Within three minutes of the shooting a tape was uploaded onto YouTube and a tweet went out on Twitter purportedly from the group Jihad al-Salibiyya taking credit for the attack on the senator and telling the world that after striking abroad they were now bringing the fight and the cause to America.
By morning Jefferson's photograph appeared in every newspaper in the United States, from broadsheet to tabloid, including front page above the fold in the New York Times. For Kate Sinclair, the publicity was priceless.
Forty-eight hours after the event itself, reading a script hastily written by Morrie Adler, the president announced that Richard Pierce Sinclair had been appointed to the vice presidency of the United States. By the end of the week it was the cover of People magazine and Time. Within ten days Patrick Henry Jefferson had a New York agent and slightly more than half a million dollars in the bank.
25
"This is a very, very, bad idea," said Peggy. She and Holliday were sitting in the cab of the old pickup truck they'd borrowed from Harry Moonblanket two days before. The battered old F150 was parked across from a plain white bungalow on West Federal Street in Bedford Mills. It was typical of most of the homes in the working-class Virginia town: slightly run-down, in need of paint and sitting on a half-acre lot crusted with a thin layer of old snow. A pink flamingo was frozen in place on the front lawn and the large area in the rear showed the hard, lumpy ruts of a vegetable garden. A carport with a fiberglass roof had been tacked on to the right side of the house like an afterthought. Sitting under the green, corrugated sheet of plastic was a brand-new, jet-black Porsche Turbo S.
"It's the only idea I have left," said Holliday. He scratched at the heavy bristle on his cheeks and chin-his early attempt at a disguise. With the eye patch he looked quite frightening. "We can't go back to the house in Georgetown, you can't go back to Rafi and I can't think of anyone else we can go to for help. We've got to figure this whole thing out by ourselves."
"What good is this guy going to be?" Peggy asked. "I still don't get it."
"Neither do I," answered Doc. "There's something wrong about it, just like Brennan and Philpot and all the rest. This guy Jefferson was there. Maybe he saw something we missed. It's worth a shot."
"And if he turns around and blows the whistle on us?"
"Then we're no worse off than we are right now," said Holliday. "On the run with no place to go."
The gun used to shoot the newly appointed Vice President of the United States had been a short-barreled Walther P22 semiautomatic pistol that had been purchased quite legally at a local Bedford Mills gun store. The identification provided by the purchaser had identified him as Theodore Douglas Trepanik, a resident of Bocock, Virginia, a double-wide trailer park suburb of Lynchburg. Further investigation had uncovered that Trepanik was employed as a technician for Falwell Aviation at the nearby Lynchburg Regional Airport.
As it turned out, Theodore Douglas Trepanik had passed away ten months previously and his trailer home in Bocock had been ransacked during the funeral. Although his wife, AnnieRuth Trepanik, had taken care to cancel all of her late husband's credit cards, she hadn't noticed that both his driver's license and Social Security card were missing from his wallet. The wallet had been on his bedside table along with his keys and reading glasses on the night of the massive heart attack that killed him.
Subsequent to the shooting, investigators from the FBI and Homeland Security discovered that the assassin had been registered at the Bedford Mills Super 8, using the Trepanik identification. Searching the room they found a Kuwaiti passport in the name of Shamed Khalil Zubai, as well as a Dutch passport in the name of Ismael Aknikh. The Kuwaiti passport showed an entry into the United States four months previously while the Dutch passport showed an entry into JFK in New York only two weeks before.
On that basis it was assumed that the name on the Kuwaiti passport was an alias and that Ismael Aknikh was the man's real name. According to the Dutch authorities Aknikh was thirty-two years old, born in Amsterdam of Moroccan immigrant parents. Both his parents were dead and he had no other known family in Amsterdam or anywhere else in the Netherlands. Beyond that the killer was a cipher, as was the group who took credit for the Sinclair shooting, as well as the assassination of the Pope: Jihad al-Salibiyya.
Ismael Aknikh and the Jihad al-Salibiyya were the fulfillment of Richard Sinclair's most dire predictions: an extremist Muslim terrorist organization centered in the United States; a festering wound that up until the night of the shooting had gone unnoticed.
At a press conference held at Walter Reed hospital in Washington the day after the shooting Kate Sinclair stated unequivocally that the attempt on her son's life was a call to action. All the intelligence, counterterrorist and federal police agencies, including Homeland Security, had failed to identify either Jihad al-Salibiyya or the threat that it represented. According to her, the attack was nothing less than an early warning of much worse to come, a clarion call to the American people and their government that another 9/11 was in the making. In closing Kate Sinclair then made her own ominous prediction: Jihad al-Salibiyya's next attack would almost certainly come sooner rather than later.
"What if Jefferson is under surveillance?" Peggy asked nervously.
"Where?" Holliday laughed. "The street is empty, the houses are a hundred yards apart and there's no one around. It's too damn cold. There's no place to hide around here and, besides, why would anyone want to put a newspaper photographer under surveillance?"
"So far we've had the CIA, the Secret Service, the Italian police and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police coming after us. Why not the Bedford Mills Police force?"
"Only one way to find out," said Holliday. He zipped up his ski jacket, then climbed out of the car. Peggy followed, muttering under her steaming breath.
Holliday reached the rickety front steps and climbed up to the equally rickety stoop. The closed curtains on the front windows looked as though they'd been made from Star Wars sheets-tiny images of C3PO and R2D2 repeated endlessly. He glanced over at the Porsche. It was so new you could still see little scraps of the dealer's label on the passenger's side window. Give this Jefferson credit; he'd established his newfound wealth in record time. Holliday knocked on the door.
From inside the house he could hear the sound of a television blaring, the Brain telling his friend Pinky of yet another plan to take over the world. Hearing the Animaniac cartoon, Holliday realized that it was Saturday. Suddenly the door was jerked open by a man in red-and-blue pajamas, holding a half-eaten Pizza Pop in one hand. It smelled revolting and was oozing red sauce over the man's hand. He was in his forties, with thin brown hair and an oval face pitted from adolescent acne, and was wearing heavy wire-framed spectacles. He had a small mouth and no chin at all.
"What?" said the man.
"I'd like to talk to you about the town hall meeting you covered a few nights back."
"Screw off," said the man. "I'm watching TV." He slammed the door but Holliday managed to get his foot in first.
"It's important," said Holliday, trying to keep his voice even.
"I told you, screw off!" said the man, pushing as hard as he could against the door. Holliday reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out the ancient Beretta Storm that Brennan had lent him. He poked the heavy barrel through the space in the door, aiming the old automatic at the man's midsection.
"Step inside the house," said Holliday.
The man's eyes widened behind the glasses and his hands shot up in the air, squeezing the contents of the Pizza Pop out onto his hand and arm. He stumbled backward into the house. Holliday followed. Peggy came last, shutting the door behind her.