“No, it isn’t,” said her husband. “It could be, perhaps, but …”
“Let’s go,” Jake told Yocke. “The place on Q Street.”
With traffic practically nonexistent, Yocke made excellent time. He ran every red light after merely slowing for a look. They drove past the Lafayette Circle address, Toad pointed out the error, and Yocke circled the block.
There was a parking place clearly visible fifty feet down the street, but Yocke double-parked in front of the main entrance. He gave Grafton a bland, slightly smug smile.
The captain sighed and got out of the car. “Toad, phone the armory and find out what’s happening.”
While the lieutenant used the telephone inside, Jake conferred with another agent in the hall. He was back in the car waiting when Toad came down the steps.
“Riots,” Toad reported. “The lid is coming off.”
“Any sign of the terrorists?”
“Nothing yet.”
“Let’s go back to the armory,” Jake told Yocke and tapped the dashboard.
“Aye aye, sir. What did the manager say?”
“Wasn’t the manager. He’s gone for the holidays. It was one of the tenants. Identifies both pictures. Says the guy called himself Smithson. He couldn’t remember the first name. Been here about a month.”
“Only one tenant?” Rita asked. “What about all the others?”
“Just one. No one else is sure. The agents are going door to door.”
“You’d think if one person saw him and was sure, they all would at least recognize the photo.”
“You’d think,” Jake Grafton agreed.
Assume these people are correct. Assume Henry Charon — Smithson — Sam Donally were all one and the same man. He had two apartments. No, make that at least two. What if he had three? Or four?
Grafton looked up at the buildings the car drove past. He could be up there right now, watching the street. But why had so few people seen him?
Let’s assume the man is really Henry Charon from New Mexico. He comes to town, takes several apartments. Why? Because the hotels and motels were the very first places the police checked. Yet the minute his picture ran in the paper, he would have to abandon all the apartments. Wouldn’t he? But that was a bad break. Unexpected. He worked like hell to ensure there would be no witnesses. But he was seen. That was always a possibility.
Apartments. He rented apartments about a month ago. The conclusion was inescapable — the attempt on the President’s life was very carefully planned. Most attempts to kill the President were made by emotionally disturbed individuals, Jake knew, screwballs who acted on a sudden impulse when an opportunity presented itself. Charon or Smithson or Donally had carefully planned, bided his time. And he should have succeeded. This was the nightmare the Secret Service worked to foil — the professional killer who stalked his prey, the hunter of men.
It fitted. Charon was a poacher and a professional hunting guide. He knew firearms. He could shoot.
A hunter. A man at home outdoors.
Well, there were the alleys and the railroad yards. Maybe the places under bridges and overpasses where the bums hang out.
No. He would be seen and remembered in all those areas unless he went to great pains to look like a derelict. And to pass freely in the world of working people and tourists that was the rest of Washington, he would have to be groomed and dressed appropriately.
A master of disguise, perhaps? A quick change artist?
Jake thought not.
Was he still in Washington? Well, the assumption was that all these long-range shootings were done by one man, and if so, there appeared to be no obvious reason why he should have left. Unless he’s finished what he came to do or decided to abandon the rest of his plan. Questions — there were too many unanswered questions.
The car entered one of Washington’s traffic circles. As Yocke piloted the car around Jake Grafton caught sight of the statue amidst the trees and evergreens. These little parks, he thought, were about as close to the outdoors as the residents of Washington ever get.
Perhaps a camper, mounted on a pickup bed. Maybe one of those vacation cruisers with the little toilet and the propane stove. Surely Henry Charon from New Mexico would be at home in something like that.
What else? He was missing something. Henry Charon, a hunter and small rancher from New Mexico. He comes to the big city and only three people see him? See and remember.
The problem, Jake thought, was that he himself had lived too long in cities. He didn’t see the city as Charon did, as alien territory.
No, he had that wrong. Charon saw the city precisely as he saw the forests and mountains. A hunting ground.
But where did that fact take him? Jake Grafton didn’t know.
The conversation among his fellow passengers caught his attention now. “Why is it,” Rita asked Jack Yocke, “that the newspapers and television give the impression that the whole city is in flames, with a million people rioting in the street? My mother called me last night in a panic.”
“The television people are in show biz,” Yocke told her lightly.
“Have there been any more ‘communiqués’ from Aldana’s friends in Colombia?” Toad asked.
“Yeah,” said Yocke. “They say they’re going to blow up some airliners. They’re going to bring this nation to its knees, they say. It’s probably on TV right now. Be in tomorrow’s paper.”
Jake Grafton sat in glum silence. The aftermath of all this … God only knew. But, he suspected, the plight of the desperately hopeless, all those people without the education or pluck to make it in America — the natural prey of the Chano Aldanas — would be ignored in the hue and cry. Not that the poor were the sole consumers of illegal drugs or even the majority. Oh no. But they were the core of the problem, the loyal consumer base unaffected by changing fashion or public education. The poor were the least likely to get treatment, the least likely to have the social and financial and spiritual assets to escape the downward spiral of addiction, crime, and early death.
“We’re going to have to legalize dope,” Yocke said under his breath.
This comment produced an outburst from both Toad and Rita. Jake silenced them curtly. They were supposed to be fighting alligators: someone else was going to have to figure out a way to drain the swamp.
The situation room at the armory was packed with people, including General Land and his flag aides. Jake found time to quickly brief the chairman on the search for the assassin, then he got out of the way.
He stood there watching the brass do the math required to figure out how long it would take to search all the remainder of the city with the troops available. They knew as well as Jake that the people they were after might just walk a half block to a building that had already been searched.
General Land was acutely conscious of that possibility. He wanted street patrols to stop and examine the IDs of any suspicious characters. The D.C. police could help, but they had limited manpower.
The military presence was inexorably rising and would continue to rise until the terrorists were found. If they were here to be found. Score one for the narco-terrorists, Jake Grafton thought. If they had accomplished nothing else, the people inside the beltway were going to get a real taste of military dictatorship.
While these thoughts were going through Grafton’s mind, Senator Bob Cherry and three other senators were voicing them on national television. Cherry dropped the bombshell toward the end of the program. Chano Aldana should be sent back to Colombia, he said, and then the terrorism would stop.
“The people of Washington, the people of this nation, should not have to submit to being wounded, maimed, and murdered just so the administration can have the satisfaction of prosecuting Mr. Aldana. The citizens huddle in their houses while the military makes war in the streets. We all admire persistence in the face of adversity, but at some point dogged insistence on observing all the arcane niceties of the law becomes foolhardy. Atrocities, bombings, assassinations — how much do we have to endure here in Northern Colombia? What price in blood and flesh does Dan Quayle think we should pay for Aldana’s prosecution?”