Several years ago, I was drinking at Paddy Reilly's, just sitting at the bar and killing the afternoon slowly. This was before Paddy's got discovered and got hip and you couldn't squeeze your way inside, and just after my car wreck of a girlfriend at the time had introduced me to the place. The bartender, who had come over from Belfast, and I got to talking, and the subject of my profession came up, as it does, when someone asks, "So, what do you do for a living?"
"I'm a personal protection specialist," I'd said.
"What's that when it's at home, then?"
"Bodyguard."
Which had, in turn, led to a conversation about protecting people, and my thoughts on it at the time. Being from Belfast, and having grown up with all that entailed, the bartender had a very intimate view on violence, very different from that of most of the people you meet. In the course of the conversation, the difference between assassination and murder came up.
"I've known the rough shooters, mate," the bartender told me. "They'd make you wet yourself you saw them coming."
"That's not what makes me wet myself," I said. "What makes me wet myself is the ones I don't see coming. The professional assassins, the ones you don't know were there until they've already left."
The bartender, who was a couple years younger than even I was at the time, shook his head. "That's James Bond bullshit. You want somebody dead, whyn't you just come at them with a bomb or a gun, eh? Why muck around with all that other garbage? Just seems to me like more ways it can go wrong."
"You're talking about killers, not assassins."
"Same difference, mate."
"No," I said. "A killer is who you use when you don't care if people know it was a murder. An assassin's who you use when you don't want anyone to know it was a murder."
The bartender had digested that, then bought me another Guinness on the house. The trick wasn't simply killing Jason Earle, it was doing it in a way that wouldn't look like murder, either before, during, or after the act. It was going to have to be a snow-white hit, with not even a smudge left behind. Trent and Panno were both very clear on this, which, I suppose, meant that whoever it was back at the Pentagon who had given this particular execution of nastiness his blessing had been, as well. (I was sure it was a him; to my knowledge there had yet to be an Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, for example, who had been female.)
No blowback at all. Not even a hint of it.
Not that it would have been that much easier if we hadn't much cared how it looked from the outside. While the White House chief of staff did not enjoy the same Secret Service protection as did the President, Vice President, and their families, he was a hard target all the same. Striking at him in the White House wasn't only out of the question, it was patently impossible. Even if it had been, by some insane confluence of coincidences, chance, and luck, viable, I don't think any one of us would have gone for it, anyway, including Alena. It was the White House. It wasn't just off the table; it wasn't even in the same room where the rest of the game was being played.
Panno and Trent had prepared a bundle of intelligence for Alena and me to start with, and for the first six days, that's what we focused on. Trent had a wireless connection in the house, and between the documents in the milk crate and Alena's MacBook, we must have reviewed several thousand pages of data on Earle, his life, his relationships, his family, and his work with GSI and Gorman-North. "Target immersion" was what Alena called it; learning everything so you can forget most of it later; learning everything because you didn't know what might prove important.
"Video," Alena told Panno after we'd been at it a week. "There's little by way of photographs, and there's no video."
"Earle doesn't like the spotlight."
"We don't care," she told him. "We need both. Get it." Three days later, Panno handed us a CD of compressed video footage and various photographs of Jason Earle. The photographs weren't so much to assist in a visual confirmation-we knew what Earle looked like, and unlike us, he wasn't going to any lengths to conceal his features. As far as that went, there was still heat on Danielle and Christopher Morse, meaning there was still a manhunt ongoing for both Alena and me, but in the media, at least, the story had begun to play out. The world, being the world, had moved on, and once the Pentagon had thrown a spanner into Earle's smear campaign, confusion had dampened the media enthusiasm for selling that flavor of fear.
That didn't mean we were taking anything for granted. Alena bleached her hair, killing the glorious copper in it, then replaced it with something from a bottle that said it was "Superstar Blonde" but which came out looking like melted yellow crayon. She did her eyebrows, as well, which must have hurt like hell, but she didn't complain.
"Cuffs and collar," she told me, and I laughed at that.
For my part, I was letting the beard grow in while refusing to let the hair on my head do the same. The itching was finally beginning to pass, which made it bearable. The last time I'd done a beard, it had been a tiny and almost fashionable thing on my chin. This one wasn't. This one was full, and combined with my cue-ball pate, remarkably unflattering.
I didn't even like looking at myself. With his place of work off-limits, we turned our attention to his place of residence, and rapidly discovered we didn't much care for that, either. He maintained a home in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and while it was by no means a fortress, it was alarmed and patrolled, and had to have been checked on a regular basis by White House Security, at the least.
It was also occupied by his wife, and she didn't like to be alone. While both Jason and Victoria Earle, it seemed, were entirely faithful to one another, she was the social butterfly he was not. She had a wide number of friends who came to visit, she enjoyed entertaining, and she was active in several groups and societies. The house was heavily trafficked, and that meant while it might be easier to slip in or out with a crowd, the possibility of collateral damage was enormous. We didn't want to set the trap for Earle and end up killing his wife by mistake.
So hitting him at home was out, too. "Schedule," I said to Trent. "Can you get us his schedule for the next few months?"
"How many months are we talking about?"
"I don't know. If you can get it out to three, great. Six, even better."
"It's going to take you six months to do this?"
"It's going to take as long as it's going to take, Elliot, and rushing it isn't the way to see this done right."
Trent told me he would see what he could do. The White House chief of staff is one of those jobs that everyone has heard about, and most people have no idea what it entails. Considering that the person holding the position has often been called "The Second-Most Powerful Man in Washington," that's a little disconcerting.
The chief of staff is the highest-ranking member in the Executive Office of the President of the United States. He is responsible for controlling access to the President-a duty that has oftentimes earned him the nickname of "the Gatekeeper"-because there are always people who want the President's time. The chief of staff vets these requests, turning away those that, for one reason or another, do not meet either his own, or, more importantly, the President's requirements.
He oversees the work of the White House staff. This means everyone-the maids, the butlers, the gardeners, the staffers in the West Wing, and the caterers in the galley. He makes the White House run, each and every day, and he deals with preparations for all state visits and the like.
He often is one of the President's closest advisors, which goes a long way to explaining why he is considered to be such a powerful figure. Given that he oftentimes has a front-row seat for and even participates in major policy decisions, he needs to be reliable, smart, and frank. He must be willing to offer his own opinions, while ultimately abiding by the President's final decision.
These things being said, not every administration has had a chief of staff. In some instances it has been deemed unnecessary; in others, the position has been simply unfillable. Where there is a strong and actively involved President, the chief of staff can find himself with little to do, especially with regard to formulation of policy and issues of governance. By the same token, there have been Presidents who had demonstrated very little interest in the day-to-day minutiae of governing, and as a result the chief of staff becomes very powerful indeed, sometimes even referred to as a "quasi-prime minister."
Most of them don't last in the job very long, the average time of service being two and a half years. There's high burnout due to stress. Jason Earle had the distinction of being the longest-serving chief of staff, at seven years, beating out the previous record-holder, John Steelman, who served under Harry Truman for six.
Panno found that as ironic as I did.
Then there are the unofficial duties. A good chief of staff maintains strong relationships with both the first lady, the Vice President, and the wife of the Vice President. He is trusted by all, and endeavors to facilitate communication between each of their staffs. In many cases, he adopts some of their projects and preferences as his own. A bad relationship with any of them can undermine his key relationship with the President, and therefore, a good chief of staff-or, at least, a chief of staff who wants to remain in the position-makes it a point to work with, and to make himself available to, the other three. "He was hospitalized for chest pains last spring," Alena told me. "He complained of shortness of breath and a sharp pain in the side while in the office last April, and was taken to Bethesda for examination and observation."
"And?"
"There was no complication, and it was attributed to stress on the job."
"You think they're covering up a heart attack?"
She shook her head. "There is no shame in it, so why bother concealing it?"
"Still."
She gnawed on her lower lip. "Worth considering." Trent, via Panno, via whoever, got us a copy of his schedule. We were in the beginning of the third week, now, and Panno was spending more and more time away from the house, presumably running between us and whoever he was messengering for in Washington. I hoped whoever it was he was reporting to-if he was reporting at all-was discreet. The last thing we wanted was for our location to be blown.
The second to last thing we wanted was for Earle to find out he was in our sights. If he knew-or for that matter, even suspected-that Alena and I had grown tired of being hunted and had decided to turn the tables on him, he wouldn't be simply a hard target; he would become an impossible one. He would go to ground, wrap himself up inside his protective bubble. Then there would be no way we could pierce it to reach him.
When Trent finally got us Earle's schedule, it took less than a minute to realize that what we'd feared was exactly what had happened.
"There's nothing here," I said. "No public appearances, nothing. He's got one trip with the President to Camp David, that's it."
"It's his tentative schedule for the next three months." Trent fixed me with his sunken eyes. "Tentative. Don't read too much into it."
Alena shook her head in disgust, tossing the paper onto our ever-growing stack of research, which now dominated the dining room table.
"He knows," she said. "Someone tipped him, and he knows."
"No one tipped him," Trent said. It wasn't defensive; it was defiant. He looked from Alena to me as if suspecting us of lurking betrayal.
"Then he suspects," Alena said. "For whatever reason, he suspects, Mr. Trent. Look at this schedule. There are no public appearances. None. He is the chief of staff at the White House, and yet he has not taken a single public engagement, not a single appearance. According to this schedule, he is behaving in all ways like a man who knows he is being targeted."
"The schedule's considered tentative, at best," Trent said. "It may change."
I shook my head. "Not unless he thinks the threat's gone."
"Then you'll just have to convince him it is."
"Well, the easiest way to do that, Elliot, would be to use the phone there and turn us over to the cops."
"No," Alena disagreed. "It would be easier to kill us."
"Don't tempt me," Trent said.
"We can't fake our deaths," I said to Alena, ignoring him. "Earle would never buy that."
"He will not expose himself until he is certain that our threat is removed," Alena said, flatly. "Until he believes without doubt that we pose him-or mean him-no harm. He can afford to wait."
"I can't," said Trent. "Stannous acetate," Alena said.
We were in bed, each of us on our backs, staring at the dark ceiling and listening to the not-so-distant waves. We weren't post-coital; we hadn't made love since moving into Trent's house, and it wasn't out of any deference to him or concern for what he might think. It was hard, I suppose, for either of us to feel romantic while planning what, in its most naked terms, was murder. It wasn't that we were no longer comfortable with each other, nor that we no longer felt as strongly as we once had. There was a time and a place for it, and that time and place just wasn't here and now.
"Tin?" I asked. It took me a moment. I'd been lost in my own thoughts, missing Kobuleti, and wondering how Miata was faring with the Raminisshvillis and their Internet cafe in Kobuleti.
When Alena spoke, her voice was soft, and her tone one of resolve. "You dissolve it in glacial acetic acid, you get a solid, stannous acetate." She rolled onto her side to look at me in the darkness. Her almost-blond hair seemed luminescent. "The CIA used it to induce heart attacks during the Cold War. It can be dissolved and then ingested as a liquid, or placed as a contact agent."
"How quickly does it work?"
"Ingested, it works very quickly. Within minutes. As a contact agent, absorption is slower unless aided by a solvent of some sort."
"How traceable?"
"Anything can be discovered if one is to look for it. The question is whether or not an autopsy will be performed."
"White House chief of staff dies of an AMI-"
"After complaining of chest pains and shortness of breath the previous year," Alena interrupted.
"-I'd think an autopsy is standard operating procedure."
She considered that, then rolled onto her back again.
"Bethesda," I said, after a moment. "They'll do the autopsy at the naval base in Bethesda."
She turned her head to look at me. "Performed by military personnel?"
"Oh, yes."
She almost smiled. "Problem solved." We were left with three questions-how, where, and when. It was one thing to have resolved that we would kill Earle by poisoning him with stannous acetate. It was another thing entirely to figure out how, exactly, we'd get the poison into his bloodstream.
The answer came while we were watching the video Panno had acquired for us. We watched it on the laptop, a random sampling of media appearances and round tables and talk shows, and the most recent was already four months old, from December of the previous year. There was nothing after that, which only reconfirmed what Alena and I now knew as true; for some reason, Earle suspected he had been targeted, and was taking steps to deny exposure. As a result, most of what we watched was older, dating from early in the first term of the current administration.
The piece that caught us was almost five years old, and shortly after it started I realized what I'd been looking at all along and stopped the playback, then rewound it. We watched it a second time, and then a third.
"You're seeing that?" I asked her after the last time through.
"Yes," she said.
"I think we've got him."
"Yes." Alena sighed, not unhappy, not pleased, just the sound of someone who had completed a particularly arduous and not particularly enjoyable job. "Yes, Atticus, I think we do."
We had the how. We knew how we would kill Earle if we were ever given the chance.
But as things stood, there was no where and there was no when, and as best as any of us could tell, Jason Earle was doing everything in his power to make certain there never would be, either. Three weeks and three days after we started, we sat down with Trent and Panno at the kitchen table. Panno had the latest version of Earle's schedule he'd been able to obtain, and once again, it appeared that the White House chief of staff was far too busy chief-of-staffing in the White House to come out and play, let alone be murdered.
I passed the schedule off to Alena, who glanced at it, snorted, and set it aside. Getting Earle out into the open was something we'd come to later.
"We're going to need some stannous acetate," I said. "It's easy enough to acquire from just about any chemical warehouse, any supplier to schools or labs. However you get it, you obviously don't want it to be traced back."
Panno took notes on a pad he had produced from a pocket. He took the notes in pencil. "Spell it."
I spelled it for him.
"How much will you need?"
"Not much," Alena said. "Five grams will do; it costs about one hundred dollars per gram. Ten grams would be ideal; it would provide a backup supply."
"Done," Panno said. "You want it brought here?"
"We'll come to that."
"What's it do?" Trent asked.
"You'll like this, Elliot," I told him. "For all intents and purposes, it induces a heart attack. It'll look like he had an acute myocardial infarction."
Trent actually smiled.
"What happens if someone gets paddles on him in time?" Panno asked.
"Won't make a damn bit of difference, not if it's still in his system. He'll just arrest again. It'll look like he had multiples, instead of just the one."
"Vector?"
"It can be ingested, but we're going to try for a topical application."
Trent stopped smiling. "I don't like that."
"We're talking about murdering a man, but that's the part you don't like?"
"It's imprecise. What happens if someone else touches the surface in question first?"
"Won't be a problem." I looked at Alena. "Show them."
Alena opened her laptop and switched on the video we'd cued up. It was the oldest of the clips we had, taped five years prior, and showed Earle speaking to an auditorium full of fresh young faces at the Harvard Business School.
"Watch his hands," Alena told them.
They watched.
Alena cued the next clip, this time with Earle at a podium in front of a cluster of reporters.
"Again."
They watched again.
She cued and played the next three, and at the last said, "It's compulsive behavior, and entirely subconscious. He approaches the podium in each instance, he adjusts the microphone, and then he plants his hands on either side, as if to support himself. In every video where a podium has been present, Jason Earle does the same thing. Adjust and plant."
"We get him at a speaking engagement," I said. "We find the right venue, something where he's speaking after dinner, say, then we apply the stannous acetate to the podium just prior to his taking the stage. We dose the ridges on either side, where he plants his hands."
"He'll be introduced." Panno shook his head. "C'mon, Kodiak. He's the featured speaker, someone will stand there to introduce him first. What happens if whoever is doing the introducing puts his or her hands on those sides?"
"The way we'll fix the dose, it'll require contact with both hands," I said. "Ideally, we get him at a smaller function, something more intimate, where the introduction will be brief by necessity. If whoever does the introducing touches only one side, we should be okay. It's the combination of doses that'll do it."
Trent stared at the monitor on the laptop for several seconds.
"How long will it take?" he asked.
"Fifteen minutes, maybe longer," Alena said. "He will be well into his lecture when he goes into arrest."
"Will it hurt him?"
"It is a heart attack, Mr. Trent. You have suffered several yourself. What do you think?"
"I think it'll hurt like hell."
"That is what I think, as well."
"Good," Elliot Trent said, pleased. "When do you do it?"
I closed the laptop.
"We don't," I said. "There's no opportunity. You saw the schedule. He's not speaking in public, and as far as we can tell, he won't speak in public ever again if he thinks there's even a remote chance that Alena or I will try to hit him. We've seen four versions of his schedule, and they're all the same. Either he knows he's being targeted, or he suspects he is, but whichever the case, he's going out of his way to deny us any opportunity to hit him."
Trent didn't like that, shaking his head. "No. Dammit, no, not good enough. He doesn't live in the damn White House. You can take him at his home."
"According to your friend John, there, his home is now protected by the boys from Gorman-North," I said. "If you want us to hit the house with RPGs and automatic weapons, then maybe-maybe-we can make it happen. But not without collateral damage. And not without making it look like exactly what it will be, which is a goddamn hit."
"It's not an option," Panno said. "Needs to be clean."
"Then why did you show this to us?" Trent demanded, gesturing at the laptop. "You tell us what you need to do it, you tell us how you'll do it, and then you say you can't do it? What the hell is the point of that, Kodiak?"
"To show you it's possible-"
"You just said-"
"-just not possible at the present time."
Trent started to retort, then stopped himself.
"Do you understand what I'm telling you, Elliot?" I asked. "I'm telling you that we can get you what you want. We can kill the man responsible for Natalie's murder. I'm telling you that we can do it, and we can even get away with it. But not unless the situation changes. Not unless Jason Earle believes-absolutely, positively, and without question believes-that it's safe to emerge from his bunker. He has to believe that the threat Alena and I pose to him is gone. One way or another."
Trent's mouth worked, as if he were tasting each of the things he wanted to say before swallowing them instead of sharing them. Then he found something that didn't taste quite so bad.
"It's you and Drama he's afraid of," he said. "Natalie died because he was coming after you. He's afraid of you because he thinks you're threatening him."
"Yes," I said.
"And all of this bullshit he's pulled, it's for the same reason. Because he's afraid of the two of you."
"Yes."
"The son of a bitch is wrong. He should be afraid of me."
"That's what we were thinking," Alena said.
Trent closed his eyes, dropping into dark thoughts, and I was right there with him. Beside him, Panno was frowning, suspicious, as if sensing that suddenly Trent, Alena, and I were having an entirely different conversation from the one he'd been privy to.
"Then I'll kill him myself," Trent said, opening his eyes. "You two just tell me how."
"The same way your daughter would have done it, Mr. Trent," Alena told him. "With a rifle."