We worked the schedule for two days, checking and double-checking the listed appointments, meetings, and appearances. There was a day near the end of April coming up, almost four weeks out, now, that we liked the looks of. Earle had two events scheduled, one out at Georgetown, the other at the Watergate, and when we had Panno double-check them it looked like nothing had changed, that neither had been canceled.
At the Watergate, Earle was going to be the featured after-dinner speaker at the national meeting of Women for the Preservation of the American Heritage. This was, apparently, something he was doing as a favor for, or at the request of, the first lady, as WPAH was one of her pet projects, a foundation that she had been active in even before meeting her husband. Earle, according to the schedule, was to speak for forty-five minutes following dessert, but the schedule had blocked time from five until seven-thirty that evening, apparently to provide wiggle room.
Georgetown, on the other hand, was far more tightly scheduled, at fifty-five minutes. It was another speaking engagement, from one in the afternoon until just before two, and there was nothing in the schedule specifying where he was speaking on the campus or what he was speaking about, only that he was going to. Using Alena's MacBook and the Georgetown Web site wasn't much help; the April calendar indeed had an entry for "Lecture by White House Chief of Staff Jason Earle," and said the lecture would be given in McCarthy Hall, in the McShain Lounge, but that was all.
"McShain Lounge," I said. "Sounds intimate."
"For alumni and alumnae," Alena remarked.
"Easy enough to fake that."
"You think?" She considered. "There are many other ways to gain access to the campus and the hall prior to the engagement."
"Sure."
"Many of them."
I could see the wheels spinning.
I let them spin. We had a fight about it the following morning, as we were finishing up our yoga in what passed for the living room. We'd shoved all of the furniture to the sides to give us room, and even with that accommodation there still wasn't nearly the room either of us would've liked. In the kitchen, I could hear morning radio and the sounds of Panno apparently making himself a very large breakfast.
"So I'm thinking the best way to do this is to go up to D.C. in the next week and get into position," I told Alena. "Get a job on the campus, maybe, doing maintenance or something similar, get the layout."
"Agreed."
"Verify that everything is as we think it is."
"Yes."
"Then the other one follows maybe a day or two prior to the hit, prepares the exfil and stands by."
"Again, agreed. We stay only long enough to verify the kill."
Each of us stretched, turning into new poses. From my angle, she was now upside down.
"That's about a month without contact," I said. "That's a long time."
"We will survive it."
"I'll be careful," I told her.
Alena bent backwards, the move smooth as a line of molten glass. "You are not going to do it."
"Like hell, Alena."
"No, you are not thinking. I am better for this, and you know that." She left the position, exhaling long, then getting to her feet. "I have the experience, and I am marginally harder to recognize than you are, at least at the moment."
I tumbled down and got my own feet beneath me. "I need to do this."
"Why? Because Natalie was your friend? Is it not enough that Jason Earle will die for what he did to her? Is it not enough that you will be as guilty as I or Trent or Panno in this?"
"No, it's not. I need to do it. I need to see him die."
"That is unprofessional."
"Fuck professional. This entire thing is unprofessional. Elliot Trent let me shoot him in the goddamn head to give us this, you think he was giving a rat's ass about professional? Nothing about this is professional, Alena! Nothing."
Alena stared at me, unblinking, a sheen of sweat on her skin.
"Don't talk to me about professional," I said. "Not about this."
"Yes, Atticus, about this. If no one is being professional, then one of us must be. That person is me."
"This isn't Oxford; this isn't you trying to save me from what I might become. I've become it, Alena. For better or for worse, I've become it."
"I know. And you know that I am better for this. If a job cannot be obtained, I can pass as a student. I can get onto the campus, I can place the poison, and I can get out again. And it is not that you cannot do these things, Atticus, it is that I can do them better, with less risk to myself."
The thing was, she was right. She was absolutely right. She could pass for ten years younger if she tried, with the right clothes, the right hair. She could play the Russian emigre and get a job on the maintenance staff, or she could play the postgrad student, or she could play the alum. And maybe I could do all of those things, too, but I wouldn't be able to do half of them as well.
And it was unprofessional, and she was right about that, too. Whatever the reasons behind the crime, when it came to the task, the task was the only thing that should have mattered. Anything else, any agenda or emotion, would only get in the way of that, and make it harder to do the job right.
"You're right," I said, and I left it at that. Alena left two days later, with Panno. She left with a new cell phone and a new identity to match her blond hair, and eight days after she arrived in D.C., she had a job in custodial services on the Georgetown campus. That information came from Panno, not from her, because she was running silent now, and would until I arrived in advance of the hit.
Panno's job was to serve as the link, and on the day of the hit, to provide the overwatch, to confirm that Earle was en route, that we were good to go. For the next three weeks he gave me updates at regular intervals, and he came down to Charlotte twice, to meet face-to-face and keep me posted. He had dead-dropped the stannous acetate to Alena before the first week was out, and confirmed that she had retrieved it and brought it back to the apartment she was subletting in Annandale. To the best of his knowledge, she was running safe, and had not been made.
What little remained of the media pursuit of Danielle and Christopher Morse became more and more infrequent, and then, almost as abruptly as it had come, ended.
I waited.
For almost a month, alone in a house in Charlotte, I waited, and it nearly killed me. I was worried for Alena, but it wasn't like it had been upon leaving Lynch. That had been fear, honest and true, and what I felt now was nervousness, nothing more. But I was stagnant, and once I took care of those few things that remained for me to do in Charlotte there was nothing else, and there was nothing to be done for it. I was stircrazy before the end of the fourth day, and on the fifth I risked venturing out and bought myself a membership at a Gold's Gym located two and a half miles from the house. Then I went in search of the local library and, finding it, began dividing my time between the gym and the stacks. I packed, unpacked, and repacked my go-bag multiple times. I cleaned the house. Thoroughly.
And everywhere I went, in everything I did, I walked with ghosts.
Pulling a book from a library shelf and seeing Natalie Trent with the blood trailing from her mouth, where it had formed a puddle on brittle, dry leaves. Doing the dishes and hearing the sound of her father's suddenly dead weight collapsing all at once to the hotel carpet. The shudder and wheeze of the dying hidden behind the threads of spring that had come to Charlotte.
I walked with ghosts, and they gave me no peace. The day before Earle was scheduled to lecture at Georgetown, I packed up my go-bag for the last time and drove north to D.C., in a used Honda that had been purchased for precisely the purpose two weeks earlier. I had a new ID provided by Panno, and the old ones that Sargenti had given us back in Boise, and I had eighteen thousand dollars in cash. I had two changes of new clothes, spring weight, because it was April and though the weather was forecast to be mild, it could just as easily turn hot.
I spent the night in a Red Roof Inn just off the Capital Beltway, and Panno met me in the bar there just past nine. He had another Budweiser and I had mineral water, and there were a couple of businessmen and women in there with us, and there was enough noise that we could talk.
"You're good to go," he told me. "She'll expect to hear from you tomorrow morning at oh-nine-hundred to confirm coms. I've got both your numbers, I'll keep you posted."
"You're not worried about putting this over a cell phone in the heart of D.C.?"
"Not the cell phones I've supplied you guys with, no." Panno slugged back some of his beer and cracked a grin at me. "You're covered."
I nodded, and we fell into silence for several minutes.
"Did you know Natalie?" I asked him.
"From the time we were kids," he said, running his eyes around the bar. "Right up until college, yeah."
"Didn't stay in touch?"
"Got difficult to. I was in the service, here and there. We fell out. My mistake, I could have reached out if I had wanted to, and I didn't."
"Why not?"
"I was in love with her." Panno quit his survey of the bar, brought his eyes to me. "We had a thing for a while, high school, like that. Ended when we went to college. She ended it. I didn't take it well."
"I thought you were in this because of Trent."
"It's as much about her as it is about him. Let me ask you something. You were in the Army. Why'd you leave?"
"I wasn't very good at it. You?"
"Special Forces."
"That wasn't what I meant. Why'd you leave?"
"I have a problem following the orders of idiots," he said. "There weren't a lot of them, but I seemed to have a knack for finding the ones that were hiding in the woodwork. My problem is I look like I'm dumber than I actually am, and I was dealing with people who were dumber than they looked, you know?"
"Too well."
"You got a future at this."
"I'm not sure I want it."
"You're good at it. That move the two of you pulled in Wyoming was fucking brilliant."
"That was her, not me."
"Not according to your wife. I asked her."
"What'd you call her?"
"C'mon, man, if you don't have a common-law marriage I don't know what one looks like."
I shook my head slightly. "She's being generous about Wyoming."
"She says that putting yourself out there in Montana, that was your idea, too. That took balls. That took more than just guts-that took passion."
I looked at him. It wasn't a word I was hearing much, and I wasn't feeling terribly passionate at the moment. I was feeling cold, to the world and to myself.
"Some people need killing," Panno told me.
"I've heard that before," I said. "I'm not sure I disagree with it. I'm just not sure I'm the guy to be making that call."
He nodded, then raised his beer.
"For Natalie and her dad," he said.
I met his glass with my own.
"For Natalie and her dad," I agreed. I didn't sleep well that night, and was up again before the dawn. I tried yoga and couldn't get myself to breathe properly. I took a shower and shaved off the beard, but kept the mustache, turning it into something that drooped deep around the sides of my mouth. I liked the look better than the full beard, but that wasn't saying much. After I had dressed again, I turned on the television and watched the news, and nowhere did my face or Alena's appear.
I checked out early, got into the car, and headed across the Potomac. I drove out to Arlington, parked, and waited for nine o'clock to roll around. When it did, I took the cell phone Panno had given me the previous night and switched it on, then dialed the number for Alena.
She answered on the first ring. "Hello."
"I love you," I said.
There was a pause. "Coms are working," Alena said, softly, and I wasn't sure if it was uncertainty or surprise in her voice. "Call me at noon to confirm."
"Noon," I said, and cut the connection.
Panno called five minutes later, also to confirm that coms were working, and that everything was still on schedule. That left me most of three hours to kill, so I drove over to the Mall. It was the heart of spring in D.C., and it was already muggy, but that wasn't stopping the tourists. It took me a while to find a place to park, by which time it was a little past ten. I started at the Lincoln Memorial and walked from there for the next hour and a half. I stopped for twenty minutes or so at the Vietnam Memorial, found it as affecting as I always did, and spent much of it just staring at the three soldiers, at their fatigue and their honor and their sorrow.
I took my time heading back to the car, and if I was being surveilled, it was beyond my ability to spot it. It was twenty-three minutes to noon as I was climbing back behind the wheel, and that was when the phone Panno had given me began to ring.
"Go," I said.
"He's canceled," Panno told me. He was doing a very good job of keeping the frustration from his voice.
My heart jump-started again.
"Is he spooked?" I asked. "Did he get tipped?"
"Fuck if I know. My information says he's just canceled the Georgetown gig, that's all. Could be a thousand reasons why he would do that, it doesn't mean he knows anything."
"Can you find out if he's still planning on being at the Watergate?"
"He only canceled-"
"No, I know that, I'm asking can you confirm that he will be at the Watergate tonight?"
"I'll get on it. You'll tell her?"
"I'm heading out there now," I said, hung up, and then hit my redial. Alena answered as she had the first time, before the first ring was through. "He's canceled."
"Why?"
"We don't know. I'm trying to confirm that he'll still be going to the Watergate."
"What are you thinking?"
"I don't know yet. Where are you?"
"At work, on campus. It's confirmed, he's not coming?"
"He's not coming," I said. "I'll be there as soon as I can."
"There's a lot on the north side, just off Reservoir Road. I'll meet you there."
I hung up and started driving. After a second, I switched on the radio, punched my way through the AM presets, finally landing on an all-talk station. Nobody was saying anything about any new crisis in the world, and that was a good sign, I thought, because it meant that whatever the reason Earle had canceled his trip out to Georgetown, maybe it wasn't a reason that would cause him to cancel his evening plans as well. And I needed him to keep his evening plans. I needed him to go to the Watergate.
If we didn't hit him today, I didn't know when, or if, we would get another chance. It had taken almost three months and Elliot Trent's death to put this together. Another three months would be all the more complicated, and all the more dangerous for us. It didn't matter that we weren't in the news anymore. The public's memory is for shit, but it's not that much for shit. Alena was exactly where she said she would be, wearing her custodial coveralls and carrying a ratty-looking backpack that went with the ensemble. She had cut her hair very short, and maintained the blond look, and I guessed that was why she'd had to cut her hair; it had been bleached one too many times.
I pulled in and stopped, leaving the engine running, and she opened the passenger door and slid in, dropping the backpack at her feet. I started to turn back to the wheel, but she surprised the hell out of me by reaching out and grabbing me with both hands. She put her mouth to mine, kissed me fiercely and for not long enough, then released me.
"I love you, too," she said. "Drive."
I pulled back onto Reservoir, turning right, heading once again in the direction I had come.
"Has he called you back?"
"Not yet. I'm trying to get confirmation about the Watergate."
"You want to try to hit him there?"
"You see another alternative?" I asked. "There's no way we can take him at his house, and I'm thinking the window on this is rapidly slamming shut."
"We can't dose the podium there," she said. "The first lady will be speaking, we can't take that risk."
"We won't dose the podium. We'll find another way. How do we get to your place?"
"You're heading the wrong direction. Turn left up ahead."
I took the left, followed her directions, turning towards Annandale. "You've already packed up?"
"There wasn't much to pack." She nudged the backpack at her feet with her sneaker. "Why are we going there?"
"We need to stage," I said. "And you're going to have to change clothes."
"Then we'll need to stop somewhere to buy some. How nice?"
"Watergate nice."
"You do have a plan."
"I'm working on one."
"If we don't do this today, we're going to have more than just Earle as a problem," Alena said. "I don't think Panno's friends will be very happy with us."
"I'm trying not to think about that."
"Probably wise."
My phone rang, and I handed it to Alena to answer, heard her side of the conversation. It lasted all of eleven seconds before she was hanging up.
"According to his information, Earle will be honoring his commitment to the first lady this evening."
"Call him back, tell him that we're going to need to know the second he's on the move, and then tell him that he's going to need a suit, and he needs to meet us at the Watergate."
She did so, relaying exactly what I'd said. There was a pause, and then she handed the phone back to me. "He wants you."
"What?" I asked him.
"I'm not playing on the field," Panno said.
"Like hell you aren't," I said. "You want to use a sports metaphor, here's one: You're off the bench. We may need you there."
"You're seriously going to try this?" Panno asked. I couldn't tell if he was impressed or worried. "You're seriously going to try to do this, there?"
"Hell yeah."
"If he's twitched-"
"Then I'll die trying," I said.