I squeeze my eyes shut, hold her trembling body. Suddenly my grown daughter is fifteen years younger, a grade-schooler who needs her daddy, a father who is supposed to be her rock, who will never let her down.
I wish I could hold her, wipe away her tears, allay her every concern. I had to teach myself, long ago, that I couldn’t follow my baby girl around and make sure the world was kind to her. And now I have to pry myself loose and get on with the business at hand when I’d like nothing more than to hold her and never let go.
I cup my hands around her face, my daughter’s swollen, hopeful eyes looking up at me.
“I love you more than anything in the world,” I say. “And I promise I will come back to you.”
Chapter
21
After Lilly leaves the bar with the Secret Service agents, I ask the bartender for a glass of water. I reach into my pocket and take out my pills, the steroids that will boost my platelet count. I hate these pills. They mess up my head. But I either operate with a fuzzy brain or I’m out of commission altogether. There’s no in-between. And the latter is not an option.
I walk back to my car. The clouds are as bruised as the backs of my legs. No rain has fallen, but the smell of it is in the air.
I pull my phone out of my pocket and call Dr. Lane as I walk. She won’t recognize this phone number, but she answers anyway.
“Dr. Lane, it’s Jon Duncan.”
“Mr. President? I’ve been trying to reach you all afternoon.”
“I know. I’ve been busy.”
“Your count is continuing to drop. You’re under sixteen thousand.”
“Okay, I’m doubling up on the steroids, like I promised.”
“It’s not enough. You need immediate treatment.”
I almost walk into oncoming traffic, not paying attention as I step into a crosswalk. An SUV driver lays on the horn, in case I hadn’t noticed my mistake.
“I’m not at ten thousand yet,” I say to Dr. Lane.
“That’s a guideline. Everyone is different. You could be suffering internal bleeding as we speak.”
“But that’s unlikely,” I say. “The MRI was negative yesterday.”
“Yesterday, yes. Today? Who knows?”
I reach the lot where my car is parked. I hand over my ticket and cash, and the attendant hands me the keys.
“Mr. President, you’re surrounded by talented and capable people. I’m sure they could keep on top of things for a few hours while you take a treatment. I thought presidents delegated.”
They do. Most of the time. But this I can’t delegate. And I can’t tell her, or anyone else, why.
“I hear everything you’re saying, Deborah. I have to go now. Keep your phone handy.”
I punch out the phone, start up the car, and drive through thick traffic. Thinking about the girl in the Princeton T-shirt—Nina to my daughter.
Thinking about “Dark Ages.”
Thinking about my next meeting tonight, threats I can issue, offers I can make.
A man holding a white sign that says PARKING waves me into a lot. I pay money and follow another man’s directions to a spot. I keep my keys and walk for two blocks until I stop in front of a medium-rise apartment building bearing the name CAMDEN SOUTH CAPITOL over the entrance. Across the street, there is a roar from the crowd.
I cross the boulevard, no easy task with the traffic. A man passes me saying, “Who needs two? Who needs two?”
I remove the envelope Nina gave me and pull out the single colorful ticket to tonight’s game, the Nationals versus the Mets.
At the left-field gate of Nationals Park, attendants are processing people through a metal detector, wanding people who don’t pass the test, checking bags for weapons. I wait my place in line, but it’s a short wait. The game has already started.
My seat is in section 104, nosebleed seats. I’m accustomed to the best seats in the house, a skybox or behind home plate or right off the dugout on the third-base line. But I like this better, here in the left-field stands. My view isn’t the greatest, but it feels more real.
I look around, but there’s no point. It will happen when it happens. My job is to sit here and wait.
Ordinarily I’d be like a kid in a candy store here. I’d grab a Budweiser and a hot dog. You can shelve all those microbrews: at a ball game, there is no finer beverage than an ice-cold Bud. And no food ever tasted so good as a dog with mustard at a ball game, not even my mama’s rib tips with vinegar sauce.
I’d kick back and remember those days hurling fastballs at UNC, dreams of a pro career when the Royals drafted me in the fourth round, my year in Double A with the Memphis Chicks, sweating on buses, icing my elbow at night in dive motels, playing before crowds numbering only in the hundreds, eating Big Macs and dipping Copenhagen.
But no beer for me tonight. My stomach is already in turmoil as I wait for my visitor, the Princeton girl’s partner.
My phone vibrates in the pocket of my jeans. The caller ID on the screen reads C Brock. Carolyn texts a single number: 3. I type back Wellman and hit Send.
This is our code for a status update: so far so good. But I’m not sure everything is so good so far. I’m late to the ball game. Did he already come and go? Did I miss him?
That couldn’t be. But there’s nothing I can do but sit here and wait and watch the game. The Mets pitcher has a live arm but overthrows his split-fingered fastball, which is why it won’t drop. The Nationals leadoff hitter, a lefty, is in an obvious bunt situation with men on first and second and the third baseman staying back. The pitcher should throw high and inside, but he doesn’t. He gets lucky when the batter can’t get the bunt down either time he tries. Ultimately, with two strikes, the kid lofts a long fly ball to deep left field, toward me. Instinctively the crowd rises, but he got under it too much, and the Mets left fielder hauls it in short of the warning track.
When we all sit back down, someone in my peripheral vision is still standing, angling down the row toward me. He is wearing a Nationals cap that looks brand-new, but otherwise he looks completely out of place at a baseball game. I know instantly that the seat he’s going to take is the open one next to mine.
This man is Nina’s partner. It’s time.
Chapter
22
The assassin known as Bach closes the door, locking herself in the small bathroom. She draws a shaky breath, drops to her knees, and vomits into the toilet.
When she’s done, her eyes stinging, her stomach knotted up, she takes a breath and falls back on her haunches. This is no good. Unacceptable.
When she’s able to, she stands up, flushes the toilet, and uses Clorox wipes to thoroughly scrub the toilet, then flushes the wipes, too. No trace evidence, no DNA.
That is the last time she will vomit tonight. Period.
She checks herself in the dingy mirror above the sink. Her wig is blond, a bun. Her uniform is sky blue. Not optimal, but she didn’t get to pick the outfits worn by the cleaning crew at the Camden South Capitol apartments.
When she emerges from the bathroom into the maintenance room, the three men are still standing there, likewise dressed in light-blue shirts and dark trousers. One of the men is so muscular that his biceps and chest nearly bulge out of his shirt. She took an instant dislike to him when she met him earlier today. First because he stands out. Nobody in their profession should stand out. And second because he has probably relied too often on his brute strength and not enough on wits and skill and a nasty temperament.
The other two are acceptable. Wiry and solid but not physically impressive. Homely, forgettable faces.
“Feeling better?” the muscle-bound guy says. The other two react with a smile until they see the look on Bach’s face.
“Better than you’re going to feel,” she says, “if you ask me that again.”
Don’t mess with a woman in her first trimester of pregnancy, with morning sickness that isn’t limited, apparently, to the morning. Especially one who specializes in high-risk assassinations.
She turns to the leader of the trio, a bald man with a glass eye.