Denny let it go, rubbing his tired eyes. “Gentry has acted the last three nights in a row. Let’s plan on being ready for his next move this evening.”
Mayes nodded. “I’ve doubled the men watching Hanley’s home. Two sniper teams now. Violator’s other known associates are fully covered. He might be good, but he’s not going to reach out to anyone here without us seeing him.”
Carmichael said, “I hope you’re right. What about this other problem?”
“Catherine King?”
“Yes. Should I meet with her?”
Mayes shook his head. “Put her off for a day.”
“What will waiting one day accomplish?”
“Events are moving fast. If we bag Violator today quietly we’ll tell her we thought there was a threat to the Agency in the city, so we naturally looked into the Babbitt killing. Turns out we found nothing.”
“And if we don’t get Gentry today?”
“Then we put a lure in King’s article. Feed her something that will get back to Gentry, and make him think she knows what this is all about.”
Carmichael screwed his face up. “And Gentry reads the Post?”
“It’s Catherine King, Denny. Her articles get picked up all over. TV media will run with a story like the one we’ll give her. Everyone will be talking about it. Trust me, if you tell it to King, it will go in Gentry’s ears.”
Carmichael thought it over, then he nodded. “I like it.”
Mayes cautioned, “But give it a day before we go that route. We’re not looking for publicity in this. That’s a last resort.”
“Agreed.”
34
Court slept in his closet until nearly noon, and then he woke quickly, snatched up his pistol, and looked out into his little room. It was still and quiet; dust hung in the small shaft of light coming through the high window.
He lowered his gun and groaned with the fresh onset of pain in his side. He touched the bandages on his rib cage and found them sticky with blood. He needed to change them, but before he did he left his closet bunker and sat on his little bed. He grabbed the television remote just as the noon news began, and he flipped around until he found a local station.
The first images on the screen were of a helicopter sweeping its searchlight over a residential street lined with large homes. Court immediately recognized the property of Leland Babbitt. It was surrounded by two dozen vehicles; Maryland State Police patrol cars, Bethesda Police, ambulances, and fire trucks.
The news anchor’s voiceover gave context to the images, telling the viewers some things Court already knew, and telling them other things that surprised him.
“Maryland State Police released a statement this morning saying Babbitt had been shot to death, and the killer was then chased on foot by private security nearly half a mile before briefly holding hostages at a McDonald’s on Wisconsin Avenue. He then managed to elude law enforcement and escape, and his whereabouts are currently unknown.”
Court sighed. So much for accuracy in the news. There were two complete falsehoods in that one sentence, since he wasn’t the killer and he’d held no hostages.
Then came the images of the scene on the Capital Beltway, and this time the anchor relayed a passably accurate version of the events there, including the jackknifed semi and the armed carjacking.
But Court found it extremely odd the report made no mention of D.C. Metro police encountering the suspect at that scene as well. Hell, he’d been shot, so they must have suspected him of being the man involved in Babbitt’s murder.
This piece ended and a new story began, so Court flipped channels to CNN. After a few minutes he was surprised to see that they also ran a brief piece about the brazen assassination of a Maryland businessman and the audacious and violent escape of the assassin.
Court was national news.
He groaned aloud in anger and turned off the TV.
He stood and grabbed a beer from his little refrigerator. In the bathroom, he drank from the can while he changed the black and sticky dressing over his gunshot wound, tears of pain welling in his eyes.
—
Matthew Hanley had spent a large part of this Tuesday off-site, meeting with SAD Air Branch staff at Andrews to discuss the registering of some new aircraft with shell corporations so they could be used in an upcoming operation in Central America. Through a front company the CIA had recently purchased four very used and totally untraceable de Havilland DHC Twin Otters from an Indonesian air transport service that had gone bankrupt and then shipped the planes to the States for refitting and refurbishment. Once Hanley had the new paperwork complete, the aircraft would go to work in Central and South America, moving supplies and men to denied areas for the Special Activities Division.
They would be completely untraceable to CIA, but for now they sat at Andrews in a sealed hangar, and Hanley wanted to inspect them personally.