Street discreetly handed Charlie one of the two OSS guns he’d brought. Charlie tucked the dossier on General Kinetics at the small of his back under his shirt, and with the gun in his right hand, he led the way into the Capitol.
They first entered the Rotunda Crypt, a round room on the first floor containing thirteen statues representing historic figures from each of the original colonies. Red light from an exit sign exposed Robert E. Lee’s mournful gaze as Charlie and Street ran between the Doric columns in the center of the room, then took a left to exit the crypt. They rushed past a giant bust of George Washington and softly hustled their way up a curved stone staircase to the second floor.
The Rotunda was dimly lit by small lamps built into the circular wall. Normally daylight flooded the room through the dome windows a hundred and eighty feet above them, but at this early hour, with cloud cover, visibility was dim. Charlie knew that twelve statues of various Founding Fathers and former U.S. presidents stood like guards throughout the room, but all he could see were their immense looming shapes. The details of the eight paintings displayed—enormous renderings of explorers from Columbus to Daniel Boone—were all but invisible.
Charlie and Isaiah stood silently for a second. The Senate side of the Capitol was to their right, the House side to their left.
Street leaned close to Charlie. “Do you have any idea where they took her?” he whispered.
“No,” Charlie said. “I saw them go through the door we just came through, and then I went to get you.”
“Smart soldier,” Street said. “Let’s split up. Meet back by this doorway in fifteen minutes. You go to Statuary Hall, I’ll head toward the Senate side.”
“Roger,” Charlie whispered.
Street fell back and disappeared into the darkness.
Charlie drew his FP-45 Liberator and held it with two hands. He walked carefully along the walls of the Rotunda, heel to toe, making as little noise as possible. After passing by the statues he believed to be Thomas Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt, he took a left out of the Rotunda and into National Statuary Hall.
He had been holding his terrors about Margaret at bay, focused as he was on his mission to save her. In this, he instinctively relied on the muscle memories of his days as an army captain in war, the ability of a soldier in life-or-death situations to cram unhelpful emotions in a box. But the war was nine years ago, and he was a different man now. A softer man. He started to tremble as his fears for Margaret crept into his consciousness.
Suddenly aware of his shaking legs, Charlie made himself stop short. There was no time for such indulgences, for fear or self-pity. He needed to finish this mission.
Statuary Hall was better lit than the Rotunda, and Charlie could make out some of the faces on the vast array of sculptures, men whom he and Street had been arguing about just a few months ago: Georgia governor Alexander Stephens, the vice president of the Confederacy; Mississippi’s Jefferson Davis, its president. The men containing multitudes. Charlie shook his head as he recalled making that remark.
He walked softly on the black-and-white-checkered marble floor as he moved along the edge of the room, stepping on the tile dedicated to James Polk. The faces of the statues, shrouded in shadow, were doleful, like guests at a funeral. He wondered what Street was finding. How much time had passed? He checked his watch: only five minutes. He quickened his pace, making his way out of the room and into the hall that went to the House Chamber. As he approached a narrow stairwell leading downstairs, he suddenly felt a metal object poking his back as he heard a voice.
“Hello, Charlie.”
His heart skipped. Phil Strongfellow was behind him. With a gun, presumably, one whose muzzle was now nestled firmly against his back. Charlie raised his hands in the air.
“Hi, Strong,” Charlie said.
“What is this you’ve got? A flare gun?” Strongfellow asked, half curious, half mocking, as he took it from Charlie’s hand.
“It’s an OSS gun, Strong,” Charlie said, turning his head to the right to try to see Strongfellow behind him. “Designed to look like a flare gun, but it’s not.” Strongfellow didn’t react. “Odd that you wouldn’t know that,” Charlie said. “I mean, given your illustrious history in the clandestine services. According to This Is Your Life, I mean.”
Charlie felt Strongfellow shove the butt of his gun more sharply into his back.
“Fuck off, Charlie,” he said. “Move. We’re going downstairs.”
Charlie proceeded slowly down two flights of stairs, turning his head to get a look at Strongfellow, who, he noticed, still had a limp but was no longer using crutches. “Where are your crutches?”
“Shut up, Charlie,” Strongfellow snapped. “You wouldn’t want to risk me getting agitated. I might trip, causing an accidental discharge of my firearm.”
In the basement of the Capitol, Strongfellow guided Charlie through a labyrinth of unlit hallways.
“Where are we going?”
“To your wife. If you’re lucky, they’ll let you swap the dossier for her.”
“Why would they let me live?” Charlie asked. He didn’t expect an answer and he didn’t get one.
They passed storage rooms and the occasional maintenance closet, went down one hall, then another. They came across a stairwell leading them down an additional flight, though Charlie hadn’t known until then that there was a floor lower than the basement in the Capitol Building. At the bottom of that stair, Strongfellow guided them to the right, down a long hall so dark all Charlie could see were the two closed oak doors at the end of it. Their footsteps echoed above the dull hum of the generator as they finally arrived at their destination. On one of the wooden doors was written STORAGE.
“Open it and keep your hands up,” Charlie was told, and he obeyed.
The expansive room was filled with statues, fifty or more. In front of one honoring Confederate congressman John Tyler—a former U.S. president who’d backed the wrong horse in the Civil War—stood Margaret, her mouth gagged with a cloth, her hands tied behind her back with a rope, her pregnant belly moving rapidly in time with her breathing. To her left, leaning against a sculpture of Aaron Burr, stood Chairman Carlin, his arms crossed. To her right stood Leopold and the two thugs Charlie had seen out on Susquehannock Island.
“Honey, you okay?” Charlie asked Margaret.
“She’s fine,” Miss Leopold answered for her. “For now.”
“Congressman Marder, you’ve proven to be quite the irritant,” Carlin said. “Phil, did you check to see if he has the General Kinetics dossier with him?”
“Not yet,” said Strongfellow. He approached Charlie from behind, frisked him, and easily located the dossier under his shirt. Strongfellow removed and inspected it, then handed it to Carlin. The chairman looked at the dossier, then raised his eyes to meet Charlie’s.
His voice was low, the menacing tone unmistakable. “Do you have any idea how much damage you could have done to the security of this nation?”
“By exposing pesticide plants that are literally killing your fellow Americans?” Charlie asked.
“Might as well tell him, Mr. Chairman,” someone behind Charlie said. “If he’s not ever going to leave here, maybe he should know just how out of his depth he’s been this whole time.”
Street’s voice.
Charlie looked around and saw his friend lighting a cigarette, his gun in one hand, as casual as a summer breeze.
“There you are, Isaiah,” said Carlin. “I was wondering when you were going to show up.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Thursday, April 22, 1954—
Early Morning
Capitol Hill
“Oh my God,” Charlie said, and he looked to Margaret, whose eyes widened in disbelief.