Carlin’s eyes widened. “No,” Carlin said. “Wait, Charlie, listen to me—”
Charlie fired, but the Liberator was a gun for emergencies, and Charlie reverted to his basic-training mistake of flinching as he anticipated the gun’s recoil. The bullet whizzed past Carlin’s head and hit the statue of Crispus Attucks.
Carlin jumped forward onto Charlie and grabbed his throat, then tried to shove his thumbs into Charlie’s eyes. Charlie pulled at Carlin’s wrists, trying to stop the pain. Carlin’s obvious desperation seemed to empower him, but he was also much older and weaker than his adversary. Charlie, in pain, kicked Carlin in the groin, then twisted Carlin’s wrist and slammed his forehead into the older man’s nose. Carlin coughed and released his grip; Charlie threw him to his right.
Carlin grabbed at Charlie’s arm and bit it. Charlie screamed as Carlin’s teeth broke the skin.
Feeling a white-hot jolt of fury, Charlie grabbed Carlin by his shirt collar and lifted him off the ground, then turned his body to the left and slammed the man’s head into the sharp corner of the base of the Crispus Attucks statue. It might as well have been the edge of an ax.
The marble edge was now marked with a deep crimson stain as all fight left Carlin’s body. He groaned and his eyes rolled back in his head.
It was at precisely that moment that Leopold succumbed to Margaret’s bound hands around her neck. She dropped to her knees, then fell onto her face, dragging Margaret along with her.
Charlie stood, ran to Margaret, extricated her from the death trap she had fastened around Leopold’s neck, and embraced her.
The room was suddenly still, the only sound Margaret, Charlie, and Street breathing heavily. They were surrounded by their fallen enemies: one unconscious, one dying, three dead.
“I told you I was on your side,” Street finally said.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Thursday, April 22, 1954—Morning
Capitol Hill
Three men in suits, Colt .38s in hand, walked into the storage room. They all looked alike: brown hair, mid-thirties, trim builds, dark suits. Secret Service, maybe, or FBI; their exact affiliation was unclear.
“Nice timing,” said Street, hands braced on his knees, dripping with sweat and breathing like Jesse Owens after a wind sprint.
“Is everyone okay?” one of the men asked.
“We’re fine,” said Charlie, holding Margaret, his hand on her pregnant belly. “Everyone’s good.” Margaret’s face was buried in his chest.
“You should vamoose,” the third man said to Street. “We’ll take care of it from here.”
Street nodded and motioned to Charlie and Margaret to follow him. They reached the hallway and paused.
“Who were they?” Charlie asked.
“The good guys,” said Street.
“Do you know the way out?” Margaret asked.
“Out of the basement? Or this situation?”
“Either,” she said.
“Basement, yes.”
“And the situation here? Three dead bodies and two sitting congressmen knocked out, all in the basement of the U.S. Capitol?”
Street shook his head. “That one’s a little trickier.”
Outside, a bright dawn was breaking as if the sun were proud to be seen after days hiding. Charlie heard mourning doves coo and could smell the earthy, loamy scent of spring. A bus drove up Constitution Avenue; the city was starting to stir.
A red Cadillac Coupe de Ville sat in the Capitol driveway, its engine running.
Charlie peered in and saw Senator Kefauver behind the wheel, a grim expression on his face. Winston Marder was in the backseat.
“Get in,” Winston said. “Margaret, honey, you sit up front.”
“Please hurry,” said Kefauver. “We need to git.”
“I love it when you pretend you’re a hillbilly,” gruffed Winston.
The three piled into the Cadillac, and Kefauver hit the gas and took a right out of the Capitol driveway onto Independence Avenue. The atmosphere inside the car was tense; they rode in silence for a few blocks, Kefauver and Charlie scanning the surroundings for a tail. Finally Margaret turned around from the front seat to face the men.
“That’s all going to be cleaned up?” Margaret asked Winston.
“Area will be secured and cleaned,” he said.
“We left behind maybe four dead bodies, including the House Appropriations Committee chairman,” Charlie said.
“However many you left behind, and whoever they are, it will be taken care of,” said Winston. He turned to Street: “Four dead bodies? Including Carlin?”
“Yeah, it got ugly,” said Street, who took a few minutes to explain everything that had happened since he last saw Winston a day before in Manhattan. Margaret filled in other blanks, describing Gwinnett’s menacing hunt for her and how Catherine Leopold killed him.
“Good Christ,” Winston finally said. “I’m so sorry, Margaret. I never wanted you to get caught up in any of this. I never wanted Charlie to get caught up in it.”
“Then why arrange for me to get the congressional seat?” Charlie asked, a note of irritation in his voice. “Or at the very least, why not tell me about everything that was going on so I could have a better way to protect Margaret and the baby?”
“We didn’t know, Charlie,” Street said.
“I can defend myself, Isaiah,” Winston said.
“I know,” Street said, “but Charlie, you need to understand, we’ve only been about a half step ahead of you. We didn’t even know about the car accident until you told me.”
“I had no idea you were going to be pulled into any of this when I got Dewey to give you the seat, and I certainly didn’t know you were going to pull that foolish stunt at the comic-book hearing,” Winston said. “That’s what escalated everything. Until then, the Hellfire Club thought they had you where they wanted you. And until then, Estes and Isaiah were keeping me abreast of everything. We all were doing everything we could to steer you away from the Hellfire Club.”
“Except for telling me about it, of course,” Charlie said.
“You were supposed to just do your job,” Winston said. “You weren’t supposed to take on the whole goddamn system or screw with Carlin. Or steal papers from my goddamn study.”
“You knew about that?” Charlie asked.
“After the fact,” Winston said. “Dulles told me. That poor miserable son of a bitch Strongfellow is going to be ruined. Not by me. By the club. Especially now, tied to this mess. Poor sap probably thinks he’s in the clear.”
“Wait—you’re going to let him loose after he tried to kill me?”
“That’s how this works, Charlie,” Winston said. “We don’t call the police on one another. We bribe the police to stay out of it. The FBI or Secret Service swoops in and cleans everything up. Our organizations don’t play by the normal rules.”
“‘We’? What organizations besides the Hellfire Club?” Margaret asked. “Who is ‘we’?”
“The, ah, loose association that I’m in,” Winston said. “And Isaiah.”
“What is this ‘loose association’?” Margaret asked. “Central Intelligence? FBI? I don’t understand.”
“You will soon enough, but I’ve said all I can,” Winston said.
“Margaret, surely you realize that clandestine services in the U.S. are made up not only of organizations you know about, but also ones you don’t,” Street offered.
They stopped at a red light.
No one spoke. The light changed and they drove on in uncomfortable silence.
“I assume you can tell us about the Hellfire Club at least?” Margaret asked. “Who are they?”
“We don’t know anything for sure,” Winston said. “We think its monks include Carlin, Hilton, McCarthy, the Dulles boys, Hoover, Ambassador Kennedy, um…Who else?”
“Duncan Whitney from General Kinetics,” Street said. “We don’t know them all. You got closer to the club, Charlie, than I ever could.”
“And what do they do?” Margaret asked.
“Control almost everything,” said Kefauver.
“Make a lot of money,” Street said.
“They all have networks of people who owe them favors or people they’ve compromised,” Winston said. “And yes, they’re getting rich but they’re also fighting Commies.”