considering who they were with, they were probably admirals. He placed the binoculars to his eyes. Yes, there he was, surrounded by admirals. The goatee, he thought, made the black man look more like a saxophone player than a politician.
The Ukrainian waited until the boat was halfway across the river before he picked up the rifle.
Mahoney later said to DeMarco, ‘The moral of the story, son, is never fuck over a man who plans assassinations for a living.’
76
DeMarco put his feet up on the rail of the deck and looked out at the lake. It was still light out at eight-thirty in the evening, and hot too, but a nice breeze coming off the water made the heat bearable. The surface was getting a little choppy now, but earlier in the day the lake had been as flat as a pane of glass.
He was a little tired from having spent most of the day outdoors, in the sun, waterskiing a good part of the time, and it felt good just sitting there. No, it felt
Yesterday he’d received two phone calls, and it was in part due to the first call that he accepted the invitation he received in the second call. The first call had been from his ex-wife, wishing him a happy birthday, a week after the event, and thanking him, for a second time, for what he had done for his cousin Danny. That wouldn’t have been so bad except the call ended with:
When the phone rang the second time he almost didn’t answer it, thinking it might be Marie calling back because he’d cut her off. But it wasn’t Marie, it was Ellie. The first words she said were:
The boy would enter the refinery that night at 1 A.M. All the devices, except for one, were ready.
He would drop him off and wait for him to install the bombs, and as soon as he was back outside the refinery fence, the boy would call on his cell phone. Then he would wish God’s blessings on the boy and leave. He wanted to be far away when people started dying.
He called the boy over and had him try on the vest, a vest sports fishermen used that had many pockets. The C-4 was in a pocket over his heart. He had never told him how hydrofluoric acid killed; he’d implied, without lying, that people breathed the gas and simply died. But this was better. When the materials had arrived and he saw there was enough material for one extra device, he decided the boy would wear it. The Americans would still be able to identify him because of the letters and DNA, but this way he would die a painless death and kill whoever was standing near him.
‘Is your spirit ready for the journey?’ he asked.
‘It is,’ the boy said.
Oh, this child! He kissed him on the forehead and said, ‘Let’s pray together until it’s time to leave.’
Eddie Kolowski was late and he was drunk. Son of a bitch. He’d gone to a wake for a guy he’d been in the navy with, and shit, next thing he knew, it was midnight and he was three sheets to the wind. He knew he oughta slow down, some cop was gonna pull him over for sure, but even at the speed he was going, he wasn’t gonna get to the refinery until one, maybe one-thirty. If it had been just him and Billy on the shift, bein’ late wouldn’t be a big deal, but with that little Mormon shit still there — why in hell hadn’t that kid quit yet? — he might get reported. Son of a bitch.
Ellie said her rich aunt was going on vacation for a couple of weeks and she wanted somebody to house-sit her fancy place on Lake Erie. And as she was through with the summer class she’d been teaching, and as she’d have access to a water-ski boat and her aunt’s Mercedes, and as the house was stocked with steaks and booze, she decided to accommodate her beloved aunt — and she just wondered if DeMarco could get away for a few days to join her.
DeMarco had immediately called the speaker’s office and confirmed that Mahoney was still in Boston and had no plans to come back to D.C. anytime soon. He was on a plane that afternoon and waterskiing the next day.
Ellie was in the bathroom getting ready to go out. She wanted to have a few drinks at this place downtown and dance. DeMarco didn’t really like to dance all that much, but for her he’d pretend that he did. He’d stand there like a tree, firmly rooted to the earth, move his arms a little, and she’d dance around him like he was some sort of thick Italian maypole.
He looked down at the paper lying on the deck at his feet. Mahoney had been right about Fine — and about Lincoln.
Oliver Lincoln admitted immediately that he was responsible for Nick Fine’s death. A number of African Americans had taken to the streets as a result of the senator’s assassination and they were demanding that the government find the white racist who had killed him. Lincoln said he didn’t want anyone to get hurt because of Fine, but his main reason for confessing to Fine’s murder was that he didn’t want the bastard turned into a hero and a martyr. He said again it was Nick Fine who had paid him to orchestrate the terrorist attacks, not that simpleton Broderick.
When asked how he had arranged to have Fine killed, Lincoln said it was pretty simple. He knew several assassins; that was the business he’d been in. He gave an old friend a letter to mail to one of them, and had his friend transfer money from one of his hidden bank accounts to the assassin. The FBI had not found all his offshore accounts and since he was never going to get out of prison, what better use did he have for the money? After the hit, he instructed his pal to pay the assassin the other half of his considerable fee, including a rather generous tip for both the assassin and his friend.
When asked if he had paid someone to kill Bianca Castro, Lincoln said no. He just had his friend mail a letter to a relative of Jorge Rivera.
But DeMarco didn’t care about Fine or Lincoln or Pugh or any of them now. He was going dancing with a schoolteacher.
He stopped the car, the truck, whatever it was, a safe distance from the refinery.
It was out of his hands from this point forward. Even though he did not need to say it again, he told the boy, ‘Don’t enter the plant until the young guard returns to the building by the gate.’
‘I know,’ the boy said.
‘And put the first device on the tank. You
‘I know,’ the boy said again. He seemed impatient to be on his way.
He was thinking that if the boy had to detonate the bombs prematurely he would shut the car windows and drive as fast as he could, but he might die too. So be it.
There was only one thing left to say.
‘Go with God.’
The boy nodded his head, his eyes luminous. He opened the door and exited the vehicle. In one hand he held the short-handled shovel that he would need to dig under the refinery fence. In his other hand was the satchel that contained the bombs.
Eddie had made good time — it was only twelve-thirty — but by the time he punched in and changed and got to the guard shack, he was going to be almost two hours late for work.
Oh, shit! Was that a car stopped on the road up there? Was that a fuckin’ cop? He tapped the brakes and slowed down. He still couldn’t make out if it was a cop car or not, and that’s when he realized that he’d been driving with his lights off ever since he’d left the bar. Half the time, that’s the way cops caught drunks: the drunk would forget to turn on his lights. Eddie reached down and turned on his lights when he was fifty yards from the car parked on the side of the road. Thank God, it wasn’t a cop. There was no light bar on the car. Then, as he blasted past the car, he caught a young guy in his headlights holding a backpack and something else.
It took him a couple of seconds to realize what he’d seen: it was that guy with the puke-green El Camino. He
