The prize was a name, but it was not a guarantee. In this case, he didn’t think the prize would be enough to salvage his short-lived career at the Central Intelligence Agency.
That was fine by Ryan; he had made a promise to Katie, and he intended to keep it.
Through the thin veil of rain, the glittering facade of the Hay-Adams appeared in the distance. He hoped that she had managed to find a raincoat in the small store in the lobby, but knew that it wouldn’t do him any good either way. Whether she reached the car dry or drenched with rain, he was almost certainly in for another argument.
Without thinking about it, he took the knife out from under the passenger seat and slid it under the floormat beneath his own feet. Naomi Kharmai, as prepared for it as anyone could be, had been exposed to violent death twice in the last month. In the case of Stephen Gray, the death had been one of necessity. Some might have said, and he thought a case could be made, that it was actually one step behind outright murder. If it was murder, though, then it was understandable, even justifiable. What could not be rationalized was the random, senseless death she had been forced to confront in the broken remains of the Kennedy-Warren.
Ryan could do nothing for her now; she had touched the cold, sharp edge of reality and would sink or swim in her own time. He thought he recognized in her the strength to set it aside, to push it away and carry on with the task at hand.
If he could have kept it away from her altogether, he would have done so gladly.
It was his strongest desire that Katie should never have to endure the same. It was the reason he wanted her out of the hotel, and it was the reason he pushed the knife under the mat. If he was hard on her, if he told when he should ask, it was done out of fear that she might one day be forced to carry the same burden, year in, year out, until it crushed her spirit and her life with its weight.
Just as he would give anything to have her close, he would give anything to protect her innocence.
He would never have expressed these thoughts to her; it wasn’t in his nature and the words would have come out awkward, clumsy, and wrong.
He hoped she knew it, though. He hoped she felt it. To Ryan, only one thing took precedence, and soon, Katie would be everything, the only thing. When that day came, he knew that he would finally be able to put the past to rest.
CHAPTER 26
WASHINGTON, D.C., LANGLEY
A day trip to Washington, to look at the route and consider the options.
It was a fine day for the journey. Away from the clouds that hung over central Virginia, away from the monotonous calculations and mind-numbing work with the soldering iron. He took his most recent acquisition, a four-year-old Honda motorcycle, a VT1100 Shadow, all chrome and glistening metallic paint. He preferred not to use the van until it was absolutely necessary. Had he driven it into the heart of the city and been stopped for a traffic violation, the vehicle would have become useless to him.
He pushed the bike north on I-95, turning onto Exit 170 before racing through the western edge of Alexandria. As he crossed the Potomac, reflections from the river below scattered shards of sunlight over the polished curves of the motorcycle.
I-95 was, for the most part, a seemingly endless stretch of empty road bordered on both sides by towering stands of pine. He had been tempted to open the throttle, to get some fun out of the ride, but the desire was tempered by an unusually heavy police presence and the Virginia State Police Cessna 182s that drifted far overhead. Still, the open air was a huge relief from the confines of the barn, where the locked door and the threat of the realtor seemed to bring the walls closer each day.
He made the turn onto US Route 50, also known as New York Avenue. Vanderveen left Prince George’s County at the same time he crossed the Anacostia, pushing west into the southeastern edge of the District. As the Washington Convention Center loomed large in front of him, he turned left onto 7th Street, the Honda’s big engine ripping through the calm air and bringing some of the more complacent tourists to life. He grinned at their startled expressions as he crossed Independence going south, turning his head ever so slightly to look down the length of the road.
The sight failed to stir any emotion. The debris had long since been cleared, the burnt-out hulks of the vehicles currently resting in a disused airplane hangar at Dulles, where teams from the FBI’s Forensic Unit and the National Transportation Safety Board continued to scrape at the scorched surfaces in vain search of evidence.
Vanderveen’s interest was nothing more than that of a curious motorist turning to peer at a roadside wreck. He turned from the scene even before the open space gave way to an endless procession of parked cars and building fronts.
The Gangplank Marina stretches from the Francis Case Memorial Bridge to the end of Water Street. Across the channel lies the close-clipped grass and brightly colored flags of the East Potomac Golf Club. The 310-slip marina, which is almost always full, is shadowed, as is the club, by the towering presence of the Washington Monument to the west.
There are boats of all descriptions docked at the marina: 29' Boston Whalers, a diesel-powered Catalina, smaller catamarans, sailboats, and a sleek, 58' fiberglass Fairline Squadron — one of the largest motorboats at the port.
One yacht stands out from the crowd, however, and it was this craft that held Vanderveen’s attention as he perused the walkway next to the marina, skirting small groups of tourists while keeping his distance from the slips themselves. The USS Sequoia was slightly more than 100' long, with most of the main deck, including the pilothouse, enclosed by teak-and-glass paneling. It was his first look at the boat, but Vanderveen knew its history. He knew that Nixon sailed down the Potomac eighty-eight times on the presidential yacht, and that it was the setting for Eisenhower’s meetings with Churchill and Field Marshal Montgomery on the eve of World War II. Vanderveen had also learned that the Sequoia was sold into private hands by President Carter in 1977, after which it deteriorated for several years in a shipyard until restoration began in 1984.
Now owned by the Sequoia Presidential Yacht Group, LLC, it is available for charter, but use of the boat by the president or the vice president takes precedence over arrangements made by private citizens.
Will Vanderveen knew all of this, just as he knew that President Brenneman had already reserved, through the White House Office of Public Affairs, use of the Sequoia on the 26th day of November.
At first, he knew far less about Brenneman than he did about the yacht, and was confused as to why the president would want to sail the frigid waters so late in the year. It was not until later that he discovered, by browsing microfiche at the Richmond County Library, that Brenneman was an avid sailor and the proud owner of a Thomason ketch, which is docked at his home in Boston Harbor.
Vanderveen guessed that Italian and French leaders would find the cold wind whipping over the Potomac far less enjoyable. He smiled at the mental image that accompanied this thought and studied the Sequoia through a pair of Ray-Bans, his face partially hidden beneath a faded baseball cap. At one point he had considered an attack on the presidential yacht itself. The assassinations could have easily been carried out with a single underwater mine such as the Swedish Rockan; he had seen the same device used effectively in the Strait of Hormuz and other places. He knew that the Secret Service had no protocol in place for dealing with such a threat, and that by close- tethering the Rockan’s steel case to the Sequoia ’s anchor, he could further reduce its acoustic signature and impede their obsolete countermine equipment.
At the same time, he was leery of the mine’s sensitive electronic components, not trusting a remote device to function correctly unless he had devised it by his own hand. The principle, that he was taught so long ago and lived by still, was “simplicity equals success.” By limiting the number of components, by testing the firing system over and over again, only then could he be sure of his work.
The waterfront made him nervous, too. The few roads leading away from the area would be manned by dozens of Secret Service agents, ready to instantly seal off the perimeter in the event of an attack. He couldn’t abide the thought of being trapped in a tightening noose of Federal agents, even for the chance to see the Sequoia sink to the bottom of the Potomac. Supposing, of course, that he survived the encounter, the ensuing years spent rotting away in a Federal penitentiary would not be worth a few rapturous weeks of national anguish.
No, he much preferred to live through the event. With 3,000 pounds of SEMTEX H strategically placed on the
