the country was not about doing the right thing. It was about holding on to power.
Holding on no matter what it took. Fitzgerald was addicted to power no differently than a crack addict is addicted to the rock. He always needed more, and he could never get enough. Fitzgerald lived only for the present and the future. He had never bothered to look back on his life until now. He was experiencing something that many of his predecessors had gone through late in their careers. He’d sold his soul and integrity to get to the top, and now that he was there, he was starting to realize it was a lonely place.
23
With old age staring him straight in the face, he was, for the first time, forced to look back on his life with a critical eye. He had always known he was a failure as both a father and a husband. Everything he had, he’d put into his career. Leaning his head against the window, he took a long pull off the fresh drink and closed his eyes. Senator Daniel
Fitzgerald had never been interested in the truth, but now in his waning years, he could no longer escape it. He had never liked being alone. He had always needed others around to feel secure, and it had only gotten worse over the years. He had worked his whole life to get where he was, and now that he was there, he had no one to share it with. But, even worse was that deep down inside something was telling him he had wasted his life fighting for the wrong things. He finished off the glass of Dewar’s and poured another.
The limousine turned off Massachusetts Avenue and wound through the narrow residential streets of Kalorama Heights. One block before its destination, the limousine passed a plain, white van. Inside were two men who had been waiting-waiting and preparing for this night for over a year. The limo stopped in front of Fitzgerald’s $1.2- million brownstone, and the driver jumped out to open the door for his boss. By the time he got around to the rear of the car, Fitzgerald was out of the backseat and stumbling toward the house. Fitzgerald fancied himself too important a man to shut car doors, so as usual, he left it for the driver to take care of. The driver shut the door and wished his employer a good night.
Fitzgerald ignored the pleasantry and continued up the steps to his front door. The driver walked back around to the other side of the limo and watched Fitzgerald punch in his security code and unlock the door.
When the door opened and the Senator stumbled into the foyer, the driver got into the limo and drove away. Fitzgerald set his keys down on a table to the left of the door and reached for the light switch.
He flipped it up, but nothing happened. He tried it several more times, and the result was the same. Swearing to himself, he looked around the dark house. The front door was bordered on both sides by panes of glass six inches wide that ran from the top of the door to the floor. Through the two narrow windows, the streetlight provided a faint glow to the front hallway. From where Fitzgerald stood, he could barely make out the white tile floor of the kitchen, just thirty feet away, straight down the hallway. As he started for the kitchen, he passed the dark entryway to the living room on his right and the stairs that led to the upper floors on his left. His heavy, expensive wing tips echoed throughout the house as they struck the hardwood floor with each step. The dim light shining through the windows cast a long shadow of him that stretched down the hallway toward the kitchen.
With each step his round body blocked more and more of the light coming from the street. By the time he reached the kitchen, he was surrounded by darkness. He turned to his left and searched for the light switch.
Before Fitzgerald could find it, a pair of gloved hands came out of the darkness and grabbed him from behind.
24
The blond-haired intruder yanked the older man off his feet and slammed him face first into the tiled floor. Dropping down on his target, the powerful man thrust his knee into the center of Fitzgerald’s upper back and grabbed the Senator’s head with both hands.
In one quick burst of strength the assassin brought all of his weight down on the back of
Fitzgerald’s head and yanked up on his chin. The noise that the Senator’s neck made as it snapped shot through the quiet house like a brittle tree limb broken over a knee. The crack was followed by silence, and then an eerie gurgling noise that emanated from
Fitzgerald’s throat.
The dying Senator’s eyes opened wider and wider until they looked as if they were about to pop out. About thirty seconds later the gurgling noise subsided, and Fitzgerald’s body lay lifeless on the cold, tile floor. The assassin rose to his feet and exhaled a deep breath. He looked down at the dead body on the floor with a sense of great satisfaction.
The killer standing over Fitzgerald had just avenged the deaths of eight of his closest friends-eight men who had died a senseless death in a desolate desert, thousands of miles away, all because men like Fitzgerald didn’t know how to keep their mouths shut.
The killing of Fitzgerald was personal, but the next two would be business. The thin arm of a microphone hung in front of the assassin’s square jaw. He spoke with a precise voice, “Number one is in the bag, over.” After a brief second, a confirmation came crackling through his earpiece, and he went back to work. Grabbing the body by the ankles, he dragged it down into the basement and deposited it in a large storage closet.
The assassin took one last tour through the house, collecting the electronic listening devices he had placed there the previous week.
Before leaving, he zipped the collar on his coat up around his chin and pulled his baseball hat down tight over his short, blond hair. He stood at the back door momentarily, looking out the window into the small yard. The wind was picking up, and the trees were swaying back and forth. Once again he spoke softly into the mike, “I’m on my way, over.”
He locked the door and closed it behind him. Casually he walked across the yard, through the gate, and into the alley. When he reached the end of the alley, the white van stopped just long enough for him to climb in, then sped off down the street.
3:45 Friday
The blue Johnson Brothers’ Plumbing van was again driving through the streets of
Friendship Heights. It pulled into the same alley it had stopped in five hours earlier.
While the van was still moving, the passenger jumped down onto the pavement and walked beside it, crouching and holding on to the door. The dome light on the inside of the van had been removed. As the van stopped, the broad-shouldered, dark-haired man quietly closed the door and darted into the shadows.
