thirteen inches square and an inch and a quarter thick, a little thicker than most chessboards. He pressed down on one side of the chessboard and a thin door popped open and a dozen chess pieces spilled out onto his desk. He then tipped the chessboard downward and a slim laptop computer slid out of the hollow space between the top and bottom of the chessboard.
The chessboard had been Carmody’s idea.
After he used the laptop, Norton would slide it back into the hidden compartment in the chessboard, put the chessboard on top of his file cabinet, and arrange some pieces on the board to make it look as if he was playing a game with Mulherin. What a joke that was: Mulherin playing chess.
Getting the laptop into the shipyard was the riskiest part of the whole operation. Norton only needed to use it a few minutes a day, and when he did, he’d do like he was doing now – use it at lunchtime with Mulherin standing guard. But he’d been worried about bringing it in. In fact he’d been sweating so hard he was surprised one of the jarheads at the gate hadn’t noticed.
Personal computers were prohibited inside the facility – only government-issue equipment was allowed – and if the marines guarding the gates had picked him that morning for one of their random security checks, and if by some chance they had discovered the laptop hidden in the chessboard, he’d have been screwed. Absolutely screwed.
But the likelihood of that happening had been small. If the terrorist threat level was high, the marines searched everything coming through the gates. Cars, knapsacks, purses, lunch boxes. Everything. But Norton had brought the laptop in when the threat level was normal and he had waited until there was a backup at the gate, a lot of people bitching that they needed to get to work, which tended to make the marines rush their searches. That had been Carmody’s idea too, going in when the line was long. Carmody was a smart bastard.
Norton realized at that moment that it wasn’t the marines that he’d been worried about. It was Carmody. Carmody scared the hell out of him.
DeMarco pulled his car into a parking space at the Goose Creek Golf Club in Leesburg, Virginia. He got out of the car, shut the door, and had walked twenty yards before he remembered that he hadn’t locked the car. He went back to the car, jammed down the knob to lock the door, then slammed the door harder than necessary. It bugged him, particularly this morning, that his Volvo was so damn old that it didn’t have one of those cool little beeper things to lock the doors.
On his way into work DeMarco had taken a detour to a used car dealership in Arlington. He’d passed by the place a couple of days ago and had seen a silver BMW Z3 sitting on the corner of the lot, posed like a work of art. The car had sixty-four thousand miles on the odometer, the leather seats were sun-faded, and DeMarco wasn’t sure he could afford it – but he wanted a convertible and he was sick to death of his Swedish box on wheels. He had just started to dicker with the salesman when Mahoney’s secretary called and told him that Mahoney wanted him down at Goose Creek before he teed off at nine.
He found Mahoney on the practice green, about to attempt an eight-foot putt. DeMarco watched in silence as Mahoney squared his big body over the ball, took in a breath, and stroked the ball. He hit it straight but too hard, and the ball rimmed the cup and shot off perpendicular to its original vector.
‘Son of a bitch,’ Mahoney muttered. ‘Greens’re fast today.’
Yeah right, DeMarco thought, like they waxed the grass just before you got here.
Mahoney was almost six feet tall and broad across the chest and back and butt. A substantial, hard gut gave balance to his body. He was in his sixties; his hair was white and full; his features all large and well formed; and his eyes were the watery, red-veined blue of a heavy drinker. He dropped another ball onto the grass.
‘The guy I want you to meet,’ Mahoney said, looking down at the ball, ‘will be here in a minute. He just went up to the clubhouse to get us some beer.’ Mahoney stroked the ball smoothly and this one dropped in. ‘Now that’s better,’ he said.
DeMarco knew Mahoney had been a fair athlete in high school – football, basketball, and baseball. He hadn’t competed in college because he went into the marines at seventeen, and when he was discharged, his right knee shredded by shrapnel, the only sports he played had involved beer steins and coeds. But even in his sixties he exhibited the hand-eye coordination of an athlete, and in spite of his size, moved lightly on his feet.
‘Here he comes now,’ Mahoney said, dropping a third ball onto the practice green, this one about ten feet from the cup.
Walking toward the green, carrying a small cooler designed to fit in the basket behind the seat of a golf cart, was a man about Mahoney’s age. He was five eight, stocky, and had a round head with a flat nose and short gray hair. As he got closer, DeMarco could see his eyes: bright blue and surrounded by a million crow’s feet from squinting into the sun. He had the eyes of a fighter pilot – which he’d once been. The man was the Secretary of the Navy, Frank Hathaway.
Hathaway, in turn, studied DeMarco, probably wondering what a hard-looking guy in a suit was doing standing on the practice green. DeMarco was five eleven and had broad shoulders, big arms, and a heavy chest. He was a good-looking man – full dark hair, a strong nose, a dimple in a big chin, and blue eyes – but he looked tough, tougher than he really was. A friend had once said that DeMarco looked like a guy you’d see on The Sopranos, a guy standing behind Tony while Tony hit someone with a bat. DeMarco hadn’t thought that funny.
Hathaway acknowledged DeMarco with a nod then said to Mahoney, ‘Al’s in the parking lot, talking on his cell phone. He’ll meet us on the first tee. Andy won’t be able to make it though. His secretary called and said there’s a fire drill in progress, two Saudis they caught trying to cross in from Canada, up near Buffalo.’ Hathaway put the cooler on the ground near the golf cart and added, ‘I wouldn’t have Andy’s job for all the tea in China.’
Andy, DeMarco knew, was General Andrew Banks, Secretary of Homeland Security.
Mahoney stroked the ball toward the hole. It dropped in. ‘Oh, yeah,’ Mahoney said. Gesturing with his putter at DeMarco, Mahoney said, ‘Frank, this is Joe DeMarco, the guy I was telling you about.’
Hathaway stuck out a small, hard hand and DeMarco shook it.
‘John says you do odd jobs for Congress,’ Hathaway said to DeMarco.
‘Yes, sir,’ DeMarco said.
John was John Fitzpatrick Mahoney, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, and DeMarco worked for him – although no organizational chart showed this to be the case. DeMarco had a small office in the subbasement of the Capitol and he performed for Mahoney those tasks the Speaker preferred not to dole out to his legitimate staff. DeMarco liked to think of himself as Mahoney’s personal troubleshooter – but odd-jobs guy was accurate enough.
‘There’s Al,’ Mahoney said, pointing his blunt chin at a golf cart driven by a man so tall that his head almost touched the canvas roof of the cart. DeMarco recognized him too: Albert Farris, a onetime forward for the Portland Trail Blazers and currently the senior senator from Oregon.
Just four guys playing a round of golf: a United States senator, the Speaker of the House, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Secretary of the Navy. The fact that it was a weekday morning could mean that something more was going on than a game
