hesitated. “I try to keep busy. I’m teaching now, and I met someone. It’s not a bad life, John.” He turned his penetrating gray eyes onto Harper’s. “What I have now is worth having…it’s good, secure.”
They strolled along silently for a while. Jonathan didn’t find the words convincing. He knew about the twenty-four-year-old student Ryan was seeing, and he knew about the tenuous teaching position at the university. Slinking by in some backwater, feigning interest in the mundane. Waiting for time to erode away the memories of what he had seen, and maybe what he had done…If asked, Harper would have said that Ryan was worth more than that. He did not imagine that the younger man wouldn’t know he was being checked up on. Kealey wanted to be convinced; otherwise, he wouldn’t even have bothered making the trip.
“You’ve seen it all over the news, I imagine. It’s just fucking unbelievable. A hit on three cars in broad daylight, and we have nothing. Except, of course, for six dead civilians, one a pregnant woman, and seventeen injured. The media’s all over this, and so the president is all over us. Evidently he was pretty close to the senator.” Harper shivered as a brisk wind swept through the bright orange leaves of the trees overhead. “This guy took out Levy’s entire detail, Ryan. I’m not talking about people who barely managed to squeak by on the Civil Service Exam. They weren’t riding out desk duty for the pension, either. They were professional protection officers rotating off the presidential detail, for Christ’s sake.”
“I heard on the news that one survived. A woman.”
“Yeah, her name is Megan Lawrence. Seven-year veteran. That’s a sad story—she’s got a six-year-old kid, and she’s not expected to pull through. Fuck it.” Harper whipped his empty Starbucks container toward an overflowing trash receptacle. It bounced off the top and hit the ground, where the wind promptly pushed it back onto the sidewalk. A female jogger dressed in colorful attire approached, her blond ponytail bouncing in accordance with her footfalls. She shot Harper a dirty look as she passed them by.
“Levy was on his way back to Alexandria; he and his wife had a place on Gentry Row. The route was checked out by the detail and given approval, but it was one of five possible choices, and selected at random less than a half hour before they left the Russell Building. So we have a list of people that had access to that information, and it’s short. The Bureau is taking a hard look at each and every one of them. From what I gather, they already went to McLaughlin on the D.C. Circuit for the wiretaps. We should know more in a day or two, if they’re willing to participate in the new spirit of cooperation.”
“Why was a senator receiving Secret Service protection anyway? I thought that came down to the Capitol Hill Police.”
Harper hesitated meaningfully before answering. “I can show you why. We have a tape—more than one. I think, actually, that you might know the person who did this.”
With this revelation, it was as though time suddenly stopped for the younger man. Cold fingers inched their way up from the base of his spine, threatening to seize his throat in a terrible grip. He was lost for a moment, until just as quickly the feeling passed and he felt Harper’s reassuring hand on his shoulder.
“Watch the tapes, Ryan. Watch the tapes and tell me what you think. That’s all.”
The two men walked slowly back in the direction of the café, Harper awarding himself silent accolades. Kealey was lost in another, more terrifying world altogether.
CHAPTER 3
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Although the nation’s capital is home to many prestigious medical facilities, including University Hospital in Georgetown, the only adult burn unit in the metropolitan area is located in the Washington Hospital Center on Irving Street. Within forty-five minutes of the rocket attack all but three of the victims had been routed either directly or indirectly to this center, including Megan Lawrence, the only Secret Service agent to survive the initial devastation.
Naomi Kharmai wearily climbed the worn stone steps that were in constant contradiction to the modern building they adorned. She had spent the morning at Washington General speaking with bystanders who hadn’t seen or heard anything that could be of real use to her, or more importantly, to her immediate supervisor. The clouds had made an appearance earlier in the day, and the sky was a white sheet overhead. The warmth of the pale sun on her back lifted her spirits slightly as she walked through the main entrance past the intense scrutiny of a security guard.
Her interest extended to what she could learn, but no further. She was not burdened by the sight or knowledge of the terrible injuries that so many of the witnesses had suffered; rather, it was the lack of progress finding information that was such a crushing disappointment to her.
Taking the elevator up to the fifth floor, Naomi asked to see Megan Lawrence. After bluffing or outright lying through a series of questions and filling out the appropriate paperwork, she was finally escorted to Lawrence’s room by an exhausted young resident.
“Her injuries are very severe,” he confided in a low voice, although there was no one within sight to overhear. “She sustained multiple fractures to the skull when her head hit the pavement, but somehow she was only slightly concussed. That’s the least of it. She suffered extensive third-degree burns over thirty percent of her body, penetrating down to the hypodermis. Most of the burns are on her chest and arms, upper legs. There wasn’t much pain at first…Her nerve endings were seared, but she started to feel it on Monday. We’ve had her on a morphine drip for two days.”
“Will she live?”
The resident shook his head slowly and looked away. “The chemicals inside that rocket produce effects almost identical to those of white phosphorus,” he said. Kharmai was familiar with the statistics relating to that particular substance, but did not volunteer this information. “She’s demonstrating the initial symptoms of osteomyelitis of the jaw, a very rare condition associated primarily with exposure to highly toxic chemicals. The triethylaluminum that was released on the street oxidizes when exposed to air, and the particles continue to burn even after they are embedded in epithelial tissue, so you can imagine how painful these injuries are. The chemicals have also caused irreparable damage to her liver and kidneys, and frankly, she’s just too far down on the donor list for it to make a difference.”
Naomi thought that if she had truly been related to Lawrence as she had claimed on the forms, the resident’s blunt analysis of the woman’s condition would have sent her into hysterics. Her fears were confirmed when she pointedly flashed her credentials to the Secret Service agent seated in front of Megan’s door, and the doctor did not seem surprised. How did he know who I was? she asked herself angrily. She fervently hoped that news of this visit would not be leaked to the press, but knew that it would probably be a matter of public record within the hour. The interview with Lawrence was the most important of the day, though, and she could not rush through it just to avoid reporters. Before she entered the room, the young resident pulled her back gently.
“Listen,” he said, “I don’t know if you’ve had experience with this kind of thing or not, but what you do when you walk in there means a lot. She’ll look to your expression to gauge her own appearance, her own condition. She’s aware of the prognosis—but she doesn’t need to be reminded of it every time someone walks in.”
Naomi gave a terse nod and pulled away from the doctor abruptly.
As the agent followed her through the door to keep an eye on the proceedings, she could not keep the sickened expression from her face. The woman on the bed was hardly recognizable as a human being, her body and face scorched by burns so deep that they appeared quite dry and dark
