Fate of the Union

Fifteen

Walking with Rogers along First Street SE, the Capitol on their left, their breaths sending smoke signals, Joe Reeder looked up at the dome and wondered how much longer the scaffolding would be part of the view. The dome was cast iron, so fixes didn’t happen overnight, and of course cosmetic work would follow. The 2014 renovation had run over schedule and he assumed — relentless as the winter had been — this one would, too.

“What are you thinking, Joe?”

“That we finally have a connection between victims, though it’s goddamn vague.”

“A maintenance man from the Capitol and a congressional aide.”

“Right. Murdered months apart, in what seems to be the same series of crimes.”

Rogers nodded. She was in her gray peacoat. “No mistaking it for serial killing now, not with attempted political assassination and arson in the mix.”

Reeder gestured to the imposing building they were approaching. “But these two victims are tied to the Capitol, where our others — librarian, accountant, transvestite — aren’t.”

“Don’t forget our factory supervisor.”

Reeder’s gloved hands were in his Burberry pockets. “I haven’t. William Robertson. He provides a possible tie to the exploded buildings where our maintenance guy was dumped. An operation like that can always use a good factory supervisor.”

“Joe, Robertson already worked at a manufacturing plant in Bowie, Maryland. And he was hardly moonlighting at a shop almost three hours away.”

“Rough commute,” Reeder admitted.

Rogers, thinking, mused, “Of course that plant in Bowie might be related somehow to the Charlottesville shops...”

They made the turn onto the wide sidewalk that led up to the Capitol’s east front. Coming toward him was a very pleasant sight: his daughter Amy, in a navy-blue parka in keeping with her Georgetown school colors, walking head down, in conversation with a distinguished-looking fifty-something blonde, Senator Diane Trempe Hackbarth. Reeder had never met the attractive congresswoman, but she was a familiar face from TV.

His daughter glanced up, beamed upon seeing him, and came over quickly and gave him a hug and a kiss on the cheek. She gave Rogers a hug, too — they weren’t close but had become friendly after the dramatic events of last year.

Amy introduced them both to Senator Hackbarth.

“An honor to meet you, Mr. Reeder,” the senator said, smiling warmly, shaking his hand. “I admit to being a fan... although I assure you that your daughter has never played upon that weakness.”

“An honor here, too, Senator. Amy seems to really enjoy working with you.”

Another warm smile from the senator, whose cheeks were probably rosy even when the wind chill wasn’t below freezing. “Amy’s been fairly successful in not bragging you up too much... until just recently. You’re making a noticeable habit out of this hero business.”

“Not my intention, I assure you. Anyway, this Benjamin thing, my partner Special Agent Rogers was the real hero.”

Rogers suddenly had rosy cheeks, too.

Amy said to her, “Partner? Are you and Dad working together again?”

“Yes, he’s consulting with my task force.”

Amy knew not to ask anything further, saying, “Sounds like you’re the boss. Good luck getting him to do what you want.”

“Tell me about it.”

His daughter turned to him. “Have you heard from Mom?”

“Not for a few days.”

Her smile was gently mocking. “Well, she’s probably trying to figure out what to say to you.”

“Oh?”

“She’s very proud. And truly furious... Sorry to air our mildly dirty laundry in front of you, Senator.”

Hackbarth said, “I can understand your mother’s mixed emotions.” She turned a faintly amused smile on him. “If you were my husband... even my ex-husband... we’d be discussing your propensity to jump in front of bullets.”

Reeder grinned. “Amy’s mother and I have had that discussion.”

“But speaking not as a hypothetical wife, ex or otherwise, rather as United States Senator... I am grateful for your bravery, Mr. Reeder.”

“Make it Joe, please. And thanks.”

“Dad,” Amy said, uncharacteristically bubbly, “Senator Hackbarth just invited me to be her guest at the State of the Union speech — did you ever hear anything more cool?”

“Short of this weather we’re crazily out talking in? No. Thank you, Senator, that’s generous.”

“You have a very intelligent daughter, Joe, who works hard.”

“Great to hear,” Reeder said. “But credit her mother.”

Amy gave him an amused smile. “If you’re expecting me to report that remark back to Mom... I will.”

He smiled back at her, then said to the senator, “You’re on your way somewhere and so are we. We’d better get going before we all freeze into just so many more DC statues.”

Everybody laughed a little — politely, he thought — and they made their good-byes, he and Rogers repeating their gloved handshakes with the senator, then going their separate ways.

Reeder and the FBI agent took the stairs down to the lower entrance where all visitors passed through security, beyond which a dark-blue-uniformed Capitol Police officer waited to walk them through the labyrinth of corridors to the chief’s office. Wordlessly the officer led them through a small reception area with a currently unmanned reception desk and a handful of empty chairs, and right up to the frosted-glass door, where he knocked twice.

This was a modest satellite office of the chief’s — the main HQ of Capitol PD was over on D Street NE — reserved for meetings like the one AD Fisk had scheduled for them.

“Come,” a voice within said, and the officer opened the door for them, giving them a nod as crisp as his dark-blue tie; when Reeder and Rogers were inside, their escort pulled the door shut behind him.

“Chief Ackley,” Rogers said with her own crisp nod. “Special Agent Rogers. This is—”

But the big man at the desk in the small, nondescript inner office was already on his feet and coming around. “How the hell are you, Peep?”

“Old and hurting, Bob,” Reeder said with a grin, as the two men shook hands. “But then you know the feeling.”

Chief Robert Ackley, in uniform from badge to dark-blue tie, the pepper of his black hair heavily salted, was around Reeder’s age but looked older, the price of decades of tough, challenging police work.

The chief got behind his desk again, and Reeder and Rogers took two of a trio of waiting visitor chairs.

Before they got to it, Reeder asked about Ackley’s wife, Margie, who’d been fighting breast cancer. Ackley said everything was fine now.

“We just try to find a way to enjoy every day,” Ackley said. “Easier to do that at home, on a day like this.”

“When is it ever easy in this building?”

“There isn’t always this bullshit,” Ackley said, gesturing to a medium-size monitor on the wall.

Adam Benjamin, in a red, gray-trimmed Ohio State letter jacket, stood with a hand mic on the stairs of the West Front, a cadre of reporters before him with rows of supporters in back of them. Positioned behind the speaker, fanned on the stairs, were a quartet of hard, tough-looking men in black suits and black ties, with ear mics and sunglasses, suggesting Secret Service minus any sense of discretion.

“The biiiiig announcement,” Ackley said with quiet sarcasm. “Was saving that clown really necessary, Peep?”

“He’s a good man, Bob. Very down-to-earth for a billionaire. Anyway, I have to do something to keep myself out there.”

“Wouldn’t buying commercial time be easier?”

Reeder grunted a laugh. “So he’s running for president, huh?”

The chief said, “What a shock.”

“Let’s hear it.”

Ackley used a remote to unmute the sound.

Benjamin was saying, “I know many of you here today are expecting me to announce my candidacy for the presidency of the United States. If so, I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed.”

Moans, groans, and no’s from the crowd. Reeder and Ackley shrugged at each other.

Benjamin held up a hand, as if being sworn in to office. “I will let the Common Sense Movement dictate who their candidate will be, and if they choose to draft me, well, we’ll see. For now, I am here to offer my humble thanks to the brave man who died protecting me at Constitution Hall — I would rather it have been me.”

Ackley said, “Now we’ve moved from bullshit to horseshit... Apologies, Agent Rogers.”

“Not necessary, Chief.”

“On this day of mourning,” Benjamin was saying, “our thoughts and prayers should be with the family of Jay Akers, former Secret Service agent and a patriot who gave his last full measure of devotion for the Common Sense cause he believed in. Thank you.”

The solemn man in the letter jacket strode away, even as questions came fast and heavy from the reporters. He answered none of them, his bodyguards in black surrounding him and hustling him away.

Ackley muted the TV. “I didn’t see that coming.”

“I’d call it well played,” Reeder said.

“For building his poll numbers, I guess,” Rogers said. “But with the spotlight on him, why not announce?”

Reeder shrugged a shoulder. “He’s playing the long game. There’s no Common Sense Movement convention, but he can create the illusion that he’s been ‘drafted,’ when the numbers are right.”

Rogers cocked her head. “I thought you liked the guy, Joe. Everything you say about where this country’s heading, he says, too... better, of course.”

“Thanks. Don’t read my pragmatism for cynicism.”

Ackley said, “But, Peep, you are cynical.”

“Oh yeah.”

A knock came to the door. Apparently the whole world hadn’t been watching Adam Benjamin’s big moment.

“Come!” Ackley said.

A birdlike man in his late forties entered, widow’s peak hair combed straight back, its brown invaded by gray. He wore a work jumpsuit with a Capitol crest, but the creased pants and spotless appearance indicated these threads had never seen a real day of blue-collar work — the same could be said for its wearer. The walkie-talkie in a belt holster, however, had seen plenty of action.

Ackley said to Reeder, “This is Ronald Murton, Lester Blake’s supervisor... Ron, have a seat. This is Joe Reeder, who’s consulting with FBI Special Agent Patti Rogers, here.”

Reeder and Rogers stood, hands were shaken, and then everybody sat down.

Murton, perhaps slightly intimidated by FBI presence, asked, “Bob, what’s this about?”

The chief said, “Special Agent Rogers, would you like to handle that?”

Murton turned to her.

Rogers said, “I’m sorry to inform you, Mr. Murton, that Lester Blake, of your department, was murdered.”

“You said... murdered?” Murton said, frowning, obviously trying to turn the abstraction of the word into something real. “Of all things. How? Where? This was last night?”

“His remains were found last night. We don’t know the time or even date of death as yet, and the specific cause has not been released.”

“That doesn’t make sense...”

“All I can say is, we’ve positively identified Mr. Blake, and murder is strongly indicated.”

Reeder just sat staring through the blank mask he gave the world, reading Murton’s body language. On hearing that Blake had been murdered, the supervisor had crossed both his feet and his arms, as if it were cold in this toasty room. Going into a defensive posture because he had something to hide, possibly; or perhaps just shielding himself from the sad news.

Rogers was asking, “Do you know anyone who might have wanted Lester Blake dead, Mr. Murton? Work conflicts perhaps, someone with a grudge that Mr. Blake may have mentioned...?”

Murton shook his head. “Lester was a good employee, a hard worker. Make that a great employee. Quiet but friendly, everybody liked him.”

Didn’t they always, Reeder thought.

“I’d go so far,” Murton said, uncrossing his arms, “as to call him a friend.”

“Close friend?”

“Well... close for a workplace friend. He’s been on my crew here at the Capitol for, oh, almost twenty years. We went out for a drink after work, now and then — maybe once a month? But then, so did most of the crew.”

“No other socializing?”

“No. Well, our respective kids’ weddings. That’s about it.”

“He get along with the rest of the crew?”

“Yeah, like I said — everybody liked him.”

“What were his duties, exactly?”

Murton uncoiled a bit. Work was a more comfortable subject than murder.

“Recent years, with all his experience, he got the most important maintenance jobs. When something needed to be done right, I turned to Lester. Things break down in the Capitol, you know — it’s a beautiful building but it’s old. Anything we can fix ourselves, we do — hardly ever contract outside workers. So, Lester, he was usually busy.”

Reeder asked, “Was he in on repairing the dome?”

“No, that’s the kind of job we do bid out.”

Reeder nodded.

Rogers asked, “What was Lester’s most recent project?”

“A big one — he oversaw the installation of a new furnace.”

Could you construct a furnace out of Senkstone?

Miggie had talked about desks and chairs, but they didn’t have moving parts, like a motor-driven machine. Mig mentioned making a computer of Senkstone, too, but that was only an object that looked like a computer, right? A 3-D rendering?

Could something mechanical be built entirely out of plastic explosive?

Reeder said, “We’d like to have a look at the new furnace.”

Murton frowned so hard, it was like all of his features had converged on the center of his face. “Why would you—”

Rogers, staying right with him, said, “It may have a bearing on our case.”

Ackley was frowning, too, but in a different way. “Is this something I need to worry about?”

Reeder said, “We’re just doing some due diligence, Bob. I’ll let you know if the threat level goes from green to blue.”

“You do that,” the chief said, hard-eyed. “Ron, you wanna show our guests our brand-new furnace?”

The supervisor, confused as hell, shrugged. “I can do that.”

Everybody got up but Ackley. Reeder and Rogers left their topcoats behind in the chief’s office and followed the maintenance supervisor into the corridor. Soon Murton was leading them down into the vast, well-lit Capitol basement, roaring with the merged vibrations of what looked like an underground city of machines.

Wide concrete aisles were on either side of an M. C. Escher design of pipework, furnaces, air conditioners, water heaters, and more. Pipes of metal, PVC, and copper snaked everywhere — upward to provide heat, air conditioning, water, downward for drainage.

Murton stayed in the lead, taking them on a guided tour of an underground world civilians never got to see.

“The Capitol Power Plant provides electricity and natural gas for us,” Murton said, working his voice up over the din, “in addition to almost twenty other federal buildings in the Capitol Hill area.”

Reeder, nearly shouting, asked, “Is replacing a furnace routine or rare?”

“We’ve been installing new furnaces in the basement for most of the last ten years, part of the Capitol working to shrink its carbon footprint.”

“How many furnaces replaced recently?”

“Two in the last year — this one, and one under the Senate.” He paused. “No, three, now that I think of it. The one Lester put in? That was a replacement for one that failed its test run.”

They kept walking.

Reeder asked, “How long has the plan to change out the furnaces been on the schedule?”

Murton laughed but it got lost in the din. “For fifteen years, anyway! Each year, the budget either allows us to continue, or not. The last couple years, under Harrison, things have improved. This replacement furnace? Lester just finished that job a week ago. Here it is.”

Murton was gesturing to a sleek new furnace: big, black, geometric, boxes on boxes. Had one of them been in Bryson’s SIM card picture?

Reeder and Rogers stood staring at the thing, like Ahab spotting Moby Dick lounging in the sun, shooting spray from its blowhole — What are you gonna do about it, you one-legged asshole?

“It’s running,” Rogers said, sounding surprised.

The thrum of the black furnace was like an aircraft about to take off.

“Of course it’s running,” Murton said, with an are-you-crazy smirk. “It’s winter!”

While Rogers tried to explain to Murton that the furnace might have been sabotaged — without getting into the Senkstone aspect — Reeder moved off a little ways to call Miggie. He tucked into a recess that cut the machinery noise somewhat, but still kept his mouth close to the phone — he wanted to be heard, but only by Miggie.

Reeder asked, “Could you 3-D print a working Senkstone furnace?”

“Hell no,” Miggie said. “But... well, you could print each part separately, and then assemble it.”

“Thanks,” Reeder said, not sure he knew much more than before he called.

“What’s up, Joe?”

“Fill you in later, Mig.”

He clicked off, and stepped out from the recess just as somebody bumped into something to his right. Rogers and Murton were down to his left, and he turned toward the sound.

Just another Capitol worker in no hurry, in that same jumpsuit uniform, in the opposite aisle, barely visible through the crowded pipes and furnace. Headed back the way he, Rogers, and Murton had come.

No big deal, Reeder thought, and then the guy glanced his way.

The SIM card blond.

Give the guy credit — he didn’t react at all. Maybe that was what removed any small doubt from Reeder’s mind, since most people, even meeting the eyes of a stranger, would nod or even smile. Not this guy, though again to his credit, he did not pick up his pace. Just looked ahead as if nothing special had occurred, as if he hadn’t recognized Reeder.

But Reeder knew the blond had made him, and moved along with the man, mirroring his pace, separated by the mechanical hum-and-clank snarl of the bowels of the Capitol.

Reeder considered trying to work his way through the clustered pipes and PVC and coils and boxy metal units, but better to wait for a cross aisle — one would have to be coming up. The blond picked up speed, still walking but briskly now.

Rogers had apparently not noticed any of this, talking with Murton, and Reeder cursed himself for not yelling to her before he took up this bizarre chase. She could have cut across and come up behind the blond.

But it had gone down too quickly, and to yell now would spark his prey into a full-on run. He fished for his cell — he could at least send a text to Rogers — and maybe the blond saw that, because he broke into a run and Reeder had no choice but to give damn-the-torpedoes chase.

Reeder and the blond were both running now, footfalls eaten up by the mechanical noise, like they were figures in a silent movie. Someone behind him was running, likely Rogers finally figuring something was up; but he didn’t look back, keeping his head down as he charged forward, well aware he was in a race with a younger man.

The blond guy cut from the aisle into the nightmare jungle gym of pipes and Reeder automatically slowed, peering through the PVC and metal maze, searching for any small glimpse of the intruder. Had he passed the guy? Had Reeder kept moving forward and now the guy was behind him? Then the son of a bitch jumped out of a cross aisle fifty feet in front of him.

They were in the Capitol and yet the guy somehow had a gun in his hand, a .45. Made of Senkstone, perhaps, one moving damn part at a time.

“Gun!” Reeder shouted, for the third time in two days, and threw himself against the pipes as the guy planted himself and aimed, Reeder bracing for the shot.

“Ow! Shit!”

Rogers!

He turned toward her, twenty feet behind him in his aisle. She was dropping to her knees, pistol clattering to the cement. He glanced back to make sure he wasn’t in the line of fire, and the blond guy was gone.

A door slammed.

He went quickly to his partner’s side and knelt beside her. She was on her back, moaning.

“How bad?” he asked.

“He... he got me in the... vest. The vest! Then why, why... why does it hurt... like a mother?”

Murton, not far away, had crammed himself behind a furnace, walkie-talkie out as he barked into it, though he too was in a silent movie, drowned out by machines.

Reeder went down to quickly check something about the black furnace. When he returned in a minute or so, Rogers was in a sitting position and her gun was back in her hip holster.

“Shit!” she said again, the word handball-careening off the hard walls.

“We’ll get the bastard,” Reeder said.

“Yes we will,” she said, massively pissed, “and when we do, I’m going to kick his ass around this grand old building for shooting a hole in my best silk blouse. That’s two blouses ruined in twenty-four hours. Does this prick think I’m made of money?”

Reeder smiled, an arm around her shoulder. “You FBI agents aren’t usually so colorful. But could I have a slice of that ass kicking? Son of a bitch owes me for a suit, too.”

“Why the hell are you smiling?”

“Two things. First, you’re alive, and second, we saw our blond here — at the Capitol. That confirms it — this is the target.”

“Domestic terrorism?”

“If it needs a name.”

“Is that... that furnace made of Senk?”

“Probably not. I scraped paint off a side and got sheet metal. Anyway, it’s been running for a week. Miggie says every moving part would have to be printed separately, and there could still be stability issues.”

“Should we call the bomb squad?”

He shook his head. “If it’s Senk, they wouldn’t know what to do about it. We need that furnace off-line and disassembled for the lab guys to test it, run ’em through the gas chromatograph.”

Soon Capitol cops were swarming the basement, and — while a medic cleared Rogers — the Capitol PD explored the mechanical jungle. Others were searching the rest of the building, using the SIM card pic of the blond that Reeder provided via his cell. Nothing so far.

Chief Ackley approached and said grimly, “First shooting inside the building since 1998 — I don’t love it happening on my watch.”

“Building’s on lockdown?”

“Why didn’t I think of that? Thank God a hero like Joe Reeder is around to—”

“Screw you, Bob,” he said pleasantly. “Didn’t you ever ask a stupid question?”

“Sure. Here’s one — what the hell’s this about?”

“Filling you in is over my pay grade. Patti will do that, after AD Fisk clears it.”

One by one, Ackley’s subordinates reported in: nothing on the blond so far.

Rogers, surprisingly steady on her feet, came over and joined them, wincing as she put her jacket back on.

“Sure you’re okay?” Reeder asked.

“Hurts like root canal, but I’ll live.”

“Good to hear.”

“You caught a round once,” she said, “that missed the vest.”

“Thanks for reminding me,” he said. “My shoulder forgot to ache for a while.”

“Why the hell would you jump in front of a gunman for Adam Benjamin? Now that I’ve been shot in the vest, just the vest mind you, I sure don’t want to do that again.”

He shrugged. “I wasn’t wearing a vest.”

Into his cell, Ackley was yelling, “How the hell did that happen?” Scowling, he listened for a moment. Then: “Keep looking, goddamnit!”

Thirty minutes later, back in Ackley’s office, coffees all around, Rogers asked, “Just disappeared?”

The chief shrugged wearily. “It’s a big building with hundreds of doors, loading docks, about a thousand or so people in the corridors at any given moment, plenty to get lost in. Losing track of one person isn’t that hard to do, especially one trying to get lost.”

Reeder said to the chief, “Why was he down here with a gun? It’s not the kind of place you shoot your way out of.”

Rogers added, “And what was he here to do?”

“Good questions,” Ackley said tightly. “Here’s my favorite — what the hell is going on in my building?”

Rogers glanced at Reeder, who said, “He deserves an answer. See if you can get through to Fisk.”

She tried and did.

With the AD’s blessing, she gave Chief Ackley a broad-strokes rendition of what they were working on, what they knew, what they suspected, what they feared.

Finally, Rogers said, “I think you should probably shut down this building until that new furnace has been thoroughly checked, and till we know for sure what the intruder was doing in the basement.”

Ackley’s laugh was mirthless. “Shut down the United States Capitol, Agent Rogers? It’s like turning the Titanic — in mud.”

“What if you had time to turn before you hit the iceberg, mud or not?”

Ackley shook his head and said, “In 1954, four Puerto Rican nationals fired shots from the gallery of the House of Representatives. That was before any of us were born. Three men and a female fired thirty shots, wounded five congressmen... but the Capitol didn’t stop running that day. Trust me, nothing we say is going to shut down this place.”

“You have it locked down already.”

“Right, and I guarantee you, at least five hundred members of Congress don’t think that pertains to them... like half the laws they pass. Right now, you’ll see them strolling between offices, some heading downstairs for a late lunch. Then there’s the tourists who don’t have anywhere to go during a lockdown.”

“Damnit,” Rogers said.

Reeder said, “She gets grouchy when somebody shoots her. Tell her what you can do, Bob.”

“Agent Rogers, my people will go through that basement inch by inch, using human eyes and every high-tech tool. I will find out why our interloper was down there, and how he got through security with a weapon.”

Rogers’s cell vibrated. She rose and went out into the outer office to take the call.

Ackley said to Reeder, “You think this Senk stuff is a real threat?”

“I do,” Reeder said. “But that new furnace isn’t what we’re looking for.”

“But the target is this building?”

“Maybe, or the White House, or even something nonpolitical — I don’t know. Remember Guy Fawkes?”

“The Gunpowder Plot,” Ackley said.

In 1605, in London, Guy Fawkes and his coconspirators planned to blow up the House of Lords with gunpowder they stashed beneath Parliament.

“Hell, Peep — you think that’s what’s going on here?”

“Certainly is possible, and you don’t need hundreds of pounds of this Senk stuff. Ten pounds would shuffle the deck from here to the Washington Monument.”