Andrew Britton: The Operative

Trask’s expression turned ugly; he grabbed the Glock from Bishop’s belt and threw all three safeties as he slid away along the planter.

Bishop moved between Trask and Kealey. “Go on,” he said. “You took everything else from me.”

“It wasn’t about you!” Trask said. “I’m sorry your daughter was collateral damage. Very, very sorry. But you understand why it had to be done-”

“I don’t!” Bishop yelled. “No way do I, you sick bastard! But you can explain it in open court and keep explaining it right up until they strap you to the gurney.”

“That won’t happen-”

“It will. You want to kill me? They’ll get you for murder, and it ends the same way. As long as it puts an end to you, it’s all good to me.”

Trask was shaking his head. “I am a patriot! It doesn’t end this way!”

“You’re a piece of shit, and you’re done,” Bishop said through his teeth.

“No. I can shoot you and leave by the garden door-”

“On foot?” Bishop said. “The grounds are surrounded. There’s only one play that gets you out of here without cuffs. The one I let you take.”

Kealey was trailing Bishop. He had picked up the industrialist’s shears and was holding them at his side, his eye on the Glock. Bishop had hidden the gun behind his buttoned blazer until his back was to the SWAT team. Kealey had not supported the agent’s plan, but he respected it.

Trask was shaking his head. “All the planning… I gave Hunt and his team every advantage! I won’t be a failure!”

“You failed the day you stopped trusting the system,” Bishop said. “It always self-corrects. It was designed to do that!”

Trask reached the sweating glass wall of the greenhouse. He held the gun waist high.

“I accomplish more in a day than men like you achieve in a lifetime.”

“Not this day,” Bishop said, stepping up to the barrel.

“Yes, today,” Trask replied. “Today I leave the dying body of America to the dogs.”

His eyes burned into Bishop’s as he raised the gun to his own right temple and fired. Bishop didn’t flinch as the impact slapped Trask to his left, smearing the clean spray of blood even as it struck the glass. Trask landed on a row of empty pots, shattering them. The two men looked down at the ruin of an industrial titan.

“I told you I wouldn’t need the backup,” Bishop said.

“He could have killed you instead,” Kealey said.

“He already had,” Bishop replied. “He knew it, too. This was his only play.”

There was no sense of triumph in his voice. There was only sadness as he looked down at the crumpled shell that had caused so much suffering.

Kealey wiped the shears on his shirt, put them back on the planter’s soil. He didn’t want anyone finding his fingerprints, thinking he’d forced Trask to do this.

It took just seconds for the nearest of the SWAT team members to reach them. They ran in, stopped, pulled up their masks.

“He had a gun under the table,” Kealey said. He raised and lowered his shoulders. “Nothing we could do.”

The special agent in charge came over, squatted over the gun-which had fallen from Trask’s hand-and made a face. “Weapons maker had a Glock… with no serial number?”

“Guy was a traitor, right down to his gun,” Bishop told him.

“So you say.”

Bishop and Kealey just stood there.

The team leader frowned but said nothing more as he ordered his team to secure the crime scene. He told one of the agents to escort Bishop and Kealey out. They walked down the corridor past the autographs and accompanying portraits of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

Kealey laid a hand on Bishop’s shoulder. “You’re not dead, you know.”

“Yeah. I hurt too much to be deceased.”

“I meant that you still have a lot to do, a lot to offer.”

“Maybe.”

“You saved a couple of million lives. That’s not an end. It’s a beginning.”

Bishop grinned. Kealey smiled back. “I don’t mean you have to top that, Reed.”

“I know what you meant.” Bishop cocked his head noncommittally as he looked at the respectfully lit documents. “But I believe what I said back there about the system working.” He added quietly, “How do I justify what I did?”

Kealey stopped and faced him. The agent escorting them stopped several paces back, gave them space.

“Trask declared war on this nation, and you responded,” Kealey said quietly. “You gave him a choice as to how the end played out. That’s more than he gave anyone else. That, to me, is one of the things we’re about. Americans. It may not be in any document, but it’s here.” He touched a hand to his own chest.

Bishop held it together a moment longer, then put his face in his hand, sobbing. Kealey turned and joined the agent. There would be time enough for embraces and words of comfort. Bishop knew he wasn’t alone, and right now all Kealey wanted was to give the man his privacy.

He looked over at the wall, at a painting of Thomas Jefferson standing beside a pedestal with the Declaration scrolled over the side.

Help him find peace, Mr. President, Kealey thought. Some things are that black and white, aren’t they?

SILVER SPRING, MARYLAND

The funeral for Laura Bishop was held at the Holy Sepulchre Cemetery. It was where her mother was buried. She would be laid to rest in a plot Bishop had bought for himself.

Bishop’s brother, his brother’s wife, and their children were there to support him. So was his mother. Harper, Andrews, Cluzot, and Carlson were in attendance, as were select members of both houses. Along with the funeral of FBI agent Jessica Muloni, this was one of the few services President Brenneman attended as a result of the so-called “16 Hour” attacks. That was the name the media had given the time span covered by the two days of terror. Even in the administration there had been some debate about how to refer to the two bloody days. No one wanted to refer to it by the dates; not even the most lurid elements of the media wanted to create the impression that attacks against the nation were an ongoing series.

The media were not invited to the service or the interment. The burial was beneath spotless blue skies, where the priest remembered Laura as a young girl who cared not only for her father’s health but also for the health of others, just like her mother had.

“Young Laura was always making healthy-eating posters for the church and for her school,” the clergyman recalled. “She once asked me about the fat content of the Communion wafers and whether the holy water was spring or tap. Her interest in people, in caregiving, was one of the reasons she was with her father among the nurses and doctors who held such a high place in her heart. We know she was happy then, and that is how we must remember her. For we also know that, reunited with her mother, they are both happy now.”

Kealey didn’t know if he embraced that idea, and he took no solace from it. He had seen enough evil and suffering to doubt the existence of God Himself. Yet it never failed that these reminiscences spoken to celebrate a life were invariably the most painful part of saying good-bye. Or maybe they were intended to do just the opposite-to prevent us from leaving everything behind, to help us to hold on to the soul of a loved one.

After paying their respects to Laura’s mother, the Bishop family went back to their limousines alone, the officials leaving in their cars. Harper lingered long enough to tell Kealey, Allison, and Andrews that Julie was conscious, though still in a fog.

“It’ll be a while before she’s anything close to being herself again,” he said. “But she’ll get there. Hell, she’ll probably turn it into a platform to talk about courage.”