Philip Margolin - Capitol murder

Mark Dobson, one of the doctors at the facility, was kneeling beside the body.

“The radial artery?” Alan asked. The artery was at the base of the thumb. He’d seen something like this once before.

Dobson nodded. “He chewed through both of them.”

Dobson pointed at the spatter pattern on the walls, floor, and ceiling. “He probably got light-headed from blood loss toward the end and staggered around waving his arms. It’s a shitty way to go. I figure it probably took him fifteen to twenty minutes to bleed out.”

They talked a little longer. Then Alan went upstairs to phone Harold Johnson with the news. He wasn’t going to lose any sleep over Ali’s suicide. Bashar was a terrorist and deserved to die.

I mran Afridi knocked on the door of the motel room, and Mustapha Haddad opened it. Mustapha was not someone you would notice in a crowd. He was slim, of average height, and neither handsome nor ugly. Mustapha blended in and had a nonthreatening demeanor. A dangerous person would always feel that he had the advantage in a confrontation with Afridi’s enforcer. That person would be wrong. Mustapha killed without conscience and was deadly with a knife at close quarters. He was also a skilled sniper who had learned his trade in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Afridi didn’t recognize the two other men in the motel room. They were over six feet tall and thickly muscled, with the scowl worn by bouncers who guard nightclub doors. The men stood up when Mustapha ushered his boss into the room.

“You know what happened?” Afridi asked.

Mustapha nodded. “Rafik told me. The detonators malfunctioned.”

“This was not an accident. Either the man who sold the detonators to Reynolds was FBI or he was co-opted by the FBI. In either case, the FBI knew about our plan in advance. Someone betrayed us.”

“Do you know who?” Mustapha asked.

“No, but there are four people who could have. Ali Bashar was the only member of the cell who worked with the bombs.”

“I can’t see him as a spy for the Americans, Imran. I know his background. He was recruited from a remote village and was sent directly to the camp. If he had contact with the CIA, someone in his village would have noticed. After the camp, Bashar was sent to the safe house in Karachi. After that, he was on the freighter, and from there he went straight to the safe house in Maryland.”

“Someone could have gotten to him at FedEx Field while he was working,” Afridi said.

“But how would they know he was a member of our cell? If he was turned, it was because the traitor identified him.”

“An excellent point. In any event, he’s in custody and we have no way of getting to him.”

“Who else do you suspect?”

“Jessica Koshani knew that FedEx Field was our target.”

“Did she know any other important details, like the date of the operation or the identity of the person who sold Reynolds the explosives?”

“No, but her death is suspicious.”

“Wasn’t Koshani murdered by that escaped serial killer?” Mustapha asked.

“That might be what the CIA wants us to think. Koshani was in Washington to testify before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. She was staying at a house owned by Senator Carson. Koshani was blackmailing the senator to find out what the Americans knew about our plan. She phoned me on the afternoon of the day she was killed. The senator had just left after telling her that the FBI still had no idea where the attack was going to take place or when it would occur.

“It’s possible that Carson went to the CIA or FBI and confessed that Koshani was blackmailing him. After Carson left, agents could have tortured her for details of the plot and faked Clarence Little’s MO.”

“Even if she was tortured by the CIA, she couldn’t have told them enough information to get them to the person who supplied the detonators,” Mustapha pointed out.

“Someone else may have done that, and Senator Carson might know who it is.”

“It will be difficult to get to a United States senator,” Mustapha said.

“Are you telling me you can’t do it?” Afridi challenged.

“I’m saying it will be difficult, but I will find a way if it becomes necessary. Who is your last possibility?”

“Steve Reynolds. It has always seemed convenient that he was in that alley when the imam’s student was attacked. He could have been in deep cover and the attack could have been a setup to get him in contact with the imam. Also, Reynolds found the man who sold the dynamite and detonators.”

“I can question him,” Mustapha suggested.

“Question him, then kill him.”

“What if he isn’t the traitor?” Mustapha asked.

“Kill him anyway. Reynolds has outlived his usefulness.”

T he house where Reynolds was staying was a forty-five-minute ride from the motel. They were several blocks from the rental when Mustapha told the driver to slow down so he could scout the surrounding area. As they drew closer, Mustapha tensed.

“Keep going,” he said. “Something is wrong.”

Without warning, Mother Nature threw a switch, and fall turned to winter. Keith Evans and Maggie Sparks were a block away from a small, two-story Cape Cod in an unmarked car. The wind-chill factor had pushed the temperature into the thirties, but Keith had cranked up the car’s heater, and he was sweating under his Kevlar vest.

A low chain-link fence surrounded the Cape Cod’s unmowed, weed-infested lawn, and the paint on the front of the house was peeling. The rental agreement was made out to Stephen Reynolds, the name on the registration for the 2008 Volvo station wagon with the license plate number Ali Bashar had given up during his interrogation.

Keith had been sitting in front of his television eating a TV dinner and watching a college football game when Harold Johnson called him back to the office. Johnson gave Keith an arrest warrant for Reynolds, told him the suspect was armed and dangerous, and informed him that he’d have a SWAT team for backup.

A little after midnight, a pickup truck pulled into the driveway and a man fitting Reynolds’s description got out, accompanied by a woman. Lights went on in the house. A half hour later, the house went dark. Keith gave the couple an hour to get to sleep before radioing the commander of the SWAT team to tell him that they were going in.

The moon was a cold sliver hiding behind thick clouds, and the only light came from the streetlights. A stiff wind smacked Keith in the face as soon as he got out of the car, and he ducked his head as he raced across the street. Even with SWAT to back him up, his nerves were getting to him. They always did before a raid, but he knew he’d be okay once the action started.

Keith and Maggie followed six members of the SWAT team up the driveway. More men were covering the back and sides of the house. The SWAT team and Maggie vaulted the low fence easily. Keith struggled and vowed to definitely put in some time at the gym.

Keith positioned himself on one side of the front door while Maggie ducked low and peeked through a gap between the windowsill and the curtain that draped the front window. She could see a sagging sofa, a television, and a cheap coffee table in the living room. A counter separated the living room from a small kitchen. There were doorways on either side of the living room, but it was too dark to see into the rooms. The team had procured a blueprint for the house when they were planning the raid, and the rental agent had identified the two darkened rooms as bedrooms.

Maggie relayed her information to the commander of the SWAT team, and he signaled two men who were holding a battering ram. Just as the ram swung back, a light came on in one of the bedrooms, and Steve Reynolds walked toward the kitchen. The ram smashed into the door before Maggie could warn anyone, and the team rushed in shouting “FBI” with Maggie and Keith following.