Brian Haig - The Kingmaker

About twenty minutes later, I watched Katrina rush out of her apartment building with her purse tucked under her arm, the way street-smart women carry their valuables in neighborhoods like this, tightly, so nobody can tug it away and run off with it.

I gave her a head start, then dashed across the street and followed. I guessed her apartment building didn’t have underground parking, or even a parking lot, so, like most Washingtonians, she had to scrounge around adjoining neighborhoods for a space. It’s that kind of city, and at the end of her street she hooked a left. My eyes searched to see if anybody was following her, or taking an undue interest. I didn’t see anybody, so I ran forward to keep her in sight.

As I rounded the corner, a street bum on a park bench got up and followed her. He was about twenty steps behind her and he truly did look like a bum, dirty and grungy, with clothes that were tattered and weathered. What was odd was that he didn’t move like a guy who was down on his luck, surviving on handouts, pickled on dope or booze or whatever he could afford. He moved like a sprightly killer stalking his prey, right down to the butcher knife he yanked out of his pocket and lugged in his right hand.

I screamed, “Run, Katrina!” and tried to calculate the distance, wondering if I could get there before he raised it over his head and slammed it into her skull.

He turned around and looked at me, even as she turned around and looked at him, and she saw his blade, even as he spun back around and faced her. He was only ten feet from her. I was at least twenty yards away.

Cool as ice, she reached into her purse, yanked out a small canister, held it up like a pistol, and unleashed a spray in his face. The butcher knife was over his head and ready to slash down into her face when he got the full brunt of it. He reeled back for the merest instant, then swung the blade through the air, only Katrina had smartly stepped aside, so he slashed at thin air.

That’s when I got there. I punched him in the back of his head, more to attract attention than to hurt him. He immediately spun around, coughing and rubbing his eyes with one hand, brandishing the butcher knife with the other.

He had no idea who I was, except that I was an enemy. He began swinging the knife wildly through the air, while he used his other hand to wipe his eyes. It was only a matter of time before the pepper spray wore off and his accuracy improved. A butcher knife is a terrific weapon. In the hands of a trained murderer, it only takes one good whack and it’s over. I had no weapon. Or actually, maybe I did. I reached into my pocket and withdrew a pen. I launched a kick at one of his shins and dove at him, hoping he couldn’t get the blade up in time.

We went tumbling onto the cement, him trying to bury the knife in my head, while I brought my right hand up, then swung it down, my pen gouging directly into his right eye socket. I guess I had an adrenaline pump, because I drove it about four inches into his brain. I felt his body tighten and lurch, and he let out a loud scream that sounded perfectly awful, but thankfully didn’t last long.

I rolled off him and Katrina stared down in horror at the Bic pen sticking out of his eye socket. While I hate to be cold about these things, I yanked it out and stuffed it in my pocket, because my fingerprints were on it, and I didn’t want the police to know I’d been there. I’d already killed two men that morning, and it would stretch credulity if they found me with another corpse, like I just happened to be involved in another homicide, and, gee, what a terrifically funny coincidence, huh?

I got up and grabbed Katrina’s arm, then tugged her down the street. Some of the kids I’d seen drinking at the bodega had come around the corner, attracted by the dead man’s scream, and they got a good look at the two of us scurrying away. There was nothing I could do about that, unless I wanted to race back there and threaten them with a bloody Bic pen. From the looks of them, that would be a very stupid idea. This was one of those neighborhoods where seven-year-olds get Uzis for their birthdays. Anyway, with any luck they’d be the kind of kids who’d never tell the police anything, one of those code-of-the-hood things. Even if they did talk, what could they say? They saw a man and woman running away from the crime scene?

Katrina and I intermittently walked and ran, block after block, until I was sure we’d put enough distance between us and the corpse that even a local sweep wouldn’t catch us. I finally dragged her into a pizza shop and we dodged into a booth near the back.

She reached into her purse and withdrew a Handi Wipe, passed it to me, and said, “Wipe your hair. You got splattered by that man’s blood.”

I did as I was told, saying, “Thanks.”

She nodded. “You always show girls such a good time?”

“Not always.”

“No wonder you’re thirty-nine and single.”

“Yeah, no wonder.”

The good news here was that her sense of humor seemed to be coming back. What does that tell you about her? Line her up to get murdered and suddenly she’s all bubbles. Interesting.

“What did we do?” she asked.

“Damned if I know,” I admitted. “But it’s got to be the same people who tried to kill us in Moscow.”

“Not necessarily.”

She was right, of course. There could be two different groups after us. There could be a dozen. But being right, and being right, are two different things. These were the same bastards; I was sure of it. So was she.

I got up and went to the counter and ordered a pizza, partly because I was hungry and partly because I didn’t want to arouse attention from the shop’s proprietors, who were under the perverse impression that their booths were reserved for paying customers.

When I got back to the table, Katrina was playing with a napkin and staring at the tabletop. She looked perfectly calm. It was impossible to tell she was contemplating the fact she’d just nearly gotten her head cleaved in by a murderer wielding a butcher knife.

I said, “You did good back there. It took nerve to pull out that spray while he came after you.”

“Practice, practice, practice. Grow up in TriBeCa back in the good years and life was always exciting.” Her eyes wandered around the shop, then she said, “What are we going to do?”

“We’re not going back to our apartments. We’re not going back to our cars. We better assume they’re very well connected and getting more desperate.”

“The police? The FBI?”

“Eventually. But not until we figure out what to tell them.”

She nodded at that, because we were both lawyers, and the first thing every attorney thinks of is how much not to disclose to the police. Not that either of us would consider lying, but there’s always the tricky question of how high you want to stick your ass in the air. We’d introduced ourselves to the CIA’s most closely held secret asset, hid the truth when somebody tried to kill us in Moscow, fled from a crime scene, and possibly committed a few other misdemeanors-littering even-the sum of which could get us in very ugly trouble with the law. I had not the slightest doubt what General Clapper was going to do to me when this story came out. If I didn’t have so many other things on my mind, I would’ve been contemplating what I wanted to do after I left the Army.

However, we were obviously long past the point where our legal careers were our overriding concerns. I said, “Do we agree we’ve stumbled onto something important enough to cause our deaths?”

She automatically said, “Agreed,” which, considering the circumstances, wasn’t any stretch.

“Do we agree Morrison’s probably innocent, that somebody’s trying to keep us from proving that?”