Greg Rucka - Patriot acts

"I see it, Atticus, I get it, I really do." Panno got up from the table, heading to the refrigerator. "But all of this is built on the assumption that Earle saw the report of Trent's death, saw the assassination plot, and then concluded that it was you and Killer, there, who took care of Trent."

"It's a reasonable assumption on his part," I said. "Earle knows about the Jacob Collins contact. The FBI will have told him that Trent had a home in Wilmington. If they did any search at all-and we all know they did-then they also learned there were at least three people living there, even if they don't know exactly who those three were. It's enough for Earle to make the connection, to put Alena, myself, and Trent in the same place at the same time. So he's got to ask why we were together, and what's he going to conclude, John?"

"That Trent brought you two in to help him plan or execute the hit."

"And then Trent ends up dead," I said. "Our peace offering to Earle, our way of saying that we're quits."

"It's a hell of a long path for Earle to follow to get where you want him to go."

"Has to be that way. Any shorter and it would've made him suspicious. The only way this could work was to let Earle reach his own conclusions."

There was a snap of a church key freeing a bottle cap, and Panno came back to the table with a long-neck bottle of Budweiser in his hand. "Maybe."

Alena finished with the fourth sheet, set it down, then motioned for me to slide the laptop over to her. "We have the schedule. Either it worked, or it did not. Either we will kill him, or he will kill us. But Trent's death has given us what we hoped it would. It has given us our opportunity."

"Or it's given Earle his," Panno said.

Then, having taken the last word, he left Alena and me to figure out when and where we would murder Jason Earle.

We worked the schedule for two days, checking and double-checking the listed appointments, meetings, and appearances. There was a day near the end of April coming up, almost four weeks out, now, that we liked the looks of. Earle had two events scheduled, one out at Georgetown, the other at the Watergate, and when we had Panno double-check them it looked like nothing had changed, that neither had been canceled.

At the Watergate, Earle was going to be the featured after-dinner speaker at the national meeting of Women for the Preservation of the American Heritage. This was, apparently, something he was doing as a favor for, or at the request of, the first lady, as WPAH was one of her pet projects, a foundation that she had been active in even before meeting her husband. Earle, according to the schedule, was to speak for forty-five minutes following dessert, but the schedule had blocked time from five until seven-thirty that evening, apparently to provide wiggle room.

Georgetown, on the other hand, was far more tightly scheduled, at fifty-five minutes. It was another speaking engagement, from one in the afternoon until just before two, and there was nothing in the schedule specifying where he was speaking on the campus or what he was speaking about, only that he was going to. Using Alena's MacBook and the Georgetown Web site wasn't much help; the April calendar indeed had an entry for "Lecture by White House Chief of Staff Jason Earle," and said the lecture would be given in McCarthy Hall, in the McShain Lounge, but that was all.

"McShain Lounge," I said. "Sounds intimate."

"For alumni and alumnae," Alena remarked.

"Easy enough to fake that."

"You think?" She considered. "There are many other ways to gain access to the campus and the hall prior to the engagement."

"Sure."

"Many of them."

I could see the wheels spinning.

I let them spin. We had a fight about it the following morning, as we were finishing up our yoga in what passed for the living room. We'd shoved all of the furniture to the sides to give us room, and even with that accommodation there still wasn't nearly the room either of us would've liked. In the kitchen, I could hear morning radio and the sounds of Panno apparently making himself a very large breakfast.

"So I'm thinking the best way to do this is to go up to D.C. in the next week and get into position," I told Alena. "Get a job on the campus, maybe, doing maintenance or something similar, get the layout."

"Agreed."

"Verify that everything is as we think it is."

"Yes."

"Then the other one follows maybe a day or two prior to the hit, prepares the exfil and stands by."

"Again, agreed. We stay only long enough to verify the kill."

Each of us stretched, turning into new poses. From my angle, she was now upside down.

"That's about a month without contact," I said. "That's a long time."

"We will survive it."

"I'll be careful," I told her.

Alena bent backwards, the move smooth as a line of molten glass. "You are not going to do it."

"Like hell, Alena."

"No, you are not thinking. I am better for this, and you know that." She left the position, exhaling long, then getting to her feet. "I have the experience, and I am marginally harder to recognize than you are, at least at the moment."

I tumbled down and got my own feet beneath me. "I need to do this."

"Why? Because Natalie was your friend? Is it not enough that Jason Earle will die for what he did to her? Is it not enough that you will be as guilty as I or Trent or Panno in this?"

"No, it's not. I need to do it. I need to see him die."

"That is unprofessional."

"Fuck professional. This entire thing is unprofessional. Elliot Trent let me shoot him in the goddamn head to give us this, you think he was giving a rat's ass about professional? Nothing about this is professional, Alena! Nothing."

Alena stared at me, unblinking, a sheen of sweat on her skin.

"Don't talk to me about professional," I said. "Not about this."

"Yes, Atticus, about this. If no one is being professional, then one of us must be. That person is me."

"This isn't Oxford; this isn't you trying to save me from what I might become. I've become it, Alena. For better or for worse, I've become it."

"I know. And you know that I am better for this. If a job cannot be obtained, I can pass as a student. I can get onto the campus, I can place the poison, and I can get out again. And it is not that you cannot do these things, Atticus, it is that I can do them better, with less risk to myself."

The thing was, she was right. She was absolutely right. She could pass for ten years younger if she tried, with the right clothes, the right hair. She could play the Russian emigre and get a job on the maintenance staff, or she could play the postgrad student, or she could play the alum. And maybe I could do all of those things, too, but I wouldn't be able to do half of them as well.

And it was unprofessional, and she was right about that, too. Whatever the reasons behind the crime, when it came to the task, the task was the only thing that should have mattered. Anything else, any agenda or emotion, would only get in the way of that, and make it harder to do the job right.

"You're right," I said, and I left it at that. Alena left two days later, with Panno. She left with a new cell phone and a new identity to match her blond hair, and eight days after she arrived in D.C., she had a job in custodial services on the Georgetown campus. That information came from Panno, not from her, because she was running silent now, and would until I arrived in advance of the hit.

Panno's job was to serve as the link, and on the day of the hit, to provide the overwatch, to confirm that Earle was en route, that we were good to go. For the next three weeks he gave me updates at regular intervals, and he came down to Charlotte twice, to meet face-to-face and keep me posted. He had dead-dropped the stannous acetate to Alena before the first week was out, and confirmed that she had retrieved it and brought it back to the apartment she was subletting in Annandale. To the best of his knowledge, she was running safe, and had not been made.