Брэд Мельтцер - The Fifth Assassin

“Let’s keep it moving!” a member of the Park Police called out, motioning the line forward.

As the Dutch crowd shuffled through the open door, the Knight stood just outside the entrance, waiting patiently to go inside. Looking diagonally upward, toward the very top of the grand marble steps, he couldn’t see the statue of Abraham Lincoln. From this angle, it was hidden by the Ionic columns. But the Knight knew what was carved into the marble wall just above Lincoln’s head:

IN THIS TEMPLE

AS IN THE HEARTS OF THE PEOPLE FOR WHOM HE SAVED THE UNION

THE MEMORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

IS ENSHRINED FOREVER

Unwrapping a butterscotch candy, the Knight tossed it into his mouth and stepped inside.

He knew how it would end.

In a temple. Just as it was supposed to.

PART V

The Fifth Assassination

“Didn’t you ever hear what Queen Victoria wrote to her daughter?

It is worth being shot at—to see how much one is loved.

”

—President Orson Wallace, joking around,

two minutes before the gunshot was fired

104

Eight minutes ago

Soon, they’d all be screaming.

It always started with screaming—then running and scrambling, then the inevitable stampede that the Secret Service had no hope of containing.

But right now, as the heavy bulletproof door of his SUV was tugged open and a light mist of snow tumbled into the car, President Orson Wallace stepped out, all smiles.

His good mood had nothing to do with their current location or the fact that everyone thought he was still at Camp David. It had to do with who he was with .

Behind him, following him out of the SUV, Wallace’s eleven-year-old daughter, Vanessa, stuck her head outside, instinctively looking around. Their SUV had stopped along the edge of the road on the D.C. side of Memorial Bridge. But to her surprise, there was no crowd waiting, no one cheering, no cell phone flashbulbs popping. It was the same trick they used for Obama’s surprise Christmas visit to Iraq… and for sneaking President Bush to his daughter’s rehearsal dinner before her wedding. Instead of a motorcade, they put the President in a pair of jeans, the leather jacket he never got to wear, and an unmarked black baseball cap—then tossed him in a single SUV that no one would look at twice.

On her far left, pulled up on the grass, was an ambulance parked under one tree, and a black van tucked behind another. The Secret Service had prepositioned a few assets, but all were far enough away that father and daughter truly had something they never got to have: peace and quiet.

“It’s just us,” Wallace promised, which, really, was the point.

The President was determined not to miss this day. He’d missed so many already. Not the big ones, of course. Nessie’s birthdays, her elementary school graduation, even the spring piano recital—those were easy to block out on his calendar. But the small, everyday ones—like Fifth Grade Art Night or the softball game where they gave her a chance to pitch and she struck out two hitters!—those were the days he’d never get back.

When Wallace had first taken office, he heard the stories—about how Chelsea Clinton learned to drive from her Secret Service agents at Andrews Air Force Base. Wallace swore he’d do better than that. But as he learned during the very first days on the job, if you want to be the leader of the free world, sometimes the fifth-grade field trip needs to go on without you.

But not always.

“So. You excited ?” the President asked, kicking himself for sounding so much like his own overenthusiastic father.

Nessie didn’t answer, shooting him the kind of preteen-daughter look that even the Secret Service can’t protect you against. Still, as Wallace reached out to help her from the SUV, Nessie reached back, taking her father’s hand and holding it in her own.

In just a few minutes, Nessie would be sobbing uncontrollably as a Secret Service agent carried her, clutching her to his chest. But right now, as they walked hand in hand—her thin fingers intertwined in his—the President’s day couldn’t possibly get any better.

“Sir… Miss Nessie—this way, please,” A.J. called out, pointing them toward the narrow path that led through the wide-open, snow-covered field behind the Lincoln Memorial.

“Not as good a view as the front, is it?” Wallace asked.

“I like it better from back here,” his daughter said, looking up at the enormous symmetrical columns that lined the back of the Memorial. “It’s quieter—like it’s ours.”

“Mmm,” the President said in a wordless hum that encompassed the pure joy of simply being alone with his daughter. Or as alone as a President gets. In front of them, a casually dressed Secret Service agent and a similarly dressed military aide—both in unmarked baseball caps—walked at least twenty yards ahead so they wouldn’t look like bodyguards. In back of them, A.J. brought up the rear, keeping a similar distance. For a full two minutes, as snow tumbled from above, father and daughter were just two more tourists exploring the nation’s capital. Nearing the back of the monument, A.J. whispered something into his hand mic. The President couldn’t help but glance over his shoulder. A.J. shot him a knowing nod.

Wallace knew what it meant: Palmiotti had put the meat in the bear trap, and it had finally snapped shut. They had everything they needed at Camp David. Soon, they’d have the rest: Beecher, Nico, Marshall… The President still wasn’t sure how or why —but he knew they were all tied together. And now, whatever fight they were picking, one by one, they’d all go down.

“Sir, this way please,” the lead agent called out as he and the military aide approached the back of the Memorial and stopped a few feet shy of the granite base. On cue, from the ground, bits of snow popped as two metal cellar doors opened and a rusted old platform rose upward on an industrial scissor-lift. When the Lincoln Memorial was built back in the 1920s, the scissor-lift helped them lower electrical, mechanical, and plumbing equipment down to the basement level. These days, it lowered Presidents and visiting VIPs.

“Your chariot,” the President teased, motioning his daughter toward the steel platform with its three-sided railing. It wasn’t big enough to hold all of them. The lead agent and the mil aide went first, thinking they were being safe.

“So you think your friends will be excited to see me?” the President asked as the platform’s scissor-lift grunted and screeched, swallowing the first two members of their party.

“Dad, I hate to break it to you, but my friends didn’t vote for you.”

“That’s only because they’re eleven,” Wallace said as the now empty platform churned upward. When it stopped, the President and Nessie stepped onto it. Joining them, A.J. glanced around, doing his usual recon.

“ Goliath and Glowing moving ,” A.J. said into his hand mic as he squeezed next to Nessie. With the press of a button, the platform rumbled, and all three were eaten, slowly sinking underground.

105

Eighteen years ago

Sagamore, Wisconsin

The drop was longer than he thought.

He was on his stomach, lowering himself feet first through the basement window. While the top half of his body held his weight, his legs kicked in every direction, searching for something to stand on. Chairs. Suitcases. Anything to break his fall.

Finding nothing, Marshall didn’t panic. Even if it was four feet… five feet… the basement ceiling wasn’t that high. The drop couldn’t be that bad. With a quick shove, he slid down on his stomach, like a child on a steep playground slide. But as he picked up speed and the ground still hadn’t arrived… the drop was farther than he anticipated.