Брэд Мельтцер - The Fifth Assassin

Glancing down at the car’s digital clock, the driver pumped the brakes and again searched the sidewalk as the car rolled slowly along Pennsylvania Avenue. A young woman with a forceful gait and a Justice Department ID leaned forward as she plowed against the wind tunnel created by the canyon of tall buildings that lined the block. In the opposite direction, a middle-aged couple held hands as they headed for the Metro.

But as the car reached the end of Pennsylvania Avenue, what caught the driver’s eye was a homeless man approaching the corner of 6th Street.

He was no different from most of the homeless people on the street tonight. His knit cap was tattered and old, he wouldn’t make eye contact, and his crumpled jacket and torn pants looked like they were fished from the garbage. But as he reached the northeast corner of 6th and Pennsylvania—just as his foot touched the edge of the curb where the National Hotel used to exist—the driver couldn’t help but notice the time: 10:11 p.m.

The exact moment John Wilkes Booth pulled the trigger on Lincoln.

Hitting the brakes on the corner of 6th Street, the driver lurched forward as her car bucked to a stop. The homeless man didn’t look up.

“You’re not alone,” the driver of the car called out as she lowered the passenger-side window.

“Clementine?” the homeless man asked, staring at the woman behind the steering wheel.

Clementine nodded, staring back at the so-called homeless man. At Nico, her father.

“Nico, you need to get inside,” Clementine added, popping the locks.

Turning to the side, Nico muttered something as if he were talking to someone next to him. His imaginary friend.

“Nico…”

Adding a quick prayer, he pointed a thank-you up to God and mouthed a silent Amen . Pulling open the car door, he slid into the front passenger seat, smelling of fish and wet garbage.

As her fingers curled around the steering wheel, Clementine couldn’t take her eyes off him, overwhelmed at how simultaneously old and young she felt every time she was in her father’s orbit.

“How did you know I’d be here?” Nico blurted, drilling her with a look that felt like he was trying to break her down to a chemical level.

“I’m your daughter,” Clementine offered.

Nico almost turned away. But he didn’t.

“I thought you’d be with Beecher,” he finally said.

“I’m not.”

“He’ll be looking for me. They’ll all be looking for me.”

“I understand,” she insisted. “I’m still your daughter.”

Clicking his front teeth together, Nico felt his cheeks rise into a crooked grin. “I need a razor,” he insisted.

“We can get it later,” she replied, kicking the gas and twisting the wheel as the car took off up 6th Street.

“I need it now. I need a razor right now,” he told her, staring up at the passing storefronts and streetlights. It’d been so long since he’d been outside the hospital.

Ten minutes later, after a quick stop at a nearby CVS while Nico waited in the car, Clementine handed her father a can of shaving cream, a set of disposable plastic razors, and a bottle of water.

“You don’t have to do this now,” she said, sending the car racing up the street. Next to her, Nico popped open the shaving cream and sprayed it into his hand.

With a quick smudge, he spread the cream into his black hair and tore open the bag of razors with his teeth.

“You need to use the water,” she told him.

Nico didn’t care. Starting at the back of his own neck, he pressed the blade to his skin and tugged upward, taking out a square of black hair and leaving a tiny nick of…

“You’re bleeding,” Clementine said, turning quickly and pulling onto a quiet side street where they’d be better hidden. “Please… can’t this wait?”

But it couldn’t. If Nico was in pain, he didn’t show it. Rinsing the blade with a dump of bottled water, he started again, working his way upward.

Shutting the car and watching him, horrified, Clementine assumed he was worried about being seen or recognized. By now, his picture was all over the news. But as the clumps of hair fell away, she noticed there was something else besides stripes of shaving cream and streaks of blood on the back of his head. At first, she could only see the edge of it: a thin line. It was muddy and pale green.

“Is that a tattoo?” Clementine asked, mesmerized as she studied its curved lines. Slowly, Nico worked the razor upward, shaving his own head.

“No,” Nico said. “It’s a symbol.”

With a sharp tug, the metal blade swallowed a final chunk of black hair from his nearly bald skull, which was shaved down the center like a lawn mower plowing a jagged line through a black forest. But it wasn’t until Nico lowered the razor and turned toward the passenger window that Clementine got a good look at what—for decades now—he’d kept hidden underneath. The final secret Nico Hadrian had kept from them all, even the Knight: a small tattoo that dated back to the Renaissance, where it was the fifth and final suit in certain decks of cards: a crescent moon.

The final suit of the final Knight. And the clear sign that—dear Lord, he had no choice but to admit it now—this mission had always been his.

His body shook, fighting to contain the tears he was keeping inside. In that moment, his entire life made sense. This was why he was chosen. Fate had led him to so many places—and now, once again, it had led him back here. Back to the original mission. Like his predecessors, like his fellow Knights, it was his destiny to kill the President of the United States.

The Knights of the Golden Circle would live again.

Facing the back of her father’s head, Clementine studied his reflection in the passenger-side window. “You know you don’t have to do this,” she told him.

Nico raised his close-set eyes, staring back at her. “That’s what you’ve never understood. I don’t have a choice.”

Knowing better than to argue, and wondering if he might actually be right, Clementine continued to study her father’s reflection. The more hair he took off his head, the more he looked like Clementine without her wig.

“Were you being honest before?” Nico asked, running the razor up the side of his head. “Do you have my cancer in your body?”

Clementine nodded, feeling her blonde wig clamped against her skull. But as she started the car, she didn’t want to talk about cancer, or killing, or anything else. For the first time in her life, Clementine just wanted to enjoy a quiet night with her father.

114

One week later

Camp David

What about meatballs. You like meatballs?” the President asked.

“You know I like meatballs,” eight-year-old Andrew replied, trailing behind his father through the cabin’s rustic living room.

“And do you like hamburgers?”

“Maybe.”

“Don’t say maybe ,” Wallace told his young son, heading into the bedroom, toward his closet, where he pulled out a fleece pullover with the presidential seal on it. “That’s a rule for life. When someone asks you a question, say yes or say no . Stand for something. Now, do you like hamburgers?”

“Yes,” Andrew said assertively.

“And do you like taco meat?”

“May—Usually,” the boy said.

“ Usually counts as a yes,” the President pointed out, sliding his arms into the fleece and pulling it on. As his head popped through the neckhole, Wallace’s hair was still perfectly in place. “Then you should like steak. Meatballs, hamburgers, taco meat… that’s all steak is, just in a different form.”

“But it’s harder to chew,” the boy countered.

Making his way back to the front door of the cabin, the President of the United States stopped and looked back over his shoulder at his son. “You really are going to be a politician when you grow up, aren’t you?”