Target: Alex Cross Read online

  Which is how Stapleton came to be sitting in the jump seat across from me and Mahoney, his wrists in handcuffs, and an FBI SWAT medic working on his head wound.

  “Talk,” Carstensen said.

  Stapleton didn’t stop talking as we picked up speed, and the pilot attempted to call the air traffic control tower at the Atlantic City airport. I admit to being fuzzy on that flight, but everything the security director was saying fit with what we’d suspected.

  The pilot called out, “Are they in a Gulfstream?”

  “Yes,” Stapleton said. “Don’t let them off the ground. They can fly more than six thousand miles in that thing.”

  “That’s them,” the pilot said. “They are taxiing toward the runway and ignoring air traffic control orders to turn about.”

  “Move!” Carstensen shouted.

  The pilot juiced the chopper to its limits, one hundred and forty-five miles an hour. Then he dropped speed and swung the bird past the airport tower.

  The Gulfstream was just making the turn onto the runway when the pilot flew over the top of the jet, passed it, and hovered broadside over the runway. The jet kept coming. Carstensen slid back the side door of the chopper. Five FBI SWAT agents aimed automatic weapons at the cockpit and the pilot.

  The jet stopped. The engines died. The jet’s pilot put his hands up.

  We landed. The SWAT officers surrounded the jet.

  “This is the FBI; open the door and come out with your hands up,” Carstensen said over the helicopter’s loudspeaker. “Now.”

  Two minutes later, the airplane door slowly opened and let down the staircase.

  Austin Crowley came first, blinking nervously behind his thick glasses, the fingers of both hands interlaced on his head. Crowley’s partner, Sydney Bronson, had his hands up but was openly defiant.

  “What the hell is this?” he cried after agents grabbed Crowley and slammed him facedown onto the tarmac. “Why are you—”

  Two agents dragged him off the staircase, threw him down beside his partner, and restrained his wrists behind his back.

  I looked at Carstensen, who nodded and said, “All yours, Dr. Cross.”

  “Austin Crowley, Sydney Bronson,” I said. “You are both under arrest for conspiracy to overthrow the government of the United States.”

  CHAPTER

  103

  AT TEN O’CLOCK the following morning, outside the northeast gate to the White House grounds, Bree and I met Mahoney, Carstensen, and FBI director Sanford. After presenting our credentials, we were waved in and soon found ourselves standing in the hall outside the Oval Office.

  “You good?” Bree whispered to me.

  “Slight headache.”

  “I didn’t mean your head.”

  “I know. I’m good.”

  I don’t know why, but I was good, strangely calm when the door opened and we walked in. The room was fairly crowded with people I recognized. Some were cabinet members. Others were leaders from both houses of Congress and from both sides of the political aisle.

  All nine Supreme Court justices were there as well. And Secret Service special agent Lance Reamer, and Lieutenant Sheldon Lee of the Capitol Police. Bree went and stood by them.

  President Talbot was on his feet behind the Lincoln desk, looking grim.

  “What the hell happened in Atlantic City? No one will tell us anything.”

  “We’ve been sorting that out all night, Mr. President,” Director Sanford said. “It seemed easier to brief everyone who needed to know at once.”

  “Well, then,” Talbot said, irritated, as he sat down. “Get on with it.”

  Sanford glanced at Carstensen, who said, “Two of the assassins are dead.”

  That set off a hubbub that lasted several moments before she continued, “They were killed on the boardwalk in Atlantic City last night.”

  Chief Justice Watts said, “Who were they?”

  I said, “One was a notorious Hungarian contract killer named Kristina Varjan. The other, who we believe was President Hobbs’s killer, is as yet unidentified.”

  The Senate majority leader said, “Explain how you caught up to them.”

  “A fluke, Senator,” Mahoney said. “We were up in Atlantic City following a different thread of the investigation, and we spotted them.”

  “Doing what?” the House whip asked.

  Carstensen said, “They were shaking down their employers.”

  “You mean whoever hired them to do the killings?”

  “That’s correct,” the FBI director said.

  “So who are they?” the secretary of the interior asked.

  “Austin Crowley and Sydney Bronson, co-founders and owners of the largest e-sports company in the world.”

  That set off another animated reaction in the room. E-sports? What?

  “You’re sure about this?” the Senate majority leader said.

  “Yes,” I said. “When I spotted the three assassins in Crowley and Bronson’s skybox, they evidently were there demanding payment for the killings. They got Bronson to transfer millions of dollars in Bitcoin to so-called hard wallets—small, densely encrypted thumb drives—that the killers took with them.”

  I could see skepticism on the faces of many in the room, including the president.

  “They told you this?” President Talbot said. “They confessed?”

  Sanford said, “No, Crowley and Bronson tried to tell us the three were just sophisticated robbers who’d heard about the purse for the tournament being in Bitcoin and taken advantage of the situation.”

  I said, “That was nonsense. Stapleton, their director of security, was beaten by the assassins, and he overheard the conversations that occurred in that skybox. When we hit Crowley and Bronson with what Stapleton told us, they denied it and said they’d sue us and him.”

  Carstensen smiled. “Until we showed them that Stapleton had recorded almost the entire thing on his iPhone. Then they caved, admitted they were the masterminds.”

  The chief justice said, “Why in God’s name would they do such a thing? These are video-game people, right?”

  “Sophisticated video-game people,” I said. “Expert coders. MIT- and Harvard-smart. And arrogant about it. I think they thought they’d never get caught, that they knew enough about the dark web to get away with playing behind the scenes, anonymously hiring assassins to topple the U.S. government.”

  “But why?” the chief justice said again, growing irritated.

  Carstensen told him that Bronson and Crowley said that they hadn’t planned to kill the president. Not at the outset, anyway. They had been spending more and more of their time exploring the dark web, doing research for future games, and they’d come upon a site that offered killers for hire.

  “They claim they got on the site to see if a game they were designing was plausible,” Mahoney said.

  “I’m confused,” Talbot said. “This was a game? A goddamned game to them?”

  “At first, sir,” I said. “Then President Grant died. And someone made them realize they had a unique opportunity.”

  “What opportunity?” the House whip said.

  “Ultimately?” I said. “The opportunity to make Bitcoin, lots and lots of Bitcoin.”

  CHAPTER

  104

  MOST OF THE people in the Oval Office that day had vaguely heard of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, but we gave them a crash course in the so-called block-chain technology that underlies digital money and keeps trade in it relatively anonymous.

  “A lot of very smart people think this is the radical future of money,” Director Sanford said. “So ask yourself: What would you do if you were Crowley and Bronson, two of those very smart people who think Bitcoin is the future, and you owned a huge e-sports company? Being entrepreneurs, you’re looking to the future, trying to tie your company to potentially radical change. What business would you want to be in? What business would it make sense to be in?”

  No one in the room said anything. Sanford looked to
me and nodded.

  “Gambling,” I said.

  “What?” the chief justice said.

  “Consider these facts,” I said. “E-sports are the fastest growing participatory and spectator sport in the world. The only thing that isn’t happening there is what has happened with all other sports in the world: Betting. Wagering. Gambling.”

  Carstensen said, “And now imagine a time in the not-too-distant future when you could bet on e-sports, all digitally, potentially from any computer in the world. And every smart-phone. And every tablet. And all of the betting is occurring via hard-to-trace Bitcoin.”

  Director Sanford said, “We’re talking billions upon billions upon billions of untraceable dollars. If it had worked, Crowley and Bronson could have been among the wealthiest people on earth, if not the wealthiest.”

  “Who would take such a chance?” the House minority leader said, disgusted.

  “Two super-nerds, young brilliant dropouts with no social skills and zero empathy for their fellow man,” Carstensen said. “They see little difference between real-life humans and game avatars. They’re all expendable. And they believed that they were so good at game theory and design, at thinking their way through the ramifications of every possible move, that they could cover all their bases. Only they didn’t. Evidently, the first time Varjan, the Hungarian assassin, was contacted by them anonymously, she attached some kind of electronic bug to her reply that followed it to the source. She knew who they were from the start.”

  “Fatal mistake on their part,” Mahoney said. “I mean, they were good enough hackers to know the itineraries of every one of their targets, but they missed her bug.”

  The Senate majority leader said, “Idiots. Congress would never have allowed uncontrolled gambling like that.”

  I shrugged. “Congress might have if the president thought it was a good idea.”

  All around the Oval Office, brows knitted and then heads turned to look at President Talbot, who appeared puzzled. “What are you saying?”

  “I said that, hypothetically, sir, if the president thought unfettered gambling on e-sports was a good idea, their scheme might have worked. Such a president could have lent his popularity and influence to see it through Congress, sold it as a way to bring in new sources of revenue to do governmental good.”

  “Well, hypothetically or not, I don’t support anything like that,” Talbot said. “Never have. Never would.”

  There was silence in the room.

  Director Sanford ended it by saying, “I’m sorry, Mr. President, but you must know that’s not true.”

  The president raised his head and glared at Sanford. “How dare you tell me what I support and don’t.”

  Carstensen said, “The Senate bill that would have allowed digital gambling as a means to collect tax revenues and so decrease the national debt. You’re familiar with it, aren’t you, Mr. President? You’re listed as a co-sponsor.”

  Talbot laughed. “Young lady, do you know how many cockamamie bills a senator will cosign in a career? Hell, half the time you don’t know what it is you’re supporting. You’re just doing a colleague a favor. Making him look good.”

  Sanford said, “So you don’t support digital gambling, sir?”

  “I just said that, didn’t I?” Talbot snapped. “Frankly, I think this is outrageous. You don’t honestly think I colluded with these two clowns on the autism spectrum to overthrow the government just so they could make billions, do you?”

  CHAPTER

  105

  THERE WAS ANOTHER long, tense silence in the room, with everyone either looking at us or at Talbot.

  I cleared my throat, said, “Well, sir. There’s also the presidency. The ultimate office. The dream of every senator. Even you, sir.”

  “Bull turd,” Talbot sputtered. “I have never—” He laughed caustically and shook his head. “How in God’s name do you think this all happened? I mean, I became Senate president pro tempore by accident. My good friend and colleague Senator Jones—who was expected to recover just fine after his heart operation—died before he even got on the operating table. Explain that.”

  Bree said, “Senator Walker was assassinated, sir, and if she hadn’t died, she’d have been in line to take Senator Jones’s place as Senate president pro tempore. Not you.”

  His face reddened and tightened. “And who are you?”

  “DC Metro chief of detectives Stone, sir,” Bree said. “I solved Senator Walker’s murder. And again, if Walker wasn’t dead, she would have been standing where you are now.”

  “Exactly right, but so what?” Talbot said dismissively. “Arthur wasn’t killed. He just died. Things happen randomly.”

  “They do sometimes,” I said. “But not in this case. Senator Jones did not just die. He was helped.”

  Mahoney held up a photograph of Kristina Varjan in death. “We showed this picture to Senator Jones’s sister, who was in the room when he coded. We also showed it to the night nurse on the cardiac unit. Both women identified this assassin as the phlebotomist who was with the Senate president pro tempore shortly before his heart attack .”

  I said, “Which put you behind Abraham Lincoln’s desk, sir. The most powerful man on earth. Capable of bestowing unfathomable wealth on a favored few.”

  Talbot shook his head like a horse at biting flies. “This is not true. You will not find any tie between me and—”

  The door to the Oval Office swung open. Samuel Larkin walked in.

  “Larkin?” Talbot said, growing furious. “What in God’s name are you doing here?”

  “I’m here to place you under arrest for treason,” the former acting president and attorney general said, unruffled. “I’ve seen the interrogations of Stapleton, Crowley, and Bronson. They all say it was your idea, cooked up the day after President Grant died. You and Bronson and Crowley were eating at a restaurant in Reno and talked out the whole thing.”

  “That’s not true!” Talbot said.

  “There’s security footage of you all together.”

  “It’s fabricated! Fake news!”

  “You’ll get your day in court to prove that. A lot more than your victims got,” Larkin said, nodding to Secret Service agent Reamer. “Arrest him.”

  Reamer smiled, said, “With pleasure, Mr. President.”

  “What?” Talbot shouted, backing up. “They’re giving the presidency back to you, Larkin? This is illegal! This is a coup!”

  “I’ll be taking over temporarily,” Larkin said. “By all accounts, Harold Murphy is going to live and make a full recovery, thank God. The secretary of defense is the rightful successor to the office and will take over as soon as he’s physically able.”

  “No!” Talbot said when the Secret Service agent came around the desk. He stormed over to the French doors that led to the west colonnade of the White House, threw them open, and stepped outside. He looked ready to try to make his escape, but he froze when two Marine MPs walked up and blocked his path.

  “Stand aside,” Talbot said. “I’m your commander in chief!”

  “Not anymore, you’re not,” Agent Reamer said from behind him, and he roughly snapped the cuffs on the former leader of the free world.

  CHAPTER

  106

  SIX DAYS LATER, six riderless black horses clip-clopped down Pennsylvania Avenue, followed by six coffins on horse-drawn caissons, all draped in U.S. flags.

  Once again, I stood with my family at the corner of Constitution and Louisiana. Well, most of my family. Damon had exams, and Bree had just been called away.

  “I can’t get over this,” Nana Mama said as the funeral cortege approached. “Crowley and that Bronson, they didn’t think twice about taking all those brilliant lives to gain control of the presidency and make billions. Who thinks like that?”

  “At least three people do,” Ali said.

  “All it takes, I guess,” Jannie said. “If you can work the dark web.”

  Later, during the eulogy he gave at the service fo
r the fallen leaders at the National Cathedral, the acting president, Larkin, talked about the fragility of life. He also spoke of the strength and resiliency of our nation.

  “The simple fact about our country that has been undervalued time and again is that we are by design a government that continues to function no matter the tragedy or turmoil,” Larkin said. “If you kill one of our leaders, another rises, and the country goes on. If you assassinate two, three, or even six of our leaders, there is a natural succession laid out by the Framers, and the country and the government go on.

  “These gifted, patriotic men and woman who lie before us lived in service to the people, and I believe they did not die in vain,” he said. “They are martyrs, and I will always think of them as such, martyrs to the ideals of our country as laid out in our brilliantly conceived Constitution.”

  I left the service thinking how right Larkin was. We had just endured one of the biggest upheavals in our country’s history, but life would continue. And America would go on trying to create a more perfect union of the people, by the people, and—

  My cell phone buzzed. Bree.

  “Funerals done?” she asked.

  “They all left for Arlington a few minutes ago. Figured it was for family. I’m heading home.”

  “Not so fast,” she said. “I need you to come see something. Right now.”

  “I told Jannie we’d go for a run. Can’t it wait?”

  “I’m sorry, baby, but no.”

  She gave me an address in Foggy Bottom that sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it. I called an Uber, and even with the traffic, I got there fifteen minutes later.

  Bree met me outside an old restored town house with a freshly painted green door. “You’ve never been here, right?”

  I shook my head. “No. I don’t think so. Why? Who lives here?”

  “I’ll show you.”

  She gave me blue booties and latex gloves. We walked inside a few feet to a steep narrow staircase. Bree went up it before I could look around.