Jack & Jill

Cabinet Room. It was dominated by serious-looking leather chairs, each bearing a brass plaque with the cabinet member’s title. A very impressive place to visit.
    “What I’m thinking is that every person working here has to be checked out,” I said.
    “They’ve all been checked, Alex.”
    “I know that. They haven’t been checked by me, though. We need to check them all over again. I’d like each of them run against an interest in poetry or literature, even college degrees in literature; any kind of filmmaking experience; painting, sculpting, any endeavor requiring creativity. I’d like to know what magazines they subscribe to. Also their charitable contributions.”
    If McLean had an opinion on all that, he kept it to himself. “Anything else?” he asked.
    We were looking out over the Rose Garden. I could see office buildings off in the distance, so I assumed they could see us. I didn’t like that too much.
    “Yeah, I’m afraid so,” I went on. “While we’re doing those background checks, we need to look at everyone in the crisis group. You can start with me.”
    Agent James McLean stared at me for a long moment.
    “You’re shitting me, aren’t you?” he finally spoke his mind.
    I spoke my mind, too. “I shit you not. This is a murder investigation. This is how it’s done.”
    The dragonslayer had come to the White House.

CHAPTER
43

    THE PHOTOJOURNALIST had chosen a conservative dark gray suit and a striped rep’s tie for the sold-out performance of
Miss Saigon
at the Kennedy Center.
    He had cut his grayish blond hair short; the ponytail was long gone. He no longer wore a diamond stud earring. It was doubtful whether anyone he knew would have recognized him. Just as it should be, as it had to be from now until the end of the game.
    “Seems like old times,” Kevin Hawkins sang softly as he crossed a parking lot facing
USA Today
headquarters across the river in Rosslyn.
    “Keep those big presses running,” he muttered under his breath. “Might have something for you later. Might just have a big, late-breaking story tonight at the Kennedy Center.
Quien sabe?”
    He was so glad to be back in Washington, where he’d lived at various times in the past. He was happy to be back in the game as well.
The game of games,
he couldn’t help thinking, and believing it in his heart. Code name: Jack and Jill. Intrique just didn’t get any better than this. It couldn’t.
    There were two essential parts to his psychological buildup as he approached the difficult evening ahead. The first part was to make himself as cautious, as suspicious, as paranoid, as he possibly could. The second part, equally important, was to pump himself up with a full megadose of confidence so that he would succeed.
    He could not fail. He would not fail,
he told himself. His job was to murder someone—often a well-known someone, sometimes in public view—and not get caught.
    In public view.
    And not get caught.
    So far, he had never been caught in the act.
    He found it curious, although not particularly disturbing anymore, that he had little or no conscience, no guilt about the killings; and yet he could be perfectly normal in many other areas of his life. His sister, Eileen, for example, called him the “last believer” and the “last patriot.” Her children thought he was the nicest, kindest Uncle Kevin imaginable. His parents back in Hudson adored him: He had plenty of nice, normal,
close
friends all around the globe. And yet here he was, ready for another cold-blooded kill. Looking forward to it, actually.
Craving it.
    His adrenaline was pumping, but he felt less than nothing about the intended victim tonight. There were billions of people on the earth, far too many of them. What did one less human mean? Not a whole lot, any goddamn way you looked at it. If you took a logical view of the world.
    At the same time, he was extremely cautious as he entered the glittery Kennedy Center, with its gleaming crystal chandeliers and Matisse tapestries. He glanced up at the chandeliers in the Grand Foyer. With their hundreds of different prisms and lamps, they probably weighed a ton apiece.
    He was going to murder in public view, under the bright lights, under all these prisms and lamps.
    And not get caught!
    What an incredible magic trick. How good he was at this.
    His seat had been purchased for him, the theater ticket left in a locker at Union Station. The seat was in the back of the orchestra. It was almost underneath