The Detachment

meeting was at the downtown Capital Hilton, a large and appropriately anonymous conference hotel Dox had recommended and where he’d made a room reservation. I had the cab drop me off at the Hay Adams, across from the White House, instead, thinking I’d walk the few blocks to the Hilton rather than give the driver a chance to note my actual destination. But instead of heading straight to the meeting, I succumbed to a strange urge to join the throng of tourists milling along the tall iron security fence at the edge of the expansive front lawn.
    I strolled over, my pores opening immediately in the afternoon humidity. It was a cloudy day, but somehow the absence of sun exacerbated the heat, which felt like it was radiating from everything rather than from some single, identifiable source. Even the squirrels in Lafayette Square seemed listless, lethargic, as motionless as the nearby humans slouching on park benches and sweating under the useless foliage in rolled shirt-sleeves and loosened ties.
    As I exited the park, I was immediately struck by how fortified the area was. Pennsylvania Avenue had been shut down to automobile traffic, presumably out of fear of truck bombs. There were steel vehicle traps through which delivery trucks had to pass for inspection; multiple guard posts; swarms of uniformed cops and military personnel patrolling on foot, on bicycles, and in cars. The windows of the far-off building itself stared insensate through the thick iron bars separating the grounds from the citizenry, as blank and impenetrable as the tactical shades of the scores of men guarding them. What had once been a residence and office was now, in essence, a bunker.
    I moved on, heading southwest in the beginning of a long loop that would give me ample opportunities to confirm I wasn’t being followed before arriving at the Hilton. Outside the garrisoned grounds of the White House, the city was unremarkable, even bland. The streets were wide and straight; the architecture unimaginative; the ambiance, nonexistent. I noted that, along with London and New York, Washington seemed one of the few remaining cities where men were determined to wear jackets and ties even in the summer. The difference being that in London and New York, the men knew how to dress. But what they lacked in sartorial sense, Washington’s office workers made up for with a certain bounce in their gait. I wondered what might account for their perkiness, and decided it was proximity to power. After all, a dog wags its tail even when it’s begging for a scrap, not only when it receives one.
    I had called Horton from the airport and briefed him on what happened in Vienna. As with Shorrock, he’d already heard. He told me the money had been deposited and proposed that we meet to discuss the next assignment. But I saw no upside to a face-to-face. We still had the communications gear he’d given me in L.A. I’d ditched the cyanide, and didn’t think I’d need a replacement. So I declined, telling him to use a secure site I’d set up, instead.
    I paused in another park, fished the iPad out of my shoulder bag, and found a public Wi-Fi network. I checked the bank account and confirmed deposit of the three hundred thousand. Then I checked the secure site to see if Horton had uploaded the target file.
    He had. I opened it and saw the name. I would have recognized it even if it hadn’t been immediately followed by her title:
    Diane Schmalz. U.S. Supreme Court Justice.
    No, I thought, shaking my head at the screen. Not a chance.
    He was ignoring my rules about women and children. Maybe he thought I wasn’t serious, that the money would matter more. If so, he was wrong. I’d lived by my rules for a long time, and even the one deviation hadn’t really been an exception, because I did it for personal reasons, not as part of a job. I wasn’t going to change now.
    But what if killing her saves thousands?
    No. I didn’t care. If there’s one thing I know as well as I know killing, it’s how subornment works. One baby step at a time. The art of getting someone to cross a line he doesn’t even see until he looks back and realizes it’s already impossibly far behind him.
    I glanced through the file. Photographs. Home addresses, both in D.C. and a weekend place in western Maryland. Schedule. No observed security consciousness and no protection, because no Supreme Court Justice had ever been assassinated.
    But it didn’t make sense. I’d never had much interest in