The Mark of the Assassin

that fancy
    hairdo, and he'll look like a Salvadoran farmworker. Get him a false
    green card and find him a job on the cleaning service used by the Post.
    I want him inside by tomorrow night."
    "Good idea."
    "I want everything on her: financial, her divorce, everything. If she
    wants to play hardball, she's playing in the wrong league."
    Calahan held up the tape. "What do you want me to do with this?"
    "Destroy it."
    CHAPTER 10.
    Washington, D.C.
    ELIZABETH OSBOURNE THOUGHT, If there's anything worse than a Washington
    dinner party, it's going to a Washington dinner party alone. She arrived
    at Mitchell Elliott's Kalorama mansion fifteen minutes late. She left
    her Mercedes with the valet, a boy who looked barely old enough to
    drive, and headed up the walkway. Michael had telephoned late in the
    afternoon to say he couldn't get away because something big was going to
    break. She had tried to find an escort but couldn't, on such short
    notice.
    Even Jack Dawson, Susanna's ex-husband, had turned her down. Elizabeth
    pressed the button, and a solemn bell tolled somewhere inside the
    imposing house. A trim man in a tuxedo opened the door. He helped with
    her coat and glanced outside expectantly, looking for her partner. "I'm
    alone tonight," she said self-consciously, then immediately regretted
    it. She thought, I don't have to explain myself to a fucking butler. The
    butler informed her that drinks were being served in the garden. She
    followed the center hall into the house. French doors gave onto a
    magnificent terraced garden. Gas heaters burned the chill from the
    autumn night air. Elizabeth stepped outside, and a waiter presented her
    with a glass of cold Char-donnay. She drank half of it very quickly. She
    glanced around at the other guests and felt even more embarrassed. She
    was surrounded by the elite of Washington's Republican establishment:
    the Senate majority leader, the House minority leader, a smattering of
    lesser members, and the upper echelon of the city's lawyers, lobbyists,
    and journalists. A famous conservative television commentator was
    holding forth on the banks of the lap pool. Elizabeth awkwardly drifted
    into his orbit, clutching her wine like a shield. Beckwith was in
    trouble, the commentator pronounced, because he had betrayed the Party's
    conservative principles. His audience nodded slowly; the Oracle had
    spoken. Elizabeth glanced at her watch: eight o'clock. She wondered
    whether she could make it through the evening. She wondered who would be
    the first to comment on the fact she was alone. Someone bellowed her
    name. She turned in the direction of the sound and saw Samuel Braxton
    floating toward her. He was a brilliant and ruthless lawyer, warehoused
    inside a lineman's body gone soft with age and prosperity. His latest
    acquisition, a big-breasted blonde named Ashley, hung on his beefy arm.
    She was wife number three or number four; Elizabeth couldn't recall for
    certain. They had sat next to each other at a dinner party while she was
    still Ashley Dupree, waiting for her divorce to become final so she
    could "make an honest man of Samuel." She was Huntsville rich. Her
    family made money from horses and from cotton, some of which was stuffed
    inside her head, masquerading as a brain. She suited Braxton's needs
    perfectly: an upper-class pedigree, money of her own, and the body of a
    Playboy centerfold despite her respectable thirty-eight years. "Where's
    your husband?" Braxton asked loudly. "I wanted to show off Ashley."
    The Oracle stopped speaking, and his audience turned to hear her answer.
    "He was called out of town suddenly on business," Elizabeth said. She
    felt her face flush, despite her lawyerly effort at courtroom composure.
    The lying was the hardest part. It would be so much easier if she could
    tell the truth just once: The President is about to order air strikes
    against the Sword of Gaza, and my husband works for the CIA, and he
    couldn't exactly leave work this minute to come to this ridiculous
    dinner party. Braxton made a show of looking around the garden at the
    other guests. "Well, Elizabeth, you do seem to be in the minority here
    tonight. If I'm not mistaken, you're the only card-carrying member of
    the Democratic Party in the room."
    Elizabeth managed a careful smile. "Believe it or not, Samuel, I'm one
    of the few people who actually likes Republicans."
    But Braxton didn't hear the crack because he was already looking past
    her at Mitchell Elliott, who had