Designated Survivor (25 page)

Monroe walked away and Grace turned to Arrington. “Nope,” Arrington said.

“Dammit,” Grace said.

CHAPTER 49

Arash Abbasi had the truck parked across the street from a business park. A row of matching trucks with a company logo plastered across them lined the curb facing him. It hadn’t been too difficult to find out which companies had contracts to service the large heating and air conditioning system two miles down the road at the Homeland Security building. He’d searched help wanted ads for HVAC service people and ruled out any that didn’t require active government clearance, which in the DC area wasn’t rare for any business. From there, he just had to see which ones were certified in the brand Baasch had seen on his field trip to the machinery building. It left only two. Instead of trying to figure out which would be called first, he decided to create an emergency big enough that would require as many technicians as possible.

He was ready to be done, to get on a plane and fly away. Collect his money and be done with Washington DC. He hadn’t decided whether he would kill the client yet, but he did know he wasn’t going to take a contract in the United States again. There was enough good money to be made in Europe and the Middle East.

He looked at the time on the dashboard radio. 10:00 am.

CHAPTER 50

President Abrams arrived at the building with her Secret Service detail in tow. The guards at the gate were only informed a few minutes before the caravan of black cars pulled up. Most of the agents lined the exterior of the building, checking all of the entrances. The hallway inside had another dozen men as well as a few who were working their way through the six-story building. Four agents stood outside the thick steel door to the ETTF along with the guards. The man in charge of her security detail, Agent Rick Haggard, was the only one inside the room and he stayed within a few feet of her at all times as he had since she’d been sworn in.

All conversations that had been taking place came to a stop as she worked her way through the room. CIA Director Leighton was sitting at the head of the long conference table and promptly stood, stacked up his papers and moved to a seat three down on the left side.

“We’ll begin in five minutes,” the president said. “In the meantime, would someone please bring me some coffee? It’s chilly in here.”

“Yes, Madam President,” her personal aide scampered off to find her a hot drink.

Grace heard her request as he walked past the group to Ben Murray’s desk and pulled up a rolling chair beside him.

“We gotta get more on William,” Grace said. “Just because he’s dead now doesn’t mean he wasn’t involved.”

“It could just be coincidence,” Ben said. “His father owns the company that bought Cunningham, so of course he was around them. Probably where William and Graham met.”

“Doesn’t smell right,” Grace said. “Keep digging.” He turned and saw Jim Monroe get the president’s attention and speak to her for a few minutes. She was shaking her head.

“Wish I could be a fly on the wall for that one,” Grace said.

CHAPTER 51

Jim Monroe stopped and took a deep breath outside the locked door. He turned the handle and stepped in.

“When am I getting out of here?” Richard Graham said. “I have meetings in DC.”

“You’re in here for your own safety, Richard,” Monroe said.

“Quit the bullshit,” Richard said. “You’re detaining me.”

“Do we have reason to?”

“No,” Richard said.

“You have meetings scheduled when the president is getting briefed by her cabinet?” Monroe said.

“I just found out about the briefing last night. I already had meetings on my calendar that couldn’t be rescheduled,” Richard said. “I was going to get face time in here then get back to my office in time for an 11 o’clock appointment.”

“You might as well just forget about your meetings. Would you like some coffee?”

Richard leaned back and glared at the FBI director then his shoulders lowered. “Yes.”

Monroe looked up at the camera and nodded then turned back to Richard.

“Before we begin,” Monroe paused. He wanted to be ready to receive the reaction but still was hesitant to tell a man his boyfriend had been killed. “William Whitlock was taken home by two agents and the assistant director. Sometime after they arrived at your residence--” he paused again.

“What?” Graham said.

“Richard,” Monroe said. “William is dead. He was killed in a shooting at your home.”

Graham stared at Monroe as if he was waiting for some warped punch line, to hear it wasn’t true. When he realized that wasn’t coming, he leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms across his chest and squeezed himself tightly, shaking his head.

“How?” was all Graham could get out.

“It appears to have been similar to the attacks on the Capitol, a coercion of one of our agents,” Monroe said. “We’re looking into it to find out exactly what went on there.”

The door opened and a guard carried in two cups of coffee in paper cups, set them on the table then left the room. Monroe let a few moments pass. He had learned from his time as a federal prosecutor that questioning people in the wake of learning about a lost loved one can be one of the most productive interrogations. Their guard is down, they are weakened. As bad as it felt to continue, he knew he had to.

“You founded Cunningham Construction,” Monroe said.

“That’s not a crime,” Richard said. He was answering on autopilot, his eyes drawn down to his coffee cup.

“In itself, no,” Monroe said. “Whitlock Development purchased Cunningham Construction years ago. William Whitlock’s family owned company.”

“Again, no crime,” Richard said. “It’s how we met. Sure, it was a bit of a hostile takeover of my company, but we were barely treading water. We’d bidded too low on several big contracts in order to get the business. Whitlock put up a lot of capital to keep us afloat.”

“Was this before your Senate run?” Monroe said.

“A few years,” Richard said. “Don’t know why I ever tried that.”

“Really? You didn’t want to be in politics?”

“Never had the drive to. I liked construction, owning my own company,” Richard said.

“Why’d you run then?” Monroe said.

“I don’t know. I think William put the idea in my head,” Richard said.

“Did he push you to run?” Monroe said.

“I wouldn’t say he pushed,” Richard said. “I don’t think. Maybe. He certainly seemed far more into it than I was. Probably why I lost. Nobody’s going to vote for the guy who acts like he doesn’t want to be there.”

“True,” Monroe said. “How was William when you lost?”

“He said we’d try again, and again if we had to,” Richard said. “I didn’t have the heart to tell him I didn’t want to. Plus it was the 90’s. Being an openly gay politician wasn’t quite accepted yet. Harvey Milk proved that in 1978 and things hadn’t changed. Not sure they have now, either.”

“But you aren’t out, are you?” Monroe said. “You still hide it from the public.”

Graham looked up at Monroe then turned and stared at the wall.

“No. I’m not,” Richard says. “And it kills me everyday. Parading around with women to put on an act.”

“Why do you do it?” Monroe said.

“Abrams. She told me she thought it was best that I kept it secret,” Richard said.

“Really?” Monroe said. “She’s pretty liberal.”

“Confused me, too,” Richard said. “But I was happy to get the posting. Things at Cunningham weren’t going well and my business partner Mason was always better at running the place than I was. It gave me an easy out.”

“So, speaking of Cunningham again,” Monroe said, “we’ve discussed the tie to the explosion.”

“I can’t believe it,” Richard said. “I won’t believe it until you show me solid proof.”

“We’re working on that, but so far it’s a working theory,” Monroe said. “And how about your phone being used to trigger the explosion. Any thoughts on that?”

“I told you before, no,” Richard says.

“You insist on your innocence. Do you think William could have been involved with the attack?” Monroe said.

Graham sat silently and ran his finger around the rim of his coffee cup.

“Richard?” Monroe said. “Do you think William could have been involved?”

“No. I really don’t,” Richard said. “I’ve known him for years, loved him for years. I don’t see any way he could have been.”

“Seems like you’re holding back,” Monroe said.

Graham slowly shook his head. “He’s gone and we’re talking about him like he isn’t. He joked once, maybe twice. He joked about making me president.”

“After you lost the election?” Monroe said.

“Yeah. Right after I took over transportation,” Richard said. “He made up a big story about how he could make me the first gay president.”

“Did he say how he’d do it?”

“He was joking around. It wasn’t real. We were just lying in bed and he was making up a story. He said he’d use his connections in DC to get me selected as designated survivor, then he’d--”

“What, Richard,” Monroe said.

“Then he’d blow the Capitol up,” Richard said. “It was a joke. It was a goddam joke,” he looked up at Monroe. “Wasn’t it?”

CHAPTER 52

Larry Ferguson sat at his desk in the trailer connected to the machinery building, a chocolate croissant on a napkin in front of him. His phone rang, pulling his attention from the pastry.

“Ferguson,” he answered then listened. “Don’t see any signs of malfunctions here,” he looked around the empty trailer, knowing the person on the other end of the phone had never stepped foot near the workingman’s area of the campus. “Oh, she’s in the building? Yeah. I’ll check it out.”

After hanging up he eyed the croissant then grudgingly covered it with a napkin and struggled to his feet. For 12 years he’d listened to his doctors warn him of diabetes and gout and never gave it a second thought after walking out of their offices. His right foot was now swollen and turning black starting from his big toe.

He pulled open the desk drawer to get the keys to the boiler building and couldn’t find them. He turned to the lockbox on the wall and keyed in the four-digit code, retrieved the master keys and left the trailer. A blast of wind hit him as the door opened. He used the master to open the machine-building door then saw his key ring on the floor and picked it up, swearing under his breath. It wasn’t the first time he’d lost them.

The stairs were a chore to work his 350-pound frame down. The last time he’d made the descent was when he’d taken the man interviewing for the maintenance position down. After resting at the bottom he worked his way over to Boiler #1 and looked at the gauges. His head cocked to the side and he tapped the glass cases surrounding the needles that told him the pressures and temperatures inside the boiler.

Everything was wrong. The output temperature was down by eight degrees and the incoming water was registering at zero pressure. The motor that drove the pump was sitting silent, the smell of burning oil and metal in the air. With five more boilers and automatic rollover, he wasn’t worried. It’s why they built the redundancy into the system. As long as the other systems were working he could get a repairman in and nobody would notice that the huge machine had failed.

At the second boiler he was relieved to see the temperatures and pressures correct on the gauges. As he walked back to the stairs he heard a grinding noise. He turned around to see smoke begin to swirl out of the metal casing surrounding the motor on Boiler #2.

“Shit.” He pulled his phone out and went through his contacts then dialed. “Yeah, hey, it’s Larry Ferguson over at Innovation Square.” The campus had a generic name to obscure the government agencies that operated within its fences. “I got one boiler down and a second on the way out.”

He jumped as a loud popping noise came from Boiler #4. “Make that two on the way out. I need everyone you got right now. We have, uh, some VIP’s here. Gotta get these things up and running fast,” he listened. “Yeah, I’ll alert the gate.”

After hanging up he dialed the number to the security office for the campus to inform them that repairmen would be coming.

The phone shoved into his pocket he moved down the row of huge machines. As he approached Boiler #5 the motor burned out, sparks flying out of the vents.

“Goddam, this is bad,” he turned to go to the stairs and stopped and looked up at the man standing in front of him. “What the f’ are you doin’ down here?”

Ormand Baasch looked down at the man’s bulging face with contempt, not at his size or sloth, but at the man inside. “You should really be nicer to your employees.”

“Wha?” Ferguson said. “How did you get in? my keys . . .. Did you steal my f’n keys?” His right hand fumbled into his pants pocket and tried to grip his cellphone. “You’ve made a huge mistake, asshole.”

As the man pulled the phone out of his pocket Baasch slapped it out of his hand and it slid across the cement floor, the glass face of the touchscreen shattering.

“Jesus H . . . What do you think you’re doin’?” Ferguson said. “I don’t wanna do this, but you leave me no choice.”

Ferguson thrust his right arm out, his hand in a fist, aimed for the German man’s chest. Baasch took a slight step to the right and let the punch catch only air.

“My turn,” Baasch said.

Ferguson raised his face to see Baasch’s eyes. The powerful strike hit him square in the throat, cracking the hyoid bone and crushing his trachea. He immediately began to struggle for air, his windpipe reduced to a quarter of its normal size.

Baasch watched the man fighting to catch his breath, knowing it was a losing battle. He’d pass out first from a reduced flow of oxygen to the brain and would likely fall to the ground and further compress the area, fully blocking the airway. As the large man began to take a step forward, Baasch backed up and watched him fall to his knees, the sound of his left patella cracking on impact to the cement floor under the huge weight, a strained and gurgling scream of pain lost in the gasping. Baasch grinned.