Three Weeks in Washington, page 39
part #3 of Titus Ray Series
Khouri nodded and gestured at me. “I’m sure you’ll enjoy seeing it as well. My new equipment is all state-of-the-art.”
“Do you mind if I finish looking at these photographs first?”
“Of course not,” he said. “The studio’s right down this hallway. Come join us when you’re ready.”
I waited until the two men had disappeared around the corner, and then I immediately slipped out the front door and headed down toward the barn.
I figured it would take me two minutes to get down there, two minutes to locate the Eagle Eye, and two minutes to get back to the studio before I was missed.
Those calculations were correct.
Unfortunately, I didn’t take into account the locked door.
* * * *
Earlier, when I’d used the zoom feature on the Nikon to take a look at the barn, it had been impossible to see the details on the exterior doors.
Although I’d noticed they were sliding doors, typical of a horse barn, I wasn’t able to see the locking mechanism located just above the door handles.
Now, that lock was staring me in the face.
A key was required to open it, but thankfully, it was a simple cylinder, so I began searching the area for something I could use to pick the lock.
According to my internal clock, I’d been away from Khouri’s showroom for less than three minutes.
As I was about to give up any hope of finding anything, I happened to notice the camera strap around my neck. It had a thin strip of metal at the very end of it, close to the point where the camera was attached to the strap.
I immediately removed it and went to work on the lock.
A minute later, I was able to slide the barn doors open.
I’m not sure what I was expecting.
I knew there weren’t any horses on the property, so it wasn’t as if I were anticipating a barn full of hay and horse tack.
Still, because of the barn’s age, I was at least expecting an onslaught of musty odors, perhaps the sight of bats hanging from the rafters.
Instead, the barn was pristine, with only a slight whiff of stale air, and, in lieu of bats, there was an unmanned aerial vehicle, a Bell Eagle Eye Model 918, parked in front of me.
The drone was painted white with red markings on the nose, wings, and tail, and it looked exactly like the photograph Katherine had sent me.
The shaft of light from the barn door illuminated the aircraft and bathed the wings in bright sunlight. The wings themselves were in their vertical position, looking very much like a couple of soldiers standing at attention.
I put the Nikon on continuous burst mode and walked around the UAV. As a way of documenting the drone’s location, I also included the interior of the barn in some of my shots.
At least seven minutes had passed since I’d slipped out of the studio, and although I knew I should leave immediately, I couldn’t do so until I took a look at one last thing—namely, the vehicle parked behind the Eagle Eye.
I thought I knew what I’d find inside, and I wasn’t far off the mark.
* * * *
It was a cargo van, similar to the Aramex van Pike and I had occupied in Damascus when we were monitoring Naballah’s compound.
I opened the back door and climbed inside.
Katherine had told me the control system for the Eagle Eye was a command module attached to a computer, which sounded simple enough, but the setup inside the van looked a little more complicated than that. In fact, there were two computers and some additional equipment I couldn’t identify.
Next to the second computer, I found a set of instructions. They were written in Arabic, and although I didn’t have time to give them more than a cursory glance, I immediately recognized the second computer wasn’t there to control the aircraft. Its purpose was to monitor the CCTV cameras around Washington.
Presumably, as Walid Khouri was flying the Eagle Eye over the nation’s capital, bombarding the population with chemical weapons, he’d be observing his handiwork in real time on the second computer.
Since the control system for the drone was set up inside the cargo van, I had to believe he had plans to park the vehicle at a location far outside the kill zone on 7/11.
Even though I’d been away from the studio way past my self-imposed time limit, I took out my Agency phone and snapped a couple of photographs of the Eagle Eye as it stood alongside the cargo van.
I sent the pictures, along with a short message, to Carlton’s phone.
My text said, “Found them.”
After sending it, I suddenly realized it was the same message Mitchell had sent the Ops Center about the missing shipping containers—the last words anyone had heard from him.
On that ominous note, I quickly closed the barn doors and made my way back up to the studio.
* * * *
I half-expected Khouri and Benson to be waiting for me in the reception area. When they weren’t, I breathed a sigh of relief and proceeded down the hallway to take a look at Khouri’s studio.
While I knew I’d have to show at least a cursory interest in the new photography equipment, I was determined to let Benson know I’d found enough evidence for the feds to get a search warrant for Khouri’s property, and it was time for Donovan Bartlett and Douglas Carlton to leave the grounds.
When I opened the door to the main portion of Khouri’s studio, where his photography equipment was located, I was surprised to find the place empty.
At that point, I began to get a little uneasy.
I told myself it might be the stark white walls and the dead silence of the place that was making me uncomfortable. But then I noticed something out of place; something sitting on top of a white plastic cube.
I walked over and picked it up. It was an ID badge, Donovan Bartlett’s press badge, the one with my picture on it.
I wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, but I knew it couldn’t be good.
I took out my Glock and reentered the hallway.
* * * *
The first room on the left was a feminine-looking dressing area, with two large makeup mirrors and some curtained changing rooms.
It was empty.
A similar room for men, in a much different décor, was across the hall.
It was also empty.
When I arrived at the last room at the end of the corridor, there was a sign on the door which read Walid Khouri, Photographer.
That room was not empty.
Although the door was shut, I could hear two people talking inside, and I quickly identified the voices as belonging to Benson and Khouri.
As I stood there listening to what Khouri was saying, I tried to envision where the two men were located in the room. I wanted to pinpoint specifically their position relative to each other and to the door.
Once I’d established that, I burst through the door, pivoted to my right, and aimed the pistol at Khouri, who was standing in front of a desk with a gun in his hand.
He was pointing it at Benson, who was seated in front of him.
The moment he saw me, he fired the pistol directly at Benson, and then he quickly turned and aimed the gun at me.
At that point, I shot him.
His left hand immediately clutched the center of his chest, and he fell to the floor.
He didn’t move after that.
I rushed over to Benson, who was slumped over the chair.
“Where have you been?” he asked, holding onto his shoulder.
“How bad is it?”
“I’ll live. He’s a lousy shot.”
“Either that or I startled him.” I looked at the hole in Benson’s shoulder. “You know he ruined your new shirt.”
“At least I’m alive. He said he was going to kill me.”
“Yeah, I heard that part.”
After I ripped Khouri’s shirt off his dead body and used it to apply pressure to Benson’s wound, he called his division head at the FBI. Once he hung up, he said the feds were on their way, and they were sending an ambulance.
“Please tell me you found something inside the barn,” Benson said, looking down at the blood-soaked shirt. “That way I won’t feel so foolish.”
After giving him the details of finding the Eagle Eye, I said, “Now, it’s your turn. What happened after you left me in the showroom?”
* * * *
Benson said once Khouri had finished showing him the studio, he suggested they go over the background questions for Pike’s interview.
“I was just trying to give you as much time as possible,” Benson said, “but as soon as I brought up the interview, he asked me why I was pretending to be a journalist.”
“He was on to us from the very beginning, wasn’t he? I saw him staring at you when we were introducing ourselves.”
Benson nodded. “Yeah, according to him he was.”
“What did you say?”
“I held up my press badge, which wasn’t very smart I guess, because he immediately grabbed it and made a big deal about it being your picture on the ID.”
Benson paused and appeared to lose his train of thought. His color wasn’t that good, and I thought he might be going into shock.
“Save your strength. I’ll hear the rest of the story later.”
“No, I can finish it. There’s not that much left to tell.”
He laid his head back against the chair cushion. “Before I knew what was happening, Khouri threw the badge back at me and pulled a gun on me. After that, he demanded I give him my weapon. When I asked him why he thought I was carrying a gun, he told me a newscaster had identified me as an FBI agent when they were doing live broadcasts of the Navy Yard shooting.”
“Of course,” I said. “I should have thought of that earlier. Khouri must have watched those videos numerous times. You were front and center on several of the news channels.”
“Don’t blame yourself. I didn’t think of it either, and I’m twice the detail person you are.”
“I can’t argue with you about that.”
“He demanded to know what we were doing on his property. At that point, I decided it didn’t matter if I told him the truth, and frankly, I wanted to see how he’d respond. When I told him the FBI had evidence connecting him to the Navy Yard shooter, he seemed genuinely surprised at this information.”
I glanced down at Khouri’s body. “I’m sure he thought of himself as invincible.”
“He didn’t believe me about the evidence. He said if we had proof he was involved, we would have arrived at the property with an arrest warrant. He seemed convinced the two of us had gone rogue and hadn’t told our superiors what we were doing. I denied it, of course, but I could tell he didn’t believe me.”
Benson grimaced, and I figured his body had started sending out some pretty heavy-duty pain signals by now.
“He kept waiting around for you to show up, and when you didn’t, I think he got a little spooked. When he said he was taking me to his office, I decided to leave the ID badge on the cube, hoping it might give you a heads up something had gone wrong.”
“That’s exactly what happened, Frank. I’m glad to see you’ve gotten a little more creative in your old age.”
When Benson didn’t respond to my comment, I knew he didn’t have much fight left in him.
“Once we got in here, he shoved me in this chair and said he planned to shoot me whenever you showed up.”
“I heard that part. I was standing outside the door by that time.”
“I would say your timing was perfect, but—”
“Yeah, I know. You got shot.”
When the ambulance arrived, I stepped out in the hallway and called Carlton.
“There’s a situation. The DDO may want to get involved.”
Chapter 52
Tuesday, July 7
Stormy wouldn’t leave my side. Last night, he’d been the first to greet me when I’d pulled in the driveway at The Meadows, and, when I’d left him to go inside, he’d remained at the front door, barking incessantly.
Despite Arkady’s protests, I’d allowed him to come inside the house. Once Millie had gone up to bed, I’d even smuggled him upstairs and let him sleep with me.
Now, while I was sitting out on the patio enjoying a mug of Millie’s delicious coffee, he was at my side watching Frisco chase a squirrel up a tree.
Stormy didn’t seem the least bit interested in participating in the squirrel’s antics, and I asked him, “What’s going on, boy? You’re not sick, are you?”
At the sound of my voice, he immediately looked up at me, tilting his head to one side as if he were considering how he should answer that question.
“Don’t worry about Stormy,” Arkady said, coming out the back door. “He’s just fine.”
Arkady sat down beside me and opened up a newspaper. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“You don’t look so good. I thought you looked pretty bad last night, but this morning, you don’t look much better. That’s the reason Stormy won’t leave you alone. Dogs can sense those things, you know.”
“It’s been a rough few days, and the week’s not over yet. That’s about all I can say.”
“Sure, I get it,” he said, glancing down at his newspaper. “Hey, did you hear about this guy getting shot last night? It’s all over the news this morning.”
Before he turned the paper around and showed me the guy’s picture, I thought for sure the Bureau had violated their agreement with the DDO and released the story of Walid Khouri’s demise.
However, the headlines were about a rock star who’d been shot by a demented fan. “Sorry. Never heard of him.”
“Not your generation, I guess.”
His comment made me think of Benson, and I debated whether or not I should call the hospital and check up on him. I knew he had made it out of surgery because Carlton had texted me around midnight to tell me the doctors had removed the bullet, and he was expected to make a full recovery.
Carlton seldom texted me.
I’d never asked him why, but I suspected it had something to do with the way he communicated a message.
His verbal messages always involved tone. Tone was very big with Carlton, and it had taken me years to understand that. If I didn’t get the tone right in his message, things could go very wrong.
Since Carlton had texted me about Benson, I had to believe he knew he’d portrayed his tone sufficiently when he’d viewed Walid Khouri’s dead body.
Carlton had arrived at Khouri’s studio after the ambulance had taken Benson to the hospital.
He’d brought along a couple of suits from the seventh floor, who were there to represent the DDO in negotiations with the FBI.
Once everyone had heard my explanation and examined Khouri’s body, they’d gone down the hallway to his studio and hammered out an agreement with the feds to keep Khouri’s death out of the media—at least until after Franco Cabello had texted Marwan and the feds had been able to secure the chemical weapons.
The story they’d agreed to feed the press as to why an ambulance had been called to Walid Khouri’s property was that a construction worker had been injured on the job.
After their confab was over, I took the whole crew down to the barn to show them the Eagle Eye. The feds seemed particularly upset with me after I told them my fingerprints would be all over the cargo van, but Carlton didn’t say a word.
When the two of us were walking back up to the studio together, Carlton had turned to me and asked, “The description you gave about Khouri’s death, would that be an accurate one? Was he about to shoot you? Were you the person who shot him?”
I stopped and stared at him. “Yes, that’s exactly what happened.”
He nodded. “That’s what I thought, but I just wanted to make sure.”
I hung my head for a second, but then I looked him straight in the eye. “Look, Douglas. I know why you felt compelled to ask me that, but I assure you, what happened in Caracas will never happen again.”
He surprised me by placing his hand on my shoulder. “I know that, Titus, and, for what it’s worth, the death of Ahmed Al-Amin was a good thing, no matter who pulled the trigger.”
When we arrived back at the studio, I told him I was headed over to the hospital to check up on Benson.
“No, you should go out to The Meadows and get some sleep. Frank knows you saved his life, and I’m quite certain he’ll never forget it.”
“Knowing Frank as I do, that might not be such a good thing.”
“Personally, I think the fact you’ve finally forgiven him for what happened in Yemen is a good thing.”
Was that true? Had I finally forgiven him?
I guess I had.
* * * *
Arkady and I were in the middle of a discussion about a couple of Russian jets buzzing a U.S. Navy ship, when my cell phone began vibrating.
The phone number on the screen wasn’t one I recognized, but since Carlton had told me someone from the Bureau would be contacting me for an official statement of Khouri’s death, I took the call.
“Titus, it’s Elijah Mitchell. Is this a bad time?”
“Ah ... no. I suppose it’s just as good a time as any.”
Arkady must have realized I needed some privacy—the look on my face probably gave me away—and he picked up his newspaper and walked down the grassy slope towards the pool. Meanwhile, Stormy remained beside me.
“I’ll get right to the point,” the Senator said. “I’ve had my assistant put you on my schedule for today. Come by my office in the Senate Building at one o’clock.”
“I can’t think of any reason I’d need to come by your office. We have nothing left to discuss.”
“We have plenty to discuss.”
“Is this about my nephew? Brian told me you had hired him for the summer. If it—”
“It’s not about Brian. It’s about my son.”
“What about Ben?”
“We’ll discuss it when I see you at one o’clock. Don’t be late.”
On that arrogant note, he ended the call.
