Masked Prey Read online

  “All right, but, Lucas—no midnight meetings with Old John down in Whiskey Holler. Talk to me.”

  “I will. I gotta have somebody calling me, because right now, I’m fresh out of things to do.”

  * * *

  —

  SOMEBODY CALLED AT NINE O’CLOCK the next morning, about the time Lucas was thinking of getting out of bed. A man’s voice: “I’m a member of the ANM. I understand you would like to talk with one of us. I won’t talk on the telephone because of your surveillance techniques. In fact, I’m about to throw this phone into a trash basket. If you do want to talk, walk out under the front canopy of your hotel at exactly ten o’clock, turn right toward the Washington Monument, and start walking. Don’t cross Virginia, stay on the Watergate side of the street. You might have to walk quite a way, so wear good shoes. We checked the internet and we know what you look like. Come alone. If you’re not alone, we won’t talk. If you don’t like these terms, don’t come.”

  Click.

  That was clear enough, Lucas thought.

  He got cleaned up, decided on jeans, a golf shirt, and a sport coat, with trail-runners, along with his Walther PPQ. He thought about calling Jane Chase. FBI surveillance teams were good, but the caller warned him about a long walk and the only reason for that would be counter-surveillance. There was a lot of security on a weekday in downtown DC, so he wasn’t concerned about being shot or kidnapped.

  Still: Ten minutes before he left the room, he sat down and wrote a note to Jane Chase, explaining what he was doing and about the ANM contact. He sealed the note in an envelope with her name on it and left it on the hotel room desk. If he got shot or disappeared, she’d find it soon enough.

  At ten o’clock, he walked out from under the canopy into the bright sunlight, took a right, and started walking toward the Washington Monument.

  And he walked. And walked. He didn’t try to hurry, but ambled along, for twenty-five minutes, when he could see what appeared to be the end of the street. The Washington Monument was obscured by overhanging trees, but when he could see it, he knew it wasn’t far away, and there was a sprawling park around it. That’s where he’d be picked up, he decided.

  He crossed the last small street before he’d come to a much larger one, and started past the small triangular green space on the other side. He passed a bronze statue where a man stood reading the legend beneath it, and as he passed, the man turned and said, “Marshal Davenport.”

  Lucas looked back.

  The man was as tall as Lucas, thin, but not hungry-looking, maybe a runner, perhaps thirty-five years old; brown hair sprinkled with white, conservatively cut. He had a tanned oval face, brown eyes, narrow nose and lips. He had an ex-military or ex-LEO feel. He was dressed almost as Lucas was, running shoes and jeans, but with a black T-shirt under the sport coat, instead of a golf shirt.

  “You’re my guy?” Lucas asked.

  “Yes. I am,” the man said. “If you arrest me, I won’t resist, but I won’t say a word except ‘lawyer’ and by-and-by, you’ll be in desperate legal trouble for arresting me, since you have no cause. You also won’t get any help from us. Agreed?”

  “I’m not here to arrest you or even hassle you,” Lucas said. “I followed your instructions. You aren’t Old John, I take it?”

  “No, I’m not. We were fairly sure you would follow the instructions, but not positive,” the man said, mildly enough. “You are being followed, though. Doesn’t look like federal people, to us.”

  “Blue RAV4?”

  “He was in a blue RAV4, but he ditched it after a while—found a lucky parking place—and now he’s on foot,” the man said. “He’s on Virginia, a block or two behind us.”

  “Goddamnit. I’d really like to know who it is,” Lucas said. “He was back there yesterday. I think he’s trying to figure out who I’m meeting.”

  “We’ve taken a couple of pictures of him. We’ll send them to your phone. An email address would be useful, too.”

  Lucas took out his ID case, extracted a business card with his official email address, and handed it across. The man dropped it in his jacket pocket.

  Lucas: “Now . . . I wanted to talk to you because Charlie Lang thinks you’re a large well-organized group with good contacts among the alt-right. We need to track down this 1919 group as quickly as we can. If a kid gets hit, the FBI will tear up everybody in sight and that includes you. We need you to put out feelers to all your cells: anything will help.”

  “I don’t think we have that many people in the District, or around it,” the man said. “I’ll talk to my friends and see what they want to do. See what they can do. We’ll get back to you by telephone, the number we called this morning.”

  “You don’t know how many members you have? What’s your position with the ANM?” Lucas asked.

  The man smiled. “I’m a trusted member. We don’t have officers, as such. Even Old John is more of a coordinator than an officer—he can’t order people around, because, well, that’s the kind of thing we’re against.”

  “You can’t really promise me anything? Make any commitments?”

  “No. I’ll get in touch with Old John if I can and he’ll trickle the information around, and maybe something will trickle back up. That’s all I can tell you.”

  “You know, from the outside, you sound like this 1919 group,” Lucas said. “They don’t identify themselves, they don’t ask for anything specific, they apparently are trying to recruit people they don’t know and who don’t know them . . . and from the looks of the website, they’re fond of guns and we know you guys are.”

  The guy rolled up his hands in a “what can I say?” gesture. “They want to shoot kids, they’re nuts. Our basic philosophy is that the country is going to hell in a handbasket. We don’t want to overthrow it, we just want to survive the coming catastrophe. We want to help create a sustainable form of social organization, where people re-learn how to take care of themselves.”

  “I saw that in your papers,” Lucas said. “On the other hand, there’ve been some shootings . . . like in Michigan and Ohio and Pennsylvania, that some alt-right people think you were involved in. If you’re willing to pull a trigger, then . . . where are you going to stop?”

  “I don’t know anything about that,” the man said.

  “If you can’t give me any information or commit to anything, then . . . why are we talking? And why you?”

  “We’re talking because apparently the PR lady wasn’t enough for you, you wanted to go face-to-face with a member. Here I am. We also wanted to get a look at you—we’ve got some pictures now. From what we’ve read on the internet, you’ve been involved in some killings yourself.”

  “As a cop.”

  “Some people would say as a tool of the deep state. I don’t necessarily say that, since I’ve had some . . . relationships . . . with the deep state myself. But, some people would say that—about you. You work for people who pull the levers, but don’t come out in the open to do it.”

  “And you’re here . . . why? You personally?”

  “I was chosen to make contact because my particular friends, my group, is here in the District, and includes people with operational intelligence backgrounds with the U.S. government. They could spot somebody tracking you. I specifically was chosen to meet you because I’m very fast and can run like hell, if necessary.”

  He smiled at that, as a phone buzzed in his pocket. He answered, listened for a moment, then clicked off and said, “The guy who’s following you is trying to sneak up on us. He’s about a half block down Virginia. I’d rather he not see my face.”

  Lucas looked down the street and the man said, “I gotta go.”

  He waved a hand and a car crossed the street and pulled up next to them, a blue LED “Uber” sign in the window. He nodded at Lucas and said, “We’ll call, one way or the other,” and climbed into the Uber. Th
e car pulled into a stream of traffic and was gone.

  It had been, Lucas thought, as he looked after the Uber, well done. He’d hoped to get some hint of where the man was from, or where he was going, or who he might work with, or, with any luck, something with a bit of DNA on it. He’d gotten only a sliver of that: the guy might be a government employee, somebody with intelligence contacts, he was a sprinter, and Lucas had a good description. Maybe the FBI could work with that, and maybe not.

  A teenaged couple were walking past. Stoners, Lucas thought. The boy looked at the bronze statue, then at Lucas, and asked, “Who the fuck was General José Artigas?” He pronounced the general’s first name as “Josie.”

  Lucas shook his head. “Who the fuck knows?”

  * * *

  —

  HE WAS LOOKING FOR A CAB—he was apparently one of the few people on earth who didn’t have the Uber app—when his phone dinged with an incoming message. He checked it, and found himself looking at a photo of Lang’s assistant, Stephen Gibson, walking away from a blue RAV4. A second photo showed the RAV4’s back license plate, still with a smear of mud, but he could make out the tag numbers. Probably a rental, he thought.

  It also told him more about the ANM. They could call for help from people who could do effective surveillance, and not be seen, even when taking photos of someone who was, or should have been, wary.

  Lucas waved at a taxi. The driver waved back and sped on.

  * * *

  —

  HE WOUND UP WALKING BACK to the Watergate and called Jane Chase on the way, to tell her about the meeting. “Damnit, Lucas . . .”

  “I didn’t want to scare the guy away. When he was telling me the conditions for the meeting, I figured he’d spot you. Anyway, I’m good, and I know Gibson is following me, but I’m not exactly sure why. I’ll call Lang and ask him.”

  “Tell me more about the guy you met. The ANM guy. If we have enough detail, we might be able to put a finger on him.”

  Lucas gave her what he knew: the man had been an inch over six feet, a few pounds either side of one-eighty, blue eyes, brown hair with a touch of white, athletic, a runner, maybe ex-military or a cop, possible connections in the intelligence community, well-spoken, likely a college grad.

  “That gives us a chance,” Chase said. “Why don’t you come around later in the day . . . two o’clock . . . I’ll have my assistant put together a video show.”

  “All right, I’ll see you then. Did the media coverage kick out anything?”

  “Not so far. The media doesn’t seem to have reporters anymore, they just have commentators. What we’re seeing is mostly hot air. Our guys who work the alt-right say there’s some talk about the 1919 site, and apparently it was mirrored on a couple of alt-right websites before it got taken down, so the web page is still out there.”

  * * *

  —

  WHEN LUCAS AND CHASE were finished talking, he called Charles Lang, and asked, “Why is Gibson following me? I assume you assigned him to do it.”

  Lang tried bluster: “Stephen isn’t following you. That’s ridiculous. What makes you think . . .”

  “I’ve got a photograph of him, Charles. Standing right next to the RAV4. I suspect that’s a rental car, right? In case I spotted it?”

  Silence. Then, “We wanted to see who you spoke to. We are a research team and you wouldn’t commit to keeping us informed.”

  “Well, tell him to fuck off. If I see him around anymore, I’ll find a way to put him in jail. Interfering with a government investigation or something. Maybe you could go with him. It’d be a new cultural experience for you.”

  “I’ll pull him back. I apologize, but I find this whole episode rather fascinating and I couldn’t help myself.”

  “Well, help yourself. Make him go away.”

  * * *

  —

  BACK AT THE WATERGATE at eleven o’clock, Lucas decided he didn’t want to read any more of the FBI files, which left him nothing to do, except go shopping. He got the Cadillac and drove over to N Street, to Figueroa & Prince, a custom tailor shop where he’d spent a few thousand dollars on previous trips.

  His sales clerk was named Ted, who brightened when he saw Lucas coming through the door. “Lucas! I was thinking of you only yesterday. You won’t believe what we got in from Italy. It’s the finest piece of wool I’ve seen this year and just right for Saint Paul in the winter.”

  Lucas spent two hours in the shop—it was a fine piece of wool, an absolutely perfect shade of blue to chime with his eyes—and after picking out three neckties and three shirts that would go with it, he was in the back of the store, being measured by Jim the Tailor, who said, “For you, we’ll have it in three weeks. Your measurements have changed, though. You’ve lost weight. Will you get it back or are you slimming down?”

  “I’ll get it back: best go with the old measurements.”

  “So it wasn’t a diet?”

  “No, I got shot last spring.”

  “See, don’t do that . . .”

  * * *

  —

  ANOTHER TAILOR CAME THROUGH, nodded at Lucas, and asked, “You on a case?”

  “Yeah, I’m trying to chase down some right-wingers. No big deal.”

  “That 1919 thing? The SS?”

  Lucas nodded. “That’s the one. You saw it on TV?”

  “Yeah, the girl is on CNN. She’s a cutie.”

  Lucas: “What girl?”

  “You know, the high school kid who uncovered the whole thing. She’s on right now.”

  “Oh, boy.” Lucas stepped off the box he was standing on, and asked, “Where’s your TV?”

  “Back in the fabric room.”

  Lucas followed the tailors back, where a small television sat on a shelf among bolts of fabric. A card table and four metal folding chairs were crowded into an aisle between racks of cloth, apparently used for lunch breaks. On the TV, Audrey Coil was shown comfortably ensconced in a guest chair on the CNN news set, while the talking head was saying, “It takes a brave girl . . .”

  Lucas stopped listening and called Chase. “Are you watching CNN?”

  “Oh, no. Somebody got shot?”

  “Not yet. I may go over and shoot Audrey Coil as soon as she gets off the set. She’s up there now, spilling her guts.”

  “Oh . . .”

  “Go ahead and say it,” Lucas said.

  “That little bitch, I’ll wring her neck.”

  CHAPTER

  SEVEN

  Chase’s assistant, a young man named Donald, met Lucas in the Hoover Building at two o’clock and took him to a conference room that had a seventy-plus-inch television screen hung from one wall. The screen was connected to a chunky black laptop computer.

  “Ms. Chase is trying to get on top of the Audrey Coil situation,” Donald said. He was a pale man with reddish hair, dressed in a blue suit, white shirt, and burgundy necktie, the suit precisely the wrong shade of blue; altogether, his outfit had the grace you’d expect from a one-man band in a vaudeville show. Lucas decided he would have a personal conversation with Donald before he left. “I don’t know what’s happening there. Based on what you gave us, I doubt we’ll find your man from the ANM, because there are so many possibilities, but we can try. A runner, possibly a competitive runner at some point, white, thin, tall, perhaps a current or former government worker, possibly ex-military who may have expressed political sentiments and has contacts in the intelligence community. We included your height and weight estimates with hair and eye color.”

  “That’s about all I got,” Lucas said.

  Donald plugged a thumb drive into the computer, handed Lucas a remote control, and said, “What will happen now is that you can click between pages. There are forty headshots per page, and almost two hundred pages. That’s eight thousand headshots. You will get through them surpris
ingly quickly . . . a few seconds per page, most of the time. Probably less than an hour to get through all of them, if you don’t spot him. If you see a possible, note down the number on the headshot and the page.”

  He handed Lucas a legal pad and a pen.

  One of the chairs was a worn leather recliner and Lucas took it. Donald brought the computer up, opened the thumb drive, and Lucas clicked the first page. The photos came in ranks of eight, five ranks per page. He could scan a page and reject it with barely a blink. Donald said, after a moment, “If you find something, you have my number. Call when you’re finished.”

  * * *

  —

  LUCAS FOUND HIS MAN, David Thomas Aline, on the twelfth page. He scrambled to the door, which had barely closed, and caught Donald before he turned a corner in the hall: “Hey! I got him.”

  “You’re joking,” Donald called back.

  “No. I got him.”

  Donald came back, took down Aline’s name and an index number, and said, “I can’t believe it worked.”

  “Neither can I. I spent a good part of my life looking at mug shots and hardly ever found anyone. Let’s look the guy up.” Lucas paused, and then said, “Donald. About your suit . . .”

  * * *

  —

  DAVID THOMAS ALINE WAS EX-ARMY, a former captain who’d served for six years after graduation from West Point. He’d been a middle-distance runner at West Point and had spent four of his six years in the Army as a logistics officer at an air base in Kuwait. When he left the Army, he’d joined Bechtel Corp. as a logistics manager.

  “Odd job for somebody who doesn’t like the government,” Donald said. “Bechtel’s a major government contractor.”

  They were sitting in Chase’s office, paging through a computer printout of everything the FBI had on Aline.

  Lucas said “Mmm,” because he hadn’t thought about it.