for the last two weeks, waiting to see if any out-of-the-ordinary deliveries were made. None of them had expected Griffin to walk into the midst of their surveillance, and of course now they had to wonder if he knew what they were waiting for, and perhaps had come looking for it himself. This long, they had to wonder if it was going to arrive at all, but where else would the girl have sent it?
“You’re sure that’s Griffin?” he asked Benito once again. After all, Benito was several houses away on a rooftop.
“Positive. He went in almost ten minutes ago, and hasn’t come out yet. Maybe you should call the boss.”
The last thing Leonardo wanted to do was call his cousin and give the impression that he couldn’t handle this on his own. Adami did not like weak links. Instead, Leonardo thought about the other reasons why Griffin might be there. “They must have her identified. He’s come to make the death notification.”
“Now what?” Benito asked.
“You’re sure Griffin’s alone?”
“Positive.”
“Let us know the moment he leaves,” Leonardo said into the phone. “We’re going to follow him. When he stops, we’ll take care of him there. If we’re lucky, he’ll lead us to his safe house. Adami will no doubt be extra grateful if we eliminate Griffin as well as those bastards he is working with.”
Washington, D.C.
Carillo waited until he saw the congressman leave the building, then walk toward a waiting car, before he approached. While he was here in D.C. on a legitimate case that Doc Schermer had dug up for him, his contact with the congressman was unofficial, and he needed to step lightly.
“Congressman Burnett?”
The man looked up, appearing mildly annoyed at being stopped. “Yes?”
Carillo held up his credentials. “Special Agent Carillo, FBI. You have a few moments?”
“I’m in a—What is this about?”
“Alessandra Harden.”
The congressman took a deep breath, this time looking more than annoyed. “I’ve answered these questions ad nauseam. Someone is trying to discredit me. There was no affair, for God’s sake, and I didn’t divulge anything about the committee. Isn’t it time you let this thing go?”
He started to walk away, and Carillo decided a different tack was needed. Maybe a subject not quite so threatening as an affair with a girl now dead, and he thought about what Sydney had told him on her most recent call, thinking this kid might have contacted the congressman. That, she thought, might give them a clue as to why Alessandra was murdered.
“Actually, I’m interested in learning about a student in a class that she was in. A friend of hers who is missing,” he said.
“Fine,” the congressman said. “You don’t mind if we talk in the car? I’d rather my business not be overheard so I can read about it in the paper the next morning.”
Carillo glanced into the interior of the Town Car, saw the driver, and no one else. “Not a problem.”
The congressman got into the backseat, and Carillo followed, closing the door, shutting out the noise from the street beyond.
“Where to, sir?” the driver asked.
“I need a cup of coffee.”
The driver nodded, and the moment the car took off, the congressman leaned back in his seat, closing his eyes. He looked haggard, his brown hair flecked with gray, his skin covered with fine lines around his eyes and mouth. This was not the man who’d graced the posters at election time, the doctored pictures that took ten years off his face. This was the man worried about scandal and career-ruining photos plastered all over the nation’s newspapers.
“Did you ever speak to a student named Xavier Caldwell?”
“I believe that was his name. This kid was a nutcase. He said he was a friend of Alessandra’s, and that’s the only reason I agreed to talk to him. He tried to say that the photo of she and I, that the government leaked it to discredit me. A government conspiracy.”
“Any truth to that?”
“No doubt in my mind that it was done on purpose, and to discredit me. But I think he’s out there if he thinks my own government did it as part of a national conspiracy. Especially when he added that it was all due to the government’s involvement in Propaganda Due.”
“Which would be what?”
“You may have heard of it under the name P2. A Freemason lodge in Italy, shut down in the eighties, after it nearly toppled the Italian government and crippled the Vatican bank. He said he had proof that they were active again, this time