Call It Treason (The Adam Drake series Book 4) Read online

  Mohamed did a quick search on Google and found Prescott’s home address. With the help of Google Earth, he was able to study the neighborhood in Arlington where Prescott lived to plan his route in and out of the exclusive area. Roving security patrols were to be expected, but he would be driving his other town car, an emerald green Range Rover registered under a false name. He met Prescott on several occasions and didn’t expect to be turned away at the door.

  The only serious problem he faced was making sure he didn’t leave any trace that could identify him. What he planned for John Prescott had to appear to have been caused by Prescott’s own hand.

  When the spreadsheet finished downloading to an encrypted Ironkey drive, Mohamed told his secretary he was leaving for the day and drove to the one bedroom apartment he’d purchased at the Watergate West for his visits to America. Aside from the wonderful waterfront view, it allowed him to meet and mingle with people who held important positions in the city.

  It was dusk by the time Mohamed reached his apartment and poured himself a glass of chilled white Bordeaux to go with the goat cheese and fig appetizers on flat bread he’d stopped to buy at the deli in the complex. Layla would want to prepare something for him later that night when he went to her condo, but for now he needed a light snack before the work of the night.

  He walked to the window and stared at the river below while he savored the appetizers and cold, crisp wine. He had no reservations about killing Prescott. It was necessary, and something he had done many times. But he did regret the need to kill his cousin. If the attorney had been killed as planned the night before, it wouldn’t have been necessary. Before he returned to London, he would have to visit his cousin’s parents to pay his respects.

  He would also find a way to make sure the attorney would pay for his family’s loss. The Law of Retaliation allowed a “life for a life” and he would willingly make sure the debt was paid.

  When Mohamed finished eating, he went to his bedroom and took a black ballistic nylon duffel bag down from the top shelf in his closet. From it, he took out a Ruger 22/45 Lite with a SWR Warlock suppressor and loaded a magazine with ten rounds of .22 LR ammunition. Next, he selected two pair of surgical gloves from a box and a small Ziploc bag he’d filled with bleach germicidal wipes. He put those items in a gallon Ziploc bag for cleaning up any mess that he made.

  Mohamed put the tools for the night in a slim black carbon fiber attaché, gathered his wool topcoat, and prepared to leave. With a last look around, he turned off the lights and headed out.

  It took ten minutes to walk to a nearby parking garage where he kept the three-year-old Range Rover. He rented the parking space by the month when he was in Washington, D.C., and the rest of the year kept it in a leased garage. Each time he used the vehicle, it carried a different license plate from his stolen license collection. Unless he was stopped, the car was virtually impossible to trace back to him.

  Giving the Rover a minute to warm up, Mohamed entered Prescott’s address in the GPS/NAV system and set off to Arlington, the wealthiest county in America. As he drove over the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Bridge, he thought of the old Rough Rider and his favorite saying; “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” He hoped that the public outrage over the jetliners shot down would give the current president the courage to do the right thing when he learned that Iran was responsible. If the appeasement foreign policy the man followed since his election was America’s response, his plan would be a miserable failure.

  Mohamed followed the GPS directions and drove past Prescott’s house. He saw there were no cars in the driveway as he continued past for another two blocks, then pulled into a driveway and retraced his route. Several cars were parked on the street in front of an adjacent massive red brick home and he slowed to a stop behind the last car.

  Directly across the street was Prescott’s slightly smaller classic Colonial style home. Mohamed sat quietly and looked for signs of a security system. Two small bullet security cameras peaked out from under the roof of the covered front porch, one beside each of the white pillars on either side.

  He took his black wool fedora from atop his attaché on the seat beside him and adjusted it down low over his eyes. From the center console, he chose his black leather driving gloves. Before he stepped out, he opened the attaché and slipped the pistol in a left-side under shoulder holster and stuffed the Ziploc bag in the pocket of his topcoat. Mohamed opened the door of the Range Rover and walked across the street carrying the attaché in his right hand.

  As he walked up the steps to the front porch, Mohamed kept his head down and moved with purpose, an employee bringing papers at night to his boss.

  “Who is it?” a woman asked over the intercom speaker beside the door.

  “Mrs. Prescott, I’m from the office. I have some papers Mr. Prescott needs to sign.”

  As she opened the door, she asked, “My husband is in the library, follow me.”

  Mohamed walked behind her through the foyer, with a staircase just beyond leading up to his right and a formal living room to the left.

  Mrs. Prescott knocked softly on the next door to her left and said, “John, there’s someone here from your office.”

  Mohamed took his suppressed Ruger pistol from a nylon hip holster on his left side and waved the woman into the library.

  “I’m afraid Mr. Prescott wasn’t expecting me,” he said and shot her in the forehead, above eyes widened in surprise.

  “Or maybe you were, Prescott. I’m Layla’s lover. Keep your hands on top of the desk. We need to talk.”

  CHAPTER 57

  “What do you want?” Prescott asked calmly, deliberately not looking at his wife’s body.

  “I want you to be grateful that I killed your wife, Prescott. Now you can continue your affair with your office manager without feeling guilty.”

  “How did you…?”

  “Mark Hassan is my cousin. He kept an eye on you for me.”

  “What am I supposed to do with her body? I can’t just carry on as if nothing has happened.”

  “You’ll think of something. Before we discuss a proposition I want you to consider, why don’t you pour us some of that forty-year-old Laphroaig sitting on your desk.”

  Prescott started to get up.

  “Stop,” Mohamed ordered.

  “If you want a drink, you’ll need a tumbler. It’s in the cabinet above the wet bar.”

  “Sit back down. I’ll get it,” Mohamed said and moved to the wet bar set in the middle of the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on the left side of the library. When he opened the cabinet door, he found a Glock 36 lying on the bottom shelf.

  Mohamed picked up the slim compact pistol in his left hand. “Know how to use this?” he asked, as he put the pistol in the left pocket of his topcoat.

  Prescott nodded.

  Mohamed returned to his place in front of the desk and motioned with his pistol for his host to pour their drinks.

  Prescott poured them each a generous amount and pushed one tumbler across the desk.

  “Here’s to your good fortune,” Mohamed said and tried the Scotch. “Excellent, you live well, Prescott. I hope you’re smart enough to keep doing so.”

  “What’s your proposition?”

  “In exchange for letting you live, I’ll dispose of your wife’s body so it won’t be found, if you’ll give me the CIA files you told Layla about.”

  Prescott smirked and finished off his drink. “They’re not here.”

  “That’s unfortunate, because I’m not leaving here without them. While you reconsider your answer, I’ll pour us both another round.”

  Mohamed took Prescott’s tumbler and moved it beside the bottle of Scotch. He set his tumbler down next to it and shifted his pistol to his left hand. With Prescott’s eyes glued to the deadly suppressor on the barrel of the Ruger 22/45, he slipped a small white pill into
Prescott’s tumbler and quickly poured him another two fingers of Scotch.

  With another sip of Scotch, he said, “You have a choice to make, John, and it should be an easy one. Give me what I want and I’ll let you get on with your life. I’ll take your wife’s body with me and keep my mouth shut about your foundation supporting the terrorists. Refuse me and I’ll put your body on the floor next to your wife, and make it look like a murder/suicide.”

  He watched Prescott take a big swallow of Scotch. The small white pill he’d put in Prescott’s drink was a lab-modified version of Flunitracepam, or Rohypnol. It acted within minutes and wasn’t traceable in a person’s system two hours later.

  Prescott blinked his eyes several times, as the first of the drug’s symptoms were felt. The visual disturbance was quickly followed by confusion.

  “Layla doesn’t know where the files are, so why should I tell you. Besides, you’ll never find my safe. I hid it where no one will ever find it.” Prescott shook his head from side to side and chuckled. “My wife didn’t find it when she searched all over my library.”

  “So it’s here in the library?” Mohammad asked.

  Prescott lifted the tumbler toward his mouth and spilled Scotch all over his starched white shirt. “I don’t remember where, though.”

  “Do you remember the combination, John?”

  “Never do,” he said, his speech slurred as the full effect of Flunitracepam intoxication took hold. “Why I write it inside drawer.”

  When Prescott’s head slumped down and the tumbler dropped from his hand, Mohamed returned the Ruger to his holster. He took off his driving gloves and put on the surgical gloves he brought.

  He moved behind Prescott and rolled his chair back. On the bottom of the middle drawer of the desk, he found the six-figure combination of Prescott’s safe hidden behind the cabinet above the wet bar. When he’d opened the cabinet door to get his tumbler, the cabinet pushed back slightly, like a handleless cupboard door would. In addition, Prescott looked nervous as he approached the wet bar.

  Sure enough, the entire cabinet swung out and a small black wall safe was hidden behind it. Mohamed spun the dial on the safe, using the combination Prescott never remembered, and opened the safe door. Two passports, insurance policies, a deed, five stacks of $20’s in bank wrappers, and the CIA file.

  He left everything in the safe except the file, closed the door and returned the cabinet to its place above the wet bar.

  Prescott was snoring gently when Mohamed pushed his chair back behind the desk. He unscrewed the suppressor from the threaded barrel of the Ruger and placed it in Prescott’s hand, with his finger on the trigger. Without resistance, the gun was raised to Prescott’s temple and fired.

  Mohamed stepped back and looked for blood spatter on the hardwood floor that would indicate there had been someone standing there when Prescott was killed. As he expected, there was no blood even around the entry hole the small .22 caliber bullet made, much less any blood splatter. The bullet entered Prescott’s brain and remained there.

  With the Ruger that killed his wife on the floor beside the tumbler he’d dropped, the police would conclude that Prescott murdered his wife and killed himself. The only thing left to do was to download the encrypted Excel spreadsheet onto Prescott’s laptop and his work would be finished for the evening.

  Mohamed waited patiently while the Ironkey drive downloaded the spreadsheet. When it was finished, he opened the spreadsheet, left the laptop on for the police to examine when they arrived, and left the quiet house to call 911.

  CHAPTER 58

  Drake and Casey spent the afternoon and early evening being grilled by FBI Special Agent Kate Perkins about the shootout at their hotel, and what they knew about the Muslim youth camp in West Virginia. It was 8:15 p.m. by the time they left the FBI headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue and returned to the Savoy Suites lounge.

  Sharing a large pizza and a pitcher of beer, they sifted through the information they learned from the FBI agent and Casey’s young hacker at Puget Sound Security, Kevin McRoberts.

  “Perkins didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know about the boys at the camp,” Casey said as he finished his second piece of pizza before emptying his first glass of beer. “They were young prison converts to Islam and were suspected of a number of crimes in and around the youth camp.”

  “I’m not buying the camp manager’s story that those four left the camp months ago,” Drake said. “I recognized one of them from my trip there last Saturday.”

  “Good thing she doesn’t know about that midnight visit, or we’d still be at FBI headquarters or in jail.”

  “What I don’t understand is why Mark Hassan committed suicide, and why he would confess to embezzling from the youth camp’s foundation. Why mention Sheikh Qasseer at all? Even if he took the money, why mention the sheikh and get him involved in an investigation?”

  Casey plucked a couple of black olives from the top the pizza and ate them. “He was going to be involved at some point, anyway. Kevin was able to find the sheikh’s account at the London bank, and he transferred $9,000,000 dollars to the American Muslim Youth Camp Foundation. A lot of that occurred in the last two years. Kevin looked to see when the properties for the camps were purchased, and they were all purchased for cash way before the $9,000,000 was deposited with the foundation. That’s a lot of money to account for if you’re not buying more land for additional camps.”

  “The foundation’s a nonprofit; there should be financial audits that will show where that money went,” Drake said.

  “Agent Perkins has probably checked the audits. We should ask her without letting her know we know about the $9,000,000.”

  “John Prescott, the chairman of the foundation’s board of directors, should know about the audits. He has a duty to keep an eye on the foundation’s finances. I’m not sure he’d talk to me about the audits they have, but it’s worth a try,” Drake said.

  Casey ordered another pitcher of beer to help them finish the pizza. “What about the guy we saw meeting with Mark Hassan? Did the senator get anything else on him?”

  “I forgot to ask Liz,” Drake admitted. “I’ll step out to the lobby and call her.”

  Standing next to a tall indoor palm tree in the lobby, he waited for her to answer her phone. There was something he was missing. Something they’d just been talking about was important, raising its hand for him to pay attention. He just couldn’t see it yet.

  “Are you coming over?” she asked when she finally answered.

  “Not right now, Liz. I spent the afternoon with Mike being interrogated by Special Agent Perkins. We’re having a late bite to eat while we try to figure out what’s going on.”

  “Was it Kate Perkins?”

  “Yes, you know her?”

  “She’s with the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division. I worked with her several times when I was at DHS.”

  “What’s the CTD doing investigating a suicide and embezzlement case?” Drake asked.

  “Would you like me to ask her?”

  “That’d be great. Was Senator Hazelton able to get any more information on Mohamed Hassan?”

  “The CIA isn’t sharing. He asked for a meeting with the Director tomorrow. As chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he should get some answers,” she said.

  “Liz, I think I’d better take a rain check tonight. I’d be lousy company.”

  “I doubt it, but I understand. Call me tomorrow.”

  Drake returned to the lounge and sat down at their table.

  “Mike, something we were talking about before I called Liz started to ring a bell. We were talking about Agent Perkins and what little we learned about the four from the camp.”

  “Let me think. We agreed we didn’t learn much, that you didn’t buy the camp manager’s story that the four left months ago, and we…”

 
; “That’s it! They were trying to keep us from talking about something we’d seen at the camp. Something that was worth the risk of shooting up a hotel to silence us.”

  Casey refilled Drake’s glass. “Okay, but the only thing we saw was an army-style training layout and guys who weren’t afraid to shoot us.”

  “No, it’s something else.”

  “Maybe it’s something you saw when you were there with Liz.”

  Drake replayed his trip to West Virginia and visiting the camp in his mind. They were escorted to the camp manager by four Black Panther looking guys. One of them had a tattoo he’d seen again and a barn with a white delivery van a couple of guys were working on.

  The white delivery van.

  “Remember Liz telling us the MANPADS that shot down the last plane came from a white delivery van across the river,” Drake said. “I saw some guys working on a white delivery van at the camp when I was there with Liz.”

  “There are a lot of white delivery vans around. What were they doing on the van?”

  “Hanging sheets of something on the walls. I didn’t look that closely, but remember Liz also said they were surprised that the drone didn’t detect the missile launch. If those sheets were something that prevented a drone from detecting what was in the back of that van, the van I saw could be the one the terrorists used.”

  “But we didn’t learn the president was flying drones over major airports until after the third plane was shot down. How would terrorists know to install shielding in the van?”

  Drake and Casey said it together. “They have someone inside!”

  “I’ve got to call Liz back,” Drake said. “We need to know who to tell about seeing the white delivery van at the camp.”