Masked Prey (Lucas Davenport #30)(43)

CHAPTER

NINE



Stepping back:

Lucas flew back to Washington on Tuesday afternoon. From the Cincinnati airport, he called Chase one last time, told her everything he’d gotten from John Oxford, and said, “I think we’re on the wrong scent with the ANM. They may be odd, but their general . . . attitude . . . strikes me as inconsistent for the kind of group we’re looking for.”

“Oxford could have been lying to you,” Chase said.

“Remember, he wasn’t expecting me to show up. He was talking off the top of his head. If he’d been lying, I would have picked it up,” Lucas said. “He seemed more intent on growing a political philosophy than trying some kind of judo to get legislation passed or killed. I’m not saying that they might not have been involved in some killings, but they’d be individual actions, given the kind of group they are. For this 1919 thing, we’re looking for a smaller, crazier group. A few people, maybe. Not somebody trying to grow a political organization.”

“Okay, as long as he puts out one of these so-called asks,” Chase said. “When will you get back?”

“I’ll be at the Watergate by seven-thirty or so. What’s happening with your Aline investigation? You got anything more?”

“It’s slow because we don’t want to tip him off,” Chase said. “Everything we’ve got so far seems innocuous. He carries a security clearance because of his military service and his current job and he had to go through a couple of background investigations to get it. He told an interviewer that he considered himself a libertarian but mostly voted Republican, didn’t like the Tea Party, and so on.”

“No mention of the ANM.”

“No. But then, he wasn’t asked. He was asked if he belonged to any groups that were on the State Department’s terrorist list, or advocated the overthrow of the United States government, and he said no. We’re looking at some of his financial records now, tax records, to see if anything’s going on there, but so far, everything looks clean.”



* * *



—

ON THE FLIGHT BACK, only half of Lucas’s mind was looking for signs that the plane was breaking up and that he was about to die. With the other half, he thought about the whole presumed plan of the 1919 creators. Were they really looking for a killing? Or was something else going on?

If the plot were carried out, if somebody took a shot at a senator’s child . . . how would the blackmailers get in touch with a senator they wished to influence? If phone books still existed, senators wouldn’t have been listed. He assumed that their private phone numbers would be highly guarded, or every political junkie in the country would be calling. What would 1919 do, phone a senatorial aide and ask that the threat be relayed? That obviously wouldn’t work—word of the threat would inevitably get out, making it impossible for the senator to comply. And no aide would give out the senator’s private number.

Was it possible, he wondered, that the threat came from somebody who already had access to the senator’s private phone number? An insider? The big danger, he thought, was that some crazy would think that 1919 had it all worked out and would shoot a kid.



* * *



—

WHEN THE PLANE UNEXPECTEDLY failed to crash at National, Lucas drove back to the Watergate, took a shower, got dinner, called Weather to chat, thumbed apathetically through the pile of FBI reports that he hadn’t yet read, and went to bed at one o’clock.

At six the next morning, his phone rang and he groaned, picked up the phone, saw “Unknown” on the screen, and answered, “Davenport.”

“This is the ANM guy,” a man said. “Do you have a pencil and paper?”

“Give me a second,” Lucas said. He had recognized the voice as belonging to Thomas Aline. He found his notebook and pen. “Go ahead.”

“To begin with, and please write this down . . . go fuck yourself.”

“What?”

“John Oxford put out a letter saying that he’d been compromised,” Aline said. “He and his cell are now out of the ANM. There won’t be any more contact between ANM members and John or any of his cell members. They’re out. Done. He spent his life organizing it and now he’s gone. So go fuck yourself.”

“I didn’t make him do—”

“Yeah, you did. Now. In accordance with an ask from John, before he removed himself from the organization, I have seven groups for you, and six leaders’ names. Patriotus, looks like fake Latin, but combines ‘patriot’ and ‘US.’ Roland Carr is the leader, maybe a dozen members. Forlorn Hope, Mark Stapler is the leader, maybe fifty to a hundred members, we’re not sure. White Fist, Toby Boone is the leader there. They’re organized and they’re dangerous, you gotta be careful if you go after them. Controlled Burn, we don’t know the leader or the numbers, but they’re basically a gang of parolees who got out of the federal penitentiary at Marion. Mostly career criminals but there’s an underlying political thing going on. We also have Lethal Edge, which combines white power ideas with knives and swords, Dominick Caruso is the leader, Italian name but old Southern background . . .”

“What?”

“I know, but two of their members were charged with killing a black guy with a rapier,” Aline said.