The Hellfire Club(106)

LaMontagne had no idea what had happened to Carlin and Leopold in the previous hours, and he was unaware of the saga on Susquehannock Island. All he knew was that the day before, Charlie had been on national television alluding to national security secrets that the Hellfire Club had already killed two congressmen to conceal.

Van Waganan had been easy. LaMontagne hid in the backseat of the congressman’s car, then as soon as he got behind the wheel, out came his Ruger Single-Six, bang, a shot to the head. With the help of Abner Lance they’d staged a murder-suicide with a local prostitute. The cops had been on the scene for only five minutes before Hoover’s agents arrived and guaranteed the crime would remain unsolved in perpetuity.

Offing MacLachlan had been more challenging, given Carlin’s scheme to blame it on the Puerto Ricans. One of Hoover’s Puerto Rican informants tipped off the Bureau about the attack, and the night before, LaMontagne had planted a rifle under a bench in the House gallery. During the House debate on Mexican migrants, Abner Lance had walked up to the gallery and waited. As soon as the “Viva Puerto Rico libre” chant started, Lance—a sniper in the Korean War—aimed at MacLachlan and fired. Amid the chaos, and with every eye focused on the Puerto Ricans on the other end of the gallery, no one saw.

The tumblers on the lock gave way. LaMontagne slowly turned the knob and stepped in.

Once inside Charlie and Margaret’s foyer, LaMontagne closed the door softly and reached to the small of his back to retrieve a pistol he used for these special occasions: a Welrod Mk IIA, developed by Station IX of the UK Special Operations Executive during the war specifically for assassinations; quiet, reliable, with no markings. Fewer than three thousand Welrods had been manufactured. LaMontagne had acquired his through a British friend, a fellow expert in wet work.

The house was silent and dim, the curtains still closed against the daylight. LaMontagne poked his head around the doorways of the downstairs rooms, confirming that they were empty, and then put a tentative foot on the bottom stair, wary of creaks. Cautiously he ascended, placing his weight on the balls of his feet, pausing on each step. He would need to look around the house for a place to hide.



Charlie unlocked the door and stepped back to let Margaret enter. Exhausted, they trudged up the two flights of stairs to their bedroom, where Margaret began taking off her flannel and chinos, which had gone from soaking wet to crusted and uncomfortable.

Charlie’s nostrils flared. Something was wrong. He quickly peered into the walk-in closet and then the bathroom. He dropped down and looked under the bed.

“Something wrong, honey?”

Charlie approached Margaret and whispered in her ear. “I think Davis LaMontagne is here.”

“How—”

“Shh. I smell his cologne.”

There was no other explanation for the faint whiff of Cuir de Russie in the air.

“He’s probably downstairs,” he whispered. “Act normal and let’s be ready.”

“It was good to see your father,” she finally said aloud.

“Yep,” Charlie said. “Hey, honey, I’m going to take a shower.” He walked into the bathroom and turned on the water.

She thought she heard something from the first floor. A step? The creak of a doorknob turning?

“Honey, don’t use all the shampoo,” she said, struggling to come up with small talk. She tiptoed into the bathroom and whispered to Charlie: “I have an idea.”

“So do I.”



Hiding in the basement, LaMontagne wondered if this had been Charlie’s fate from the moment he’d tried to organize the veterans in Congress to defy Carlin over the Goodstone funding. Powerful vectors crush obstructions; the laws of physics are not dissimilar from the rules of man.

He could hear Charlie and Margaret talking in their bedroom. LaMontagne began creeping upstairs. As he stepped lightly on the stairs from the ground floor to the second, the oak beneath his foot emitted a high-pitched creak. LaMontagne froze in place. No one upstairs said anything.

Had they heard him?

The clanging of pipes and the sound of the shower spray suggested they hadn’t. Margaret uttered something. LaMontagne continued his slow trek to the Marders’ bedroom.



The door to the bedroom was slightly ajar. He pressed himself against the hallway wall and peered carefully into the empty room. Slowly he nudged the door open with his foot and eased his way inside. In the adjoining bathroom to his right, the shower was running. To his immediate left was a door to a walk-in closet.

The bed was unmade. LaMontagne steeled himself to kill both Charlie and Margaret. He would make it look like a burglary gone wrong.

“Honey, what’s the dress at this luncheon?” Margaret’s voice suddenly bellowed from behind him, in the closet. She sounded odd, muffled. Maybe she was pulling a shirt over her head.

He would dispose of her first. LaMontagne turned around.

The door to the walk-in closet was partly closed. He pushed it open with his left hand, his right hand holding the pistol, ready to shoot Margaret where she stood.

But the closet was empty. And too late he realized the sound he’d heard was from the baby monitor he’d given them, placed inside the closet; he had been fooled, and that meant Charlie and Margaret—

Heat, intense heat. His head, his hair, and his skin were on fire.

He wheeled around and dropped the gun to grab his head with both hands, as if that could quell the pain.