Kinney stood up. “I think that will do it. May I call you, if I think of anything else?”

“Sure. My extension is ten-ten.” He offered his hand. “Good luck on finding Teddy. You’re going to need it.”

DRIVING BACK TO THE Bureau, both agents were silent for a long time. Finally, Kerry Smith spoke up. “What do you think he’s doing?”

“Doing?” Kinney asked.

“He’s not finished,” Smith said, “but after the first spate of murders, he hasn’t killed anybody for a while.”

“You’re right, he’s not through,” Kinney replied. “He’s planning. He’s just getting ready to move again, in his own time.”

“Well, we’ve got a guard on everyone pictured on his website.

We can’t do more than that.“

“We can anticipate him,” Kinney said.

“How?”

“We’ve got to get inside his head, to figure out who the most likely target would be. If you were Teddy, who would you go after?”

Smith was quiet for a while. “Somebody high up,” he said finally.

“The president?”

“No, the president’s politics aren’t the kind that Teddy hates.”

“Speaker of the House?”

“That would be my bet. He has all the qualifications for getting hit by Teddy-right-wing, in-your-face politics-”

“That seems to be Teddy’s only criterion.”

“That and being well known.”

“Let’s get back to the office and make a new list.”

44

TED EXITED I-95 and made his way to Manassas Regional Airport, south of Washington, D.C. He inserted his security card to open the gate, then drove to the west side of the field, past some T-hangars, to a larger hangar behind them. He drove around back and punched a garage-door opener; the large bifold door opened, and the lights came on. Ted drove the RV inside and used the remote to close the door again. A large fan heater came on immediately, to compensate for the heat lost through the open door.

Ted maneuvered the RV into its assigned space, then got out and connected the power cable and the flexible drain leading to the septic system. He was home. He went into the RV and gazed at himself in the bathroom mirror. A very different Ted Fay stared back at him, one with a head of thick, gray hair and a walrus mustache. He peeled off the mustache, then the toupee and washed them both, leaving them on a form to dry. Then he went “outside” into the hangar.

The hangar held the RV and his car-a five-year-old Mercedes E320, which wasn’t really a 320, because he had modified it, installing an AMG Mercedes engine of five and a half liters and upgrading the suspension and tires. What he had now was a bland-looking family sedan that was capable of zero to sixty miles an hour in under five seconds, and he had replaced the speed-limiting chip with one that allowed a top speed in excess of a hundred and eighty miles an hour. Ted loved cars, and he loved this one best of all.

The final fixture in the hangar was a glassed-in office with a toilet and shower. Inside that were a desk and chair, a sofa, a comfortable recliner, and a large rear-projection television set. Ted loved TV, too. On the desk was a very powerful computer that he had assembled himself, modeled after the units used in Tech Services at the CIA, and incorporating their stolen chip, with a twenty-one-inch flat-screen monitor. With it he could access almost any government system, from the Pentagon to the CIA. Occupying an adjoining area was his workshop, which he had disassembled at his home and reassembled in the hangar.

Ted logged onto the ACT NOW website and gazed at the photographs displayed there, lingering over Efton, the speaker of the House. Efton was a tempting target, but in some ways Ted thought him a good man to have in the job, since the way he conducted himself often engendered great opposition among moderates. He eliminated the speaker from consideration.

He needed a more important, more pivotal figure. He went to another website where he had stored more photos and biographical information on other public figures, and he came to the Supreme Court. He quickly eliminated four of the nine justices, then lingered for a moment over a fifth, the one who was often a swing vote, finally eliminating her. He was left with four justices, including the chief justice, whom Ted had disliked for years. He was very old, now, and rumor was he would be leaving the Court soon, leaving President Lee to appoint his successor. No point in creating a fuss by dealing with him, so he eliminated the chief justice from consideration.

Now he was left with three justices, each of whom qualified politically. Each slavishly followed the chief justice’s lead on important cases, and the elimination of any of them would be good for the country, Ted figured. One, however, stood out. Thomas Graydon was the newest appointee to the Court, a man who had managed, during his confirmation hearings, to convince enough Democrats that his views were moderate to get him confirmed. Once on the Court, though, he had revealed himself as a hardline right-winger, infuriating the senators he had fooled during the hearings. He often addressed conservative groups, making inflammatory speeches backing far right-wing legal positions. He was the youngest member of the Court, only forty-nine years of age, and he could very well be there for thirty years or more, tossing legal hand grenades at the Bill of Rights.

Here was a man who had earned Ted’s attention. His elimination would allow the moderate president to make perhaps the most important appointment of his presidency, after the chief justice, should the old man die or yield his seat. The Democrats held a one-vote majority in the Senate, and Lee could get his appointees confirmed without too much trouble.

Ted eliminated the other justices, leaving only Thomas Graydon. Now he had to decide how to accomplish this death. He thought it should be done more subtly than the others, in fact so subtly that the FBI might think that Ted had not been responsible. An “accidental” death would certainly be preferable.

He scrolled through newspaper and magazine articles about Justice Graydon that he had collected during his confirmation hearings and the three years that Graydon had sat on the Court, and he was struck by a photograph of the man getting out of his car at the Capitol during the hearings. The car was a black, American-made SUV, and he found another shot of Graydon in the car, taken on a fishing trip, this shot more recent, which meant that he probably still owned the car. He would do a drive-by and see if it was parked at the Graydon home.

Then Ted hacked into the computer systems of the manufacturer of the car and went into the design department’s files. After a few minutes, he came up with the design for the main chip in the car’s computer system, the one that directed everything from its fuel management to its antilock braking system. He printed out the design and went carefully over it, seeing opportunity.

Next, he went to the manufacturer’s parts distribution center, entered the part number of the chip and got a list of dealers who had it in stock. The part was not one that was often replaced, so few dealers had it, only one of them east of the Mississippi, in Baltimore, which would do nicely.

He went back to the RV and made himself some dinner, then relaxed in front of the TV for the evening. His mind was preoccupied with the computer chip, however, and how he could modify it to suit his purposes.

Tomorrow morning he would check Justice Graydon’s house for the presence of the vehicle, and if he still owned it, then Ted would need to make a trip to Baltimore.

This would take time and effort, but it would be worth it; after Graydon, he would make his exit from the scene. A very nice little island cottage waited for him, and he looked forward to a quiet life, after he had made his mark on American political history.