Karim wiped the blood off the blade with what was left of the man’s torn shirt and then said to Aabad, “Wrap him up in a prayer rug, bring him to an area where no one will see you, douse him in gasoline, and burn him.”

CHAPTER 54

ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA

NASH woke up to the sound of his beeping watch at 6:30. He slid out of bed without any thought of the night before or anything else, for that matter. He knew if he did not keep his head down and his mind focused he would never get out the door. The shorts, socks, shirt, and long-sleeved pullover were sitting on the overstuffed chair in the corner of the bedroom where he had placed them before bed. He picked up the stack and quietly slid downstairs. In the mudroom he stripped off his sleep pants and put on his running gear. After a glass of cold tap water he stopped by the back door and opened the cupboard at the top of his cubby. On the top shelf sat a black biometric gun safe. He placed his right thumb over the glass eye, and a second later the safe beeped and the door popped open. There were three pistols and two extra magazines of ammunition for each.

Nash grabbed the Glock 23 off the top shelf, put it in his right hand, and with his left hand pulled back on the slide. He looked down and confirmed that the chamber was empty. He then yanked the slide all the way back and put one round in the tube. That left him nine more in the grip. He stowed the compact.40-caliber pistol in his fanny pack with his keys and one of his phones, which he didn’t bother to turn on. Nash turned the alarm off and then turned it back on before leaving and locking the door again. He did all of this without putting any thought into it. “Good habits breed success,” was what his high school wrestling coach had always said. In the Corps, the mantra was, “Discipline is what gives us the edge.” Now in this next stage of life it was Rapp telling him flatly, “You fuck up one time and you’re dead.”

Nash hit the sidewalk running. There were only two cars parked on the broad tree-lined street and they were both familiar. The Jeep Wrangler belonged to the Gilsdorfs, and the Honda Accord belonged to the Krauses. He headed for Zachary Taylor Park. There and back was three miles, and if he couldn’t do it in less than twenty minutes it would probably ruin his day. Right up until the explosion, he consistently did it in under eighteen minutes.

Nash ran for a lot of reasons, but more than any other, it was the clarity of thought it gave him. He’d made his toughest decisions during runs. He’d solved some of the biggest problems he’d faced, or at least figured out ways to get out of some pretty tough jams. This morning was no different. As his feet got lighter and he hit his stride it was like the beat of a drum in his head. First and foremost on his mind was Rory. The pain Nash felt over not being there for his family hurt every bit as bad as a piece of hot shrapnel slicing through his skin. Some things were going to have to change. He wasn’t sure what, but he did know that Rory needed him in his corner. He knew his wife well enough to know that despite what he had told her last night, she would strut that pretty little ass of hers into school and try to smooth things over.

“Not going to let that happen,” Nash said to himself as he pounded it out.

He was on call to go up to the Hill and testify. Kennedy had made it clear there was no way she would allow him to testify in an open hearing. If the Judiciary Committee closed it, they could compel him, but not if it was open. He hadn’t a clue as to how that whole mess was going to turn out, but Rapp seemed extremely confident that it would be fine. For the rest of the run he put together a mental list of things he needed to get done. Some were mundane, like the call he had to make to personnel about the auto-deposit they kept fucking up on one of his overseas operatives, and others were a little more tricky. Like explaining to Rapp and Ridley that he’d allowed Chris Johnson to stay in the field. Rapp probably wouldn’t give a shit but Ridley was likely to pop a bolt.

When he got back to the house, Maggie was in the kitchen feeding Charlie the gourmet baby food that made his poops smell so bad. He kissed the head of fine blond hair first and then the head of thick black hair.

“Good morning,” he said as he walked to the sink for a glass of water.

“Morning,” she replied, without any warmth.

“How’d you sleep?”

“Like crap. How about you?”

“Surprisingly well.” Nash reached for the hand towel to wipe the sweat from his face.

As Maggie slid a spoonful of food into Charlie’s mouth, she said, “You’d better not be using one of my dish towels to wipe your sweaty face.”

Nash looked at the back of his wife’s head and wondered how she’d known. He set the towel down and walked around the island. Charlie looked up at him with a gummy smile and a blob of something green at the corner of his mouth. Nash looked at him wildly and mouthed the word Charlie had been so fond of the day before. Charlie’s little feet started dancing and he blurted it out. Maggie groaned and put her head down on the table, defeated by a one-year-old.

“Nice work, honey,” Nash said as he left the room and headed upstairs for a shower.

Thirty minutes later he was back downstairs, cleanly shaven and dressed in the gray three-button Joseph Abboud suit his wife had got him for his birthday. Nash sat down at the computer in the office and logged on to his personal e-mail account. There were nine new e-mails since he’d checked it last night. He quickly scanned the From column for Johnson’s name. He frowned that there were none. Nash walked over to the bookcase and grabbed his work BlackBerry. He quickly scrolled through thirty-four messages and again came up empty.

Nash felt his stress begin to build as he racked his brain to come up with a reason why Johnson would have disregarded the new protocols. He could think of no good reason and a lot of bad ones. Nash knelt down and opened the cupboard door, revealing a safe. He put his thumb on the reader and then opened the safe and retrieved a Motorola phone. Once the unit was powered up, he called Johnson’s apartment. After eight rings, the answering machine came on and he hung up. He then tried his mobile number and again ended up listening to his voice-mail greeting.

The first pinprick of a headache started in his left temple. Nash put his hand up to his head and pressed down. “Not today, please. Not today.”

“You all right?”

Nash looked up and saw his wife in the doorway dressed for work. “Yeah, everything is fine.”

She looked as if she knew he was full of shit but also knew he more than likely couldn’t talk about it. “Rosy just called. She’s having car trouble, so she’s jumping on the bus. Can you hang out with Charlie until she gets here? I would, but I have a really important client breakfast.”

A small kernel of apprehension pushed its way into Nash’s thoughts. This was one of those moments in a marriage where something relatively small could blow up into something really big. Nobody liked being wrong, and Maggie had blown it with Rory. And then in her typical stubborn way she’d dug in her heels, and now instead of apologizing for her behavior and putting it behind them, she was throwing out this test. Show me that I’m more important than your job. Show me that you still love me.

She was hurting in her own very real way from what had happened with Rory. She probably wasn’t feeling like the best mother at the moment. Nash thought quickly about how he could make it work. He’d brought Charlie into work before; the problem would be getting him back to the house and then getting downtown for the hearing that was scheduled to start at 9:30. He realized they would never start on time because half the senators would be late, so he said, “Yeah… I can take him into the office with me, and then drop him back off before I go downtown for the hearing.”