Stone Cold

CHAPTER 34

IT WAS A LATE-STAGE PROBE and penetration mission, which was the only reason Harry Fi

And then his father was dead, by his own hand it was claimed, in a fit of guilt. Yet Fi

“It was all lies,” she had told him over and over. “None of it was true. Not about me or him. They killed him for their own reasons.”

Fi

“He deserved none of this,” she had told Fi

Fi

He broke free from these thoughts and concentrated on the task ahead. In the crowd with him were three other members of his team. Two were college students pulled out of his office for a little adventure in the field. The third was a woman who was nearly as accomplished at her work as him.

With some wrangling and sleight of hand they had garnered tickets for a VIP tour of the almost completed U.S. Capitol Visitor Center. The nearly 600,000-square-foot three-level complex was located beneath the east Capitol grounds. This was because its footprint was larger than the Capitol building and the pla

Fi

Each member of the team carried a buttonhole digital camera and surreptitiously snapped byte after byte of the underground site. Unfinished tu

Fi

You’re a terrorist’s best friend and you don’t even know it, Fi

Outside, Fi

He and his team strolled through the Capitol’s nearly sixty acres of grounds, compiling still more useful data. They congregated at an empty deli off Independence Avenue to go over their results and form new additions to their pla

“I guess congressmen like to keep safe,” said one of the team. “Because the operation we’re putting together is costing Uncle Sam a bundle.”

“Just another drop in the federal budget,” the woman said. “We’ve heading back to the office now, Harry. I’ve got some phone freaking to do on the Pentagon assignment.”

“You can go back,” Fi

He left them at the deli and headed to the Hart Senate Office Building, the newest and biggest of the three complexes devoted to taking care of America’s one hundred senators and their enormous staffs. It amazed Fi

The Hart Senate Building was located at Second and Constitution and was named after Philip Aloysius Hart, a Michigan senator who died in 1976. The deceased Hart, as the inscription above the main entrance to the building said, “Was a man of incorruptible integrity.”

The gent would feel quite alone in the Capitol these days, Fi

He strolled around the interior of the building admiring the ninety-foot-high central atrium and its major feature, a mobile-stabile entitled, Mountains and Clouds, sculpted by the renowned Alexander Calder. The sculptor had come to D.C. in 1976 to make the final adjustments to the piece, which was enormous-the tallest peak in the mountain rose fifty-one feet high-and then had promptly died that same night back in New York. This was a stark testament to the old saying that “Washington can be downright deadly to your health.”

While there were over fifty senators in the Hart Building, Fi

The security in the building, even post-9/11, was a joke. Once you passed through a metal detector, you could pretty much go wherever you wanted. Fi

Roger Simpson was tall, nearly six-five and fit, with blondish hair that had white infringing all over, and the calm, aloof air of a man used to having his personal boundaries respected and his commands followed.

The elevator door down the hall opened and a tall blonde woman stepped out. When he saw her Simpson smiled and stepped forward, giving her a quick embrace. She in turn favored him with a peck on the cheek that to Fi