great, racking cough. “You mean no one is looking for this madman?” he asked finally.
“No more than they ever looked very hard for Kennedy’s killer,” agreed Holliday. “They had a convenient patsy in Oswald, who was just as conveniently murdered less than forty-eight hours later. Case closed and a potentially lethal diplomatic incident between the U.S. and the Russians was averted.”
“So any investigation is nothing more than a dog and pony show?” Brennan asked.
“Until they find out who did the ‘wet work’ and who hired him,” said Holliday. “You seem to think Kate Sinclair is involved. Among other things Kate Sinclair’s father was a war hero who hit the beaches at Normandy, a senator himself and a deputy director of Central Intelligence during the Eisenhower years. He finished up his career as an ambassador. You’re screwing around with the daughter of a true-blue American hero. Neither the present administration nor the CIA would like that particular piece of dirty laundry to be revealed, I can assure you. It’s much tidier to simply say this is the work of jihad extremists and go with that.”
“So what do we do?” Brennan asked. “It’s David and Goliath.”
“We gather irrefutable evidence,” said Holliday.
“And how, pray, are we to do that?” Brennan said.
Holliday smiled. “We go to McDonald’s for a Big Mac and fries and we ask the right questions.”
The McDonald’s in question was on a barren triangle of asphalt at the intersection of Old Dominion Drive and the Dolly Madison Parkway. Unlike the J. Gilbert’s Wood-Fired Steaks and Seafood next door, McDonald’s was unlicensed, which ruled out martini lunches, and it also had the advantage of three or four picnic tables for alfresco dining in the emission fog of the highways bordering the restaurant on all three sides of the triangle it occupied.
From an intelligence officer’s perspective, it was the perfect place to avoid surveillance—except for the chilly weather, which didn’t seem to bother Holliday’s companion at all. Unless you were in the parking lot you couldn’t be seen from the street, and the constant drone of passing traffic only a few feet away beyond the sickly screen of trees would befuddle even the most sensitive parabolic microphones. The fast-food joint was almost exactly a mile away from the National Counterterrorism Center main entrance at the Dolly Madison Parkway and the Lewisville Road.
“I’ve only got about half an hour,” said Pat Philpot. Philpot was a senior domestic analyst at NCTC, which meant he tracked smaller fish that had slipped through the nets and traps set up by Homeland Security, covered the Mexican and Canadian borders, and kept his eyes and electronic ears out for a few potential Timothy McVeighs lurking in the backwoods of the continental United States.
He opened up the first of two Quarter Pounders with Cheese and began to eat, alternating bites of the dripping burgers with slurps from his large strawberry shake. Pat was a walking commercial for a heart attack, and it was hard to remember that the man across the picnic table from him had once commanded a first-strike combat team for the Rangers.
“So, what do you know about the Pope?” Holliday asked. He sipped his coffee and waited for Philpot to swallow an enormous wad of cheeseburger.
“He wears a funny hat and he speaks Latin,” the big man answered.
“I don’t need your bad jokes, Potsy. You wanted to talk to me here, not at the center, so that means you know something. Spill.”
“I’m not even supposed to talk to you, let alone divulge state secrets. You haven’t had clearance for years.”
“How’s Loretta?” Holliday asked, smiling. Loretta was Philpot’s wife. A jealous wife. Like a lot of women Holliday knew, she didn’t much care for her husband’s old friends, especially those who knew him when.
“What does she have to do with this?”
“It’s like John Lennon