Murder at the Opera - Margaret Truman [36]
He’d pulled keys from his pocket and was opening the downstairs door when he first became aware of the car, which moved slowly and quietly over the rutted concrete road. It took him a few seconds to react to the vehicle’s lights not being on. By the time he did, the car had pulled to within a few feet of him, and the man in the passenger seat opened fire, four shots in all, each striking their intended target, Ghaleb Rihnai—three in the abdomen and one in the right eye, taking off the side of his head and sending him spinning down, face-first, into a puddle.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Ray Pawkins watched the six o’clock news on his fifty-two-inch TV. Like most Washingtonians, the Secretary of Homeland Security’s announcement that the terrorist alert level had been raised caught his attention. Not that it mattered, he knew. Nothing would change. People would go about their daily routines whether the Homeland Security popsicle was green, yellow, or orange. Sure, people would be a little more alert, eyeing dark-skinned men or women wearing winter coats in the heat of summer, or knapsacks on the floor outside a phone booth while its owner made a call. But in real terms, it would be life as usual. As far as Pawkins was concerned, the terrorists needn’t bother with ever again physically attacking America to accomplish their goal of bringing it to its knees. Each time the alert level went up, millions of dollars were consumed responding to the rumor. They could bankrupt the country without lifting a finger again except to occasionally “chat” among themselves.
But one thing the secretary said had piqued Pawkins’ interest. The elevated alert was restricted to Washington. This latest threat, real or imagined, had focused on D.C., which surprised Pawkins. No city in the country was more secure these days than the nation’s capital. There were concrete barriers everywhere, and streets that were even remotely proximate to the White House had been closed. Fly a mile off course in a Piper Cub and on your wingtips you had two F-16s with orders to shoot you down if you didn’t tune to the right radio frequency and set down pronto. Sure, you could always knock off a congressman or senator. They were everywhere. Get one to come to dinner at a marginal restaurant with faded color photos of its dishes in the window, and food poisoning would do the trick. Wait until an elected official crossed the street and gun it. Not hard to knock off a member of Congress, or thousands of other government workers who represented the country. But that would be small potatoes for any self-respecting terrorist. You had to get more yield, which meant multiple deaths, or an attack upon someone of real importance. The president? Fat chance. He had more security surrounding him than a hip-hop star.
Thinking of the president brought a smile to Pawkins’ lips. The last president to attend a Washington National Opera performance at the Kennedy Center prior to the current one had been Ronald Reagan. Detractors claimed he went only because he enjoyed dressing up in a tuxedo, but that was only partisan conjecture.
To the surprise of many, the man occupying the White House these days, Arthur Montgomery, was a regular at performances when he was in town. Whether he, like Reagan, truly enjoyed those evenings was anyone’s guess. The first lady, Pamela Montgomery, had enthusiastically supported the Lyric Opera of Chicago when her husband was mayor of that city, and later governor of the state, and she’d championed the Washington National Opera