Double Cross

know how I feel about you.”
    “I don’t question your loyalty, Mason.”
    Following the hug, Craig and the lawyer sat on opposite sides of a gray metal conference table, which was bolted securely to the concrete floor. So were the chairs.
    Kyle now asked the lawyer eight specific questions, always the same questions, in session after session. He asked them rapidly, leaving no time for any answers by his attorney, who just sat there in respectful silence.
    “That great consoler of mass-murdering prisoners, Truman Capote, once said that he was afraid of two things, and two things only. So which of these is worse, betrayal or abandonment?” Kyle Craig began, then went right to the next question.
    “What was the very first thing you forced yourself not to cry over, and how old were you when it occurred?”
    And then, “Tell me this, Counselor: what is the average length of time it takes a drowning person to lose consciousness?
    “Here’s something I’m curious about—do most murders take place indoors or out?
    “Why is laughing at a funeral considered unacceptable, while crying at a wedding is not?
    “Can you hear the sound of one hand clapping if all the flesh is removed from the hand?
    “How many ways are there to skin a cat, if you wish it to remain alive through the entire process?
    “And, oh yes, how are my Boston Red Sox doing?”
    Then there was silence between Kyle and the lawyer. Occasionally, the convicted murderer would ask a few more specifics—perhaps additional detail about the Red Sox or about the Yankees, whom he despised, or about some interesting killer working on the outside whom the lawyer had informed him about.
    Then came another hug as Mason Wainwright was about to leave the room.
    The lawyer whispered against Kyle’s cheek. “They’re ready to go. The preparations are complete. There will be important doings in Washington, DC, soon. There will be payback. We expect a large audience.
All in your honor
.”
    Kyle Craig didn’t say anything to this news, but he put his index fingers together and pressed them hard against the lawyer’s skull. Very hard indeed, and he made an unmistakable impression that traveled instantly to Mason Wainwright’s brain.
    The fingers were in the shape of a cross.

Part One
ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE
Chapter 1

    WASHINGTON, DC.
    The first story, a thriller, involved an Iraqi soldier and a crime writer. This soldier was observing a twelve-story luxury apartment building, and he was thinking,
So this is how the rich and famous live. Stupidly at best, and very dangerously for sure
.
    He began his checklist of possibilities for a break-in.
    The service entrance at the back of the superluxury River-walk apartment building was rarely, if ever, used by the residents, or even by their sullen lackeys. More secluded than the main entry or the underground parking garage, it was also more vulnerable.
    A single reinforced door showed off no external hardware. The frame was wired on all sides.
    Any attempt at forced entry would trigger simultaneous alarms at the Riverwalk’s main office and with dispatch at a private security firm based just a few blocks away.
    Static overhead cameras monitored all deliveries and other foot traffic during the day.
    Use of the entrance was forbidden after seven p.m., when motion detectors were also engaged.
    None of this was a serious problem, the soldier believed. Actually, it was an advantage for him.
    Yousef Qasim had been a captain for twelve years with the Mukhabarat under Saddam. He had a sixth sense about such things, anything to do with the illusion of security. Qasim could see what the Americans could not—that their love of technology made them complacent and blind to danger. His best way into the Riverwalk was also the easiest.
    Garbage was the answer. Qasim knew it was carried out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoon, without fail. American efficiency, so valued here, was another of the luxury building’s vulnerabilities.
    Efficiency was predictability.
    Predictability was weakness.

Chapter 2

    SURE ENOUGH, at 4:34 p.m. the door to the service entrance opened from inside. A tall black lackey in stained green coveralls and a silver Afro latched a chain from inside the door to a hook on the outside wall. His flatbed dolly, loaded with bulging plastic garbage bags, was too wide to negotiate the opening.
    The man moved slowly, lazily carrying two bags at a time to a pair of commercial Dumpsters at the far end