Chapter 39

There was some prep work I had to get done Monday night after I got to the D.C. hotel I'd booked. The plane landed at Dulles International, maybe about twenty-five miles outside the city. I'd had a choice of going to Reagan National, but Susan had told me it was pretty close to the Capitol.

"Bobby has visiting firemen in from the home district, and other people, and he sometimes meets them at the airport," she said. "Well, he doesn't, but he has them met, and a lot of the time it's Walter who meets them. Yeah, it's a long shot, but why take the chance?"

So I'd booked for Dulles, and got a rental car there and a motel near there, too. The idea was to stay completely off their radar until ... well, until. I wanted my appearance to come as a complete surprise to Senator what's-his-face.

The prep work came after I got to the motel, and had dinner at the unprepossessing restaurant it offered; I was going to miss the great meals they'd been serving at the lodge. I ate at what for me was an ungodly early hour—the three-hour time difference was annoying—but it left me plenty of wakeful time to do what I needed.

First I had to dismantle the happy little rabbit's foot on the key ring fob. That went quickly, the thing was a phony anyhow—I'd figured it was—and was just glued onto the metal base; the acetone took the glue off, leaving just the base.

I washed the whole thing in soap and water and dried it carefully to get all traces of the acetone off. Now came the tricky part. I got out the box of bullets for the Liberator, extracted one, took out my superglue and applied just a drop to the bullet's casing, like the directions said. Then I pressed the casing firmly onto the fob base and held it there for a full minute, longer than the glue manufacturer said was needed. But I wanted a really firm bond.

And I had one. I tested it by taking out the keys I'd extracted from the doorknob sets I'd bought—I'd left the doorknobs themselves back in the wastebasket at the lodge—and adding them one by one to the ring. Everything held together, and I now had a keyring with four different keys on it and a war-souvenir fob. To add authenticity I took the tag off my new rental car key and put it on the ring as well, and I was set.

Susan had waited through the whole process in silence; she was really good at keeping out of my hair when I was concentrating on something. But when I was done and admiring my work she spoke up.

"Honey, there's one thing we haven't talked about yet," she said tentatively.

"Yes?"

She hesitated. "Look, you're taking that thing"—she meant the Liberator—"in there with you for protection, right? I mean, if things go south."

I nodded. "That's the idea, babe," I said. "Look, this guy's already tried to have me killed twice that I know of. You say the guy who actually tried it the first time is likely to be right there. I'm meeting him on his turf. There's no way on God's green Earth that I'm willing to walk into that lion's den without some kind of backup to be sure I'll be able to walk back out. You even agreed with me about it."

"I know, but..."

"But what, honey?" I said, perplexed. "You having second thoughts about all this?"

"No, not that," she reassured me.

"Then what?"

" ... Larry, when we talked about this up to now, we've always kind of quit at that point," she said. "You pull it out, you make your escape. But what if pulling it out isn't enough? Have you considered that?"