The Fifth Assassin by Brad Meltzer Read Free Book Online

staring at. I may know Lincoln history, but he’s been at this far longer than I have. On a hunch, he unscrews the pen as fast as he can. The front half holds the thin metal pen tube. But in the back half… there’s a small red wire connected to an even smaller transmitter. A microphone. We’ve been holding a microphone the entire time.
    Tot shoots me a look.
    I run full speed, racing back down the aisle of the church and toward the staff offices in back. Whoever this guy is, he couldn’t have gotten far.

8
    W hen we walked in… the guy… the one in the cheap suit…”
the older man known as Tot said. “
He told me we had to sign in.
”
    “I thought he was—Hold on. He’s not a detective?”
    Crossing through the slush on H Street and entering the well-plowed edges of Lafayette Park, Secret Service agent A.J. Ennis kept his pace slow and steady, barely even registering the “cheap suit” comment. Instead, following his training and staying focused on the problem at hand, he turned up the volume on the thin receiver that was tucked into his jacket pocket.
    For A.J., it was simple enough to slip them the pen with the transmitter. He’d actually stolen the idea from an overwrought mystery novel he read a few years back where some plucky investigator did the same.
    In the novel, the investigator saved the day and, naturally, rode off into the sunset. But A.J. knew that life, especially his current life, was no longer that simple.
    “Dammit,” he muttered to himself, seeing the
No Signal
message on the receiver and running his hand along the back of his buzzed blond hair. They had found the transmitter. Most people never found it, which told A.J. that what they warned him about was right. Beecher and Tot weren’t novices. But then again, neither was A.J.
    There was a reason A.J. had been sent to the church. It was the same reason A.J. was the one who accompanied President Orson Wallace out to Camp David, and on that off-the-record visit back in Ohio that tested his loyalty to the President. Luckily for A.J., he had passed.
    It wasn’t all luck, of course. As a kid in Johnson City, Tennessee, A.J. Ennis used to dream of being Jacques Cousteau. But when his father got sick and his mother went bankrupt, young A.J.’s dreams became far more realistic.
    Not for long. After Business School at Duke and three tedious years as an investment banker, the explorer once again reemerged, knowing that there were more exciting things to chase than money. As he applied for the Secret Service, luck had nothing to do with his getting hired or promoted, or how quickly he made his way over to the President’s Protective Detail. The Service knows talent when it sees it.
    What it didn’t know was that thirty years ago, A.J.’s father was one of President Orson Wallace’s dearest friends from law school. A.J. never pointed out the connection or took advantage of it, but he knew it made him lucky.
    It made the President’s best friend, Dr. Stewart Palmiotti, even luckier, since after the funeral, A.J. was the one who helped Palmiotti set up his new identity.
    Yet the luckiest of all?
    A.J.’s phone vibrated in his pocket. Caller ID said “King’s Copiers,” a copy shop in Maryland that had closed at least two years ago. Maybe even three.
    “A.J. here,” he said, picking up.
    There was silence on the other end.
    “You were right about the church,” A.J. said.
    There was no reply.
    “They’re both there. I saw him. It was definitely Beecher.” Before another bit of silence hit, A.J. added, “I know it’s not ideal, sir. But it doesn’t mean it’s a total disaster. We can still—”
    There was a click. The President of the United States hung up.
    With a flurry of tapping, A.J. dialed another number.
    The phone rang once… twice…
    Palmiotti picked up without even saying hello. “Where’ve you been?” he asked. “Do you need me down there? I can be there in—”
    “Don’t come down here.”
    “But I