“You killed them with bombs you set in Washington, DC.”
“That’s correct.”
“You killed them to protect Tom Walsh’s secret.”
Walsh’s lawyer stands up. “We object, Mr. Chairman!”
“Save your objections, Counselor,” Halpin drawls. “This isn’t a trial. It’s a fact-finding session.”
Walsh and his lawyer put their heads together and mumble out of mic range. Polermo turns to face front again.
“Walsh knew that I’d smuggled home a supply of C-4. And I knew that he could hang me up with that. I also knew that he could probably have me killed, no questions asked.”
“So you weren’t just saving Tom Walsh,” says Halpin. “You were saving yourself.”
“That’s what I believed, yes.”
From one chair away, I can feel Aiden Phillips tense. Halpin looks over at the screen and reads off the three names.
“Former army corporal Ray Kilbourne, twenty-six, killed in the Thirteenth Street bombing. Former army sergeant Stacy Fine, twenty-eight, killed in the Vietnam Veterans Memorial bombing. Former army specialist Jean Baptiste, thirty, killed in the Montgomery building bombing.”
Halpin turns his gaze from the screen to the witness table. “Can you tell us what all these bombing victims had in common, Mr. Polermo?”
“They all worked at the base in Guldara Baghicha.”
“And all three had TS/SCI clearances?” asks Halpin.
“Correct.”
“Meaning that, like you, they had access to confidential weapons system codes and operating software.”
“Yes.”
“Information that Tom Walsh was selling to Taliban operatives for his own profit.”
“Yes.”
I’ve heard all this before, during Phillips’s questioning. But hearing it from Polermo’s mouth—straight from the killer himself—makes me furious all over again.
The Washington, DC, bombings were not terrorist attacks after all. They were disguised assassinations, aimed at just three people. The other victims were all collateral damage—a smoke screen of human carnage. With the troubled vet sitting beside me framed for all of it.
None of us focused on the individual victims killed in the bombings. That three working-class military folk were killed in three separate explosions hadn’t raised any immediate red flags. Veterans are everywhere in DC—in government offices, hospitals, businesses, stores, restaurants. It was the perfect cover.Nobody had made the connection. Not me. Not Ned Mahoney. Not Roland Perkins.
Nobody but Aiden Phillips.
And then Anna Rizzo had too. According to Phillips, that’s what she’d been coming to my house to tell me.
Halpin puts down his notes and pulls his glasses off. He rubs his face and stares at the witness table. “You were a U.S. Army soldier, Mr. Polermo. A decorated combat veteran. And you killed three of your own, along with a lot of other innocent people, in your nation’s capital and framed another decorated vet for your crimes. Do you have any regrets about what you did?”
“Yeah, I do,” he says. Polermo’s lawyer puts his hand over the mic. Polermo shoves it away and leans forward.
“I should have just blown up Tom Walsh.”
CHAPTER 110
I’M WALKING WITH Aiden Phillips along the pathway that circles the Ellipse. Today, the Ellipse is pretty much empty. We’re both glad to be back aboveground and in the fresh air.
“What are the odds they’ll execute Walsh for treason?” asks Phillips.
