Gone Tomorrow

She hadn’t gotten to the bathroom yet, but there were two clean towels still on the rack. Nobody could possibly use all the towels that a big hotel provides. There was a cake of soap still wrapped next to the sink and half a bottle of shampoo in the stall. I brushed my teeth and took a long shower. I dried off and put on my new pants and shirt. I swapped my pocket contents over and left my old garments in the bathroom trash. Thirty bucks for the room. Cheaper than a spa. And faster. I was back on the street inside twenty-eight minutes.

I walked up to Dupont and spied out the restaurant. Afghan cuisine, outside tables in a front courtyard, inside tables behind a wooden door. It looked like the kind of place that would fill up with power players willing to drop twenty bucks for an appetizer worth twenty cents on the streets of Kabul. I was OK with the food but not with the prices. I figured I would talk to Sansom and then go eat somewhere else.

I walked on P Street west to Rock Creek Park, and clambered down close to the water. I sat on a broad flat stone and listened to the stream below me and the traffic above. Over time the traffic got louder and the water got quieter. When the clock in my head hit five to seven I scrambled back up and headed for the restaurant.

TWENTY-TWO

AT SEVEN IN THE EVENING D.C. WAS GOING DARK AND ALL the Dupont establishments had their lights on. The Afghan place had paper lanterns strung out all over the courtyard. The kerb was clogged with limousines. Most of the courtyard tables were already full. But not with Sansom and his party. All I saw were young men in suits and young women in skirts. They were gathered in pairs and trios and quartets, talking, making calls from their cells, reading e-mails on handheld devices, taking papers from briefcases and stuffing them back. I guessed Sansom was inside, behind the wooden door.

There was a hostess podium close to the sidewalk but before I got to it Browning pushed through a knot of people and stepped in front of me. He nodded towards a black Town Car twenty yards away and said, ‘Let’s go.’

I said, ‘Where? I thought Sansom was here.’

‘Think again. He wouldn’t eat in a place like this. And we wouldn’t let him even if he wanted to. Wrong demographic, too insecure.’

‘Then why bring me here?’

‘We had to bring you somewhere.’ He stood there like it meant absolutely nothing to him whether I went along or walked away. I said, ‘So where is he?’

‘Close by. He’s got a meeting. He can give you five minutes before it starts.’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Let’s go.’

There was a driver sitting in the Town Car. The engine was already running. Browning and I climbed in the back and the driver pulled out and drove most of the way around the circle and then peeled off south and west down New Hampshire Avenue. We passed the Historical Society. As I recalled New Hampshire Avenue there wasn’t much ahead of us except for a string of hotels and then George Washington University.

We didn’t stop at any of the hotels. We didn’t stop at George Washington University. Instead we swept a fast right on to Virginia Avenue and drove a couple hundred yards and pulled into the Watergate. The famous old complex, the scene of the crime. Hotel rooms, apartments, offices, the Potomac dark and slow beyond them. The driver stopped outside an office building. Browning stayed in his seat. He said, ‘These are the ground rules. I’ll take you up. You’ll go in alone. But I’ll be right outside the door. Are we clear?’

I nodded. We were clear. We got out. There was a security guy in a uniform at a desk inside the door, but he paid us no attention. We got in the elevator. Browning hit four. We rode up in silence. We got out of the elevator and walked twenty feet across grey carpet to a door marked Universal Research. A bland title and an unremarkable slab of wood. Browning opened it and ushered me inside. I saw a waiting room, medium budget. An unoccupied reception desk, four low leather chairs, inner offices to the left and the right. Browning pointed me left and said, ‘Knock and enter. I’ll wait for you here.’

I stepped over to the left hand door and knocked and entered.

There were three men waiting for me in the inner office.

None of them was Sansom.

TWENTY-THREE

THE ROOM WAS A PLAIN SPARE SPACE MOSTLY EMPTY OF furniture. The three guys were the three federal agents who had made the trip up to the 14th Precinct in New York City. They didn’t seem pleased to see me again. They didn’t speak at first. Instead their leader took a small silver object out of his pocket. A voice recorder. Digital. Office equipment, made by Olympus. He pressed a button and there was a short pause and then I heard his voice ask, ‘Did she tell you anything?’ The words were fuzzy with distortion and clouded by echo, but I recognized them. From the interview, at five o’clock that morning, me in the chair, sleepy, them alert and standing, the smell of sweat and anxiety and burnt coffee in the air.

I heard myself reply, ‘Nothing of substance.’

The guy clicked another button and the recorded sound died away. He put the device back in his pocket and pulled a folded sheet of paper from another. I recognized it. It was the House notepaper the Capitol guard had given me at the door of the Cannon Building. The guy unfolded it and read out loud, ‘Early this morning I saw a woman die with your name on her lips.’

He held the paper out towards me so I that I could see my own handwriting.

He said, ‘She told you something of substance. You lied to federal investigators. People go to prison for that.’

‘But not me,’ I said.

‘You think? What makes you special?’

‘Nothing makes me special. But what makes you federal investigators?’

The guy didn’t answer.

I said, ‘You can’t have it both ways around. You want to play all cloak and dagger and refuse to show ID, then how should I know who you are? Maybe you were NYPD file clerks, showing up early for work, looking to pass the time. And there’s no law about lying to civilians. Or your bosses would all be in jail.’

‘We told you who we were.’

‘People claim all kinds of things.’

‘Do we look like file clerks?’

‘Pretty much. And maybe I didn’t lie to you, anyway. Maybe I lied to Sansom.’

‘So which was it?’

‘That’s my business. I still haven’t seen ID.’

‘What exactly are you doing here in Washington? With Sansom?’

‘That’s my business too.’

‘You want to ask him questions?’

‘You got a law against asking people questions?’

‘You were a witness. Now you’re investigating?’

‘Free country,’ I said.

‘Sansom can’t afford to tell you anything.’

‘Maybe so,’ I said. ‘Maybe not.’

The guy paused a beat and said, ‘You like tennis?’

I said, ‘No.’

‘You heard of Jimmy Connors? Bjorn Borg? John McEnroe?’

I said, ‘Tennis players, from way back.’

‘What would happen if they played the U.S. Open next year?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘They would get their asses kicked all over the court. They would get their heads handed to them on a plate. Even the women would beat them. Great champions in their day, but they’re old men now and they come from a whole different era. Time moves on. The game changes. You understand what I’m telling you?’

I said, ‘No.’

‘We’ve seen your record. You were hot shit back in prehistory. But this is a new world now. You’re out of your depth.’

I turned and glanced at the door. ‘Is Browning still out there? Or did he dump me?’

‘Who is Browning?’

‘The guy who delivered me here. Sansom’s guy.’

‘He’s gone. And his name isn’t Browning. You’re a babe in the woods.’

I said nothing, just heard the word babe and thought about Jacob Mark, arid his nephew Peter. A girl from a bar. A total babe. Peter left with her.

One of the other two guys in the room said, ‘We need you to forget all about being an investigator, OK? We need you to stick to being a witness. We need to know how Sansom’s name is linked with the dead woman. You’re not going to leave this room until we find out.’