By Order of the President (Presidential Agent 1)

The Mercedes 220 was at the curb when he left the restaurant. Pevsner’s car was nowhere in sight.

He half expected to find Inge in the backseat. But she wasn’t there.

He went to his room in the Bristol and decided the first thing he needed was a cold shower and some coffee. Lots of black coffee. He called room service and ordered coffee and then stood under the shower, as cold as he could stand it, for as long as he could stand it, and tried to think.

He finally reached the conclusion that he was in no condition to make any but the most basic decisions.

As he, shivering, dried himself and pulled on the terry cloth bathrobe hanging on the back of the bathroom door, he made three of these:

First, that he was not going to see Pevsner again in Vienna. Pevsner had said all he intended to say. He had probably gone from the Drei Hussaren to the airport, where, almost certainly, a private jet was waiting for him.

Second, that he would not try to put anything down on the computer and/or send any kind of a message. Maybe in the morning but not now.

And, third, that he had to get to Washington as quickly as possible.

He called the concierge and told him that something had come up and he really needed to get to Washington as soon as he could, even if that meant getting there by a circuitous route. The concierge said he would do what he could and call him.

There was a knock at the door while he was still on the phone with the concierge. It was the floor waiter with his coffee.

When the floor waiter had gone, Charley realized the coffee posed another problem: What’s smarter? Take the coffee and see if it clears my thinking? Or just go to bed and sleep it off?

And then, not two minutes later, there was another knock at the door.

What did I do? Forget to sign the bill?

When he opened the door, Inge was standing there. She ducked past him and entered the room. He saw that she held a bottle of cognac.

“Hello, Charley,” Inge said. “I thought you might like some company.”

“You thought, or Alex Pevsner thought?”

She laughed in her throat and walked close to him. “Does it matter?” she asked.

And then he felt her hand on him under the terry cloth robe.

And, a moment later, she laughed again deep in her throat.

“And Howard was afraid you were a poofter,” she said.

What the hell, why not? Maybe it’ll get Patricia Wilson out of my mind.

IX

[ONE]

Baltimore-Washington International Airport Baltimore, Maryland 1440 8 June 2005

The beagle headed for Major Carlos G. Castillo’s suitcase with a delighted yelp, dragging his master, a hefty, middle-aged, red-haired woman in too-tight trousers, and who wore both a cell phone and a Smith & Wesson .357 revolver on her belt, after him.

The other passengers who had traveled from Munich aboard Lufthansa 5255 and were waiting for their luggage to appear on the carousel were fascinated.

“Excuse me, sir,” the woman said to Castillo. “What do you have in that bag?”

“Just personal possessions,” Castillo said. “A couple of gifts.”

“You don’t happen to have any fresh bakery products in there, do you?”

“I think it would be a good idea if you called your supervisor, ” Castillo said.