In the rearview mirror, the cabdriver's face was incredulous. 'It's the Pentagon, mista. No stoppin' here.'
Jason was already out of the cab, oblivious to angry horns as he dodged his way through traffic. He stood looking at what was arguably the world's ugliest office building as though experiencing rapture.
Along the west side, a single charred capstone was the only marker. In front of it were flowers, singly or in bunches, but Jason had no trouble recognizing the long green stems of white gladioli, her favorite. He had a dozen placed there every week.
The simple gold band he wore on a chain around his neck was the only trace of her found. There was no grave for him to visit, no other physical place to vent his grief. It was here, across a busy street around unattractive architecture, where she had spent the last seconds of her life, that he came to be as close to her as the living might get to the dead.
If you weren't looking for it, the repairs would go unnoticed. On that bright late-summer morning that had become America's darkest day, an airplane had slammed into the building.
It was like recalling an incident from childhood, so far away did 9/11 seem. First Lieutenant Peters, J., of the little-known and less discussed Delta Force, had been on temporary assignment here. His wife, Laurin, junior partner in one of the multitude of D.C. law firms specializing in lobbying activity, was in the building for an early morning meeting with the firm's largest client, the army.
The experience of going to work together was unique. Jason frequently was in places with classified names for indefinite periods of time. Laurin missed him, and the assignments were rarely to locales that could be described as garden spots. His paintings were acquiring a regular market, and her real estate investments, inherited from her mother, had become too large and profitable for her to manage and continue to work full-time.
They had decided to quit their present jobs in the next twelve months, spending the cold, wet Washington winters in the British West Indies and enduring the hot, equally wet summers in their Georgetown home. They built the house on North Caicos and spent an idyllic month there. They both loved it.
They were already counting the days.
Shortly before eight A.M. on September 11, 2001, he had shown her his temporary office in the Pentagon's second ring. She had a few minutes before her meeting.
'Can I bring you something from the canteen?' she'd asked.
It was much later he realized that most last words were probably equally banal.
'Sure. A large cup of coffee.'
Nodding, she had set off, never to be seen again. Had she remained with him for the next five minutes, she would still be alive. The thought tortured him on nights he could only toss and turn with survivor's guilt.
It had taken a minute or two after the crash for Jason to learn what had happened and where. A number of firemen suffered varying degrees of injury from a wild man trained to kill before MPs had succeeded in pulling Jason away from the inferno that had consumed his wife.
Once the adrenaline flow stopped, he had sobbed like a brokenhearted teenager. His rage was one of loss and impotent fury. Delta Force kept a more or less current brief on the world's nasties. Even before the presidential announcement, he had no doubt one or more of the terrorist groups had done this. He would, by God, get even.
But how?
His reverie in front of the Pentagon was interrupted by a hand on his shoulder. He spun around to look into the sympathetic face of a cop.
'Look, mister, I know you probably lost someone there, 'cause I see 'em all the time. But your cab's blockin' th' road. If you want, I'll hold up traffic an' let the taxi get to the parkin' lot. You can at least argue with them military assholes to let you stop there for a few minutes. Besides, you look like you're freezin'.'
Jason, clad in only a T-shirt and a pair of light cotton trousers, had been oblivious to the mid-thirty-degree temperature. Even his moth-eaten overcoat would have provided some warmth had it not been consumed in the fire.
Jason managed a weak smile. 'Thanks, Officer, but I'll be going.'
He could feel tears that were not caused by the cold on his cheeks as he climbed back into the cab.
Chapter Nine
Chevy Chase, Maryland
The next morning
Jason had found a hotel in Crystal City with a kennel for Pangloss. Both had spent a morose evening: the dog in unhappy confinement, Jason considering calling to get a table at Kincade's, one of the capital's better seafood places, before deciding the restaurant was too infested with memories. Instead, he elected to avoid his room's ever-remindful view of the Pentagon and eat in a dining room that justified every joke that had ever been made at the expense of hotel food.
A morning sky unmarred by clouds and a sun that turned a city of glass into gold improved Jason's spirits. Better weather did nothing for Pangloss, who barked most pitifully when Jason left the kennel after checking on him. Renting a car, he was at a nearby men's store when it opened. After purchasing two sweaters, slacks, and a Burberry raincoat with removable lining, Jason got on the Beltway and headed north.
When he exited the multilane road, he picked his way carefully, relying on memories two or three years old.
Where quaint towns had dotted the landscape, strip centers and outlet malls competed for space. Rolling farms had become subdivisions of McMansions on tiny lots. By equal parts navigational skill and blind luck, he finally saw the snaking brick wall that formed the boundary of the office park he sought.
Jason scanned the uniform plaques outside each building until he found the one he wanted: Narcom, Inc., one more acronymically named entity whose title did nothing to inform the observer of the company's function or distinguish it from its neighbors. Its one unique feature was a subterranean parking lot, a seemingly superfluous amenity in an office park where space was readily available. At the entrance to the down ramp, a wooden arm blocked passage until a ticket was taken.
Any semblance of normality ended with appearances.
Jason knew that while the car was waiting for the machine to spit out a ticket, scales set into the floor were weighing the vehicle. In less than a second, a computer compared the poundage to the manufacturer's specified weight, adjustments were made for a possible full tank of gas, and a formula applied for the number of occupants. Should the car exceed what the system deemed normal, a steel curtain would drop from the ceiling, preventing further access while probes extended from the walls to take air samples in much the same way bomb-sniffing dogs operated at airports.
The machine determined the rental car posed no risk, and Jason drove into a nearly empty basement. An elevator returned him to ground level, and he entered the three stories of smoked glass. Last night's rain was still a thousand diamonds on the carefully manicured lawn along the flagstone pathway to the entrance.
Almost all the buildings in the vicinity displayed signs announcing the services of one or more security companies. So did this one. Visibility was, after all, part of security. An intruder would, presumably, be less inclined to invade the premises of an establishment guarded by the usual electronic devices.
There were certain differences from nearby similar structures, had one looked in the right places, differences of which no ordinary burglar would have ever heard. But then, it was not the ordinary burglar Narcom wished to deter.
Jason knew his image was being transmitted inside by a series of well-concealed cameras. One step off the path would trigger sensors buried an inch or so deep under lush grass, green despite the season. The glass of the exterior was reinforced sufficiently to withstand any projectile smaller than an artillery shell. Well out of sight from below, the roof sprouted a forest of antennae. Window shades were rubber lined. When pulled, as they were anytime an important conversation was in progress, they made it impossible for listening devices outside to pick up vibrations in the glass caused by words spoken inside.
An electric eye opened the door as Jason reached it. The lobby, the twin of hundreds of others in the area,
