'In D.C.' very few. You happen to be talking to one of the two I know.'
'Am I?' She inserted the key card in the lock. 'The man I've gotten to know, General, is suspicious bordering on paranoid. I'm beginning to wonder how you ever passed the Op-Center psych evaluation.'
'We're paid to be paranoid,' he replied. 'That's what allows people like you to sleep nights.'
'I sleep fine,' she said as the green light flashed. She opened the door.
'How is Howell when he calls? Comfortable? Surreptitious? Vague?'
'Cautious,' she replied. 'That is certainly not uncommon in Washington.'
'I'm missing something here,' he said. 'Some connection. Was Howell in the navy?'
'I don't know,' Kat said as she hefted her bags into the room. She turned on the light and held the door open for a moment. Kat had obviously had enough. 'Was there something else?' she asked. 'You want to frisk me, go through my luggage?'
'You have anything to hide?' he asked, nodding at the bags.
'I'm not hiding anything from you right now,' she said contemptuously.
Rodgers hesitated. Even if he found the dress it wouldn't prove anything. The luggage was brought to the airport in one van. Someone could have placed it there. 'General Rodgers, please call if you need something.
Something that has to do with the USF. That is, if you're still interested in working with us.'
Rodgers looked at her. Her bright eyes were sad as she shut the door.
He started toward his own room. He noted the stairwell was right beside his room with a security camera above it. He wondered if Link had put him here on purpose, so the admiral could watch him.
Rodgers hoped not. He hoped a lot of things. He hoped he was wrong about Howell. Maybe the Metro Police detective was just sucking up to someone in power. That was prevalent in D.C. But then why would he have been watching McCaskey? Professional jealousy? A turf war? Or maybe he was just watching Kat's apartment and happened to see McCaskey go in. Howell may have known about the reporter being at the hotel that night.
Chances were good he would not be able to talk to McCaskey. Instead, Rodgers went to his room, sat on the bed, and entered a stored number on his cell phone. There was only one person he trusted to figure this one out.
The other man of principle Rodgers knew.
FORTY-THREE
Washington, D.C. Wednesday, 3:44 p.m.
Bob Herbert was delighted to hear from Mike Rodgers. It was the only familiar aspect in a suddenly surreal situation, and for a moment, just a heartbeat, it sounded and felt like old times.
'How am I?' Herbert said in response to Rodgers's question. 'I'm sitting in the parking lot, breathing non- machine-filtered air, which I happen to prefer to that dry, metallic-tasting crud in the Tank, working on a laptop I borrowed from get this the head cook in the Andrews commissary cafeteria. I had to create my own files between the Tuesday lunch menu and the recipe for Brigadier General Chrysler's favorite pie. Which is cherry, if you were wondering. My calls are being routed to a cell phone belonging to Jason Shuffler in accounting.
He was parked outside the hit zone, and it was in his car. A bonus to being a peon.'
Herbert was rambling, and he knew it. But it had been a long, rough day with no time to vent. Under the best of circumstances there was no one he felt completely comfortable with other than Mike or Darrell, and Darrell was not available. So Mike got the first big hit. Herbert took a short breath to calm himself, sucked his self-styled debriefing back down, and went to the above-the-fold news.
'Meanwhile, the cops have Darrell and Maria at the precinct,' Herbert told Rodgers. 'They were arrested for breaking and entering.'
'I heard.'
'Darrell made his one call to Paul, who shipped Lowell over there to get him out. Paul briefed me. Anything
