Mature or not, he gave the low-riders another look. She was already talking to someone else.
'I have a room upstairs,' the stranger announced.
Wordlessly, Jason followed him out of the bar and onto an elevator. The bright light confirmed Jason's impression that the guy was young. The heavy horn-rimmed glasses and dark suit did more to make him look out of place than older.
Still without speaking, the two men got off and trudged down a hall, stopping in front of one of a series of doors while the young man inserted his plastic key. Other than an overcoat draped across one of the beds and a briefcase on a table, there was no sign the room had been occupied.
'Wouldn't it have been easier to simply courier over the reports?' Jason bantered, throwing his coat beside the other and taking a seat in one of the two chairs. 'You could have saved a pair of code names and the time you took to study my picture.'
The other man sat in the remaining chair across a small table, produced a key, and unlocked the briefcase. He handed Jason a form for his signature. 'I assume you know the rules: classified documents are not entrusted to persons without appropriate clearances, and all copies have to be signed for.'
The agency employment profile did not require a sense of humor.
Jason took a thin manila folder and quickly skimmed it. 'This is the complete report of the incidents in the Bering Sea and Georgia?'
The young man was already relocking the empty brief, case. 'It was what I was given.'
'And if I have further questions about something?'
The agent's face betrayed confusion. 'No one told me. My instructions were to deliver that file and have you sign for it.'
Originality of thought was not a requisite, either.
Jason stood, stuffing the file under his belt at the small of his back and pulling his sweater down over it. 'It's been a real pleasure to meet someone as charming and witty as you. I don't know what I would do without all your help. You want to leave first?'
Clandestine meetings broke up one at a time because single departures did not advertise the fact that there had, in fact, been a meeting.
The still-unnamed agent also stood, scooping a coat from the bed. 'I'll leave first. Give me five minutes.'
Then he was gone.
It was only when Jason picked up the remaining coat that he saw the young man had taken the wrong one. Instead of the tartan design of the Burberry's lining, there was dark faux fur. The remaining raincoat also lacked the belt that gave Jason's garment its distinctive shape.
The guy had been in too big a hurry to get away to notice.
Shit.
Snatching up the coat, Jason rushed for the door.
Screw procedure. Jason wanted to retrieve his coat without having to drive all the way to Langley.
The hall was empty, and the elevator seemed to take forever.
As the doors sighed open, the vestibule containing the elevators was packed with a seething, shouting crowd, most of whom looked like they had come from the bar. A woman screamed; several men shouted.
Jason edged his way toward the hotel's exit, turning to a young woman. 'What's happening?'
'Someone's been shot,' the man next to her said. 'Shot right here.'
The pulsating wails of police sirens were becoming increasingly audible above the crowd as Jason worked his way through the lobby. Near the revolving door that led onto the arrival porte cochere, the crowd had formed a rough circle.
Jason felt as though he had stepped into a blast of arctic air as he peered over the heads of the people in front. He was looking at a man sprawled on the floor, a dark pool seeping into light carpet.
The man was wearing an overcoat.
Jason's overcoat.
Chapter Eleven
Hay-Adams Hotel
16th and H Streets, Washington
An hour later
Jason had made no effort to retrieve his rental car. Instead, he had again fought the crowds in the hotel lobby until he found his way to a side exit. Forcing himself to move at a normal, non-attention-getting pace, he took an irregular course for several blocks until he found an overhanging awning that afforded deep shadows.
For a full five minutes he waited, watching the way he had come, before crossing the street to a Metro station. He really didn't care where the train was headed. He simply wanted to put maximum distance between him and the overcoat-shrouded body in the hotel lobby.
The bullet that had killed the young man from the agency had been meant for him. They could simply have traced his credit card, one issued by Narcom in the same name as his alternative passport, the same one used to rent the boat, the same boat with the key in Paco's pocket. It would have led them straight to the hotel in Crystal
City. Then all they had to do was follow him embedded in the mass of Washington traffic, almost impossible to spot.
At some point, Jason exited the Metro and took a cab to the venerable old hotel across Lafayette Park from the White House. The woman at the desk was unable to conceal her surprise when he paid for the room in cash. It would draw unwanted attention, but the credit card would attract notice even less desirable.
One of the reasons Jason had selected this particular hotel was its dining room. The fare was good, but the location better. Seated at any one of several candlelit tables on the floor below the lobby, he had a clear view of anyone descending the well-lit stairs or exiting the elevators under overhead illumination. His first thought was to have a cup of coffee and tarry thirty minutes or so, observing. After only ten, the siren aroma of a passing dish reminded him he had not eaten in a long time. He asked for a menu.
His room was furnished with reproductions of lateeighteenth-century American pieces, a period reminiscent of the building's origins. The cabinet containing the TV and minibar was a highboy with brass pulls. The bed had both steps and canopy. Just to make sure, he checked the bathroom, satisfied the faux antiques did not include these facilities. Sitting in a Martha Washington chair at a Federalist desk, Jason began to read the report he had been given.
There were a number of items that had not been included in the briefer document Mama had given him, and one very interesting addition.
When he finished, he reread it, puzzled, before taking the BlackBerry-like device Mama had given him out of his pocket. The resemblance ended largely with the physical case. Although the gadget could receive and send voice and text messages, it could do so in nanosecond garbled bursts that both defied decoding without appropriate equipment and sent false satellite coordinates that would foil the most sophisticated GPS. In short, communications were secure both as to location and content.
He punched a button on the back that activated the special features and then a series of numbers, beginning with the 202 D.C. area code, well aware that the actual phone he was calling might be on the other side of the world.
Jason waited. There was no sound of ringing in the conventional sense. He was calling his agency contact whom he used when he needed information on anything. Anything included pertinent weather updates in any part of the world, scientific data, or impeding coups or assassinations.
The latter two, Jason mused, had been on a decline in inverse proportion to increasing congressional inquiry. Gone were the halcyon days when a people's revolution conveniently removed a leftist-leaning dictator of some banana republic, or a rival clansman used a single bullet to end the anti-Western ravings of some sheikh or mullah.
