First Thrills

When that door had closed behind them, Chloe pulled her hand away, stopping him. “What was that about?”

“This is about believing the warning I got over the phone. And, by the way,” he added, “I’ve got my instructions now, or as good as I’m going to get them.”

“What are they?”

“It’s still not completely clear. But one thing is.”

“What’s that?”

“We’ve got to get to the hotel. Like yesterday.”

And taking her hand again, he led her down the clanging and darkened stairway and out at the base of the Eiffel Tower.

L’Hotel George V-Paris

“Something’s changed,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“This isn’t the way we left this room,” Matosian said as soon as they’d come through the door and double- locked it behind them.

“What’s different?” Chloe said. “I don’t see…”

But he had already crossed to the table in front of the couch. It held a variety of magazines and travel guides fanned out artistically. But within the fan, two of the magazines were folded open rather than to their covers. Matosian picked up the first one, glanced at its description of fine hotels in Washington, D.C., and then immediately grabbed the second, opened to an article on Abraham Lincoln called “The Great Emancipator.”

He stood stock-still for a long moment. Chloe came up behind him and put her arms around him. “What is it?” she said.

But, his heart breaking, Matosian kept his face straight as he turned to her. “I’ve got to go now,” he said. “You’ll be safe here.”

“But…” Her doe eyes filled with tears. “I thought that you and I…”

“We will,” he said. “But I’ve got to finish this. And it won’t be safe for you where I have to go. If the warning we got in the restaurant meant anything, that much was clear. I’ve got to do this alone.”

And so saying, he kissed her one last time and strode for the door. “What ever you do,” he said as he turned at the door, “lock this behind me and don’t let anyone in, not even hotel staff. I’ve paid for your room for a week, and I’ll be back to you before then.”

“Don!” She ran across to him. “I’m afraid. I don’t know…”

He quieted her with a last kiss. “Wait for me,” he said. “Trust me.”

And with that, he was gone.

The Lincoln Memorial-Washington, D.C.

It was close to 4:00 A.M. when Matosian mounted the steps at the end of the Capitol Mall. When he got near to the top, he moved into the shadow of the imposing structure and could just make out in front of him the looming bulk of the sixteenth president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln.

The night was dead quiet and surprisingly warm. Matosian still wore his tuxedo from the Restaurant Jules Verne in Paris-there had been no time to change, and certainly not as he flew his own jet alone over the Atlantic, wrestling with his unanswered questions, his demons, and most of all, least familiarly, with his emotions.

But now he was at the end, and there was no time for emotion.

He got to the last step, paused, took a breath, and then continued forward under the massive stone ceiling and into the monument. The place seemed to be made of darkness itself. Then, steeling himself, he came forward more and then more, step by step. Finally, he stopped.

With the laser light that had served him so well in the pump house in London, now he shone its beam over the words of the Gettysburg Address on his right, then over to the Second Inaugural Address on the left. He stopped on the words, “with malice toward none; with charity for all” and somehow he felt anew that however this whole terrible affair turned out, he was proud to be doing this important work for his country, proud to be an American.

They could never take that away from him.

For some reason, he became aware of the feel of water evaporating from the reflecting pond behind him, sending a chill down the back of his neck.

There was no sound. He was alone.

It was all as it should be.

He drew in a breath as though it might be his last. Finally: “Gato,” he whispered into the cavernous emptiness. And then again, more loudly. “Goddamn it, gato.”

And from behind the statue, he heard the footsteps-a light tread, but businesslike, echoing within the semi- enclosed chamber.

A figure began to emerge from behind the sculpture. Matosian raised his laser beam, hesitated, and then pressed the button, bathing the figure in a green fluorescent light.

“Hello, Don.” How Chloe had beaten him here from Paris he didn’t know and couldn’t imagine. And she also had managed to find the time to change her clothes, for now she wore a well-tailored dark business suit. “Well done,” she said, stopping ten feet in front of him. “Congratulations. You’ve passed.”

“I’ve passed?” A slow, deep rage seemed to settle into the middle of his chest. “What do you mean? Has this all been some sort of a game?”

“Not some sort of a game, Don. The most important game in the world. We had to know what you were capable of, what motivated you, how you reacted under pressure. And we had to see it ourselves, not hear about it from some questionably reliable third source. This is the last round before you’re allowed to do the really important work, the work no one can ever know about.”

“But what…” The world seemed to be whirling about him. He brought his hands up to his forehead and closed his eyes against the sensation of vertigo. He became vaguely aware of another set of footsteps emanating from the opposite side of Lincoln’s body. Opening his eyes, he pointed his light in that direction and was not surprised to see his original connection from Langley, call him Honest Abe now, rounding the corner by the emancipator’s right foot. “Hi, Don. Glad you could make it.”

“You’re glad I could make it?” Again the rage threatened to undo Matosian. “But what about your sister?” he said to Chloe. “What was that?” He whirled on his CIA contact. “Was that simply collateral damage, as you called it, Abe?”

“Easy,” Chloe said. “We expected you to be upset, Don. Most people who get to this stage in their training are upset. It’s natural. But first, know this. She wasn’t my sister, and…”

“That doesn’t forgive…”

But she raised her hand imperiously, stopping him. “Second, and perhaps more important, she’s not dead. She took a small pill we provided that mimics death very effectively for the better part of an hour. Her job was to get the key to you and then to appear to die. Your job, which you performed spectacularly, I might add, was to forget about her as an acceptable loss and move on with the mission. If you’d have stayed around long enough for her to recover, you wouldn’t be here now. You’d be lateraled into career oblivion and never even know what happened.”

Matosian shook his head. “You people are cold,” he said.

“Cold is a virtue,” Chloe answered. “Cold is a necessity. And you’re a few degrees below lukewarm yourself.”

“For a while there I wasn’t,” Matosian replied.

“No. That was clear.”

Their eyes met. Even in the dark, Matosian thought he could still detect a spark there.

But Honest Abe spoke up, breaking the palpable tension of the moment. “Your mention of Langley was your only mistake. We thought of shutting down the mission then.”

“So why didn’t you?”