rendering him mute.
'Maybe what he had to say to you was important,' Emma said. 'But that's not the issue. You've got to go on, and you won't be able to do that unless you can forgive yourself.' Emma put her arm around his shoulders. 'Do you think you can do that?'
Bravo kept silent, knowing that she neither wanted nor required an answer. He simply listened, gave himself over completely to what she was saying. The truth was, despite whatever sibling-type fights they'd had when they were young, he'd always admired her, not just for her talents but for her innate intelligence.
'Before you turned your talents to risk management you were a scholar. The fact is, you're still a scholar, just as I'm still a singer. We're who we are, Bravo, whether or not we choose to believe it, because it's imprinted onto us at birth. By God? Yes, by God, through genetics. A risk manager is what you do, but that's not the same thing, is it? Dad understood that, even when you yourself lost sight of the fact.'
Well, that was something, he thought as he walked out of the hotel. More than something. Right now, it was all he had.
Chapter 3
Bravo traveled to Washington on the shuttle, checking the faces and demeanor of his fellow passengers both in the terminal and on the plane. He took with him the two keys-the seven-star key, as he'd come to call it, and the more pedestrian Medeco key to his father's apartment-and nothing more, except for the money he'd taken from his safety deposit box. He didn't know why he'd brought the money-a hunch, or a presentiment similar, perhaps, to the one that had brought his father to the Quai de Crenelle six months ago. One other thing: he also carried in his head a growing constellation of facts in search of a pattern.
The dense southern humidity rolling up the edge of the Chesapeake attempted to smother him the moment he strode out of the terminal. Halfway toward the rank of taxis, he stopped, as if abruptly unsure of himself. The sky was a uniform white, tinged with the palest blue lower down, away from the burning sun. Small eddies of a spendthrift wind stirred fistfuls of soot and candy wrappers into brief trembling spirals. Without warning, he turned and purposefully retraced his steps. Back inside the terminal, he walked past the huge plate-glass panels, watching the crowds coming and going. What he was looking for he could not at that moment have said, but like an animal with its snout to the wind he had responded to a peculiar prickling in the hollow between his shoulder blades. He went and got himself a cup of coffee, stood sipping it while he covertly watched the faces of passersby. Part of him felt ridiculous, but another, growing part of him, would not allow him to relax.
At length, satisfying some deeply buried instinct, he threw his paper cup into the trash and headed back out to hail a taxi.
Dexter Shaw had lived in a modest one-bedroom apartment in Foggy Bottom, that curious section of Washington between the White House and Georgetown. A century ago, the low-lying area was damp and swampy, owing to its proximity to the Potomac. Fog swirling in off the river often combined with a thick, greasy airborne mass, an industrial London-like smog emanating from the nearby Washington Gas and Light Company, Godey's lime kilns and Cranford's Paving Company. Nowadays, it was home to many legislators and a good place to network, which was, after all, the currency that greased the wheels of DCs curiously old-fashioned engine.
The apartment complex was in a huge redbrick building that took up most of the block on H Street. It was a modern, completely anonymous structure without ornament or interesting angle, form following function, typical of an unfortunate school of postmodern architecture.
Identifying himself to the uniformed doorman, Bravo took the elevator up to the twelfth floor, went down the blue-carpeted hallway. He slipped the Medeco key into the front door to his father's apartment. It didn't work. He tried again, wriggling it back and forth as if perhaps it needed only some small encouragement to fulfill its function.
He was about to try for a third fruitless time when he heard a voice behind him and, turning, found a small, dark-faced man coming toward him.
'I'm Manny-the super. Johnny-the doorman-phoned down to tell me.' He offered his hand. 'You're Mr. Shaw's son, ain't you?'
'That's right,' Bravo said.
'We were all tore up when we heard of Mr. Shaw's untimely passing. Everybody in the building liked him. He was quiet, you know, kept to himself-but friendly all the time.'
My father, the politician, always honing his image, Bravo thought as he thanked the man. 'I thought he'd given me the key to the apartment, but it doesn't work.'
'No worries.' The super took out a ring of keys and, searching through them, inserted one in the lock, opened it. He stood back for Bravo to enter.
'I gotta stay here while you have a look around,' he said. 'Building rules. You understand.'
Bravo said that he did. But when he entered the apartment, he realized that he understood nothing at all. The apartment was empty. As he moved through it, looking in all the rooms and closets, he could find not a stick of furniture, not an item of clothing, nothing that would indicate that the apartment had ever been occupied.
Stunned, Bravo turned to the super. 'I don't understand. Where are all my father's belongings?'
The super pursed his lips. He smelled of tobacco and sweat. 'I thought you'd have known. They removed the contents of the apartment days ago.'
'They?' Bravo shook his head. 'Who are 'they'?'
The super shrugged his shoulders, 'State Department, government men. Showed me their ID and everything. Was there something in particular you was looking for?'
Bravo shook his head, unable to speak. His father's entire life, where had it gone?
The super gave him an almost furtive look of pity and said that, after all, he thought in this one instance it would be okay to leave Bravo alone in the apartment. Bravo thanked him, and he left.
Bravo closed his eyes, breathing deeply as if trying to find a lingering trace of his father. His eyes snapped open and he went again from room to room, checking drawers, closets and cupboards in the kitchen and bath. Not only had the contents been removed, but the apartment had been thoroughly cleaned from top to bottom. Sanitized. He'd once heard his father use the term when they'd had to abandon the embassy in Nairobi several years ago.
He took out his cell phone and called his father's office at State. After several minutes, he was connected with Ted Coffey, a senior analyst his father had introduced him to several times.
'Hey, Braverman, I'm so sorry. How are you doing?'
'As well as can be expected, I suppose,' Bravo said.
'And Emma?'
'Also.'
'We all miss him, you know, but no one more than me. He was a goddamned fixture around here. Twenty-plus years, I can hardly believe it myself. Frankly, I don't know what I'm going to do without his expertise. That goddamned analytical brain of his simply can't be replaced, and everyone here knows it.'
'Thanks, Ted. That means a lot to me.' Bravo walked into the center of the bedroom, turning slowly in a full circle. 'Listen, Ted, what did you guys do with my father's belongings?'
There was a moment's pause. 'I don't understand.'
'Well, I'm standing in his apartment in Foggy Bottom and there isn't a stick of furniture or an item of clothing here. Everything's been cleaned out.'
'It wasn't us, Braverman.'
'The super said some government men came. He saw their IDs.'
'I don't care what the super said,' Ted Coffey said. 'No one authorized the removal of the contents of Dex's apartment, and that's a fact. Strictly against departmental policy.'
Bravo stood for a moment in the silent, bare apartment. Vainly, he tried to imagine his father in this place. Thanking Coffey for his time and heartfelt condolences, Bravo closed the connection.
He looked down at the Medeco key, using his remarkable memory to once again recreate the conversation on the misty Parisian quai. What was it exactly his father had said? Ah, yes. 'If something happens take the spare
