where that was, but it sounded as good a place as any.
I gave the old boy his cash and off he drove. The whole area looked new and high rent, both shopping and residential. There was a Ritz Carlton hotel and, a few minutes away, the Pentagon.
I got my bearings and led Kelly toward the mall. I wanted to visit an ATM to celebrate the start of a new financial day.
We exited and walked across the supermarket parking lot, then on toward the river. It was strange, because for the first time I felt like I was really responsible for Kelly. I still held her hand when we were crossing roads, but now it seemed natural to keep holding it on the sidewalks, too. I had to admit, it felt good to have her with me, but maybe that was only because I knew it looked natural and therefore provided ideal cover.
We walked under the concrete freeway bridge that led to downtown D.C. It was very busy. The traffic sounded like muffled thunder; I told Kelly about the scene in Cabaret in which Sally Bowles goes under the railway bridge to scream when things get too much for her. I didn't tell her that was what I'd been feeling like doing for the last forty-eight hours.
Past the bridge the landscape changed. It was easy to imagine what this area must have looked like maybe fifty or sixty years earlier, because it hadn't been fully developed yet.
It was full of derelict railway-siding buildings, some of which had been taken over as offices, though much of the area was just fenced off into lots or used as car pounds.
I looked left and saw the elevated section of the highway disappear into the distance toward downtown Washington. A concrete wall hid all the supports, and a road ran alongside.
There was no sidewalk, just a thin strip of hard ground, littered with soda cans and cigarette packs. It looked as if people parked up on the shoulders here to avoid the parking charges farther in. There were old, ramshackle buildings everywhere, but the place was still being used. On the right was the dark Street Playhouse, a theater in what had once been a railway warehouse. The tracks were still there, but they were now rusty, and weeds were growing through. From above us came the continuous roar of traffic on the elevated highway.
We passed a scrap-metal yard, then a cement distribution plant where the boats used to come up the Potomac and dump their loads. I then saw something that was so totally out of place it was almost surreal. A late 1960s hotel, the Calypso, was still standing in defiance of progress. It was marooned in the middle of an ocean of chrome, smoked glass, and shiny brick, as if the owners had decided to give the finger to the property developers who were slowly taking over this dying area.
It was a very basic, four-story building, built in the shape of an open square; in the middle was a parking lot crammed with cars and pickups. There were no windows on the outer walls, just air conditioners sticking out of the cinder block.
We turned left; with the highway thundering away above us we walked past the hotel on my right side. We were now parallel with Ball Street, which lay behind it. Kelly hadn't said a word. I was in work mode anyway; if it weren't for the fact that I had hold of her hand, I would probably have forgotten she was with me.
As we got even with the Calypso I wiped the drizzle from my face and peered up into the gloom. On its roof was a massive satellite dish, easily three yards across. It wouldn't have looked out of place on top of the Pentagon. We turned right and right again. We were on Ball Street.
From street numbers on the map I knew that the target was going to be on my left. I kept to the right side for a better perspective.
It was still incredibly noisy; if it wasn't an aircraft taking off from the airport just the other side of the tree line, it was the continuous roar from Highway 1. 'Where are we going?'
Kelly had to shout to be heard above it all.
'Down there,' I nodded.
'I want to see if we can find a friend's office. And then we can find a nice new hotel to stay in.'
'Why do we have to move around all the time?'
I was stumped on that one. I was still looking at the street numbers, not at her.
'Because I get bored easily, especially if the food's no good. That one last night was crap, wasn't it?'
There was a pause, then, 'What's crap?'
'It means that it's not very nice.'
'It was OK to me.'
'It was dirty. Let's go to a decent hotel, that's what I want to do.'
'But we can stay at my house.'
A jet had just left the runway and was banking hard at what appeared to be rooftop level. We watched for a while, trans fixed; even Kelly was impressed.
As the roar of its engines died down I said, 'Come on, let's find that office.'
I kept looking forward and left, trying to judge which building it was going to be. There was a hodgepodge of styles old factories and storage units, new two-story office buildings rubbed shoulders with parking lots and truck container dumps. In between the buildings I could just glimpse the trees that lined the Potomac maybe three hundred yards beyond.
We were in the high nineties, so I knew the PIRA office building wouldn't be far away. We walked on until we got to a new-looking, two-story office, all steel frames and exposed pipe work All the fluorescent lights were on inside. I tried to read the nameplates but couldn't make them out in the gloom without squinting hard or going closer, neither of which I wanted to do. One said unicorn but I couldn't make out the others.
It didn't look much like the sort of Sinn Fein or PIRA offices I was used to. Cable Street in Deny, for example, was a row house on a 1920s residential street; the places in west Belfast were much the same. Had Pat got this right? In my mind I'd been expecting some old tenement. Chances were this was just a front--it would be a commercial business;
people working there would be legit.
I focused on the target as we walked past, but didn't look back. You have to take in all the information the first time around.
'Nick?'
'What?'
'My feet are really wet.'
I looked down. Her feet were soaked; I'd been concentrating so much on what to do next that I hadn't noticed the puddles we were walking through. I should have bought her a pair of boots at the mall.
We got to a T-intersection. Looking left, I could see that the road led down toward the river. More cars parked up on the shoulders, and even more scrap yards
I looked right. At the end of the street was the elevated highway, and just before that, above the rooftops, I could see the dish on top of the Calypso Hotel. I was feeling good.
A successful recon and somewhere to stay, and all before 11 a.m. We walked into the hotel parking lot. I pointed between a pickup truck and a UPS van.
'Wait under the landing, and keep out of the rain. I'll be back soon.'
'Why can't I come with you. Nick? It's dark under here.'
I started my puppy-training act.
'No wait ... there. I won't be long.' I disappeared before she could argue.
The hotel lobby was just one of the first-floor rooms turned into an office. Checking in was as casual as the layout. The poor Brit family story was understood a lot quicker here.
I Went outside, collected Kelly, and, as we walked along the concrete and cinder block toward our new room on the second floor, I was busy thinking about what I'd have to do next. She suddenly tugged on my hand.
'Double crap!'
'What?'
'You know, like not nice. You said the other one was crap.
This is double crap.'
I had to agree. I even thought I could smell vomit.
'No, no, wait till you get in. You see that satellite dish? We can probably get every single program in the world on that. It's not going to be crap at all.'
There were two king-size beds in the room, a big TV, and the usual dark, lacquered surfaces and a few bits of furniture a long sideboard that had seen better days, a closet that was just a rail inside an open cupboard in the
