Alex returned home, picking up her mail in the lobby, giving a friendly nod to the concierge. She fumbled with two bags, flowers, and mail as she walked past.
Alex lived alone in a one-bedroom apartment in a modern building called Calvert Arms Apartments on Calvert Avenue and Twenty-fourth Street, in the Cleveland Park neighborhood in the northwest quadrant of the city. It was a comfortable quiet building built in the mid-sixties, filled with young single people-students, interns, people just starting their first job out of college, and government retirees.
She waited at the elevator. It was stopped on the fifth floor. It seemed to be permanently stopped, as if someone was saying a longwinded good-bye.
She grew impatient. The elevator began to descend slowly.
Five,
She knew everyone on her floor, at least by sight. Who was making her day longer than it had to be?
Two,
The twin doors of the elevator opened. Out stepped a young woman who could hardly have been older than her early twenties, very pretty in a heavy parka and tight jeans. A student at one of Washington’s numerous colleges, Alex figured.
Students, along with career-beginners, were the Calvert Arms’ bread and butter. They coexisted with the old women in their seventies, eighties, or even nineties who had moved into the place when it opened forty years ago. At that time they had been middle-aged empty-nesters. Time had passed. They were still empty-nesters, just twice as old. Their ex- or late husbands had been pushing up daisies for decades.
The younger girl hurried to the front door. Alex stepped into the elevator and rode to the fifth floor.
Her neighbor across the hall had started out as a friendly nodding acquaintance and ended up becoming a good friend in a fatherly kind of way. He was a scholarly sixty-year-old who had worked for the State Department for twenty-eight years. Now he was a retired diplomat who played catchy pop music from Latin America each morning as she was on her way to work. The Calvert Arms was pretty well insulated, but you could hear music in the hallway through the doors.
Alex had on occasion met him going into or coming out of his apartment and had struck up a conversation in the laundry room, commenting on his choices. She too liked Lucero and the late Rocio Durcal. One day she couldn’t help asking, “Do you only listen to women singers?”
“Absolutely,” he replied. “My virtual harem.”
That conversation and similar exchanges had let to a curious kind of friendship with a man who could be friendly but was self-contained, seemingly content with his virtual harem. He had few visitors. They spoke only Spanish with each other and his was easily a match for hers. She called him Don Tomas, though he was no Latin. He had invited her and Robert in for brunch one Sunday. They had been fascinated by his collection of art deco prints from the 1920s and 1930s, notably some beautifully preserved works of the French artist Tamara de Lempicka. They were all stylized pictures of beautiful women.
“Another part of your virtual harem?” she had asked.
Don Tomas had replied in the most relaxed manner imaginable, “Absolutely.”
This evening no sound from the vocal part of the virtual harem was coming through the door as she passed. She hoped nothing had happened to him.
She glanced at her mail and dumped it on the dining table. Then she stood perfectly still. Was everything exactly as she had left it? Was there something that she sensed, but could not quite put a finger on? Alex was unsure. Coupled with the appearance of the man at the bar in the Athenian, the evening had taken on a strange spin. Or was she just overanxious about a Ukraine trip that she didn’t want to make?
She sighed. She dismissed it. She placed the flowers in a vase.
She was in bed by midnight. She set the alarm for 6:00 a.m. Then, as she settled in to sleep, her eyes shot open. A realization hit her.
The man she had seen at the bar in the Athenian?
He was Fred, one of the two newcomers at the gym. Away from the gym, in a Burberry raincoat instead of basketball togs, she hadn’t recognized him. Chances were that he couldn’t figure out why he thought he knew her. Well, now she could relax. At least she knew why she recognized him and from where.
She closed her eyes. Minutes after her head hit the pillow, she was sleeping soundly.
SEVEN
The next morning at 7:54 a.m., Alexandra walked through the entrance to Room 6776 B at the main building of the United States State Department, a vast complex covering two city blocks. To come in out of the cold she used the Twenty-first Street entrance, which had been built in the 1930s as the War Department for the US Army.
The handsome marble-clad art deco lobby had a curious mural featuring peaceful Americans at work and prayer. They were surrounded by protective soldiers in gas masks, cannons, and then-new-fangled four engine bombers. Out of embarrassment at the martial theme, the State Department had long hidden the picture behind a curtain, but later more tolerant minds had prevailed.
Alex’s meeting was not in that part of the building but in the much larger part built onto the original structure under Eisenhower. The two components had different floor plans that Alex always found disorienting when she paid a visit.
She arrived in a small conference chamber with a circular table and six chairs.
The room tone was flat. Soundproofing. It was like being in a clinic for hearing aids. One window with double glass overlooked an inner courtyard with a statue of Atlas holding up the globe.
At the desk, a small, trim man adjusted his spectacles but did not look up. He had a mop of gray hair and a reddish face. He wore a crimson tie and a cream-colored shirt. He was flanked by a half-finished container of Starbucks, the tall one with the full day’s caffeine punch. He had a look to him that she thought she recognized, one of those surly old State Department retirees who get called back for special assignments.
“Alexandra LaDuca,” he said, finally glancing up.
“Good morning.”
“Good morning,” she said. “Yes. I’m Alex.”
He stood. He was a smaller man than she had initially thought, not much more than five foot four. Over the years, she had learned to be wary of tiny people who might harbor king-sized complexes.
“I’m Michael Cerny. State Department. Please sit,” he said. He indicated that she could take any seat at the table.
“I’m afraid I don’t even know what this is about,” she said. She sat, choosing a seat that allowed several empty chairs between them.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “This is the government. We’re soldiers, aren’t we? We march forward. Orders.”
“Sometimes,” she said.
“Sometimes,” he agreed.
“I suppose you better bring me up to date,” she said. “Explain where I’ll be marching. You talk and I’ll listen.”
“Quite,” he said. “Excellent. Tell me. Water? Coffee? Tea?” he asked. There was a service on a side table, which held all three.
“Just some water,” she said.
He fetched it. She glanced around the room. One reading chair. Reading lamps. Prints from second-rate paintings. Landscapes meant to offend no one. Bookcases without a single book. Michael Cerny sat down again.
He related that he was actually retired from the State Department after thirty-five years but had returned for a special ten-week assignment. She was off to a good start, assuming he could be believed. She had called that one perfectly.
