Whitman was laughing.

“Gregory, what the fuck!”

“Boss, meet Charlie Daou, my new armorer.”

* * *

Orteño was in rehab when Luther St. Vincent strode into the room and said to the PT nurse, “I am in need of your patient.” At almost the same time, he beckoned to Flix. “Let’s go up to your room and get you dressed. I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep.”

Ten minutes later, he had bundled Orteño into a black Cadillac Escalade with smoked windows and enough room inside to erect a barn. The two men sat side by side while a driver in sunglasses, overcoat, and black leather gloves drove them very fast out to Rockville Pike, taking it north to Cedar Lane, then making a right. It wasn’t long before the Escalade turned right again. Flix figured they couldn’t have come more than five miles from the Walter Reed complex. Up ahead, he saw a sign for the Bethesda Institute of Mary Immaculate. Passing the sign, the driver immediately cut the Escalade’s speed, like a motorboat in a no-wake zone. The two men had uttered not one word.

Flowering cherry trees, their buds just beginning to peek out, lined the gravel driveway on either side. Then the house loomed up, looking very large, very ornate, and very British. Inside, they were greeted by a woman who called herself Sister Margaret, a dour woman going on sixty, whose wiry, gray hair was tied back in a severe bun.

She walked them silently out of the entry, down a series of maze-like corridors, all of which had closed doors on either side. Behind one, Orteño heard laughter, behind another, sobbing. Eventually, they came to the conservatory—a large room filled with light streaming in through a pitched ceiling made of panes of glass. It faced the rear of the building. Flix could see a wide lawn sloping down to a set of four tennis courts.

“We used to have a pond there,” Sister Margaret said, “until one of the girls drowned herself. Then we filled it in.”

She reported this with the matter-of-fact tone of a talking head on TV. Orteño glanced at her, wondering whether she might be a sociopath. But his experience was with priests, not nuns.

Just then, Sister Margaret stopped and pointed to a figure in a chair near the left-hand corner. “Lucinda is just there,” she said.

Flix looked around. “No cops?”

“No FBI, either.” St. Vincent was studying his nails with the concentration of a manicurist.

If St. Vincent had meant to impress Orteño, then mission accomplished. Only someone very high up in the clandestine services could have pulled Lucy from the clutches of the FBI.

Sister Margaret cleared her throat. It was clear she had more pressing business elsewhere. “Take as much time as you need.”

“You have thirty minutes,” St. Vincent broke in.

Sister Margaret gave him the flicker of a humorless smile before she turned back to Orteño. “If there’s trouble…”