The Frenchman was doing all right himself, but he’d been a foreign ministry official and an ambassador to Canada, so now he mostly served on corporate boards and spoke at universities. His speaker’s fee was big money, unless you compared it with what Ohlhauser raked in each day he lunched with a congressman on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and pitched an international treaty beneficial to one of his clients.

It was a quarter after two in the afternoon now; Ohlhauser and his guest had downed two dozen of the Old Ebbitt Grill’s freshest Copps Island oysters and two orders of pan-roasted calf’s liver, along with martinis before, during, and after the meal. The Frenchman could outdrink the American by a wide margin, but it had been thus since they were sixteen-year-olds sneaking out of their dorm to down beers behind the horse stables at their Montreux boarding school. Even back then the Frenchman was known for having the constitution of a water buffalo, and Max Ohlhauser was known as the brainy nerd who liked to wear red bow ties.

Much had changed in their lives in the forty years since, but some things had remained unaffected by time.

Max paid the tab, but only after the Frenchman ordered one more round for himself with plans of taking it to the bar. The American would have stayed himself, but he had to get back to the office. After a round of good-byes and au revoirs, Ohlhauser stood with barely a wobble and shook the hand of his old friend. He then headed for the exit, taking his coat from the hostess with a wink as he did so.

—

A well-dressed businessman sitting at the bar paid for his beer, left the second glass half full, and headed for the door, just a few seconds behind the dark-haired man in the red bow tie. The businessman collected his raincoat and his umbrella from the hostess, and then he stepped out into the afternoon gray, slipping on a pair of sunglasses because he saw a few others wearing theirs, and popping open his umbrella because the misty afternoon warranted it.

Pedestrian traffic was exceedingly heavy at the moment; in the District it was common for businesspeople and government workers to go to lunch around one, so now huge throngs of men and women in work attire walked along in all directions, returning to their offices. The White House was just a block to the west, and the adjacent Eisenhower Executive Office building alone accommodated hundreds of government employees.

The businessman turned to his right, in the same direction of Max Ohlhauser, and he began walking north.