I click on the number and am given the option to CALL, which I select, and I wait for it to connect. And it does, ringing loudly, wirelessly through intercom speakers in the SUV.

“Thank you for calling the Hay-Adams. This is Crystal, how may I assist you?” a female voice answers.

“Hello?” Marino says with a blank expression that turns into a murderous scowl. “This is the Hay-Adams? The hotel?” He turns his baffled furious face to me and silently mouths, What the fuck?

“This is the Hay-Adams in Washington, D.C. How may I assist you, sir?”

“Would you mind reading back your number to make sure it’s what I was given?” Marino says, his glaring eyes on the road.

“Were you trying to contact the Hay-Adams Hotel, sir?”

“It would be helpful if you’d tell me your number. I think I might have dialed the wrong place,” Marino says, and after a pause the woman recites the same number that’s in the electronic note I looked at.

“Thanks. My mistake.” Marino ends the call. “Goddamn son of a bitch!” He slams his meaty fist on the steering wheel.

What he wrote down is the general number for the hotel. It’s what was given to him by someone who identified himself as a counterterrorism investigator for Interpol. This is worse than a typo or even a deliberate and mocking misdirect. It’s personal, and not just directed at Marino. It may not be directed at him, period, but now’s not the moment to tell him that. The Hay-Adams means nothing to him and I doubt he’s ever stayed there.

But the hotel is close to the Capitol, the White House, and convenient to FBI headquarters, and also its academy and behavioral analysis unit in northern Virginia. The Hay-Adams is our first choice when Benton and I are in Washington, D.C., together, and we were there several weeks ago for business and pleasure. We visited museums, and Benton had meetings in Quantico while I conferred with General Briggs about our space shuttle presentation at the Kennedy School.

I think back to anything else that stands out about the trip. But nothing extraordinary occurred. I had work and so did Benton. We were in and out of offices and around a number of different people. Then the last night we were there we had dinner with Briggs and his wife at the Palm with its cartoon-covered walls.

We sat in a booth near a host of iconic characters. Nixon, Spider-Man, Kissinger, and Dennis the Menace, I recall.

CHAPTER 12

SIRENS SCREAM AS A Cambridge patrol car squeals a tight left off Winthrop and falls in behind us. We’re a light show flashing along John F. Kennedy Street, and other drivers are slowing down and moving out of the way.

“Shit, shit, shit. Damn son of a bitch,” Marino continues cussing a blue storm, to borrow another of his uniquely crafted clichés.