“Yes,” he said, and shoved the file underneath others stored in the bottom drawer of his desk.

“I haven’t said what it is.”

“Yes,” he repeated. “Yes.”

42 - Georgetown June 30

42

Georgetown June 30

“This is all wrong,” Lancette said, as she got into Addis’s Honda.

“Hello,” he said.

Let’s just drive out of town. Follow the old canal to West Virginia. Find a bed-and-breakfast. Stay there a few weeks. And then drive again—anywhere, as long as it’s in the direction of away.

“They have it all tied up, answers for everything. They’re good. Whoever they are. But there’s one thing. If we can find it, they’ll have a hard time keeping everything packaged.”

Addis pulled away from the curb. He caught a glimpse of an older woman wearing a scruffy raincoat and lying in front of a trendy clothing store. Propped up next to her were cardboard slabs bearing her psychotic scrawl. He had read the signs before: “The U.S. Government Killed My Son! I KNOW it, and they KNOW it!” How do people like that survive? he wondered.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“The Kennedy-Warren,” she said.

“And what’s there?”

The car rumbled across cobblestones.

“A piece of paper … I hope.”

He looked at her and registered the exact color of her green eyes.

“I’m just doing my job,” she added.

“And today that is … ?”

“Connecting this Max Bridge—what are they calling him now? Matthew Levon Morrison, right?—to people who would rather not be connected to him.”

“That would change things,” Addis said.

So would the fax he had received. He considered telling her about it, perhaps ask her advice on what to do with these records. But would she think he was forever mired in a dilemma? One chunk of secret history at a time, he said to himself.

“Will this evidence tell us why it happened?” he asked.

“Probably not. Maybe blow-back from an op. I don’t know. But you should hear the crap the director was giving me today.”

“And the tough part is you don’t know if he’s on the wrong side or just wrong.”

“That’s right.” She looked at him. Addis felt himself yearning.

“I’ve seen that,” he said. “In Washington, it’s not that unusual.”

“With Wenner, it is … . Or it was.”

“When I first went to work for Palmer, he told me, ‘In this town, everybody takes a dive once in a while. You have to, if you want to get anything done. So don’t be too disappointed when I take mine.’”

“That’s a record-setting level of self-awareness for Washington,” Lancette said with a laugh. “Did he take many?”

“Not many. But some.”

“And were you disappointed?”

“Every time. But I understood.”

“Maybe that’s the problem,” she said. “We understand too much.”