Was I really in any danger? Let’s put it this way: I wouldn’t sell a life insurance policy to myself. I had to be on somebody’s naughty list. I’d earned it. Dick and Frannie were probably salivating. My guess was they hadn’t picked me up in the first sweep because they believed being stuck in a chair limited my options. To them, I was a permanently sitting fuck. Where was I going to roll? So after collecting all the people who might scatter, they would come back for the easy pickings. I had to smile at that thought. Being underestimated definitely had its advantages.

Instead of pressing that elevator button, I walked around the corner and took the freight elevator to the subbasement. It was surprisingly brightly lit. Cardboard boxes of cleaning supplies, toilet paper, and fluorescent bulbs—whatever was needed to keep an office building humming—were piled neatly against the walls. As the doors opened, I heard voices. Then I saw two young women; they jumped when I emerged from the elevator. “You scared me,” one of them said, the hand holding her cigarette pressed against her chest. Clearly they had sneaked down there to have a smoke and were relieved to see who I wasn’t.

“Ladies,” I said, smiling pleasantly as I moved past them. They stepped back to make room for me, then resumed their conversation. The basement was well-organized and surprisingly immaculate. Management was taking good care of it. It smelled of slightly damp cement, cardboard, and cigarettes. I made a note to myself that if I ever needed a place to hide, this would work. The last place anyone would look for me was …

Wow. That was quick. It had been only hours since Wrightman’s announcement, and already I was compiling a list of safe places.

The custodial door opened onto a rear alley that stretched the entire length of the block. Rather than steps, a cement ramp sloped very gently up to street level, obviously to make it easy access for maintenance to dolly supplies in and garbage out. That didn’t surprise me. Most large buildings have rear ramps, but those people who don’t need them don’t think about it. In particular the Dicks and Frannies.

The alley was wide enough to allow small trucks and vans to make deliveries. It was lined with green metal dumpsters bursting with small mountains of black and clear plastic garbage bags. I followed it for about forty yards until I reached a narrow passage between buildings, just wide enough for Mighty Chair to squeeze through onto the street.

I eased out, as if I were a car nosing into a busy intersection. I looked to my left and sat there for several minutes. There were several soldiers on the block, but no one seemed to be paying any special attention to my building. I took a hard right and picked up speed, leaving the Pro in Mighty Chair’s rearview screen.

In those few hours, the sidewalks had come alive; in fact they seemed even more crowded than a typical downtown weekday lunch hour. But instead of the usual businesspeople, it was an odd juxtaposition of armed troops wearing modified combat gear, D.C. cops in their formal riot gear, members of different militias wearing colorful uniforms and matching armbands, and casually dressed spectators who had come downtown to see the show for themselves. The spectacle of a young couple wheeling a stroller past militia members with automatic weapons strapped on their backs was startling. Rather than Washington, D.C., on a glorious early summer day, it felt about as gay and carefree as the Unter den Linden in 1938.