He went to the Columbia Mall and parked in the covered parking, where his car would be harder to spot. He turned on his cell phone and strolled into the mall. It was so nice, so damn American. He went into the Sears, strolling easily, looking at the washing machines, the clothes. He bought a couple of shirts, a pair of pants, a blue blazer and some black sneakers. When he came out of the men’s room, he looked like the same guy in different clothes. He knew that you weren’t going to be able to disguise Paul Ward, but every little bit helped.

He dropped his phone in a lady’s shopping bag. They’d follow that, for sure, probably track it down in about an hour. There was going to be some excitement in her sweet life.

He went outside and hailed a cab, which he took to the campus of St. John’s College in Annapolis. A thousand years ago, he’d been a St. Johnnie for a couple of semesters. The school followed a great-books curriculum, starting with Homer and ending with Freud and Einstein. He’d read the Iliad and the Odyssey under Professor Klein, who’d had his fingers broken by the Nazis for playing the piano better than an Aryan. Still, as much as it hurt, he had played of an evening, Debussy and Chopin and Satie . . . He hadn’t weaned young Paul away from doo-wop, but the playing had been awesome.

Paul had been the only kid in the whole school who’d favored the war in Vietnam, and also been dumb enough to put a statement up on the bulletin board about it. As a result, he’d soon found himself being recruited by CIA, and thus had begun the rest of his life. Old George Hauser, of blessed memory, had sat with him on that bench right over there under the great oak and spoken to him of what it meant to be an operations officer, how hard it really was, and just how disappointing it could be . . . and how much it mattered.

He went up the brick walk toward McDowell Hall, the administration building and meeting hall, where the choir had met. The young voices returned, calling to him from the quiet that he entered when he entered the building. Downstairs was the coffee shop, and there also was the bulletin board where his current life had begun.