Downstairs into Penn Station, Tesla paid cash for a one-way ticket on the Acela Express to Washington’s Union Station, though she planned to get off in Delaware. Checking the overhead departure board, she saw she had enough time to run to the newsstand for a pre-paid cell phone and an array of domestic and international newspapers for the two-hour train ride to Wilmington.

As she gathered her change, she looked up. There, on a TV above a rack of batteries and disposable cameras, was a grainy video of a gun battle at Dulles Airport. “Two Cops Killed,” the zipper reported.

“Harold,” she said, the word escaping before she realized it had.

She stared at the soundless newscast. The zipper under the video now told her the gunman hadn’t yet been found.

For some reason, she took it as verification that he was still alive.

She wondered if the same could be said of Lespasse and, maybe, Brocco.

Twelve hours earlier, Harold Middleton left the St. Regis Hotel with the sadist Eleana Soberski on his arm and a Zastava P25 in his ribs. As he and Soberski walked west along K Street, they seemed like the kind of couple not unknown in the neighborhood: a disheveled middle-aged man in a business suit, briefcase swinging at the end of his fist, and an upscale hooker exuding cold impenetrability. Except they were moving away from a four-star hotel rather than toward one for a $500 an hour “date.”

Middleton listened for police cruisers’ sirens—no doubt the cowering bartender had called the D.C. police who, in turn, would notify the FBI. Lurching along, he wondered if he’d be saved by the people he’d been trying to avoid.

He said, “Where—”

The gun nozzle raked his ribs.

“Farragut Square,” Soberski replied, “the statue. Charlotte is there.”

Middleton stumbled, but Soberski kept him upright.

“The briefcase,” he said.

“Yes, the briefcase,” Soberski replied. “Of course, the briefcase. But the briefcase is not enough.”

Middleton glanced around. K Street was empty, the sidewalks rolled up now that the dinner hour was through. In New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Krakow, Warsaw, there’d be dozens of people enjoying the night air, on their way to a new hot spot, their chatter and laughter a giddy prelude to what’s next. In Washington, you could hear the joyless scrape of the guards’ shoes outside Lafayette Park and the White House two blocks away.

“What do you mean ‘not enough’?” Middleton asked as they turned north on 16th Street.

“To me, a piece of paper.”

“My daughter—”

“Of course you would trade your Chopin for your daughter. But what else?”

They stood at the corner of Connecticut Avenue, pausing as a few taxis headed east. As Middleton caught his breath, he finally heard the wail of sirens, further off than he’d hoped, but drawing nearer.