D.C. Dead

3

They checked in, and a bellman took them to the top floor of the hotel, thence to a pair of double doors.

“We need two doors?” Dino asked.

The bellman opened the door, and they walked into a large sitting room. Stone gave the bellman a fifty. “His room is the worst one,” he said, indicating Dino.

“They’re both very nice,” the bellman said, hesitating.

“How about the smallest bathroom?” Stone asked.

“Once again, both very nice.”

“Okay,” Stone said, pointing to the door on his right, “put my bags in that one.”

Dino went and opened the door to his room. “Can we manage this on five hundred per diem?”

Stone shook his head. “I’m splurging. It’s the first time I’ve spent any of Arrington’s bequest. You can chip in half your per diem.”

“Deal,” Dino said, walking into his room. The bellman followed with his bags.

Stone went into his room, unpacked his bags, and put things in dresser drawers. He grabbed a handful of things on hangers and gave them to the bellman. “Pressed and back in an hour?”

“Better make it an hour and a half,” the man said. “You’ve got a lot of stuff here.”

Dino added some things to his burden, and the man left. Dino walked over to a set of French doors and opened them. “Wow,” he said.

“Wow what?”

“Come out here and look at this.”

Stone walked out and found himself on a terrace, nicely furnished. Then he looked out over op|Lafayette Park and saw the White House, neatly framed by trees. “Wow,” he said.

“How much are you paying for this?” Dino asked.

“I don’t want to know,” Stone said. “I never again want to know how much anything costs.”

“Let’s keep this gig going as long as we can,” Dino said. “How about some lunch on our terrace?”

They ordered from room service and were soon sitting on their terrace, allowing the air-conditioning to waft through the French doors to combat the August heat in Washington. They ate, and stared at the White House.

“There are people on the roof,” Stone said.

“Well-armed people, no doubt,” Dino replied, popping a French fry into his mouth. “And I’ll bet those box things conceal ground-to-air missiles.”

“Don’t do anything threatening,” Stone said. “They could put one right through the French doors.”

“You still have no idea why we’re here?” Dino asked.

“I haven’t received any messages from the ether,” Stone replied.

Stone was stretched out on his bed, watching MSNBC on the large flat-screen TV, when the bellman returned with his clothes and hung them in the closet.

“I hope you’ll be very comfortable here,” the man said, doing the bellman shuffle.

Stone gave him a twenty. “We’ll struggle through,” he said.

“Just let me know if you need anything at all, Mr. Barrington.” The man left, taking the room service table with him.

Stone drifted off, and Holly came into his head. He was caressing her ass when Dino rapped on the doorjamb.

“We’re due over at the neighbors’ house in an hour,” he said. “You’d better shake your ass.”

Stone reflected that that was what Holly had been doing when he had last imagined her. “Right,” he said, putting his feet on the floor. “I’ll grab a shower.” He did so, freshened his shave, and got into clean clothes.

The valet brought the SUV under the hotel portico, and Stone walked around it once. The license plate contained only a four-digit number, 4340, and there were no manufacturer’s badges on the car, just black paint. He checked out the door locks as he got into the passenger seat. “All the locks are beefy,” he said as Dino got in. “And I’d be willing to bet that this is one of Mike Newman’s armored vehicles. The Agency is one of his clients.” Mike Newman was the CEO of Strategic Services, Stone’s biggest client, on whose board he served.

“That makes me nervous,” Dino said, closing his door. He looked at the key in his hand and pressed a button on it. The car started. “That makes me nervous, too. You think they think somebody’s going to shoot at us or put a bomb in the car?”

“It’s the CIA, Dino,” Stone replied. “It’s probably all they had.”

They made their way to Pennsylvania Avenue. “Which gate do we use?” Dino asked.

“There,” Stone said, pointing. “That’s the one you see in the movies all the time.”

Dino swung into the drive and stoppiv>ve and ed at the gate. Two uniformed officers wearing Secret Service badges approached, one on each side. Stone and Dino presented their White House IDs.

“Names?” an officer asked.

“Barrington and Bacchetti,” Dino replied. “Sounds like a delicatessen, doesn’t it?”

The officer maintained a stone face as he checked a clipboard. “Right, Mr. Barrington,” he said.

“Bacchetti,” Dino corrected him.

“Right. Straight ahead, under the portico. Somebody will meet you.”

The gate opened and Dino drove through.

“Slowly,” Stone said. “I want to take this in.”

“It’s not our first time here, you know.” They had attended a White House dinner a couple of years before.

“I know, but I didn’t take it all in that time.”

Dino pulled to a stop under the portico, and a man on each side of the car opened the doors. One of them drove the car away, and the other opened the door to the building. They presented their IDs at a reception desk, and the young man who had opened the door led them down a hallway until they came to an elevator. When they got in, he pressed an unmarked button and stepped out of the car. “You’ll be met,” he said.

The elevator rose; Stone couldn’t be sure how far. He didn’t know the car had stopped until the doors opened. They stepped into a broad hallway, and a man in a dark suit with a small badge of some sort on his lapel waved them to a sofa against the wall. “Please be seated. Someone will come for you shortly.”

They sat. A little way down the hall another Secret Service agent stood at a loose parade rest before a large door.

They had been on the sofa for perhaps five minutes when the elevator door opened, and the first lady of the United States stepped out, followed closely by Holly Barker. The first lady was also the director of Central Intelligence, Katharine Rule Lee, and it had taken an act of Congress to overlook the inconvenience that nepotism had been involved in her appointment.

“Mr. Barrington, Lieutenant Bacchetti,” the director said, walking over and extending her hand. “It’s good to see you both again.”

They had already leapt to their feet to renew their acquaintance, previously made at the White House dinner.

Mrs. Lee led the way down the hall to the guarded door, which was opened for her by the Secret Service agent. “Come in,” she said, sweeping into a large, handsomely furnished living room. “The president is on his way back from the West Coast and will be here in time for dinner. In the meantime, what would you like to drink?”

“Mr. Barrington will have a Knob Creek on the rocks,” Holly said to a man in a white jacket, “and Lieutenant Bacchetti will have a Johnnie Walker Black the same way.”

“I see you’ve been drinking with them,” the first lady observed.