Jonathan walked inside, closing the doors behind him. Happily, the maid had left. He checked that the thermostat was set to low, then drew the curtains. The air conditioner rumbled to life, and he raised a hand to check that the air pouring from the vent was cool. His time in Afghanistan had accustomed him to sleeping with a cold head and warm body. He took off his watch and laid it by the bed. He had no idea what the agenda was, but no doubt Connor had everything planned out. For the moment, he was too tired to care. Still standing, he removed his pants and his underwear. He thought about taking a shower, then decided against it. The bed was too inviting. He pulled back the sheets.
Without warning, a sharp blow pounded his kidney. He gasped, feeling the presence of someone close behind him. He spun and saw a flash of powder blue, but before he could turn halfway, iron hands clutched his arm and threw him to the ground. He landed belly down, his left arm wrenched behind him in a police armlock.
“Never turn your back on a stranger.”
“Let go,” grunted Jonathan, his face mashed against the carpet. “You’re breaking my arm.”
“Did you see me leave the room?”
Jonathan recognized the accented English. “No,” he managed out of the side of his mouth.
“Did you notice if there was a service cart in the hallway? See my nametag?”
“No.”
“What about downstairs? Many guests milling about? Lots of cars in the parking lot?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Any reason why I should be servicing your room so late in the afternoon if the entire hotel is empty?”
“Ummm… no.”
“So are you naive or just plain stupid?” A twist of the arm emphasized each adjective. “Never trust anyone.”
“Get off of me.”
“Make me. You’re a strong man. Go ahead. I weigh one hundred and twenty pounds. Surely you can free yourself.”
Jonathan struggled to flip her off his back. Then he tried to get his right arm beneath him and raise himself to his knees. He was no martial arts expert, but over the years he’d picked up a little jujitsu here, some Krav Maga there. And he was strong. Yet his every attempt was stymied with a hold more painful than the last. “Enough,” he said, his cheek wedged against the floor once again.
“Look around you. Ask yourself why, where, how, what if. Don’t just look but see. Observe.”
His eyes focused on the carpet less than an inch away. He observed that it was blue, with green speckles.
The armlock relaxed. The weight on his back lifted. Jonathan lay still, catching his breath. The maid walked to the curtains but, true to her advice, never completely took her eyes from him. “Get up and put something on.”
Jonathan pushed himself to his feet and limped into the bathroom. By the time he returned with a towel wrapped around his waist, the maid had removed her apron and let down her hair. She was tall, more handsome than pretty, maybe thirty-five years old, with weathered skin, blue eyes, and black hair as straight as straw.
Often Jonathan was able to guess a person’s nationality at first glance. Not her. She could be American or French, Argentine or Swedish. The perennial wanderer in him sensed a kindred spirit. Like him, she was at home anywhere in the world. She wore little makeup, and her lips were chapped. Her arms were toned, with the veins running down chiseled biceps. She didn’t need to be a black belt to hold him down-she had enough raw strength. Her nails were trimmed, her fingers thicker than most women might like. It was no wonder the jab to his kidneys had hurt so badly. He also sensed that, like him, she preferred life away from the madding crowd, and that time spent in cities was a down payment against the next foray into the wild. His flash of perception troubled him. He’d felt the same way about Emma.
“What happened to the lei and a welcome cocktail?” he asked.
“This isn’t a holiday, Dr. Ransom. School is now in session. We don’t have much time, and from what I just saw, we have far too much work to do. Now get some rest. I’ll be by at six to take you to dinner. Your clothes will be here by then.”
“Do you have a message for me from Frank Connor? He told me I’d hear from him.”
“Who?” The blue eyes bore down on him. It was not a name to be said aloud.
“No one,” said Jonathan, backpedaling. “I was mistaken.”
“I thought so.” The woman came closer and extended her hand. “I’m Danni. I’ll be your trainer.”
18
It was called “the Bubble,” but the official name for the soundproof chamber on the third floor of the Rayburn Office Building, one block from the Capitol, where testimony graded classified or higher was given to the House Subcommittee on Intelligence, was a SCIF, or Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility. The Bubble looked no different from a large, windowless office. It had four walls, a ceiling, and the usual painful fluorescent lighting. But the differences were there. The floor, walls, and ceiling were constructed of three-inch-thick cement and lined with soundproof acoustic tiles. To enter, one passed through a double set of alarmed doors and stepped up a half foot, the distance necessary to separate the Bubble from the original floor. A low level of white noise played constantly to frustrate any eavesdropping device. Finally, the Bubble benefited from its own power supply, connected to an independent generator in the building’s basement. Once the Bubble’s door closed, no sound could get in and no sound could get out.
“Hello, Joe,” said Connor, ducking his head inside the door of the SCIF. “Got a minute?”
The Honorable Joseph Tecumseh Grant, representative of the eleventh district of Nebraska and chairman of the House Subcommittee on Intelligence, stopped putting the day’s testimony into his satchel. “Frank? That you? What are you doing out of your coffin? I thought you spooks only came out at night.”
“Must have me confused with someone else.” Connor stood by the door as the last few stragglers left the chamber. “I’m a mortal like anyone else. Haven’t you heard? We do things aboveboard now. In daylight.”
Joe Grant crossed the room with alacrity, one hand extended for the shake. His birth certificate stated that he was sixty-five years old, but the combination of his lopsided grin and the thatch of shoe-polish black hair hanging over his forehead gave him the air of a man half his age. “By golly, it’s been a while,” he said, gripping Connor’s hand as if he were the last voter in a tight contest. “I think it was March, after that blowup in Zurich. Your confirmation hearing, right?”
“That sounds about right,” said Connor.
It was a memory he could do without. The hearing was a referendum more on Division than on who should head it next. The level of sanctimonious bullshit had reached historic heights. Never again could a covert agency be allowed to overstep its boundaries so grossly (true, thought Connor), or meddle in the political affairs of another nation (false), or take human life without a two-thirds majority vote of Congress (pure and utter nonsense). Yet when presented as the man to best repair Division’s tattered reputation, Connor had been met with a barrage of disbelieving stares. Despite his sterling service record, the portly man in the wrinkled gray suit with his ruddy cheeks and cascade of chins did not meet expectations. For all the talk about reining in Division, it was painfully apparent that the august members of the House subcommittee wanted a carbon copy of the square-jawed, blue-eyed, uniform-wearing patriot who had nearly taken the world to the brink of nuclear conflagration. Or, at the least, they didn’t want Connor. The final vote had been 5-4 in favor, and had required considerable arm-twisting behind the scenes.