Hay-Adams Hotel
16th and H Streets, Washington
An hour later
Jason had made no effort to retrieve his rental car. Instead, he had again fought the crowds in the hotel lobby until he found his way to a side exit. Forcing himself to move at a normal, non-attention-getting pace, he took an irregular course for several blocks until he found an overhanging awning that afforded deep shadows.
For a full five minutes he waited, watching the way he had come, before crossing the street to a Metro station. He really didn't care where the train was headed. He simply wanted to put maximum distance between him and the overcoat-shrouded body in the hotel lobby.
The bullet that had killed the young man from the agency had been meant for him. They could simply have traced his credit card, one issued by Narcom in the same name as his alternative passport, the same one used to rent the boat, the same boat with the key in Paco's pocket. It would have led them straight to the hotel in Crystal
City. Then all they had to do was follow him embedded in the mass of Washington traffic, almost impossible to spot.
At some point, Jason exited the Metro and took a cab to the venerable old hotel across Lafayette Park from the White House. The woman at the desk was unable to conceal her surprise when he paid for the room in cash. It would draw unwanted attention, but the credit card would attract notice even less desirable.
One of the reasons Jason had selected this particular hotel was its dining room. The fare was good, but the location better. Seated at any one of several candlelit tables on the floor below the lobby, he had a clear view of anyone descending the well-lit stairs or exiting the elevators under overhead illumination. His first thought was to have a cup of coffee and tarry thirty minutes or so, observing. After only ten, the siren aroma of a passing dish reminded him he had not eaten in a long time. He asked for a menu.
His room was furnished with reproductions of lateeighteenth-century American pieces, a period reminiscent of the building's origins. The cabinet containing the TV and minibar was a highboy with brass pulls. The bed had both steps and canopy. Just to make sure, he checked the bathroom, satisfied the faux antiques did not include these facilities. Sitting in a Martha Washington chair at a Federalist desk, Jason began to read the report he had been given.
There were a number of items that had not been included in the briefer document Mama had given him, and one very interesting addition.
When he finished, he reread it, puzzled, before taking the BlackBerry-like device Mama had given him out of his pocket. The resemblance ended largely with the physical case. Although the gadget could receive and send voice and text messages, it could do so in nanosecond garbled bursts that both defied decoding without appropriate equipment and sent false satellite coordinates that would foil the most sophisticated GPS. In short, communications were secure both as to location and content.
He punched a button on the back that activated the special features and then a series of numbers, beginning with the 202 D.C. area code, well aware that the actual phone he was calling might be on the other side of the world.
Jason waited. There was no sound of ringing in the conventional sense. He was calling his agency contact whom he used when he needed information on anything. Anything included pertinent weather updates in any part of the world, scientific data, or impeding coups or assassinations.
The latter two, Jason mused, had been on a decline in inverse proportion to increasing congressional inquiry. Gone were the halcyon days when a people's revolution conveniently removed a leftist-leaning dictator of some banana republic, or a rival clansman used a single bullet to end the anti-Western ravings of some sheikh or mullah.
The more moral American foreign policy, the more chaotic the world became.
There was no salutation, no mention of a name, simply a "Begin."
Jason was used to the abruptness. In fact, he had long suspected he was speaking to a voice mechanically generated to make electronic identification impossible should the conversation somehow be recorded. Machine or person, he had no idea with whom he was speaking, only that the voice was always the same.
"Reference"-Jason held the written pages up to the light-"document echo-tango-four-zero-two. Question: The bodies found all had traces of silica and ethylene in the lungs, though in quantities that should not have been fatal. Couldn't that have come from natural surroundings?"
Pause.
"Unlikely with silica on the Bering Sea incident. Possible in Georgia, but the soil had low silica content. Unless there were a sandstorm. There was no record of a sandstorm in the area."
Only a machine would exclude that possibility, given the locales. No, knowing the CIA…
Jason ran his eye down the page. "I note sulfates at almost uniform levels in all the victims' lungs, too. Isn't it unusual that persons with different-size lungs would have almost identical amounts?"
"Very."
Not exactly helpful. "Any explanation?"
"As stated, tissue studies show nitrogen also, as well as trace carbon. As in some sort of smoke inhalation."
"Smoke from what?"
"Unknown. Subsequent photographs of the ship and logging camp depict some sort of brush or scrub as the only flora nearby. One in a pot, the other beside the bunk- house. None of it appears to have burned."
"Then what did the smoke come from?"
"Good question."
Jason thought for a moment. "Let's go back to the silica. That's a common element in rocks as well as sand, right?"
"Right."
"Any chance they breathed silica in the smoke?"
"Only if a rock was burning. Not likely."
"Okay," Jason went on, "any idea why they would be gassed at all? I mean, shooting would have been a lot more efficient."
"We don't know. That, Mr. Peters, is why we hired your company."
Jason thought for a moment. "Anything else that's surfaced since the report was written?"
Pause.
"There were traces of radiation. Very low rads, but ascertainable. Also some evidence of hydrocarbons in the blood, and ethylene."
Jason paused, trying to pry loose a distant memory. "Ethylene is an anaesthetic, isn't it?" "Was. Its use was discontinued in the sixties." Jason stood, idly glancing around his hotel room. "Don't suppose you have any explanation for the presence of the hydrocarbons, either."
"You are correct."
Swell.
Jason was dealing with a form of anaesthesia mixed with what amounted to sand, one or both radioactive, origins and purpose unknown. The agency needed a geo- or biochemist, not a spy. "You've been a big help."
Pause.
"Always pleasure, Mr. Peters."
Was that a trace of mechanized sarcasm?