Gone Tomorrow

woman was happy to take thirty bucks in cash and a thirty-minute break. I guessed she would move on to the next room on her list and come back later.
    She hadn’t gotten to the bathroom yet, but there were two clean towels still on the rack. Nobody could possibly use all the towels that a big hotel provides. There was a cake of soap still wrapped next to the sink and half a bottle of shampoo in the stall. I brushed my teeth and took a long shower. I dried off and put on my new pants and shirt. I swapped my pocket contents over and left my old garments in the bathroom trash. Thirty bucks for the room. Cheaper than a spa. And faster. I was back on the street inside twenty-eight minutes.
    I walked up to Dupont and spied out the restaurant. Afghan cuisine, outside tables in a front courtyard, inside tables behind a wooden door. It looked like the kind of place that would fill up with power players willing to drop twenty bucks for an appetizer worth twenty cents on the streets of Kabul. I was OK with the food but not with the prices. I figured I would talk to Sansom and then go eat somewhere else.
    I walked on P Street west to Rock Creek Park, and clambered down close to the water. I sat on a broad flat stone and listened to the stream below me and the traffic above. Over time the traffic got louder and the water got quieter. When the clock in my head hit five to seven I scrambled back up and headed for the restaurant.

Chapter 22
    At seven in the evening D.C. was going dark and all the Dupont establishments had their lights on. The Afghan place had paper lanterns strung out all over the courtyard. The curb was clogged with limousines. Most of the courtyard tables were already full. But not with Sansom and his party. All I saw were young men in suits and young women in skirts. They were gathered in pairs and trios and quartets, talking, making calls from their cells, reading e-mails on handheld devices, taking papers from briefcases and stuffing them back. I guessed Sansom was inside, behind the wooden door.
    There was a hostess podium close to the sidewalk but before I got to it Browning pushed through a knot of people and stepped in front of me. He nodded toward a black Town Car twenty yards away and said, “Let’s go.”
    I said, “Where? I thought Sansom was here.”
    “Think again. He wouldn’t eat in a place like this. And we wouldn’t let him even if he wanted to. Wrong demographic, too insecure.”
    “Then why bring me here?”
    “We had to bring you somewhere.” He stood there like it meant absolutely nothing to him whether I went along or walked away. I said, “So where is he?”
    “Close by. He’s got a meeting. He can give you five minutes before it starts.”
    “OK,” I said. “Let’s go.”
    There was a driver already in the Town Car. The engine was already running. Browning and I climbed in the back and the driver pulled out and drove most of the way around the circle and then peeled off south and west down New Hampshire Avenue. We passed the Historical Society. As I recalled New Hampshire Avenue there wasn’t much ahead of us except for a string of hotels and then George Washington University.
    We didn’t stop at any of the hotels. We didn’t stop at George Washington University. Instead we swept a fast right onto Virginia Avenue and drove a couple hundred yards and pulled into the Watergate. The famous old complex. The scene of the crime. Hotel rooms, apartments, offices, the Potomac dark and slow beyond them. The driver stopped outside an office building. Browning stayed in his seat. He said, “These are the ground rules. I’ll take you up. You’ll go in alone. But I’ll be right outside the door. Are we clear?”
    I nodded. We were clear. We got out. There was a security guy in a uniform at a desk inside the door, but he paid us no attention. We got in the elevator. Browning hit four. We rode up in silence. We got out of the elevator and walked twenty feet across gray carpet to a door marked Universal Research . A bland title and an unremarkable slab of wood. Browning opened it and ushered me inside. I saw a waiting room, medium budget. An unoccupied reception desk, four low leather chairs, inner offices to the left and the right. Browning pointed me left and said, “Knock and enter. I’ll wait for you here.”
    I stepped over to the left-hand door and knocked and entered.
    There were three men waiting for me in the inner office.
    None of them was Sansom.

Chapter 23
    The room