Solo

intentions’. A somewhat loaded phrase – seeming at first glance like a compliment – though it could actually be interpreted as a rebuke: why hadn’t those magnificent intentions ever been realised? For all its pre-eminent role and status in the nation’s political life, Washington, he thought – outside the pomp and grandeur of its public buildings or the tonier neighbourhoods – appeared a run-down, poor-looking, dangerous place. Every time he told people he was going there he received the familiar warnings about where not to go, what not to do. Consequently, his impressions of the city were coloured by this note of caution and edgy guardedness. For most of the time you were in Washington DC you never really felt fully at ease, Bond thought.
    His hotel was ideal. The Fairview was a tall featureless modern block with a middle-distance view of the Capitol’s dome on its hill. His room was large and air-conditioned, with a colour TV, and the bathroom was clean and functional. He sat down on his bed and flicked through the telephone directory and then Yellow Pages, finding nothing that led him to AfricaKIN Inc. Then it struck him that Gabriel Adeka had only arrived a few weeks ago. So he called information and was given a number. This second call elicited an address: 1075 Milford Plaza in the Southwest district, south of Independence Avenue. He would check it out in the morning. At least he had found the beginning of his trail.
    He unpacked his clothes and toiletries and felt the creeping melancholy of hotel life infect him. The bland room, replicated in thousands of hotels worldwide, made him sense all the drab anomie of the transient, the temporarily homeless – just the number of your room and your name in the register the signal of your ephemeral identity. He thought of Bryce, inevitably, her ripe beauty and their night together and experienced a brief ache of longing for her. Maybe he should never have embarked on this whole business – he should have spent his month’s leave in London and come to know her better. It might have been a more therapeutic course of action than revenge . . . He shook himself out of his mood – self-pity was the most rebarbative of human emotions. He had chosen to come here; he had a job to do. He looked at his watch – early evening but midnight for him. Still, he couldn’t go to bed.
    He went down to the dark loud bar in the lobby – all the other transients drowning their melancholy – and drank two large bourbons and branch water. Then in the half-empty hangar of a dining room he ate as much as he could of a vast tough steak with some French fries. Back in his room he took a sleeping pill: he wanted a full ten hours’ unconsciousness before he set about investigating the new configuration of AfricaKIN Inc.

·2·
     

THE STAKE-OUT
     
    Milford Plaza was a new development and had pretensions. Three six-storey glass and concrete office blocks had been positioned round a large granite-paved public space – the ‘plaza’ – set out with stone benches and a generous planting of assorted saplings. An oval pool with a fountain and a plinth-mounted piece of modern sculpture – three outsized girders painted in primary colours leaning against each other – contributed to its striven-for airs and graces. AfricaKIN Inc. was on the second floor of the central block.
    Bond stood in the filtered neutral light of the building’s tall marbled lobby – more plants, a giant suspended mobile twirling gently – and pretended to study the gilt-lettered columns of companies that were renting space. He thought about taking the elevator and actually seeing what the AfricaKIN premises were like but he sensed it might be both premature and possibly dangerous. He needed some time – to watch and evaluate, see who came and went, assess the risk factor. There was no hurry, he told himself; he had time on his side; his name was Bryce Fitzjohn.
    He strolled outside. The Plaza was let down somewhat by the buildings opposite, across the street – a row of assorted pre-war brownstones showing signs of their age faced the pristine glass and granite. There was a temperance hotel – the Ranchester – a thrift shop, an A&P grocery, a Seventh Day Adventist chapel, a Chinese laundry, a jewellers and assorted eating places and a couple of small convenience stores with boarded-up windows.
    Bond lit a cigarette and crossed the street wondering if there was somewhere that he could establish