"Those were the first places you searched," Maria said. "Our a.s.sa.s.sin-"

"Is experienced," McCaskey said. "Fair a.s.sumption. Still, it might have been burned in a fireplace or stuffed in an incinerator."

"An incinerator is not a guarantee of total destruction," she said. "But I agree that it might have been consigned to a fireplace. Who among your potential suspects has one?"

"I don't know," he said. "Even if we find out, we would need a reason to get a warrant. 'They have a fireplace' is just not good enough."

"A warrant may not be necessary," she said. "We may not even have to go inside. Not yet."

"I don't follow."

"I know," she smiled. "You should learn."

"Ouch," he said.

"Let's go home," Maria said. "We will need to do a little research before going out again."

McCaskey agreed to the plan, but not just because debate would have been pointless and not because his wife was a sharp field op-something exhaustion and frustration had caused him to forget. It was simple math. A woman had sent the men of Scotland Yard, Op-Center, and the Metro Police into a dark alley with no discernable exit.

Maybe a woman was what they needed to get out.

THIRTY-SEVEN.

San Diego, California Wednesday, 7:01 A.M.

Short, stocky Eric Stone had always been ambivalent about history. He could not affect it, and whatever impact it was going to have had already occurred. Moreover, he did not believe people could learn from it or, failing that, were doomed to repeat it. There were always nuances that made events different. Caesar was not Napoleon who was not Hitler who was not Stalin. Anyway, what was important in one era did not matter now. How many people, old and young, could name one thing Calvin Coolidge had done? Or who he was, for that matter.

While tourists and visitors to the convention center gathered around the time line of San Diego, Stone went about his business. He checked booths where attendees received their badges, made sure the media was present and able to set up their gear, determined that there would be a sufficient number of buses to run delegates to and from the nearby hotels. He did not care that hunting peoples of northeast Asia had crossed the Bering Ice Bridge and migrated to the south to hunt caribou, bison, and mammoth some twenty thousand years ago. It did not matter to him that Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo was the first European to visit the region, sailing from Mexico into San Diego Bay in 1542 and claiming the region for Spain. It was unimportant that sixty years later, Sebastian Vizcaino sailed from Mexico and named the region after the Spanish saint San Diego de Alcala. The natives could have been hunting dodos, the Spanish men could have been French women, none of it mattered. The thirty-year-old was unapologetic about his interest in the present. That grew from spending time with his father, Phil, back in Indianapolis, when the fifty-year-old was dying from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Lou Gehrig's disease. Not just dying from it but being disintegrated by it. His limbs folding in on themselves as his muscles atrophied, his organs failing. In a lucid moment before he succ.u.mbed entirely to living decomposition, the elder Stone told his only son that he regretted so much in his life. Becoming a mechanical engineer instead of a painter. Not spending more time with Eric instead of bowling and drinking with the guys.

"I had had a guy," the older man whispered. "The best guy." He touched the top of eighteen-year-old Eric's head with a hand whose fingers would not fully uncurl. "I could have had a better life." a guy," the older man whispered. "The best guy." He touched the top of eighteen-year-old Eric's head with a hand whose fingers would not fully uncurl. "I could have had a better life."

That was the last thing Phil Stone had to say before the muscles of his face stopped working. He spent the last month of his life with his jaw hanging slack and his eyes staring at an aluminum bed rail and whatever memories he could find in his drug-hazed brain. Eric Stone resolved, then, to regret nothing. To live in the moment. That meant having power.

The elder Stone's illness devoured their savings and kept the young boy from graduating with any distinction. The only way he could get an education was by enlisting in the military. Having spent his life landlocked in the agricultural belly of the nation, he joined the navy, where he caught the eye of then-Rear Admiral Link. It was in San Diego, after the Persian Gulf War. There was a reception for the vice president of the United States at the s.p.a.ce and Naval Warfare Systems facility. SPAWAR provided more than half of the tactical and nontactical information management technology the navy used to complete its operational missions during the war.

To help pay the bills at home, Eric had worked as a waiter for a catering company. He was ordered to work the windy al fresco party. Something about his manner captured Link's attention. His intensity, perhaps. He handled a tray as carefully as he would nitroglycerin. The wind stirred the fabric of his dress blues, but he did not lose a single drop of champagne.

Eric Stone lived in the moment.

Link had Stone transferred to his own Department of Focused Sensing and Data Acquisition. This embraced intelligence-gathering operations through photographic, electromagnetic, acoustic, seismic, olfactory, visual, or other means. It relied on everything from satellites to aircraft to sensor fields arrayed on the ground in the form of probes and microtechnology. Stone went to work in the accounting division. At Link's request, he found ways to get better deals from suppliers so there was more money to spend on other things. There was no kickback, no padded invoices, no black-ops funding, no dishonesty. It was all about making FSDA/SPAWAR run more effectively. Link made sure that Stone got the schooling he needed. There was strong mentoring throughout the three years they were together.

SPAWAR was Link's jumping-off point to the Company. Before accepting their offer to run Far Eastern Intelligence from CIA headquarters, Link told Stone to get in touch with him when his. .h.i.tch was up. Stone did that and went to work in the inspector general's office. There was an opening for an information system auditor, conducting efficiency a.n.a.lyses of CIA programs and activities. While Stone worked there, he attended cla.s.ses in accounting at the University of Northern Virginia. He had his master's degree within three years. He transferred to Link's personal staff that same year, with GS-15 pay status and top-level security clearance. Stone's first job was making sure money reached field agents in Asia, which was Link's area of command. Within two years, Stone had become the admiral's executive a.s.sistant. The men did not socialize outside the office. On the job, however, they were as close as father and son, watching each other's backs in the shadow of a ruthless and complex bureaucracy and making sure the department ran smoothly.

Stone had never thought of the admiral as a political activist. Like the younger man, Link seemed to be absolutely focused on the moment, on whatever job needed to be done. It came as a shock when, six months ago, Link called him into his office and shut the door.

"Senator Donald Orr of Texas is going to be starting a new political party and making a serious run for the presidency," Link had said. "I'm going to find a way to work with him."

"Why?" Stone had asked.

The answer surprised him. "To stop him."

Link had met the senator at a Congressional Intelligence Planning Committee briefing several months before. The Texan was impressed with Link's grasp of the threat represented by terrorist cells relocating from the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia to China. Implicit in the presentation was the notion that if Beijing could control international terrorism, it would give the Chinese a powerful tool to use against Western aggression. Paul Hood of Op-Center was also at that meeting, reporting on the recent efforts of the NCMC to try to contain Chinese expansion into the diamond market in southern Africa. Link had proposed a comprehensive "Quiet War" against Beijing, stirring student dissatisfaction from within, encouraging fringe provinces to move toward independence. Keeping the Chinese busy with domestic unrest would give them less time to worry about the United States and Europe.

The Quiet War was approved and funded. After the meeting, Orr took Link aside. He said he actually wanted to go further. He wanted to train CIA operatives to execute acts of terror in foreign capitals in what he called an "anti-civilian strike option." These ACSO units would attack the societal infrastructure with more devastating efficiency than terrorist attacks had been executed anywhere in the world. In a subsequent meeting, Link learned that half of the twelve-person CIP Committee was appalled at the notion of attacking civilian targets such as banks, communications centers, and landmarks. The other half thought there was merit to the idea and named a subcommittee of six congressional representatives to study it.

Link was horrified. It was one thing to monitor terrorists and take preemptive action against them. It was another thing to use that security apparatus to foster what Orr was calling "aggressive isolationism." But Link was too good an intelligence officer and too seasoned a bureaucrat to let Orr know what he was thinking. To the contrary. He encouraged Orr to talk. It was important to know what a potential opponent was thinking. Link resolved to take no steps against the top secret ACSO program until it moved from subcommittee to recommendation.

That never happened. The subcommittee decided the downside of ACSO made it too risky: the chance that a slip up could lead to the discovery that Congress had authorized strikes against civilian targets. Link was bothered that they did not react on moral grounds. It was all about personal preservation.

Orr accepted the setback with his courtly Texas grace, but he did not abandon the goal. ACSO and aggressive isolationism became obsessions with him. He privately enlisted Admiral Link in his crusade, a.s.suming that a military man and intelligence director would see the wisdom of his goal.

Link confided in Stone that he did not. The admiral stayed close to Donald Orr because he wanted to know what the senator was planning. He believed Orr to be a dangerous man: a man with bad ideas and the charm to sell them.

It was a typically brisk morning on San Diego Bay. Stone's curly blond hair danced against his forehead. The salty sea wind was ribboned with the faint smell of diesel fuel. The unique gas-and-steel tang, the odor of latent warfare, was coming from the naval station just southeast of the convention center. The sounds of traffic moving along Harbor Drive mingled with the cries of sea birds and the roar of jets that landed every few minutes at the airport a few miles to the north. It was sensory chaos, but none of it bothered Stone. He was a source of calm in the midst of political and environmental anarchy. He had to be. What they did here would alter the course of world history.

An ironic destiny for someone who did not care to be a part of that stream, Stone thought. All the young man cared about was securing the goals Kenneth Link had set for them both. They were unusual ends, and it would take extraordinary means to get there. But they would succeed.

They had to.

Stone showed the security guard his pa.s.s and entered the convention center. A huge American flag hung on the south side of the room; the banner of the USF was suspended from the north side. Both were being steam-ironed to remove the wrinkles. Then they would be rolled and dropped when the convention got under way. Below them, rows of chairs were still being set up, their backs draped with gold and blue covers. Those were the colors of the convention. They signified a new dawn in a clear sky. The slogan of the convention was, "A New Day for America."

That it would be. But not in the way that Don Orr imagined.

Stone went to the podium to see how work on the sound system was progressing. Texas Congresswoman Nicolet Murat was there, waiting to run a sound check. Nicolet would be giving the keynote address the next day. She came from oil money and was in line to become Treasury secretary in an Orr administration. Stone smiled a crooked smile as he greeted Congresswoman Murat and her executive a.s.sistant. It was exciting to be part of a big machine with its parts and pieces nearly ready to engage. And not in the way its designer imagined.

The lopsided smile broadened.

How could dead history compare to rich, explosive life life?

THIRTY-EIGHT.

Washington, D.C. Wednesday, 11:33 A.M.

The McCaskeys did not work very much when they got home.

They sat on the bed, pulled the laptop between them, and reviewed the list of possible suspects: Kendra Peterson, Kat Lockley, Dr. Hennepin. Mike Rodgers had mentioned a reporter, Lucy O'Connor, who covered Congress and arrived very soon after both murders. The McCaskeys had looked up her background. The resume of everyone who had security clearance to the Capitol was filed online in the eyes-only section of the congressional web site. She wrote for the American Spectator American Spectator and had a moderately successful syndicated radio talk show. She was a Pittsburgh native who had majored in communication at Carnegie-Mellon University. and had a moderately successful syndicated radio talk show. She was a Pittsburgh native who had majored in communication at Carnegie-Mellon University.

"She also took their Interstellar Communication course and grabbed several credits from the Robotics Inst.i.tute at the university's School of Computer Science," McCaskey remarked.

"What does that tell you?" Maria asked.

"She likes to think outside the coconut," he replied.

The couple went back to the police station. Howell's people had been doing some of the legwork they needed now. The Metro Police had obtained the addresses, license numbers, and make of car driven by each individual on their list of potential suspects. They also charted the location of security cameras closest to these people: parking garages, apartment lobbies, convenience stores, gas stations, banks, and traffic intersections. The latter were monitored for speeders and potential terrorists moving through the capital. Once the McCaskeys had these sites, they intended to go back out and visit them, borrow the tapes, and have a look for one of those women returning home after the crime.

They fell asleep instead. The days of youthful "forced march" crime-fighting were a thing of the past. The McCaskeys needed rest.

Maria got up at five-thirty the next morning. She showered, made coffee, then woke her husband. McCaskey was not happy to have pa.s.sed out like that. He joined her in the kitchen at six-thirty. They had coffee and whole wheat toast. By seven o'clock, they were on the road.

McCaskey had not done patrol work since he was a debutant. That was Bureau slang for a first-year agent. He forgot how tiring it could be. Or maybe how much older he was. That aside, it was rewarding work made more so by Maria's enthusiasm. She loved police work and had an eye for detail unlike anyone he had ever met. She had decided that the killer would have driven from the murder sites. A woman alone, on foot, after dark, was likely to stand out. She might have been noticed from a bar or restaurant or by a pa.s.sing motorist. That could have helped police determine her direction. If she had taken the Metro, she definitely would have appeared on a security camera. A taxi or limousine service was out of the question. Drivers paid attention to the people who got into their cars. Part of that was fear and part of it was bragging rights in case they happened to pick up a celebrity.

a.s.suming the killer was driving, she would have done so slowly. She would not have wanted to risk being stopped by the police. They might ask where she had been. If the killer had shared a drink with Wilson, the police might have smelled it and insisted on a sobriety test.

There were a great many a.s.sumptions in their scenario. But experience, deductive reasoning, and good instincts could be as important to an investigation as facts, especially in a case such as this where there was very little hard data. McCaskey was thinking about that as they drove from site to site. His Op-Center ID got him access to the videotapes or digital records. None of them proved to be helpful. There was no sign of the cars they were looking for.

Maria was at the wheel. As McCaskey watched familiar storefronts and offices slip by, he had a troubling thought. A century ago, the booksellers, diners, attorneys, government offices, and banks would have been especially vulnerable to fire. Today, it was a new kind of fire that could destroy them. The kind that had crippled Op-Center. He wondered if there would ever be a time when people did not have to fear life as much as they feared death.

Not the way we do things now, he told himself. he told himself.

Funds to fight these dangers were allocated by political need instead of by threat a.s.sessment. People like himself, Maria, and Detective Howell could not do the job America was counting on them to do.

"Do you think the killer might have rented a car?" Maria asked.

McCaskey looked at his wife. "I'm sorry?"

"The killer," Maria repeated slowly. "Do you think she might have rented a car?"

"I would be very surprised if she did," he said. "a.s.sa.s.sins don't like to leave a paper trail."

"This a.s.sa.s.sin did not expect to be exposed," Maria pointed out.

"That is true."

"And she certainly would have gone in with a fake ID," Maria went on. "An experienced killer would have several, I'm sure."

"I suppose we can try that search if this doesn't get us anywhere," McCaskey said. "But there have got to be hundreds of rental facilities in the D.C. metro area. It will take days to visit them all, and what do we tell them when we do?"

"We show them pictures of all the women and see if they look familiar. Or better yet, we can see if any of them show up on security cameras. None of those women would have had a reason to rent a car."

"Yes, we could do that," McCaskey said.

That was another difference between today and his days as a rookie G-man. Twenty-odd years ago, at least a dozen agents would have been a.s.signed to a case like this. Now there were two.

"Darrell, were you all right a minute ago?" Maria asked.

"Sorry?"

"You went away from me."

"Yes," her husband said. "I was thinking, that's all."

"What about?" Maria asked.

"The pork barrel," he said with a little laugh.

"Is that a restaurant?"

"In a manner of speaking," McCaskey replied. He loved his beautiful, sweet, Spanish wife. She was so worldly, so tough, and so very linear. "A person of influence takes a lunch tray to his senator and gets plates full of federal funds. It's another name for patronage."

"I see," Maria said. "It is the same as what bookmakers in Madrid call el roulette del amigo. el roulette del amigo."

"That's exactly what it is. The roulette wheel of a friend," McCaskey said. "The fix is in, the outcome predetermined."

"Why were you thinking about that?"

"Because Op-Center was a victim of pork barrel politics. Maybe Paul is right, doing what he's doing. If we had played the system better, we would have more people looking for a killer. And that should be our bottom line, should it not? Protecting law-abiding citizens."

"That is my religion," she said simply.

"Well put." McCaskey looked out the window again. He noticed they were nearing Lafayette Park. "We're near the Hay-Adams. Why don't we go back there? Walk around, see if there is anything we may have overlooked."

"All right," she said.

That was the beauty of having married a cop. He might have to explain colloquial English to her, but he did not have to explain the intangibles of their lives and work. She got that.

They drove to the hotel, its tawny facade gleaming warmly in the morning light. They parked and decided to walk along Farragut North. The White House shone through the trees of Lafayette Park. McCaskey could see the press corps gathered in tents on the east side. The president was probably heading to the airport. It was too early in the week for Camp David. He remembered when the press looked for stories instead of handouts. There was a time when someone would have sniffed out the new relationship between the White House and Op-Center, exposed it, and not been afraid to write about it. Access to news-makers. A different kind of pork barrel.

McCaskey took his wife's hand. She gave it an encouraging squeeze. She seemed to sense the frustration he was feeling with this case and with the situation at Op-Center.

"We'll get her," Maria said.

"Thanks. I believe that," McCaskey replied.

Maria stopped suddenly. She looked ahead. "No, I mean we will will get her." get her."

"I don't follow."

"I was just thinking about the a.s.sa.s.sin, what I would do if I had just killed someone at the hotel," Maria said. "I would be undistracted by conscience or the late hour. My only concern would be getting away quick and clean. That means I would be parked as close to the hotel as possible, on a relatively dark street."

"Of course."

"I would also have parked where there are the fewest eyeb.a.l.l.s," Maria said. "Where would that be?"

"The side of the hotel by Lafayette Park," her husband said, "near where we parked."

"Yes. Darrell, do you think any of the White House reporters might have been there? Maybe one of them doing a live report for CNN?"