DeRenzi was with him, for this leg of the movement, anyway. He threw an understandable fit when Carmichael told him he would run a surveillance detection route and then continue on to a meeting alone, but it wasn’t DeRenzi’s job to tell Director Carmichael what he could and couldn’t do, so the close protection officer just made sure the director of National Clandestine Service was wearing his .45 caliber HK semiautomatic pistol in his shoulder holster like he normally did. CIA officers virtually never carried firearms, but Denny had always been a different sort of animal from every other CIA officer around, and he often strapped a sidearm during movements, even in the States.
The JetRanger landed at Washington Executive Airport in Prince Georges County just fifteen minutes after it took off, and there Denny left DeRenzi in the helo and climbed into a beige Toyota Highlander that another CIA employee had positioned in the parking lot with the keys under the mat. He drove out of the airport grounds and into late-morning traffic, heading north on the 210 back towards D.C. He kept his eyes in his rearview and he turned east on I-95, and only after he was sure there was no one on his tail did he get off the freeway and head back west. He took the Woodrow Wilson Bridge over the Potomac into Alexandria, Virginia, and there he spent twenty minutes driving through the narrow streets of the Old Town section on a surveillance detection route.
After fifty minutes in the vehicle he parked on King Street and continued his SDR on foot. He meandered through the neighborhood for thirty minutes, wandering into gift shops and antique stores, heading down side streets and then back up again on the other side. At twelve fifteen he stepped into a sandwich shop and ordered a pastrami on rye. Eating his lunch at a counter by the window, he kept his eyes out on the street, all the while searching for anyone who might be following him.
His trained eyes saw nothing out of the ordinary, so at twelve thirty he threw the remainder of his sandwich away, headed north on King Street, and then ducked into the courtyard in front of the Kimpton Lorien Hotel.
Once in the lobby he walked straight to the counter and asked for a suite for one night with an early check-in. He used a credit card from a cover identity he kept ready and the woman behind the counter gave him the card key to his fourth-floor suite. He stepped around to the bank of elevators behind the check-in desk, and while he did so a distinguished-looking man stepped out of the men’s room and walked over to the elevator bank to wait alongside him.
The two men stood in silence as the car delivered them to the fourth floor. There Denny walked down the hall to his suite, and the other man followed. No words were exchanged.
They entered the suite together and Denny shut the door.
The man who shadowed him in was in his early fifties, lean and handsome in his gray pinstripe suit. Olive-skinned and delicately featured, he had a kind, gentle bearing about him, in sharp contrast to the stern manner of Denny Carmichael.
Only when the door was shut behind the two men did the olive-complected man offer a handshake to the American.
He spoke perfect English with only a slight accent. “Nice to see you, Denny.”
“Hello, Kaz.”
Carmichael turned away, took a cell phone–sized device out of his pocket, and turned it on. He headed to the center of the room and placed it on a coffee table. It was a radio frequency signal jammer, designed to block the transmissions given off by eavesdropping devices.
While he did this Kaz took off his suit coat and hung it over a chair, and then he moved to the sofa. There he sat calmly and watched Denny adjust the instrument.
Kaz was not his name, but Denny had called him this for fifteen years, because Kaz was easier to say than Murquin al-Kazaz. He was now chief of station here in the United States for Riasat Al-Istikhbarat Al-Amah, the intelligence agency of Saudi Arabia, but the two had known each other since back when Kaz was a lowly operative in Saudi intel.
The Saudi smiled while watching Denny. “Clandestine meetings in hotel rooms. This feels like the good old days, my friend.”
Carmichael replied brusquely, “Don’t romanticize the past. It wasn’t any better than the present.” While talking Denny pulled out his mobile phone and slipped an earpiece in his ear.
“We were younger, at least. I romanticize my youth, regardless of how I might have misspent it.”
Denny tried to send music from his phone to his earpiece, but he couldn’t get a signal to go through. Satisfied that his jammer was operational, he pulled the earpiece out of his ear and slipped it, with his phone, back into his coat.
Kaz said, “You must have gone to some trouble to come and see me like this on a Sunday afternoon. Tell me, what is it that could not have been handled through a secure phone call?”
Denny ignored him for the moment, took his time to turn on the TV in the adjoining bedroom, then returned to the living area and turned on the flat screen there. The televisions were set to different stations. An action movie in the bedroom and a news interview program in the living area blanketed the entire suite with conflicting sounds.
Denny sat down on the sofa, close to Kaz, and he spoke softly. “A wayward asset has returned to the United States. To Washington, in fact.”
“One of yours, or one of mine?”
“Used to be one of mine.”
“Code name Violator, perhaps?”