Soon I found my destination, an impressive brick town house near Twenty-Sixth and P Street. By a stroke of luck, I found a parking spot only two blocks away and walked through the bitter night air, my feet crunching on road salt and the icy remnants of the storm that had tapered off that afternoon. I felt as if a cold block of marble were lying against the exposed skin on the back of my neck. But the view of the town house was almost as salutary as a good fire. The structure was in the Federal style, neatly proportioned but clearly renovated and painted a dark terra-cotta. The windows gave off a warm glow, while the black shutters gleamed in the soft light thrown by the streetlamps. The brass knocker on the front door was the size of a ship’s anchor. After foregoing the knocker for the doorbell, I heard the muffled chimes of the opening passage of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro ring inside.
Footsteps, then a murmured exchange followed by laughter. The doorknob turned with a solid chunk, and the door swung open to reveal Wat Davenport in a charcoal-gray flannel suit, a highball glass in one hand. His smooth, tanned face creased in a smile. “Matthias, there you are. Get in here out of the cold.” He stepped aside, ushering me in.
In the foyer, which was flanked by white built-ins and mantled with a coffered ceiling, stood another man, shorter, less commanding than Wat. He wore the navy-blue suit of someone in government. Wat turned to the man and said, “Bob, this is Matthias Glass, an old family friend.”
Bob’s handshake and greeting were polite and perfunctory, and as he stepped past me for the door, he turned his head and said, “Thanks again, Wat. I’m forever grateful.”
Wat beamed. “A fact I shall surely remind you of,” he said. “Say hi to Doris for me.”
After the door shut behind Bob, I turned to Wat. “I didn’t interrupt anything, did I?”
Wat waved his hand, the gesture both a dismissal and a benediction. “Business. What else?”
“Is he a client?”
“Oh, no. A congressman.” Wat took me by the arm. “Let me show you around.”
The town house was a series of bright, open spaces anchored by neutral-toned couches and armchairs, with strategically placed throw pillows of vibrant orange. Modern, abstract artwork hung on the walls, creating the sense of a place that was somewhere between a gallery and a home. A stacked pile of logs burned cheerfully in a massive white fireplace. Classical music played from hidden speakers—Beethoven, maybe, or Tchaikovsky. We passed through a formal dining room with heavy drapes and slipcovered chairs and walked into the kitchen, a sleek affair of wood and chrome and marble countertops. Here, Wat topped off his whiskey and poured me a glass of wine. “Abby told me she’d seen you,” he said, corking the bottle. “At the Game.”
I took a rather large sip of excellent Shiraz, stalling. I had no intention of talking about how that meeting with Abby had gone. “Um-hmm,” I managed. “Yes, I did. See her.”
Wat chuckled and tucked the bottle into a cupboard. “Obviously it was a warm reunion,” he said. “All right, I won’t torture you about it, although I confess I am sad that you and Abby didn’t work out.” He gestured to the living room. “Shall we?”
We ensconced ourselves in a pair of armchairs by the fire. “So,” Wat said with the air of a man who has had a good meal and a good drink and is prepared to grant favors. “What can I do for you? Your call sounded urgent.”
Now that I was here, I hesitated. I had called him that afternoon because I needed to talk to somebody involved with NorthPoint, somebody who, I hoped, would be willing to talk to me and confirm what Trip and Diamond had told me. But now I felt like this was not the wisest course of action. I was about to invoke the Davenport family ghost, not to mention inquire about NorthPoint. Was this a patently stupid idea?
As if reading my mind, Wat smiled. “You can trust me, Matthias,” he said. “You were a good friend to my nephew, and no matter what my brother might think, you are my friend as well.”
“What your brother might think?” I couldn’t help it—the comment bothered me.
Wat glanced down at his glass, took a sip. “Frank is a difficult man,” he said. “Of course, Fritz’s disappearance took its toll on him. He sees enemies that don’t exist, plots that aren’t there.”
I saw Frank Davenport looming in front of me in my dorm room at Blackburne, screaming in my face. This from the man who had gotten the FBI to drop its investigation into his own son’s disappearance. I found I was clutching the stem of my wineglass so hard, I thought it might snap, so I set it down on the coffee table in front of me. Fuck him, I thought. “Actually, I need to talk to you about Fritz,” I said. “About his disappearance.”
Wat’s eyebrows rose, but only a millimeter or so, and he sat patiently as I told him the condensed version of Fritz’s disappearance and what I had recently learned: Fritz’s leaving his medal under my pillow, his father’s screaming at me in our dorm room, my interview with Pelham Greer and subsequent realization that Fritz had left campus much later than anybody had thought, Deputy Briggs’s story of the FBI. I left out Trip’s and Diamond’s contributions. Wat said nothing as I talked, just kept his gaze leveled at me and paid attention. When I finished, he got up, went into the kitchen, and came back with the wine and the whiskey and filled our glasses. Then he sat down. When he spoke, his voice sounded worn. “My nephew has been missing for nearly ten years,” he said. “An entire decade. And now you suspect that my brother may have kept him from being found.”
“I’m not saying it was intentional —” I started, but Wat cut me off with a sharp sweep of his arm.
“You want to know if I know anything,” he said. “If I can shed any light.” He took a good swallow of his drink and then looked at me. For the first time all evening, he seemed to be really seeing me. “I loved Fritz. I don’t have any children of my own, but he and Abby always filled that role. The day he disappeared . . .” He paused, blinking. The pain in his eyes was hard to bear, and I dropped my gaze before it.
After a moment, Wat continued, his voice under control. “You know that I no longer work for NorthPoint,” he said. He must have seen the surprise on my face. “I consult from time to time, but I’m not involved with day-to-day operations. I haven’t been for years. Not since—since Fritz disappeared.” He paused, seeming to gather himself like a diver at the top of a tower. “In 2000,” he continued, “I was chief operating officer at NorthPoint. That December, we found evidence that someone was trying to steal some of our research. Encryption software, mostly, although we also learned some work we’d done on miniaturization was at risk. My brother and I hired a private detective firm, as we weren’t sure we could trust our own security. Long story short, they found one of our technicians and a security officer were on a Chinese payroll. We fired them before they did any serious damage. But Frank was livid. We were negotiating contracts with the Pentagon right then, and if word had gotten out about these two NorthPoint employees passing secrets to China . . . well, in all likelihood I would be living in a split-level outside of Richmond right now instead of here in Georgetown. Those were our first real contracts, Matthias. They made NorthPoint.” He smiled wanly. “This all came to a head a month before Fritz vanished. You can imagine how that shook Frank and Mary, and Abby. And then when the FBI wanted to poke around . . .” He shrugged and finished his drink.