It was 8:30 P.M., by the time Storm and Jones left Capitol Hill and arrived at the Willard InterContinental Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue, less than a block from the White House. Before they parted, Jones handed Storm an envelope stuffed with hundred-dollar bills, a fake Nevada driver’s license, private investigator credentials under the name Steve Mason, a cell phone that was a direct line to Jones at the CIA, and the keys to a rental car parked in the hotel’s lot. Storm reached his fifth-floor suite at the same moment the phone inside it began to ring. It was FBI Agent Showers calling from the lobby. She’d come to brief him.

“Come on up,” Storm said.

“I’ll wait for you in the hotel’s restaurant.”

Storm joined her five minutes later at a secluded table.

“I’ve never stayed in this hotel,” she said as he was sitting down. “But it is famous. Mark Twain wrote two books here.”

“We can go up to my suite and I’ll give you a tour,” he said.

“I was being polite, making chitchat,” she said. “I’ve no interest in going to your bedroom.”

“Too bad,” he intimated. “I was hoping for a full debriefing.”

Storm glanced around the mostly empty restaurant. “This hotel is much nicer than the places Jedidiah typically sends me,” he said.

The waiter arrived. Showers ordered coffee. Storm ordered a sixteen-dollar hamburger and an eight-dollar beer. When their server left, she said, “And where would some of those places be-where Jedidiah has sent you?”

“If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”

“That’s an old line.”

“In my case, it happens to be true.”

“Look,” she said sternly. “I’ve been ordered to brief you and work with you. I think I deserve to know who you are.”