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IN A ROOM ON THE FLOOR below, Malik el-Shabazz examined the listening device he’d planted to spy on the defense attorney and political newspaper editor. Perfectly hidden. Clandestinely installed. Perfunctorily recording. The Washington way.
To fully complete his mission he had to escape. El-Shabazz checked himself in the bathroom mirror and ran a brush through his ear-length brown hair, the tangled beard suggesting an Islamic bravo, a roisterer promoting a peck on the lips for a woman. It was his grand introduction, an act to make people aware that they were not all a batch of terrorists. He was a smidge under six-two, much of his face covered by the beard, and his eyes were dark, one may have considered them banishing and evil.
He was dressed in a pin-striped suit, white shirt, and blue tie: the basic D.C. raiment. Even his handkerchief was politically correct.
His cell phone, encrypted, beeped, Shai Brown said, “Come out, walk to the right, and I’m on Pennsylvania Avenue waiting. Gray Mercedes.”
El-Shabazz didn’t respond, simply switched off, went out, boarded an elevator to get out of there, a Panamanian woman smiled at the man who looked like somebody’s favorite Bali-wood actor about him, expected he was an investigator for the sitting United States Attorney for the District of Columbia.
Exiting Trump International Hotel, el-Shabazz walked to the right and hopped into the waiting gray Mercedes.
Over the car’s stereo system: “So nice to meet you, Brandy.”
“You’re just in time,” said AUSA Brown. “Things are about to get a bit personal in the presidential suite. It seems,” he said through chuckles, “that Mr. Butler has ran into his baby’s mama.”