26

She entered the Biltmore at 10 p.m. It’s cloak and dagger, Bascombe had said on the phone. It’s the only way they’ll agree. Be punctual.

The only way, she thought. What was wrong with a little openness now and again? They were infatuated with secrecy. They liked nocturnal meetings and whispered conversations in secure rooms.

She surveyed the reception area. This place, all the rage in the years after Frank Lloyd Wright had designed it, was past its shelf-date. Women with bad face-lifts dined here, balancing awkwardly on high heels and hanging on to the arms of silver-haired men who looked like traumatized bankers or golfers from the age of knickerbockers. There was the perfume of old money and the musty smell of quiet power. It was the kind of place where her father occasionally dined.

Amanda approached the desk. She asked a clerk for the key to room 247, as she’d been instructed. Do it exactly the way you’re told, Bascombe had said. The clerk was supercilious. He pushed the key towards Amanda as if he thought she was here for the purpose of an illicit assignation. She wondered if her clothes were suspect. The knee-length black skirt and matching jacket didn’t strike her as the garb of a working-girl. You couldn’t tell, she supposed.

She took the key and walked towards the stairs. On her way up she encountered a party of old dowagers chattering among themselves like so many fluttery birds descending in a wave of chiffon and the choking smell of Chanel No. 5. Amanda sidestepped, let them creak past her on their way down, then continued up.

She clutched the key in her warm hand. Go into the room. Somebody will meet you there. For an uneasy moment she suspected some kind of trick or trap. It was groundless, a case of nerves. She was going to have a quiet word with a grey-faced bureaucrat, that was all, somebody who’d allay her fears with a few appropriate phrases and maybe a lie or two thrown in for good measure. Somebody who’d tell her that the situation had been investigated and the repairs made, the holes sealed, it couldn’t happen again. Sorry about Isabel Sanchez, by the way.

But still.

She walked down the corridor, searching for the room number. She reached it, paused, then kept walking. This affliction of nerves was downright stupid, so why didn’t she just turn around, slip the key in the door and enter the goddam room? This is what you wanted, she thought. This is what you asked for.

She walked back. She looked at the key a moment, then she opened the door. She stepped inside the room. It was empty. She checked the bathroom, also empty. She went to the window and gazed out, seeing falling rain caught in the lamplight on the lawn. Somewhere a band had begun to play, a tinny sound heavy on drums, music for people who wanted to shuffle through a geriatric foxtrot.

OK, so the Program representative was late, flight delayed, traffic jam, all kinds of reasons. She sat down in front of the dressing-table and caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. A little make-up, a touch around the eyes, the lashes, the lightest of lipstick, hair sensibly brushed and in place. She’d wanted to look down-to-business serious, the kind of person who wouldn’t be swayed by platitudes and excuses.

She heard a key turn in the lock and the door opened. The man who entered the room came across the floor towards her. ‘Amanda Scholes?’ he asked.

She noticed tiny spots of rain in his hair. He reached inside his raincoat and said, ‘Let me show you some ID.’

‘Sure,’ she said.

He handed her a laminated badge. She saw the words ‘Department of Justice’ and the guy’s photograph and a thumb-print and a name typed just beneath it: ‘Anthony Dansk.’