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explain how to unlock Barnard’s door, I hung up and joined the tourists cruising the Ellipse. Hard to
     be invisible in this town: too damn broad and bright, zero foliage cover, and every other pedestrian carried a videocamera.
     No wonder there were so few assassinations anymore. Crowds, lights, thinned after the Lincoln Memorial. Soon even the sidewalks
     disappeared. I walked along the Potomac, reacquainting myself with the rhythm and insinuation of shadows as adrenaline began
     seeping into my blood. It was a heavier mix than my brain had put out for Bobby Marvel’s concert a few hours ago; then again,
     no one killed a violinist for bad intonation. I could feel the rush in my arms and legs. They were already in super shape;
     during my time off, I had been working out. Smith had never been leaner or stronger. Odd that the less I cared to live, the
     better care I took of my body.
    Cut through the bushes behind the Kennedy Center. Though all was now quiet on the immense back palazzo, tonight’s opera would
     end in fifteen minutes, spewing several thousand witnesses my way. Even now a few spoilsports were scuttling out before the
     final curtain. Limousines crawled up the ramp, motors rumbling, masking low frequencies; a battalion of taxis would invade
     any minute. Hurrying, I crossed the street to the Watergate complex, where once upon a time a few cocky amateurs had performed
     the mother of all botch jobs. Careful, Smith: bad karma here.
    Heard water before I saw it. Ahead of me, three oval basins tinkled into each other, exactly as Maxine had described. Three
     tiny moons danced on their surfaces. I froze, horrified: my last assignment had begun in a fountain in Leipzig. Now Maxine
     had brought me halfway around the earth to not one fountain, but three. Was this the Queen’s way of telling me to get on with
     it? Worse, a dare: If I couldn’t make this first hurdle, she’d know my guts were still soup, my nerves steady as ice in a
     desert. I’d sink to the bottom of her class, maybe for good.
    On a nearby balcony, a woman laughed softly, ecstatically: stopped me dead. She was watching the moon with someone she loved.
     I had laughed like that once … did that woman have any idea what was to come? If so, she laughed anyway. Goaded by her defiance,
     her hopeless bravery, I stalked to the middle fountain. No fish. Just pennies, pebbles, balls of gum. I had nearly circled
     the basin when the phantom of a shadow wavered beneath the water. A jellyfish with straight edges? My hand raked the slippery
     bottom: keys all right. Clear plastic.
    Above, I heard another low, maddening chuckle. Up the street, cars began to honk: opera
finita.
I quickly circled the Watergate complex, a hulk of jags, tiers, and curves—half yacht, half Moby-Dick. Like most buildings
     in Washington, it was a tad too white. Out back, a grove of pines shielded the service entrance. Pulled on my gloves and hid
     my face in the scarf. Tried one of Maxine’s keys. No alarm sounded, but up in security a little beeper had probably gone off;
     armed guard would be checking in any minute. I trotted down a humid, linty corridor. Behind closed doors, machinery whined
     so that folks upstairs could coast through four seasons at a comfy seventy-two degrees. I ran up the stairwell to the ninth
     floor. Barnard would live near the top, of course. Ostentation was the best cover, she always claimed. But Barnard would have
     stuck out in any crowd. She was a stunning six-foot blonde. Liked her hair in a high chignon and shoes with four-inch spikes:
     working altitude easily six six. She could do a mile in under four minutes and after a half bottle of gin she could still
     pick off a chipmunk at two hundred yards. Maxine had scooped her out of med school and somehow convinced her that squashing
     bad guys was more patriotic than finding a cure for cancer. I think her love life was like mine but with a few hundred more
     correspondents, thus fewer