Chapter Two

THEY DROVE ME to the east river first. At the heliport a chopper was waiting, and we flew to an airport in Jersey, where a business jet took off the moment we were on board.

An hour before sunset, I saw the monuments of Washington silhouetted against the darkening sky. We landed at Andrews Air Force Base and three SUVs driven by guys in suits were waiting for us. I guessed they were FBI or Secret Service, but I was wrong – it was far above that.

The guy in the lead vehicle hit his bubblegum lights and we made good time through the choking traffic. We turned into 17th Street, reached the Old Executive Office Building, passed through a security checkpoint and headed down a ramp into a parking area.

That was as far as the spiders were going – they handed me off to four guys in suits who took me through a reception area, along a windowless corridor and into an elevator. It only went down. We stepped out into an underground area manned by armed guards. There was no need to empty my pockets – I was put into a backscatter X-ray and it saw everything, both metal and biological, in intimate detail.

Screened and passed, we got on to a golf cart and drove down a series of broad passages. As disorienting as it was, that wasn’t the strangest thing: I got the sense nobody was looking at me, as if they had all been told to glance away.

We reached another elevator – this one ascended for what felt like six floors – and the four guys in suits handed me over to an older man, better dressed, with greying hair. ‘Follow me please, Mr Jackson, ’ he said.

My name wasn’t Jackson, I had never heard of Jackson, my many aliases had never included Jackson. I realized then that I was a ghost, a shadow without a presence or name. If I didn’t know before how serious it was, I did then.

The silver fox led me through a windowless area of work stations but, again, nobody looked in my direction. We went through a small kitchen and into a much more expansive office. At last there were some windows, but the gloom outside and the distortion caused by what I supposed was bulletproof glass made it impossible to get any sense of where we were.

The silver fox spoke quietly into his lapel mic, waited for an answer, then opened a door. He motioned me forward and I stepped inside.