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just so that crazy gun loaders in America couldn’t get their hands on any of it. That was a stroke of genius,” he said. “Must have really put the press on the gangbangers in South Chicago. Only being able to kill a hundred people or so a night now. All those years pushing the ATF button to push them in the face of the gun dealers. Put as many of them as possible out of business, along with the manufacturers. You’re just up to your little honkers in good works, aren’t you?”
    He stopped for a moment and looked at her, the smile gone from his face. “But then, of course, you have a permit to carry, don’t you?” He knew she did. He sometimes wondered if she might bring her pistol, a snub-nosed .38, to one of their meetings and try to put an end to it. But it wouldn’t do her any good unless she turned it on herself. “Where exactly do you hide it?” he asked. He looked her up and down with a kind of lustful leer as if the next thing he might do was strip-search her.
    A good number of the political class constantly railed against guns and gun owners and then used their influence to obtain permits so that they could carry concealed weapons themselves. This was done mostly when they were back in their districts. Firearms were frowned upon in the highly sanitized atmosphere of the Capitol, where security was now so tight that members of the public had to make appointments, sometimes weeks in advance, and get ten-printed just to do the public tour of the hallowed halls that for more than thirty years had been the scene of the collective crime.
    “I got that permit years ago when I was being stalked!” She said it with a tone of defiance. The instant the words left her lips she knew it was a mistake.
    “Oh, I hope he didn’t hurt you,” said the man.
    She shook her head, said nothing. Why compound the error?
    “Thank God for that!” He shook his head. “It’s a sick world out there. You do have to wonder what’s going on in some people’s minds. That an honest, hardworking public servant such as yourself would be the victim of a stalker. You do have to wonder what could possess someone.”
    The way he said it and the fact that he seemed to be waiting for an answer made her feel like a bug pinned under his microscope.
    “One who didn’t know better might think you had done something wrong,” he offered. “But then, of course, we know better. Like I say, it’s a sick world.”
    She stood there, the quiet anger fixed in her eyes. He was right about one thing. She had no one to blame but herself. Back in the Senate Office Buildings or in the Capitol she was part of the aristocracy. Out here she belonged to him.
    Under the dome she might be whisked into the private members’ elevator between floors, and be able to jump aboard the little private underground choo-choo that chugged them beneath the sweltering streets of Washington so they wouldn’t wear out shoe leather or have to mingle with the unwashed.
    Here, faced with the reality that others knew her secret, she was forced to stand by silently and accept the humiliation. She hoped in time he would let her go. He assured her that they would at some point. Until then there was nothing she could do, nothing she could say. Serna had discovered Grimes’s secret and had tried to extort favors and money from her only to discover that she was standing in line, that the people in front of her had a prior claim and that they held it with a death grip.

SEVEN
    M r. Madriani, call for you.” Brenda Gomes, my secretary, looks over at me from her desk, her hand cupped over the tiny microphone on her headset.
    I am out front looking for a file in one of the cabinets. “Who is it?” I mouth the words so as not to be heard at the other end of the line.
    “Mr. Diggs,” she whispers.
    “I’ll take it in my office.” Seconds later I am behind my desk, the phone to my ear. “Herman. Paul here.”
    “Benjawan Tjahana,” says Herman. “I’m not exactly sure how