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knock-kneed, but her face was elegantly structured, with a mole under her right eyebrow. He had heard her during a discussion in the hall with a fellow tenant who did not support the current administration. Her replies had been sharp and informed. Robie had been impressed.
    He had started referring to her in his own mind as “A.”
    Robie stepped back from the door when she disappeared into the elevator with her bike. He moved back to another window overlooking the street. A minute later she left the building, shouldered her knapsack, swung onto her bike, and was off. He watched her until she turned the corner and the reflector strips on her backpack and helmet disappeared from view.
    Next stop: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
    It was four-thirty in the morning.
    He turned back from the window and surveyed his living space. There was nothing in his apartment that would tell anyone searching it what he did. He had an official position that would be backed up to the fullest in case anyone questioned anything. But still, his apartment was nondescript and contained almost nothing of personal interest. He preferred that to having others invent a past for him, placing photos of people he didn’t even know around his apartment and passing them off as relatives or friends. “Hobbying” a residence with tennis rackets or skis or stamp collection books or a musical instrument was standard procedure. He had turned all such offers down. There was a bed, a few chairs, some books he’d actually read, lamps, tables, a place to eat, a place to shower and use the toilet.
    He reached up to the pull-up bar he kept over the doorway leading to his bedroom and did a quick twenty. It was good to feel his muscles in motion, pulling his weight up to the bar with relative ease. He could run most twenty-somethings into the ground. His strength and motor skills were still excellent. Yet he was forty now and clearly not what he once was. He could only hope to counter the inevitable erosion of skills and physicality with increased field experience.
    He lay down in the bed but didn’t put any covers over him. He kept the apartment cold. He needed to sleep.
    The coming night would be busy.
    And
different.

CHAPTER

8
    R OBIE WAS IN the basement gymnasium of his building. It was nearly nine p.m., but the place was open twenty-four/seven for the residents. All you needed was your key card. In one respect Robie’s workout routine never varied: He never did the same workout twice in a row. He focused not on strength or stamina or flexibility or balance or coordination or agility. He focused on them all. Every exercise he did required at least two and sometimes all of those elements.
    He hung upside down on the pull-up bar. He did stomach crunches and then worked his oblique muscles while holding a medicine ball. The U.S. Army had devised a functional fitness regime that mimicked what soldiers did in the field, the sorts of muscles and skills required on the battlefield.
    Robie held to the same concept and worked on things he needed to survive
out there
. Lunges, thrusts, explosiveness from his calves up. He worked everything in synergy. Upper body and lower body at the same time that he was pushing his core past the breaking point. He was chiseled but never took his shirt off. No one would ever see him strolling along displaying his six-pack unless he needed to as part of a mission.
    He did a half hour’s worth of yoga until he was drenched in sweat. He was holding an Iron Cross on the pull-up bar when the door opened.
    A. Lambert stared over at him.
    She didn’t smile or even acknowledge him. She closed the door behind her, went over to a corner, and sat down cross-legged on anexercise mat. Robie held the cross for another thirty seconds, not to impress her, because she wasn’t even looking at him. He held it because he had to push his body past what it was used to. Otherwise he was just wasting his time.
    He let go and dropped lightly to the floor. He