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in the plumbing section of Home Depot, is a lot harder to swallow.”
    “An American assassin; good Christ, that’ll put the cat among the pigeons,” said Brennan.
    Holliday stared blindly up at the ceiling. Something Philpot had said that didn’t quite fit. The more he tried to remember, the vaguer the memory got. He looked at Brennan. “I think you were right. There’s a whole other level to this thing.”
    “So what do we do about it?” Peggy asked.
    “Follow the trail of bread crumbs that Potsy left for us,” said Holliday. “We have no other choice and not much time.”

    Giving in to the freedom of a fresh divorce, the successful navigation of a midlife crisis and a secret yen to be James Bond after seeing Goldfinger as a young boy at the Neuadd Dwyfor cinema in his hometown of Holyhead, Wales, the professor whom Holliday was replacing for a year had purchased a silver Aston Martin DB9 for his fiftieth birthday. He’d given Holliday free reign to drive the car while he was away, as long as he took it in for monthly tune-ups, paid for its maintenance and took out his own insurance.
    The magnificent twelve-cylinder brute of a car drank gasoline like a man dying of thirst in the desert, but it was worth every drop; Holliday had never had such fun driving a vehicle in his entire life. Both Brennan and Peggy wanted to go along with him to the dead drop in Rock Creek Park, but the car was only a two-seater.
    Peggy cited her superior driving skills while Brennan simply stated that it was a man’s job and “no task for a slip of a girl, begging your pardon.” In the end Peggy won out after Brennan admitted that it would be extremely difficult for him to last that long without a cigarette, and the one thing stressed by the Aston Martin’s owner was a no-smoking rule.
    Before they set out for the park Brennan told Holliday to wait for a moment and went upstairs to the guest room. He returned with a flat-black, short-barreled Beretta Storm semiautomatic, small enough to fit in a jacket pocket, and an extra clip. The bullets were .40-caliber hollow points, fifteen to a clip. A police load.
    “How on earth did you get that through customs?” Holliday said, astounded that the priest had brought a pistol with him in his luggage.
    Brennan gave a very Italian shrug. “I travel on a Vatican diplomatic passport.” He smiled sourly. “Anyway, people suspect all priests are pedophiles, not gunrunners.”
    “You really think we’re going to need that?” Peggy asked.
    “Weapons are like the Garda,” said Brennan, referring to the Irish police force. “When you really need them, they’re never there.”
    Holliday took the pistol, gave it a quick once-over to familiarize himself with it, then tucked it away.
    It was only four in the afternoon when they left Prospect Street for Rock Creek, but it was already almost dark. In an hour or so the park police would be out in force, looking for kids tearing at each other’s clothing in the backseats of their parents’ cars.
    Peggy drove and Holliday rode shotgun, giving her directions. If there was any trouble, Holliday had given her explicit orders to get the hell away as quickly as she could; if it came down to a chase, there wasn’t a cop car outside of Germany that could catch an Aston Martin.
    It was still snowing as Peggy drove the powerful sports car north toward Ridge Road and their destination, the wipers keeping up a steady metronome beat as night fell and the snow turned to slush under their wheels. It was getting warmer and the snowflakes were getting big and soft. If they had another cold snap the streets would be skating rinks and there’d be hell to pay on the morning commute.
    “What good is a dead drop or whatever you call it? Just seems like a lot of trouble to me,” said Peggy.
    “Dead drops are used so the parties involved don’t have to meet, but in this case I think it’s only window dressing to make Potsy’s story a little more credible.