Chapter 12
AN UNSETTLING SIGHT OF A STRANGERHours later, a Wednesday morning, they departed, chatting about the National Gallery and Covent Garden like many excited tourists might. Pablo spotted in the lobby only three people, and they seemed not to have heard or cared. A hotel employee wearing a Muslim skull cap, beige jacket and pants concentrated sweeping his polisher back and forth over the marbled floor. Of the skeletal reception staff, one clerk, her back to them, looked engrossed, nodding to someone on the other end of her cell phone. The other employee had her land line phone pressed to her ear, while she typed something briskly on her keyboard.
As he and Stuart pushed through the glass-paneled revolving doors into the chilly misty dark, he again suffered doubts about attending t
