CHAPTER 20
J. EDGAR HOOVER called the hulking building the ugliest building he laid his eyes on. Across Pennsylvania Avenue from Justice, a thousand yards from the White House, agent Smith slammed his palm on the city map.
“She knew the Primacy would alarm Kuznetsov if she used that phone,” but his carping about it did not ease the misgivings. He was talking to himself more than anyone else and his voice was thick with reproach.
“She wanted me there,” he repeated. “She used me as a decoy to distract the Russians.”
“She’s a bag of tricks,” said Parker Junior, stroking his battered nose.
“And that’s not half of it. There was a phone there with a scrambler and charged batteries with her prints on it. She used it to call the desk to scare the clerk, as agent Monroe of the FBI, before her
