CHAPTER 100

AFTER SPENDING THE AFTERNOON and evening in a luxury room at the Hay-Adams, Katrina White changed into green hospital scrubs, a black zip-collar, a long-sleeved top, the blue puffy jacket, and a knit cap embroidered with the emblem of the University of Texas Longhorns.

At 3:50 a.m., she walked toward the main entrance to the university’s medical center near the Foggy Bottom neighborhood in the District of Columbia. White carried the gray pack she’d retrieved at Union Station.

She had the burn phone in the pack along with her cover passport, other supporting cover documents, and what looked for all intents and purposes like a fancy portable boom box, complete with an antenna of braided flexible wire that she’d fed through an insulated sleeve meant to keep a hydration line from freezing. What looked like a small black microphone was screwed into the end of the braided wire and clipped to the right side of the pack’s shoulder harness.

At the bottom of the stairs to the front entrance to the hospital, the Sparrow slowed for several beats, searching in her pockets for an employee badge on a lanyard, courtesy of Maestro. When she found it, she hung the badge around her neck, put on a surgical mask, and went inside.

Acting glad for the sudden warmth, she was aware of the cameras in the high corners of the lobby but did not pay them much attention. She pulled back her hood, crossed to the scanner, and slid the badge through, confident that the guard on duty would see her come up as Cynthia Del Torre, a traveling nurse from Dallas recently hired to work on the oncology ward.

“You’re a little early,” the woman said.

“First day on the job,” White said to the guard and hurried off to the elevators, thinking that it really was amazing what M could do when he had access to a computer system, even one with as many security bells and HIPAA whistles as GW’s.

The burner phone in her pack rang twice but stopped before she got in the elevator. As the car rose, she looked at the camera in the upper right corner, tugged her mask down below her lips, and smiled, knowing no one would notice, not really.

After all, she was invisible.