“They might be the same people,” Prescott said.

“They might be,” Lowen said. “But my guess is that if they are, they’ve kept themselves far enough away from events that there’s someone else the direct line points to. And you know how that is. If we have an obvious suspect with an obvious motive, that’s where we go.”

“Like Amazonian separatists,” Prescott said, archly.

“Exactly,” Lowen said.

“The timing is still a little bit too perfect,” Prescott said. “You stepping out and the consulate going up.”

“I think thatwas coincidence,” Lowen said. “If they were timing it, they would have waited until Nascimento was back in the office.”

“Which would have meant you would have died, too,” Prescott said.

“Which would have suited their purposes of distraction even more,” Lowen said. “Blowing up the daughter of the secretary of state would definitely have drawn the focus of the United States. Another reason to assume the bomb was set in motion a long time ago.”

“When I present your theory to the secretary, I’m going to leave that last part out,” Prescott said. He pulled out his PDA to take notes. “I’m sure you’ll understand why.”

“That’s perfectly fine,” Lowen said.

“Huh,” Prescott said, looking at his PDA.

“What?” Lowen asked.

“I’m sending you a news link that was just forwarded to me,” Prescott said.

Lowen pulled out her PDA and opened the link; it was a news story on her tending to the injured on Sixth Avenue after the explosion. There was video of her kneeling over a prone woman.

“Oh, come on,” Lowen said. “She wasn’t even hurt. She just freaked out and collapsed when the bomb went off.”

“Check your message queue,” Prescott said.

Lowen did. There were several dozen media requests for interviews. “Gaaah,” she said, throwing her PDA onto the table, away from her. “I’ve become part of the distraction.”

“I take it this means the State Department should say you’re unavailable for interviews at this time,” Prescott said.

“Or ever,” Lowen said. She went to get some coffee to self-medicate for her quickly approaching headache.

*   *   *

Lowen ended up doing six interviews: one for The New York Times,one for The Washington Post,two morning news shows and two audio programs. In each she smiled and explained that she was just doing her job, which was not strictly true, as she had given up the daily practice of medicine to work for the U.S. State Department, and anyway her specialty had been hematology. But no one called her on it, because the story of the daughter of the secretary of state arriving like a healing angel at the scene of a terrorist act was too feel-good to mess with.

Lowen cringed as her picture was splashed across screens all over the planet for two whole news cycles, the second news cycle prompted when she received a call from the president, who thanked her for her service to the nation. Lowen thanked the president for the call and made a note to yell at her father, who had undoubtedly set up the media op for his boss, who had to contend with midterm elections and could use a spot of positive public relations.

Lowen didn’t want to deal with any more interviews or congratulatory calls or messages or even the offer by the Brazilian Ministry of Tourism to come for a visit. What she really wanted was to get her hands on the file concerning Luiza Carvalho. She pestered both Prescott and her father until it showed up, along with a State Department functionary whose job it was to not let the file out of her sight. Lowen gave her a soda and let her sit down with her at the kitchen table while she read.

After a few minutes, she looked over to the State Department courier. “Seriously, this is it?” she said.

“I didn’t read the file, ma’am,” the courier said.

The file had nothing of note about Luiza Carvalho. She was born in Belo Horizonte; her parents were both physicians; no brothers or sisters. She attended Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, earning degrees in economics and law before joining the Brazilian diplomatic corps. Postings in Vietnam, the Siberian States, Ecuador and Mexico before being called up to be part of Brazil’s United Nations mission, which was where she had been serving for six years before she took on the Clarkemission, where she murdered Liu Cong.

Like all Brazilian foreign service workers, Carvalho was questioned annually by her superiors about her associations and activities and also consented to be randomly “examined” (that is, followed and bugged) by the Brazilian intelligence services to make sure she wasn’t doing anything untoward. Aside from some questionable sexual liaisons—“questionable” in terms of taste in partners, not in terms of national security—there was nothing out of the usual.

Carvalho had no associations or friends outside of the foreign service community. The only trips she took were Christmastime visits to Belo Horizonte to spend the holidays with her parents. She took almost no time off except for two years prior to her death, when she was hospitalized for a case of viral meningitis; she spent four days in the hospital and then another two weeks at home recovering. And then it was back to work for her.

No pets.

“This woman is boring,” Lowen said, out loud but to herself. The courier coughed noncommittally.

An hour later the courier had left, file in hand, and Lowen was left with nothing but a feeling of unsatisfied irritation. She thought perhaps a drink might fix that, but a check of her fridge informed her that the only thing in that appliance was the dregs of some iced tea that she couldn’t recall making. Lowen grimaced at the fact that she was coming up with a blank concerning when she had made the tea, then grabbed the pitcher and poured it out into the sink. Then she left her Alexandria condo and walked the two blocks to the nearest well-lit suburban chain theme restaurant, sat at its central bar and ordered something large and fruity for no other reason than to counteract the taste of boring that Luiza Carvalho had left in her mouth.

“That’s a big drink,” someone said to her a few minutes later. She looked up from her drink to see a generically handsome-looking man standing a few feet from her at the bar.

“The irony is that this is the small size,” Lowen said. “The large margarita here comes in a glass the size of a hot tub. It’s for when you’ve decided that alcohol poisoning is a way of life.”

The blandly handsome man smiled at this and then cocked his head. “You look familiar,” he said.

“Tell me you have better pickup lines than that,” Lowen said.

“I do,” the man said, “but I wasn’t trying to pick you up. You just look familiar.” He looked at her more closely and then snapped his fingers. “That’s it,” he said. “You look like that doctor at the Brazilian consulate bombing.”

“I get that a lot,” Lowen said.

“I’m sure you do,” the man said. “But it couldn’t be you, could it. You’re here in D.C. and the consulate was in New York.”

“Sound logic,” Lowen said.

“Do you have an identical twin?” the man asked, and then gestured at the bar stool next to Lowen. “Do you mind?”

Lowen shrugged and made a whateverhand movement. The man sat. “I don’t have an identical twin, no,” she said. “No fraternal twin, either. I have one brother. I pray to God we don’t look the same.”

“Then you could be that woman’s professional double,” the man said. “You could hire out for parties.”

“I don’t think she’s that famous,” Lowen said.

“Hey, she got a call from the president,” the man said. “When was the last time that happened to you?”

“You’d be surprised,” Lowen said.

“Cuba libre,” the man said to the bartender as she came up. He looked over to Lowen. “I’d offer to buy you a drink, butc”

“Oh, Lord, no,” Lowen said. “I’ll have to hire a taxi to get home after this thing, and I only live a couple of blocks away.”