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man was not on his side. However, Serov did not like to deviate from an established plan. He decided that if the man remained in the house after the bodies fell, he would follow through on his original plan and escape through the woods. If the man interfered in any way or came outside after the shots were fired—well, Serov had plenty of ammo, and the result would be three bodies instead of two.

 
CHAPTER 3
    Daniel Buchanan sat in his darkened office and sipped black coffee of such strength that he could almost feel his pulse rise with each swallow. He ran a hand through hair that was still thick and curly but had gone from blond to white after thirty years toiling in Washington. After another long day of trying to convince legislators that his causes were worthy of their attention, the level of exhaustion was intense, and enormous amounts of caffeine were increasingly becoming the only remedy. A full night of sleep was not typically an option. A catnap here or there, closing his eyes while being driven around to the next meeting, the next flight, occasionally blanking out during an interminably long congressional hearing, even an hour or two in his bed at home—that was his official rest. Otherwise, he was working the Hill in all its near-mystical facets.
    Buchanan had grown into a six-footer with wide shoulders and sparkling eyes, and possessing an enormous appetite for achievement. A boyhood friend had entered politics. While Buchanan had no interest in holding office, his lively wit and natural powers of persuasion had made him a perfect lobbyist. He had been an instant success. His career had been his only obsession. When he was not pushing the legislative process Buchanan was not a comfortable man.
    Sitting in the chambers of various congressmen, Buchanan would hear the voting buzzer go off and watch the TV every member had in his or her office. The monitor gave them the current bill up for vote, the tally for and against and the time they had left to scurry like ants to the floor and cast their ballot. With about five minutes remaining on a vote, Buchanan would conclude his meeting and hurry down the corridors looking for other members he needed to talk to, the Whip Wind-up Report clutched in his hand. It gave the daily voting schedules, which helped Buchanan determine where certain members might be—critical information when you were tracking dozens of moving targets who probably didn’t want to talk to you.
    Today Buchanan had managed to grab the ear of an important senator by riding the private underground subway to the Capitol for a floor vote. Buchanan left the man feeling fairly confident of help. He wasn’t one of Buchanan’s “special” people, but Buchanan was aware that you never knew where help could come from. He didn’t care that his clients weren’t popular or that they lacked a constituency that would hook a member’s attention. He would just keep hammering away. The cause was a virtuous one; the means were therefore susceptible to a lower standard of conduct.
    Buchanan’s office was sparsely furnished and lacked many of the normal accoutrements of a busy lobbyist. Danny, as he liked to be called, kept no computer, no diskettes, no files, no records of anything of importance here. Paper files could be stolen, computers could be hacked into. Telephone conversations were bugged all the time. Spies were listening with everything from drinking glasses pressed to walls, to the latest gadgets that a year before hadn’t even been invented but that could suck up streams of valuable information right out of the air. A typical organization bled confidential information the way a torpedoed ship shed its sailors. And Buchanan had a lot to hide.
    For over two decades Buchanan had been the top influence peddler of them all. In some important ways he had laid the groundwork for lobbying in Washington. It had evolved from highly paid lawyers dozing at congressional hearings to a world of numbing complexity