house, off Bentcross Drive, set among mature oaks and a screen of lower pines.
Two granite pillars flanked the driveway entrance, and the long blacktopped driveway led to a detached garage eighty or a hundred feet from the house itself. The house side of the driveway was edged with a knee-high granite wall. The wall looked nice, but it occurred to Lucas, who’d seen a similar driveway at the home of a powerful intelligence officer in Mexico, that it also worked as a security feature: you couldn’t get a car or truck close to the house—or a car or truck bomb.
Lucas parked at the garage and walked through a four-foot-wide slot in the granite wall, up to the house. Before he had a chance to ring the doorbell, the door opened and a tall slender man, with a neat Vandyke beard, perhaps thirty-five, opened the door and asked, “Marshal Davenport?”
Lucas nodded and said, “Yes.”
“I’m Charles’s assistant. He’s in the den.”
Another assistant, Lucas thought—it must be a Washington thing.
The assistant backed up and Lucas followed him inside. Once past the entry, he found himself in an expansive living room decorated with eighteenth-century British hunting prints and paintings, mounted on pale blue plaster walls; a six-foot grand piano sat in a corner, half the size of the piano at the Winstons’ house. There was no sheet music in sight, but a crystal vase sat on the piano top, filled with yellow and pink bell-shaped flowers; the room smelled of funeral.
As they went through, Lucas asked, “What’s your name?”
The man said, “Stephen.” And after a pause, “Gibson.”
“Have you been with Mr. Lang for a while?”
“Thirteen years,” Gibson said. He was prematurely balding with close-cropped hair, and wore beige trousers, a yellow shirt open at the throat, a blue linen sport coat, and brown loafers. A pair of narrow silver-rimmed glasses hung from his neck. “About twelve years longer than I expected to, when I graduated from the university. I assist Charles with his research, in addition to . . . ordinary business chores.”
They walked through a smaller room, whose function Lucas couldn’t quite identify—maybe a more intimate meeting room, with a sideboard for drinks, and a faint odor of nicotine—to the den, another large room lined with books. There were three photos in a cluster in a niche between bookcases: a young Lang shaking hands with Ronald Reagan, a middle-aged Lang shaking with George W. Bush, and a near-elderly Lang shoulder-to-shoulder with Donald Trump.
Lang himself sat behind a walnut desk that had the look of an Early American antique: not elegant, but formidable. Another crystal vase of flowers sat on a credenza behind the desk.
He looked up from a manuscript when Gibson led Lucas into the room, and stood up to shake hands. Lang was a middle-sized man, fleshy, bald with a few strands of steel-gray hair layered over the top of his pate, a narrow nose, extra pink at the tip, and watery green eyes. His hand was soft as warm butter. He was wearing a gray suit coat and trousers, a white dress shirt, and a yellow bow tie.
“Marshal Davenport,” he said, showing small pearly teeth as he smiled through his greeting. “I’m pleased to meet you. I won’t apologize for it, but I asked Stephen to background you, and you seem to have had at least two extremely successful careers.”
“We’ll have to see how successful the current one is,” Lucas said. He took a blue-leather visitor’s chair in front of Lang’s desk, as Lang sat down again.
Gibson said, “Charles, I need to finish with that email. Would either of you like a drink before I do that? Orange juice? Lemonade?”
Lucas said, “No, thanks. I just ate breakfast.”
Lang said, “Not yet, but bring me a lemonade when you finish with the mail.” Gibson left, and Lang turned back to Lucas.
Lucas said, “You know why I asked to see you—I’ve been told that you’re one of the leading experts on these alt-right groups, white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and so on. We’re looking particularly at a group called 1919.”
“1919. Extraordinarily interesting. Came out of nowhere. You’re aware of the 88 meme . . .”