We went downtown and rifled a FedEx box, taking several cardboard letter-size envelopes and the bigger, sack-like envelopes. Then we stopped at an art store where I bought a jar of black poster paint, a watercolor brush, and an X-Acto knife. I bought a black golf shirt at a department store, and a black baseball cap from a sports shop two doors down the street.

Years before, we once had needed a full-face mask, and found one, of former President Bill Clinton, at a novelty store. To LuEllen’s delight, the store was still there, and open, and she bought another one just like the first. The great thing about the Clinton mask was that it was Caucasian flesh-colored, and from more than a dozen feet away it might be mistaken for an actual face.

We took all the supplies back to the hotel and up to LuEllen’s room.

On the back of the cardboard FedEx envelope we found a logo just about the right size for a shirt. We cut it out with the X-Acto knife, and LuEllen sewed it above the pocket on the golf shirt, tacking it on with three stitches of black thread from her sewing kit.

“Good from six feet,” she said, looking critically at the shirt. “If a cop stops us to give us a ticket, you can tear it off.”

“Can’t have any cops,” I said. “We’ll have to do the plates when we get close to Krause’s, but they wouldn’t fool a cop.”

“Gonna be some cops in that neighborhood,” she said.

“We need five minutes,” I told her. “Give me five minutes with the guy.”

“We could call him on the phone.”

“He wouldn’t believe us. We’ve got one chance at it.”

While we were talking, we cut another logo out of one of the FedEx bags, and we put that one on the baseball cap. “Who knows what a FedEx uniform looks like, anyway?” LuEllen said. “You just look at the logo, right? You just look at the box the guy’s carrying.”

Before we headed to Krause’s place, we went out on the hotel line-this was nothing sensitive, just a Google search-and found a half-dozen pictures of Krause. Took a long look: he had sandy hair, a narrow face, a long nose, a rounded chin. He looked English, upper-class English.

WE CRUISED Krause’s house at five o’clock, driving my rental car. High summer and still full daylight. That was a particular problem, because we couldn’t see any signs of life-no lights, no movement, all garage doors closed. We cruised it at five-thirty and at six, at six-thirty and at seven. In between, we found an elementary school with a deep turn-in. That’s where we’d do the painting, if Krause ever showed.

“Maybe he’s not home,” LuEllen suggested, when we went by at seven. The house was still dark; and now the sun was going down. “A lot of these guys go back to their home states on weekends, right?”

“That should have been mentioned on one of the schedules,” I said. “It wasn’t… and he’s not up for reelection for four years.”

THE house showed lights at seven-thirty and I headed back to the school yard. “You ready for this?” LuEllen asked.

“Let’s just do it,” I said. We pulled into the turn-in, and I got out and did a quick touch-up on the front license plate with the black poster paint-changed an H to an M, a 7 to a 1, made a 6 out of a 5. When I was done, I screwed the tops back on the paint bottles and put them in a plastic bag in the trunk. I pulled the Clinton mask over my face, held in place by a rubber band stretched around my head, above my ears. Once it was on, I rolled it up onto my forehead, so that when I was wearing the ball cap, the roll of the plastic mask was obscured by the bill.

“Ready,” I said, when I got back in the car.

LuEllen was in the backseat. “You know what you’re gonna say?” she asked nervously. We’d rehearsed the possibilities all the way over.

“Yup.” I yawned, as nervous as she was.

FOR all the sweat and preparation, we got this:

I pulled all the way into Krause’s driveway, LuEllen lying down in the backseat. Once I was inside, she’d move up to the driver’s seat and get ready for a fast exit. I got out of the car, carrying a FedEx package full of newspapers and my Sony laptop, with the screen lit up. We thought that looked sort of like one of the FedEx delivery slates. If Krause’s wife came to the door, I would politely ask for her husband. If she wanted to take the package, I’d refuse, and say that I would come back the next day. If that didn’t get him, we’d leave.

If Krause came to the door, I’d turn away as soon as I saw him, duck my head and pull the mask over my face, and show him the gun. I’d taken all the shells out, because if he did something weird, I didn’t want to wind up shooting him. Unfortunately, when you take the shells out of a revolver, the person who the gun is pointed at can see the empty cylinders. I’d have to be careful, show him only the side of the gun.

MOST of the working-out stuff wasn’t necessary. I walked to the front steps, rang the doorbell, and a minute later saw Krause walking toward the door. He was wearing shorts and a madras shirt instead of his usual blue shirt, but his long face was unmistakable.

As he came to the door, I turned my face away. The hand with the FedEx package was visible from the doorway, along with the lit-up computer screen; I pulled the Bill Clinton mask down. As I heard the door open, I realized that we were losing just a bit of the light-not quite twilight, but the sunlight was dimming.

The door opened and the senator said, querulously, “FedEx?”

I turned toward him and he shrank back, seeing the face.

I put the gun up but said, quietly, “I’m not going to hurt you. Shut up and don’t move. I need five minutes of talk and then I’m going to get out of here.” I was holding the door open with my foot, still had the package and the laptop in the other hand.

He took another step back and looked over his shoulder, looked back at me, and I said, “I’m going to save your career if you give me five minutes. If you start screaming, I’m gonna run, and it’ll be the worst decision you ever made.”

He said, “FedEx?”

“No. Listen to me. Do you know the shooting in Jackson, Mississippi, of the black man, where the cross was burned?”

“Yes,” he said tentatively. He looked back over his shoulder again. He thought about running, but knew he wouldn’t make it.

“The man who was killed was Bobby. Do you know who I’m talking about? The hacker Bobby?”

He frowned. Now, for the first time, he thought of something other than escape. “I saw it on the news, but they didn’t say anything about a hacker.”

“But you’ve heard of Bobby?”

“I’ve heard of him, but I-”

“Did you know that two men from your DDC group were killed yesterday?”

“Who are you?” He was a politician, trying to take the offensive; and he had heard.

I cut him off. “Bill Clinton. Listen, one of your former staff members at the Intelligence Committee, James Carp, killed Bobby-murdered him, beat in his head, and stole a laptop with information that could hurt me and other of Bobby’s friends. Then he killed your people, while they were looking for him. He used information from the laptop-listen to me-to do all of the political hits of the past week, all the so-called Bobby stuff. The daughter of the senator from Illinois, the military execution, the Norwalk virus, the Bole-blackface story… there are at least thirty more stories ready to go. We think a lot of the stuff was taken out of your DDC group.”

“What?”

Now I had his attention. I repeated myself, and added, “What in God’s name ever possessed you to run total background security probes on other members of Congress? Do you think there’s any chance your career will survive? What do you think your chances are of not going to prison?”