In early June 1984, a bespectacled nearly thirty-year-old man with a dimpled chin, chubby cheeks, and wavy, receding hair left his modest apartment in Washington, D.C., and walked two blocks to the fashionable Hilton Hotel, spread across seven manicured acres at 1919 Connecticut Avenue. In the lobby, a sumptuous space lit up by a massive crystal chandelier, he glanced around and located the person he had come to meet for lunch, a stranger to him until now. After a quick consultation, the two decided to eat in the Hilton's refurbished coffee shop, at a corner table where no one would overhear their conversation.
