19: Chapter 19 Chestnut Street, A Test at the Dinner Party

Washington, Georgetown, Chestnut Street.

117 Chestnut Street is a three-story Georgian Federal-style brick building, nestled deep in the quietest block of Georgetown, three blocks away from the Potomac River.

The facade is deliberately understated.

There is no signage, no logo; on the exterior wall, only an old-fashioned gas lamp-style brass sconce emits a soft, warm light.

The windows use old-fashioned hand-blown glass; from the outside, one can vaguely see the warm light inside and the dark wood paneling, but the specific furnishings are unclear, and not a sound can be heard.

There is no name here.

But in certain circles of Washington, it has a tacit code name— "Chestnut Street."

Three words are enough.

This is a private club restaurant open only to members.

It is not the kind of club where you can just buy a membership card; money is merely the lowest threshold for entry here.

What truly distinguishes "Chestnut Street" from the hundreds of other high-end restaurants in Washington is its membership review system:

One must be a current or former senior official of the Federal Government, at least at the Assistant Secretary level, be recommended by two existing members, and pass a background check to join.

The restaurant has only twelve tables, hosting at most twenty-four guests each night.

There is no menu; the chef prepares dishes based on the ingredients available that day. After the meal, the bill is automatically deducted from the member's account; no one knows how much others spend, and no one cares.

People dining here discuss the terms of Federal Government budget amendments, the nomination games for Supreme Court Justices, and the procurement plans for the latest generation of weapon systems at The Pentagon.

And all of this happens amidst the crisp sound of knives and forks touching bone china plates and the halo of red wine slowly swirling in glasses.

No one speaks loudly, no one looks around; every table is an independent and enclosed little world.

When Edward Warren walked into 117 Chestnut Street, it was 7:48 PM.

The maître d' was an elderly Black gentleman with graying hair, wearing a well-tailored dark gray suit. Seeing Edward, he merely bowed slightly without any superfluous pleasantries.

He knew the Warren Family, and he knew who Edward was meeting tonight.

"Mr. Warren, Director Walsh has arrived."

"Your table is in the back hall, by the fireplace."

Edward nodded, walked through the front hall corridor, and pushed open the heavy oak door of the back hall.

The back hall was smaller than the front, with only four tables in total, three of which were currently empty.

A man sat at the table near the fireplace.

He was about fifty-seven or fifty-eight, similar in age to Edward, and kept his physique in very good shape.

It was not the deliberate fitness of someone who trains at a gym, but the lean, upright posture that belongs to a soldier who has maintained self-discipline for years.

He was wearing a deep navy blue cashmere sweater with a light blue shirt underneath; the top two buttons were undone, and the cuffs were rolled to the middle of his forearms, revealing a pair of forearms worn sharp by the passage of time.

His hair was already graying and cut very short, his hairline significantly higher than in his youth, but his facial contours remained distinct, with prominent cheekbones and a solid chin.

In his gray-blue eyes was the calm, sharp look of an intelligence veteran.

A bottle of Bordeaux had already been opened on the table; it was one he had brought. Every time he met Edward, he brought this wine.

Twenty years ago, they couldn't afford good wine at the small tavern opposite the Naval Academy.

Later, Eli Walsh rose through the ranks of the intelligence system, and the wine rose with him, but his habit of bringing the wine never changed.

He looked up at Edward, who was walking in, a faint smile appearing at the corners of his mouth.

The smile was small, but deep.

"Ed." He called Edward by his nickname, a moniker from the Naval Academy days; there were fewer than three people left in all of Washington who still called him by that name.

"Eli." Edward walked over, pulled out the chair opposite him, and sat down, his movements as natural as if he had returned to his own living room.

The maître d' silently took the bottle from the table, expertly poured it into a decanter, and then retreated.

The door closed gently behind him, the heavy sound of the oak door shutting like a stone dropping into sand.

The appetizer was served first: smoked salmon with toast points and a small pinch of capers.

Edward used his fork to nudge the capers and looked up at Walsh.

"How is Katherine lately?" he asked.

"Same as always."

"Her knees aren't great. I told her to play less tennis, but she won't listen, insisting that her Wednesday and Sunday doubles matches are her only social activity."

"She sprained her ankle last week and finally stopped, but now she nags at home every day, saying the knee brace I bought isn't good enough."

Walsh cut a small piece of salmon and put it in his mouth. As he chewed, his eyes held the kind of tenderness only found between an old married couple—a mix of annoyance and indulgence.

"How about your side? Is Link Warren still in Las Vegas?"

"Yes."

"He crashed his car last month. It wasn't a big deal, just scraped the bumper."

"But this kid is a handful; I don't know when he'll ever stop being a worry."

Edward picked up his glass and took a sip, his tone as flat as if he were commenting on the weather.

"Twenty-six years old," Walsh also took a sip of wine. When he lowered the glass, he paused for a fraction of a second at his lips—an imperceptible hesitation.

"I remember when we were twenty-six, we were already on a destroyer in the Persian Gulf."

"Young people now are different from when we were that age; twenty-six is still a child."

"Different." Edward repeated the word, his gaze fixed in the wine glass, watching the red wine slowly swirl around.

In the three words he spoke, there was no sentimentality, no nostalgia, just a pure statement.

It was no different from stating a piece of intelligence that had already been verified by multiple parties.

Walsh caught that underlying meaning.

But he made no reaction.

His fork moved methodically between the capers and the toast, maintaining perfect uniformity even in the force with which he cut the bread.

"Do you remember..."

Edward suddenly changed the subject, his tone becoming more like casual chitchat.

"Back at the Naval Academy, there was a time we got into a fight behind the gym with some guys from the Marine Corps. You had a molar knocked out, and blood was streaming down your chin."

"And the next day at morning drill, you told the instructor you fell?"

Walsh chuckled softly, the sound brief, as if something had been gently flicked out of his throat:

"That was because the guy who hit me, his father was a colonel in the Marine Corps."

"If I had told the truth, he would have gotten two days of confinement at most, but my graduation evaluation would likely have had a mark on it—physical altercation with a Marine Corps cadet."

"Do you think it was worth it?"

"You knew how to look three steps ahead even back then," Edward said.

"Weren't you the same? I remember you were the one who started it."

Walsh looked at Edward, his eyes carrying a hint of appreciation mixed with scrutiny.

"But the reason you started it wasn't because those Marine Corps guys called you a hick from the West, but because you had calculated it much earlier—after that fight, you became the leader of the Western group at the academy."

He put down his fork and leaned back in his chair, the corners of his mouth slightly upturned.

"You, ever since you were young, have had your own calculations for everything you do."

"Calculations can be wrong sometimes," Edward said, holding the glass without drinking.

He just watched the traces of wine left as it flowed in the glass.

"The further you calculate, the easier it is to trip in the near places."

"It's like playing chess; you look ten steps ahead, only to return and find the opponent changed their formation on the third step."

Walsh's left hand on the dining table had his ring finger twitch discreetly.

The movement was so small that even the next table couldn't have noticed it, but his old friend and classmate did.

"That depends on who you are playing chess with," Walsh said, picking up his fork again to spear the last caper on the salmon.

"In Washington, everyone plays about the same game."

"The difference isn't who looks further, but who has more pieces on the board."