From a hilltop in Azbekistan, through night-vision binoculars, Jake McMann looked down on the Kerch Strait Bridge, wondering if he was about to make history.

That such a detached thought would float through his mind wasn’t unusual — keeping a distance, being outside yourself, was part of any field agent’s makeup. Still, McMann considered himself a genuine student of history — with a Ball State University degree to back it up. And the professional path he’d taken indicated how seriously he took such things.

His short brown hair riffled by the evening breeze, his muscular frame draped in black fatigues, the CIA operative grinned at himself — me making history. Jesus.

But wasn’t he on the front line of a predicted, even inevitable conflict? Why shouldn’t he be seized with the sense that, on this night, he would have the chance to make an entry on the pages of history?

Or anyway a footnote.

Never one to question orders — in or out of uniform, McMann was a soldier — he nonetheless couldn’t help wondering what the hell he and his team were doing in this tiny Crimean Peninsula excuse for a country. All he knew was that they were here to reconnoiter from this position, and wait.

Azbekistan had been just one victim of Russia’s annexing of most of the peninsula back in 2014. The Russians had built the bridge below, from the Taman Peninsula in Krasnodar Krai to Kerch on the Crimean; they’d opened it in 2020, one year behind schedule, back when they still controlled the little country.

Five years later, with mounting threats from the United Nations and determined fighting by Azbekistani rebels, the Russians retreated to their side of the bridge. Now, barely six years later, they threatened to return and overrun Azbekistan yet again. McMann’s four-person team had been sent here to assess the country’s defenses. But why bother? The Russian invasion seemed inevitable, as did the fall of Azbekistan (again).

The strait wasn’t that wide here, less than three miles, and McMann thought he heard some kind of noise echoing off the water; but with the swirling wind, he couldn’t pick it out.

Turning, he looked down the hill to the south. He saw nothing, at first. Pulling on his night-vision goggles, he spotted two men climbing the slope to join him.

The taller, almost spindly one — Willie Meeks, McMann’s partner — was an African American agent from Villa Rica, Georgia, a sleepy suburb of Atlanta. McMann and Willie were called Ebony and Ivory by their peers back at Langley, but McMann supposed that was better than Salt & Pepper, which similar duos had been christened back in the Agency’s glory days in the 1960s and ’70s — back when black agents in the CIA were more rare than female ones, and there weren’t ten of those.

Next to Meeks, Vitor Gorianov — one of the two analysts they’d been sent here to protect — was an American of Crimean descent, and also their translator. Craggy, and burlier than Meeks, Gorianov also knew his way around an AK-47, which was a nice bonus in circumstances like these.

As the men neared, also attired in black, night-clinging fatigues, McMann eased the goggles back up to his forehead.

“Where’s Liz?” Gorianov asked, in a near whisper, knowing voices really carried out here at night.

The fourth member of the team, Liz Gillis — the other analyst, blonde, blue-eyed, boyishly attractive — was not yet thirty, but knew her shit.

“She went for a walk,” McMann said, also sotto voce.

“A walk?” Meeks asked, almost too loud. He caught himself. “You let that fresh-faced analyst go off on her own, in the wild?”

McMann met his partner’s eyes. “She can take care of herself, Willie.”

“In what could be a fuckin’ war zone any time now? Jake, get serious — she’s just a goddamn analyst.”

From behind Meeks and Gorianov, a confident female voice came, softly: “A goddamn analyst who’s got the drop on you three.”

They all wheeled toward her. Her blonde hair tucked under a black watch cap, Gillis stood there grinning. She was tall, almost willowy, yet the AK-47 looked perfectly at home in her delicate hands, its snout lowered but ready.

Gorianov, his words clipped, asked, “What the hell were you doing out there?”

“My job,” Liz snapped.

“Keep your voices down!” Meeks said, too loud.

McMann held up a hand and said, “Okay, everybody — unbunch your panties. Chill already.”

He waited while they all took a breath.

The entire team was tense, including McMann, and why not? The Russians seemed poised to invade, and Azbekistan appeared almost ready and willing for them to do so.

Which was damn dumb: the Azbekistani army was not exactly intimidating, despite fancy new uniforms. As rebels, citizens fighting for their homeland, they had been tenacious pit bulls; as an organized, under-equipped army standing up against an overwhelming enemy, they were more like lapdogs.

But at least they would look sharp as they got slaughtered.

McMann asked, “What did you find, Liz?”

“The Azbekistanis are sound asleep. Except for the ones just napping.”

“Vitor?” McMann asked.

“Same thing to the south. Maybe they think they can dream the Russians away.”

“Where’s the closest Azbekistani force?”

Meeks said, “Other than that glorified bridge tollbooth? A two-jeep patrol about a click away.”

As they headed back toward their vehicle, a thought kept gnawing at the front of McMann’s mind: Why are we here? Everybody in the CIA, not excluding the agent at the desk in the lobby at Langley, knew this invasion was coming, and that the Azbekistanis were about to get rolled over. His four-person team could hardly prevent that inevitability.

So why the hell were they here?

They were still nearly a thousand yards to the trees where their car, a Skoda Citigo, was hidden, just off a back road, when the wind shifted and McMann suddenly heard distant thunder — or was it?

The sounds were low-pitched, but as the wind brought them to him, he knew — no, not thunder. Spinning, he pulled down his night-vision goggles and trotted over to where he could look back down toward the bridge.

Tanks.

A whole damn column of them, already better than halfway across.

“Damn!” McMann blurted. “It’s on — the Russians are on the move! Right the hell now!”

All four of them sprinted toward the car. McMann ran hard, but some detached part of his mind recalled the Nazis storming across the border of Poland in 1939. Just up ahead were the two jeeps that Gorianov and Meeks had spotted earlier, lumbering toward them. For a second, McMann wondered if his little team would end up pinned down between the two sides.

But the Russians were still a few clicks away, and the four of them would be long gone by the time the tanks rumbled through. That thought gave him some relief.

Some.

Running just behind him, like a relay man about to pass a baton, Meeks yelled, “You hear that?”

Until now — lost in his immediate thoughts of escape and his reflective flashes about the history they were in the middle of — McMann hadn’t; but now he did — a low-pitched rumble, different from the tanks. But he didn’t turn and he didn’t slow as he sprinted through darkness across uneven ground, only then the noise was right above him, and he risked a glance skyward.

On this moonless night, the planes were not visible, though he could make out parachutes dropping out of nowhere. Not only would he and his team fail to get away in time, they would soon have Russian paratroopers landing all around them.

Ready to fight.

“Faster!” McMann shouted.

Somehow they all picked up the pace, though McMann had a grim feeling they wouldn’t even make it to the car, let alone get away.

The Azbekistani jeeps were closing, but not as fast as Russian invaders were materializing from the sky. His team sprinted even harder — they had orders not to engage the Russians unless fired upon.

McMann unsnapped his holster and drew his Glock.

To his right, the first Russian thudded to ground. The paratrooper was a good distance away, judging by the sound, and they were now only two hundred yards from their car. Two football fields, two lousy football fields between them and the chance to get away before the Russians and Azbekistanis opened fire on each other.

Sweat burning his eyes, his lungs burning too, McMann kept running, kept urging his team on. Young slender Liz was leading the way, Meeks keeping up with McMann, though Gorianov was slowly falling back.

“Vitor,” McMann yelled, “pick up the pace!”

Somehow Gorianov found an extra gear. Again, for a moment, McMann thought they had a chance, right up to where the Russian soldier landed hard in front of him. Meeks circled around the guy, but McMann had no choice but to hit the brakes. Gorianov nearly ran up his back, but dodged left in time.

That left McMann face-to-face with the Russian as the paratrooper came up, AK-47 at the ready, pointed right at McMann.

The CIA agent shot the man in the head.

It was all reflexes and his action meant that if they weren’t in a shitload of trouble before, they sure as hell were now.

When McMann fired, the other three on his team opened up, too. This was a target-rich environment, getting richer by the second. Looking up, all McMann could see were shadows, but he knew each one was a Russian paratrooper...

... and there were shadows everywhere.

He holstered his pistol, then leaned down, picked up the fallen paratrooper’s AK-47, and started shooting, doing a slow, deadly pirouette.

Not only were they suddenly in a firefight on the ground, but paratroopers who hadn’t even landed yet rained fire down on them. Gorianov took a hit, went to a knee, wincing, but kept firing. The next second, he was up and moving again, though not nearly as fast.

The Azbekistani jeeps were on them, headlights lancing through the inky night, and men riding opened fire, raking the field with machine gun rounds even as they rolled forward.

Because we don’t have enough trouble, McMann thought, emptying the magazine of the AK-47.

Dropping the depleted weapon, he got out his pistol again. Their progress had slowed to a walk now as they moved toward the car, firing at Russians all around. McMann looked over at Meeks and saw a shiny black spot on his partner’s leg, leaving him barely able to limp along now, much less run.

They kept fighting, did their best to keep moving. Gorianov got hit again, this time in the chest. They all wore body armor, but having been hit like that more than once himself, McMann knew it hurt like a son of a bitch and knocked the wind out of you as surely as a fist to the belly. Suddenly Gorianov was on his back, arms and legs flailing.

With his free hand, McMann went to Gorianov and grabbed a fistful of the man’s fatigues and pulled him up to a sitting position. He was about to help the analyst to his feet when a Russian bullet exploded Gorianov’s skull, the lifeless, near headless body sagging back to the ground.

Spattered with gore, McMann swung and fired at the paratrooper, killing him as dead as Gorianov.

But their pistols were no match for AK-47s, and they were outmanned a hundred to one, not to mention the Azbekistani jeeps firing indiscriminately into the night, unaware that Americans were on their soil.

Meeks took two hits, one in the body armor, one not, spun, dropped, fought his way to his hands and knees, then Gillis and McMann each caught him under an arm and dragged him toward the car.

“Jesus, are we screwed,” Meeks burbled. Hurt bad.

“And it’s all your fault,” McMann said, a standard line between them when the shit was coming down.

Meeks tried to laugh, but summoned only a choke, then he stumbled and Gillis lost her grip. McMann waved for her to keep going, and get to the car. If she could, maybe they could still make it out of here alive, that back road so close, so very close...

McMann felt a sudden searing pain in his leg, and dropped to the ground, looking down to see a nasty wound in his thigh, shiny with bubbly blood. Turning to Meeks, he said, “Come on, Willie, quit loafing — time to go.”

“Cut a guy some slack,” Meeks said, and smiled, and died.

McMann dragged himself to his feet, no time for sorrow, just as an Azbekistani machine gun tore into Gillis and shook her like a rag doll, less than fifty feet from the Citigo. Her slender, bullet-riddled form dropped in an awkward pile.

Shit.

His leg burned, shock setting in, sweat pouring out everywhere as he limped toward the car, both sides of the battle seeming to turn their gunfire toward him, tracers streaming like fiery ribbons.

He was hit once, twice, three times, two in the body armor, another time not, stumbled, fell, rose, like a nearly knocked-out fighter who should have stayed down for the count. Bullets buffeted him now, the car barely ten feet away. Machine-gun fire from one of the jeeps raked the vehicle’s hood, turning the engine into something worthless, no doubt.

Still, McMann limped on, fell to his knees, got hit in the left glute. Which one of these sons of bitches had actually shot him in the ass? If that wasn’t covered by the Geneva Convention (some detached part of his mind said), it sure as hell should...

Crawling, he got to the car, touched a tire, the feel of the rubber tread oddly comforting. He moved forward, the Russians coming right up on him now, the firing coming to a merciful stop. He reached up, his hand bloody, his arm barely working, and he touched the door handle.

Then in a crystalized instant he realized why he and his team were there. It all fell into place — they had been sent here to die, so that...

Cold steel against his temple cut his thought short — a muzzle. He tried to turn but couldn’t see who held the gun. Did it matter? McMann heard just the start of the shot that killed him.

And felt no pain at all.

He was history.

Nothing hit FBI Special Agent Patti Rogers in the pit of her stomach quite like getting summoned upstairs to see Assistant Director Margery Fisk. Somehow, no matter how benign the circumstances, it always reminded her of being called to the principal’s office.

She felt that way right now, as she rode the elevator up to Fisk’s floor. But if Joe Reeder — her task force’s consultant, and her good friend — had been with her, this trip wouldn’t have been unnerving at all. Or at least much less so.

She and Joe would be having dinner tonight. Since they had first been thrown together on the Supreme Court task force two years ago, the pair had become tight, and they had usually dined out every couple of weeks or so. In the last year, however, her social life had taken a decided upturn, so she and Reeder — there had never been anything romantic between them — were seeing less of each other.

When Rogers was shown into the Assistant Director’s office, Margery Fisk sat behind a desk the size of Rogers’ parking-garage space. The AD’s short, rigidly coiffed dark hair almost touched the collar of her impeccable, expensive business suit, a gray tweed offset nicely by a black silk blouse. Rogers, at five six, with her medium build and shortish brown hair, could not fill out a business suit the way Fisk could. Nor could she afford as smart a one.

As good as Fisk looked, the woman was even better at her job, a role model for, and occasional mentor to, Rogers, who saw in Fisk everything the young FBI agent aspired to become.

Right now Fisk’s unsmiling countenance betrayed not a trace of why Rogers had been called up here.

“Have a seat, Patti,” the AD said, without rising or even looking at Rogers, attention on her monitor, the dominant item on her almost too-neat desk.

Rogers sat, and waited, figuring there was nothing good coming.

Finally, without looking at her, Fisk said, “How do you like having Agent Altuve back on your team?”

“He’s a real boon to us. Nobody is better than Miggie when it comes to tech.”

Computer expert Miguel Altuve had been assigned to the Supreme Court task force Rogers and Reeder headed up two years ago. Miggie’s work on that case had earned him his own small but elite computer crime unit, which he’d been temporarily pulled off last year when Rogers (again with Reeder consulting) needed help in thwarting an attempted government overthrow.

“I’d like to say the change was made,” Fisk said, “for all the right reasons. But I assume you know how and why the reassignment went down.”

Rogers nodded — she didn’t need to say, Budget cuts, the reason for Miggie’s unit getting swallowed up by another one. And that quickly, Rogers understood why she’d been summoned.

“Things aren’t easing up either,” Fisk said unhappily. “We’re having to cut two more units, and yours could wind up on the chopping block, too.”

“I guess that’s always a possibility, ma’am,” Rogers said, unsure of what else to say.

“You’re not going to make a case for your team?”

“When that becomes necessary,” Rogers said, just a little tightly, “our record will be our best defense.”

Fisk nodded. “One might say that the Special Situations Task Force has virtually snatched this nation from the brink of disaster. Twice.”

But what have you done for me lately? Rogers thought, trying not to move a muscle.

“But lately,” Fisk said, “you’ve not been producing much.”

Working to keep defensiveness out of her voice, Rogers said, “We have closed over a half dozen cases since the Capitol matter.”

Again Fisk nodded. “You have. A kidnapping, two bank robberies, and a few other more minor matters... but nothing that gets us the media attention we need. Not like the two big cases, the second of which frankly remains necessarily unpublicized.”

Rogers sat forward. “They’re threatening to close us down because we aren’t providing enough publicity? Since when is law enforcement driven by how much press it generates?”

“Well, Agent Rogers, we’re in the J. Edgar Hoover Building. Doesn’t that say it all?”

Fisk did have a point.

The AD continued: “Your task force receives, agent-by-agent per capita, more funding than any other three units combined.”

“Well, our agents are at standard pay grade, and so far when Joe Reeder has consulted, he’s done so pro bono.”

“But your investigations generate considerable expense at a time when President Harrison is cutting the budget of every agency in DC. The only way I can keep arguing against the deep cuts other agencies are taking is to generate publicity, to close high-profile cases, the kind that make the public sit up, take notice, and write to their congressmen to keep the FBI fully funded.”

Rogers could not conceal her frustration. “You’re saying that if I want to keep my team together, I need to find a high-profile crime... and that we need to be the ones to bring it to a successful conclusion. How is that supposed to work? We don’t generate the crimes. And you assign the cases.”

Fisk took in a breath and let it out. “Patti, I like you and I admire you — you’ve done amazing things in your surprisingly short career. The Director himself has expressed how impressed he was with the Supreme Court and Capitol investigations...”

The former attracting considerable media attention, the latter a state secret.

“... but the fact remains: you are the least senior team leader we have. Right now you face the imminent possibility of being reassigned to another leader’s unit.”

“Director Fisk, how am I supposed to—”

“Agent Rogers,” Fisk interrupted, the “Patti” familiarity gone, “I’m not suggesting you do anything. If the right case comes along, I’ll send it your way. If you can again attach Joe Reeder as your consultant, that would be a big PR plus. But you needed to know where you stand.”

Rogers realized the nod that followed was the end of the meeting, and she quietly exited the AD’s inner sanctum.

Not what Rogers wanted to hear, but not completely unexpected either. She’d figured that budget cuts would become an issue at some point — the United States had nearly defaulted, just six months before — but had hoped her work with Reeder would keep her and her team afloat a while. Now her hopes rested on some minor case evolving into something major, or Fisk coming through for her with a barn burner.

Maybe Joe would have a thought.

Bob & Edith’s, a diner on Columbia Pike not far from Rogers’ condo, drew an eclectic crowd that, depending on the time of day or night, ran the gamut from families with kids to whores with habits. Even when the clientele overlapped, there was never any trouble — whatever people brought in the door, they left in the parking lot. The place was an island of biscuits-and-gravy-induced peace, a Switzerland of comfort food. The only change in about the last fifty years had been the addition of flat-screens riding high in the corners, 24/7: CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, ESPN.

In a back booth, Joe Reeder, in a black polo and matching jeans, his ABC Security windbreaker flung on the seat next to him, waved Rogers over. His short, prematurely white hair, contrasting with the tan of a recent Florida vacation, made him easily the most striking man in the place, not excluding guys with mohawks, transvestites, and a couple of ripped bodybuilders.

She plopped down across from him.

“Another rough day at the office, huh?” he said, not really a question. His craggy good looks, as usual, gave nothing away, except perhaps tiny smile lines around the brown eyes in their white-eyebrowed settings.

She shuddered. “Brutal.” Sometimes she hated that people-reading thing of his.

Reeder’s expertise in the field of kinesics — the science of facial expressions and body language — dated back to his Secret Service years. It remained a major selling point for his firm ABC Security, which consulted with law enforcement agencies nationwide.

They took time to order coffee while they surveyed the menu.

Then he said, “It’s the budget cuts, isn’t it?”

She gaped at him. “How the hell...?”

Her friend gave her half a smile. “Don’t worry, I wasn’t ‘reading’ you — it’s not like these cuts haven’t been in the news ad nauseam.”

He nodded toward a screen where CNN was excerpting this morning’s press conference with President Harrison explaining his latest efforts to balance the budget.

“It was only a matter of time till it was the FBI’s turn,” he said. “What’s the skinny on your task force?”

She gave him the details of her meeting with Fisk, pausing briefly as the two friends ordered.

Reeder looked like he was about to advise her, then he stopped short, seeing somebody approaching. Without looking, she already knew who it was — Joe Reeder wasn’t the only people reader at the table. Kevin Lockwood dropped into the booth next to her and squeezed her thigh under the table — he was working, so a kiss on the cheek was out of the question.

Kevin and Rogers had been seeing each other for the better part of a year now. They’d met when he was a material witness on the last case she and Joe had worked — boy-band handsome, Kevin wore his dark hair clipped short, his tortoiseshell glasses enlarging slightly his impossibly long-lashed brown eyes.

Those eyes had first drawn her to Kevin, even though at the time he wore eyeliner and mascara. Kevin sang at a club called Les Girls where he appeared under the nom de guerre Virginia Plain, though he took occasional shifts here at Bob & Edith’s. Tonight he wore not a sparkly gown, but the customary waiter staff’s white shirt, black bow tie, and black pants.

“Mr. Reeder,” he said, nodding across the table.

“Mr. Lockwood,” Reeder said with a wry smile. She’d noticed some time ago that he’d stopped asking Kevin to call him “Joe.” Just didn’t do any good.

“Working graveyard, huh?” she asked Kevin.

“Yeah, lucky me. Alexis called in sick, so Pinky called me and I said, ‘Sure.’ I hope you weren’t thinking of doing something.”

Pinky was the heavyset, henna-haired gal at the register.

“No,” Rogers said, and raised her coffee cup toward Reeder. “I’ve already got a date.”

“Tomorrow night, then. I’m not working either place. I’ll take you somewhere nicer than this... meaning no offense, Mr. Reeder.”

“None taken, Mr. Lockwood.”

Kevin gave her a wink in lieu of a peck on the cheek, then rose and went off toward the kitchen window where somebody’s food waited.

“Been almost a year, hasn’t it?” Reeder asked.

She shrugged. “Who’s counting?”

“Your folks back in Iowa are going to love him.”

“Don’t be mean.”

“Hey, I like the guy. And I don’t have to be much of a people reader to see that you do, too. In a different kind of way.”

“So,” Rogers said, uneasy talking about this part of her life, “you were going to say something? Right before Kevin showed up? Something that might help us keep Special Situations afloat, I hope.”

“I don’t know...”

“You don’t know what you were going to say?”

He huffed a tiny laugh. “I don’t know if it will keep Special Situations together.”

She felt a tiny rush in her stomach. “You have something?”

“Maybe.” He sipped coffee. “You ever have occasion to meet Amanda Yellich?”

Secretary of the Interior Yellich — a hard worker and valued ally of President Harrison — had died just under a week ago at her desk.

“Just once.” Rogers shook her head, sighed. “Nice woman. So sad.”

“Sad as hell,” Reeder said. “Do you know how she died, exactly?”

Rogers shrugged. “Wasn’t it a heart attack?”

Reeder leaned in. “Are you old enough to remember Mama Cass?”

“Who?”

He rolled his eyes, then said, “The Secretary died from eating a sandwich.”

“A sandwich? What, did she choke?”

“Are you sure you don’t remember Mama Cass? Food allergy — sesame.”

FBI agent Rogers didn’t love that the cause of death of such a high-ranking public official was unknown to her. “And you’re privy to this how?”

“I know that she died at her desk over lunch because it was on the news. I know about the sandwich — and more importantly, the allergy — because... I knew Amanda.”

“Amanda? You knew the Secretary of the Interior well enough to call her by her first name?”

With a little shrug, Reeder said, “Her marriage broke up about the same time mine did. We went to dinner a few times. Maybe more than a few times. But it was never anything really serious.”

Rogers wasn’t sure she bought that. “How well did you know her?”

“Well enough to know about her OCD.”

Rogers cocked her head. “She had Obsessive Compulsive Disorder?”

“I don’t know if it was ever officially diagnosed or anything,” Reeder said, shrugging. “But I do know she ate at her desk every damn day. And that she had the same sandwich from the same restaurant every damn day. Hell, for all I know it was delivered by the same delivery person every damn day.”

With some lightness in her tone, Rogers said, “Please stop saying ‘every damn day.’” Because this clearly was something that was gnawing at her friend.

“OCD or not,” Reeder said, “Amanda knew all about her allergy, going back to early childhood. She would have made sure the restaurant knew about it, too. It wouldn’t take much sesame to kill her, a fact of which she was quite aware.”

“Kill her? Really kill her?”

“Really kill her. Not a heart attack.”

“Is this being covered up or...?”

“No. There was a general assumption that she died at her desk of a probable coronary, which made the news initially. Follow-up reports mention the fatal reaction to sesame, but that was not page-one stuff. I mean, you didn’t notice it.”

“Who’s investigating?”

Reeder shrugged. “Nobody that I know of. Death by misadventure, an accident. Might be that’s all it is, but the Amanda I knew was pretty damn careful.”

Rogers mulled a few moments, then asked, “You think Situations should look into her death?”

“Do you have any other pressing cases?”

“No,” she admitted.

“Might be worth a look. Death of a cabinet member, if it’s more than accidental or misadventure, could be just the kind of case that would satisfy your boss.”

She smirked. “Or I could be accused of spending government funds just to satisfy your curiosity about the death of someone you knew intimately.”

“Did I say I knew her intimately?”

“Did you have to?”

Their food arrived, fish and chips for her, a meat loaf plate for him.

About to dig in, he said, “Well, if funding is your big concern, if it’ll make you feel better — I’ll buy dinner.”

“Even though it’s my turn?”

“Even though it’s your turn,” he said, lifting his fork of meat loaf in salute.

Truth be told, Reeder could have afforded to take her anywhere in town. His highly publicized success with her on the Supreme Court case had helped turn his already thriving ABC Security into a multinational corporation. But the political paparazzi had made dinner practically impossible at such favorite spots of theirs as the Verdict Chophouse, the Blue Duck Tavern, and Vidalia.

Reeder had first hit the headlines back in his Secret Service days, after stepping in front of a bullet meant for then President Gregory Bennett. Prior to Reeder, Tim McCarthy — protecting President Ronald Reagan on March 30, 1981 — had been the last Secret Service agent to take a bullet for a president.

Across the restaurant, a couple came in. The man wore a nothing suit, but the woman was wearing expensive jeans and a T-shirt.

“Them,” Reeder said, as they sat quietly eating.

That was her cue for a game they’d been playing. In an effort to pick up her partner’s people-reading skills, Rogers had coaxed him into coaching her as she studied kinesics and tried to improve her powers of observation.

She watched until the couple was seated in a booth in the back, near the kitchen. Even so, she still had a clear view of both.

“Well?” Reeder asked.

“Married couple. Rings on both. Hers is a huge fricking diamond, so they have some money.”

“What about her body language?”

Rogers nodded at the prompt. “Defensive, arms crossed, brow furrowed.”

“Right. She’s pissed off. Any idea about what?”

She glanced at Reeder. “Oh, come on.”

“It’s there,” he said.

She sneaked a look at the couple. The man was fiddling with his wedding ring, slipping it off, slipping it back on. “Ah... They’re talking divorce.”

“They are,” Reeder agreed.

The woman smiled, but her eyes were teary and she used the napkin to blot them away. A waitress came and they ordered something without looking at the menu.

Kevin swung by and warmed their coffee. Smiles were exchanged. Then Kevin was gone, and Rogers asked Reeder, “How’d I do?”

“I’ll tell you after you sum it up for me.”

“They’re a couple deciding whether or not to split. He’s in favor, she’s not.”

“That’s one option,” Reeder said.

She glanced at them again, as discreetly as possible. “What am I not seeing?”

“His watch.”

Another glance, though it didn’t give her much. “What about his watch?”

“It’s cheap — a Timex or something.”

“So?”

“You said they’ve got money. His suit is inexpensive, off-the-rack. Shoes are worn. Yet she has a honking diamond ring, a professional manicure, and a hairdo that cost more than his suit.”

“Then... they don’t have money?” Rogers asked, unsure where this was going. “Or maybe they do but she spends it all?”

“They’re married... just not to each other.”

She goggled at him. “Where do you get that?”

“She has a lot of money, he has none.”

“That still doesn’t mean they’re not husband and wife.”

The waitress brought the couple coffee — probably all they ordered.

He shrugged. “Professional manicure, expensive hairdo. But she’s not wearing makeup. He’s wearing a worn, wrinkled suit. Been at work all day, right?”

“Okay...”

“Everything about her says ‘perfect’ — yet she left the house without makeup.”

“Which means,” Rogers said, “she left in a hurry.”

“Yup,” Reeder said.

Rogers sat forward, gesturing with an open hand. “He called her. Needed to talk to her and they met here because no one knows them. Just to be safe, they took a booth near the kitchen, away from the windows.”

“Right. Mrs. America normally would never be caught dead in a place like this, but if she did, she sure as hell wouldn’t sit near the kitchen.”

“So I was way off about the divorce,” Rogers said.

“Not entirely. Married man has finally told Mrs.-Somebody-Else he’s going to leave his wife... so the star-crossed couple can finally be together.”

Rogers shook a fist. “And she’s pissed, because that isn’t what she wants at all! She’s got the money she wants in her current setup. This guy is strictly recreational.”

Reeder nodded. “If he had any smarts he would go home to his wife.”

“Does he? Will he?”

“Naw. When he slips the ring off? His eyes narrow for a split second, a micro-expression that says he’s determined to act. He’s made his decision.”

She glanced at them again — discreetly — and this time she caught it. “... Poor SOB.”

When she sent her eyes back to Reeder, his weren’t on hers, rather on the TV in the opposite corner. She looked over her shoulder at what had caught her friend’s attention. A red Breaking News banner flashed across the screen and quietly ominous words scrolled across: Russia invades Azbekistan.

“Well, hell,” Reeder muttered.

One of the other customers said, “Hey, Pinky, turn up the sound, will ya?”

Behind the register, Pinky picked up the remote, pointed it, and did as she was asked.

A blonde newsreader was saying, “... have overwhelmed the Azbekistani army. The United Nations is making vigorous protests, but at this point, the Russians remain in control of the beleaguered country. In a related story, unconfirmed by CNN, four American citizens are said to be missing from the Azbekistani capital of Troyanda.”

Reeder and Rogers traded a look.

The newsreader said, “Further updates as this story develops.”

“CIA?” Rogers asked.

Shrugging, Reeder said, “I hope not. If the four are Company, and alive, we’re going to want them back. If they’re dead, then someone, probably the Russians, will be blamed... and the hawks will smell blood in the water.”

She sighed. “Why does the world have to be such a shitty place?”

“World’s fine. It’s people that’s the problem.”

That made her laugh, but it caught in her throat. “You can be one cynical son of a bitch sometimes, Joe Reeder. Me, I prefer to cling to the hope that things can be better. Naive, I know.”

He shook his head. “You’re not naive, Patti. Don’t sell yourself short. We’ve seen enough bad shit go down, both of us, that you have to cling to whatever hope you can. Be greedy about it. You’ve seen what happens when cynicism takes over.”

She’d never heard this kind of thing from him before. “You have hope, Joe?”

He stared into his coffee for a moment, then brought his eyes up, locked on hers. “Don’t tell anybody.”

“Your secret’s safe with me.”

His grin was disarming and for once not at all guarded. “You know what John Philpot Curran said?”

“What, to Mama whozit?”

“Different eras — like us. John Philpot Curran, Irish judge and orator?”

She just stared at him.

“I’m paraphrasing,” Reeder said, “but in essence, Curran said the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.”

“I hear you,” she said.

“Eternal vigilance is our job, and because I have a high opinion of you and me, I’m hopeful. We do our job, then maybe, end of the day, some liberty will be left.”

“Pretty deep, Joe.”

He shrugged. “I get reflective every time Russia invades someplace. Dessert?”

Joe Reeder sat up in bed, pillows propped behind him, Nero Wolfe novel propped before him (Might As Well Be Dead), but he wasn’t reading, despite Archie Goodwin’s compelling narrative voice. Instead, Amanda Yellich dominated his thoughts — a petite redhead, as sunny and funny and fun as she was intellectually above him.

And she had liked Reeder a lot.

He had liked her, too. They had a number of nice nights together and a few afternoons, but after a promising easygoing start, she came to want more than he was prepared to give right now. Not that he’d broken it off — Amanda did that, when she realized Reeder was still in love with his ex-wife, Melanie.

Amanda hadn’t been wrong about that, and he’d hurt her, if unintentionally. He still regretted that he couldn’t give the woman what she needed emotionally, and the physical side, however rewarding, hadn’t been enough. In recent weeks, though, there’d been many times he wondered if he should call Amanda and try again. He’d never quite done that. And now — now she was gone.

On the nightstand, his cell chirped. So few people had the number — and once he’d paid dearly for ignoring a call — that he’d made a point of answering, or at least checking out, every one. When it rang the second time, he eyeballed the caller ID — UNKNOWN.

With a sigh, he put Rex Stout down and picked up the phone. “Reeder.”

A female voice on the other end said, “Please hold for the President of the United States.”

There was a time when Reeder might have clicked off, chalking this up to a crank call. But in the past several years, the President was someone he’d actually spoken to on occasion — and one of those few people who had this number.

“Joe? Dev Harrison.” The casualness of that liquid, self-assured voice coming over the line was at once disarming and intimidating.

President Devlin Harrison, the second African American leader to be elected in the country’s history, was no crank-caller.

“Good evening, Mr. President.”

“Apologies for the late hour, Joe.”

“Not necessary, sir. I’m pretty much open for presidential calls any time.”

A soft chuckle preceded a change in tone: “Obviously you’ve seen the news.”

The President wasn’t much for small talk. No president was.

“The Russian invasion, sir? Of course.”

The surprise of receiving a phone call from the President was amplified by the apparent subject. The moment felt surreal.

The President’s voice was deceptively casual. “What strikes you about our role in this incident?”

“The four missing US citizens.”

Obviously.

“I’d like to talk to you about them, Joe. Tomorrow morning, my office...”

Right. That oval one.

“... six a.m. Can you make that, Joe?”

“Of course, Mr. President.”

“Our, uh, people weren’t just regular citizens.”

That was more than Reeder expected to hear over an open phone line. But he risked, “I didn’t think so, sir. I can come now, sir, if...?”

“No. I have things to do. Six a.m. Thanks, Joe.”

A click in his ear signaled the end of the call. Good-byes were unnecessary.

He settled back in bed, trading the phone for the Nero Wolfe. So the President wanted to talk to him about missing citizens overseas, caught up in a Russian invasion, and who “weren’t just regular citizens.” CIA agents, clearly, as he’d assumed — not a big leap, as CNN and the other outlets had raised the same possibility, or anyway their talking heads had.

Reeder tried to get back to the book but instead fell asleep wondering how the hell he fit into this scenario. He dreamed a variation on the Situation Room scene in Dr. Strangelove, and woke up sweating, finding nothing funny about it at all.

At the wheel of her government Ford, Patti Rogers sensed she was embarking upon a wild goose chase; but when Joe Reeder gave her a lead, she followed it up, no questions asked — particularly when she and her task force were so desperately in need of a significant case.

She did not share her misgivings with Special Agent Lucas Hardesy, her ride-along on this trip. The senior agent, with whom Rogers was enjoying an uneasy truce, wore shoes as shiny as his shaved head, and an immaculate off-the-rack suit — a good agent who shouted ex-military even at his most quiet.

Not that his “most quiet” happened very often.

“What’s this asshole’s name?” Hardesy asked from the rider’s seat.

“Let’s not assume he’s an asshole, Lucas,” she said, keeping her tone easy, not wanting to restart anything. She always called him Lucas, never Luke; no one on Special Situations did. “We’re just looking at the guy who delivered Secretary Yellich’s lunch every day — a citizen named Glenn Willard.”

“So, then, Reeder knew the woman, huh? Probably in the Biblical sense. And now we’re doing this as a favor to him, ’cause he’s such a suspicious bastard?”

“You’re doing it because I’m buying your lunch today. I’m doing it because Joe has better instincts than both of us put together.”

Hardesy didn’t dispute that. She was driving southeast on Branch Avenue in Hillcrest Heights, Maryland, getting ready to take the right onto Curtis Drive.

Hardesy asked, “What do we know about this Willard who isn’t necessarily an asshole?”

“Not much. Miggie called the restaurant Secretary Yellich ordered her sandwich from every day. The owner, Dev Avninder, says Glenn is the deliveryman in question.”

“Okay, but who made the sandwich?”

“Avninder himself. He always made it himself. He knew sesame was a big no-no in Yellich’s diet, and made sure she got exactly what she ordered.”

He gave her a grunt of acknowledgment, then: “What kind of name is Avninder?”

“East Indian, I think.”

Another grunt. “Phone’s not enough. We should talk to him.”

“We will. But first, Willard.” She made the right onto Curtis, Hilltop Apartments in sight. “Avninder says Willard is a decent employee and a good enough guy.”

“You had Miggie run him?”

“Of course.”

“And, nothing?”

“Nothing at all.”

“Well, we know one thing, boss.”

“Which is?”

“How much I’ll put up with for a free lunch.”

The buildings of the Hilltop Apartments, set at the corners of a huge parking lot, might have been four six-story college dorms. Nondescript white brick weathered to light beige gave the place a worn-out, even weary look. Rogers parked the car and they got out. She was in a cream-color silk blouse and navy trousers, the day cool but not enough so to require the matching jacket.

“Which building?” Hardesy asked.

“Number two,” Rogers said, nodding to the one in front of them.

“Security building?”

She nodded again as they strode across the parking lot.

He was reaching in his pocket for his jimmy tool. “One thing I never miss? The Fourth Amendment.”

“Don’t let Reeder hear you say that,” she said.

The Patriot Act, expanded over a decade ago, had pretty much gutted the Fourth Amendment, and the conservative-dominated Supreme Court had upheld the decision. But old-time liberals like Reeder still pissed and moaned about “unreasonable search and seizure.” For her part, Rogers — a self-identified middle-of-the-road Republican — liked not having to deal with all the bullshit warrants and assorted other crap that might keep her from saving a life or hauling in a bad guy.

“I’ll keep my opinion to myself,” Hardesy said, jimmy in hand.

Then, like a jump cut in a film, the door to Building Two flew open and a youngish guy in a business suit popped out. Her hand moved to her sidearm.

The guy’s eyes grew wide and his arms went up at the sight of Rogers’ palm resting on the butt of the pistol at her hip. In his twenties, his dark hair short, his retro-hipster beard the same, he looked like he might pass out. As the door banged closed behind him, he flinched.

Rogers said, “Glenn Willard?”

Confusion clenched his forehead. “What? No... no! Basement flat, in back, on the right.” His voice was a shaky tenor. “Cops?”

“Federal agents,” Rogers said, her hand drifting away from her pistol.

The guy shook his head, lowering his hands slowly. “Not a surprise... DEA?”

“FBI,” Hardesy said. “What’s that mean, ‘not a surprise’?”

“When you get to his front door, just take a whiff. It’s not springtime.”

“Blowin’ smoke, is he?”

“Considering how many ‘friends’ he has, going in and out of there? I’m guessing he’s not just blowing it... but you didn’t hear that from me.”

“Who exactly,” Rogers asked, “are we not hearing this from?”

“Joe Boyer.”

“You live here, Mr. Boyer?”

“For two years now.”

“Willard been here that whole time?”

Boyer nodded.

Hardesy asked, “All that time, dude’s been flyin’ the Mexican airlines, and doing a lot of entertaining, too?”

With a shrug, Boyer said, “When I first moved in, it was real steady — you’d have to push past ’em sometimes, and they reeked of the stuff. Fewer now.”

By 2031, only ten states had not passed legislation allowing recreational use of marijuana; but Maryland was one of them, and selling the stuff illegally remained frowned upon.

Realizing he wasn’t the target here, Boyer said, “All right if I go? I’m already late.”

Rogers nodded, but Hardesy had another question: “Do you know if your neighbor’s home now?”

Boyer shrugged. “I wouldn’t say he’s a neighbor. I’m a floor above him, but we usually go to work about the same time. Not unusual we go out the door one after the other. Haven’t seen him today.”

Rogers sent her colleague a look that said this interview was over. But Hardesy wasn’t quite finished.

“How would you like to get in solid with Uncle Sam?” he asked the guy. “And open the security door for us?”

Boyer looked around to see if anyone was watching. “Why not?”

He slid his key card into the door and opened it for them.

“You have the gratitude of your federal government,” Hardesy said, happy not to have to jimmy his way in; but Boyer was already walking toward the Naylor Street metro stop.

Hardesy held the door open for Rogers.

“You want to cover the back?” she asked.

“Other than weed, this guy is clean, right?”

Rogers shrugged. “He’s got no record, anyway.”

“Probably no need then. Let’s stick together.”

That made sense to her.

The pair headed down to the lower floor. As they emerged from the stairwell, a young man was locking his door — short dark hair, medium build, polo shirt, decent jeans, Reeboks. The kind of guy who might pass for invisible in a busy office building, say, delivering something.

“Glenn Willard?” she called, her hand not at her hip but hovering.

The young man’s eyes flew to her, then widened with fear.

“Federal agents,” she said. “We’d like to ask you—”

But then Willard was sprinting down the corridor to a door that led to stairs that no doubt rose to a rear exit.

Just behind her, Hardesy said, “Shit!”

Rogers was only two steps into her pursuit when she heard her partner bellow, “Maybe I should take the back after all, huh?”

He said this while heading up the stairs to go around and cut the guy off.

Racing down the hall, she passed Willard’s door — was their man running because of his drug dealing? Or something else?

Rogers went up the rear stairs and out the door, looking straight ahead, at more apartment houses, then to her left. Turning right she glimpsed Willard slipping around the far corner of the building. She took off like a sprinter at the starting gun.

In good shape from her thrice weekly workouts, she was well up to the challenge, making it quickly to the far end of the building, rounding the corner... but Willard was already almost to the parking lot. Damn! He had a good fifty yards on her.

She ran harder, closing the distance, but then she heard Hardesy yell, “Freeze, Glenn! Federal agents!”

Willard stopped, but he didn’t freeze. Instead his hand went behind his back, slipping under the untucked polo to yank out a small automatic from his waistband.

Rogers shouted, “Gun!” but she doubted Hardesy heard the warning over the report of his own pistol.

The automatic seemed to fly out of Willard’s hand of its own volition, then skittered out of reach as the young man crumpled into a heap on the pavement in an empty handicapped parking place.

Rogers rushed to the fallen drug dealer, her Glock still on him, and Hardesy did, too, from around the front of the building.

At first she thought her colleague had pulled off a trick shot out of one of those old westerns Reeder watched, shooting the gun right out of the man’s hand. But it had been pain that sent the weapon flying, not fancy pistol-work: writhing on the cement, Willard got his hands red trying to stop the blood pouring from a wound in his side.

The young man looked up at Rogers as if maybe she were a nurse there to help him. “Son of a bitch shot me,” he said, like it had hurt his feelings.

Kneeling next to him, Rogers said, “Shut up and lie still.”

She ignored his moans as she dragged latex gloves from her pocket, pulled them on, then took his scarlet-smeared right hand.

“Quit grabbing at it,” she said, then pressed his palm back against the wound. “Keep steady pressure.”

Pacing nearby, her cohort had his cell out, telling the dispatcher, “Suspect down! Suspect down! Ambulance needed.”

As he gave the address, Hardesy was fishing latex gloves out of a coat pocket. When he’d finished the call, he went over, bent down, and collected Willard’s automatic, dropping it into a plastic evidence bag like a dog owner cleaning up behind Fido.

Rogers remained crouched near Willard, who was wincing in pain but alert. She asked, “Good idea, you think, drawing down on a federal agent?”

Willard seemed about to say something, but all that came out was a groan.

They didn’t have to wait long for the ambulance, but while they did, Hardesy read Willard the revised Miranda rights, after which Rogers — still kneeling, as if praying for the perp — started asking questions.

“Glenn, did you regularly deliver Secretary Yellich’s lunch?”

But Willard was too busy whimpering to respond.

She kept trying anyway: “And the Secretary always ordered the same sandwich, correct?”

Not a nod nor a shake of the head. Just whimpering and tears.

“That sandwich had sesame in it, Glenn. And Secretary Yellich was dangerously allergic. Did you know that?”

He passed out.

As the attendants loaded Willard up and in, Rogers and Hardesy gave their statements to both the local cops and an FBI Agent Involved Shooting investigator. This took a while. Before long, the parking lot filled with cop cars whose flashing lights painted the late morning red and blue.

Hardesy said to her, “I told you he’d be an asshole.”

“Let’s hope he’s not a dead one.”

“Hey, he pulled on me, so don’t look for tears.”

“I won’t. But we can’t talk to him if he isn’t breathing.”

Finally they had the chance to enter Willard’s apartment, the FBI evidence team’s work winding down. The apartment wasn’t the mess she’d figured, the expected scattering of pizza boxes not present, nor the anticipated scruffy carpeting. The room was surprisingly clean, in fact, and she attributed any disorder more to the evidence team’s search than a lack of cleanliness.

The furniture — a leather sofa along a wall, a matching pair of chairs under the living room window, a good-size flat-screen against another wall — was higher-end than she would have expected in an apartment like this.

Granted, the place was redolent of the sickly sweet mixture of dope and incense, but otherwise everything seemed so... normal. The dining room, off the entry, had a polished wood table and four chairs with a pile of mail propped against a condiment holder.

Rogers picked up the envelopes, thumbed through — a few bills, some junk, nothing special. She set the stack back down and took a pass through the galley kitchen. Coffee pot and toaster on the counter, sponge and dish soap near the faucet, everything clean and in its place.

Martin Napoli, a tall, balding agent of around forty, strode into the room; he wore an FBI windbreaker and a seen-it-all expression. The Special Agent in charge of the evidence collection team, Napoli was a favorite of Rogers’ — good at his job, and he could always make her smile.

“Hiya, Patti,” he said.

“Hiya, Marty.”

Hardesy and Napoli traded nods.

“Find anything?” she asked.

Napoli gave up a tiny shrug. “You could say that.”

“Care to share?”

His expression giving away nothing, Napoli crooked a finger for Rogers and Hardesy to follow him down the hall.

As they trailed the evidence SAIC down the dim corridor, Hardesy whispered to her, “What’s he bein’ so cute about?”

“It just means he has something.”

They passed a bathroom on the right. Neat and clean. A bedroom, door open, was dark but appeared tidy, too.

Opposite was a second bedroom, its door closed. Napoli stopped there, wearing a cat-that-ate-the-canary grin, then twisted the knob and pushed the door open.

The fecund aroma of weed rolled out.

As she and Hardesy stuck their heads in, Napoli said behind them, “Enough grass in here to replace the turf at RFK Stadium.”

If this bedroom had a bed, it was buried beneath bursting, stacked garbage bags, the pot aroma so strong that Rogers wondered if she could get a contact high just standing in the doorway.

“My lord,” she said. “Marty, any idea how much dope is in there?”

Napoli shrugged. “We haven’t exactly had time to weigh it, but my guess? Enough to make a guy carry a gun and make a run for it when federal agents come around.”

Nodding, Rogers said, “Anything to tie him to the death of Secretary Yellich?”

“Not unless one of these bags is filled with sesame seeds,” Napoli said with half a smirk. “And in the kitchen? Not a bun or a bagel with the deadly little beauties.”

Moving away from the odor, she said, “Well, stay at it, Marty. And thanks.”

“Always entertaining, Patti, when a call from you comes in. How’s your pal Reeder?”

“Getting rich not working for the government.”

She and Hardesy headed outside. Afternoon now, it was getting colder.

Hardesy regarded her with narrowed eyes. “So what do you think?”

“Well,” she said, “I almost wrote this off as a wild goose chase.”

“Yeah, me, too — but I didn’t figure it would lead to a half ton of marijuana.”

She huffed a laugh. “I guess we know why Willard pulled on us.”

“Do we?” Hardesy asked. “Or is Reeder onto something?”

“Always possible with him. We’ll have to keep digging. I wonder if taking a huge pile of dope off the street will make AD Fisk smile upon Special Situations?”

Hardesy laughed once. “We may get a day or two out of it.”

Her cell chirped — it was Miguel Altuve, their computer analyst.

“I’ve been going through security video,” he told her, “and not just from the day Secretary Yellich died — from the days before her death.”

“And?”

“And a guy who must be your Glenn Willard did deliver her meals regularly... but he didn’t do it the day of her death.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah. The guy subbing for Willard was dressed similarly, similar look generally, but definitely not the same guy.”

Her stomach did a backflip. “Do we know who the ringer is?”

“Not yet,” Miggie said. “Facial recognition came up nada.”

“Have you talked to Avninder, the owner of the restaurant, since you got this?”

“Briefly, on the phone. Knows nothing about anybody filling in for Willard. But I figure you’ll want to talk to him yourself, and not on the phone.”

Nearby, the evidence team was hauling the bulging bags of dope out of Building Two and loading them into a van — they were going to need another.

She told the phone, “Send the file on the restaurant and the owner to our phones. Hardesy can fill me in while I drive.”

“You got it,” Miggie said, then clicked off.

Turning to Hardesy, she said, “Reeder was right.”

“Was he now?”

“Ready for this? Glenn Willard delivered the secretary’s sandwich on every day but one. Guess which.”

Her colleague’s eyebrows rose high on his endless forehead. “Jesus. What are we into?”

She didn’t answer that, saying instead, “We kind of missed the noon hour, but I did promise to buy you lunch. And I have a certain restaurant in mind...”

Alone in his Georgetown office at ABC Security — a surprisingly modest space for a CEO — Reeder went over the information on the thumb drive he’d received from President Harrison.

The security firm now took all four floors of the nondescript 1990s-era building they’d moved into a decade ago, occupying space that had sat empty ever since the microfiche company that erected it went belly up. Reeder was constantly pressured by his business associates to upgrade, embarrassed as they were that the home office was shabby compared to the branch ones; but he was comfortable here.

Right now he sat at an old-fashioned oak desk with a window to his back; to his left was a wall of manuals and studies with trophies and awards serving as bookends. The wall opposite was engulfed by a video monitor, and to his right the remaining wall was given to a couch under a surprisingly small but nonetheless client-pleasing display of his national magazine covers and the famous photo of him taking a bullet for a president (who he just as famously hadn’t liked).

He was leaning back in his oversize black-leather ergonomic office chair, one of his few indulgences, his gaze fixed on his desk’s video monitor. After a third time through the thumb drive, he still had not found one damn thing of real interest.

Included were individual files for each of the missing-presumed-dead CIA operatives, a copy of the President’s directive that no one be sent to Azbekistan, and incident reports that detailed prior actions of lead agent Jacob McMann and his longtime partner, William Meeks. The two analysts, Vitor Gorianov and Elizabeth Gillis, were not regulars in McMann and Meeks’ circle, but had occasionally worked with them.

McMann and Meeks were good, very good, and none of their previous missions cast any light on why they might have been deemed expendable. But in being ordered to Azbekistan, four top operatives — including Gillis, an exceptional young talent (judging by her file) — appeared to have been knowingly sacrificed.

What other explanation was there, for some unknown party in government intentionally disobeying the orders of the President of the United States? If pawns were needed, why not send less competent agents, to accomplish the same goal?

The answer was obvious: using more clearly expendable people — a mix of inexperienced rookies and burned-out operatives — might have raised troubling red-flag questions. On the other hand, top-flight agents, lost on a mission, would only fan the flames more.

And somebody wanted a conflagration.

After letting his secretary know that he’d be mostly out of pocket for an unspecified period, Reeder left to take a meeting scheduled at Langley. The stone wall at the Agency had gone up fast and high, but thanks to the direct intervention of the President himself, CIA Director Richard Shaley had made himself available this afternoon for a one-on-one meeting. Imagine that.

The Director was seated behind his desk when a male secretary ushered Reeder in. The large office was a study in cherrywood, its rich walls sparsely decorated, almost surprisingly so, although a large framed American flag under glass rode one of the walls, as did the CIA emblem. Reeder was shown to one of two oversize rust-colored, well-padded visitor chairs.

Behind the Director and on the right side wall were floor-to-ceiling windows whose blinds were semi-shut, providing a surreal view of the Langley campus. The massive, carved mahogany desk — its glass top free of anything but a banker’s lamp and two fancy pens in holders — was of another era; but then of course so was Shaley.

An angled ceiling light shone down on the CIA chief, bathing him in an almost divine glow but not reflecting off his mostly bald dome. Meanwhile, the lighting on the guest side of the desk was about the wattage of your average garage door opener. The arrangement was rather obviously meant to intimidate, and Reeder supposed it worked a good deal of the time, particularly with subordinates.

But Reeder didn’t work here, and in any case didn’t intimidate easily.

The Director was on the phone. His side of the conversation was “yes,” “no,” and finally, “See that you do.” No state secrets were shared.

When Shaley had hung up, he said, “What is it you want, Mr. Reeder? The President asked me to squeeze you in, and I’ve done so. But I encourage you not to waste my time — as you may have heard, I’m not one to suffer fools.”

“Then you’ll be relieved to hear I’m no fool,” Reeder said. “For example, when I sink down into a well-stuffed chair like this, I know it’s not for my comfort but about putting you at a higher level.”

The Director sat back and folded his arms. “I have you scheduled for fifteen minutes, Mr. Reeder, and then I have important things to get to.”

Reeder crossed his legs but left his arms unfolded. “Fine. Let’s start with whether you’ve accomplished what the President requested of you this morning — do we know who sent your people... our people... to their deaths?”

“If I knew, Mr. Reeder, I’d have reported as much to the President, and you wouldn’t be here.” His eyes were hooded behind the wire-frame glasses, his mouth an expressionless line. “So what’s the function of this visit? Are you running point for the White House? My understanding is that you are out of government.”

“I’m here, Director Shaley, because — like you — I serve at the pleasure of the President.”

The Director’s gaze was cool, but Reeder could tell the man was boiling. “Mr. Reeder, I don’t care to be hounded. I have a duty to perform and I’m doing it. It would seem to me your presence here is a sort of... veiled threat from the President. Meaning neither him nor you any disrespect, I assure you I know how to do my job.”

Reeder didn’t let any irritation come to the surface. All those years standing post with the President paid off at times like this.

He said, “Meaning you no disrespect, Director Shaley, I have a job to do, too — again, at the bidding of the President. Call it running point if you like. I see it more as fact-finding, and passing along whatever information you may find... or have found.”

Tiny eyes flared large behind the lenses. “It sounds as if the President is asking me to report to you — a civilian.”

“If it helps, think of me as a consultant to the FBI — a liaison between two great government agencies.”

Shaley shifted in his black tufted-leather chair; maybe it was ergonomic, too. “I’ve personally checked all the deployment orders for McMann’s team.”

“And you’ve found...?”

“Just that those orders were routed through the encrypted in-house e-mail of every single senior agent, including myself.”

“But who sent it?”

Shaley looked suddenly very small behind the big desk — one of the most powerful men in government, facing a situation that seemed almost certain to end his career.

“According to our top computer techs,” he said, “all of us did.”

Reeder mulled it a few moments. Then: “Was somebody just covering his trail? Or is this a statement someone is making? A message that makes you out to be the very kind of fool you don’t suffer?”

If the grandfatherly figure was offended by that, it didn’t show. “I haven’t the slightest idea,” he admitted.

“Let’s come at this from another angle. Who working in the Company might see a benefit from starting a war with Russia? Motivation, monetary or political.”

Shaley shrugged, sighed deep. “Again, I have no idea. You say you’re on a fact-finding mission. Well, that’s all we do here. Apolitically. Our job is to try to know what our potential adversaries in this precarious world are up to. When we’re at war, our job shifts, in a way gets easier. Whoever is shooting at our people, that’s the adversary.”

“Does narrow it down,” Reeder said.

“No one here I know of stands to benefit directly,” Shaley said. “Not unless they’ve been bought.”

“There’s another possibility.”

“Enlighten me.”

“I said ‘monetary or political.’ This could be somebody with a political agenda who has infiltrated your agency — acting either for himself or as someone’s agent.”

The Director’s eyes narrowed to slits, and there was nothing grandfatherly in his tone now. “Whichever is the case,” he said, “we will find that traitor, and I intend to deal with him in my own way.”

Reeder held up a cautionary palm. “Not to tell you how to do your job, but I’d keep in mind that your infiltrator will have valuable knowledge. So you might hold off on terminating this party with the customary extreme prejudice.”

Shaley nodded. “I will keep that in mind. Now, Mr. Reeder — if you don’t mind... as you might imagine... I have things to do.”

Nodding, rising, Reeder said, “I might be able to help you, Director. I have some very good computer techs at ABC, and I also have access to the best computer man at the FBI.”

Shaley gave up a mirthless laugh. “Even if I wanted to, Mr. Reeder, I couldn’t give you access to internal CIA computer records. And if you had a court order, you know I’d only give you so much horseshit.”

“I know,” Reeder said, grinning, “but it never hurts to ask.”

The slightest smile traced Shaley’s lips. “Joe... if I might... I respect you — you’re a genuine American hero. For all I know, you may just be window dressing in Harrison’s effort to make this mess go away... but this is our screwup, the Agency’s... and we’ll fix it.”

“Okay, Dick...” Reeder could be familiar, too. “... but four of your people are dead, and already were before you even knew they were in the field.”

Shaley said nothing. His eyes were tight, and his hands were fists. And here they’d just started getting along...

“I’m just saying, Mr. Director, if you need me, call. Maybe I can do you a favor... like help to see your place in history isn’t how you paved the way for World War III.”

Patti Rogers, behind the wheel, didn’t pick up either call that came in. When she and Lucas Hardesy parked in the ramp at MedSTAR Trauma Center, she finally checked and saw Reeder had tried but left no voice mail. The other number she didn’t recognize, but the caller had left a message. As Rogers and her colleague walked toward the main hospital building, she checked it.

“This number ASAP,” Reeder’s voice said. As usual there was nothing to find in his tone; a man whose specialty was reading people didn’t give much for others to work with. But to her the clipped brevity of it spoke volumes.

Reeder had more than one cell phone, and she knew (or thought she knew) them all; but she had never seen this number before.

To Hardesy, she said, “Go ahead on in — I’ll be a minute.”

Noting her checking her cell, he asked, “Something?”

“Reeder.”

“Cool,” he said with a nod and kept walking.

On the grass near the sidewalk to the entrance, she punched in the unknown number. Reeder answered on the first ring.

“What’s up, Joe?”

His answer was as long as her question was short: the old friend who was CIA, the scheduled meeting at the Fortress of Solitude, the car that had run his friend down, a description of the vehicle and where it was headed. She promised to do what she could.

“But, Joe — this is obviously a professional hit. If we or the locals manage to find the car, it’s not likely it’ll lead anywhere.”

“No argument. It’s almost certainly stolen, and’ll be abandoned somewhere — with maybe a piece of lint for the forensics guys to work with.”

“You’re calling on a burner phone.”

“Right. I tossed mine. They must have tracked my call to Len — it’s the only way that could have gone down. So hold onto this number. For now.”

“Jesus, Joe. What the hell’s next?”

“Oh, not much. Just keep the President happy and figure out who sent four Americans to their death to foster a war between us and Russia. Same-oh, same-oh.”

“Oh, Joe.” The phone in her hand was shaking. “This is... I mean, we’ve been through a lot, but...”

“I don’t mean to involve you beyond some simple law enforcement stuff. This call is just a heads-up.”

“But, Joe, if the entire CIA is flummoxed by this thing, how can you...?”

“Don’t know,” he admitted. “I may have to fall off the grid and go underground for a while.”

“I wish there was something more I could say than just... be careful.”

“You be careful, Patti. Remember, these pricks didn’t come after me — they took my friend Len Chamberlain out.”

“And... you think they might try to hurt you through—”

“The people I care about, yes. Consider yourself warned. I’m on my way to try to talk Melanie and Amy into disappearing for a while.”

His ex-wife and daughter.

“Okay,” she said, “so I’m warned. Do what you need to, but remember to call me in off the bench if need be.”

They ended the call.

Hardesy was waiting for her near the information desk. He eyed her as she approached. “You okay?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Reeder. Some problems he’s dealing with.”

“Such as?”

She gave him the short version, which did not include the reason for Reeder meeting with his old buddy at the cemetery. The mission for the President was not to be general knowledge.

“Christ,” Hardesy said, eyebrows high. “Chamberlain was a CIA guy, huh?”

“Just a desk jockey. But they always have histories, those people. So where’s Willard?”

“Upstairs. ICU.”

They walked to the elevator.

She asked, “How is he?”

“Out of surgery. Awake, I’m told.”

They got off the elevator, took an endless corridor walk to the ICU, pushed through the double doors. Glenn Willard was just two rooms down. As advertised, the suspect was awake, hooked to an IV and several monitors, propped up slightly in a bed, a thin white blanket covering him, though where he’d been shot, the bandages made a mound. As they came in, a middle-aged nurse, taking his vitals, gave them an accusatory look.

Holding up her credentials, Rogers said, “FBI,” for the benefit of both caregiver and care-given.

The patient, getting his blood pressure taken at the moment, goggled at Hardesy. To the nurse, he said, “That’s the asshole who shot me!”

The nurse gave Hardesy a glare, and the agent casually said, “That’s who I am, all right. And he’s the asshole who drew down on a federal agent.”

Now the nurse seemed nervous and she finished up and got out, never having spoken a word. Rogers and Hardesy stood on opposite sides of the patient’s bed. The patient looked alert enough.

“Getting shot over some damn dope,” Willard complained. “Not even real drugs. Stupid.”

“We’re in agreement,” Hardesy said.

“That’s not why we’re here,” Rogers said. “And it’s not why we were at your apartment today either.”

Willard frowned in confusion. “Then why did you come around?”

“We wanted to talk to you about Secretary Yellich. We still do.”

“Well, she’s dead, right? Heard about that. She was nice, always... cheerful, tipped good. Too bad. But what’s it got to do with me?”

Hardesy said, “You delivered food to her regularly.”

“Yeah. So? Look, I know she was important. Secretary of the Interior, right? Whatever that is.”

Rogers asked, “Did you know she had an allergy to sesame?”

“No. I don’t make sandwiches, I just deliver them. Like I said, she was a nice lady, kind of foxy for being that old. We joked around and stuff. I liked her. I’m sorry she died. You should check at the sandwich shop, if that’s what killed her.”

“Thanks for the advice,” Hardesy said.

Willard shifted in bed and made a pained face. With Rogers on one side and Hardesy on the other, he had to work a little. They meant him to.

“Hey,” he said. “Five days a week I delivered her a damn sandwich and some chips. We exchanged, you know, pleasantries. I gave her lunch and she gave me the money with a twenty-five percent tip. That’s the whole story.”

Rogers said, “You didn’t deliver her sandwich every day.”

“Sure I did.”

“Not the day she died.”

“I didn’t?”

Hardesy leaned in menacingly. “Now is a bad time to play dumb.”

“I’m not playing dumb!”

“Then you really are an idiot?”

Rogers gave her partner a quick look.

Willard was shaking his head. “Look, guys, they got me goofed up on pain meds, and most days I’m usually a little lit anyway, you know?”

Rogers said, “We made that leap.”

“So for me, time sort of... runs together.”

“Well,” she said, “since you delivered the Secretary’s lunch ‘every day,’ you surely must remember the one day you didn’t.”

His boyish features tightened in thought. “Well... I do. Didn’t realize that was the day she bought it, but yeah — I remember it. Only, really, I did work that day.”

Hardesy said, “Somebody else is on the security footage outside the Secretary’s office. Much as I would like you to’ve delivered the fatal sandwich, Glenn, you didn’t.”

“Somebody took your place that day,” Rogers said. “Who?”

Willard gestured with an open hand and tugged on his IV. “Like I said, I did work, but... my buddy Tony filled in for part of the day.”

“Your buddy Tony who?”

“Tony Evans. Anthony Evans.”

“Why did he fill in part of the day?”

“You know... I had stuff to do. This and that. Stuff.”

“Why did he fill in, Glenn?”

He shifted in bed a little. “I don’t think I want to answer that. Maybe... maybe it’s time I lawyered up.”

Hardesy said, “Might be at that, if we arrest you on an accessory to murder charge.”

That got Willard’s attention. He managed to sit up some. “I’m no accessory! I told you, I liked that lady. If Tony did something to her, I had nothing to do with it!”

Rogers said, “Then answer the question — why did Tony fill in for you part of the day?”

His eyes squeezed shut as if the pain had gotten worse; in a way, maybe it had. “All right, okay, all right. I had a chance to score some primo chronic at a crazy low price... but the guy selling it could only meet me at a certain time.”

“Let me guess,” Hardesy said. “The time you were supposed to deliver the Secretary’s sandwich.”

“Well, it was that time of day, yeah. I didn’t remember that was the day that... that she, you know, died.”

Rogers said, “So you got Tony to take your place. I would imagine you have lots of friends, Glenn. Why pick on Tony?”

Willard was shaking his head. “No, no, it wasn’t that way — he volunteered.”

“Volunteered?”

“Yeah, he did! Who do you think told me about the guy with the primo chronic?”

Rogers and Hardesy exchanged narrow-eyed looks.

“Your pal Tony,” Hardesy said.

Willard nodded several times. “Tony did, yeah.”

Rogers asked, “So tell us about the delivery.”

Willard huffed a laugh. “What do you think? I met the guy, I bought the dope. The end.”

“Not the dope, Glenn. The sandwich. The owner of the shop says you did your regular deliveries that day.”

“Oh. Yeah, well. I didn’t want to get on Mr. Avninder’s bad side — he’s a good boss, but he has a temper.”

She nodded for him to continue.

“He’da been pissed if I didn’t make that delivery myself, so I walked the sandwich out of the shop, gave Tony my Ye Olde jacket and hat, and a bag of sandwiches and chip packs, for lunch-hour delivery, with instructions... but not till I was around the corner from the shop. Then Tony made the deliveries, including the Secretary’s lunch.”

Only instead Tony had delivered murder.

Rogers asked, “How did you meet Tony?”

“He was a customer. I sold him a lid or two at a couple of dance clubs, you know, in the john. We got friendly. He started doing a little dealing himself and I helped him out.”

“Did you approach him or vice versa?”

“Him me.”

Rogers asked, “Where can we find your friend — Tony?”

“After what he’s put me through,” Willard said, “he’s no friend of mine.”

And gave them an address.

Melanie Graham, the ex-Mrs. Joe Reeder, glared at the man she’d divorced, who still loved her.

“Jesus, Joe,” she said, “when is enough going to be enough?”

He guessed that was a rhetorical question.

Slender, she was wearing her brown hair very short these days, a change he regretted but hadn’t commented on. Her brown eyes burned into him and her teeth were bared, her upper lip curled back.

Okay, so she was pissed at him — at least she still cared.

“You’re a very successful businessman,” she said, biting off words, “and you’re not a kid, and yet you insist on getting yourself involved in these dangerous fixes and then everybody in your life has to uproot themselves for God knows how long until you sort the crap out and try not to get yourself killed.”

She didn’t get raving mad like this very often, but when she did, Reeder knew there was nothing he could say. He tried anyway: “I’m on a mission for the President—”

“The President! The President! How many years, how many damn decades, did I have to hear about one president or another whose life was more important than ours! Goddamnit, Joe, I’m still tied to you! We might as well still be married!”

He wouldn’t have minded that — normally.

She raved on: “How am I supposed to explain this to Donald? That we’re to pick up and pack up and go running somewhere and hide?”

The reference was to her current husband, Donald Graham, a lobbyist. Reeder was standing in what had been Graham’s house and was now Melanie’s as well. The framed landscapes that were scattered around the room, the floral sofa, the antique table lamps, were all touches his ex-wife had brought to what had been Graham’s male domain.

Firm but without anger, Reeder said, “We don’t have the luxury of this argument right now. I said this was serious.”

“It’s always serious!”

“Not this serious. Just hours ago, they killed Len Chamberlain right in front of me.”

About to speak, she froze, her mouth half-open as she processed that. Then: “Not Len... he was... CIA wasn’t he?”

“He was. Just a desk jockey these days, but he was doing me a favor. We were about to meet outside the main entrance to ANC when he got taken down by a hit-and-run. Do I have to say it was no accident?”

“Oh, Joe... oh my God, Joe...” Her eyes softened as her voice trailed off, the back of her hand at her cheek in a loose fist.

“Here’s the bad part.”

“The bad part?”

“Len and I talked only once on the phone, with no direct mention of where we were meeting. The only way someone could have known where we’d be was if they are tapping my phone, and know my habits.”

“That... that could have been you,” she said, her voice small. She took a tiny step toward him and he caught a whiff of her favorite perfume, Magie Noire. His favorite, too.

He put his hands on her shoulders, gentle though strong. “But it wasn’t me. In fact, they made no effort to get me, and I was right there for the taking. Len shouldn’t have been a threat to anyone these days, just playing out his string in Langley, waiting for retirement.”

Her eyes were narrow now in tightened sockets. “Why not go after you, if they had you in their sights?”

He dropped his hands from her shoulders. “I don’t really know. Possibly they’d already decided on Len, and knew that a hit-and-run death might be written off, whereas taking me down, too, would make it murder.”

She stared past him. “And now you’re on the run, keeping a low profile, which means...”

“Whoever-this-is might come after my family, whether for leverage or to make me mad enough to come at them straight on, which they’d be confident they could handle.”

Her eyes swung back to him, wide with alarm. “Tell me you at least had sense enough to handle Amy and Bobby first!”

Melanie meant their daughter Amy, a junior at Georgetown, and her live-in boyfriend, Bobby, who her middle-of-the-road Democrat dad considered half a communist.

He nodded. “She and Bobby are off to—”

She held up a hand. “Don’t tell me where, just that they’re safe.”

“They’re safe. An ability to make that happen is one of the perks of having real money.”

She sighed, calming herself. “And now you’re here. And Don and I get an unscheduled vacation.”

“All expenses paid,” he said, risking a little smile. “Look, Len and I were circumspect when we talked... but they were waiting for us, anyway. It doesn’t get more deadly serious than this, Mel. I need to know the people I love are safe. And, uh... I’ll need that package I left with you.”

Nodding, her expression somewhat dazed, she said, “Donald’s study. Come along.”

He followed her out of the living room and down a corridor toward the back of the house, past the dining room to a closed door.

Melanie led him inside. No feminine touches here — the dark-paneled, book-lined study was strictly male: wall-mounted flat-screen that overpowered the small room, a two-seater black-leather sofa, a massive oak desk that a window must have been removed to get in.

To one side of the window behind the desk was a painting of the Capitol that at Melanie’s touch swung open on unseen hinges to reveal a wall safe. She twirled the dial and soon was withdrawing one of two side-by-side brown-paper-wrapped packages about the size of two bricks.

She handed it over to Reeder, who hefted the thing, then said, “You should take the other one for you and Donald.”

She pulled out a second bundle. “How much is there?”

“Two hundred each.”

“How far will that go?”

“Two hundred thousand.”

The dark eyes flared. “Four hundred thousand dollars, and you kept it in a wall safe in our house?”

He managed a weak smile. “Turned out to be a pretty good plan, didn’t it?”

She found her own small smile. “It’s hard to hate a man who has two hundred thousand dollars tucked away for you.”

“Here’s that rainy day,” he said. “How soon can you and Donald get out of here?”

“If I can get a hold of him... probably... three hours?”

“Make it faster, if you can. But leave the house casually, okay? Load up the suitcases in the garage, and no word to the neighbors.”

She nodded.

“Thanks, Melanie, and... I’m sorry. I really am sorry.”

She glared at him, and then touched his cheek.

“I hate you,” she said.

But it sure sounded like, I love you.

Patti Rogers, in her favorite gray suit with a black silk blouse beneath, strode with purpose into the Special Situations bullpen at the J. Edgar Hoover Building. Though she’d barely slept, Rogers had been up early, ready to go — or anyway, ready after grabbing a tall coffee from the Starbucks in the lobby of her apartment building.

First order of business: talk to the team’s resident computer expert, Miggie Altuve, who was as good at his specialty as anybody the FBI had.

He was in the office next to hers, at the back, first in, the other desks empty. He was using his private tablet, not his work computer. The small space had windows onto the street, his door always open because he could focus in a hurricane, and anyway, he was always welcome for more input.

“Hey you,” she said, strolling in without knocking on the jamb.

“Hey you,” he said, not looking up.

While his razor-cut hair was “Werewolves of London”-perfect, his navy suit coat was already draped haphazardly over the back of his desk chair, the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up a couple turns. Formerly a pudgy nerd, Miguel Altuve had lost weight and ditched his wire-frame glasses, but inside this handsome, diminutive man a nerd still lurked. Right now his eyes were red-rimmed — likely his contacts had been in too long — and his dark complexion looked uncharacteristically sallow.

She lowered herself into the chair alongside his desk. “How long have you been up?”

“Twenty-four... uh, twenty-six hours.”

She almost felt guilty, having dropped Reeder’s suspicions on Miggie last night... using the burner phone of course. Almost guilty.

“No sleep at all?” she asked.

“I was working,” he said, as if that explained it, and actually it did. “I napped for an hour or two. Hey, I’m fine. My blood is thirty percent caffeine.”

“How far did you get?”

“I’m still on Tony Evans.”

Her eyebrows tried to join each other. “You spent all night tracing an alias?”

He leaned back in his swivel chair. “That was part of it. But I was also looking into the fascinating life and times of Anthony J. Wooten.”

“And just who is Anthony J. Wooten?”

With a sly smile, Miggie said, “He and Tony Evans are one and the same... at least according to the fingerprints from the DC Homicide morgue.”

She was on the edge of her seat, like a kid at a horror movie. “What do we know about the late Mr. Wooten?”

“Ex-military. Black ops stuff in Afghanistan.”

“So, he’s CIA?”

“Not so you’d notice. But clearly an asset.”

She shifted in the chair. “Okay, back up. How do you even know Wooten did ‘black ops stuff in Afghanistan’? That’s got to be classified.”

“Oh, it is. Way down deep.”

“Then you found out how?”

He folded his arms, shook his head. “We’re in that if-I-told-you-I’d-have-to-kill-you area. Or even worse, if-I-told-you-they’d-have-to-kill-me.”

“Or both of us?”

He sighed and thought for a moment. Rocking a little, he said, “Let’s just say I know somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody who could get me the answers we wanted.” He stopped rocking. “Are you planning to take this to court?”

“Not in the immediate future.”

He started rocking again. “Then we’re on a need-to-know basis... and you don’t need to know.”

“For now... okay. So, Evans... or I should say Wooten... was, what? A mercenary?”

Nodding, Miggie said, “In that he got paid to do some bad shit, yes... but he was never open to the highest bidder. Never was a part of Air America or anything so mundane. He was, it seems, a contractor, but only for very specific employers.”

“Then we are talking CIA...?”

“Mostly... but also the occasional freelance job for employers within the government.”

“What kind of employers?”

“Highly placed ones. Generating the kind of classified activities that don’t get talked about even in congressional hearings.”

She processed that for a while. Then: “And this CIA asset, this governmental handyman, is who befriended Glenn Willard, to gain access to Secretary of the Interior Yellich... to assassinate her?”

“Sure seems that way.”

She stared past him at Washington, DC, out his window. “You’re saying... we’re saying... that someone within the United States government dispatched Wooten to kill Yellich. That simple.”

“That simple,” Miggie said. “That terrible.”

Her eyes went to his. “You’ve shared this with no one else.”

“Of course not.”

She nodded toward the monitor on his desk. “Is there a government computer that has any record of your searches?”

He made a face. “You don’t have to be insulting.”

She twitched the tiniest smile and rose. “We need to tell Hardesy.”

Miggie looked up at her in surprise. “He’s in Reeder’s inner circle on this?”

“He is. And with you, that makes four of us.”

She fetched Lucas from the bullpen, where he and the others were trailing in, and led him into Miggie’s office to hear what the computer expert had learned.

When Miggie finished, Hardesy — in the chair Rogers had vacated — was shaking his shaved head, making the overhead light reflect. “Un-fucking-believable,” he said.

Standing next to him, arms folded, looking down at him like a teacher checking a student’s paper, Rogers said, “You don’t buy it?”

Hardesy’s smirk was humorless. “No, I don’t want to buy it.” His sigh was deep and sounded like somebody had opened a distant boiler door. “So, there’s a rogue element in the government? This shadow group that Reeder posits?”

Rogers said, “Looks that way.”

“And they assassinated a member of the goddamn cabinet?”

“Yeah.”

He turned up both hands. “To what end?”

“It would be nice to know,” Rogers said.

“And nice to know,” Miggie added, “who in this rogue group put the Yellich murder in motion. Have to be somebody pretty high up.”

“Maybe as high up,” Rogers said, “as someone capable of getting CIA agents sent to Azbekistan.”

The color had drained from Hardesy’s face and wasn’t coming back very fast. “Do we think this case is tied to Reeder’s presidential mission?”

Her shrug was barely perceptible. “You tell me — or do you still think it’s a coincidence, dead CIA agents here and abroad, a mercenary taken out with extreme prejudice, and an assassinated cabinet secretary?”

“You had me at dead CIA agents,” Hardesy said dryly. “Okay, let’s say I’m convinced. Where do we go from here?”

She let a grave look travel from Hardesy to Miggie and back again. “I go to AD Fisk with what we know,” she said, “and with what we suspect... and ask her to assign our task force to this case.”

Miggie asked, “Do we empty the entire bag on her desk?”

“We hold nothing back,” Rogers said, nodding.

Hardesy frowned. “Should we run all this past Reeder first?”

She shook her head. “We’ll fill him in at the next opportunity. But Wooten’s identity only confirms what Joe’s already thinking — he knew coming into this investigation that there must be some kind of government involvement, when the President’s own directive was ignored. Those four CIA agents didn’t just suddenly decide to check out Azbekistan as a vacation spot on the eve of a Russian invasion. No, Reeder’s already got a mission from the President, and he’s staying off the grid as he carries it out. Meanwhile, we need to get the Bureau to stand behind us on our side of it.”

Rogers made a quick call to AD Fisk’s office and learned that the Assistant Director was in a meeting, but should be free momentarily.

Soon, seated in Fisk’s reception area, she checked the burner phone to see if a text had come through from Reeder — it hadn’t — then got out her other phone, which had a text from Kevin about seeing her tonight. The AD’s inner-office door opened and a tall man with dark hair came out. Pleasant enough looking, he had a Cost Cutters haircut and generic gray Men’s Wearhouse suit that screamed government drone. He gave her the nod that was a stranger’s hello and strode out.

Two more minutes passed before the AD’s male secretary interrupted her perusal of the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin on her cell phone, to say, “Ms. Fisk will see you now.”

Rising, Rogers took in a breath, let it out. She strode into the inner office to find Margery Fisk staring past her, her expression cold. Not welcoming.

But as Rogers neared the aircraft carrier of a desk, AD Fisk met her eyes and said, as if uttering an expletive, “Accountants.”

Obviously Fisk was referring to her previous visitor.

Taking the waiting chair opposite her seated boss, Rogers shrugged, smiled just a little, and said, “Accountants.”

“GAO’s threatening another audit,” Fisk said, her voice matter-of-fact, her eyes hooded.

The Government Accountability Office audited, evaluated, and ran investigations for Congress. Another GAO audit would be the first step in the process of stripping the Bureau of much-needed dollars. Theoretically, the GAO could recommend more funds, but Rogers knew that with the economy in a downturn, such a thought bordered on fantasy.

Sensing an opening, Rogers said, “Would it help if we successfully took on the biggest case the Bureau ever had?”

Fisk’s smile had a bitter edge. “I believe, Agent Rogers, that John Dillinger is no longer at large.”

Rogers kept her tone businesslike. “Suppose, just hypothetically mind you, that there was a rogue element in the US government. A shadow government within the government, manipulating certain events.”

To Rogers’ relief, the AD neither laughed out loud nor threw a paperweight at her. But the woman did say, “So, you’re a conspiracy theorist now.”

Rogers had expected a reaction like this, and had decided not to point out to her superior that just a few years ago evidence had finally surfaced clearing Lee Harvey Oswald.

“It doesn’t seem to be just a theory, ma’am. I’m confident I can prove it.”

Fisk straightened in her high-backed chair. She studied Rogers, as if perhaps the need for a major crime for the Special Situations Task Force had turned the younger agent desperate.

Then Fisk said, “Make your case.”

Rogers laid out everything that she, Altuve, and Hardesy knew, as well as what Reeder had contributed... without compromising his presidential mission, merely reminding the AD that four CIA agents had been killed in Azbekistan despite their presence in that country contradicting a presidential directive.

When Rogers was done, Fisk said nothing for several endless moments.

Just when Rogers thought she had blown it, her boss said, “About half of the dots you’re connecting aren’t there.”

Deflating a little, Rogers said, “But what about the other half, ma’am?”

Fisk mulled that, but only for a moment. “You may not have a convincing argument where your ‘shadow government’ theory is concerned... at least not yet... but your case for Secretary Yellich having been assassinated is sound. And obviously that is a very serious matter, a threat to the government itself. We’ll start there.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Make this investigation your task force’s priority. Get right on it.”

She rose, nodding. “Yes, ma’am.”

Rogers was halfway out the AD’s inner-office door when Fisk called out, “Oh, and Rogers?”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Good work.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

She flew through the outer office, thinking that sometimes a trip to the principal’s office wasn’t so terrible after all.

When he entered the Oval Office, Joe Reeder found the President in shirtsleeves and tie behind that familiar, formidable desk, looking like his best friend had just died. Chief of Staff Timothy Vinson, certainly not the friend in question, stood to Harrison’s left side, seething, mustache twitching, a boil in a three-piece suit on the verge of bursting.

Jesus, Reeder thought, this guy is in full-blown Yosemite Sam mode.

Harrison motioned to Reeder to join them, and he quickly did, standing opposite, nodding, saying, “Mr. President.”

The commander in chief asked the ex-Secret Service agent, “Are you getting anywhere, Joe? On the direct line, Krakenin is stopping just short of accusing us... of accusing me... of inciting war. And the back-channel chatter is even worse.”

Dubbed “the Kraken” by American media outlets, Boris Mikhailovich Krakenin, President of the Russian Federation, was a notorious saber-rattler. But the Russian incursion into Azbekistan was not just a threat, and the deaths of four CIA agents in the midst of it put both nations at the precipice.

Preferring not to brief the President with Vinson present, Reeder said, “Making progress, sir, yes.”

Vinson began to pace a small area near the big desk, words tumbling out of him. “Boris has taken to referring to the Azbekistani government as a ‘puppet regime,’ accusing us of propping up a handful of insurgents. He doesn’t consider his own country’s actions as an invasion, oh no... just rightfully putting down a rebellion.”

“A rebellion,” Harrison said dryly, “in the form of a freely elected democratic government going back six years.”

“Krakenin,” Reeder said, “makes Putin look like a pushover.”

Harrison cocked his head. “You know the man?”

“‘Know him’ overstates it. I met him once, years ago. Secret Service days, when now-President Krakenin was serving in the FSB under General Bortnikov.”

These three were well aware that the Russian Federal Security Service was home to many a ruthless bastard.

Harrison asked, “Any thoughts on comrade Boris?”

Reeder shrugged. “Only that he considered Putin a weak sister and Stalin the consummate Russian leader. Some men lead with an iron fist. Krakenin heats up that iron fist in a forge till it burns a nice bright orange.”

The President was nodding. “He’s a hard-ass of the first order, little doubt of that. But do you think he really wants war?”

Reeder smiled thinly. “Mr. President, with all due respect, you have access to far more worthy analysts than some lowly security-outfit exec.”

“With all due respect, Joe,” Harrison said, with his own restrained grin, “false modesty doesn’t suit you. For decades you’ve stood at the sides of Presidents, in this very office, and seen and heard so very much. Don’t they call you the People Reader? So based on your observations of Boris Badenov, years ago and in his on-air appearances of more recent times... what do you think he’s up to?”

“Not war.”

Vinson’s laugh was both immediate and bitterly derisive.

Harrison gave his Chief of Staff a quick sharp look, cutting the laugh off, and Vinson looked on in surly silence.

“What makes that your opinion, Joe,” Harrison asked, “considering the man recklessly invaded a sovereign nation, and got four of our agents killed?”

Reeder’s tone could not have been more matter-of-fact. “He doesn’t want war — he wants portillium.”

Vinson frowned and growled, “What the holy hell is portillium?”

Quietly the President said, “The element that lends stability to Senkstone as a plastic explosive.”

They all knew what Senkstone was — the most versatile and dangerous munition of its kind yet developed.

Harrison said, “Boris wants the rich veins of portillium, known only to that region, found underneath the otherwise unimpressive surface of Azbekistan.”

Reeder said, “Taking over that pimple on the face of the planet is the most expedient way to acquire that scarce element in quantity.”

“Science fiction,” Vinson muttered.

“Is it?” the President asked. “All of this came to classified light when the Special Situations Task Force discovered the existence of Senkstone.”

Reeder nodded. “Boris’s people go in, mine as much as they can, until a truly serious United Nations threat comes along... which after all could take decades... and then retreat to the border with all the portillium they can carry, and generously let Azbekistan have its ravaged land back.”

The President, looking rather sick, said, “And with the ability to contrive that much Senkstone, Boris can do...”

“Pretty much anything he wants,” Reeder finished.

Thanks to portillium, Senkstone’s best quality as a plastic explosive was that it was stable enough to use in a 3D printer, and could be molded to mimic anything. Like to match some world leader’s eyeglasses for an assassination. Or, shaped in some manner that disguised its purpose, blow up the White House.

Or the Kremlin.

“So,” Vinson said, squinting in thought, “the Azbekistan invasion is just a cover for... a strip-mining operation?”

“More to it than that, Timothy,” Harrison said. “The Russian hard-liners will be ecstatic to see Boris flexing his muscles, making it a political win at home... and with the Azbekistanis under the Russian boot heel again, maybe, just maybe, the world would let him hold onto that little excuse for a country.”

“Okay,” Reeder said. “Now — do you want to hear the really bad news?”

“For Christ’s sake,” Vinson said, “what could that be?”

Harrison knew. He said, quiet again, “That someone on our side knew the exact time of that invasion and sent four American agents to die in it, in hopes of starting a war with Russia — a war that doesn’t really seem to suit Krakenin’s agenda.”

Rising, the President gestured toward the informal central meeting area of couches and chairs, and the three men repaired there. Reeder and Vinson took the couch and the President an overstuffed chair opposite.

“Mr. President,” Reeder said, “at the risk of impertinence... there’s a question I must ask.”

“Ask it, Joe.”

“Someone on our side knew when the invasion was going down. Agreed?”

“That would appear so.”

“Which means that someone had the ability to send our agents into harm’s way.”

“Yes.”

Reeder locked eyes with the President and asked, as if wondering what time it was, “Was that person you, sir?”

Vinson exploded, turning to Reeder, spittle flying his way. “What in the hell...! You have no right to—”

An upraised hand from the President cut Vinson off.

“Joe is a citizen I called upon for a mission, Tim, which gives him every right to question his president.”

Reeder said, “And the question stands, sir.”

Next to him, Vinson was turning shades of red — suffering succotash...

The dark eyes in the auburn face met Reeder’s unblinkingly. “Isn’t the real question, did I go after the portillium for the benefit of the United States, using those CIA agents as an advance team? And have I been using you to cover my tracks?”

“That’s two questions, Mr. President. But that sums it up.”

Harrison’s smile was a weary one. “If only I were that smart, Joe... but the truth is, I never even saw this coming. Satisfied?”

Reeder worked to detect every micro-expression, every body nuance, but nothing led him to think that the President was lying. Of course, US presidents were among the most skilled liars in history.

Just the same, Reeder said, “Yes, sir, I am. Thank you for your frankness.”

The Chief of Staff next to Reeder on the couch half-turned to him, agape.

“Now it’s my turn for a question,” Harrison said. “Are you any closer to finding our traitor? Director Shaley is either stalling or genuinely flummoxed.”

Reeder let out some air. “I think with Director Shaley, sir, it’s the latter. Of course, he might be taking care of the problem in-house, to protect himself and his domain... but I can’t honestly say I’m really any closer on that front, Mr. President. Not directly.”

Harrison frowned. “Then you haven’t got a thing for me?”

“I know more than I did, when we spoke yesterday... but not the name of the mole. I have learned something that’s... troubling.”

“Which is?”

Reeder had held this back because of Vinson’s presence; but there was clearly nothing not shared between these men.

So Reeder said it: “Secretary Yellich was assassinated.”

In a soundproofed room, silence can be surreal. And the three men breathing was the only sound any of them could discern in the uncomfortable stillness.

“But that... that was an accident,” Vinson said, absent of any of his usual bluster. “A tragic—”

“Murder,” Reeder said. “So was the hit-and-run death yesterday of CIA agent Len Chamberlain. I was there and I saw it.”

Then Reeder handed over everything that Rogers and Hardesy had turned up in their investigation thus far, leading up to and including the murder of Tony Wooten/Evans. He left out only the information Rogers had gleaned from the Wooten family in Pennsylvania — until Miggie Altuve traced the source of the family’s money in the Caymans, reporting that would be premature.

And he also stopped short of outlining the potentially absurd-sounding concept of a shadow government.

When Reeder had finished, President Harrison stared at the floor, shaking his head.

“Five CIA agents down,” he said, “the Secretary of the Interior assassinated, her assassin himself liquidated... and if I put the pieces together correctly, you’re telling me this could all be a plot by the Russians, with help from someone in our government, for a land grab? All to acquire the resources to make an unlimited amount of an undetectable plastic explosive... with World War III in the offing.”

“It’s a genuine possibility, Mr. President,” Reeder said.

Vinson said, “Why on earth would any American help the Russians acquire the key to Senkstone?”

Reeder shrugged. “They may not have figured out that part. The goal of the rogue players in our government may well be a hawkish one toward Krakenin’s Russia. As for Senkstone, very few people in or out of government even know about it, and fewer still are aware that portillium is the element needed to stabilize it.”

Shaking his head, the Chief of Staff said, “I just can’t believe it.”

“Well, there’s an even worse read of the rogue element,” Reeder said.

Vinson grunted. “What in God’s name could be worse?”

But the President answered his Chief of Staff: “They could know about portillium.”

“Know about it?” Vinson blurted.

“Know about it,” Reeder said, “and be in Russia’s pocket — either as foreign agents or, well, capitalists without a conscience.”

Again, silence settled over the sealed room.

Harrison looked hard at Reeder. “Now that the FBI is officially on board, by way of Special Agent Rogers’ task force, I want you to work with them. You have a history of being a consultant there — no red flags will go up.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Get to the bottom of all this... and Joe — I need it wrapped up before the first of the week.”

Reeder felt as if the leader of the free world had just punched him in the stomach. “Respectfully, sir, that’s less than five days for an investigation that could take, oh months... even years.”

“We don’t have the luxury of time,” Harrison said. “And I’m depending on you to meet my deadline. The cabinet is scheduled for a weekend at Camp David. The only item on the agenda will be whether the United States will issue a declaration of war against Russia.”

And another one to the chin...

The President was saying, “The decision can be put off but there’s a real possibility that the United States will face war with Russia. I’m assuming you’d like to help forestall that.”

With a confidence he wished he felt, Reeder said, “Yes, sir, I would. I will.”

The President stood and so did Vinson and Reeder, who shook hands with Harrison. And he even shook hands with the Chief of Staff, who had the look of a man about to go home and build a fallout shelter.

Walking to his car, the sky an ominous, starless dome, Reeder felt the vibration of his cell phone, and checked it: Bishop. He’d given his homicide detective pal the number last night. Within the car, he answered.

“Evening, Detective Bishop.”

“Some pile of dog shit you stepped in this time around.”

“Getting any on you?”

“Naw. It’s you who stepped in it, not me. Remember Pete Woods? The young buck you helped on the Bryson case?”

“Sure,” Reeder said. “Good detective, even if he does look about twelve years old.”

“Well, Woods drew the Chamberlain hit-and-run, and when I casually asked him what evidence he had, he not so casually told me the feds took everything... and made it clear the matter, which is to say the murder, wasn’t his problem.”

“How did Pete take that?”

“More gracefully than either of us would. He told them nicely that he should get at least a look-see, and the feds told him just as nicely to screw off — that in the case of a federal death, he had no jurisdiction.”

“Which agency got the evidence?”

“Even that’s more than they were willing to tell Woods. What they did tell him was to butt out.”

“And has he?”

“Yup. And normally Woodsie Owl doesn’t back down from anything. Working that case with you last year must have spooked him some. Now he knows just how deep the doo-doo can get.”

“Bish, he’s a smart kid, and did the right thing. Now do me a favor.”

“Any time.”

“Hang up and forget we had this talk.”

“Fine. As long as I’m allowed to remember one thing.”

“Which is?”

“Which is, you owe me big time.”

They clicked off.

The White House’s massive black gates allowed Reeder passage and he headed north, toward Lafayette Square. Soon he turned west, toward home. He drove leisurely, replaying in his mind the conversation with the President and his Chief of Staff; but even before he got to the roundabout at New Hampshire Avenue, he knew he had a tail. It stayed two cars back but in the same lane — that way if Reeder took a quick right, the tail could follow.

It was a simple Ford Explorer, dark green, a few years old — not some black tinted-glass Interceptor utility, and certainly not a hovering helicopter — much too showy, far too obvious. No, this might be a government car, or an ex-police car. Either one meant reinforced bumpers and more horsepower than his Prius, meaning at least a modest advantage for his new best friend.

Getting Rogers on the burner cell would be the fastest way to find out if the Explorer was a chaperone she’d provided. But also the fastest way for the tail to capture the signal of his burner, and hers.

These people would obviously know where Reeder lived, so trying to lose the tail was pointless, unless he was prepared to go underground immediately. Right now the tail was keeping its distance, though the headlights of other vehicles revealed a driver’s silhouette and no passengers.

Reeder took a direct route home. When he pulled up in front of his white-brick, two-story townhouse on Thirty-Fourth Street Northwest, the tail tucked into a spot two houses back, on the other side of the street. Reeder got out, closed his door, and — on the way to the front steps — walked around behind his vehicle, lending him an inconspicuous view of the Explorer. But a streetlight was nearby and shining down on the car reflectively, giving Reeder no look at all of the driver.

Instead of going across the street to confront the tail, Reeder trotted casually up to his red front door, unlocked it, and slipped in. After quickly dealing with the alarm system on the wall just inside, punching in the seven-digit code, he got his SIG Sauer out of the drawer of the little table beneath the security keypad.

He considered going out the back way, cutting through yards, then coming up behind the Explorer to meet his new friend.

But checking the house, even though the alarm had been on, was the priority. He turned on the living room light, moved into the dining room. Everything seemed quiet, appeared undisturbed. Of course if a team had bugged the place, they would have been pros and, like the Boy Scouts in a forest, would’ve left it as they’d found it. SIG Sauer in hand, barrel up, he edged into the kitchen, elbowing a light on.

At the back door, he considered the strong possibility that the rear of the house was covered, too. If he was the one doing surveillance, he’d sure as hell want someone back there.

After checking the two bedrooms and his home office upstairs, and finding no guests, Reeder returned to the front door. He tossed his suit coat on a chair, then went to the front closet and got his black ABC Security hooded sweatshirt, which he got into. He dropped the expandable baton in his right sweatshirt pocket, and tucked the nine millimeter into the back waistband of his slacks. He pulled the sweatshirt down so that it covered the pistol grip.

He went out the front door, in no hurry, just a guy going out for an evening stroll or maybe to a neighborhood 24-hour joint. This seemed better than heading out the back door into the waiting arms of who-the-hell-knew.

He crossed the street at his townhouse and took the sidewalk in the direction of the parked Explorer. Hands in the sweatshirt pockets, the baton in his right, he figured his brazen approach might spook the tail into taking off, or anyway action of some sort... but nothing.

Reeder closed the distance at his evening-stroll pace. As he neared, he couldn’t see past the streetlight reflection on the windshield to get a look at the driver. Since that driver might have a gun aimed at him right now, this was... disconcerting.

But killing Chamberlain by hit-and-run was one thing, and shooting a well-known, government-connected figure like Joe Reeder was something else again. He liked his odds. When he got to the vehicle and could see through the side window, the car was empty.

Damn!

His eyes swiftly scanned the street for any sign of another person — nothing. Where the hell had the guy gone? Nearest place for coffee was several blocks down — should he check that? He scanned the area again, more slowly now — it was as if the world had ended, only an occasional distant honk of a car horn to suggest otherwise.

He walked to the next corner, crossing to his own side of the street, and came cautiously back — where could the tail have gone?

Across the street from the start of his block, Reeder ducked into the shadows of the house there. It wasn’t like you tailed somebody just to park a car, unless...

... a car bomb?

There were car bombs now that could obliterate blocks, and these people were deadly enough for that. But usually they were more surgical — Wooten had taken Yellich out by poison, Wooten himself got liquidated by a sniper’s precise bullet, Chamberlain by hit-and-run. Neat kills, relatively speaking, at least as much as murder is ever “neat.”

So, no — no car bomb.

Had the driver left his vehicle to check in with somebody watching the rear of Reeder’s house?

A possibility. That meant the driver would soon be returning to the Explorer, either to plant himself for surveillance or to vacate the scene. Little attempt, though, had been made to conceal from Reeder that he had been tailed, and would now be subject to surveillance...

Somehow, he needed to get his hands on the driver of that Explorer, and interrogate him. Shake it out of him, or goddamn waterboard him in the townhouse bathtub if that was what it took...

Keeping to the shadows, Reeder crossed to the northwest corner of Thirty-Fourth Street NW and P Street, then turned west on P toward the alley that ran behind the townhouses. Occasionally, as he crept along, he stopped to listen, but heard nothing. Not even a shoe scraping over concrete, not the rustle of clothing nor the rhythm of heavy breathing.

As he turned into the alley, a fist flew from the darkness.

Reeder couldn’t react quite fast enough and it connected high on his cheek, not on his jaw, as he ducked. Even so, the blow turned the inside of his skull into Fourth of July fireworks, and his balance was gone.

The attacker followed up on that advantage, kicking the unsteady Reeder in the ribs, martial arts — style, sending him to the gravel of the alley. His work apparently done, his escape seemingly assured, the attacker headed back toward the sidewalk.

But Reeder withdrew the baton, extended it with a snap, and whapped the guy across the left calf, getting a yelp out of him and sending him face-first onto the sidewalk with a thump.

Reeder rushed the attacker, who flipped onto his back and sent another kick at Reeder, who dodged it — the attacker’s face remaining a smudge in the night, thanks to darkness and movement. A second kick got Reeder in the right forearm and his fingers popped open and the baton jumped out, landing God knew where. Both men scrambled to their feet and Reeder reached behind him for the pistol in his waistband, but the attacker sent out another kick to Reeder’s ribs, doubling him over.

By the time Reeder regained his breath, the man was sprinting away, likely heading back to the Explorer. Reeder gave chase, but his opponent had too big a head start, and Reeder’s ribs were screaming. Reeder caught up only as the Explorer lurched away from the curb and sped off.

A glimpse of the attacker’s face, in the side rearview mirror, didn’t really help much. The license plate had been removed — no help there either.

He caught his breath, rubbed his aching ribs, then looked up and down the block. Not a single porch light had come on, the struggle apparently unnoticed. He went back to the scene of the attack, to retrieve the extending baton. He found it quickly, just down the sidewalk. But he also spotted something else, something small, making a reflective glimmer off a streetlight.

It was a lapel pin of a US flag, a common enough touch on men’s lapels in this town — only this one had a tiny camera. The little high-tech thing had been smashed in the struggle.

But Reeder knew what the lapel-flag camera was. And he knew of only one group of people who wore such a pin.

Agents of the United States Secret Service.

Rogers said, “The pin could belong to someone who wants you to believe they’re with the Secret Service.”

Reeder, seated next to her, gave Rogers a blank look that somehow conveyed his contempt for that notion.

They were in the outer office of the Director of the United States Secret Service on the ninth floor of its H Street HQ. According to Reeder, he and Jonathon Briar, the first African American to hold the directorship, had been field agents around the same time.

That didn’t seem to be helping as half an hour of waiting turned into an hour. Of course, Reeder hadn’t left the Secret Service under the best of circumstances.

“I’m just saying,” she said, “that some unknown Secret Service agent jumping you isn’t the only possible explanation.”

“You saw the ID number on the back. He might as well have signed it Secret Service.”

Rogers took air in, let it out, then rose and went to the desk, where a brunette guardian of the gates was giving her computer the attention they weren’t getting, and said, “Excuse me?”

The woman looked up, narrow-faced if attractive with scant makeup, her dark gray suit and midnight blouse nice enough for Rogers to wonder how much better the SS must pay than the FBI. The guardian’s eyes, a lighter gray than her apparel, met Rogers’ without a word. That was apparently all the response an FBI agent merited.

“We had an appointment,” Rogers said. “It’s been over an hour.”

“The appointment was made only this morning.”

“You do know who Mr. Reeder is?”

The guardian nodded, about as impressed as a maître d’ at a really expensive restaurant. “Yes, and I told Mr. Reeder earlier, on the phone, that I would do my best to squeeze him in.”

“There’s no one else out here.”

“The Director is in conference.”

Getting that principal’s office feeling again, Rogers nodded and dragged back to her seat.

Five more minutes passed and the Director’s office door opened and a tall male figure emerged — that same GAO drone in wire-frames and a Men’s Wearhouse suit who she’d seen at Fisk’s office. This time Rogers didn’t rate the stranger’s nod of admission that she was a human being. Even the famous Joe Reeder got ignored.

Rogers whispered, “Conference must be over. We have to be next.”

Reeder didn’t give her a nod, either.

But fifteen minutes later he got up and strode to the Director’s door.

The assistant said, “Mr. Reeder — you can’t simply—”

But he did, with Rogers following right after, pausing only to give the guardian a condescending smile before shutting herself and Reeder inside.

Fiftyish Director Jonathon Briar, broad-faced on a muscular mid-range frame, his navy suit with red-and-white tie blatantly patriotic, actually started a bit when they came in. To the right as they entered, Briar was seated behind a black slab that was more table than desk, two modern beige visitor’s chairs opposite, a looming framed portrait of President Harrison on the wall behind him. The large, stark office seemed to be keeping as many secrets as the Service itself. To the left was a meeting area with a low-slung black slab table and various modern but comfortable-looking chairs.

“Jesus, Peep,” Briar blustered. “You know better than this!”

Reeder stood at the edge of the desk-thing and stared down at Director Briar.

“You’re right, Jon,” Reeder said. “I should have barged in here the moment your last guest left. I’m getting complacent.”

Reeder was standing between the two visitor’s chairs and Rogers was just behind the one to Reeder’s left. Briar’s eyes met hers and narrowed.

Rogers held up her credentials, but Briar said, “I know who you are, Agent Rogers. Do you mind, Peep, telling me what this is about? Make it quick — I have another meeting in ten minutes.”

“Let them wait an hour,” Reeder said, and tossed a small plastic evidence bag with the smashed pin in it onto Briar’s desk. Briar was wearing his own, somewhat smaller lapel flag pin — did it come equipped with a camera, too?

Then Reeder lowered himself into one of the visitor’s chairs and waved Rogers into the other.

Briar stared at the smashed pin in the bag. “Where did you get that?”

“It fell off someone who attacked me last night, not far from my home. I can show you the bruises on my ribs if you’re interested. You’ll note that that’s an American flag camera pin, a mangled one I grant you.”

“Homeland uses these,” Briar said, with a shrug. “Agent Rogers will tell you they’re not unknown to the Bureau, as well, and several other agencies.”

Reeder reached over and flipped the evidence bag. “Do I have to remind you, Jon, that the SS is the only one who uses that form of ID number?”

“That’s not one of ours,” Briar said without looking at it.

“It’s one of yours, all right. And I want to know who this one belongs to.”

Briar smirked mirthlessly. “Has procedure changed, Peep, since you worked here? You know damn well that if an agent loses one of these, he or she is required to report it immediately. No one has.”

“Why, do you check the reports yourself?”

“Actually, yes. Every day. Are we done here?”

Rogers asked, “Director Briar, who was it that left this office before we came in? In the wire-framed glasses?”

The Director said, “He’s with the GAO. Nothing that concerns you.”

“Would he have a name, sir?”

Briar said, “That’s not information I’m prepared to share with you, Agent Rogers. You seem to have the Secret Service confused with the Smithsonian.”

Reeder gave the Director a long, hard look, then said, “Jon, we were never friends — we never shared duty together. But we were friendly enough, and I’ve always respected you. When I tell you that I was attacked by someone, last night, who lost a Secret Service pin in the process, doesn’t that raise any level of interest?”

Briar gave the evidence bag the barest look. “That’s not our pin. What you’re reporting is not a Secret Service matter. You might try the DC police, or because that pin probably originated with some government agency, you could discuss it with your FBI colleague, Agent Rogers, here.”

Reeder rose. “Thanks for the advice, Jon. It’s nice to know that all my years with the Service earned me so much support.”

Briar looked up coldly at the former agent. “Sarcasm doesn’t really suit you, Peep. But let me suggest something. If that pin did belong to a Secret Service agent... and if you were attacked by him... someone above my pay grade would have to have put it in motion.”

Reeder’s gaze was unblinking. “Would have had to put you in motion, you mean.”

“Assume what you like. But I would suggest you’re treading on some important toes. As you say, we weren’t friends, Peep, but we were friendly enough for me to suggest that whatever you’re up to... you may want to find a new hobby.”

“Noted,” Reeder said, and reached for the bag with the pin, but Briar laid a hand on it.

“I’ll hold onto that for you,” the Director said.

Reeder gave Briar an awful smile. “That’s not yours, remember?”

Rogers stood and said, “But it is evidence in an ongoing federal investigation, Director. With all due respect, please remove your hand.”

Briar thought about that for a good ten seconds, then nodded, and let Reeder take the bag.

In the corridor, Rogers asked, “What the hell was that?”

“Briar’s a decent enough director,” Reeder said. “Anyway, he was a good agent. There’s a reason he didn’t cooperate with us.”

“Because he’s covering his own ass?”

“That may be part of it. Mostly, he’s scared.”

Rogers studied that unreadable face and then asked, “What does it take to scare the Director of the Secret Service?”

“Generally not something as small as that pin.”

“That GAO guy is who I saw coming out of Fisk’s office the other day. She said he was there on budgetary matters.”

Reeder raised an eyebrow. “So?”

“Joe, when I got to the AD’s office yesterday, he was there. Already there! What’s he doing... tailing us?”

Reeder thought for a moment, then said, “Worse.”

“How do you mean, worse?”

“He’s out ahead of us.”

Rogers was mulling that as they headed for the elevators, passing various agents and office workers. The older agents sometimes exchanged nods with Reeder, and younger ones all seemed to be whispering to companions, Is that Joe Reeder? Really Joe Reeder?

She was about to push the DOWN button when a male hand butted in from behind them and pushed it for her. She turned to look and there he was — the GAO drone.

The drone politely gestured for Rogers to get on first, and then did the same with Reeder, who was giving the man a blank look that disguised alarm bells going off.

The nearly handsome man with the dark hair and wire-frame glasses said to her lightly, “We have to stop meeting like this.”

Reeder pushed the first-floor button as Rogers said, “I was just telling my friend here that no matter where we go, it seems you’re already there.”

The doors whispered shut.

Unperturbed, the drone said, “Life’s just full of odd coincidences, isn’t it, Agent Rogers?”

Reeder hit the STOP button and the elevator did a little shake and braked. A real alarm bell began to ring now, muffled.

Rogers said, “You seem to know me. Who the hell are you?”

The drone shrugged; his smile couldn’t have been more pleasant. “For now, my name’s unimportant. I’m sure, Agent Rogers, that with a little effort, you’ll soon know.”

Reeder came over and grabbed the drone by the arm, crowding him in the small space. “She asked you a question. Who the hell are you?”

The drone, not at all intimidated, said, “Violence won’t do you any good in this situation, Mr. Reeder.”

The alarm bell rang on.

Reeder let go of the man’s sleeve. “Who are you working for?”

“The American people, of course.”

Reeder grabbed the drone’s arm again. “Listen to me, you son of a bitch...”

With surprising ease, the drone plucked Reeder’s hand off and flipped it away. His voice came back with a new, menacing edge: “No, Mr. Reeder. You listen to me.”

On and on, it rang.

“... I’m listening.”

“Walk away from your investigation, if you want your life back. That is, if you want that life to be a safe one for you and yours.”

Reeder backhanded him.

Briefly, something vile flickered on the drone’s face, then his pleasant expression returned as he dug a handkerchief out to touch the blood at one corner of his mouth.

The alarm bell did not let up.

The drone’s eyes were on Reeder but he was speaking to her now: “Agent Rogers, I believe I have good news for you. I have it on good authority that an Assistant Directorship will be opening up soon. Could well be yours... if you and your friend here can find something constructive to do... such as: nothing.”

The drone punched the button that released the elevator and they started down again.

The alarm bell ceased.

“Not interested,” Rogers said, soft but firm.

“Sorry to hear that,” the drone said. “A wrong decision can get a person into trouble. The wrong outlook can even get a person killed.”

Reeder grabbed the drone’s Men’s Wearhouse jacket by its lapels, and shoved him against an elevator wall.

Though he was clearly rattled, the drone said calmly, “Agent Rogers is the one at real risk here. You, Mr. Reeder, are a public figure. An American hero, and eliminating you would draw an unfortunate amount of attention. That would be less a concern for, say, your wife and daughter. They can’t stay in hiding forever, unless you three are prepared to live in exile.”

Letting go of the drone, Reeder backed away, visibly shaken in a way Rogers had never observed in him before.

The doors swished open and the drone knifed through a group waiting for an elevator that had taken a terribly long time to arrive.

Soon Rogers and Reeder were outside in the sunshine, but gloom nonetheless shrouded them.

“Did that really just happen?” she asked.

“That was a very real and serious threat, Patti, made by someone not afraid to carry it out, if need be.”

They tucked themselves against the outer wall of the building; the sidewalk butted almost up to the building here.

She asked, “Is he who we’re after, do you think?”

Reeder shook his head. “We’re looking for more than one rogue player, and your GAO pal seems more a messenger.”

She was flushed. “I don’t care if Briar is the Director of the Secret Service, I’ll put him in custody and haul his ass to the Hoover Building into an interview room and—”

“No.”

“... No?”

“We take a frontal approach like that, we’ll be lucky to be alive tomorrow. And if that prick knows my wife and daughter are in hiding, he just might learn where.”

“You’re not suggesting we walk away?”

“No. Not at all.”

“Then...?”

“We go to ground.”

Rogers frowned. “But I need my task force to get anywhere on this thing, and access to my resources at the Bureau, and—”

“Where did you first see our GAO friend?”

“At Fisk’s office.” She looked at him agape. “Oh, come on, Joe — you’re not saying Fisk may be compromised!”

“The Director of the Secret Service seems to be. And Fisk is just an Assistant Director.”

“She gave me full support on this investigation!”

He just sent her one of those frustratingly bland looks. “How better to keep an eye on you and your people?”

Government employees trouped by on the sidewalk in either direction. Employees of a government that Rogers could no longer trust...

She said, her voice sounding as small as a child’s, “What do we do?”

His response seemed a non sequitur. “You care about Kevin.”

“What? Yes! Of course.”

“Then we need to get him somewhere safe. You make him vulnerable, and he makes you the same.”

She willed herself to say calm. “Okay, so we get Kevin somewhere safe. What about us?”

“The same. Off the grid. Way off. We’ll pull Miggie in, too, so he can work his computer magic and help us get the identity of our GAO buddy. That son of a bitch is our way inside to whoever’s behind all this.”

“What about the rest of the team?”

“For now, they stay on the job. We’ll pull them off at some point, and get them to ground, too... but for now they make a show of continuing the Yellich investigation, only they won’t get anywhere that they share. Otherwise, anything they come up with, anything they accomplish, could be known by the rogue group.”

Soon, with Reeder at the wheel of his Prius, Rogers kept an eye out for a tail. After last night, the agent who lost his flag pin would not likely still be on the job, but someone else obviously could be. Right now they were going south on Ninth Street NW.

“We need somewhere to work from,” Reeder said, “a shadow HQ for an investigation of a shadow government. And we have to stay in the city, because that’s where the enemy is.”

“We need a safe house,” she said.

“Yes. And that’s where we’re going.”

He drove up the ramp for I-395 and headed east. They rode in silence for a while — she would let him think, even as her own mind was spinning. When he merged onto I-695, she finally asked, “Not the Navy Yard?”

“Not the Navy Yard. Too many security cameras. Someplace better.”

He parked on Ninth Street SE, with greenery to their right as he got out of the car and so did she.

“Where are we?” she asked.

“Near where we’re going. But it’s best we walk.”

They skirted Virginia Avenue Park, then turned back down Tenth toward the Navy Yard and into a sketchy area where they passed a vacant lot between two brick buildings. The one on the corner of M Street, a tailor and pawnshop below, had a fire escape up to the floor above.

Reeder took the ’scape, surprising her a little, and she followed him to a landing where awaited a steel door with an overhead security camera... and a doorbell. As if the bell weren’t there, Reeder pounded on the steel.

In a moment, a voice came over a speaker: “Closed for bidness.”

“I got after-hours money, DeMarcus.”

“Who that with you?”

She said, “Special Agent Rogers.”

The voice said, “You shittin’ me, Reeder? You bring Five Oh to my door?”

“Five Oh is city, DeMarcus. My friend here is federal, but she isn’t DEA or ATF, so don’t sweat it.”

“Go away, man. I don’t know you no more.”

“Ten thousand dollars.”

The speaker fell silent.

Then: “Fifteen.”

“DeMarcus, you don’t even know what I’m buying yet.”

“I know you brung a fed around.”

“I need two minutes. We come to terms and I got ten K for you.”

“Like you got that much on you.”

Rogers goggled at Reeder as he withdrew a major wad of cash from his pocket like Bugs Bunny producing an anvil from somewhere. He held up the wad with one hand and the fingers of the other riffled through bills.

The door opened. Half-opened, anyway.

The skinny African American guy who peered suspiciously out at them looked to be in his early twenties; he wore Georgetown University gear, though she doubted somehow that he was enrolled.

“Patti,” Reeder said, “this is my friend DeMarcus. DeMarcus, this is my friend Patti. You can call her Agent Rogers. Be nice. She’s armed.”

He grunted an unimpressed laugh. “What you wanna buy?” he asked.

“Oh,” Reeder said innocently, “did you want to deal right out here in the open? On your doorstep?”

Their host scowled and waved them inside, stepping aside for them.

The place was a loft, with an office area just inside, a metal desk with computer off to the right and a warehouse of goods to the left — three tall rows of shelves arranged by product: bags of weed, handguns, and cell phones. Beyond was a modern kitchen, like something from a Home Depot showroom, and to the left a spacious home theater area with overstuffed black-leather chairs and a couch facing a massive flat-screen, below which a low-riding doorless cabinet held electronics gear, two massive black speakers bookending the big screen. Down on the M Street end was an elaborate wall mural of classic rap and hip hop, interrupted by two doors — bathroom and bedroom, probably.

The place reeked of weed. A door in the mural opened and a beautiful young naked black girl with a retro ’fro leaned there and called out sleepily, “Come back to bed, Markie — your baby’s lonely.”

DeMarcus shrugged at them. “Don’t mind Sheila.”

Reeder was looking in Sheila’s direction; he didn’t seem to mind one bit.

“Bidness!” DeMarcus called back, and Sheila’s sigh could be heard all through the loft before she shut herself poutily back in.

They remained near the door in the office area as DeMarcus asked, “So, Joe. What you wanna buy?”

“Nothing.”

“Nada?”

“Not a thing. I want to rent something.”

“What the hell you wanna rent?”

“This loft.”

And Reeder handed the wad of bills toward DeMarcus.

“Like hell,” their host said, his brow wrinkled. Maybe he was closer to thirty, she thought. “I got a bidness to run.”

“That’s why this fistful of money isn’t really ten grand.”

“If it ain’t ten grand, then get you white asses outa my crib.”

“It’s fifty.”

“Say what?”

“It’s fifty K, DeMarcus. You old enough to remember when somebody won something, and a guy showed up with a giant damn check for them? Well, nobody uses checks anymore. You’ll just have to settle for cash. Here. Count it.”

DeMarcus, looking a little dazed, took the wad and counted. It was hundred dollar bills. Presumably five hundred of them.

Reeder waited until DeMarcus’s nod indicated the tally was right.

Reeder said, “There’s a string attached.”

Their host scowled again. “Would be.”

“You have to use that to take little Sheila someplace exotic for a week. Belize maybe. Nassau’s nice. When you come back, I’ll have another fifty for you.”

DeMarcus thumbed through the bills; he looked stunned. “A hundred K to rent the place for a week.”

“That’s right.”

“What for?”

“Why, are you afraid we might do something illegal? DeMarcus, the green rents the place and comes with no explanations. You have a passport?”

“Yeah, but, uh...”

“How about Sheila baby? She have a passport?”

“Yeah, we did Cancun last year.”

“Long-term relationship, huh? That’s good, DeMarcus. That’s healthy.”

“Reeder, I gotta know—”

“That’s not healthy. One week, the out-of-country dream spot of your choice.”

“When?”

“Now.”

“Now?”

“Well... soon as you’ve packed, and broken it to Sheila. She’s not going to mind.”

“But I... man, I got a damn bidness to run.”

“Why, do you generally pull down a hundred K in a week? You send out word to your customer base, e-mail or text or whatever, that you’ll be away for a week. Anybody comes around, we won’t answer the door.”

“Maybe... maybe I should go pack now.”

“No maybe about it.”

DeMarcus started off, then turned and said, “I don’t really wanna know any more than this?”

“That’s right, you don’t.”

DeMarcus headed for Sheila’s door at the other end of the loft, but Reeder’s voice stopped him. “Consider part of that hundred K payment for any burner phones I might need. If I take any weapons, we can settle up later.”

“You can have up to five nines,” DeMarcus called back, “on the house,” and then slipped in the bedroom.

Their host and his lady friend had flown in an hour, but the weed smell remained. Rogers found some Febreze under the kitchen sink and got rid of it as best she could.

Using a burner phone from DeMarcus’s seemingly endless supply, Reeder rented a car to be delivered to a restaurant on L Street a couple of blocks north.

“We’ll walk over there together,” he said to her.

They were each in an overstuffed black-leather chair.

Rogers shook her head. “No need. Hey, you may have forgotten, but I’m a trained FBI agent. Me with your famous face is way too conspicuous.”

He reluctantly agreed.

“When the car gets there,” he said, “you drop the driver off at the rental agency, then go to Miggie’s, pick him up, and have him bring as much gear as he can carry.”

“Mig’ll work from here?”

Reeder nodded. “No one’s going to look for him at this address. We’ll keep the rest of the task force out on the street while we get things done here.”

“Mig should bring some clothes, too, I assume.”

“Unless he’s into Redskins and Georgetown threads, ’cause probably that’s all DeMarcus has. We’ll get some of your things when we pick Kevin up. I can cover my needs from some neighborhood bodega and the tailor downstairs.”

“You can wash what you have on, too. This place has everything. It’s the damn Batcave with burner phones.”

Reeder gave her half a smile. “DeMarcus is a smart cookie, as we ancient types say. He stays under the radar, and in the ten years I’ve known him, never served a day inside.”

“Why d’you never bust him?”

“His crimes aren’t federal. Anyway, he’s a resource. Like the CIA guys say, an asset... You better get going, Patti. That rental’s due in fifteen minutes. Oh, and grab one of those nine millimeters of Marcus’s on your way out.”

“Come on, Joe — I already have my service weapon.”

“Yeah. And it can be traced.”

Anne Nichols, going up in her apartment building’s elevator, knew she owed her mother a phone call. Despite the fresh look of her light blue silk blouse and black flared slacks, the African American FBI agent was dead tired, and wanted nothing more than to get inside her apartment, maybe take a detour to the shower, then crawl between the sheets ASAP.

Nichols and her mother, a Chicago policewoman, usually talked at least once a week. But it had been almost two weeks now, and she was feeling guilty.

For almost a decade, she and her mom had been each other’s entire immediate family — her daddy, a CTA bus driver, came home one night and fell asleep in his recliner, never to wake up again. And her older brother, Trevon, died in Iraq. His framed Purple Heart was still on Mom’s mantle.

So Nichols felt a responsibility to keep in touch, however busy she might be, and the Special Situations Task Force had been plenty busy over this past year. Still, she knew that her mom wouldn’t shame her for not calling, and would rarely call herself, for fear of intruding.

When Anne had gone straight from law school to the FBI, after her mother had assumed her daughter would go into private practice, Mrs. Nichols had understood without need of discussion that her “baby girl” wanted to be a cop like her momma.

Nichols had the long, slender frame of her father, and a prettiness that her stocky, rather blunt-featured mother lacked. But both women knew they were more alike than not.

On the fifth floor, Nichols walked quickly to her apartment, beckoned by the thought of a hot shower and cool bed sheets. She was just getting her keys from her purse when she noticed the edge of light under her door.

Her tiredness evaporated and she was on the alert — she never left the lights on. Never.

This was a security building, with a doorman on duty much of the day and a keypad in the lobby. Not an impregnable fortress by any means, but anyone who’d been able to get in here, and into her apartment, was likely a professional criminal... or a federal agent.

And considering the rogue element in government that Rogers had warned them about, Nichols could not assume the best about another fed.

She dropped the keys back in her shoulder-strap purse, withdrawing a small automatic with one hand, and the burner phone she’d been given with the other. Tempted as she was to deal with this herself, the wiser move would be to call Rogers for backup.

The automatic trained on the door, her hearing perked for anything behind it, she had just started keying in Rogers’ new number when she sensed something behind her.

An anonymous nine millimeter snugged in his waistband, Joe Reeder stood on the fire-escape landing outside DeMarcus’s crib, pulling on a cigarette liberated from the half-pack of Benson & Hedges Menthol Ultra Lights left behind by the formerly naked Sheila in the couple’s rush to leave. The beautiful starry evening seemed at odds with the storm clouds of the situation, though a March crispness provided a reminder that a chill was coming.

That distinctive white hair of his Reeder had tucked under a Nationals cap, appropriated (like the Georgetown windbreaker) from his host’s closet. The door was propped open, a shaft of light cutting the darkness of the wrought-iron landing as he waited for Rogers and Miggie, knowing they should be back soon.

He hadn’t smoked in over a year, not even a single cigarette, but he couldn’t resist just this one as he tried to calm his jangly nerves. He’d been going over every single aspect of the Yellich assassination and the dead CIA quartet in Azbekistan, looking for possible connections — was Len Chamberlain’s murder the connective tissue? He tried to separate what he knew from what he thought, what he could prove from what he surmised.

As soon as he saw headlights swing onto Tenth, Reeder tossed the cigarette sparking into the alley and went down to greet them.

When Rogers parked the car alongside the building, Reeder stepped behind the vehicle so that when she popped the trunk, he’d be ready to grab some of Miggie’s gear. With the three of them, a single trip got all of it up and inside. Although Mig used a tablet for most of his searches, the rest of the tech wizard’s toys, which were in part to help hide his presence here, would not exactly fit neatly into a shoulder bag.

With the door finally pulled shut, Miggie looked at Reeder and said, “Patti gave me the Cliff Notes version. How about the unabridged edition?”

Reeder motioned for them to move to the comfy chairs and couches facing the big flat-screen and settled in. Reeder brought Mig up to speed quickly but thoroughly.

Then he asked Miggie, “Have you had any luck tracking the money Wooten was paid to take Secretary Yellich down?”

Mig, in gray Hoyas Basketball sweats, shrugged. “Some... but nothing that does us any good yet. Shell companies, a slew of them. Whoever paid Wooten wanted the transaction untraceable. Nothing is, of course... but tracking it could take time.”

“How much time?” Reeder asked.

Miggie shrugged again. “Who knows? Weeks, even months.”

“We have four days. Then it won’t matter.”

Miggie frowned, flipped a hand. “I can only do what I can do, Joe. It’s like peeling an onion a layer at a time.”

Rogers asked, “What about our friend from the GAO?”

“Your elevator buddy? Well, knowing he’s from the GAO — if he’s really from the GAO — isn’t much to go on.”

She clearly didn’t like the sound of that. “Can’t you round up some pictures for me to sort through?”

Miggie huffed a non-laugh. “Patti, there’s somewhere north of three thousand employees in the GAO, more than half of ’em male — you want to look at all their photos?”

She frowned. “There has to be a faster way...”

“Might be,” Miggie admitted. “I’ve got a couple of ideas. Get back to you on that. In the meantime, what else do we need?”

Reeder held out the plastic bag with the busted flag-lapel camera in it. “Any way to track this?”

Miggie took the bag, removed its contents, studied it. Finally he said, “There’s no onboard memory, so it recorded images to a hard drive somewhere else. Meaning... probably not. Any idea who it belongs to?”

“A guy who jumped me in the dark.”

“Giving me a lot to work with, aren’t you?”

Reeder lifted a shoulder and put it back down. “Well, the Secret Service is the only agency I know of that uses these, this model anyway. It almost has to belong to one of their agents. If not, why did the GAO drone try to intimidate us right there at the Secret Service?”

Rogers asked, “What do you say, Miggie? Is there a way to track down the right agent?”

Examining the back of the mini-camera, the computer expert said, “There’s an ID number... maybe match it, if I hack the Secret Service. No small feat that, and when the flag cam got smashed, the ID number appears to’ve been ground into the concrete, and it was a tiny one to begin with... but we should be able to come up with several possibilities.”

“Good,” Reeder said.

As if taking stock for the first time, Miggie glanced around, sniffing some, and said, “You’ll need more Febreze than that to cover up that much weed.”

Reeder chuckled. “Who says Miguel Altuve can’t determine anything without a computer?”

Really taking their surroundings in now, Miggie asked, “What the hell is this place?”

Not missing a beat, Rogers said, “The Batcave.”

Miggie smirked. “Oh really? Is that how Bruce Wayne made his fortune, selling dope and guns?”

Ignoring that, Reeder rose and said, “Get set up, Mig, and get at it. You should be safe here... just don’t answer the door.”

The smirk morphed into a frown. “You think that elevator clown who threatened you can find us? Him or whoever he works for, anyway? And I don’t mean the GAO.”

Reeder shook his head. “Probably not, but in this town, what couldn’t happen? And the friend of mine who loaned us this pad has customers who will not be expecting you. So don’t answer it unless it’s one of us. There’s a camera — you’ll be able to see who’s out there.”

Miggie nodded, let some air out, said, “Got it.”

Reeder turned to Rogers. “Have you taken care of the Kevin situation?”

“No, but it’s next on my list.”

“Mine, too.”

She rose. “Joe... I can handle it myself. You stick here, why don’t you, and keep Miggie safe.”

Miggie volunteered, “I can handle myself.”

“He’s right,” Reeder told her. “This is a fortress. But you’ll be out in the world, Patti, and the next time they come at us, it’ll be with more than just threats. Consider me your backup.”

Lawrence Morris sat at the long narrow table in the expansive private dining room of the Federalist Club on F Street. He had been here a few times, to deliver messages, but had never been admitted past the front vestibule. Tonight, he perched among the chosen, ready to deliver his report when the chairman called upon him.

The chamber, with its rich oak paneling and dark heavy furnishings, seemed a throwback to a day when industrialists openly ruled the nation from behind closed doors. The same was true for the formal table settings with their bone china, impossibly white dinnerware with intricate hand-painted cherry blossoms. Baccarat crystal water glasses, Reed & Barton sterling silverware, hand-embroidered table linen, the outlay fairly dazzled Morris. He knew, for example, that these napkins ran over $150 each, which meant that for tonight’s dinner with the six-body board, plus the chairman, plus Morris himself, brought the napkin cost alone to $1,200. Toss in the fine tablecloth, and linens, and it tallied more than the price of his first car. (Working as he did in the Government Accountability Office, knowing what things cost was Morris’s specialty.)

The male staff wore tuxedos, the females old-fashioned maid-uniform livery. Whenever staff entered the room, all conversation stopped, and — other than giving orders or responding to questions from waiters — the board members remained silent until they were alone again.

With dessert done, and coffee served, the liveried army retreated to the kitchen. The chairman waited a full minute, then tapped his knife against his water glass, just once.

Every eye went to Senator Wilson Blount, his sharp light blue eyes peering from above the low-riding tortoiseshell glasses, his silvery blond hair barbershop perfect despite the late hour. Even before that single tap of metal on glass, all here were already under his sway. The chairman of the American Patriots Alliance led the way of this joint effort to restore the United States from “the sniveling weakling it had become,” as Blount himself sometimes explained it, “to its rightful place as the world’s preeminent superpower.”

“We all know why we’re here, gentlemen,” Blount said in his lilting Tennessee accent.

The six board members nodded as one.

Their attire varied in style but not in monetary value — Morris was out of his depth as to the exact price of their wardrobe (tailored suits rarely came up at the GAO). And admittedly he felt somewhat self-conscious in his own Men’s Wearhouse number. But actually, Blount’s off-the-rack brown suit, which fit his contrived folksy persona, may have cost even less.

Morris recognized two of the board, powerful men with national reputations who occasionally made it into the media — a major hotelier from New Jersey, and a trucking magnate from Wisconsin. The other four Morris drew a blank on, though that was hardly surprising. Anonymity was something the Alliance board cultivated.

They were all low-profile players now, with the one exception — an individual who had unwisely sought the political limelight — conveniently deceased. When the man had refused to step back in line with the Alliance’s plans for the greater good, Senator Blount and the board simply distanced themselves from him. No further action was taken, since the natural course of events had resolved the situation.

The chairman swung his eyes toward Morris and so did everyone else. “Your report, sir, if you please.”

Morris cleared his throat and stood, nodding to one and all, allowing a tiny polite smile to flicker. Blount had personally given Morris his task and, other than the Senator himself, no one in the room would have the slightest idea of his identity, foot soldier that he was.

Which was fine with Morris. He believed in the American Patriots Alliance’s motto: Serve Country, Not Self. Someday that would be on currency. What he and all of the loyalists enacted was part of their overall mission to restore the greatness that President Harrison had so recklessly squandered.

Still, this was a chance to make an impression, to demonstrate his value to the movement. Not that he had any illusion that a regular chair at this table might become his — the money and power here were out of his reach. But he would happily serve.

He said, in a firm voice that disguised his unease, “I met with Joe Reeder and Special Agent Patti Rogers after their meeting with the Director at the Secret Service. As instructed, I proffered both carrot and stick.”

“And their response?” the chairman asked.

“As you predicted, sir, they were not receptive to the carrot... but somewhat so to the stick. They did seem to have a sense of the precariousness of their situation — the implications of what further inquiry by them might cost.”

“Reeder has two weaknesses,” came the folksy drawl. “His pride and what we might call his... ‘family.’”

Morris asked, “His ex-wife and his daughter, sir?”

“No. They are out of reach for the moment. Efforts are being made to find them, but Mr. Reeder is not a man without his own resources.”

Morris leaned a hand on the linen-covered tabletop. “Reeder betrayed emotion, sir. I realize his reputation is one of rather... restrained behavior and self-expression. But he laid hands on me — twice.”

The other eyes at the table were moving from the chairman to Morris and back again, as the two men exchanged remarks in a tennis-match fashion.

“Joseph Reeder,” drawled Blount, “is such a self-righteous soul that the very idea of his character bein’ besmirched likely gives him physical pain... but he would sooner endure that than allow anything untoward to happen to those he cares about.”

“Sir, you... you don’t refer to his ex-wife and child?”

“Well, they’re the major part of the mix, of course. But he’s become attached to this agent, this Rogers woman. I don’t believe it’s a sexual relationship. Call it... father-and-daughter, or big-brother-and-little-sister. However you might characterize it, she is important to him. So are those he’s worked with at the FBI, as a consultant — the so-called Special Situations Task Force.”

Morris nodded, understanding the weak spot the chairman intended to penetrate.

Blount asked, “Did our people track the pair after they left the Secret Service buildin’?”

Morris offered an apologetic open-handed gesture. “I’m afraid, sir, within minutes, they went off the grid. If we find them... that is when we find them... what action do we take?”

The chairman leaned back in a chair taller than he was. “For now, nothin’ — we’ll let ’em flail and flounder.”

“Sir.”

“They’re tryin’ to find a way to keep out of harm’s way and yet contin-yuh their investigation at the one-and-the-same time. Eventually they will come to perceive the hopelessness of that goal.”

“Sir, Reeder is a top investigator, and so is that FBI female.”

Holding up a hand, the chairman said, “Keep your powder dry, my friend, and wait. They have not yet grasped the untenable nature of their position. They will contin-yuh to flail around for a time, likely gettin’ nowhere a’tall.” Blount pointed a thick forefinger at Morris. “But if they get close, we will have no choice but to shut them the hell down. Do you follow?”

Morris nodded. He followed, all right.

These men, the patriots on the board, were willing to make such sacrifices to return America to its greatness. A soldier kills in battle, at the direction of generals. The four CIA agents and Secretary Yellich had not been murdered; they were casualties of the cause.

For something as far-reaching as the ongoing operation, individuals would occasionally have to be sacrificed — for the greater good. That was at the core of the American Patriots Alliance.

Patrick Reitz, the trucking magnate — a heavy man with receding dark hair and a lizard’s hooded eyes — shook his head. “Why not eliminate them now? Aren’t they a genuine threat to our current goal?”

The chairman’s glance at Reitz had steel in it. “You are aware, my friend, that six government employees are already fatalities.”

“Nothing wrong with your math, Mr. Chairman. Only... why not two more?”

Blount’s intake of breath seemed to consume half the air in the room; when he let it out, nearby napkins rustled. “You would have us liquidate an FBI agent, a female one at that, who has generated positive publicity for the Justice Department in recent years? Then there’s the national hero who saved one president’s life and now is more popular than another one.”

“Accidents do happen,” Reitz said.

The chairman shook his head; there was a finality about it. “Too many red flags have already gone up for us to risk such behavior. Their deaths would bring more questions, more agents. But, yes, we can and will deal with these two, if necessary. For now, we have control of the situation. Killing that pair would relinquish our control. Doesn’t that make sense, gentlemen?”

Morris found himself nodding. To his surprise, so was Reitz, and the rest of the board, too.

“That’ll be all for you this evenin’,” Blount said to the GAO man pleasantly.

Then no one, not even the chairman himself, spoke a word as Morris rose and left like another member of the club’s staff, just not as well dressed. He slipped out the door, leaving behind the muffled sounds of the meeting continuing without him.

Jerry Bohannon, tie loosened, jacket folded up on the passenger seat, was fighting to stay awake. Every law enforcement officer in the world hated surveillance duty, and while this wasn’t technically that, it sure as hell felt like a stakeout.

Bohannon was parked in a Bureau Ford outside his fellow agent Trevor Ivanek’s place in Dumfries, Virginia. For a change, he didn’t have to worry so much about being spotted. All he was doing was waiting for Trevor to come home. There was even a convenience store nearby, so he didn’t have to monitor his liquid intake, and was sipping a coffee with cream and sugar right now. Of course, his boss, Patti Rogers, claimed a rogue element in government was up to no good, but frankly Bohannon found that a little hard to buy.

In fact, in this instance, he hoped Trevor would spot him, and also hoped he didn’t miss the guy if Trevor parked somewhere out of sight, the apartment building having no parking garage.

He got out the burner phone to text Evie that he didn’t know when he’d be home. She wouldn’t recognize the number, but she’d see his text: *A wn ts # Cs, J*, his personal shorthand for “answer when this number calls, Jerry.” The use of that shorthand would confirm it was him at the new number.

Evie was Evelyn Sullivan, the lovely brunette he’d met at a Georgetown bar a little over a year ago. Evie seemed the opposite of Carol, his ex-wife; this forty-something gal had a bawdy sense of humor and a go-with-the-flow attitude that included putting up with his weird work hours — all she ever asked was that she be kept in the loop. Not doing that had been a big factor in the breakup of his marriage.

As he waited, Bohannon sent his eyes up and down the street, which had been dead when he got here and still was. The apartment buildings had cars parked out front, and traffic was light. A couple was strolling at the other end of the block, and a dog across the street was barking at them. That was it for excitement.

Wishing Evie would call, he got out his tablet and went through the information he’d gathered on Secretary of the Interior Amanda Yellich. Her personal life was clean, her professional life exemplary, and the one thing he’d turned up was something of a happy accident.

Earlier in the day, he had visited Yellich’s condominium. The building’s doorman had told him the condo was empty, the Secretary’s things in storage in the basement waiting for some distant family member to claim them.

His FBI badge and a twenty had bought Bohannon ten minutes in the storage room with furniture, clothing, and boxes and boxes of books, the latter including a handwritten journal he almost missed. This he’d stuffed in his back waistband.

Bored in the Ford, he got out the journal and picked up where he’d left off. He took no pleasure out of paging through the dead woman’s private thoughts, which were frankly not terribly interesting much less revealing, and just cryptic enough to be irritating. One entry had caught his attention: JR hopeless case, still in love with his ex. Could JR be Joe Reeder, and was Reeder’s connection to the woman what sparked Rogers to send them digging into Yellich’s death?

Good God, was this shadow government Rogers imagined some offshoot of Reeder’s love life? Bohannon grunted a laugh.

Just then he came to an entry that made him sit up a little: My turn to sit out Camp David trip. Maybe I can kick back at home for a change.

So Amanda Yellich had been the designated survivor, left behind when the President and Vice President gathered with the cabinet at a single location. Now with Yellich dead, someone else would stay behind. Probably meant nothing, but the back of his neck was tingling — this was worth telling Miggie Altuve about.

He was about to send Mig a text when the phone vibrated — Evie was texting: *K* — okay. Quickly he switched screens and typed *AY not CD* and sent it to Miggie. He’d explain more fully as soon as he had a chance to call Evie and say that he’d be late, that in fact this case might tie him up for days.

That was when someone approached his window quickly, probably Ivanek.

Patti Rogers joined Reeder who, hands on hips, stood before their taped-in-a-kitchen-chair prisoner.

Sweat beaded Morris’s forehead, though it wasn’t particularly hot in the loft apartment. Fear practically radiated off the accountant. Rogers knew the feeling — even the captors here were in a tight, untenable place.

Reeder said, “I’m listening.”

Morris swallowed and the earnestness he summoned was almost painful to see. “I wasn’t there when your agent was taken. But I have a good idea where she’s being held.”

“Still listening,” Reeder said.

“Then... we have a deal?”

“A deal?”

Morris nodded; sweat flew. “I tell you where I think she’s being held, and you let me go. You do that because if I were to tell my people I’d been captured, they might consider me compromised, and that could be fatal.”

“You give us an address,” Reeder said, a faint smile tracing his lips, “and we let you walk? That it? After all, you acted in good faith.”

“Yes!”

“No,” Reeder and Rogers answered as one.

“Then... then what incentive is there for me to help you? And please don’t insult any of our intelligence by racking that weapon and threatening me with a hole in the ground. I think we’re past that.”

Rogers said, “Are we?”

Reeder resumed his seat in the chair that faced the captive. “Here’s how this is going to play out. You tell us where you think they have Agent Nichols. We go check it out. If we don’t die in the attempt, and actually free her, we return to discuss your future.”

“What... what kind of future?”

Rogers said, “You’ll be lucky to have any. Seven Americans have died already.”

Morris summoned an air of confidence, though he was trembling. “That’s what I mean — you consider me a traitor. From my point of view, I’m a patriot. What I propose is that if you’re successful in your rescue, we all go our separate ways, no harm, no foul.”

This coming from a man taped in a kitchen chair.

Reeder said, “That’s a possible outcome.”

Rogers would have rather thrown this excuse for a human down those fire-escape stairs, chair and all. But she would follow Reeder’s lead.

“Where?” Reeder asked.

“Burke. Burke, Virginia. It’s... kind of out of the way.”

“What makes you think she’s there?”

Morris relaxed within his bonds; he seemed assured of the information he was about to share.

“I was given the task,” he said, “of pinpointing government safe houses that are seldom in use. That was a part of my normal work for the GAO — looking for properties that could be sold off by agencies that no longer used them. One of these was a house the ATF used in Burke. 124 Jennings Circle.”

Rogers recorded that on her phone.

Morris went on: “The ATF hasn’t used it in over three years. The neighbors were getting suspicious, which often compromises a safe-house location. Anyway, I sent that message up the Alliance chain.”

“Sounds to me,” Reeder said, “like you might be handling any number of former safe houses.”

“That’s true,” Morris admitted. “But the house in Burke was not only the most recent example, it inspired a number of follow-up questions. Something was obviously being planned for that address — my guess? Holding your agent there is it.”

Rogers traded looks with Reeder — despite the People Reader’s usual blank expression, she could tell he found this promising. So did she. Of course, what else did they have...

“We’ll check it out,” Reeder said.

“And if you get your friend back?”

“Then we’ll talk.”

“We have a deal, remember.”

“One thing at a time.”

Rogers put the blindfold back on Morris.

“Aw, come on!” the prisoner said.

She said, “Hush,” and walked away.

They gathered around Miggie. His tablet had some vintage Latin music going, which he cranked to keep their already hushed conversation private.

“Any word from Bohannon?” Reeder asked.

Miggie shook his head.

Reeder spoke to Rogers: “Nichols is your agent who’s gone missing. Take the lead.”

Rogers nodded and said, “All right — Joe and I will check out the safe house in Burke. With any luck, we’ll extricate Anne. Miggie, you keep digging. Reggie, watch the prisoner. We’ll keep you posted by cell. If we go dark longer than, say, four hours, take the charming Lawrence to Fisk and make a clean breast of it.”

Wade frowned. “I rather dump him on the street and make noises about how he gave up his crew.”

Reeder said, “No. If Rogers, Nichols, and I are casualties, our play is over. Letting the Bureau handle it is the better part of valor.”

Rogers shook her head at Reeder. “Joe, our new best friend over there says every sector of government is infiltrated. That would include the FBI.”

But Reeder’s answer went to Wade. “That’s why you’ll need to turn Lawrence over in as public and showy a way as possible. Preempt a cover-up. Go to the Post and give an interview. Contact every 24-hour news channel. Got it?”

The big man sighed big. “I got it. But why don’t you just bring Anne back instead?”

Everybody agreed that was the best idea.

Rogers touched Reeder’s arm. “Let me say good-bye to Kevin.”

“Sure.”

She went back to the bedroom, letting herself in as quietly as possible. The room was just beginning to lighten, the only window allowing in the first hints of sunrise.

Kevin, in dark shirt and slacks, was on the made bed on his side, asleep maybe.

She crept in, shut the door behind her. “You awake?”

He smiled up at her. “Still awake. Can’t sleep. Maybe I should have taken my nylons off.”

She almost succeeded in not laughing.

“Okay,” he admitted, “maybe it is a little funny.”

She sat on the edge of the bed, found his hand. “Thank you for what you did tonight.”

“I kind of enjoyed it. Nice to know I can fool a straight guy like that, not just be some camp oddity.”

“But you’re a straight guy — kind of.”

“And you’re a straight girl — sort of.”

“Made for each other,” she said, and leaned in and kissed him a little. He sat up and kissed her more.

Then she put her hand in his short dark curly hair and said, “Now I need you to do what you were going to before this sting came up — disappear for a while.”

He sat up even more. “I’d rather hang, and help. I proved I can do that, right?”

“No proof necessary. You’re all man.”

“Except maybe for the nylons.”

“And the eyeliner.”

“That, too. So you want rid of me?”

“Just till the guns are gone. Just till having you around doesn’t worry me and make me lose my edge. You need to doll up and get Virginia Plain’s pretty behind out of here. Catch a cab. Grab a bus. I don’t want to know where you’re headed.”

“I’ve got that phone Reeder gave me. You’ll call?”

“I’ll call.”

She touched his face, so handsome, so pretty, and gave him a smooch and got out of there. She didn’t need her eyeliner getting spoiled, too.

Reeder said, “Bohannon was executed. No attempt to make it look like anything else this time.”

Her arm still around and supporting Anne Nichols, Rogers gaped at him, horrified. “What?”

“A mob-style double tap. Your people looking into any mob-related activity lately?”

“A few things, but...”

“So maybe I’m wrong, and this is somebody’s half-assed idea of covering up their latest kill.”

Rogers looked stricken. “Where was he...?”

“Still sitting surveillance outside Ivanek’s place.”

Nichols was quietly crying now. Rogers was shaking her head, saying, “I thought Jerry was on his way back to the Hoover Building.”

“So did I. For now, we have to stick a pin it, and get the hell out of here. See if you can find what they did with Anne’s shoes and get her into them. I’ll tidy up downstairs.”

“You’re not going to kill anybody are you?”

“I’ll try to restrain myself.”

It went quickly. The IDs of the captured minders were all Homeland. From the two downstairs, their hands already cuffed behind them, Reeder collected cell phones, and escorted them to the front closet and shut them in. The pair was too professional to squawk.

Shortly in the garage, Reeder was surveying the still unconscious Clayton and Simpson when Rogers and Nichols joined him.

Rogers helped him haul and dump the two Homeland agents into the trunk of their Ford, then the two women waited while Reeder fetched the rental vehicle from one street over. When he’d pulled into the driveway, Rogers ushered Nichols out and helped her into the back, then shut the garage door with an electric-eye opener she’d liberated from the Ford.

Reeder held the driver’s side door open for Rogers, who paused and said, “Those four kidnapped Anne. We just leave them behind for their people to pick up?”

“When somebody notices they haven’t checked in, yes. With luck that may be next shift change, but it’s more likely they have periodic call-ins.”

Her face was as clenched as a fist. “Clayton mentioned the Alliance. Probable that all four of them are part of that. They need to be arrested, Joe.”

“Who by? Us? The people who assaulted four federal agents?”

She blanched.

He said, “Who do we trust enough with that call? I’ve now tangled with both Homeland and Secret Service, and we know somebody in the CIA betrayed five of their own. Only thing we can do is get out of here.”

They did.

Trevor Ivanek, bony and brooding in a black suit with no tie, sat at his desk in the bullpen of the Special Situations Task Force at the J. Edgar Hoover Building, feeling very alone.

The room was already more than the team needed, the big open space more than accommodating their desks and, at the rear, the private offices for Altuve, Rogers, and sometimes Reeder. But it had never felt this big, or this empty, to him before.

Night was peeking through the blinds — how long had he been here? Three hours? No, four.

Not so long ago, with everyone here, Rogers had used a whiteboard to suggest, out of security-cam eyeshot, that a possible rogue element in government meant that paranoia was a fact not a condition. There had been talk of burner cell phones being distributed. But he hadn’t received one.

Possibly that was his fault. He’d made himself scarce last night and this morning, troubled by what Rogers had outlined and wondering where he fit into it. His work as an FBI profiler, for going on ten years now, had taken a toll. He’d never been able to sustain a relationship with the opposite sex, or any sex for that matter — the nightmares of his days made his evenings nothing worth sharing.

Finally, after dealing with some of the worst monsters on the planet as part of an FBI Behavioral Science unit, he’d requested a transfer to something less... intense.

The Special Situations Task Force, however, had proven anything but a less intense environment. Serial killers seemed like pikers compared to those who had sought, last year, to arrange a coup by outlandishly murderous means. And now Rogers was saying that a shadow government, with similar intent, might be attempting to manipulate world events with federal employees used as cannon fodder.

While he waited to hear from Rogers or anyone else on the team, he sat reading, on his tablet, A Brief History of Secret Societies by Barrett; taking a crash course on what they might be dealing with.

He’d spent the morning wandering the National Gallery of Art, one of many local museums where he could drift along and chill. It wasn’t that he was hiding from Rogers and the rest — more that he wanted to decide if he was up to being part of this, this... intense task.

Beneath his cool, rather scholarly manner a jumble of nerves hid how well he understood his own psychology and that of others. He imagined he could rival Joe Reeder in people-reading skills, though that had never been put to the test.

Night was here, and now what? Back to his Dumfries apartment maybe, where Rogers or other team members might be more comfortable getting in contact with him, should a government facility like the Hoover Building seem too likely to have been compromised.

He’d just decided to gather his things and his thoughts and leave for home when something remarkable happened: Assistant Director Margery Fisk herself walked in the door.

In the year-plus the Special Sit Task Force had been on the job, he could remember only once before when AD Fisk had descended from the heavens, several floors above, for a direct visit.

In a black business suit and a white silk blouse, her short curly hair as perfect this time of day as at the start, Fisk granted him a nod and a thin smile. She glanced around at the otherwise empty bullpen. He was just about to ask her where the hell his team was when she spoke.

“Where the hell is your team?” she asked.

She was standing before him now, a teacher looking down at a questionable pupil.

“They’re in the field, Director. I haven’t heard from Agent Rogers or any of the others. And I admit I’m concerned.”

She came around, borrowed a chair from the desk next door, and sat beside him. Leaning forward a little, staring past him, her hands knitted in her lap, Fisk had already moved from stern taskmaster to worried boss... or even worried fellow agent.

“I’m concerned, too, Trevor...”

Calling him Trevor was clearly an attempt to put him at ease, and encourage a sense of familiarity between them. And he did have a history with Fisk, a positive one — she’d allowed him to transfer here from the Behavioral unit.

She was saying, “I’ve left message after message, e-mail, text, voice mail, and no one has checked in. What do you make of that?”

He tilted his head. “Frankly, I know Agent Rogers is concerned about security.”

Fisk frowned and smiled at once. “You mean this notion she has that there’s a ‘rogue element’ in the government? That seems highly unlikely, don’t you think?”

Considering the subject of the book he was reading, Ivanek wasn’t sure. But he told her what she wanted to hear: “Most unlikely.”

“But I do understand what her concern might be — she made a most convincing case for Secretary Yellich’s death to’ve been murder. And considering Yellich’s high position, that murder might well be considered a political assassination.”

“I can see that, ma’am.”

“I have the utmost respect for the Special Sit Unit. It is, in a way, my baby. I’ve been working hand in hand with Patti Rogers to keep you folks funded, which is no small trick in these lean times.”

“I can imagine.”

She smiled in a chin-crinkling way, patted him on the shoulder, and rose. “Let’s make a pact.”

“A pact, ma’am?”

“Make me the first person you call when you hear from Patti, and I’ll do the same.”

Then she was gone, heels clicking down the corridor.

Was she sincere? Should he suspect her? He wasn’t sure.

He sat thinking about that for a good ten minutes and was about to finally leave when his cell vibrated. He checked the caller ID.

Rogers.

They stayed off the interstates, avoiding as much as possible traffic-cams and other security cameras. As Rogers drove, Reeder got Miggie on the burner.

“Everybody safe?” the computer expert asked.

“Patti and I are fine.”

Quickly he told Miguel what had happened at the Monument.

“Oh, hell,” Mig said hollowly. “First Jerry, now Trevor... God. What next?”

“We do our best not to join them. Your end?”

“Everybody’s okay. No sign of a tail. Should be at the cabin soon. Nichols is sleeping in back right now.”

“Both of you need to get some rest. Sleep in shifts, when you get to the cabin.”

“That’s what we planned. GPS says you’re on the move, too.”

“We are. Patti and I’ll find somewhere we can sleep before we drop. But tomorrow I want to make a visit, first thing.”

“Anywhere special?”

“Just the cabinet member left behind for this Camp David trip, now that Amanda Yellich is off the list.”

A pause filled itself with cell-phone crackle.

“Joe, I told you before how tight a lid the Secret Service keeps on that.”

“And you’re just the guy to pry it off.”

Another crackly pause.

“I’ll get back to you,” Miguel said, and clicked off.

Reeder slept for fifteen minutes and then the burner in his hand vibrated.

“Turns out the held-back cabinet member,” Mig said, “is a familiar name.”

“Secretary of Agriculture,” Reeder said. “Nicholas Blount.”

“Jesus! If you knew that, why—”

“I didn’t. Just an educated guess, based on Lawrence mentioning the Blount dynasty. If procedure hasn’t changed, Nicky will be at home or perhaps some summer or winter place.”

“His home,” Mig said. “Chevy Chase, 6900 block of Brennon Lane. Do I have to remind you a spate of agents from your alma mater will be on hand?”

“No, but see if you can define spate.”

Miggie tapped on his tablet.

Then: “Six — three two-person teams rotating over twenty-four hours.”

“After the attempted coup last year,” Reeder said, “I expected more. But then a contingent of agents would only attract unneeded attention. Hey. Is my pal Lawrence asleep?”

“No. Wide awake and pouting.”

“Enough dashboard light to see his face?”

“Sure.”

“Ask him if Wilson Blount is the Alliance chairman. And as you do, watch his face close — you’re going to read him for me.”

“Do my best... Lawrence! Reeder wants to know if Senator Blount is the chairman of the Alliance board.”

Reeder could make out Morris’s muffled, “Hell no.”

“Hear that?” Miggie asked.

“Yeah. Did his eyes go up and to the left?”

“His left or my left?”

“Yours.”

“Yup. For half a sec, I’d say.”

“Thank Lawrence for me... I’ll check back in the morning. That concealed gun cabinet in the cabin is—”

“I remember where it is.”

They clicked off.

Rogers, at the wheel, had gathered most of the conversation from Reeder’s end and what she could hear of Miggie’s.

She asked, “So Blount is the chairman? Based on some minimal eye movement on Morris’s part?”

He gave her half a smile. “Wouldn’t exactly hold up in court. But it makes sense. The Senator is who angled to get the qualifying age for the presidency lowered last year, and now we learn that his young son is the one cabinet member not at Camp David right now.”

“It’s thin,” she said, “but credible. So we talk to Nicky Blount? How do we get past your Secret Service buddies?”

The sky was already showing patches of pink light in the east.

“Working on it,” he said.

Then he fell asleep.

When he woke up, Rogers was pulling into the entry drive of an underground garage using a keycard. Reeder twisted and saw a street sign: WOODMONT AVENUE.

Once they were settled into a space away from cameras and potential passersby, Reeder asked, “Are we anywhere special?”

“Bethesda. The Landow Building. Offices and retail, and very little traffic this early on a Saturday.”

“And you have a keycard for a parking garage in Bethesda why?”

“Gabe Sloan and I — not long after we were first partnered up — stopped some domestic terrorists who wanted to blow this place up for jihad or something. The owners asked us how often our work brought us to Bethesda and we said fairly often, and...”

“They gave you each a permanent parking pass. I got a few perks myself on the job. Who knows about this?”

“The late Gabriel Sloan. How long should we sleep?”

“Make it two hours.”

“Okay.” She set the dashboard alarm. “I’ll take the back. That seat you’re in reclines. Try not to snore.”

He grinned at her, and it felt good. “Same back at you.”

Sleep didn’t take him immediately, possibly because of the catnaps he’d caught on the ride. He worked out a tentative plan to get in to see Nicky Blount, and wondered if he was too geared up to fall asleep again, and then did.

By the time Reeder finally emerged from the Cape Cod, Patti Rogers — tucked behind the beech, Glock in hand — had just endured the longest fifteen minutes of her life...

... Reeder talking to his old Secret Service buddy before giving up his weapons and cell and going inside, the SS agent smoking on the little landing until going in himself, and finally Reeder coming out with Parker, shaking the man’s hand, retrieving guns, baton, and phone, then trotting across the yard to her while Parker watched. If Reeder’s old pal drew his sidearm with the apparent intention of shooting, Rogers would have shot the man, federal agent or not. Maybe the guy would be wearing a vest. But maybe not.

Then they were moving through the connecting backyards again, hugging the trees, and they didn’t talk until they were in the Buick with her back behind the wheel.

“Well?” she asked.

“First, drive. Parker’s giving us an hour and we better start using it.”

She started the car. “Anywhere special?”

“Not here.”

They were out of Blount’s immediate neighborhood before Reeder said, “Gaithersburg. Know where it is?”

“Yes,” she said.

That was a suburb of about sixty thousand, northwest of DC.

“What’s in Gaithersburg?” she asked.

“Nothing, I hope. No Alliance troops or FBI, either.”

“Why Gaithersburg of all places?”

“Why not? Avoid the Capital Beltway. Fisk’ll be having traffic-cams scanned.”

“You think?”

“Sorry.”

As she got her bearings and headed northwest, he filled her in on his conversation with the young Secretary of Agriculture.

“Well,” she said, “suspicions confirmed, but how much good does it do us otherwise, if Nicky won’t come forward?”

“It’s his father,” Reeder said. “Took balls to go as far as he did.”

She couldn’t argue with that.

He set his cell to speaker, then placed a call that was answered on the third ring.

After hearing Hardesy’s “Yeah,” Reeder asked him, “Where are you two?”

“Reston, at my college roommate’s place. He’s out of town and that’s fine with me.”

So they were safe in Virginia. There were worse places to be.

“Can you get your hands on some firepower?”

“... Could be I can call in a favor. What might we need?”

“Anything with some punch that isn’t a handgun but can be used on the move. Controllable. Nothing producing random gunfire, like a machine gun.”

A long pause, then: “See what I can do. What then?”

“There’s an Applebee’s on Frederick Road in Gaithersburg.”

“We’ll find it. I assume we leave the weaponry in the car.”

That had some sarcasm in it, but Reeder’s response did not: “Not your handguns. How long you need?”

“Travel time, getting to my source... let’s say three hours.”

“Try to shorten it,” Reeder said.

“Give it a try,” Hardesy said, and they clicked off.

Eyebrows up, Rogers asked, “Firepower? No machine guns?”

“You don’t want the President taken down by friendly fire, do you?”

She stared at him so long and so hard he had to tell her to get her eyes back on the road.

“Please tell me,” she said, “that you’re not talking about storming Camp David.”

“I’m open to other suggestions.”

“Good God, Joe! Isn’t that a little over the top?”

“So is Nicky Blount’s father leading a coup to overthrow the government and leave his bouncing baby boy as the only one standing. Nicky turns out to have more going for him than I would ever have guessed, but I still don’t want him to be the next president.”

She was shaking her head, the concept rattling around in her skull like something broken. “And we don’t trust the presidential protection detail why?”

“It’s likely at least some of them are Alliance.”

He seemed so goddamn calm! But her heart was racing. She didn’t realize how heavy her foot was on the gas till he advised her to slow down and engage the cruise control, which she hadn’t because of the serpentine way she was traveling.

Finally she said, “Do I have to tell you that place is a military installation? A fortress not only protected by the Secret Service, but staffed with Navy and Marines? You know that, and yet you’re still contemplating, what, shooting our way in?”

“Someone has to protect the President. With the Secret Service infiltrated, who else is there but us?”

She drove numbly for a minute or maybe an hour.

Finally he said, “There’s one other way. We can drive up to the checkpoint and I can ask to be put through to Harrison. But how likely is that request to go directly through? Someone on the inside who’s compromised would have us taken care of. And anyway, we’re basically the FBI’s entire Most Wanted List right now.”

“Jesus. If there were only some way to warn the President.”

Reeder was so quiet and blank, she could read him.

“Joe?”

“... I have a direct line to the President right now. A cell phone he gave me.”

“What?”

“But alerting him at this point doesn’t make sense, not until we have an actual plan of action. Telling him that people around him aren’t to be trusted could backfire. It’s not like he’s trained in kinesics.”

She gaped at him. “You have a phone that’s in the President’s pocket? And we’re not using it?”

“Not yet. The less time he has to think about it, the less chance he’ll give himself away.”

“I don’t know, Joe...”

“This has to be my call.”

She smirked at him without humor. “I remember. It’s not a democracy.”

“Not even close.”

They drove in silence for an hour or maybe a minute.

She said, very quietly, “Think Miggie can find us a way in?”

He raised his cell phone. “My next call.”

With Miggie on the speaker, Reeder asked, “Security at Camp David — what can you tell us?”

“What you already know,” the computer expert said, clearly taken somewhat aback by the query. “That it’s good and goddamn tight, as one might expect.”

But Mig was already tapping on his tablet in the background.

“Kind of hoping,” Reeder said, “for something a little more detailed.”

“... It’s a self-contained system, not online. No way for me to hack it.”

“None?”

“There’s an underground control room, multi-person team inside, pretty much in the center of the compound. They manage all the electronic equipment from there. Motion detectors, infrared, the works. And no way for me to sneak into the system.”

“Not good news,” Reeder admitted. “What else?”

“Besides the Marines, the Navy, and the F-22s?”

Rogers said, “They have planes?”

“They can get them with a finger snap,” Miggie’s voice said. “Two different occasions, F-15s intercepted small planes near Camp David that got too close to President Obama.”

Reeder asked, “You see a way in? Use your imagination.”

“Not that I see,” Miggie said, “or imagine. Maybe if you had someone inside... but from the outside? Suicide.”

She and Reeder exchanged glances: they did have someone inside — the President himself.

“Miggie,” Reeder asked, “is the tunnel still in use?”

“Tunnel?”

“Runs between Aspen Lodge and the command center. Anyway, it did back when I was on the presidential detail.”

Miggie’s tapping again could be heard, then he said, “Yes... yes, it is. Don’t know how that helps, but it’s still functional, according to what I can access.”

“Can any part of the system be shut down without tripping all the alarms?”

“There’s a way to shut off a single sector, but it has to be done from the control center — if you had someone inside.”

“Suppose we did,” Reeder said, “and a sector could be cleared. What’s the best approach?”

A long pause, broken by a sigh. “From the woods on the southeast.”

“Through the golf course.”

“Yes. If no one is playing, that’s where there’ll be the least security... but also the least cover.”

“Late enough in the day, shouldn’t be anybody playing. President Harrison is a morning golfer.”

Mig asked, “How would you know that?”

“I know where the shadows fall, different times of day. Seen pictures of Harrison playing golf there. Old habits die hard.”

“But sometimes fast. Anyway — the second tee, Joe. I’ve got a feeling you know it.”

“I do.”

“Section A-22. That’s the only sector that needs shutting down. Your inside guy can report it as a system check and buy you maybe, oh... ten minutes? But you’ll really have to hustle.”

“Oh yeah. That’s over a mile through woods, unless we take the fairway, which would mean no cover.”

“But it’s also the shortest path to Aspen Lodge, and your tunnel.”

“Thanks, Mig.”

“Are you really going to try this, Joe? Isn’t there some better way?”

“Feel free to call me back with one,” Reeder said, and clicked off.

“You can’t be seriously contemplating this,” she said, her gaze fixed on him again.

“Eyes on the road. I’m going to mull it some. When we sit down with Wade and Hardesy, I’ll tell you what I’ve come up with.”

In Gaithersburg, with Hardesy and Wade not due for a while, Rogers located the Applebee’s, then drove around the area checking to see if they’d been made by any government agents. She knew the kind of vehicles they drove and the way they dressed and even how they had their hair cut. If somebody was on to their meeting, she had a good chance of knowing.

Finally satisfied, she pulled into the restaurant parking lot and backed into a place at the rear with the alley behind them, giving them two channels of flight. The lunch rush was over, though enough extra civilians were around to give them some cover — not that it was very likely the Buick could be on the FBI radar.

They stayed in the car and waited for Hardesy and Wade. No reason to go in and expose themselves any longer than necessary.

She turned to Reeder. “How’s that mulling coming?”

His shrug was barely perceptible. “Let’s just say there’s zero margin for error.”

“Meaning everything goes exactly right, or we check into a federal penitentiary.”

“Not necessarily.”

“Oh?”

“They may kill us.”

They lapsed into silence and the next thing Rogers knew, Reeder was nudging her.

“They’re here,” he said.

She sat up, yawned, stretched. “How long was I out?”

“Not even half an hour.”

“They made good time.”

“Or they struck out on the guns.”

Hardesy and Wade were backing in next to them in a nothing Kia. They all got out and met in front of their vehicles. The two agents looked somewhat on the bedraggled side, Lucas in his black windbreaker and jeans, Wade in the dark gray sweats.

Reeder asked, “Any luck?”

Hardesy said, “Two AR-15s. Wish I had four.”

“Two’ll do. Semiauto?”

“Yeah. My guy is a friend, but he’s not that good a friend. Fully auto’s more than we can hope for, given our circumstances.”

Reeder nodded. “Let’s go in and stop looking like a drug deal. I have a few things to run past you.”

Hardesy gave Rogers a look and she just shrugged.

They asked for and got a table in a back corner. The place was maybe half-full. Wade and Hardesy ordered food, Reeder and Rogers coffee, their breakfast still holding them.

Wade summoned a smile. “Ever try jailhouse food?”

By the time their beverages arrived, Reeder had given them the gist. Nobody was smiling now. Then, covered by clatter and conversation around them, he went over the plan in detail. Wade and Hardesy’s food came and neither touched it.

At one point, Hardesy said, “I don’t know if I’m prepared to shoot a United States Marine or sailor or even a Secret Service agent. Some may be Alliance-turned traitors, but others sure as hell won’t be.”

Reeder sipped his coffee. They might have been discussing an office football pool.

“I’ve considered that too,” Reeder said. “The thing is, they’ll be trying to kill us.”

Hardesy shook his head glumly. “I’m just saying I don’t know if I can drop them.”

Reeder showed nothing at all in his expression. “They are military sworn to protect and defend their country and their president. Ready to give their lives for that. Those who are uncompromised, and that may be most of them, are in a war where they’re being unwittingly used by the enemy.”

Wade was nodding gravely. “The Alliance.”

“The Alliance,” Reeder said. “Any brave men and women who go down will be dying for their country.”

Rogers sighed. “Maybe, but that’s a roundabout way of looking at it.”

“No doubt. And since I first considered going this route, killing our own has weighed heavily. The Secret Service, the Marines, they are all battle-ready, which means bulletproof vests. We’re not using any kind of armor-piercing ammo, correct?”

Hardesy shook his head. “No. Nothing like that.”

“Good. Then just aim center mass. Knock them down. We’re hoping not to fire on anyone at all — a faint hope, I realize, but none of us wants to kill anyone who isn’t a bad guy. Hit them in the vest, and that should put them out of commission, nonlethal.”

Hardesy glanced at Wade, who shrugged. The ex-Army sergeant still looked skeptical, however, obviously loathe to fire on his own.

Rogers said, “We all need to make our own decisions on this one. Joe, in this case, we are a democracy. This is well out of our task force’s mission statement — it’s more a suicide-mission statement.”

That got wry smiles out of everyone, even Reeder, no surprise considering the dark sense of humor of just about every law enforcement professional.

She continued: “So sit this out, with my blessing — just keep it to yourself. Because Reeder and I are going.”

“I’m in,” Wade said, no hesitation at all. “I owe my man Jerry Bohannon as much.”

Finally Hardesy said, “I hate this, I really hate this... but I got nothing better. And I’m not going to be part of letting a fucking coup go down on our watch. I’m in, too.”

When dishes had been cleared and coffee cups filled, Hardesy said, “Trouble is, this all hinges on an inside man, Joe, to shut down a security sector. And we don’t have anybody.”

“Sure we do,” Reeder said.

Wade asked, “Who’s he talkin’ about?”

“Just the President,” Rogers said.

Reeder got out a cell phone.

Goggling at him, Hardesy said, “You’re just going to call the President of the United States on the phone? The plan hinges on that?”

Reeder said, “It’s a special phone he gave me.”

Hardesy’s eyes narrowed and he said, “Your mission for the President — to find out who got those CIA agents killed overseas.”

“That’s right. Lucas, maybe you could take care of the check. Reggie, Patti’ll give you the keys — transfer those weapons to the Buick’s trunk... discreetly, okay?” Reeder stood, pushing back his chair. “And if you’ll excuse me...”

In the parking lot, Reeder made the call while Rogers listened on.

After delivering a condensed version of the events and situation that had led to this moment, Reeder said, “Yes, Mr. President — I would select the Secret Service agent you trust most.”

Muffled talk.

“Yes, sir, I’ll text you when we’re in position. Get to the control room, have section A-22 shut down on whatever pretense, text me back, then we’re a go.”

Muffled talk.

“Yes, sir, good luck and Godspeed to you as well, Mr. President.”

Reeder clicked off.

She said, “We’re really going to do this. Invade Camp fucking David.”

“Yes. But it’s all right.”

“Is it?”

“Sure. We have the President’s permission.”

All four were in the Buick now, Reeder riding up front, Rogers behind the wheel, the other two in back. They were driving through Catoctin Mountain Park, not far from their destination in the Maryland woods, when Hardesy leaned forward like a kid wanting to know how many more miles and asked, “Sure we shouldn’t wait for dark?”

Reeder said, “That would give away what little advantage we have. They have the tactical night-vision gear, goggles, binoculars, rifle scopes, every toy we don’t have. We’d still have surprise, but we have that now.”

The vehicle continued threading through the thick poplar forest, sun cutting through to dapple the shade with gold until clouds rolled in to mute the effect. They encountered a few other drivers, tourists, families. Not many. Reeder pointed to a dirt road off to the right and Rogers veered in that direction, the way proving to be more a trampled path. The car bounced and lurched, jostling them but good, until finally Rogers found a place to park between a chestnut oak and a beech, the latter large enough to all but hide the vehicle behind.

All four wore hooded hunting attire, purchased at a Hanover, Maryland, Walmart, where Reeder had also bought various goodies, including one hundred rounds for the various nine mils the quartet was packing (the two AR-15s had come with plenty of .223 Remington ammo). They had stopped at a gas station to get into the camo gear, as well as the four Kevlar vests that Reeder, anticipating a need, had risked purchasing at a Navy Yard area army surplus store back when they were guests of DeMarcus.

As leaves and sticks crunched beneath their camo-colored boots, and trees rustled and birds sang and cawed, Hardesy procured the two AR-15s from the Buick’s trunk, kept one and handed the other off to Wade. Reeder had decided to use the rifles to protect the flanks, while he and Rogers came up the middle. Without sound-suppressed weapons, the first time any of them fired, the element of surprise would be over and the firefight would be on.

Before they started out, Reeder gathered them into a kind of commando huddle, and said, “The strategy here requires one part stealth and two parts luck.”

Everyone nodded at that.

Reeder went on: “Start by setting your phones to vibrate.”

Hardesy, a little edgy, said, “I think I could have figured that out.”

Reeder ignored that, saying, “Texting is the only secure communication system we have. A text can be used for specific intelligence, or just a few letters of gibberish... because the vibration itself means drop and freeze.”

They all had burner phones in hand now.

“After you’ve hit the dirt,” Reeder said, “check for shared intelligence, when you can do so safely. If it’s just a few scrambled letters meant to alert you to danger, wait it out, then go when you feel you can.”

Wade and Hardesy nodded.

Rogers held up her cell. “I’ve made a group. You should all have a text from me soon. I’m including Miggie, too.”

Reeder felt his phone vibrate, as around him the hum of other cells sang the same song.

He gave Rogers a nod of thanks. With no makeup, under that camo hood, she might have been an adolescent boy. Of course, that would be an adolescent boy with two nine millimeter automatics, one in her hip holster, the other in her right hand.

Like the pines around them, Wade towered over the little group. “How far out are we?” he asked.

Reeder pointed. “Maybe two clicks from the security boundary.”

Craning around, taking in the surroundings, Hardesy said, “Some scenery, huh? Breathtaking, really. You know, if I live through this, I could see taking a week out here with the family.”

Everybody managed a smile, and Rogers said, “Or if we’re caught, when you get out of the federal pen? You can bring your great-grandkids out here.”

“Oh, he won’t be out that soon,” Reeder said.

And now they laughed. Somewhere a bird joined in, somewhat tauntingly.

“All right,” Reeder said in a sigh. “Let’s get moving — stay quiet, and alert. Nothing riding on this except the line of succession and maybe a shooting war with Russia.”

AR-15 in his hands, Hardesy said, “No pressure.”

“Well, at least I left out the Armageddon part.”

Wade, the other guy with an AR-15, said, “Man, as pep talks go, that comes in way behind win-one-for-the-Gipper.”

That got a few chuckles, likely the last levity these four would enjoy for a while.

They moved out, all their attention on the mission. They started slowly, single file, till they got to their real starting position. The afternoon was cool, but the heavy camo clothing with the bulletproof vests was warm. Reeder wiped his brow with the back of a hand, knowing some of it was nerves.

The little group spread out at first, the better to know what they were dealing with. For half an hour or more they walked, every step deliberate and yet the leaves and twigs seemed to scream their approach. But not a phone vibrated, and nothing unexpected emerged.

Then they had closed ranks enough to see each other crouching in the underbrush, just outside what Reeder knew to be the security perimeter of Camp David. Shadows thrown by the canopy of trees on a cloudy day combined to give them some semblance of darkness.

Reeder went from face to face, his eyes saying, Point of no return. What he got back were expressions as blank as the one he so frequently showed the world.

Then he got out the presidential phone and texted: *In position*

He knew, better than anyone, that it would take time for President Harrison to deal with his end, which included an extra responsibility before making his way down the tunnel from Aspen Lodge to the command center. Settling in for the wait, staying alert, keeping calm, might be the hardest part.

Ten minutes dragged by. Twenty. Wade and Hardesy were getting restless, stretching, cracking their backs, their necks. They were FBI field agents, after all, not Navy SEALs.

He shot them a look: Patience.

Another ten minutes. Afternoon was easing into dusk. Everyone’s eyes would go to Reeder and Reeder would seem not to see them, then shake his head.

Finally Rogers crept over to him. “Something’s wrong.”

“We don’t know that,” Reeder said.

Wade, AR-15 in one hand, clambered over. Whispered, “Man’s had time enough.”

Hardesy came over, too, hugging his rifle. “Maybe we should abort. Maybe there’s another way.”

Reeder said calmly, “He couldn’t just get up and walk away. Bound to be in the middle of a meeting with everything going on.”

“Unless,” Rogers said, “the Alliance has already struck and we’re too late. We could be waiting for a dead man’s signal.”

She had just voiced his greatest fear.

Reeder got to his feet and said, “Or he may not be dead yet. Which means we better get our asses in there.”

Wade yanked him back down into the weeds. “Man, without the security down, that’s crazy!”

Hardesy got hold of Reeder’s other sleeve and said, “I signed on for the duration, Joe, but I don’t do kamikaze.”

“Then I go without you,” he said, and yanked himself away.

“Joe,” Rogers began. “We have to be smart about this...”

“You be smart,” he snapped. “The life of the President is on the line, and I’m going in. That’s what I was trained to do, and I’m not about to stop now. Screw the security system. If nothing else, it’ll get the place locked down, and I have to believe the majority of those on guard are not compromised.”

They all looked at him with wide eyes filled with alarm and maybe something else, maybe respect or admiration or some damn thing, but if they thought reasoning with him would work, they didn’t know him well at all, not even Patti, and then his phone vibrated.

The text message said: *GO*

Reeder said, “Harrison made it. Still want to bail?”

They all shook their heads, maybe a little ashamed.

He texted back: *OK*

Bitching was forgotten and everyone got ready to move out. Hardesy went right, Wade left, while he and Rogers drove straight ahead. Each of the flanks had rifles, he had two pistols, his SIG Sauer and an anonymous nine, while Rogers had her Glock and another nine from DeMarcus’s stock. And they had plenty of ammo, thanks to Walmart.

They moved as low and fast as the underbrush would allow, needing to cover almost a mile before they got to their first goal, the edge of the golf course. Between here and there was thick brushwood, dense forest, and roving armed patrols. They were maybe halfway there when Reeder sensed movement to his right: Hardesy dropping to the ground, swallowed in the greenery.

Reeder reached over for Rogers and tugged her sleeve and they both fell into leafy cover as well. A two-man patrol was headed their way, uniformed Marines. Wanting to warn Wade, he dug carefully for his phone when it vibrated. A half-second later, Wade disappeared from view. Without checking, Reeder knew the text alert had come from Hardesy.

They watched silently through riffling leaves as the two-man patrol crossed their paths barely ten yards away. No dogs, at least, Reeder thought.

Armed with AR-15s of their own, the Marines moved on, oblivious to Reeder and the others at their feet. He gave them a full minute before he poked his head up.

“Gone,” he whispered.

They rose slowly, cautiously, like strange plants growing in this piney jungle, then moved on, slower now, fanning out again. Before long they were at the edge of the tree line.

Ahead was the second fairway.

Sixty yards of well-tended open ground yawned before them, beyond which were more sheltering trees. It was as if in the midst of a primordial world a country club had dropped from the sky. If they cut at a diagonal, to make up time and get to Aspen Lodge quicker, they’d have even farther to go out in the open.

The course appeared deserted on this cloudy late afternoon, but the foot patrols could be anywhere. Reeder and Rogers were between Wade (twenty yards from the tee) and Hardesy (twenty yards closer to the hole). In the planning stages, they’d decided that going one at a time across the fairway would be safer, even if moving all at once might be faster.

Reeder signaled Wade with a wave.

Looking like a guerilla in his camos, the former ball player, long legs pumping, crossed the rough on this side, then the fairway, and finally the rough opposite before disappearing into the trees.

They waited.

No sign that anyone had seen Wade.

Hardesy went next, angling slightly up the fairway before disappearing into the woods as well, heading toward his next position.

Looking back toward the tee, Reeder could just barely make out Wade moving through the trees.

“We should go together,” Rogers told him, looking so very young.

“Riskier.”

“Faster,” she said. “Clock’s running.”

He was about to agree when she jerked him down by his sleeve into the undergrowth again as another two-person Marine patrol, male and female this time, strolled right down the middle of the fairway toward the tee box.

He hadn’t seen them coming, and the way they sauntered right past where he and Rogers were belly down, the pair hadn’t seen either of them either.

As soon as the patrol was out of sight, Reeder and Rogers sprinted across the fairway and into the trees.

Wade was right there.

“Jesus,” he whispered. “Where the hell did those two come from?”

Rogers said, “No idea — they weren’t there, then they were. What, were they wearing slippers?”

Reeder said, “Did they see us?”

Wade said, “If they had, we probably wouldn’t be talkin’ about it right now.”

Within five minutes, Reeder, Rogers, and Wade were standing at the edge of the woods with Aspen Lodge perched atop a hill before them, an impressive yet unpretentious structure of three rambling green-clapboard wings with low-riding flagstone walls, an expansive yard between the intruders and the rear of the place.

Two guards patrolled the patio known as the upper and lower terraces, one on each level; two or more guards would be out front. Hardesy, having peeled off back at the golf course, was at the edge of the next sector, ready to provide the diversion they would need to cross the vastness of that backyard.

Reeder’s burner vibrated, stopped, vibrated, stopped. A glance at Rogers told him hers had done the same — Hardesy’s signal. Seconds later, he heard three quick shots from an AR-15. Both guards’ heads snapped in that direction.

“What the hell?” the lower-terrace guard said, his voice just barely carrying.

“Check it out!” the other one called, easier to hear, and both men moved around toward the front.

As soon as the guards skirted the corner, the three invaders sprinted across the sloping yard, staying low, then pressed themselves against the stone wall of the lower terrace. Carefully, a nine mil leading the way, Reeder climbed the few steps to the lower terrace. The patio with its furniture was unpopulated, and he kept going; the only entrance to the lodge on this side was back here on the upper terrace. Behind him came Wade with his AR-15 and Rogers with her Glock.

Six stairs from the lower to the upper terrace were navigated easily by Reeder, fanning his pistol to the left into a small garden, also unpopulated. He kept moving, past the windows of the sunroom, also empty (a nice break), as he made his way to a door he hoped would be unlocked — with those two guards stationed out here, that seemed possible. If not, Rogers had her lock picks, and she was damn good with them.

Their heads all swiveled toward the northeast when they heard more shots. Hardesy was definitely on the move, and they didn’t have a second to waste. The camp would be shutting down and locking up any moment now, if it hadn’t already.

Reeder tried the door, found it unlocked (another small break), then all three were inside, Wade closing them in. The cedar sunroom and the casual, open-beamed living room beyond were empty. Surely a silent alarm had to be going off right now. The alarm, Reeder knew, sounded in the command center and orders went out from there.

They checked the main floor and, surprisingly, found Aspen Lodge entirely deserted.

Wade asked, “Where the hell is everybody?”

Reeder said, “Likely a conference room in one of the other lodges. Digging in on the Azbekistani situation. That’s why they’re here.”

The sunroom door banged open and all three of them spun, weapons up.

Hardesy tramped in. “Christ, tumbleweed’s blowing through this place. What’s going on?”

They all lowered their weapons and Reeder asked, “I hope you aren’t leading a battalion of Marines our way.”

Hardesy shook his head. “I lost their asses in the woods. These young pups can’t compete with an old joe like me. Where the hell is everybody?”

Reeder said, “There’s a dozen or more buildings between here and Laurel Lodge to the north. The cabinet members, the President and VP could be in any of them. There’s conference rooms all over, as well as more informal areas where they can sit around working.”

“You ask me,” Hardesy said, “we got in way too easy.”

“Bullshit,” Wade said, jerking a thumb at Reeder. “We just got ourselves a tour guide who knows his way around.”

But Reeder said, “I don’t know whether we had crazy luck or somebody’s opening doors for us. Either way, we have a job — protecting the President and his cabinet. And that won’t be easy.”

“So we move to the next stage of the plan,” Rogers said, “and head down the tunnel to the command center, secure it and make sure the President is unharmed.”

“You and I will do that,” Reeder said to her. “Lucas and Reggie will stay here and make sure we’re not caught in a pincer movement.”

Hardesy was frowning. “You really think we should be splitting up? With the grounds and buildings crawling with Secret Service and Marines?”

“You’re the one that said this was too easy — if you’re right, Patti and I’ll need cover on this end. Lucas, watch the door we came in. Reg, take a position with an angle on the living room.”

Hardesy and Wade did that, then Reeder led Rogers back to the President’s bedroom. Larger than the otherwise similar cedar-walled guest quarters, the unpretentious space had a king bed with a folksy quilt, several comfy chairs, and a big flat-screen over a fieldstone fireplace. Next to a wooden-sliding-doors closet was the sleek non sequitur of a metal door.

Rogers asked, “Gun closet?”

Reeder shook his head. “Private elevator to the command-center tunnel.”

He flipped back the notched wooden cover of a round red button, which his right forefinger was poised to push, when her hand caught his wrist.

His eyes met hers as she said, “If you’re right about that pincer movement, the other half could be waiting in there. Or at least a gunman or two of it.”

They both had weapons in hand and were angled at either side of the metal door when he pressed the button. The door whispered open onto an empty elevator.

“Lucas said it,” she sighed. “Too easy.”

He said nothing.

“So we ride down,” she said, “and the door opens and a welcome committee is waiting with a who-knows-how-many-gun salute. Suggestions?”

“We take the ride,” he said, leaning in and pointing to the panel in the roof, “but from the observation deck.”

Her eyes opened momentarily wide. “Who doesn’t like to travel first class.”

They didn’t bother disabling the security camera — if they were expected, there was no point... not unless their action was caught on a monitor in time for any hosts below to be alerted.

The two-hundred-foot descent happened fast and it was all Reeder could do to haul Rogers up through the escape hatch and get it back in place before their descent slowed, then stopped.

The doors slid open, and bullets sprayed the car.

When the metallic hailstorm stopped, Reeder gazed down through the gridwork of the hatch where two men leaned in, one with a linebacker build, the other wiry, both with short dark hair, immaculate business suits, and AR-15s. Feds, probably Secret Service.

The wiry one said, “Where the hell...?”

When the linebacker stepped inside the car, Reeder kicked down on the hatch, swinging it to catch the man in the forehead and stagger him. Rogers dropped through the hatch, landing in a combat crouch. The wiry one was squeezing in, that AR-15 ready to spit, so she boot-heeled him in the face, knocking him back out and onto the concrete floor of the tunnel, spitting bloody teeth, not bullets. Reeder swung down right behind her, holding onto the edge of the roof, and kicking his already staggered opponent in the face as well, with the flats of both boots. The linebacker went backward and landed hard enough to knock himself cold, if he hadn’t already been.

Reeder and Rogers emerged from the elevator, nostrils twitching with cordite, ears ringing from all those rounds expended in the enclosed space. But footsteps in the tunnel were pounding their way, and that they could hear just fine.

They tucked back in the elevator as four more agents — summoned by the barrage of gunfire — rushed toward them, two with automatics, two with tactical machine pistols. Reeder and Rogers had their backs to either side of the inner doors. Nine mils in hand, angled up, they made eye contact.

Reeder lifted his head.

Rogers nodded.

He went high and she went low as they swung their guns through the open door, each picking the nearer machine-pistol agent, aiming center mass. The simultaneous squeezing of triggers doubled the thunder of the nine mils and both feds took a center hit and seemed to bow in thanks before going down in awkward sprawls, their weapons spinning and sliding out of reach.

The other two, faced with a lack of cover, retreated down the tunnel. Reeder and Rogers holstered their nine millimeters and acquired the AR-15s of the first two fallen agents and ammo as well. Moving quickly, they used zip ties to bind the hands behind the backs of all four agents.

They stood for a moment appraising their situation. The tunnel was an oversized hallway cutting through rough rock with a concrete floor and sporadic overhead lighting.

“They know we’re here now,” she said.

“You think?”

“You figure they’ll rush us?”

“Why bother? They know we’ll go to them, unless we want to take the elevator back up and devise a new plan that doesn’t include getting us killed. Of course, they can send more guns down that elevator and outflank us.”

She turned an eye toward the elevator. “You really think that elevator will still work after all those fireworks?”

“Why not? They shot the shit out of the car itself, but wouldn’t have hit the motor or any of the cables. Why, you want to go back up?”

“... No.”

They stayed close to the rugged rock walls, one on either side, as they moved down the tunnel, lugging the AR-15s, their footsteps, despite their care, echoing. Both knew that somewhere up ahead, guns waited. A lot of them. But short of sitting down in the tunnel, leaning back against the rock walls, and waiting for death to find them, they had no other real option.

A hissing turned Rogers around, staring at the way they came. “What was that?”

“Elevator doors closing. Thing must be functional. I’d say company’s coming.”

“Great.”

Reeder figured they were about halfway to the command center when a sound from way, way behind them might have been the elevator doors opening. He picked up the pace and Rogers did, too.

Finally they reached the entrance to the command center, an off-white wall blocking the way, decorated with the presidential seal and another seal labeled JOINT STAFF SUPPORT CENTER, RAVEN ROCK MOUNTAIN COMPLEX, surrounding a raven perched on a cliff at night. In addition a bold sign said WARNING, RESTRICTED AREA. A pair of central metal doors had a guard booth next to it.

Empty.

“Another welcoming committee,” he said, “on the other side, you think?”

Rogers grunted a laugh. “Maybe we’re the millionth visitor, and they have something special for us.”

“Maybe those doors are locked and this is a dead end.”

“Don’t sound so hopeful,” she said.

He tried a door.

Unlocked.

And when they entered into a good-size alcove facing a glass wall with metal-and-glass twin doors, they found no one waiting. Only an eerie silence greeted them.

Pistol noses up, they edged into the brightly lit room, computer terminals and monitor screens lining the walls; off to the left, a massive screen with an overhead map of Camp David, lighted here and there in red, dominated a circular command area. As impressive as all this was, the tableau before them was even more.

Nine men in black suits stood facing them in a row that was just faintly semicircular. Each had a handgun aimed at their just-arrived guests — well, eight did. The center man had his handgun in the neck of President Harrison, who was on his knees, his face bloodied, his tailored charcoal suit rumpled.

“Guess I chose the wrong man to trust, Joe,” Harrison said with a weak, puffy smile. “Head of the detail — who’d have thought it?”

That earned the President a whack along the side of the head by his captor. Reeder fought back the anger and disgust at the sight, the very thought, of those privileged to protect the President betraying their oath.

The current head of the presidential detail was not anyone Reeder recognized from Secret Service days, no — too young, too new, for that. But he did recognize the man, having gone tooth and nail with the son of a bitch in an alley near the townhouse, the night this excuse for a man had dropped his flag-lapel camera. Now Reeder got a better look — short-clipped brown hair, relaxed, emotionless face... just another anonymous Secret Service agent...

... in the sway of the Alliance.

“Welcome,” the presidential detail head said through a slash of smile. “We’ve been waiting for you. Can’t have a political assassination until the assassins get here.”

Reeder — his AR-15 still at the ready, Rogers the same — said, “Why, are we here to kill the President? Or maybe the entire cabinet as well?”

Their smug host nodded toward the kneeling President. “Your target is Harrison here. The cabinet will be taken out by your Russian collaborators, of course.”

Almost casually, Reeder said, “Rocket launcher? Take the conference room out and everyone in it? What, Laurel Lodge?”

The leader chuckled, shook his head in admiration. “Well reasoned, Mr. Reeder. You were ahead of us for much of the way, you know. Have to hand you that. But at the end of the day, you and Agent Rogers and her people... you’ll all just be a rogue element in our government, intent on staging a failed historic coup. Of course, history will not record that you performed this task for the American Patriots Alliance, since of course that group does not, and never has, existed.”

Rogers, the AR-15 raised into shooting position, edged away from Reeder, putting a little distance between them — no need to help these traitors out by presenting a unified target.

“Ms. Rogers!” the detail head said, his smile like a skull’s. “Any further movement will initiate a firefight, and I don’t think any of us want that.”

Well, the nine-man firing squad facing them surely didn’t — the only reason she and Reeder hadn’t been cut down yet were the AR-15s in their grasps. Short of taking head shots themselves, they could take out every one of these sons of bitches before dying.

“Put down your weapons,” the leader said. “A general melee will surely take the President out early on. And I don’t think you want that.”

Harrison blurted, “I’m dead already, Joe!”

That got the kneeling prisoner another cuff alongside the head with the handgun.

Reeder took this in as casually as if someone were passing him the salt. But she knew he was roiling inside.

“I suppose,” the leader said, just a hint of tension in his voice, “I should be grateful to you for identifying yourselves as assassins making an incursion.”

“How did you track us?” Reeder asked. Still as casual as dinner-table conversation.

Tiny shrug. “We didn’t have to. Your actions stayed off our radar, and you certainly weren’t betrayed, except by your own character. You see, we knew you’d be coming, Mr. Reeder. Your vanity demanded it. Turns out the great People Reader isn’t tough to read at all.”

That got a wisp of smile out of Reeder, whose AR-15 remained leveled directly at the leader of the insurrection, or anyway this cell of it.

Rogers — with her weapon aimed to the leader’s left, figuring Reeder would handle everyone to the man’s right — said, “You can’t hope to get away with this. It’s madness.”

“If so,” the leader said cheerfully, the snout of his gun in the bloodied President’s neck, “there’s method in it. The story is already written and ready for the media, how traitors from within conspired with Russian agents in a vain attempt to wipe out the US government. You will be the chief villains of the piece, even as the nation salutes this weakling...” — he dug that snout deeper into Harrison’s flesh — “... that we’ll have turned into a hero, while the fallen cabinet will become martyrs as the nation says, ‘Thank God for Nicholas Blount, our new president.’”

“What,” Reeder said calmly over the rifle, “did they promise you and these other disgraces to the Service?”

That made the leader’s eyes narrow, his upper lip twitching. “We’re patriots, Mr. Reeder, one and all. We want a return to the roots and values of this great nation and its founders. Those of us in the Service are every day witness to the compromises and surrenders of political leaders with no moral compass.”

What complete utter, empty bullshit, Rogers thought.

“I’m guessing,” Reeder said placidly, “that you’re after the directorship of the Service. And I’m probably looking at the new White House presidential detail, which will really know its stuff having betrayed a president themselves.”

The faces above those pointing handguns no longer seemed so impassive — frowns, however subtle, could be discerned.

“Mr. Reeder,” the leader said, “you are no one to talk. After all, twenty million dollars from Ukraine sources have been deposited in a Swiss bank account in your name, and another ten million each into similar accounts for Ms. Rogers and her FBI team. You are traitors, headed for vilification today, and pages in history rivaling Benedict Arnold tomorrow... so spare us your judgmental condescension.”

“Sorry.” Reeder shrugged over the aimed AR-15. “I should be thanking you, anyway.”

“Thanking us?”

“For identifying yourselves as the cell operating within Camp David. Or are there more of you?”

The skull smile again. “There are patriots everywhere, Mr. Reeder.”

“I must have skipped civics class the day it was explained how killing the cabinet, the President, and Vice President, was patriotic.”

Another tiny shrug. “What could be more patriotic than the revolutionary rebirth of America? In twenty-four hours, the public will be mourning the loss of their leaders, rallying around their new president, and readying to retaliate against the Russians for what will become known as the Camp David Attack.”

“Which began,” reminded Reeder, “with the murders of four CIA agents in Azbekistan. Who set that in motion, by the way?”

Slight head shake. “Not a name you’d recognize, Mr. Reeder. A CIA official, fairly high up as you’d imagine, who is since deceased. Heart failure. Tragic.”

Reeder grinned over the weapon, still trained on the leader. “Hear that, fellas? That’s how the Alliance treats its loyal followers. If I were you, and had bought this bill of goods, I’d be reconsidering. If the President will grant me the privilege, I will offer full amnesty to any of you who put down their weapons, or come over to our side. Mr. President?”

“Done,” he said.

Their leader was frowning, irritation finally cutting through. “That’s enough, Mr. Reeder. We’re all quite prepared to die for what we believe in.”

“What was that again? To further empower a cabal of corrupt industrialists who are loyal to no one or nothing but their own self-interests? They aren’t left, they aren’t right, they’re just wrong.”

The man’s eyes and nostrils flared. “If that’s your choice, Mr. Reeder, then it’s time this Mexican standoff, if you’ll forgive the political incorrectness, comes to an end... no matter the cost.”

Rifle ever steady, Reeder said, “You’ll go first, friend. But before you do... and your men give their lives out of a misguided sense of patriotism... you should know that when your rocket launcher takes out that conference room in the Laurel Lodge, it will be as empty as Senator Wilson Blount’s sense of morality.”

The frown was almost a scowl now. “Don’t bother with lies. They’re all gathered around their big table with no sense of what’s coming. It will almost be merciful.”

“Sorry to disappoint, but I directed the President earlier to move the cabinet members to the location known by code name Cactus — as head of the Secret Service presidential detail, you’ll know what that is...”

“Don’t bother bluffing.”

“I thought you said I was easy to read? I don’t bluff. Patti, just so you know, ‘Cactus’ is the nuclear bunker here at Camp David. And the cabinet has been instructed to stay put within, till the President himself gives them the word.”

The cell phone in her pocket vibrated and she and Reeder in a microsecond confirmed that his phone too had vibrated and, as agreed, they dropped. On the floor now, in sniper position, Reeder took out the detail leader with a burst of shots that turned the man’s head to bloody mush, while the President hit the deck, staying under the exchange of gunfire.

Taking Reeder’s act as permission, Rogers began to take one head shot after another, while behind them Wade and Hardesy came on the run, firing their own AR-15s from the hip, like Audie Murphy charging a tank. The thunder of the semiautomatic weapons fire bounced off the high walls and swallowed the smaller, occasional pops of the handgun fire from the lineup of agents, as orange tracers made a deadly light show. One of the agents managed to hit Hardesy in the chest, and he stumbled, went down on one knee but was firing again, almost immediately.

The air filled with red mist as men in oh so proper suits flew back onto the cement with their skulls cracked open and seeping, their eyes — those that had not been shot out of their heads — staring up at nothing.

The carnage was terrible and complete.

The echo of gunfire faded to a silence broken only by the ringing of the survivors’ ears. Thirty seconds had been all it took. The same was true at the O.K. Corral.

Only Hardesy had been hit, and he was hobbling along with a grin and an assist from Wade, basically only winded from the blow to his vest. Reeder abandoned his weapon to run to the President. There was blood all over Harrison’s back.

“Mr. President!” Reeder shouted, and knelt by the leader of the free world...

... who pushed himself up with one hand, like he was doing a show-off push-up, and half-smiled at Reeder.

“I guess that’s another president you saved,” he said. “You’d do anything for a Medal of Freedom, wouldn’t you?”

Rogers was right there, too, still carrying the AR-15 in both hands. “Is he all right?”

“Fine,” Reeder said, helping Harrison to his feet. “It’s not his blood.”

Hardesy leaned against a wall while Wade went around checking what proved to be corpses.

“Poor misguided bastards,” Wade said.

The coppery smell of blood mingled with the stench of bodies evacuating themselves at death. Victory had been complete, but the victors were all sick to their stomachs.

“Was that a bluff, Joe?” she asked him. “About the cabinet being sequestered in the bunker?”

“I said I didn’t bluff,” he said. “No, that was part of the plan all along. They’re quite safe. No offense, Patti, but no one needed that knowledge but me... Lucas, Wade! Guard the entrance. There may be more of these insurgent pricks around.”

The President moved with incredible confidence, dignity, and fluidity to the control desk where he sounded an alarm, and then got on the hotline phone and ordered up Marines to come to Raven Rock.

Reeder went to him and said, “We need to stay alert, sir — those Marines you summoned could include Alliance infiltrators.”

The President’s puffy smile had melancholy in it. “My guess is that, considering the way things have gone, any traitors will fade back into the woodwork and behave themselves, for now at least. When we get back to DC, I’ll be starting an investigation into every agency of government. Some will call it a witch hunt, I’m sure... but this time we have actual witches, don’t we?”

“We do. And the head warlock is Senator Wilson Blount.”

Harrison sighed. “That’s my impression, as well. But do we have any proof that links him to this attempted coup? He’s a powerful man, Joe, with powerful friends.”

“And at least one very powerful enemy, sir. Yourself. As you know, I never did come up with the name of the man who betrayed our four agents. If our late friend over there can be believed, that person is already dead, and we should be able to determine his identity. But I’d like your blessing, your mandate, to go after Blount as best I can.”

“Done.”

Reeder glanced around at the now bustling chamber. “And I believe, until we have done the most thorough security and background checks possible on the Secret Service here at Camp David, you should allow Agent Rogers, her two agents, and myself to serve as an ad hoc presidential detail.”

“Also done.”

“We can’t leave here, by helicopter anyway, until the threat of a rocket launcher is dealt with. Can you put together a team of Marines that you trust, to comb the surrounding woods — inside and outside of the compound — to deal with that threat?”

The President’s half-smile was self-deprecating. “I didn’t do so well choosing a Secret Service agent to count on.”

“I know. But take your best shot. We’ll be here at your side. In the meantime, I would like your permission to have two DC cops I trust, Carl Bishop and Pete Woods, to come out and give you and the Vice President rides. Won’t be a limo, though.”

Harrison grinned, full on. “I’ll survive.”

“That’s the idea.”

A presidential hand settled on Reeder’s shoulder. “And, Joe — as soon as you and your friends can get me back to the White House, I’ll be letting the Russian premier know that he and his people can get their collective ass out of Azbekistan or this attempted coup will be linked to them big-time in the media. And, boy, would that fire up the American people.”

“Kind of would.”

Rogers, overhearing all this, said to Reeder, “When we first get a chance, I’d like to drop by and see AD Fisk.”

His expression was typically unreadable, but his words weren’t: “Thought you might.”

Within minutes of the firefight and rescue of the President, Reeder reported in to Miggie Altuve.

“You and Patti are miracle workers,” Mig’s voice said.

“Same back at ya. How are the supplies in the cabin?”

“Enough for several months. Cupboard of canned goods, freezer fully stocked. Why?”

“You need to stay put. When I’m able, I’ll send reinforcements, but for now, remember — you have precious damn cargo.”

“Our house guest you mean? The charming Lawrence Morris?”

“The very guy. A lot’s riding on him — he’s our most direct evidence against Wilson Blount.”

“We’ll need more.”

“There’ll be plenty more, but we need Morris to build on. You and Anne sit on him — but gently. He’s our new best friend.”

Miggie didn’t sound so sure: “He says under no circumstances will he testify. That he’s given you all the help he ever will, and that you and he have a deal that you need to honor.”

“Let him know the presidential coup has been exposed and violently quashed. Let him think about which side of that he wants to come down on.”

“Okay. I assume we’re talking immunity and WitSec.”

“Oh yeah. Tell him we’re going to buy him contact lenses and, when his hair grows out, get him dyed and styled.”

Miggie laughed. “He’s already got some five o’clock shadow going on that noggin.”

“Hang in. I’ll be in touch.”

The Marines quickly had the compound under control, and if any of them were Alliance, they faded back and fell into line as predicted. Two Soviet rocket launchers, in the forest just outside the security net, were taken out by more Marines; neither of the two mercenaries manning them survived, which was both a pity and just fine with Reeder.

The cabinet gladly vacated the nuclear bunker at the President’s command and the members were helicoptered out two at a time, an effort that took several hours.

By ten p.m., Pete Woods in a fresh Ford and Carl Bishop in his black Chevy had whisked away the President and Vice President, with Hardesy and Wade riding along respectively. Not your usual presidential motorcade, but with the Secret Service and God-knew-who-else compromised, protocol be damned.

Before the President left the compound, however, he made a call to the Director of the FBI and instructed him to rescind immediately the arrest warrants on Reeder, Rogers, and the surviving members of her unit.

For now, a media blackout had descended and even intra-government reports were kept at a minimum. What would be told to the public would be discussed and controlled beforehand, and — with various agencies infiltrated by the Alliance — much of it would be marked classified and all of it strictly managed.

Still in commando camo, Reeder and Rogers arrived in Washington, DC, finding its quiet almost unsettling, as if the town had slept through its own near demise... and hadn’t it? He drove her to her apartment, where she picked up a change of clothes, and then to his townhouse, where she took the spare bedroom. This was over, the coup if not the greater threat, but they wanted to be near each other tonight — each other, and their guns. As with an earthquake, Reeder was prepared to deal with aftershocks.

Before finally giving in to their exhaustion, they sat at his kitchen table in robes, like an old married couple, and had some chamomile tea. Morning now, technically at least, but still dark out there.

“I should call Kevin,” she said.

“Not just now. I’m not fetching Amy and Melanie yet, either, or their two undeserving males. There could be some immediate retaliation, and anyway, I don’t think I’ll sleep soundly till that bastard Blount is in custody.”

“Meaning the Senator, not the son.”

“The son will be our ally, I think. He may even testify, given what happened today. Right now we have only Lawrence Morris as a witness. But we need another.”

“Who?”

“Your boss and mentor, Margery Fisk, Assistant Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

She’d started frowning and shaking her head halfway through that. “No, no, no... not a witness. A suspect. No, not a suspect, a perp!”

“You blame her for Jerry Bohannon’s murder, I take it.”

“And Trevor Ivanek’s, and Anne’s kidnapping, and—”

“We don’t know that. She is almost certainly compromised, but to what degree, we can’t be sure. Do you think she’s capable of fingering two of her own people for death?”

Her smirk bore no humor at all. “Who the hell knows what anybody is capable of in this thing?”

“Good point. You know what I think?”

“What do you think?”

“We should talk to her.”