The Counterfeit Agent

1

The Norwegian Epic had everything.

Not just cruise-ship necessities like a casino, pools, and an all-you-can-eat buffet. Two bowling alleys. A seven-hundred-seat theater. A gym with rows of gleaming and rarely used treadmills.

After six days, John Wells couldn’t wait to leave. On the cruise’s final afternoon, he and Anne sat on their balcony as the Epic chased the sun toward Miami. The sky was a bright subtropical blue, marred only by the diesel exhaust unfurling from the Epic’s smokestacks. Like the ship was giving the ocean an inky middle finger. The Epic was as big as a skyscraper, a thousand feet long, with four thousand passengers and two thousand crew. It was the third-largest cruise ship ever built. Wells couldn’t imagine numbers one and two.

Anne, Wells’s girlfriend, had proposed the trip weeks before. The New Hampshire winter had been crueler than usual. Snow poured down by the foot. Drifts piled above the windowsills of their farmhouse in North Conway. Even Wells’s dog, Tonka, a shepherd mutt who usually liked cold weather, went outside only long enough to take care of necessities.

Wells spent hours every day tending the fireplaces. He carried armfuls of wood from the garage, layered on logs until he’d built blue-flame blazes hot enough to warp steel screens. He watched as the hearths filled with glowing red coals that inevitably turned to gray-black soot. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust… the keeping of fires touched a chord in him primitive and true.

Anne spent her days on patrol in North Conway, waiting to join the New Hampshire state police. They’d offered her a job, but the state had a hiring freeze as deep as the winter. Wells found himself inward-turned, dreaming of the heat and dust of East Africa. One morning he woke to find Anne sitting beside him, her laptop open. “What we need.”

“Summer.”

“A cruise.” She tilted the screen toward him. A gleaming white ship passed — barely — under a giant gray bridge.

“How does that thing even float?”

“There are last-minute sales.”

“This is new.”

“John, I know you think you don’t belong on a cruise ship. Trained killer, savior of the unknowing masses, blah, blah, blah. It’ll be fun.”

She had him. If he complained, he’d sound self-satisfied and ridiculous.

“And I don’t want to hear about carbon. You’ve put half the trees in this state up the chimney this month.”

She had him there, too.

“Maybe terrorists will take it over. Like Speed 2.”

“There was a Speed 2?”

“An excuse to relax. Besides, I’d like to have sex on a ship. Bet it’s like a giant waterbed.” She stroked his neck.

“That supposed to work? Throwing sex around as a treat so I’ll do what you want?”

“Yeah.”

He pushed the laptop aside and grabbed her. “It does.”

So they went. Despite himself, Wells enjoyed the first couple days, if only for the sunshine. But as the cruise continued, he found its wastefulness gross. The way the crew scraped before passengers also bothered Wells. No doubt many sailors were desperately poor and glad to make five hundred dollars a month for twelve-hour days polishing and mopping. No doubt the cruise was a hard-earned luxury for many people on board, a vacation they had saved for years to enjoy. Still, Wells started to see the Epic as something like a floating plantation.

Anne wouldn’t admit she felt the same, but she and Wells spent most of the cruise’s last two days sunning on their balcony, avoiding the rest of the ship. Now, with Miami hours away, Wells had a decision to make. A big one. He wondered if he should take a walk on the decks. He had developed a hint of flab this winter. After a week of all-you-can-eat meals, the hint had become a suggestion. An insistent suggestion.

Anne leaned over. “You’ve had enough of this.”

“David Foster Wallace was right.” Before setting sail, they had both read Wallace’s 1996 article about his miserable week aboard a cruise ship. Now Wells was rereading Wallace’s book A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, which contained the piece.

“No more David Foster Wallace for you. He’s a depressing depressive. Was.”

Wells clutched the book to his chest, an exaggerated gesture.

“I agree it’s all a little much,” she said.

“Everest is a little hill.” Wells raised his sunglasses, wraparound Oakleys that had replaced the vintage Ray-Bans she’d given him. He’d lost those in Somalia. He was still sorry to have given them up, though he’d had no choice.

“Don’t pretend you haven’t enjoyed parts of this. I saw you scarfing down ice cream at the buffet like a Lifetime special on bulimia.”

In retrospect, Wells had gotten excited at the sundae bar. He poked at his stomach. “It’s going to take about a million hours of running to lose this. Past forty, it doesn’t come off so easy.”

She cuffed his cheek, peaceably. “The world doesn’t know it, Mr. Wells, but you’re as vain as a supermodel.”

“I have practical reasons. The life you save may be your own.”

“If an inch around your waist is enough to get you killed, you’ve pushed your luck way too far.”

“Look tough enough and maybe you won’t have to fight at all.”

“You boys check out each other’s abs before you get to it?”

“On occasion.” Wells knew that when he got home, he would lose the pounds he’d gained, no matter how many hours it took. But he was more aware than ever that time was the ultimate victor. He had once been gifted with the coordination and hand speed of a professional baseball player. Now his reflexes had slowed. He’d gone to a batting range a few weeks before for his usual once-a-year test, found himself swiping hopelessly at fastballs he’d once crushed. He was still strong, but close-quarters combat was more about quickness. To compensate, he worked his shooting, putting in an hour a day at the local range. More than a year had passed since East Africa. Too long. He needed to get back in the field.

“Have you thought any more about the training thing?” Anne had suggested he approach the agency about working at Camp Peary, known to the world as The Farm, where the agency taught new recruits.

Wells had no intention of begging the CIA for something to do. “They come to me, I’ll think about it.” He went back to the Wallace book. After a minute, she walked into their stateroom. Wells watched her go. She had a sturdy New England body, not fat but solid, with supple legs, muscled arms.

A few minutes later, she emerged wearing a solid black one-piece swimsuit that favored her and carrying a pitcher of iced tea. “Put on some trunks. One last trip to the pool.”

He held up the book.

“You’ll regret it when we’re back at the North Pole.”

“I’ll find you there.”

“Want tea?”

“Sure.” She poured him a glass. He reached for it and she grabbed the book. She cocked her arm, tossed the book off the balcony. They watched in silence as it tumbled end over end into the water. It must have splashed, but from this height Wells couldn’t tell.

“Unnecessary.”

“I’m not looking to that guy to tell me how to live my life.”

“He was right. Cruises are the ultimate sign of late capitalism.”

“You want the ultimate sign of late capitalism? Deciding you’re too tortured to work. Too much of a genius. Then ditching your wife and everyone who loves you and hanging yourself.” As Wallace had done.

“He was depressed.”

She sat on the lounge chair beside him, rested a hand on his forearm. “People fight like hell to stay alive, John. No one knows that better than you.”

At that moment Wells knew he had been right to bring the ring. He pushed himself up.

“Are we going?”

“Don’t move.”

He found the box at the bottom of his suitcase. Inside, a simple white-gold ring set with a diamond, not huge, but flawless. Only a connoisseur would know how much it had cost. A foolish luxury, but Wells had little use for money. He’d seen what it could not buy. He’d ordered the ring months before, after realizing how happy he was every afternoon to see Anne. How his days didn’t begin until she walked into the kitchen and put her arms around him and mocked his half-assed cooking.

He pulled off his Oakleys, hid the box in his hand, walked back onto the deck.

“Take off your glasses.”

“I’ll go blind.”

She took them off. Wells dropped to one knee. He felt like he was going into combat, all his senses heightened. The sun scoured his skin. A warm breeze roughed his eyes. Before Wells could lose his nerve, he opened his hand and lifted the box toward her. “I know I should have done this years ago, but I wanted to be sure. About me, not you. I’ve always been sure about you. You’re smart and funny and gorgeous. I’m happy to fall asleep next to you and happier to wake up. You’re right about everything except this cruise, and I even forgive you for that. I love you and I want us to be together for the rest of our lives. Marry me, Anne.”

She was crying when he finished. He knew the tears weren’t joy even before she shook her head.

“John.” She took the box from him, opened it. “That is some diamond.” She flipped it shut. “Like staring into the sun.”

He couldn’t pretend this was the lowest moment of his life. Waiting in the hospital to learn if Exley would die had been worse. But he wasn’t sure he’d ever felt more shocked. He hadn’t imagined she would say no.

He’d underestimated her.

“Throw it over, I’m going to be pissed. It cost a few bucks more than the book.” He was croaking. His voice hardly worked, but he had to say something. She gave the box back to him.

“That’s no, then?”

“It’s not yes. I know you enjoy my company, John. I know you care about me. But I’m not sure you love me. I’m sure you want to love me, but I’m not sure you can. I’m not sure you don’t still love Jennifer—” This was Exley, his former fiancée, his former handler at the agency.

“I love you.”

“Let’s say you do. I hope it’s true. Because I do love you, and I want more than anything for it to be mutual. But you love your missions more. More than any of us. Even Exley. Wasn’t that why she left?”

Wells didn’t answer. To hear Anne dissecting him, so coolly, so accurately, made him wonder how long she’d waited to give this speech. How much hurt she’d swallowed on the way.

“So I would marry you, and I’d hope everything you say is true. Or might come true eventually. But I want kids, John. I’m closer to thirty-five than thirty now, and you may have noticed North Conway isn’t long on marriageable prospects. I can’t have kids with a man who’s waiting for his next big chance to get killed.”

“You want me to retire?”

“There are risks and risks, John. I’m not saying you want to die. But when you’re on a mission, I’m not sure you care.”

“I don’t want to die.”

“You know why I wanted us to take this cruise?”

She looked at him until he got it.

“You made me go on the Norwegian Epic planning to dump me when we got home?” Wells pulled himself up, turned away. He stared at the ocean, fighting the foolish urge to toss the ring. He wasn’t sure if he was angry with her or himself. He’d never felt more foolish. Or less perceptive. He’d brought an engagement ring to a good-bye party.

“I wanted to remember you lying out in the sun, getting good and brown.”

He turned toward her, flipped her the box. She caught it, pure reflex.

“I don’t want to die,” he said again.

“But do you want to be a father? A real father this time, present.”

He didn’t trust himself to speak. He nodded.

“Enough to walk away from an operation that’s too dangerous.”

He nodded again. Though he wasn’t sure he knew what those words meant.

“I don’t believe you. But okay.” She set down the box. “I’ll give you thirty days. If you truly believe you’re ready to be a father, you come back to me with this.”

“You’ll say yes?”

“If I believe you.”

So he stowed the diamond in his suitcase and they went for a swim. Neither of them wanted to be in the suite anymore.

2

They’d warned him.

His friends. His advisors. Even the Post reporter who covered the CIA. Every last one told Vinny Duto that he held far more power as Director of Central Intelligence than he would as a new senator. That he’d be at the bottom of a deeply hierarchical institution. That his clout would vanish so quickly that he would wonder whether it had ever existed.

Still he’d left the seventh floor to run for the Senate. He knew something they didn’t. The President was tired of him, the way he controlled Langley. The slights piled up slowly. His meetings with the big man started late, ended early. A budget request that should have been waved through instead took months of meetings. The National Security Advisor demanded preapproval for all drone strikes.

Duto decided to jump before the slow leaks started and he read about the agency’s failures on the front page of the Times. He could have hung on for another year or two, but ultimately he would have lost. He might be the most successful DCI ever, but he was no match for the President.

He didn’t discourage the inside-the-Beltway pundits, who said he was making a Senate run to position himself for his own grab at the White House. If not in the next election, then the one after that. He’d still be young enough to be a credible candidate. Younger than Reagan. And in the back of his mind, Duto hoped the conventional wisdom was right. But he didn’t delude himself about the odds. He wasn’t a natural campaigner. In Pennsylvania, he could run as a relatively conservative Democrat, but he wouldn’t have that option in a national primary. No matter. He had years to decide. Meantime, he was glad to leave on what seemed to be his own terms.

He’d won easily. But he hadn’t realized that life as a senator would be so mind-numbingly boring. As DCI, he’d regularly faced life-or-death decisions. Four senior AQAP operatives are meeting at a madrassa in Yemen. Can we waste them without blowing up a room full of kids?

Now, instead of ordering drone strikes, he listened to lobbyists and his fellow lawmakers drone on. Worst of all were constituent meetings. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania had thirteen million residents. Sometimes Duto thought every one of them was lined up in his office foyer, waiting for a handout. The Harrisburg mayor begged for $27 million for a highway extension — and reminded Duto that Harrisburg had gone 70–30 for him. The president of Penn State hoped for an $11 million earmark for a new dairy-science building, and wondered if Duto wanted tickets to his box at Beaver Stadium. A roomful of wig-wearing cancer patients from Philly asked for an increase in the National Institutes of Health budget. In that case, Duto sympathized.

His chief of staff, Roy Baumann, insisted that he press the flesh. Baumann was firmly in the all-politics-is-local camp: People don’t know how you voted on specific bills, much less care. They care whether the turnpike’s safe and the economy’s decent. They know you can’t do much about any of it, but they want to think you’re trying. And you’re not like ninety percent of these gasbags. People want to meet you, hear your stories. Nothing important. Like, did Osama bin Laden really have porn in his safe house, or did we just put that out to discredit him? After a year or two you can disengage. I don’t recommend it, but I can’t stop you. But for now you say yes. Yes?

Thus Duto had said yes to lunch with the head of the Philadelphia hospital workers’ union, Steve Little. Duto didn’t like Little. Little had endorsed his opponent in the primary. I’ll remind him of that, Baumann said. This lunch is peaches and cream. Best friendsies. Little was a trim black man with a perfectly tailored suit and shoes a Wall Street banker would have envied. Duto wondered if Little charged his clothes to the union. Probably—

“Senator.”

“Yes?”

Little was shaking his head. “I lose you there? On the Medicare HMO issue? You looked glazed. I know it’s esoteric, but these are huge numbers.”

Duto’s phone buzzed. A number he’d never seen before. A 502-2 prefix. Guatemala City. He sent it to voice mail. The phone buzzed again. Some instinct left from Langley told him to take it. “I’m sorry. Excuse me, Steve.”

He walked outside. “Hello.”

“Remember me, comandante?”

Only one man had called him that. “Diecisiete?” The man’s name was Juan Pablo Montoya, but Duto would always think of him as Seventeen.

“None other. Did you miss me?”

“No.”

“Tenemos que hablar.”

“Can we do it in English? It’s been a while.”

“If you must. I promise you’ll want to hear this.”

“One hour.”

“Una hora, comandante.”

3

Brian Taylor stood by the window in room 1509 of the InterContinental Hotel in Istanbul, looking at the dark water of the Bosphorus down the hill to the east. In twelve years at the agency, he had never been so excited.

Taylor was the CIA’s deputy chief of station for Istanbul. His dream job, his dream city. He’d fallen for it backpacking across Europe at the end of the nineties. The last flash of American innocence, when taking a summer to drink cheap wine and run with the bulls still seemed adventurous. Taylor followed the usual route. He saw the sun rise over Montmartre, jumped off the rocks in Cinque Terre. He met his share of women. Always Americans. He never cracked European girls. Maybe if he hadn’t tried so hard… He had fun. Yet he felt he’d arrived a couple generations late. The cities were open-air museums. Even the beautiful couples walking along the Seine seemed to hold hands almost ironically. Like they were reenacting movies about Paris instead of living there.

Then he found Istanbul. Its history stretched millennia, and it was as picturesque as anyplace he’d ever seen. Its giant mosques loomed over the Bosphorus, the mile-wide waterway that separated Asia and Europe. Yet it wasn’t a museum. It teemed with life. Shopkeepers and students hustled along its hilly streets. Gleaming white yachts sped past packed ferries and rusted container ships. The Turks were hardworking and silver-tongued, loud and showy. Taylor had grown up in a stuffy town outside Boston. He liked them immediately. He even developed a soft spot for the devious shopkeepers in the Grand Bazaar. Those guys weren’t exactly trying to take advantage, he decided. They wanted to deal. They wanted drama. Any tourist who didn’t understand the game — which every guidebook explained in detail — deserved to be fleeced.

Taylor expected to be in the city three days. He stayed three weeks, flying home the afternoon before fall term started. He knew his sudden ardor was silly, but was falling for a city more absurd than falling for a woman? Both required a willingness to suspend disbelief. Anyway, now he had what every college student wanted. A goal, and a path to reach it. He would learn Turkish, move to Istanbul after graduation. Turkey had eighty million people and a fast-growing economy. Big companies needed Americans who spoke the language. And the University of Massachusetts shared an excellent Turkish program with other colleges around Amherst. He expected his parents to push back. They didn’t. Dad: It’ll make you a lot more hirable than a history degree. Mom: I always wanted to live somewhere exotic. Turkish was tough, but Taylor worked hard. By the start of senior year, he was nearly fluent.

Then al-Qaeda attacked the United States.

Like his friends, Taylor was terrified and enraged and wanted revenge. Unlike them, he could help. Turkey shared borders with Iraq and Iran. The FSB, Mossad, and Revolutionary Guard all ran major stations in Istanbul. The CIA was badly outgunned. Just four agency officers spoke Turkish. By November, the agency had contacted language programs all over the country in search of candidates. With his 3.8 GPA and spotless background, Taylor jumped out. A recruiter invited him to Boston for a meet-and-greet. The remains of the World Trade Center were still smoldering. He never considered saying no.

And he had never regretted his decision — not even during his ten-month posting to Iraq, when he’d left the Green Zone only four times. He’d spent most of his career at CIA stations in Istanbul and Ankara, the Turkish capital. Taylor knew he wasn’t a star case officer. The stars worked in Beijing or Kabul or Moscow. But he was reliable, dedicated, and a good fit for Turkey. Though he had joined after September 11, Taylor was something of a throwback. He disliked drones, preferred old-school spying, the careful recruitment of agents from government and business. Guys who lived in mansions, not mud huts. His best sources were mid-level officers in the Turkish army, bureaucrats in the Ministry of Finance.

So Taylor’s career progressed, and his social life, too. He made a habit of American twenty-somethings who came to town on two-year stints for multinationals. He replaced them easily enough. His years with the agency had given him an appealing air of mystery. His apartment had a killer view of the Bosphorus. Plus he knew every restaurant in town, and he always picked up the check. Case officers had practically unlimited expense accounts. No accountant at Langley would question a two-hundred-dollar dinner for “recruiting.”

The CIA promoted Taylor to deputy chief of station in Istanbul on the eleventh anniversary of his hiring. He planned to stay three years, then head back to the United States. He was ready to settle down, have a family. He didn’t think he would ever be a chief. Taylor still believed in the mission, that in some small way he protected the United States. But he supposed that he’d become a careerist. September 11 had faded in his memory, along with everyone else’s.

Then the letter arrived.

Almost half a year later, its details were etched in his mind. Noon on a Friday in early September. The consulate mostly empty as the long Labor Day weekend approached. Istanbul stuck in a heat wave, smoking like a kebab on a spit. Taylor’s office was air-conditioned, of course, but through its narrow bulletproof windows the men on the streets looked sullen and irritable.

A knock on his door. His secretary, Alison. She carried an envelope, holding it by her fingertips. Like it was contaminated. Though the consulate scanned local mail for anthrax and other nasties. She handed it to him without a word.

It was addressed to Nelson Drew, Associate Director for Citizen Services, United States Consulate, Istanbul. Taylor’s cover name and job. Inside, a single page of staccato laser-printed sentences.

“Nelson.” You are spy. CIA. Real name Brian Taylor. Speak Turk/Farsi. I am Rev. Guard Colonel. “Reza.” I need to meet.

Gran Bazaar 6 Sep 3 p.m. Ethcon Carpet.

Taylor felt like he’d gone to the doctor for a routine physical and been told he had an inoperable brain tumor. Impossible. The letter’s plain white paper burned his fingers. You are spy… He couldn’t be blown like this. But wishing wouldn’t erase the words.

He handed the letter and envelope back to Alison. “Make a copy for me, one for Martha.” Martha Hunt, the bureau chief. “Bag the original and the envelope. Try not to touch them, in case there’re fingerprints.”

Though he didn’t expect forensic evidence. Whoever had sent this was smart. And knew much too much about him. That he worked for the agency. His real name. Even that he knew Farsi. He’d learned the language working with Iranian exile groups in Ankara. He hadn’t liked the exiles. Most just wanted to hang out in Turkey on the CIA’s dime. They found excuses whenever Taylor proposed operations that would send them back into Iran. Still, every so often one had decent intel, so the agency tolerated them.

Now that work had bitten him. As he’d assumed, some exiles were double agents spying for Iran. Still, he couldn’t imagine how they’d found his real name. He’d been careful. But he’d been stationed in Turkey for a long time. Probably the Guard had put the pieces together bit by bit. Finding the answer would be impossible. He’d left Ankara four years before. The exiles had scattered. What mattered was that his cover was blown. What if the Guard knew where he lived? Part of him wanted to get on the first flight home.

But he knew he had to stay. The man who’d written this letter could be an enormously valuable source. The United States was desperate to stop Iran’s nuclear program. Washington had imposed sanctions and attacked the program covertly. Still, the Iranians hadn’t quit. Policymakers badly needed to know how close Iran was to a bomb. But the United States had few agents anywhere in the Iranian government, and none in the Revolutionary Guard. Instead, the CIA and National Security Agency relied on their usual technical wizardry. But Iran had buried its enrichment facilities to keep them from satellites, drones, and radiological sniffers. Following a joint American and Israeli attack on their computer systems in 2009, Iran’s scientists had removed the computers from their labs. They solved equations with calculators now, used plaster to model bomb designs. Still, they were making progress. After all, the American scientists at Los Alamos had designed the first bomb in the 1940s with slide rules and hand-drawn blueprints.

Without hard evidence, the United States could only speculate at Iran’s capabilities and intentions. Some analysts thought Iran would finish its first bomb in less than a year. Others said five years was more likely. This Revolutionary Guard colonel might have the answers.

If he was real. And not luring Taylor into a trap.

Martha Hunt was named Istanbul station chief four months after Taylor became deputy. She was two years younger than Taylor and didn’t speak Turkish. But he didn’t begrudge her the job. She had served three years in Kabul, two in Islamabad. When they disagreed, she was usually right. The fact that she was shockingly good-looking, tall and slim, with killer blue eyes, didn’t hurt. He’d never hit on her. He knew his league. She wasn’t in it.

They met in the safe room beside her office. It had no windows and was swept weekly for bugs.

“I don’t like it, either,” she said, as soon as he closed the door.

“Hello, Martha.”

“For all the obvious reasons. Who sets a meet in the Grand Bazaar? Must be five thousand security cams in there. But you’ve got to go.” She didn’t wait for him to agree. “We’ve got a week. Let’s use it. Get a camera to put eyes on the door. He’s dressed wrong, looks like he’s hiding a vest, you abort. He wants to blow himself up, not your problem. Meanwhile, you want to stay in the safe house until this is done, I’m fine with that.”

“I’ll stay put. Can’t give up that view.” No way would he let Hunt think he was scared.

“You have a view? I hadn’t heard.” A joke. Taylor’s apartment was a minor legend.

“Come on over sometime, see for yourself.” He snorted, so she’d know he was kidding. Though he wasn’t.

“Tell you what. Get us inside the Iranian nuclear program and I will.” She smiled a smile he’d never seen before.

He spent twelve hours wondering if she was flirting. Until he realized what she’d done. She’d given him a tiny ambiguous signal to chew over. To take his mind off the letter. Taylor had heard some men weren’t suckers for beautiful women. He’d never met one.

The week dragged. Taylor looked over his files from Ankara, but nobody jumped out as a possible double agent. The station’s tech-support team — two chubby guys named Dominick and Ronaldo — placed a thumbnail camera to watch the front door of the carpet store. The same night a cleaning crew threw it away. Hunt and Taylor decided not to risk placing another.

Two days before the meeting, Taylor checked out the shop himself. It occupied expensive space a few feet from the domed square where the bazaar had begun five centuries before. Rather than traditional patterned carpets, it specialized in modern, brightly colored rugs. Under other circumstances, Taylor might have bought one. Instead, he wandered into a pipe store and watched Ethcon’s entrance as he pretended interest in an overpriced meerschaum.

He’d come early. The bazaar was almost empty. After a few minutes, the Ethcon clerk poked his head out to talk to his counterpart across the corridor. Taylor recognized his accent as from southeastern Turkey, near Iran. Probably a coincidence. Hundreds of thousands of the region’s villagers had migrated to Istanbul. The letter writer had likely chosen Ethcon at random. The company didn’t show up on agency databases, and when Taylor had checked its Turkish records he’d found nothing suspicious. Taylor eavesdropped as the clerk talked about very little. Finally, he handed back the meerschaum and left, ignoring the curses the pipe store owner tossed at his back.

He spent that night staring at the Bosphorus. He hated the way this meeting had come together. Simply by showing up, he was confirming his identity to whoever had sent the letter. Plenty of terrorists, from al-Qaeda to Greek anarchists, would gladly take a CIA scalp.

“Good night’s sleep,” Hunt said the next morning.

“We don’t all have your cheekbones.”

“Why don’t you take the day off, practice your shooting.”

The agency had a deal with the Turkish army to let officers use a range at a base near Istanbul. As usual, she was ahead of him. Taylor hadn’t fired his pistol in a year. A day shooting would help him relax and might save his life. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

The bazaar stretched across a dozen blocks in Sultanahmet, the heart of Istanbul’s Old City. On Friday afternoon, Taylor sat at a nearby McDonald’s, watching tourists and Turks slurp down Cokes against the late-summer heat. He wore a tiny receiver in his right ear for updates from the surveillance team, a baggy T-shirt to hide the pistol in his waistband. At 2:44, his receiver buzzed.

“Pico One. Possible Gamma sighting. In the forest now.” Taylor could no longer bear the plastic friendliness of the McDonald’s. He shouldered his way to the bazaar’s southeast entrance. Two minutes later, his earpiece buzzed again. “Pico One. False alarm on that Gamma, unless he has three kids.” Finally: “Pico Two. Empty forest. No Gamma, no X-rays.” Picos One and Two were the CIA team around the store. Gamma was the letter writer, whoever he was. X-rays were a potential enemy team. X-rays almost certainly meant a trap. Reza would arrive alone if he was genuine.

At 2:55, Taylor entered the bazaar. Six minutes later, he reached the store. Pico One was gone, but Two stood down the corridor. He wore his Real Madrid cap backward, signaling to Taylor that the store was empty except for the clerk. Reza hadn’t shown. Unless the clerk himself was Reza, a long shot.

Taylor walked inside. The Ethcon clerk was dark for a Turk, with oily black hair. He wore a T-shirt and jeans, both too tight to conceal a bomb. “You are Mr. Nelson?” Taylor controlled his surprise. The store was a single room, its only entrance the front door. Rugs were piled high along the walls. Nowhere for anyone to hide. Taylor took the bait. “Nelson Drew, yes.”

The clerk picked an envelope off his desk. “Boy come yesterday, say you come to store today, I give you this. He say you want many rugs.”

“How old?”

“Our rugs are new—”

“The boy. How old was the boy?”

“Ten years, maybe.”

“Iranian?”

“Turk.”

Reza had figured the agency would be watching the store. He had used a runner to get a letter into the store safely. Basic tradecraft. The clerk handed Taylor the envelope. NELSON was printed across the flap in black letters. Taylor tore it open, found a single sheet.

Tram to Cevizlibag. Down stairs to gas station. Arrive by 3:30. ALONE. Other Wise I will go and never contact you again. “Reza”

On his way out of the bazaar, he called Hunt, read her the note.

“As a meet, it makes sense,” she said.

“It’s no fun at all.”

“No cameras, we can’t box him. When he’s done, he gets back on the tram or finds a cab and disappears onto the highway. I think this increases the odds he’s real.”

“You’re not the one with no backup.”

“It’s nice and public. Nobody’s gonna touch you there. Just don’t go further. He tries to get you into a vehicle, tell him no.”

“What if he says I can have a puppy?”

He hung up, dodged through a busload of Chinese tourists blocking the bazaar’s main entrance.

The tram stop was close to the bazaar. Istanbul had lousy public transportation — the city had promised a subway line under the Bosphorus for decades. But the trams came often and were the fastest way around the Old City. Taylor waved his pass at the entrance gate’s scanner and joined the Turks crowding the platform. A tram was just arriving. He pushed his way on. The car was packed, and he wedged his hands against his sides. The butt of his Sig bulged under his T-shirt. A woman stared until Taylor shook the shirt loose to hide the pistol.

The stink of onion and garlic and summer sweat overwhelmed the tram. Many older Turkish men still preferred traditional baths to everyday showering. Taylor fleetingly wondered if Hunt had given him this mission as a prank. Maybe she thought his life of expense-account dinners was too comfortable.

The tram chugged along, passing cars that were barely moving on either side. At 3:26, a cheery automated voice announced Cevizlibag. Taylor shoved himself out. Sweat coursed down his chest. He unzipped his jacket, fought the urge to draw his Sig.

The gas station lay below the tram platform, beside the highway, an eight-lane monster that connected the airport with central Istanbul. Taylor joined a line of men walking down the spindly steel stairs and looked for his contact. There. A man leaned against the concrete retaining wall that supported the tram tracks. He had brown Persian skin. He wore wide mirrored sunglasses and jeans and dragged on a cigarette. His T-shirt and jeans were too tight to hide a bomb.

Taylor stopped halfway down, checked out the lot. Dozens of pumps and a busy minimarket. Lots of gas being sold, no sign of a kill or kidnap team. Men pushed past him, annoyed that he’d blocked their path. The guy in the sunglasses stepped toward the stairs. Taylor had reached the point of no return. Choose or lose.

He walked down.

Up close the man was older than Taylor expected, early forties, though Iranians could be tough to judge. He wore blue jeans and knockoff Doc Martens. He was tall and handsome, with salt-and-pepper hair. “I’m glad you came,” he said. In Farsi. He sounded native, as best Taylor could judge.

“What about the store?”

“This is better.” He led Taylor to the retaining wall, took a final drag on his smoke, and scuffed it under his shoes. His first mistake. Taylor would grab the butt after he left. The agency would test any fingerprints and DNA against its databases.

“What’s your real name, Reza?”

“Cigarette?” He offered Taylor the red pack of L&Ms.

Taylor shook his head. “You know my name, I don’t know yours.”

“You have a weapon, I do not.” He lifted his arms over his head, made a single slow twirl so Taylor could see the truth of his words. Like a middle-aged Iranian ballerina.

“Playing the fool, drawing attention to yourself.”

“If someone has followed me here, I’m dead already.”

“How does the Guard know my real name?”

“They don’t. Only me.”

“How’s that?” In Ankara, Taylor had used a different cover identity.

“We have a photo of you from Ankara in our files. Nobody ever bothered with it. I saw it a few months ago, I had an idea. Our man said you spoke excellent Turkish—”

“Who was the man?”

“He called himself Hussein al-Ghazi when he was in Ankara. A nobody. Back in Tehran.”

Taylor didn’t remember the guy. But the Ankara exile groups had hundreds of members. “And this man Ghazi gave me up?”

“All he said was that you spoke good Turkish—”

“Excellent.”

“Excellent, yes. Shall I explain, so we can put this behind us, I can tell you why I’m here? We don’t have long.”

Taylor nodded.

“I guessed your age and found all the Turkish-studies programs in America and looked up the graduates on the Internet. You don’t look Turkish, so I imagined you must learn at a university.”

“What if I knew the language because I had some family connection to Turkey instead?”

“Then I wouldn’t find you. A small risk. All I would lose is time.”

“Every program?”

“They’re not large, and most students are Turkish. All the way from 1995 until 2000 I saw only about three hundred Americans. I checked yearbook photos until I found your real name. It took less than a month from beginning to end.”

Taylor was speechless. A monstrous security flaw, one he’d never considered before.

“Then I looked at our photos of American consular and embassy officers. We take those as a matter of course. I was fortunate you were still in Turkey, under official cover. And that you’d been here long enough for us to have your official name and title so I could know where to address the letter. I imagined if I’d guessed correctly, you would come. As you have.”

“But no one else in the Guard—”

“Correct. Only me. And I don’t intend to tell anyone.”

The words Taylor had hoped to hear. If they were true. “You want to work for us, Reza? A man in your position must have valuable information.”

“I’m not here to sell out my country.”

If a decade as a case officer had taught Taylor anything, it was that agents always said that before they sold out their countries. The Iranian lit another cigarette, dragged deep.

“Our leaders, they’ve swallowed their own poison. They believe this bomb will make them safe. They hate you and the Jews for trying to stop them.”

“How close is it?”

“I don’t know exactly. I have a friend in the program, he tells me very close. Though our engineers have been too optimistic before. But what your country needs to understand, it is already affecting our policies. Sometime next week, we will bomb two Israeli embassies.”

The surprises kept coming. “Where?”

“One Africa, one Asia. There was supposed to be a third, in Bulgaria, but it got pulled. Security was too tight. That’s how I know.”

“This is Hezbollah or the Guard?” Iran used Hezbollah, a Lebanese militia, for most of its attacks on Israel.

“Hezbollah. But we’re helping even more than usual. It’s complicated. Two simultaneous bombs, two continents. Also they’re very focused on Syria right now.”

“Why not delay, then?”

“If we had any choice, we would, but the orders come from the top. A message to the Israelis, stop shooting our scientists.”

“Which embassies?”

“I don’t know.”

“Bombs? Does that mean truck bombs, suicide bombs?”

“Bulgarian was truck. I think the others, too.”

“This is confirmed? Two embassies?”

Reza turned to Taylor, raised his sunglasses so they were eye-to-eye. “I don’t have much respect for your agency. Technology, yes. Officers, no. You, you speak Turkish, your Farsi isn’t bad, so I hope you’re not stupid. Then you ask questions like this. Yes, it’s confirmed.” Reza took a last drag of the L&M, crunched it under his heel. “I must go.”

“Reza, I need to know more about you. We need to know more. Why you’re offering this information—”

“I’m sick of these fanatics who run my country. I don’t like the idea of a nuclear war. You need more reasons?”

“If you have them.”

“A friend of mine, the Basij-e beat his cousin to death during the Green protests.” Following a disputed election in the summer of 2010, college students and other young Iranians filled Tehran with anti-government protests that became known as the Green Wave. The regime struck back with paramilitary gangs called the Basij-e Mostaz’afin — the name meant Mobilization of the Oppressed. The Basij-e were poor and devout and hated the protesters, who were wealthier and less religious. They attacked viciously, killing dozens and wounding hundreds more. The police didn’t stop the violence. Sometimes they even worked with the Basij-e.

“At least tell me your name.”

“I’ve told you the truth. You don’t believe me, watch the news next week. See that bag behind that piece of concrete.” Taylor followed Reza’s gaze to a brown paper bag. “A phone for you. I’ll call when I have something. It may be a while.”

“I can’t—”

“It’s not a bomb. Just a phone I bought today. Still in the package.”

“I need a way to reach you.”

“I don’t want you to reach me. Or pay me. Or take my photo. Or put my DNA in a file.” Reza picked up his crushed cigarette butts, tucked them in his pocket. “The Guard have a prison near Qom, underground. They keep rabid dogs. They take off your clothes, handcuff you to a post, open the cage. They tell about the rabies so you’ll know what happens after the bite.”

“We can’t protect you if we don’t know who you are.”

Reza pushed his sunglasses down. “Tell the Israelis. The end.”

Three pumps down, a taxi had just finished filling up. Reza strode to it, spoke to the cabbie. He slid inside and didn’t look back as the taxi rolled off.

Taylor squatted down beside the paper bag. He couldn’t see what was inside. Anyway, what was he expecting? That it would be ticking? He unrolled the top, nudged it over with his sneaker. A little mobile slid out in a clamshell case. Taylor decided to take a cab back to the consulate, just in case. If the phone blew up, there’d be less collateral damage.

When the Marines at the consulate’s front gate scanned the phone for explosives, it came back clean. Taylor left it with the station’s techs. “Make sure it’s not bugged.”

“Can I take it apart?” Ronaldo said.

“Do what you want, long as you don’t break it. You break it, I break you.”

Hunt waited in the conference room, two digital tape recorders on the table. “Tell me just as it happened. No opinions. Facts, as you recall them. I want every detail while it’s fresh.”

For a half hour, he recounted the meeting. “You did well,” she said when he finished.

“Thank you.”

“Did you get the cab’s plate?”

His elation vanished. “No, it was too far—”

“Forget it. I think you handled it about as well as anyone could have. But I have to know one thing. Don’t hesitate. Just yes or no, from the gut. Is he real?”

“Yes.”

“Because?”

“His anger at the regime felt real. His Farsi sounded native. Even the way he described the op, that it’s in trouble but the top guys are pushing. Whichever team you play for, we’ve all had that. And it doesn’t make sense otherwise. He gave us a very specific tip. We’ll know in a week if he’s lying. If the point was to set me up, why not shoot me today? We both know I couldn’t have done much.”

“Write up your report, I’ll cable the desk.”

“I wish I’d gotten a picture somehow.”

“Maybe we can convince the agency to put a sketch artist on a plane tonight before your memory fogs.”

“You think he’s real, Martha?”

“I trust you.”

An answer that wasn’t exactly yes. And, more important, left the judgment squarely on him. He was disappointed in her — and in himself for letting her beauty fool him. She was chief. He was deputy. Ever thus.

Taylor spent the next two days on conference calls with Langley, answering the same questions again and again. How the letter had come in. What had happened at the carpet store. Finally, he reached Bart Regina, an assistant deputy director. “You know no Rev Guard officer has ever defected? Not one. Ever.”

Taylor didn’t bother to answer.

“If we pass this warning to the Mossad and we’re wrong, we will look muy foolish. But you think we should go ahead.”

Hunt scribbled on a piece of paper and flashed the words at Taylor. Decision made, ass covering. So this call was pro forma. Regina wanted to hear that Taylor believed. Then the backsplatter wouldn’t touch Regina if the tip didn’t pan out. If it did, no one would care that Regina had raised an alarm. The seventh floor would be too thrilled with its new source.

These internal games were the reason Taylor liked having a quiet career. Bigger stakes, bigger politics. Now he stretched out his neck, put it on the block. “Sir, if you’re asking me whether Reza was genuine, I believe so. If for no other reason than he got my name from somewhere. The story he told makes sense. Believe me, I know we’d rather have his real name. But given the risks he faces, I’m not surprised he kept it to himself.”

Despite the second-guessing — or maybe because of it — Taylor increasingly believed that Reza was who he claimed to be. Not just because being wrong would end his career. Taylor wanted everyone to have to admit he was right. Everyone included Martha Hunt.

“Good,” Regina said. “We’ll let the Israelis know. Classify it as single-source, probability four.” The scale ran from one to ten, one completely reliable and ten wild rumor. Considering that the agency had only Taylor’s gut as a data point, four was a vote of confidence. The line went dead.

“Nice guy,” Hunt said.

“Just covering his ass. Like a certain station chief I know.”

To his surprise, she smiled. “Guess I deserve that.”

“Should have put your chips next to mine, Martha.”

Four days later, in Luanda, Angola, a Nissan van accelerated down Rua Rainha Ginga and rammed through the outer gate of the Israeli embassy, a small two-story building. As the Nissan approached the inner gate, its guards opened up with their AKs. The driver lost control. The van slammed into a concrete chicane that the Israelis had hastily put up after the American warning. The driver ran to a motorcycle and escaped.

Thirty seconds later, the van exploded. Two guards were killed, three others wounded. Six embassy employees were also hurt. An Israeli investigative team later found the van had held three hundred kilograms of fertilizer and fuel oil, enough to have taken down the embassy if it had reached the building.

Six thousand miles away, a taxi stopped at the rear entrance to the Israeli embassy in Bangkok. Neither driver nor passenger had an entry permit, so the local guards wouldn’t raise the gate. After a fifteen-second standoff, the taxi’s passenger shot the driver in the head and ran.

Forty-five seconds later, the taxi blew up. The driver and one guard were killed, two others badly injured. The passenger escaped. Thai police estimated that eighty pounds of a military-grade explosive called Semtex had been placed in the taxi’s trunk.

The Israeli prime minister called the President to thank him for the warning. The President called his new DCI, Scott Hebley, a Marine four-star who had replaced Duto. Hebley called Taylor. Langley sent a surveillance team to Istanbul to help the station trace Reza. NSA cloned the phone that Reza had given Taylor so it would ring on a dedicated line in the Counterterrorism Center. Taylor kept the original. After all, Reza had chosen him. Despite the risk, he badly wanted Reza to call again. He expected to hear within a few days. Surely the Iranian would want credit for the tip, if nothing else.

Weeks passed. The agency checked its sketch of Reza against its databases, along with those from the FBI, Interpol, and the MIT, the Turkish intelligence service. No matches. The surveillance team went home. In Angola and Thailand, the attack investigations stalled. The van had been stolen. The cabbie in Bangkok appeared unconnected to terrorism. He’d done nothing more than pick up the wrong fare. The Semtex was traced to a Czech factory that supplied half the world. Neither Hezbollah nor Iran took credit for the bombings, but their silence wasn’t a surprise. They rarely broadcast their involvement.

September became October. Still Reza stayed away. Taylor found himself depressed, strangely jealous, a lover spurned after a one-night stand. Why doesn’t he call? What did I do? He asked NSA to double-check that the phone was working. He changed ringtones, went back to the original. He put off his other agents, ignored calls, canceled appointments. For four straight Fridays in November, he reenacted every detail of the meeting. After the fourth, he found Hunt outside his office. “Have a drink with me,” she said.

He knew he wouldn’t like what she was going to tell him. He also knew he needed to hear it. In her office, she pulled a bottle of Laphroaig and two glasses from her bottom drawer and poured for them both.

“Most likely he’s not in Istanbul anymore. They probably found him.”

They both knew that if the Guard had discovered that Reza was a traitor, it would have arrested and tortured him. In that case, Taylor’s cover was blown. He should transfer out of Istanbul. He wanted to stay. He wanted to be around when Reza called again.

“They’re not on him. He’s careful.”

“Don’t be irrational.”

“That tip saved lives.”

“Three months ago.”

“You’re jealous because you didn’t buy in.”

She sipped her scotch. “Plenty of glory to go round. Only one squandering it is you. You got PTSD from a single successful meet. First time in history.”

He wanted to argue with her, but he knew she was right.

“That phone rings, we’ll be ready. Meantime, be a man. Get back to work. Let it go.”

“You be a man.” He wanted to be funny, but even to his ears the words sounded petulant.

“Salud, Brian.” She raised her glass and downed the whiskey in one gulp.

Fall ended. Christmas became New Year’s Eve and Taylor invited Hunt to his annual party. She didn’t come. Turkey entered its short, sharp winter, an unpleasant surprise for out-of-season tourists. Snow on the Bosphorus sounded picturesque, but Istanbul wasn’t built for cold. Winds whipped off the Sea of Marmara. Sleet frosted the sidewalks. The Turks hurried along in their too-thin coats, trying not to fall on patches of black ice.

Taylor felt almost relieved to be back to his everyday work. Still, he made sure the magic phone was always fully charged, always within arm’s reach. It rang at ten p.m. on a Friday night. For a few seconds, Taylor didn’t quite believe his ears. Then he grabbed for it. The screen reported the incoming number as the 123456 of a Skype call. He clicked on.

“Mr. Nelson.”

Taylor knew Reza’s voice instantly. “Yes.”

“InterContinental Hotel. Envelope at front desk. Pick it up, come to room 1509. Alone.” Click.

Taylor messaged Hunt: R called. Activating team. Each month, Hunt chose two officers to stand by in case Taylor needed backup. Basically the assignment meant, Be ready to drop whatever you’re doing if Brian needs you. Make sure your phone is charged, and don’t get too drunk. Dominick and Ronaldo were part of the team, too, though their job was only to get a picture. They weren’t trained in active surveillance.

They’d planned for a no-notice call like this. They wouldn’t have time to set a trap. The tech guys would park near the hotel. One officer would wait in the lobby, the other outside. They’d all seen the sketch. They wouldn’t follow Reza. Taylor and Hunt agreed a tail would be a mistake. Based on how cautious he’d been during the first meeting, Reza could probably make a two-man tail. If he did, he would be furious. He might break contact forever. So the station would settle for a photograph of him, and to see if anyone was with him or watching him at the hotel.

Taylor’s apartment was a little more than a mile south of the InterContinental. He dressed, strapped on his holster, made his way into the misty Istanbul night. He walked northeast as texts lit up his phone, the team reporting in. Dominick and Ronaldo lived together a few miles north of downtown. Taylor had never understood whether they were roommates or lovers. Either way, they promised to reach the hotel in thirty minutes. One of the live surveillance officers said he could arrive in twenty. The second didn’t respond. The guy was single. He could be in a loud bar and have missed the text. A bad break. But Taylor knew the truth. He would have gone in with no backup for the chance to meet Reza again.

The envelope the concierge passed him was nearly weightless. Taylor tore it open in the elevator, found only a hotel key card. He turned it in his hands and knew Reza wouldn’t be waiting.

He stood outside the room and listened. Nothing. Knocked. No answer. He drew his Sig, held it at his side, pushed the key card into the slot. He shoved the door open as the lock beeped green. He hid at the edge of the door frame and waited. No footsteps scuffling inside, no whispered voices. He pushed inside, put the key into the slot by the door so the lights would pop on.

The room was empty, the bed unmussed. In the marble bathroom, the soaps and shampoos and bottled water were untouched. Taylor had brought a radio-frequency sniffer that would find basic bugs. He scanned the room. Nothing. He didn’t think Reza had been here. The agency would check the name on the reservation. But Reza had no doubt used a runner again, paid some lucky Turk a few hundred dollars to book the room. Taylor sat on the bed and scrolled through pay-per-view movies while he waited for the call.

Twenty minutes later, the phone rang.

“I said no surveillance. Did you think I wouldn’t see those fat men in the van?”

Taylor knew why Reza wanted to keep his name secret. He understood why the Iranian had brought him here. Reza knew NSA had tapped the phone he gave Taylor. The room phone was clean. So Reza didn’t have to worry about an immediate trace.

Still, the gamesmanship grated on Taylor. Agents and case officers had tricky relationships. To defuse their fears, some agents needed to prove they were smarter than their handlers. If Reza and Taylor were going to work together long-term, the Iranian’s attitude needed to change. For the moment, Reza held the cards. Taylor couldn’t risk driving him off.

“It’s natural we’re anxious to have a photo of you.”

“I’m anxious that you don’t.”

“That’s also natural.”

“Will you give me your word that the next time we meet, there won’t be surveillance?”

“I give you my word that next time you won’t see it.”

Reza laughed. We are both men of the world, the laugh said. We understand each other. I don’t hold the surveillance against you. You play your part as I play mine. A knot in Taylor’s stomach eased. Reza would cooperate today.

“Did you think I would call sooner?”

“I thought you would call when you had something to say.”

“I told you, smarter than the average CIA. We are planning to assassinate a station chief.”

Martha? Taylor almost said. He bit back her name in time. “Here?”

“Too close to home. Not Europe, either. The police, too good. I’m not involved directly, but I am told we’re choosing from one in Asia, one in Africa.”

“Hezbollah?”

“Too tricky for them. The Guard itself.”

“That’s like declaring war.”

“No one asks my opinion. But we won’t take responsibility, you can’t prove it. Maybe we blame someone else. Al-Qaeda.”

“When?”

“This one, it could still be called off. But I believe the approval’s coming. Within the next ten days. The planning is done.”

“A sniper, a bomb, poison?”

“I don’t know.”

“Give me something, Reza. We can’t lock down the whole world.”

“Of course, Brian. I will call General Moghrabi, demand he tell me. When he asks why, I’ll say my friend at the CIA needs to know.”

The phone went dead. Taylor listened to the dial tone until it turned into a fast, angry beep. The most important agent he’d ever had, and Taylor had treated him like a thousand-dollar-a-month file clerk. He stood by the window, looking at the Bosphorus. The windows were undoubtedly too thick to break. Lucky him.

The phone rang. Taylor dove for it. Actually dove across the room, grabbed the handset, sprawled on the bed. Not cool, but no one was watching.

“Next time I don’t call back.”

“I’m sorry.”

“The risks.”

“You could have had a team waiting to drop me, Reza. I came.”

“You have men.”

“Downstairs. What good are they when I open this door?” Taylor counted to five in his head. Slow it down. Calm him down. “We’re in this together.”

“Then let me do what I can. Don’t ask for information you know I don’t have. If I get what you need—”

Taylor suddenly knew what to do. “I’ll set an account for you. At UBS. Monday.”

“An excuse to get my name.”

“No safe-deposit box. No keys. No nonsense. It’ll be online, under the name Reza Istanbul. You’ll have the account number. Real money, not a promise. Take it out, transfer it, whatever.”

“It’s not necessary.”

“Two hundred thousand to start. If you defect—”

“I won’t.”

You might, Taylor thought. But even if he never touched the money, Reza would like having it. Two hundred thousand dollars was a small price to build loyalty from an agent like this.

“Next time we talk, will you tell me more about your biography? How old you are, where you grew up, when you entered the Guard, your life.”

“Why would I do that?”

“So we can understand each other better.”

“Good night, Brian.”

Taylor reached for a Heineken from the minifridge, then reconsidered and grabbed a Coke. He had a long night ahead. He would have to send a CRITIC-coded cable reporting the threat. Since Reza had been right about the embassies, the agency would put out an immediate worldwide alert, which would cause an immediate worldwide mess. The more cautious station chiefs would turtle up. The cowboys would figure this warning didn’t tell them anything they didn’t know, that they were always at risk, and without a specific threat the tip was useless. They were right, and wrong. Reza might not know how the Guard intended to pull this off. But if he said the planning was done, Taylor believed him.

He popped open his Coke and stood by the window, looking out at the dark water of the Bosphorus, the shining city around it. Waiting for his stomach to settle.

It didn’t.

4

Anne and Wells shuffled down the gangway with their heads down, like earthquake survivors waiting for aftershocks. Wells wanted to grab her, beg her to reconsider. But she’d said no for the right reasons. In thirty days, he would give up the job or walk away from her forever. He couldn’t imagine either one. Or maybe he could. Maybe he already knew exactly what he would do, and he wouldn’t admit the truth to himself.

They’d just slid into a cab when his phone interrupted his uncheery thoughts.

“Where to?”

“Miami International.” Wells rejected the call, sight unseen. A minute later, the phone rang again. This time he checked the screen. VD. Duto. He again sent the call to voice mail, switched the phone to vibrate. Within seconds, it began to buzz. Despite himself, Wells felt his interest stirring. If Duto needed him enough to call three times, Duto had a problem.

“Do what you have to do,” Anne said.

Wells clicked on. “Senator.”

“Any chance you could meet me tonight?”

“Any chance you could tell me why?”

“Not on an open line.”

“Then no.”

“Ellis will be there.”

If Ellis Shafer was going, then Wells was going. Pointless to pretend otherwise. Though they’d fought some ugly battles in the years since Wells returned from Afghanistan, Shafer was now Wells’s closest friend inside the CIA, or anywhere else. He was part boss, part confidant, part fixer, and he had pulled strings to save Wells’s life more than once. But Shafer was now past the CIA’s retirement age, and with Duto gone, Wells knew that Shafer was on borrowed time at the agency. He didn’t want to think about what either of them would do when Shafer finally was shown the door.

“We meeting in D.C.?” Wells said.

“Philly. Can you get to my office by ten?”

“Thought you slept in a coffin.”

“I’ll text you the address.” He was gone.

Wells tucked away the phone, looked at Anne. Started to reach for her. Stopped. “I—”

“Go. I’ll take care of Tonka.”

“I’ve still got the thirty days, right?”

“Don’t, John. Just don’t.”

The condo towers loomed over Biscayne Bay like fifty-story mirages.

His flight was late. Philly matched his mood. Cold and wet. He didn’t reach Duto’s offices until almost midnight. He followed a plainclothes police officer down a hallway covered with maps of Pennsylvania and photos of the Liberty Bell. Duto and Shafer sat watching ESPN, drinking Budweisers from a twelve-pack on the couch between them, resting their feet on a coffee table. Sixty-something fratboys.

“John.” Shafer raised a can of Bud in greeting. “Get off those dogs, have a beer.”

“When did you two turn into such good buddies?”

Duto lurched up, extended a hand. “John Wells. My heart flutters. Together again, we three amigos.”

“We were never three anythings.” Wells ignored Duto’s outstretched palm until Duto sat back down.

“Nice tan,” Shafer said.

“Must be living right,” Duto said.

“He went on a cruise.”

“Ellis,” Wells said.

“If you were stuck watching TV with him, you’d drink, too,” Shafer said.

“This job,” Duto said. “The people this, the people that—”

“Why am I here?”

“Old times’ sake.”

Wells stepped toward the door.

“Let’s say you’re here to repay a favor.” The drunken playfulness had left Duto’s voice.

“How’s that?”

“Really? After I sent that drone to save your ass.”

Wells eyed Shafer. Shafer lifted his old-man shoulders a half inch. So he agreed.

“We both know without that, you weren’t getting out—”

“All right.”

“Take a seat, John.”

Wells pushed their feet aside, sat on the coffee table.

“Your attention, please.” Duto turned off the television. “Juan Pablo Montoya called me today.”

“Should I know that name?”

“He was an agent of mine in Colombia. An army officer. We’ve stayed in touch. He wasn’t all that nice, but he had his uses.”

“This ring a bell?” Wells said to Shafer. Shafer shook his head.

“He lives in Guatemala now. Retired, or so he claims. He wanted to pass along a tip. A friend of his is part of a team that plans to assassinate a station chief. Weird part is that a CIA officer is supposedly running the op.”

“A case officer trying to kill a COS? He lose out on a promotion?”

“I know it sounds weird, but Juan Pablo’s not into bullshit. If he’s calling, it’s true. Or at least he thinks it is. Before you ask, he doesn’t know the station.”

“But his friend does.”

“Correct. He’ll give us the friend’s name for one hundred thousand dollars. Plus I have to go to Guatemala City to meet him in person. I’m sure you can see that wouldn’t be a good idea. Which is why I’m deputizing you in my stead.”

“You don’t need to say deputizing and in my stead, Vinny,” Shafer said. “Either will do. More important, this afternoon we got a report that Iran is planning to kill a COS, name and location unknown.”

Duto’s eyebrows nearly came off his skull. The surprise looked real to Wells.

All three men fell silent. Wells spoke first.

“Let me make sure I have this. In the last day, both Vinny and the agency itself have been warned about a plot against a station chief. Vinny’s info comes from a guy in Guatemala who used to be an asset. He says that a case officer is running the plot. Meanwhile, the agency’s report comes from—”

“Turkey,” Shafer said.

“Human, ELINT, third-party—”

“Closely guarded.”

“You don’t know.”

Shafer shook his head.

“Anyway, whoever it is, this source says that Iran is behind the assassination. Rev Guard or Hezbollah like Buckley?” Hezbollah had killed William Buckley, the station chief for Lebanon, after kidnapping him. The agency had always believed Hezbollah wouldn’t act so provocatively without at least informing Iran of its plans.

“No, the Guard itself.”

“So two very different reports. And the only thing they have in common—”

“Is that a COS is getting…” Duto made a pistol with his fingers and pulled the trigger.

“A station chief hasn’t been killed in twenty years,” Shafer said. “Since Freddie Woodruff.”

Woodruff, the chief in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, had died in 1993 under circumstances that remained murky even now. Woodruff, a hard-partying Oklahoman, had come to Georgia just after the collapse of the Soviet Union. At the time, Moscow hadn’t fully reconciled itself to the loss of its satellite states. Woodruff was riding with his security guard in a jeep when a single bullet hit him in the head. He died before reaching a hospital.

The police arrested a former Georgian soldier, claiming he had taken a single blind shot from the side of the road. The soldier’s car had run out of gas, and he was angry the jeep hadn’t stopped to help him, the police said. After days of beatings, the soldier confessed. But the forensic evidence didn’t match the police theory. The FBI and CIA picked up rumors that Russian spies had shot Woodruff to warn the United States against encroaching on Moscow’s turf. But after a short trial, the Georgians convicted the former soldier. The FBI had reinvestigated the shooting without success. The only certainty was that Freddie Woodruff was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Buckley’s kidnapping and Woodruff’s murder had led the agency to tighten security around station chiefs. None had been killed since, though they were top targets for al-Qaeda.

“A few choices,” Duto said. “One, Montoya is lying, looking for a hundred K. And he’s the luckiest scammer in the world because he picked up the phone the same day this other plot came in. Two, it’s open season on station chiefs and these plots happen to be unrolling at the same time. Three, Iran has hired one of our case officers to kill one of our station chiefs. Am I missing anything?”

“Heart, soul, conscience,” Shafer said. “But in this case, no.”

“So call the seventh floor, tell them about Juan Pablo,” Wells said. “Let them figure it out.”

“Too squishy. It’ll look like I’m interfering. Like I can’t back off, let Hebley do his job.”

“Talk to Montoya yourself, then.”

“I’m scheduled for like the next three weeks. Plus this isn’t a guy I want to be seen with. He’s not senatorial. For lack of a better word.”

“But you’re okay sending John?” Shafer said.

“John’s a big boy. He’ll be fine.”

Wells wondered how dangerous Juan Pablo Montoya really was. No matter. As Duto’s emissary, Wells should be safe. Anyway, the trip would take his mind off Anne. “You sure you want to waste your favor on this? Using me as a messenger boy for some two-bit narco.”

Duto nodded.

“Then Guatemala City it is.”

So: a new assignment. He wouldn’t be going back to New Hampshire.

Wells wanted to pretend he felt something other than relief. He couldn’t.

5

The United 737 came into La Aurora International from the south, so close to the concrete rooftops that Wells could count clotheslines. Even before the jet stopped rolling, Wells lit up his phone. No messages. Not from Duto or Shafer. And not from Anne. He wished she hadn’t given him a month. Without it, they might have made a clean break. He was thinking about her more than ever. Or maybe she’d intended that.

He needed to put her aside. Drugs, gangs, and poverty made Guatemala one of the world’s most dangerous countries. Wells was unarmed. Naturally, he hadn’t taken any weapons on the cruise. Not even a knife.

Just the ring.

The sun was low in the sky as Wells stepped out of the airport. He called Montoya, but no one answered. At his hotel, he channeled his frustrations into a monster workout. Two hours of cardio, another of lifting. The exercise exhausted him, but still he slept poorly. He dreamed that Anne stood on the front of the Titanic, her arm cocked back. He yelled to her. She ignored him and flung the ring into the ocean.

When he woke, he found himself annoyed by his lack of imagination. His unconscious was stealing from movies now? He should have dreamed… he didn’t know what. Of his parents, maybe. Their house in Hamilton. Something that connected past and future.

But thinking about the past meant thinking about the men he’d killed. He’d walled himself off. Now he saw that imagination was memory’s twin. His forced amnesia gave him movies for dreams. He closed his eyes, saw himself hiking on a ridgeline, sheer thousand-foot cliffs on either side, an army of the dead behind him, wool-thick fog rolling toward him. The only way out is through.

He showered, shaved, called Montoya.

“Buenos días.”

“And good morning to you.” Wells wished he spoke Spanish. He’d always enjoyed its smoothness.

“Who is this?”

“John Wells. I work with Vinny Duto.”

“You are in Guatemala, Señor Wells.” The guy spoke the last two words like a Telemundo villain. A joke, Wells figured.

“Sí.”

“I told the comandante I’d meet him. Not an errand boy.”

“Never been called that before.”

“Do you have my money, errand boy?”

“We can discuss that in person.”

“So you don’t.”

Wells was tired of this Latin braggadocio. “You think a United States senator jumps on a plane because you say so, you’ve sampled too much of your product. I promise you’ll get paid. Assuming this story isn’t complete caca.”

Montoya laughed. “Be at the Parque Central at five p.m. No, six.”

“Why don’t you just tell me where you live? Or are you being difficult because you’re annoyed Vinny’s not here?”

“My men will pick you up. No weapons, please.”

Words that made Wells want a pistol more than ever. He hung up, called the front desk. “Can you call me a cab to the nearest Walmart?”

“You’re sure you want a Walmart, sir? We have excellent shopping nearby.”

“I’m on a budget.”

Officially called the Plaza de la Constitución, the Parque Central had once been Guatemala’s government and religious center. Now the president worked elsewhere, and the palace on the park’s northern end served as an art museum. But the cathedral on the east side, which had survived multiple earthquakes, remained home to Guatemala City’s archbishop.

“Don’t go after dark,” the desk clerk said, when Wells asked about it. “Better to stay in the Zona Viva. Here, it’s patrolled.”

“Even around the palace?”

“Especially there. They look for tourists.” I know you won’t listen, the clerk’s face said. You want to find out for yourself. The foolish privilege of the foolish privileged.

Wells stowed his wallet and passport and ring in the room safe and left the hotel at 5:30, the winter sky nearly dark. Even in the patrolled area, the Zona Viva, the streets were nearly deserted. The cab turned onto Avenida 7A and rolled north past long, low concrete blocks, pockmarked and covered with graffiti. Guatemala City reminded Wells of a boxer, a lightweight with a losing record and prison tats that didn’t quite cover his acne scars. The cab stopped for a light beside a drugstore marked with a green neon cross. A chubby man in a white coat pulled down a steel gate as two guards flanked him. They were armed like a police tac team, shotguns and bullet-resistant vests.

“Farmacias, many robberies,” the cabbie said.

Ten minutes later, the cabbie turned left through an archway and stopped outside a squat stone building topped by two low bell towers. “Cathedral. Parque Central.” The square was smaller than Wells expected, with a dry fountain in the center protected by a low wall. A grove of trees shaded the southern side. The final strips of daylight were fleeing the sky. A dozen teenage boys sat on the wall beside the fountain. Others squatted on their heels around the plaza. Two leaned against the cathedral, chins lolled to their chests, tongues dangling.

“They take glue,” the cabbie said. Liquid cement was the drug of choice for the poorest kids in Latin America. Glue was a strange drug. It didn’t bring the euphoria of heroin or the stimulation of cocaine. It made time vanish and obliterated the mind. Huffers rarely lasted much past their teens. The freefall wasn’t a side effect, Wells figured. It was the point.

He reached for his door, found it locked.

“You see, now back to hotel, yes?”

“I’m meeting someone. Can you wait?”

“Too many gangs.”

“How about at the corner of Calle Ocho, Avenida Cinco?” Two blocks away.

“How long?”

“Half hour.” Wells passed the cabbie two twenty-dollar bills, way more than the fare. “I’ll give you one hundred U.S.”

“Fifty now. You come by six-thirty, hundred fifty more. Otherwise I leave.”

Wells handed over fifty dollars from the loose cash he was carrying in his baggy black Walmart sweatpants. The real prizes from his shopping trip were hidden under the sweats. Wells had taped a metal flashlight to his right calf, sheathed a four-inch knife to his left. He would have preferred a pistol, of course, but the knife and light were the best he could do on a few hours’ notice.

In movies, no one ever had a problem getting weapons. In the real world, people who tried to buy guns illegally were apt to be arrested, or worse. A would-be buyer had to find someone who already had a firearm — while advertising that he had money but no weapon of his own. A more obvious prescription to be robbed was hard to imagine.

The urchins stared as Wells stepped onto the plaza. The nearest were forty feet away, three kids squatting side by side by side. The one in the middle pointed a finger pistol at Wells and said something under his breath. The other boys laughed. The plaza reminded Wells of the sunbaked plains of Kenya. The boys were the hyenas, Wells the lion. In a one-on-one fight, he would dominate. But hyenas ran in packs. And in packs they had been known to run lions off, or even kill them. Already the three kids in the middle were pushing themselves to their feet, looking around for friends.

Wells decided to bring the fight to them, send the others running. Even if the tactic worked, it would buy him only a few minutes. Then whoever controlled this plaza would hear what had happened. The guys with the AKs would show up. He had to assume Montoya’s men would pick him up before then. If Montoya wanted to get Wells killed, he would have insisted Wells go into a hillside slum at midnight. Instead, Montoya was testing him. Taunting him. Gringo, are you man enough to be my man? A stupid game.

Wells strode toward the three boys. The only real risk was that their leader might have a .22. But these kids looked too broke to own even the cheapest pistols. Their jeans and T-shirts were more holes than fabric. Plus Wells had never seen anyone who was holding make a finger pistol. Wells put them on box cutters, homemade shivs, butterfly knives.

He was making a lot of assumptions. Wrong one way, he would wind up with a dime-sized slug in his chest. Wrong the other, he would worsen the misery of a bunch of pathetic street kids. He would go with the flashlight first in a fight. Better to break bones than leave these kids bleeding to death. He had no choice but to get in close and let the question answer itself. His biggest advantage was that kids weren’t expecting him.

The boys muttered as he closed the gap. Most of the plaza’s streetlamps had burned out. In the light that remained, Wells saw that the boy in the middle wore a filthy yellow soccer jersey. It hung long and loose over the kid’s jeans, plenty of room to hide a pistol.

Wells walked straight to him. The kid was both more pathetic and more dangerous up close. In another life he would have been handsome, with brown eyes and jet-black hair and an angular face. But sores marred his lips, and a long white scar crossed his forehead. His head barely reached Wells’s sternum, but he looked up without fear.

“American?” The word was a curse.

“Guilty.” Wells waited. Not his normal move. He had stayed alive all these years by striking first. But he had to give this fourteen-year-old a chance to walk away.

“Want drugs? Chinga?”

The kid’s right hand had been flat on his leg, resting on his jeans. Now he moved it up, slid his index and middle fingers under the edge of the soccer shirt. The kid had a gun tucked into his jeans.

“Money.” The kid slipped his hand under his shirt—

Wells shoved the boy backward, his hands side by side on the boy’s chest like a close-grip bench press. Wells had the weight and the leverage. The kid had no chance. He stumbled back and Wells stepped forward with him, pushing him down like an offensive tackle pancaking a linebacker. The boy pulled his hands out and away to brace his fall. The pistol rattled against the cobblestones as he landed on his ass with Wells on top of him.

The kid tried to reach underneath himself for the gun, but Wells raised his right elbow, cracked it into the boy’s temple. The kid grunted and crumpled against the plaza’s paving stones. Wells flipped him over, pushed up the soccer shirt, found a tiny black pistol—

As he did, he felt motion from the right. Another boy was coming, right arm cocked, a tiny blade gleaming in his hand, two steps away and closing. Wells was on all fours, no time to get to his feet, no time to shoot, and he wouldn’t have shot this kid anyway—

Wells pushed himself off the plaza’s stones and drew his right shoulder down and in, launching himself into a roll at the boy. The squats he forced himself to do every day paid off now. He knew the kid couldn’t adjust in time. He felt the knife swipe over him as the boy stabbed downward and found air. He rolled into the boy’s legs, a vicious chop block that would have earned him a fifteen-yard penalty if a ref had been watching. He weighed twice as much as the kid. The collision instantly reversed the boy’s direction, flipped him backward onto the stones. Wells heard the sharp crack of bone as the kid landed, followed by a low moan. Probably an elbow. Wrist fractures didn’t hurt very much, but broken elbows were nasty.

Wells used his momentum to push himself up. The boy lay on his back, his right arm twisted. He was channeling the pain by tearing at his lip with a proud pair of buckteeth. His switchblade lay useless on his chest.

Two street urchins, disarmed. American might at its finest. The third boy hadn’t moved. “Some friend you are.” Wells stepped toward him and he took off. Wells went back to the kid in the soccer shirt, the one who’d started the trouble, reached down, grabbed a skinny biceps, and picked him up. The boy was so light. Not even skin and bones. Skin and air.

“Puta.”

Wells pulled two twenty-dollar bills from his pocket, pressed the kid’s hand around them.

“Cash for guns.” He didn’t know what a Saturday-night special went for in Guatemala City, but forty bucks seemed fair.

“Chinga tu madre.”

Wells flung the kid away. He stumbled a half-dozen steps, gained his balance, raised an invisible assault rifle. “Rat-tat-tat—” He backed away, turned, ran. The other boys on the plaza followed, all but the one with the broken elbow. He walked slowly, keeping his right arm steady and pressed against his side. Wells reached into his pocket for the rest of his money, six hundred dollars. The boy shirked away. Wells folded the cash into a tight roll and stuffed it into the boy’s left hand. “Yours. Get your arm fixed.” The boy didn’t say a word.

“John Wells!”

The voice came from a minivan stopped beside the cathedral. A man stepped out, holding a pistol. Not a .22. A grown-up gun with a five-inch barrel. Probably a .45. Wells didn’t like pistols that big. They looked mean, but they were impossible to hide, slow to draw, and tough to aim because they kicked so hard. Even so, the guy was barely fifty feet away, close enough to put a hole in him.

“Hope you guys enjoyed the show.”

“Drop your gun.”

“I paid forty bucks for this thing.”

The guy raised his pistol. “Drop it.”

Wells skittered the gun along the cobblestones.

“Front seat,” the guy said. Wells took his place in the passenger seat. Two guys in back, plus the driver. No one searched him. They must have figured that if he hadn’t pulled on the kid, he was unarmed. Dumb, but Wells wasn’t complaining.

Montoya lived in the wealthy southern suburbs, past the airport. Guatemala was even poorer than the rest of Central America. But its ruling class lived well, behind electrified fences and armed guards. The minivan turned into a cul-de-sac and parked in front of a property that appeared relatively unprotected, just a spiked fence. Then the lights flicked on, revealing the real security system. Four Dobermans stood on their hind legs in their eagerness to get at the intruders. Wells loved most dogs, but Dobermans were twitchy and short-tempered. He hoped Montoya didn’t have kids.

The house behind the fence was built in classic Spanish adobe style, white with a flat roof and red-brown ceramic tiles. A handsome man a little older than Wells waited at the front gate. Wells opened his door without being told and jogged to him. The guards hurried after him, shouting in Spanish.

“Juan Pablo—” Wells sensed a guard behind him, too close. He half turned, tried to get his arm up, but he was leaning forward, his weight going the wrong way. Metal cracked into the side of his head. A web of pain ran in every direction around the world. Wells blinked, but when he tried to open his eyes he couldn’t. No, he said, or tried to say—

His legs went and he fell to his knees and the black swallowed him.

6

Most of his life he’d had a different name. A different face. He’d grown up in Ontario, California. East of Los Angeles, west of Death Valley. Caught between hell and the desert, his dad said. His mom taught third-graders, his dad managed a dry cleaner. They weren’t rich, but they did fine. His mom always used exactly those words, We aren’t rich, but we do fine.

He remembered perfectly the moment he left them behind. Disney World. Not Disneyland, Disney World. They’d scrimped for a year to fly across the country and ride the exact same rides that they rode in Anaheim. He was on Space Mountain with his dad, second time that day. Suddenly he caught himself thinking, I will not be these people. I will not be ordinary. He was twelve. He felt something like shock. You look green, his mom said when they got off the coaster. Too many Cokes?

Through junior high, he waited for the feeling to wane. Instead, it put vines in him. Only one problem. He had no idea how he would make his mark. The obvious routes to fame and fortune were out. He was five-ten, one-sixty, no athlete. He couldn’t act or play guitar. He was average-looking, with dark hair and brown eyes that were a little too small. He was smart, but plenty of kids were smarter.

What, then? Finally, he saw that he did have one exceptional quality, an uncanny ability to blend in. He was at home with the jocks, the theater geeks, the UN club. The teachers liked him, too. He simply shut his mouth. Everyone in the world wanted to talk. He listened. He let an endless stream of words flow over him, offered the right answers at the right moments. Over time, he grew to see conversations almost as a game. How little could he say? He never passed on the gossip he heard. X had cheated on her boyfriend? Y was cutting school to smoke pot? So what? Once he’d learned a secret, he no longer cared.

He’s so mature, the teachers told his parents. So empathetic. In fact, he was the opposite. The right test would have revealed that he was close to a psychopath. But he wasn’t conventionally dangerous. He had no interest in hurting anyone. Not back then.

In eleventh grade, he took a modern history class whose syllabus included The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. When he read it, he knew. He belonged with these men who lied to one another and everyone else, who stood outside the world’s laws.

Finding a way into their world was straightforward. The era of Ivy League shoulder taps had ended decades before. He studied Spanish and international relations at UC San Diego. After graduation, he became an analyst at the RAND Institute in Los Angeles. RAND was federally backed, thick with former intelligence officers, a clear path to Langley. The agency called three years later. You can’t tell anyone, the recruiters told him. Not your friends. Not your family. The most thrilling words of his life.

He aced training and was sent to Peru. With the Cold War over, Congress was cutting the agency’s budget. But the news hadn’t gotten to Latin America, the last refuge for cowboy case officers who ran their own foreign policy with duffel bags of cash. For a while, he loved the job. Especially the tradecraft. Countersurveillance runs through the slums on his way to meetings. Growing into his cover as an engineer for a mining company prospecting around Machu Picchu. Helicoptering into the Andes with a briefcase full of cash handcuffed to his wrist.

After a year, the thrills began to fade. Slowly. Like a song he’d heard too many times. He realized the agency was a bureaucracy like any other, driven by its own perverse internal incentives. The CIA’s primary mission in Lima was helping the Peruvian army fight leftist guerrillas who called themselves the Shining Path. By the mid-1990s, the Path was unraveling. Its violence had alienated the peasants who formed its core. The CIA could have encouraged the army to stand aside, let the Path commit suicide. Instead, it kept paying for ops that mostly killed civilians. Anybody ever think about dialing things back? he once asked his station chief. A casual question over beers.

We have a budget. Budget means ops. Don’t get any points for saving it. We don’t spend it, they don’t give it to us next year.

A few weeks later, he fell in love.

He’d never been in love. Never even had a girlfriend, though he’d slept with scores of women in California. The girls were usually a little overweight, a little older. They were needy and unhappy, and they always told him what a good listener he was. After he moved to Los Angeles to work for RAND, he began to dream about hurting them, dreams that always ended the same way, him taping their mouths shut.

What the hell? He wasn’t a killer. He’d become a vegetarian in college because he couldn’t abide the taste of dead flesh. He stopped going to bars. Maybe his brain wasn’t wired for love. But he resolved to stop the listening game, look for a real relationship. To his surprise, he found one.

Julia was a Peruvian who worked as a translator and reporter for the Associated Press. She was small, almost scrawny. She wore her hair long and had deep brown eyes, the most beautiful he’d ever seen. He met her at the ambassador’s Fourth of July barbecue, a cheap way for the embassy to build goodwill with reporters in Lima. She filled her plate like she was training for an eating contest. In forty-five minutes she plowed through two hamburgers, two ears of corn, a plate of ribs. She didn’t make a mess, but she left nothing behind.

“They must not pay you enough.”

“They don’t.” She said the words without heat.

“I’m Ron—” His cover name.

“Julia.”

He waited for her to talk. People always spoke; they couldn’t bear silence. Their voices relieved them. Once they started, they never stopped.

But she didn’t start. After a minute, she walked to the pie table, the highlight of the afternoon, a half-dozen varieties, plus cans of Reddi-wip flown in by the case from Houston. She came back with wide slices of lemon, apple, and pecan. She ate carefully, relentlessly. He felt her responding to his stare. Maybe even putting on a show for him. All this in silence.

She finished, reached into her pocket, slid a card across the picnic table to him. “Call me sometime.” She walked away.

He looked at the card—Julia Espada, Associated Press—and wondered if he could fall in love with someone over the way she ate.

The fact that her English wasn’t great helped. He didn’t always understand her. She had to repeat herself. The irony did not escape him. But mostly they didn’t talk. Translating tired her tongue, she told him. The quiet relaxed her. They sat together, reading and companionable. Drove along the coast road as Pacific waves crashed into the rocks. Cooked in his apartment, the kitchen hushed as an operating room in the middle of tricky surgery.

They saw each other two and three times a week, but she wouldn’t sleep with him. He should have been frustrated. In truth, he respected her for her restraint, so unlike the women at home. After two months, she offered herself to him with no false ceremony. Tonight I’m staying over. I hope you have condoms. The word sounded small in her mouth, the syllables precise and separate. Con. Doms.

Their sex was quiet, too. In California, he’d learned not to believe the screamers, who were mostly parroting the porn that guys made them watch. But Julia was nearly silent. Is something wrong? he finally asked. She told him not to worry.

Later he would wish he had.

She moved in eight months after they met. Per agency regs, he reported the relationship to his boss. The station found no red flags in her background. Her father was dead, her mother a secretary at Peru’s national electric company. He assumed she knew what he did. But she never asked. In turn, he didn’t press her for information about the stories she was working on. He didn’t want her to wonder whether he was with her because he saw her as a potential source.

Caring about her made him a better case officer. He spent less time at the station, but he had more energy, worked harder. His doubts about strategy quit bothering him. He began to see what he was doing as a job. A job that came with a diplomatic passport, a fake name, and an apartment with blast-resistant windows, but a job nonetheless. His tradecraft improved with experience, and so did his evaluations. A talented case officer who has recently grown into his work, his station chief wrote in his annual evaluation.

If he’d been writing his own evaluation, it would have been far simpler: For the first time I can remember, maybe the first in my life, I feel like a human being.

Then James Veder showed up.

Veder came to Lima on TDY, temporary assignment, from Bogotá. He was hot shit, as he would be the first to explain, a throwback to the agency’s OSS roots. He drank and smoked and screwed anything that wasn’t nailed down. He had once expensed a Harley to the agency. Somehow the report went through.

Julia met Veder two years to the day after she’d met him, the same Fourth of July barbecue. She still ate like she was starving. That guy’s such a jerk, she said afterward. Do you work together? She had never asked about another case officer before. I don’t even know him, he told her. The truth.

Two months later, he scheduled an overnight trip to Iquitos, the northeast corner of Peru. He was recruiting an engineer for Chevron. See you tomorrow, Julia said. By then he was thinking about an engagement ring, wondering if she might want an emerald, something nontraditional.

He arrived in Iquitos to discover that the engineer had a 104-degree fever. He decided to catch the afternoon flight home. Didn’t call. Figured he’d surprise her.

He heard her moaning even before he opened their apartment door. Sounds she’d never made with him. He hoped he was caught in a bad dream. But he knew her voice. He let himself in quietly. The bedroom door was open. He watched Veder’s head between her legs, her hands squeezing his shoulders. When she saw him, she pushed Veder away and yelped and covered herself in sheets that until a few moments before he had thought of as theirs.

He expected to find shame in her eyes. Remorse. He saw pity instead.

Veder grabbed his boxers. He wiped the back of his hand over his mouth with the relish of a kid who’d just eaten a chocolate bar. “She said you guys were breaking up.”

“Out, Jimmy.”

“Don’t hurt her, man. She’s not worth it.”

Veder’s words broke his anger. He didn’t know what he’d been planning. Bloodying Julia’s nose, breaking her teeth. Replacing what he’d seen with an image that at least was under his control.

He shoved her at Veder. “Both of you. Now.”

“Don’t do this,” Julia said. But she almost sounded relieved.

“Thirty seconds, then I get my gun.”

Veder grabbed for his Levi’s, tugged them on both legs at once, like he’d been through this drill before. “Let’s go, babe.”

The man watched his future pull on sweatpants and an Associated Press T-shirt. “Ten seconds.” She grabbed her passport from the nightstand. He wondered what she really thought of him. What clues he must have missed.

“Vámonos,” Veder said.

“You don’t even know her name, do you?”

“Come on, Julia.”

He wished he hadn’t asked. His wall safe was hidden behind a poster of The Kiss, the Gustav Klimt painting. The irony was so cheap that he wanted to cry. Then he did cry. He turned to the wall to hide the tears creasing his cheeks. The safe was an old-school model with a dial, not a keypad. Left three times to 22… He gripped the knob in his fingertips. Too tight. He lost track of how many times he’d spun the dial and had to start over. He heard the apartment door close as the tumblers clicked.

Inside, a 9-millimeter Sig. He didn’t reach for it. If he reached for it, he would pick it up. If he picked it up he would open his lips and put it in his mouth. If he put it in his mouth he would pull the trigger. Simple as dominoes falling.

He shut the safe, set to work cleaning the apartment, removing all trace of her.

Maybe they would have reconciled. Maybe he would have quit the agency. Maybe he would have drunk himself into a suicidal stupor, put the Sig in his mouth after all. Maybe he would have figured out what had gone wrong and why he hadn’t noticed. Maybe he would have punched out Veder at a Christmas party and they would have wound up buddies. A long shot, but maybe.

But none of those things had the chance to happen. He walked in on them on a Monday. Monday, September 10, 2001.

The attack made his private grief small and self-indulgent. No one knew what might happen next. Every station went to war. Through the fall, he worked twelve-hour days, seven-day weeks. As the immediate crisis abated, the agency began planning for the Iraq invasion. He volunteered to return to Langley for training in Arabic. He left Peru without speaking to Julia.

He arrived in Baghdad in June 2003. Within months, he realized that the agency was making the same mistakes he’d seen in Peru, focusing on its own priorities rather than the reality around it. Only this time, the stakes were far higher. Senior officers spent their time scheming with Ahmed Chalabi. Chalabi wanted to run Iraq, but he was a pretender who had fled the country a generation before. Meanwhile, no one seemed to notice the worsening chaos. Even after the insurgency erupted, the agency and its Green Zone overlords blamed al-Qaeda. They never acknowledged the truth. The occupation had made life miserable for ordinary Iraqis. Their children risked kidnapping whenever they left home. Each night they went to bed hungry, frightened, and waiting for civil war. Each morning more of them condemned the United States.

He couldn’t tell whether his fellow officers couldn’t see the truth, or whether political pressure from the White House had overwhelmed them. He found himself profoundly disappointed, in them and himself. He’d wanted to live an unusual life. He supposed in a way he’d succeeded. He worked for a bureaucracy as allergic to reality as any in corporate America. His home was a trailer on a fortified base in a country whose people hated him. He had no chance to use the tradecraft he’d honed in Peru. And he had no family and no prospects for one.

So he stayed. If he couldn’t win the war, at least he could lose himself in it. Most case officers left Iraq after a few months. He spent more than three years in Baghdad. For eighteen months, he worked as an analyst for the agency/military task force that targeted top terrorists. With phone intercepts and interrogation reports, he pieced together networks in villages that he’d never seen. He felt like a kid who’d been given a jigsaw puzzle that had a trillion pieces and no edges. But at least the task forces had a clear mission, unlike everyone else in the Green Zone. And though he was under no illusion that killing Abu al-Zarqawi’s jihadis would turn the tide of the war, he wanted them to die. He’d seen enough of their videos to know that they gloried in torture and murder.

He worked himself beyond exhaustion. In October 2006, he was caught sleepwalking while holding a loaded pistol. Time to get out, his boss said. He was so deep inside the war that he couldn’t imagine leaving. You punched your ticket. You know that, right? You’ve got one assignment until February, a paid vacation. And figure out where you want to go next. I mean anywhere. You’re at the top of the list. Sir— Don’t argue. You’ve earned it. Just thank me and pack.

He went home. He hoped Ontario would seem more real to him than it had as a teenager. He imagined he’d take care of his parents, bond with them in their slow decline. Love, one emptied bedpan at a time. Mom and Dad had other ideas. She was sixty; he was sixty-two. Their years of saving had paid off. They weren’t interested in bedpans. They’d bought an RV for an Alaska-to-Florida road trip. They loved him, but dimly, almost abstractly. They called him a hero, a meaningless word meant to free him of responsibility for the choices he’d made. They saw his sadness, but they knew they couldn’t help. They looked at him in a kindly, puzzled way, like dog owners who wished their Maltese would stop peeing on the floor.

He left after ten days, lonelier than ever. He rented a room at the W Hotel in Westwood and made up for his years of celibacy. The women in L.A. were even easier to take home than they’d been a decade before. Internet dating and drunk texting had erased the last vestiges of shame from one-night stands. Then he had a torture dream, more vivid than he remembered, amplified by what he’d seen in Iraq. He knew that these cruelties were real. He feared what that knowledge might allow him to do.

He quit the bars, wondered if he should try to find Julia. But that wound was both too raw for him to touch and too callused for him to care. His time in Baghdad had destroyed every instinct except survival, every memory except yesterday.

Yet his puzzlement and anger at her infidelity remained. He still didn’t know why she’d slept with Veder. Had he seduced her, or the reverse? Had that afternoon in the apartment been their first time together? He’d imagined she loved him. Why hadn’t she told him when she felt herself slipping away? The questions gnawed, but he would never ask her for the answers. Not after the way she’d walked out. Not after what he’d seen.

He wished he’d killed Veder.

He left California, spent the rest of his time off traveling, a month in Africa, then Thailand, the land of misfit toys. He drank himself stupid in Bangkok and Phuket and watched the low comedy play out each night, lonely farangs fulfilling their fantasies on the cheap. The men all had sob stories about women back home, who were too fat or cared too much about money or thought they were too good to do the dishes. Every tale finished with some version of These girls here, maybe they don’t understand English, but they understand me. They love me. They see me for who I am.

Yeah, right. For the first time, he joined the world’s talkers, knowing the men around him would love every miserable detail of what Julia had done. Sometimes he even embellished—

I had the ring in my pocket and I wanted to surprise her—

Don’t say it, man—

I walked in — I couldn’t even see his face, do you understand what I’m saying?

I would have killed ’em both. Let’s get another, my friend. That calls for another.

He wondered if he should quit, but he had nowhere to go. He considered asking to be posted to Bangkok, but he feared he would become one of the whoremongers he despised. He chose Hong Kong. The city was the opposite of Baghdad in every way, glamor and neon, filled with hundred-story skyscrapers. Aside from the occasional gang fight, it was basically nonviolent. Money was its sole religion.

He was pleasantly surprised when the agency kept its word. He waited a few months in Langley for a spot to open, but by fall 2007, he was living in an apartment in Kowloon and studying Cantonese. A year passed. His station chief was pleasant enough and kept a respectful distance. His work in Baghdad had bought him credibility. Take as much time as you need to learn the language, and when you’re ready to get back into the field, let me know.

Day by day, Hong Kong’s energy flowed into him, sweeping aside his memories like a flood cleaning out a polluted canal. He felt almost lucky. Like he’d been given one more chance. Then fate intervened, in the form of a BP tanker truck speeding west on a two-lane highway outside Fairbanks, as his parents’ Winnebago headed east. A state police lieutenant politely encouraged him to save himself the flight to Anchorage. The remains were unidentifiable.

We aren’t rich, but we do fine… But they were rich after all. The lawyer back home told him that between their estate and BP’s settlement offer, he would wind up with more than two million dollars. His catastrophe was complete.

Gambling is deeply ingrained in Chinese culture, but Hong Kong has no legal casinos. Bettors ride ferries forty miles west over the gray waters of the Pearl River Delta to Macao. For centuries, Macao was Hong Kong’s ugly cousin, a corrupt, dingy Portuguese colony known mostly for gang wars. But in 1999, China took control of Macao. The People’s Republic invited major casino companies to set up shop — and allowed millions of its own citizens over the border as customers. In a few years, Macao became the world’s largest gambling center, far bigger than the Las Vegas Strip. The action centered on an artificial island called Cotai, a postapocalyptic place where fifty-story temples of misery loomed above eerily empty avenues.

In his first year in Hong Kong, he’d gone to Macao three times, lost a few hundred dollars playing blackjack and craps. No big deal. Everything changed when the wire transfer from his parents’ estate hit his HSBC account. His new balance: $2,452,187.19. He knew how casinos treated high rollers. If he lost a couple thousand dollars playing blackjack, he’d get a free room, a five-star meal. At ten thousand, he’d rate a private helicopter flight from Hong Kong, no need to share a hydrofoil with the commoners. Another level up, women and drugs would find their way to his suite without his having to ask.

He held out for three weeks. Then he took one hundred thousand Hong Kong dollars, about $13,000, to the newest, shiniest casino in Macao, the 88 Gamma. The Gamma was a sci-fi-themed palace, sleek and edgy. It had an oxygen bar and a shark-filled aquarium that encircled the casino floor. He sat at a blackjack table and watched the faces around him shrink into themselves as the night passed and the house edge triumphed over prayers and promises. Yet no one cared. They went to the ATM and returned with bundles of fresh cash.

He was lucky that night. He broke even. He forced himself to leave the casino at dawn. On the ferry to Kowloon, he closed his eyes against the screaming sun and dreamed of blackjack. He was back the next weekend, and every weekend after that. He didn’t need a shrink to tell him what he was doing. He believed that losing his parents’ estate would bring them back. He’d have another chance with them, a chance to replay his whole life.

But gambling gained its own power over him. He craved the anesthesia of the table, those rare nights when the chips piled up. Beating the house meant beating death itself, reversing time and entropy. He knew he was succumbing to the ultimate fallacy, that hot streaks were a function of probability just like cold. But at five a.m., as he looked at a ten and a six and curled his fingers forward and watched the dealer slide a five from the shoe, the truth meant less than nothing.

The girls were another kind of anesthesia. They were young and desperate and did whatever he wanted, to him and to one another.

In a year, he lost everything. More than everything. He was $550,000 in debt by the time Gamma cut him off. He had lost an even three million dollars. And he had missed so many workdays that the head of security for Hong Kong insisted he take a polygraph. He failed it and the drug test that followed. The agency fired him.

Only then did reality strike him. He had nothing. He couldn’t even go back to the Gamma. Gambling took money, and he didn’t have any. He begged the agency for another chance, but no one in Hong Kong knew him well enough to stand up for him. He was written off, another promising case officer ruined by Iraq.

The end.

His depression resolved into simple self-loathing. He had squandered three million dollars. He was worse than a fool. The money had vanished as completely as his parents. He debated killing himself. The act seemed like a rational response to the mess he’d made. He imagined diving off the Star Ferry into the murky waters of Hong Kong Bay. But as deeply as he hated himself, he didn’t want to die. He didn’t see heaven in his future, which left hell and oblivion as his only options. Neither appealed.

His limbo lasted three months.

The knock came at eight a.m. on a Saturday. Light but insistent. A woman.

He lay in bed, nestled beside a three-quarters-empty bottle of Johnnie Walker Black. He tried to imagine who might want to talk to him. No one came to mind. He wondered if he might be dreaming, but the pain behind his eyes convinced him otherwise.

“Mr. Mason? Glenn Mason?”

An unfamiliar voice, but a familiar name. His. His real name. His California name. He sat up, too quickly. “Hello?” His voice scratched like a garage-sale LP. His balance was all wrong. His brain seemed to have been doused in gasoline and set afire. The Johnnie Walker bottle had been full the afternoon before.

More knocking. He pulled on a T-shirt and boxers, staggered to the door. He dropped the chain, opened up. Lousy tradecraft, but at this point anyone who wanted him could have him.

The woman outside was medium height, mid-thirties. She had short brown hair, Mediterranean skin. She wore jeans and a khaki jacket that were expensive enough to get her into a three-star restaurant, anonymous enough not to be noticed. She pushed into his living room.

“You look awful.” She wasn’t American, but he couldn’t place her accent.

“Who are you?”

“I’m here to save your life.”

She bought two large coffees, led him to the little park on the harbor by the Star Ferry terminal. “We could go for a ride, but you’d mess up my shoes.” They sat close on a bench. Anyone watching would have thought them lovers. “Are you ready to get back to work?”

“You seem to think I’m someone I’m not.”

“Don’t be stupid. I know your name. Shall I tell you your résumé, too?” She wrinkled her nose at the whiskey pouring off him. “If I had a match, I could set you on fire. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe you’re too far gone for this.”

“I don’t even know what this is.”

“I’m looking for an experienced case officer. The pay is fifty thousand dollars a month. American, not HK.”

The pain in his head was so steep that he could hardly focus. He wondered if he was hallucinating. “If you don’t mind my asking, what’s your name?”

“You can call me Salome.”

She had to be joking. Yet she seemed serious. He waited. He still knew how to listen.

“You’ll work directly for me. I need an operations officer.”

“This is a private security agency, like Blackwater.”

“Nothing like Blackwater. We’re not in the profit-making business. We’re not for hire.”

“Is this an off-the-books agency op?”

“You know better than that.”

He was glad she’d said no. Otherwise he would have had to write her off as a liar. The CIA didn’t run secret ops outside its network of stations. It happily broke laws all over the world, but it didn’t violate its own bureaucratic rules.

“But you have funding. From somewhere.”

“Unlimited. You can work in your accustomed manner.”

“Meaning a lot of memos from human resources that no one ever reads.”

For the first time that morning, she smiled. She had small, perfect teeth. “Safe houses, secure coms. Tech. Whatever you need.”

“Is this one mission, or several?”

“It has an indefinite time frame. First I need a team. And that starts with you.”

“And you plan to operate in a — an extralegal manner.”

She sidled closer. “We’re on the side of the angels. This is about nuclear nonproliferation. By any means necessary.”

“I never would have guessed you liked Malcolm X.”

“Who?”

He couldn’t tell if she was joking.

“Assassinations. Industrial sabotage. Things America should be doing but isn’t.”

He wondered if she worked for Israel. But the Mossad was already running these operations against Iran, and it would never have trusted such sensitive missions to non-Jews.

“But you need to understand. That grand machine you worked for all those years, it won’t be happy with this. I doubt you can ever go back to the United States.”

“Lucky for both of us I don’t much care.” Despite himself, he began to be impressed. Every intelligence officer dreamed of this, a black network unbound by rules and bureaucracy. “The CIA or Mossad will destroy you. Even if they agree with what you’re doing.”

“Not if they don’t know we exist. Not if they can’t find us, don’t have anywhere to look. And you’re right, the Mossad will take the blame for a lot of what we do. The more they deny it, the less anyone will believe them.”

“One example. You give me a new name, new passport. Even if it’s perfect, NSA will eventually run a face scan, compare the passport photo to its database. They’ll match my new name with my old face. They won’t understand why. They’ll decide they’d better find out. They’ll look for me. And when they look, they find.”

“Plastic surgery. We’ll send you to Thailand. There are ways to change your facial features and beat the software without making you look too strange.”

He wanted to believe that she’d come to him because he had some special skill. But he knew the truth. She’d stumbled across him somehow, realized he was desperate enough to say yes.

“I can’t betray my country. If you’re working for Russia, some enemy of the United States, tell me now so I can walk away.”

She shook her head. “It’s not an enemy. All I can tell you. You want to be reassured like a child, find another job. Or drink yourself to death. It’s no concern to me.”

He closed his eyes, wondered if she’d still be real when he opened them.

She was. “All right.”

She extended a hand. He took it. The gesture somehow felt both absurd and necessary. “You’ll need a new name.”

“Duke. Abraham Duke.”

7

Pain and consciousness crossed the line nose-to-nose, too close to call. Wells awoke with the uncanny feeling that someone was vacuuming his brain through his right ear. The vacuum quieted to a steady buzz, a Harley engine on a distant highway, and Wells remembered. The gate. The guard. Montoya.

Wells collected himself. He’d never entirely understood the expression before. Putting together body and mind, making sure every part still worked. No broken bones, though his right hand seemed stuck. He tilted his head slowly down. His forearm was cuffed to the chair where he sat. He had been parked at a long wooden table in the house’s formal dining room. A painting of Montoya and a younger woman filled one wall, a lusty Old Master knockoff. The couple wore modern clothes, a suit and dress, but they bore the self-satisfied smiles of seventeenth-century royalty.

Wells wondered if he ought to tip the chair over, try to free himself, but he had no next move. Better to stay upright. He reached behind his head with his left hand, touched fingertips to skull. Lightly. Blood seeped from his torn scalp. A swollen ridge of bone ran along the side of his head like an old-style three-dimensional plastic topographic map. But no fracture. He had a couple rough days ahead, but unless he had a brain bleed, he’d be fine.

Wells reached down for his knife and flashlight. Both gone. Montoya hadn’t survived so long by making stupid mistakes. Wells wished he understood why the Colombian was treating him this way. He wanted to consider the possibilities, but the buzzing in his ear crowded his thoughts. After a minute, he gave up, closed his eyes.

A creaking door woke him. He turned. His brain wasn’t ready for rapid movements. Bile filled his mouth. He choked it down before it seeped from his lips.

“Mr. Wells.” The ceiling lights flicked on. A dog’s nails scrabbled across the floor. Montoya came around, took the chair next to Wells. A Doberman followed, sat at his feet. Montoya carried a plastic gallon jug of water and two cups. He had changed his clothes. Now he wore a polo shirt, jeans, buttery brown loafers. Like an investment banker on Saturday. Wells had seen this stylishness before in men of extreme violence. He disliked it. It was an affectation that didn’t make the torture or murder less real.

Montoya splashed water into the cups, gave Wells one, drank from the other. A simple way of proving the liquid wasn’t drugged. Wells sipped cautiously, knowing he’d vomit if he drank too fast. Head injuries went better on empty stomachs.

“None of this is necessary,” he said. “I’m only here because you called Vinny.”

“The Parque was my little joke. I know who you are, I knew you would have no trouble with those boys. This”—Montoya tapped his head—“I didn’t intend. Pedro, my guard, he saw you come to the gate, he overreacted.”

Wells closed his eyes and marveled at the world’s stupidity. And his own. If he’d only listened to the guards when they told him to wait. But his adrenaline had been shouting too loudly. Or maybe Montoya was lying. Maybe that little love tap had been his way of showing Wells he was in charge. “He didn’t see you reaching to shake my hand?”

“It seems not. No matter. You’re here now.” Montoya’s English carried only a trace of an accent. He must have had a tutor growing up. He pulled a penlight from his pocket. “Open your eyes wide.” He shined the light into Wells’s eyes. The glare was agony, but Wells was glad for the field medicine.

“Your pupils are normal.” Meaning that Wells wasn’t hemorrhaging. “I’m going to uncuff you. I understand if you’re upset, but you should know that Mickey is very loyal.” The dog grunted in agreement as Montoya popped the cuff. “May I tell you why you’re here?”

“Tell me whatever you like.” Wells poured himself a fresh glass of water. He wanted this foolishness over, so he could go back to his hotel and sleep, if the buzz in his ears would let him.

“Your former director and I knew each other in Bogotá. This was late eighties, early nineties. When he was kidnapped.” Duto had been taken hostage for two months while he served as a case officer in Colombia, a fact almost no one outside the agency knew.

“He said you were one of his agents.”

“I was in the army. We traded information about the FARC. I called him comandante as a joke. He didn’t run me any more than I ran him. In fact, I helped find him when he was taken.”

“Thought that was an SF job.”

“Without us, they’d never have found him.”

A bit of revisionist history that might even be true. “What about you?” Though Wells hardly needed to ask. Montoya’s smooth English and white skin marked him as Colombian aristocracy.

“I grew up in Bogotá. All I wanted to do my whole life was fight the scum.”

“The guerrillas trying to keep their families alive, you mean.”

“Communist filth who think stealing is easier than working.”

Mickey the Doberman sensed his master’s irritation and growled. Time to move to safer conversational ground. In truth, Wells knew little about the Colombian civil war.

“How long were you in the army?”

“I resigned in ’93. Not my choice.”

“You have aspirin, Juan Pablo? Advil?”

Montoya rose. Mickey stood to follow, but Montoya grunted in Spanish, and the dog sat down. No wonder Montoya hadn’t worried about taking off the handcuffs. Wells was a prisoner here with or without them. He stared at the painting of Montoya until the man himself came back. “Ibuprofen or Vicodin?” Montoya rattled the pills like a game-show host offering a deal.

Wells dry-swallowed four Advil. “You were telling me why you called Duto.”

“I was telling you about 1993. My nickname.” Montoya didn’t wait for an answer. “Diecisiete. Means seventeen. I was leading a company, chasing a FARC platoon that had hit one of our patrols. The village was called Buenaventura. The peasants there, they sympathized with the scum. Wouldn’t tell us anything. I knew they were lying, but I decided not to hurt them.”

Wells held his head very still.

“A kilometer after we left, an ambush. Bombs, sniper, multiple fields of fire. Very professional. They knew we were coming. No question they set up while we were inside the village. It took three hours to run them off. I lost four men, five more wounded, eight minor injuries. Seventeen. I turned around, brought my company back to Buenaventura.”

Montoya poured himself a glass of water. Wells saw that he’d told this story before. That he enjoyed it, wanted Wells to ask questions, play a role. Wells didn’t speak. Finally, Montoya drank his water and went on.

“This was about ten p.m. We went into seventeen houses, told the fathers, you or your oldest son. Only one tried to give us his son. Of course, we didn’t take the boy. I lined those seventeen lying bastards up in the square, the middle of town. The plaza. I brought out the whole village. I told them, these soldiers are my family. My family dies, your families die. At midnight we lined them up, shot them all. Except the one coward. Him I beat to death myself. He cried for mercy all the way down.”

“You showed him.”

“Word got out and the human-rights coños made a fuss. They called me Diecisiete. My colonel made me resign. I was kind. I should have burned the whole village. They set us up, they knew it.”

“I hope you don’t stay up late waiting for your Peace Prize.”

“Afterwards, a friend of a friend came calling. From Medellín. He told me he wanted me to work for him, he needed men like me. I decided if the army wouldn’t have me, I might as well. This was before the Mexicans got in the way, all the money came to Colombia. You can’t imagine. This man had a room in his basement filled with pallets of bills. Waist-high, hundreds of millions of dollars waiting to be laundered.”

Again Montoya stopped, waiting for Wells to ask about the life. Give him a chance to brag about the hookers, the cars, the parties, Pablo Escobar.

“Then the Mexicans took over. Meth got popular — they didn’t need us for that, they made it themselves in the desert. Plus we made a mistake and let them into our networks. Another mistake, we paid with product rather than cash. And, the truth, they were harder than we were. For us, the violence was part of business. The Mexicans liked killing. I saw the future. In 1999 I hooked up with the Sinaloas.”

“And stayed in touch with Vinny.”

“Every so often, he had a question for me. Mainly political. Which generals were the greediest, which ones we couldn’t buy. After September eleventh, he asked me to tell him if the Muslims paid the cartels to sneak anyone over the border. Though the cartels would never have agreed. They had way more money than those crazy Arabs, and they didn’t want war with the United States.”

“In return.”

“Three times the narcos came close, three times Vinny made sure I knew.”

An answer that explained why Wells was here. Montoya wasn’t just another agent whom Duto had run twenty years before. He was a contract killer whom Duto had kept as an off-the-books source. And Duto had blown three federal drug investigations to protect him.

Inside Langley, no one cared about the drug war. It was viewed as a nuisance at best, a threat to regional stability at worst. But senators couldn’t work with cocaine traffickers. Montoya was a piece of Duto’s past, and Duto had expected he’d stay there. His phone call had no doubt come as an unpleasant surprise. Duto needed to know what Montoya wanted, whether he was trying a backdoor blackmail scheme, but he couldn’t meet Montoya in person. Thus Wells was beating up kids in Guatemala City.

“When was the last time you talked to Duto?”

“Two thousand seven. By then, the Zetas had taken over. The worst of all. Near the border, they had ranches where they dissolved corpses in acid. Not always corpses, either. Sometimes the men were still alive.”

Listening to Montoya, Wells felt like a coral reef in a befouled sea, the world’s ugliness covering him, seeping through him. “So you ran.”

“The Zetas told us, disappear or die. The men I worked for had no choice. They had nowhere to go, and they were too proud anyway. I had money, a passport. I didn’t care about a narco ballad for my glorious death. I went to Cuba, ended up here.”

“You’re not on anybody’s list?”

“Everyone I worked for is dead. I didn’t snitch and I didn’t kill anyone’s family, except once. Maybe one day someone’s cousin will come for me. We’re only two hundred kilometers from Mexico. Meantime, I enjoy my life. I have a new wife.” He nodded at the painting. “We just found out she’s pregnant. Twins.”

“Congratulations.” Wells almost envied Montoya his psychopathy. The Colombian had tossed his crimes aside as easily as a bag of garbage. Or leftover bones. Wells wondered if Montoya’s dreams were as pallid as Wells’s own. He wouldn’t ask. He wanted nothing in common with this man. “So you hadn’t talked to Duto in all these years — why call him now?”

“In Mexico, I worked with a man named Eduardo Nuñez. Peruvian. When I left, he decided to disappear also. We only saw each other once more. But we trusted each other. We stayed in touch, knew how to find each other. A while ago, he told me he had something. That an American named Hank had put a group together, and Eduardo had told him about me. I wasn’t interested, but I wanted to see this guy, if he was any threat. I said okay, if he comes to Guatemala we can meet. A couple weeks later, he called me.”

“You make him go to the Parque Central?”

Montoya smiled. “He was smarter than you. We met in the Radisson. He was in his early forties, I think. Medium height, medium weight. Horn-rim glasses and a baseball cap. Nothing in his face to remember.”

“A good spy.”

“We met in his suite. Straightaway he showed me two passports, U.S. and Australian. He wanted me to see the quality. They were good. Better than any I’d seen. The people I work for make your friends in Mexico look poor. I need professionals for a professional operation, and I’d like you involved.”

“He said people? Not agency, not government, people.” The choice of word didn’t necessarily mean anything, but Wells wanted to be sure.

“Yes. People. I asked for specifics. He said we could talk about money, but that he couldn’t tell me about his group. Not who was financing it. Not who or what they might be targeting, not unless I agreed.”

“Timing?”

“He was vague. Said they’d been running for a while, but now they were shifting gears. I asked if it would be one operation. He said no, several, different levels of complexity. I asked him what he wanted me to do and he said the work would be familiar. I told him I couldn’t do anything in Mexico or Central America or Colombia, I was too well known, and he said that wouldn’t be a problem.”

“But no hint to the targets. Or type of ops.”

Montoya shook his head. “I’ll admit, I was intrigued.”

“Assuming it was real.”

“Eduardo had known Hank before, and he wasn’t the type to fall for a scam. And Hank looked real to me. Agency or ex. I saw case officers in Colombia, not just Duto, and he had the same air.”

“Which is what, in your opinion? Like he was dangerous?”

“No. In my experience, very few CIA are personally dangerous. Or brave. The comandante was an exception. He went on raids with us, and after the Special Forces rescued him, the first thing he said to them was—”

“What took you pricks so long?” Shafer had told Wells the story.

Montoya smiled, his first real smile of the night. “Sí. No, what all CIA have in common is this attitude that you’re in control. You make me an offer, you don’t care whether I take it. I don’t, someone else will. And if it all blows up in the end, you go to another city, at another station. It’s my life, my country. For you, it’s a game, a job.”

The description had been more true before September 11, Wells thought. The stakes were higher now, and case officers faced more personal danger. But let Montoya think what he liked. “That’s how this man Hank came across?”

“Yes. One more reason I didn’t think he was faking. The simplest of all. He had to know that if he tried to take advantage of me, I’d make him pay. I told him I’d think it over, the next day I told him I wasn’t interested. That was it. He didn’t push. Never contacted me again. Then, two weeks ago, Eduardo called. He said, Juan Pablo, you won’t believe this. The American wants us to kill a station chief. I said, Don’t. If you do this, the CIA, they chase you forever. He wanted to talk about it. I told him not over the phone. He was supposed to come to Guatemala last week. He didn’t show up, didn’t call. I don’t know if he’s dead, or still on the operation, or he ran.”

“He didn’t give you details. Not the country or the time or anything else.”

“I wouldn’t let him. Face-to-face only for something like that.”

“Let’s go through it one more time. Some guy whose name you don’t know tried to hire you for a superelite hit squad. Which is now going after a station chief. Whose name you also don’t know.”

“The senator will tell you I’ve never lied to him, Señor Wells. Why now?”

“A hundred thousand dollars.”

Montoya swept his arm in a vague oval: Look around. You think I need a hundred thousand dollars? “What I want, truly, is for the comandante to talk to INS. A visa. My name is on the restricted list. My wife and I are overdue to visit New York. A shopping trip.”

One that ends with her giving birth in a hospital in Manhattan so your twins are American citizens. “Not sure he has that pull anymore.”

“If I’d wanted to blackmail, I would have called sooner. I’m giving him this, a favor.”

“Tell me about Eduardo.”

“Mid-thirties. He moved to Panama City after Mexico.”

“Eduardo was his real name?”

“The only one I ever knew him by.”

“How did he know Hank?”

“Peru. Eduardo was in the army there.”

“Don’t suppose you have a picture of them.”

“I have a phone for Hank that doesn’t work anymore and two numbers and an email for Eduardo. You can have them all.” Montoya walked out. Wells was glad to be alone. The Advil had lightened the pressure in his skull, but overwhelming fatigue had taken its place.

He closed his eyes for a few seconds, woke to find Mickey the Doberman nuzzling his crotch. “Mickey—”

Behind him, Montoya yelled in Spanish. The dog trotted out, leaving Wells with a trail of slobber across his sweatpants. “He gets excited.”

“I’m just glad he likes me.”

Montoya handed Wells a paper, three phone numbers and an email address, written in an elegant script. Wells wondered if he should tip the possible Iranian connection, decided to take the risk. “Did Hank or Eduardo ever mention Iran?”

Montoya shook his head.

“The Revolutionary Guard? Hezbollah?”

“Nothing.”

Wells pushed himself up. A wave of dizziness nearly pulled him down, but he braced his hands against the table until it passed.

“Stay the night if you wish.” Montoya put a hand on his arm. Wells shook him off. He wouldn’t become beholden to this man for even a few hours of rest. He wouldn’t give Montoya the pleasure of thinking they were brothers-in-arms.

At the hotel, Wells drew the blackout shades and slept. Shafer could wait. He woke once but couldn’t remember his dreams. Or even if he’d had any. In the morning, his headache had diffused like a stain down his neck. A sign of healing. He hoped. Twenty-seven days left before Anne’s deadline. Or was it twenty-six? His phone vibrated. Shafer.

“This is not the Jewish Weekly.”

“What does that even mean, Ellis?”

“You got to Guatemala City a day and a half ago.”

“Talked to him last night.”

“And?”

“I don’t want to talk too much on an open line, but it’s weird. He’s got almost no details, and the ones he has are bizarre. A supersecret organization with untold wealth. But he’s convinced it’s real. And Vinny’s right, he’s a serious guy. A snake, but serious.”

“Snake.”

“This little trip was good for me. Reminded me how dirty Vinny can play when he sets his mind to it.”

“You forgot?”

Like Shafer hadn’t been in that office two nights before, telling Wells he owed Duto a favor. “Point is, I’m half convinced, too. He gave me three phone numbers and an email address. I’ll send them. Anything new up there?”

“Nobody talks to me anymore.”

“Poor Ellis. The guy who connected him to the case officer has a girlfriend in Panama City. I’ll go down there while you run the numbers.”

“Extending your vacation.”

“Always wanted to see the Canal Zone. Call me if anything hits.” Wells hung up. He wasn’t sure he believed Montoya’s story, but it was too good not to chase.

8

Soon as the plastic surgery healed, Duke went recruiting. Agents he’d run in Lima. Mercenaries he’d met in Baghdad. An ex — FSB officer from the bars in Phuket. The game was tricky. He needed guys as desperate as he’d been. But not so desperate that they would trade him to the police or the agency to solve their problems. Guys who saw a couple moves ahead, saw he was serious and the money was real.

He found them. Three South Africans for security and skull cracking. A Peruvian and a Mexican, left over from the cartel wars. Brothers from Beirut who’d lost their parents to a Hezbollah bomb and thought the idea of coming back at Iran was just peachy.

As Salome had promised, technical support was no problem. She handled the back end. She had a houseful of hackers and document forgers somewhere in Eastern Europe. Safe houses all over the world. Private planes. Duke didn’t see the budget, but they were spending at least a hundred million dollars a year. Government-sized money, though he couldn’t figure which government.

Nine months after their first meeting in Hong Kong, Salome ordered him to Rome. She gave him two photographs of trim middle-aged white men in sweaters and slacks. He knew they were German even before she told him. Only Germans wore mustaches so proudly.

“Herrs Schneider und Wolff run a steel company in Munich. Sudmetallfabrik A.G. They’re selling ultra-high-strength steel to Iran for centrifuge parts. The export papers say it’s for a gas pipeline in Indonesia, but it’s being diverted in Dubai. They know. They’re charging double the usual price.”

He asked a few questions. She had the answers. He didn’t doubt her intel. These guys weren’t exactly the top of the food chain, but he supposed that was the point. Even if no one’s heard of you, if you’re helping the Iranian nuclear program, you’re at risk. Plus they’d be light on security. If his guys couldn’t handle this job, they’d have no chance with harder targets.

“No warnings.”

She shook her head. He ought to have been horrified. They were about to kill two men for selling steel. But he felt the same cool excitement that came at the blackjack table when the cards fell his way. His whole life had brought him here. He was through swimming against the devil’s tide.

Besides, slowing down the Iranian nuclear program wasn’t the world’s worst idea.

“When?”

“Soon. Our backers have been patient, but they’d like to see some return on their investment. Beyond that, the operational details are up to you.”

He wished he had something smart to say, something to immortalize the moment. “Done and done.” The words didn’t sound as cool out loud as he had hoped. She handed him the file with their photos and nodded: dismissed.

He wanted to kill them together. Separate simultaneous assassinations meant keeping two teams in constant contact. Using a single team for two jobs was even riskier. Too much could go wrong in even a five-minute window. Best to shoot them at work, be gone before anyone called the police.

Sudmetallfabrik operated from a two-story factory in a middle-income neighborhood in northwest Munich. Two weeks of surveillance revealed that Schneider and Wolff followed a simple, rigid schedule. No surprise. They were German. Schneider, the company’s Geschäftsführer, arrived each morning at 7:30 a.m. Wolff, his deputy, came in ten minutes later. Both men drove gunmetal-gray BMW sedans. Schneider left between 5:45 and 6:00 p.m. Wolff stayed another half hour.

The factory had a single guard at its front gatehouse and was ringed by a low fence with no barbed wire. But it had cameras watching the entrance, and one hundred and fifty workers inside. Not ideal.

Fortunately, Schneider and Wolff made a habit of having lunch outside the factory. On the first four days of the workweek, Schneider’s BMW rolled off the lot at noon. It returned an hour later, plus or minus five minutes for traffic. The men went to a different restaurant each day. On Friday, they stayed in. Duke figured they ate with their managers on Fridays.

They followed the same restaurant schedule both weeks. Monday was Alter Wirt day, traditional Bavarian. Duke planned to hit them on their way out of the restaurant’s parking lot. They’d be more relaxed. They might even have had a beer or two.

He put Eduardo Nuñez and Rodrigo Salazar on the hit. His cartel vets. Nuñez was almost Duke’s age. They’d worked together in Lima. Salazar was a few years younger, and Duke knew him only through Nuñez. They were used to narcos who traveled in armored convoys. He doubted they’d ever had a job this easy.

The day dawned bright, clear, unseasonably warm for fall in Munich. Schneider and Wolff rolled off the lot at 12:01 p.m. Five minutes later, they reached the Alter Wirt. Duke trailed in a Passat, with Nuñez in the passenger seat. He wanted to be sure they had the right targets. Killing two random Germans would be an unpromising start to his new career. He drove slowly past the parking lot as the BMW’s doors swung open.

“Yes?” Nuñez said.

He watched Schneider and Wolff step out. “Yes.”

Ten minutes later, he dropped Nuñez off at a bus stop that had no surveillance cameras. After that, the job belonged to Nuñez and Salazar.

At 12:57, Schneider and Wolff left the Alter Wirt. They were eager to get back to work. Sudmetallfabrik was bidding for an order from a natural-gas plant in Qatar. The BMW’s keyless entry system unlocked the car as Schneider approached. The men slid in, buckled up. Schneider put the sedan in reverse — and the rear camera warning beeped. A black motorcycle filled the screen in the BMW’s center console.

Schneider wondered where the bike had come from. He hadn’t seen it in the lot as they walked out of the restaurant. Nonetheless, there it was. A sportbike with rider and passenger, both wearing black helmets, tinted faceplates.

The passenger stepped off, walked around the side of the BMW. Schneider wondered if the man was upset that he’d backed up. Schneider hadn’t hit him, or even come close. But these younger bikers were fanatical about their motos. Schneider himself rode, though only on weekends.

The man knocked on Schneider’s window. A foolish interruption. Now he was simply wasting time. Schneider lowered the window a few inches. The man reached behind his jacket, came out with a pistol, a heavy black pistol—

Schneider had no time to hit the gas, no time to duck, no time for anything but—

Nuñez shot the driver four times, though one would have done the trick. The passenger scrabbled for his door handle, but he had less than no chance. Nuñez went to one knee and popped him four times, too. He liked symmetry in his hits.

The shooting took six seconds. The pistol was unregistered, untraceable. Nuñez dropped it in the driver’s lap, walked calmly back to the bike, took his place behind Salazar. They were gone before anyone even pulled a phone to call the police. Salazar turned right out of the lot, rode hard for thirty seconds, then made a left and slowed to a more deliberate pace. Eight minutes later, he ditched the bike behind a grocery store in Dachau. They switched to a gray Opel Astra, the most forgettable car in existence. They drove north for a half hour, parked the Astra in an Ikea lot. Across the lot was another Opel, this one white. Duke sat in the driver’s seat.

“Next time give us a harder one,” Salazar said.

“Be careful what you wish for.”

The killings generated headlines across Germany, especially when newspapers in Munich and Berlin received documents showing the company’s connection to Iran. Munich police acknowledged asking the BND, the German intelligence service, for help in the investigation. A left-wing Munich paper reported that the BND was examining if the Mossad was involved. The article prompted angry denials from Jerusalem, silence from Berlin.

By then, Duke and his team were on their next job, two Iranian nuclear scientists at a conference in Belgrade. This one was trickier, but still easy enough. The scientists traveled under false names, but they didn’t have bodyguards. For twelve thousand five hundred euros, a Serbian police colonel on the conference security team gave up their hotel and room. Nuñez shot them in an elevator on the conference’s second morning. He was fifteen kilometers outside Belgrade before the police put up their first roadblock. Duke never found out if the colonel had thrown in the delay as a freebie.

Over the next eighteen months, they poisoned three rocket engineers in Kiev, garroted a banker in Madrid. Finally, in Singapore, they shot the president of a company that supplied radar for the antiaircraft batteries that surrounded Iran’s nuclear facilities. Mossad Widens Front in Secret War Against Iran, reported the London Times. Israel’s denials were ignored. Duke found himself inside the life that he’d imagined growing up, the life that neither the CIA nor gambling had delivered.

Between missions, he lived in a house he rented in Thailand, on an island near Phuket. He’d been back from the Singapore operation for three weeks when Salome called. Tomorrow, she said. An address in Bangkok’s eastern suburbs. He expected another target. They’d seen each other only once since that first mission.

He arrived the next morning to find Salome curled on an expensive leather couch, her hands loose. She reminded him of nothing so much as a hungry cat. He could guess at the mouse.

“This isn’t working, Glenn.”

The name stung. He couldn’t remember when last he’d heard it. Even in his dreams he was Duke. Worse, he didn’t know what he’d done wrong.

“Are my old friends on us?”

“Why would they bother? We’ve done nothing. Newest NIE”—National Intelligence Estimate—“says that by 2015, 2016, Iran will have a bomb, 2017 at the outside.”

Her casual reference to the estimate confirmed what he’d always believed, that she or her bosses had Washington connections. National Intelligence Estimates were offered to the President as the best guess of the CIA and the rest of the American intel community. A report on Iran would have been classified at the highest level.

“The Iranians built their program to survive a full-scale attack from Israel. A mercenary team isn’t taking it down. Not without capes and superpowers.” His voice was tender and low in his throat. He feared she’d dismiss him, send him back to the empty place that he’d lived.

“We need a new course.”

He remembered the magic moment in blackjack when the dealer pulled a card, slid it across the smooth green baize. His fate determined, yet still hidden.

“Only the Americans can do it,” she said. “But they won’t risk war. We have to make them see Iran as a direct threat.” She spoke patiently, as if only an idiot couldn’t follow the logic. Only the American military can stop Iran; therefore, we’ll trick it into an attack. Q.E.D.

“That’s impossible.”

“Not necessarily.” She told him how. “So? What do you think?”

What he thought was treason. He could justify what he’d done so far. The people they’d killed were helping Iran build nuclear weapons. Now they were talking about killing Americans. He would be a traitor. Worthy of the needle. But he no longer cared.

“You have someone who can play this role? Speaks perfect Farsi? Native Iranian?”

She nodded.

“Even so. My professional opinion. First thing CIA will wonder is whether the Iranians are running a false flag. Everyone remembers 2002, how we got used to push the Iraq invasion. That’s deep institutional memory.”

“Of course.” She smiled, those clean white vampire teeth.

“Our guy can’t give them too much, either. Or everything at once. Has to be multiple ops, several months, and the intel has to be fragmentary. Make it too easy, spoon-feed it, they won’t believe that, either. He needs enough details to make himself credible, without giving up anything that the agency can verify inside Iran. He needs what a comic-book writer would call an origin story—”

“What is that?”

“A reason that he’s picked this specific case officer. He needs to seem jittery, but not so scared he lacks credibility. The more serious this gets, the worse they’ll want to debrief him. That can never happen. His legend won’t hold. So there will be tension between the value of the intel he’s giving them and the fact they don’t know who he is. They’ll hate it. We have to give them something they can’t ignore, no matter how much they want to.”

“Such as?”

Killing the President was impossible. Killing a cabinet member or senator was easier, but getting away clean would be tricky. Anyway, killing a station chief was already part of the plan. Another assassination would merely repeat the pattern. They needed something different.

“Bomb-grade uranium. If our guy turned up with an ingot, it would stampede them.”

“HEU.”

“I have no idea where you can get it. Half the people who say they have the stuff are lying. The other half are FBI agents looking for terrorists dumb enough to think they could buy it on eBay. I wouldn’t even mention it as a possibility, but you seem to have a few connections.”

She ignored the not-so-subtle question: And who are they?

“How much?”

“Not necessarily a whole bomb’s worth, but at least a couple hundred grams.”

She shook her head. He expected her to object that he might as well ask her to deliver a unicorn horn. Her complaint was different, though equally valid. “That doesn’t make sense. Why would he have it? How could he have gotten it out of Iran?”

“Maybe he stole it—”

“That’s ridiculous. Foolish. Even if he’s a high-level Revolutionary Guard officer, they’re not going to let him walk into an enrichment plant and leave with HEU.”

She was right. They needed a very good reason for their plant to have the stuff.

And then Duke knew. He explained.

“Might work,” she said when he was done.

“If you can get it. The depots are the most tightly guarded buildings in the world.”

“Let me think about it.”

So she had a source in mind, or at least a thread to one.

“Come up with that, then maybe we can make this happen. Move slow setting up the contact, then fast, so they get caught up in the momentum.”

The plan — crazy as it was — had one crucial factor on its side. Unlike the Iraqis, the Iranians really did have a nuclear program, and no one knew what they would do with a bomb.

“Tell your men we’re suspending everything,” Salome said. “We’ll keep paying them, but there’s no point in risking them on little jobs. Also, think about a case officer for the approach. Someone smart, not too smart.”

“Lots of those. Where?”

“Istanbul, ideally.”

He liked the location. Close to Iran, a natural place for a Rev Guard source to pop up. “You think you can find HEU?”

“You hoping I can or I can’t?”

He told his guys they’d hit the lottery, they’d be paid half their salaries not to work, for a few months at least. They’d get the other half when he called them back. They promised to return when he asked, and he sensed they would.

For a year, he scouted targets, moved money and weapons, added extra safe houses and cars in Turkey. He chose Angola and Thailand for the Israeli embassy bombs. He emailed Salome brief coded notes once a month, filling her in on his progress. She trained the Iranian herself. His name for the operation was Reza. She didn’t tell Duke where she’d gotten him, and he didn’t ask.

Everything was in place, but they didn’t have the uranium. He moved back to Thailand. The call came on a Sunday morning in May, the rainy season just starting. “Time to get the team together.”

“You have it?”

“I’m close. May take a couple more months. The owner’s skittish.”

“It would be ironic if the Iranians finish before we do.”

“Call your guys.”

He met them in Cyprus, a hotel near the airport. He explained they had changed their strategy, and their next hit would be on two Israeli embassies. The change obviously puzzled them, but they weren’t the type to argue, not as long as they were getting paid.

For the pigeon, Duke chose a case officer in Istanbul named Brian Taylor. They’d met in Iraq. At the time, Taylor struck Duke as naïve but decent. One of those guys who’d joined in a flush of patriotism after September 11 without knowing what he was getting into.

Years later, as Duke neared the end of his disastrous run in Hong Kong, Taylor had visited the city on vacation. They’d had dinner at an overpriced Indian restaurant in Kowloon. With his mind on cards, Duke talked even less than usual. Taylor filled the silences. He’d finished a stint in Ankara and was headed back to Istanbul. He had a strange hard-on for the city. Duke remembered enough details from the meal to concoct a plausible cover story for Reza to contact Taylor.

Reza didn’t have the usual cover details. No bank account, driver’s license, or passport. NSA would tear them apart. He would present himself as a ghost of a ghost, a man who didn’t trust the CIA with even the briefest facts of his life. In place of papers, Reza had only himself, his certainty that he was the man he pretended to be. He traveled to Bulgaria to scout the Israeli embassy for an attack. Part of a worldwide operation, his bosses at the Guard told him. Or would have, if they’d been real. He rented a van and garage in Sofia, bought a hundred plastic jerricans, the core of a crude fuel-oil bomb. Then the generals canceled the operation. Security in Bulgaria was too tight. Reza told them he was sorry to lose the chance to bomb the Jews. In reality, he felt only relief. He had to stop his country before it pushed the world into nuclear war. Through his own hard work, he had found a CIA case officer in Istanbul. Brian Taylor, alias Nelson Drew. He wrote Taylor to ask for a meeting.

The embassy bombings went as planned, a few unlucky guards dead, no real damage. The Israelis would thank Langley for the warning, and be ready to listen the next time Taylor’s mysterious source appeared.

Duke told his guys to be ready to move to Manila. Veder was chief of station there. He’d finally have his revenge. Strange but true: for years, Duke had hardly thought of the man. Yet now that Veder had left the on-deck circle and was on his way to the plate, Duke’s anger was rising. If Veder hadn’t come to Lima, maybe Julia wouldn’t have cheated. Maybe he’d still be Glenn Mason, married to her, with a couple rugrats.

Maybe not.

Day after day, his impatience rose. Only one problem. Fall came and went, and Salome still couldn’t lock down the HEU. In December she ordered him to Jakarta. They met in yet another safe house, the kind Duke had grown to expect over his years working for her. A three-bedroom house in a gated community in a suburb that catered to expats. A cursory look at the place revealed its essential emptiness. Generic posters in the bedrooms, bookcases filled with unopened novels, an oven without even a trace of grease.

The houses were owned by local law firms that specialized in buying property for multinational companies that didn’t want their names on the deeds. The lawyers usually didn’t have to disclose their clients. If they did, they listed local shell companies controlled by corporations registered in the Cayman Islands. Salome — or whoever was behind her — had no doubt created so many interlocking shell companies in so many countries that unknotting them would take the CIA years, even with subpoenas.

Another way of saying that Duke still had no idea who was behind this operation.

In Jakara, he found Salome in the kitchen. He reached into the refrigerator, found a cold bottle of Perrier. In every country, the safe houses had Perrier.

“Almost four years, Salome, I don’t know a thing about you. I’m not talking about anything important like your real name. I mean the food you like. If you’ve ever been bungee jumping. If your parents are alive. If you even like Perrier.” He hesitated. “Don’t even know if you like boys or girls.”

“He’s agreed to sell it. More than a kilo.”

“There goes our little chat.”

So she would have her chance at a war. And he would have his chance at Veder.

“Enriched to ninety-plus.”

“Don’t suppose you want to tell me who he is?”

“I had to convince him it’s not a trap. And I couldn’t just take it. Better to buy it, keep him quiet.”

“If you say so.”

“We’ll spend today talking through Manila. Tomorrow, what comes after. Because we need to be ready. Next time I see you will be Istanbul.”

Duke met his men in Manila three days later. Big teams came with their own problems. They couldn’t use the Manila safe house. Even a half-blind neighbor would notice eight military-age men moving in. They rented four apartments, all in a five-block radius in Quiapo, a dingy neighborhood near the port that had more than its share of bucket-of-blood karaoke parlors. Karaoke was a violent sport in the Philippines. Fights over songs were common, shootings not unheard of.

Still Salome wasn’t ready. Duke used the time to have his men look around, check out Manila’s rhythms for themselves. Twelve million people lived in metropolitan Manila. Google maps and satellite photos were no substitute for on-the-ground experience: How quickly did the cops answer alarms? Which intersections had surveillance cams? What back streets and alleys would help them shuck pursuers?

After a week, he called a meeting at his apartment. He couldn’t wait longer. They needed to know the target was a CIA station chief.

Nuñez and Salazar sat on the floor. Everyone else piled onto his couches. The room stank of cheap tobacco, cheap plumbing, cheap curry from the Indian restaurant on the building’s first floor.

“I want to be sure before we go any further that everyone’s on board,” Duke said. “This is an American target. Government. You’re not cool with that, no problem. Get up, walk out.”

“Like you’d let us,” Bram said. Bram Moritz was one of his South Africans. Six feet tall, 215 pounds, not an ounce of fat. He had the tiniest ears Duke had ever seen. Duke wondered if they signaled mental retardation, because Bram was as lethal and stupid as a canyon fire. Back when they were still trying to stop the Iranians directly, Bram had killed the Madrid banker, taken his head half off.

“I would. None of you know who’s paying for all this, and I can disappear, too.” He was lying. The roach-motel rules ended only when the job was done. If ever. Quitters would find their life expectancy measured in hours. But Duke didn’t expect anyone to get up. No one did.

“Good. The target.” He brought a whiteboard and a corkboard out of his bedroom. Intentionally low-tech, a way to remind the guys of their outsider status. He’d push-pinned photos of Veder onto the corkboard, along with the American embassy and Veder’s house, both massively protected. And maps detailing Veder’s routes to and from work.

“Chief of station for Manila. James Veder. Nasty bugger.”

Duke knew they wouldn’t care. These men had no love for the agency. The South Africans blamed it for using mercenaries like them in Iraq for risky jobs — and then refusing to help if they were captured or injured. Leonid, the Russian, hated the United States so much that he’d nearly refused to work for Duke.

Even so, the room briefly went silent as the guys looked at the photos. The lethality of the CIA’s drone campaign and the success of its hunt for bin Laden had erased its failures in Iraq. Not since the 1950s had the agency’s mystique been so overwhelming.

“You didn’t think we were paying all this money to kill Spanish bankers. So this will be like the embassy. We’ll let them know in advance that a station chief is the mark—”

“But this time we don’t miss,” Leonid said.

“That’s right. Make them wish they had listened to our source.”

“Goes back to the larger scheme you can’t tell us about.”

“Any particular reason we pick him?” Nuñez said.

Duke wondered if Nuñez knew about him and Veder and Julia. “Manila’s a good place to operate. I knew him back in the day, but it’s not personal.”

Duke waited for Nuñez to say something more, but the Peruvian merely nodded.

Duke spent an hour outlining the security they could expect. Veder would ride in an armored SUV, inch-thick glass, steel-sided doors. Maybe steel plating underneath. At least two bodyguards, probably ex-Rangers. Pistols on their hips, M-4s close by. Veder would have a pistol, too. All three men would probably wear vests, thin ones like those police officers wore.

“No Kevlar?” Bram said.

“Far as they’re concerned, anonymity is their best defense. Hard to stay low-profile in tac plates. This one won’t be easy. Especially since they’ll know we’re coming.”

“Are we telling them we’re hitting this station?”

“No. Not even going to give them a continent. Otherwise they can focus security too tight. But they can look at a map, see Manila’s not far from Bangkok. They’ll figure this is a potential target.”

They strategized the rest of the afternoon. Duke felt like a football coach, diagramming X’s and O’s on the whiteboard, language itself bending to depersonalize the targets. He dismissed his guys around six. The dinner rush was starting downstairs. The smell of curry hung in the air so powerfully it was almost visible, mouth-watering and stomach-churning at once. The men walked out quickly. Except Nuñez, who hung back until they were alone.

“You okay, Eddie?”

“This mission, I have concerns.” Nuñez got formal when he was anxious. He’d killed guys on four continents. Shooting strangers didn’t trouble him. Standing up to Duke did.

He was a trim man, wiry and handsome, with a square Incan face and long Spanish fingers. He’d once shown Duke a laminated business card of a woman holding a guitar. His girlfriend, he said. She was a singer. As far as Duke could tell, he neither liked nor disliked the job he’d chosen, killing other human beings.

Why did you go to Mexico? Duke had asked him years before.

The money. No other reason.

“Want a Coke?” Duke didn’t wait for an answer but pulled out two lukewarm bottles of Coke. The fridge barely worked. Luckily, Coke tasted decent at sixty degrees.

“What you said, it’s true. We do this, they look for us forever.”

“We’ll do it right. They won’t find us.”

“But this time, there’s a connection. You, Veder, the woman. That’s why you chose him, yes?”

So he knew. “No. It was a long time ago. Julia”—the sting of her name in his mouth surprised him—“it’s not like we were married. The agency will be thinking terrorists all the way. They can’t find us if they’re not looking for us.” Salome’s favorite line. Duke believed her.

“Sooner or later, somebody will think of you.”

“I’m a ghost.”

“Strange. Because I feel like I’m looking at you right now. And you tell me this has nothing to do with you walking in on Veder and your girlfriend?”

“Getting scared, Eddie?”

“I respected you. I came to you privately.”

And signed your death warrant. Duke knew he ought to thank Nuñez for taking this to him one-on-one instead. But the humiliation was too intense. Instead, he found a way to be angry for what Nuñez had done. Obviously the man wasn’t frightened of him. Otherwise he wouldn’t have challenged Duke face-to-face. He would have disappeared. Now Duke would have to kill him. Too bad. Nuñez was the best hitter on the team, and Duke liked him. But he couldn’t risk Nuñez talking. For now he needed to smooth the situation over, figure a clean way to get rid of Nuñez.

Aloud, he said, “I’ll think it over for a couple days. Maybe we go somewhere else. All I ask in return is that you do the same. I want you on the team. I want you in.”

“Yes.”

“You need to get out, we’ll cut you loose. You promise to be quiet, I trust you.”

Nuñez left. Duke gave him a half hour, then texted Salome from a burner, a blank message with the subject heading “5to1.” Odds meant an emergency.

She called four minutes later. “Yes?”

“Dennis has a cold.” D for Dennis, since Nuñez had been the fourth man to join the team.

“He always seemed hearty to me. Any reason in particular?”

Duke didn’t plan to tell Salome that his history with Veder had spooked Nuñez. “He’s run-down. It happens.”

“He contagious?”

“That’s always a risk.” Duke paused. “We can play without him.”

“I’m not thrilled, but I’ll defer to you. If you’re sure.”

Was he sure? He would be killing one of his own men. Not to defend himself. Not even from lust or anger. Simply to smooth the path for yet another murder. “I’m sure. What about on your end? Are you close?”

She hung up.

Now Duke just had to get rid of a trained assassin. Duke would have one chance at him. If he missed, he could be sure Nuñez wouldn’t.

Duke spent the night drinking cold coffee, considering plays. First he leaned toward sending Nuñez to do a job outside Manila. Hong Kong, say. Split him from the team. Ask Salome to hire guys to kill Nuñez there, make the body disappear. No doubt she had connections in Hong Kong. She’d found Duke there easily enough.

But the play was way too obvious. Hong Kong? Why me? Why now? Nuñez would take off. Before he did, he would tell the rest of the team that Duke was after him, and why.

Duke could also try to arrange something sly in Manila. A hit-and-run. A botched mugging. But even if Nuñez survived for only a few hours, he would tell the police what he knew. And nobody would believe Nuñez had died in an accident, no matter how well Duke sold it.

As dawn approached, he fell asleep. When he woke, he saw a third way. The more he considered it, the better he liked it. He called Salome, explained what he needed.

“You’re sure this is best?”

“Yes.”

“All right. You’ll have it tomorrow.”

She hung up. If she could get him everything that fast, she must have a second team running surveillance on him and his guys. She was even more paranoid than he’d imagined.

The package came the next afternoon. Thinner than he’d hoped. A dozen photos, bank statements, a flash drive with a few soundless video clips. The B-team must be just one or two men. Even Salome had limits. No matter. The “evidence” would be enough, if he presented it the right way. And to the right person.

He called Bram. “You alone?”

“Sure.”

“Roja. Now.” Roja was his apartment. “Come by yourself, don’t tell anyone.”

Bram arrived fifteen minutes later. With his short haircut and square face, he looked like what he was, dumb muscle. What Duke needed. Anyone else would have shredded the story he was about to spin.

“We have a problem. And you’re the only one I trust enough to tell.”

Duke laid the photos on a table. Long-lens surveillance of Nuñez in Panama City, sitting with a fortyish man in a short-sleeve blue silk shirt and linen pants. Duke neither knew nor cared who the other man was.

“You know what you’re seeing?”

“Eddie.”

“And a guy he owes a million dollars. Named Carlo.”

“Huh.”

“Nuñez told me he was clear of the cartels. He didn’t tell me he had to buy his way out. He borrowed money from this guy. Four hundred thousand at two and a half points a month plus a buck a year. You know how that works?”

Bram shook his head.

“Costs him ten thousand a month, every month. Then, if he doesn’t pay the whole nut back by the end of the year, they add another hundred thousand.”

“Ten thousand dollars a month? That’s crazy.”

Duke nodded. Poor Eddie. “He’s stuck now close to a million.”

“Eddie can take care of himself. I’d take odds on him over this guy.”

“Maybe one-on-one. But they’re looking at his family, too. Eddie’s got one move left. Tell Carlo what he’s been doing with us.”

“But we have nothing to do with Panama.”

Trust Bram to raise the one objection Duke could answer. “Our activities are of interest to various intelligence services, Bram. Which makes information about them valuable.” Duke made sure to lay the sarcasm so thickly that even Bram would understand the sneer in his voice. Don’t argue. Trust me and do what I say. “Long story short, Eddie came to me, said if I don’t get him square he’ll have no choice but to try to settle this on his own. Which means giving us up.”

“Eddie always seemed straight to me.”

“This kind of hole, you can’t know what someone will do.”

Bram’s eyes backed into his head until they were as small and dull as jellybeans.

“You want me to show you how we know he’s paying Carlo?” Duke grabbed a marker, started drawing boxes on the whiteboard, throwing in names of banks at random. Boxes and lines always intimidated.

“It’s all right, then. I get it.”

“I knew you would.”

“Now what?”

“We deal with it. It’s my fault. I never should have brought him in.”

“Eddie?” Bram scratched his chin, a parody of deep thought.

“It’s my call.” An old trick. Take away the subordinate’s authority, and with it the moral responsibility. My decision. I’ll face the consequences. Duke waited for a final nod from Bram. “Good. We need to move tonight—”

“But—”

Duke steamrolled the objection. “Call Nuñez. Tell him you’re worried about him. You want to meet him somewhere no one will suspect. A karaoke club. Tonight. Late. Suggest the Lucky Jack.”

“Is that around here?”

“Santa Mesa. I’ll give you the address.” Santa Mesa was a dingy neighborhood east of Quiapo. Duke had scouted clubs there the day before, looking for a place that had private rooms and no security cameras.

“He’ll go for it?”

“Don’t overthink it, Bram.”

“What if he wants to meet somewhere else?”

“Has to be there. Somewhere no one will see you.”

Bram called Nuñez, repeated Duke’s lines word for word. Nuñez seemed hesitant but eventually agreed. Probably he viewed Bram as too dumb to fear.

Across the street from the Lucky Jack Karaoke Special Club was a run-down six-story building filled with massage parlors that made no effort to hide their real business as brothels. At nine p.m. Duke entered the chipped concrete lobby, made the mistake of riding the elevator up. The cab stopped twice without explanation. On the way down, I’ll take the stairs.

After a three-minute, sixty-foot ride, the doors opened onto a weirdly well-lit corridor. Duke walked inside the Little Flower Massage Spa, explained he wanted overnight use of a room with a window that overlooked the street.

“All night? Big man.” The madam was a stout unpleasant woman who wore cat-eye contact lenses. She led him into a room directly across from the entrance to the club.

“Perfect.”

“One girl, two girls?”

“No girls. No sex.”

“No sex, still pay. Three hundred U.S.”

He handed over fifteen twenty-dollar bills. She counted them twice, held them close to her nose like they might be fake. “Like to listen, huh?” He ignored her until she left. He set his phone alarm, turned out the light, lay on the floor. He wasn’t taking a chance on the massage table. Probably bacteria from four continents in its seams.

His alarm woke him at eleven. He left the room dark, stood by the window. He should have been nervous. He’d never killed anyone. But he was ready. He saw now the devil didn’t come shouting for your soul. He touched your shoulder and told jokes until you gave it to him on your own like a guy buying a friend a drink.

Fifteen minutes later, Nuñez showed. He wore a green windbreaker, three-quarters unzipped. Duke could just see the faint outline of the holster tucked inside his waistband. He looked around, walked inside the club. He emerged a few minutes later and stood outside, smoking. Nuñez didn’t smoke. Basic countersurveillance. He looked around for about two minutes, then stubbed out the cigarette and disappeared into the club.

Bram showed up at one minute to midnight. As Duke had ordered, he wore a T-shirt and shorts, no place to hide a weapon. He walked into the club. Duke left the massage parlor, hustled down the fire stairs beside the elevator. He held a cheap nylon bag in his left hand. Inside the bag, a 9-millimeter Sig with suppressor already screwed to the barrel.

The emergency lights were burned out on the last two floors and he had to grope his way down the stairs. At the bottom, he grabbed the door handle. It refused to give in his hand. Locked. He should have checked after he decided not to take the elevator. Why hadn’t he made sure? Stupid. He slammed it with his shoulder, but it stayed locked.

He grabbed the pistol from the bag, put the tip of the suppressor an inch from the door jamb, pulled the trigger twice. The suppressor quieted the shots to an asthmatic puff, an old man blowing out candles. Duke dropped the pistol back in the bag and turned the door handle again. This time it opened.

No biggie. He’d lost a minute or two. The delay might even work to his advantage. Bram and Nuñez were probably just sitting down in the private room. He walked across the street. The club had a front room twenty feet long. A bar ran along the side and an eight-foot-tall projection screen hung from the back. The private rooms lay along a corridor that ran from the back of the room to the rear of the building.

The club was mostly empty on this weekday night. Madonna strutted on the projection screen as a half-dozen drunk Filipino guys shouted lyrics: When you call my name, it’s like a little prayer, down on my knees… Three transvestites watched from the corner, wearing long dresses, careful makeup. Demure. Behind the bar, a lighted board indicated which rooms were taken and which available. Perfect. Only three rooms were in use: 1, 6, and 8. “Ask hostess for room,” a sign beside the board said in English and Tagalog. “CC required.” The hostess sat beside the entrance to the corridor. She looked about fourteen. She reached for Duke as he walked by.

“I’m looking for my friends—”

“Price per person—”

“No worries. I’m not staying.”

He brushed her hand aside, walked through a beaded screen. The corridor was blacklit. Ghostly white numbers hung above the rooms, five on each side. The doors had narrow glass slots so people walking by could peek inside. Duke didn’t plan to press his face to the glass, an excellent way to get shot. He pulled open the door of room 1, found a transvestite and a Chinese man in a suit making out to the tune of “Rumour Has It.”

In room 6, he found three women sitting side by side by side on the couch, eyes glazed, too drunk to sing. Which left room 8. He reached into the bag for the nine, pressed his finger against the trigger. Nuñez was a fast draw, but even John Wayne couldn’t pull quicker than a guy with a pistol already in his hand.

The metal was cool against his finger. He stepped down the hall. No waiting. Aim and fire. He pulled open the door to 8—

Found himself looking at four uniformed Philippine National Police officers. Three hookers, too. The cops weren’t happy to see him. Two yelled in Tagalog. The one nearest the door lurched up—

“Sorry, sorry—” Duke shut the door, turned away. Were Nuñez and Bram in the bathroom? In one of the supposedly empty rooms? He couldn’t hang around to find out. The cops might not bother to come after him, but if they did, they’d find the pistol.

He’d thought his plan was solid. The karaoke noise would hide the suppressed shot. He and Bram would take Nuñez’s identification, shove him into a corner of the private room. By the time the waitress found the body, Duke and Bram would be gone. He’d tell the team that Nuñez had disappeared. Bram would keep his mouth shut, and in a few weeks Duke would deal with him, too.

Now he had trouble. He’d figured on shooting Nuñez soon after Bram showed. He hadn’t given Bram a cover story for Nuñez, or warned Bram what Nuñez might say. Just: Sit with him, I’ll be right there. Now, though… what was Nuñez saying? Veder was screwing his old girlfriend in Lima, this is revenge, the agency will figure it out… Even Bram would be able to see that Nuñez’s story made more sense than Duke’s half-baked lies about a Panamanian loan shark.

The hostess walked toward him. “Sir—”

“Coming, sure—” He looked in the men’s room, the women’s just in case. Empty.

“Now.”

Duke doubted she would let Nuñez and Bram in a room without paying. By the book, this one. He followed her out. One of the transvestites was up, a surprisingly sweet rendition of Whitney Houston, And ayyyyyy will always love youuu, arms spread wide.

No Nuñez. No Bram.

They were gone. How? Think.

Nuñez waited up front. Bram came in, and Nuñez steered him away from the private rooms. Let’s walk. We can talk easier outside, this place gives me a headache, let’s get some air. Nuñez was a pro. Like a pro, he’d changed the terms, made sure he wasn’t rat-cornered in a karaoke room with one door. He’d hustled Bram outside while Duke was stuck on the stairs.

“Sir.” The hostess again. He wanted to set her on fire. “You stay, buy drink.”

Duke turned to leave. Then realized. Nuñez wasn’t caught in a dark room anymore. Duke was. His watch said 12:10. Bram and Nuñez had been gone for seven or eight minutes. Time for Nuñez to see Bram had set him up. Time for him to take Bram out. He was holding, Bram wasn’t. Though Nuñez might let Bram live, figure that Duke used him.

Either way, Nuñez would want Duke. Duke could practically see him. Crouched low behind a car on the street. Standing in the alley around the side of the building, pistol low at his side. Expecting Duke to run out, looking for him and Bram. Patient. Quiet. He could wait all night. Duke wondered if he could convince the cops in room 8 to escort him out. Yeah, right. What would he tell them? This man, he’s an assassin that works for me, but I double-crossed him and he knows it… They’d laugh. And drive him to the nearest mental hospital.

Panic poured into Duke’s stomach like a spigot he couldn’t shut off. He remembered his last night at the 88 Gamma. The floor manager had tapped his shoulder as he stared at a square mile of empty green felt. No more chits, sir, we’re sorry, no more. He was a coward, he saw that now. He thought he was a killer, because he worked with killers. But he was a middle-aged bureaucrat named Glenn—

No. Glenn was gone. He was Duke. Duke had a pistol just like Nuñez. Nuñez had ducked the snare, set a trap of his own? Fine. Duke would play right back. He walked to the bar, splayed twenty-dollar bills across it. “Drinks on me. For everyone. And I’ll take a San Miguel.”

He checked his watch. 12:12. An eternity in those two minutes. The bottle appeared in his hand, cool and covered in freezer dew, label already peeling. He drank half in one swallow. His first taste of alcohol in four years. Set it on the bar. No more. Stay focused.

The Whitney Houston song ended. The room briefly went silent as another song loaded. “Paradise City.” An omen. “Gotta take a piss. Okay with you?” The hostess looked at the money on the bar and nodded. Duke walked through the beaded curtain and down the hall, praying for a fire exit.

Past rooms 9 and 10, the corridor turned right. He found himself at an American-style fire door with a panic bar. “EMERGENCY ONLY! ALARM!” was painted on the door. Duke didn’t see an alarm box. He suspected the warning was for show, to keep people from letting friends into the private rooms. For a moment he wondered if Nuñez had set up outside this door instead of the front. Anticipating this move and playing back at Duke one more time. No. Nuñez was good, but he wasn’t subtle.

Duke pulled his pistol from the nylon bag, pressed the panic bar.

No alarm.

The door angled open a few inches. Outside, a narrow alley, scattered with broken bricks and broken bottles. The night air moist, not quite warm. Winter in the subtropics. Nuñez might be a hundred feet down, where the alley met the street. He’d be looking at the club’s front door, wondering why Duke hadn’t come out yet. Duke pushed the door a few inches more, hoping it wouldn’t creak. He dropped the bag so he’d have both hands free. He stepped into the alley, turned so he faced the street.

Nuñez was at the end of the alley. Pistol in hand. Head cocked to peek at the entrance. As Duke had hoped. Duke stepped toward him. Music leaked out from the open door behind him. Not much, but enough to catch Nuñez’s attention. If Nuñez turned, he could pin Duke in the alley.

Nuñez raised his head. Like a hunting dog catching a scent. He shifted his weight, swung his shoulders—

Duke lifted the Sig, a two-handed stance, weight slightly on the front foot, aimed center mass, fired twice. Missed. Close. Concrete flaked off the wall to the left of Nuñez. Duke expected Nuñez to dive for cover. Instead, Nuñez kept coming, reaching for his pistol, bringing his arm forward, pure intent. This ends now.

Neither man spoke, the song providing the alley’s only noise—the grass is green and the girls are—

Duke stepped forward. All his senses on fire. He shifted his aim right, just a fraction, pulled the trigger. The shot struck Nuñez square and low in the gut, drove him back a step. Nuñez tried to raise his pistol, but Duke fired again. This time the blood jumped out of Nuñez’s chest. The suppressor did its job. The alley swallowed up the shots.

Nuñez dropped his pistol, went to his knees. His head drooped, but he forced it up.

He mumbled something in Spanish. Duke didn’t answer. Glass bits crunched under his feet. He walked briskly toward Nuñez, savoring every step. Nuñez’s head wobbled on his neck like a cheap toy, but he looked at Duke without fear. Either he was too far gone to care or he had seen this ending long before.

Duke pushed the pistol into his temple and pulled the trigger. Nuñez’s brains exploded against the wall. His body crunched face-first as his soul fled the scene. Duke expected fear. Instead, a neon sign flashed pleasure pleasure inside his skull. No drug on earth felt this good.

He peeked out of the alley. The street was empty. The massage-parlor building was dark. He reached for Nuñez’s wallet and phone and pistol. He strode back down the alley. The emergency exit was still ajar. Duke half wanted the cops to have heard the commotion. Let them come. He’d kill them all. But the alley stayed empty. Duke picked up the nylon bag, tossed everything inside, walked on, Tagalog-accented Guns N’ Roses fading behind him. Oh won’t you please take me home…

Bram didn’t show at Duke’s apartment that night. The next morning the Philippine National Police reported two foreign nationals shot at close range in Manila, neither man carrying identification. “Detectives believe robbery to be the motive in both cases and will investigate with diligence,” the two-paragraph statement read. “It is not yet known whether the shootings are connected.”

By then Duke had wiped both pistols and dumped them and everything else into Manila Bay. He wasn’t worried about an immediate knock on his door. Manila was among the most dangerous cities in East Asia. Unregistered pistols were common, the police understaffed. As a rule, police in poor countries had an all-or-nothing rule when foreign nationals died in bad neighborhoods. If family members made noise and tourism was at risk, the cops investigated seriously. Otherwise, they brushed off the deaths as drug- or sex-related. Neither Bram nor Nuñez was married. Duke didn’t think anyone knew either man was in Manila. No one would call embassies to complain.

Even so, he thought he should get out of Manila soon. He’d pulled the trigger like a pro, but he’d blown the rest of the hit. Even the laziest detectives might wonder why no one inside the club had heard the shots. If they realized the killer had used a suppressor, they would investigate for real. When they did, they’d find half a mountain of evidence. Duke hadn’t exactly gotten in and out quietly. The hostess and the bartender would remember him. So would the police officers in room 8. He’d left fingerprints all over. Across the street, the madam at Little Flower Massage would remember his three-hundred-dollar room rental. Little Flower might even have surveillance cams. He hadn’t seen any, but they would be hidden. He had gone to incredible lengths in the last four years to make sure police and intelligence services took no notice of his remade face. Now he had to worry that someone in authority would see him.

Even so, he knew he couldn’t leave Manila. If he fled under these circumstances, his team would implode. He would have to stay, hope that the Philippine National Police lived down to their reputation. By noon, less than twelve hours after he’d killed Nuñez, he realized he needed to admit his involvement to his guys. They wouldn’t trust the police. They’d ask questions at the club themselves and figure out Duke had been there. Duke had to get in front.

With Nuñez and Bram dead, Duke could tell his men whatever he liked. But he’d get one chance. If he didn’t sell his story he’d lose them. They wouldn’t quit all at once. They’d disappear one by one, and one would take him out along the way. Only the truth would set him free.

The sort-of truth.

That night, he called his guys together. A two a.m. meeting. They arrived in a group, silent, grim. The room felt airless, even with the windows open. Leonid stood by the door, the butt of a pistol peeking from his jacket pocket. The threat didn’t surprise Duke. Its openness did.

“You want to know what happened. So do I. What I can tell you — Bram came to me the day before yesterday, told me he had proof Nuñez was going to narc on us.” A sublingual murmur of disbelief passed through the room. “Anybody know what Bram might have known, or suspected, or imagined?”

Silence.

“I don’t, either. Bram wouldn’t say. I told him he was crazy, that I knew Eddie way better than he did and Eddie was clean. I told him I was in charge, to listen to me. He wouldn’t lay off. He told me to meet him at this karaoke club at midnight. He’d show with Eddie and prove it. I went. I figured Eddie and I would talk some sense into him. And I—”

Duke broke off.

“Best tell us, patrón,” Salazar said.

“I brought a Sig with a suppressor, because if we couldn’t talk Bram down—”

“For Bram, this was? Not for Eddie.”

Duke nodded.

“You call Eddie, tell him what was up?” Salazar said.

“I tried him, he didn’t answer. Anybody see him after like seven or eight?”

Heads shaking.

“I get to the club at midnight, a minute or two late. They aren’t there. I check the place out. I get spooked. Bram made a big deal out of it, be there at midnight. I go out the back. Soon as I do, I can’t believe it, Eddie’s there, waiting at the end of the alley. Watching. I walk toward him, say, Eddie, come on, what’s going on? He turns toward me, not a word. He brings his gun up. I shot him. That was it. I figured him or me.”

“Maybe he didn’t see you,” Salazar said.

“He saw me. Plenty of light.”

“He didn’t say nothing?”

“Nothing. Didn’t tell me to stop, didn’t ask me if I had a gun. I hadn’t shot him, he would have killed me. I’m sure of it. Then I figured Bram was dead, Eddie killed him, so I grabbed Eddie’s stuff and ran.”

“You killed Eddie,” Salazar said. “You killed Eddie.” Like he’d believe it if he could just get the sound right.

“What about Bram?” This from Pieter de Velde, another South African, Bram’s closest friend on the team.

“Never saw him. I hoped I was wrong about Eddie taking him down until the cops put out that statement this morning.”

“We don’t know who killed him,” Salazar said. “Only thing we know is that you killed one of your own. Shot him in the street like a dog.”

“You think I wanted this? The guys paying for this, I told them everything, and they’re scrubbing Eddie now, looking for anything that might have made Bram think he was dirty. If they get anything, I will tell you.”

“They won’t get anything. This story is crap. Eddie told me two days ago you have your own agenda on this. That there’s stuff you aren’t telling us.”

So Nuñez had walked up to the line, but he hadn’t given away the secret. Duke had anticipated something like what Salazar had said. He was ready to deflect it. “He was right. There’s a lot of moving parts on this. Mainly to do with the next job. Which is even bigger than this one. But Eddie shouldn’t have known about that. I don’t know what he saw or heard or thought he knew.” Duke stepped forward now, raised his hands. “I don’t get it, either. But everything I’ve told you is true. You want to cut me down, do it now.”

Salazar was silent. Duke looked at the other men.

“Anybody want to ask anything? Do that now, too.”

Leonid threw out a few Russian-accented questions: How could you be sure he was drawing? What exactly did Bram say? But Duke stuck to his story, and Leonid flamed out fast. In truth, none of these men knew Nuñez well enough to be sure he hadn’t betrayed them. Not even Salazar.

“Anyone else?” Duke said. “Anything else?” No one spoke. One fine night at the 88 Gamma, Duke had lost nineteen hands in a row. The odds were a half million to one against a streak that bad. He changed his bet sizes, tipped the dealer. Nothing mattered. The dealer won every conceivable way, blackjacks, flat twenties, thirteen finding eight, even sixteen pulling five, the worst of all. Hand by hand, Duke watched his stacks evaporate, wondering what he had done to deserve such a beating, if he could possibly slide his chips forward to be taken again. Yet he did. He saw the same grim resignation on the faces of the men in this room.

“What now, Cap’n?” de Velde said. “We go our separate ways?”

“Until we hear different, the job’s still on.”

“You want us to attack a CIA station chief when we’re already busted.”

“Bram didn’t say Nuñez had narced. He said Nuñez planned to.”

“Next you’ll be telling us you need to leave before the local cops find you. Walk away and leave us neck-deep. Just like Iraq.”

“Up your ass. Even with the police on me, even knowing that any of you might wake up tomorrow and frag me, I’m seeing it through.” If Salome can ever get the HEU, that is. “And I’m going to insist everybody gets a fifty-K bonus and fifty percent more from now on.” Salome wouldn’t argue, not once Duke told her they were an inch away from having no team at all. “You’ll see the money in your accounts tomorrow.”

“Double pay,” Salazar said.

Good. They were haggling about price now. “I’ll ask.”

The men sat up straighter. They were insane to stay, of course. Either Nuñez had been about to give them up or Duke had killed him and lied about what had happened. But Duke knew the empty lives they faced on the outside.

“One last thing,” de Velde said. “Time you tell us what this is all about.”

“I can’t. Not yet.”

“Then I’m out.” De Velde stepped to the apartment’s front door.

Duke wondered how the truth would play. We’re trying to con the United States into a war. These guys might even be impressed. But he couldn’t tell, not without Salome’s okay. “I’m sorry.”

“Give me something. Some reason to trust you.”

Then Duke knew. Some part of him must have known even before Nuñez came to him. Some part of him had wanted this chance. “Way we worked it, Eddie was going to do Veder, right? Now someone’s gotta step up, take that spot. Be the hitter.”

“Yeah, so—”

“I’ll do it.”

9

The flight from Guatemala took all of ninety minutes, but three messages waited on Wells’s phone when his plane touched down in Panama. Shafer, Shafer, and Shafer. Call me. Call me. You still on that plane? Call me. Wells hadn’t entirely shaken the headache from his foolishness at Montoya’s mansion. He gritted his teeth and called.

“Good news, bad news.”

“Good news first.”

“One of those numbers from Montoya is a landline. Maybe the last in creation. Tracks to apartment 2106, Oro Blanco Tower, on Avenida Five-A Sur. A high-rise downtown.”

“Sounds classy.”

“Looks nice on the Google. The name in the records is Eduardo Nuñez, but there’s a woman associated with the address, too. Sophia Ramos.”

“You have a picture?”

“We have eight-point-three million. Hispanic names don’t come much more common than Sophia Ramos. Database boys are looking for a date of birth to narrow it down. Get you a driver’s license, bank, that fun stuff.”

“Those crazy database boys. And the bad news?”

“There isn’t any.”

“You told me there was bad news when there wasn’t.”

“I wanted to give you a pleasant surprise.”

As usual, Shafer’s logic was equally bizarre and irrefutable.

Downtown Panama City proved to be half Miami, half Dubai, with the inevitable Trump-branded skyscraper and the inevitable absence of street life around in the high-rise district. Business seemed good, though. Either the real-estate bubble was already reflating, or it had never burst. Low taxes, bank secrecy laws, easy access to cocaine — what more could a hedge fund manager want?

The Oro Blanco was less impressive than its name. It stood twenty-five stories, a midrise by local standards, on a busy avenue three blocks from the harbor. Larger towers blocked its line of sight to the water. The apartments inside would have a view of a view. So close, yet so far. At street level, signs papered over empty storefronts, promising, in English and Spanish, “Oro Blanco, Your Golden Dream! Affordable Luxury! Financing Available! 65 % Sold! Agent On-site!”

Wells parked outside and watched as a uniformed man opened the front door for a sixtyish woman whose neon-blue skirt barely covered her ass. Wells wanted to admire her courage for defying societal conventions. But the outfit belonged on a much younger woman, or maybe a cartoon character. Meanwhile, he needed a way upstairs. He wondered if a twenty to the doorman would do the trick. The security cameras behind the front desk suggested otherwise. “Agent On-site!”… He checked to be sure his clothes could pass for those of a potential purchaser, headed for the lobby.

The chill of its air-conditioning reached him while he was on the sidewalk. The Oro Blanco’s developers apparently wanted to prove they could waste energy as aggressively as their more expensive neighbors. They’d splurged on the fixtures, too, spending money in an obvious way, marble and mirrors and polished brass.

“Señor?” the doorman said.

“Is the agent here today?” Wells was used to a different context for that word. “Sales agent.” The doorman nodded to the back of the lobby. Gold letters proclaimed “Sales Office” on a frosted glass door.

Inside, the walls were covered with photos of couples smiling at each other and singles smiling to themselves in nicely furnished apartments. A pretty Panamanian woman in a black suit sat at a professionally clean desk. She gave him a smile that made Wells wonder why the building wasn’t already sold out. “I’m Julianna. Pleased to meet you.”

“Roger Bishop.” The name on his passport, in case she checked.

“You’re interested in the Oro Blanco?” Latin women could sound sultry saying anything.

“I’d love to see the model units.”

“The office closes at two today. But may I take your information, schedule an appointment?”

Perfect. It was 1:40. “Julianna, I’m looking at several buildings—”

She raised a hand to her mouth, flirty mock horror.

“But you’re first. If you could show me around, I promise to have you out in time.”

“In that case. If I can make a copy of your passport for security purposes, Mr. Bishop.”

And send me promotional mail until the end of time. Wells handed it over. “Call me Roger.”

“Our model apartments are on twenty-three,” she said, as he followed her into the elevator.

Good news for Wells. Not twenty-one, but close enough.

“Bet they get great light.” Wells found himself falling into his role as Roger Bishop, apartment hunter. The elevators were slow. One demerit.

“Wonderful. And we have a great relationship with American banks. Of course, you’re welcome to use your own financing.”

“Based on the prices I’ve seen, I think cash.”

She leaned toward him like a plant questing for the sun, and he knew he’d said the magic word. “If you don’t mind my asking, how did you hear about us?”

“A friend.”

“An owner in the building?”

“No, but he knows someone who is. I put in my twenty with the NYPD, now I’m looking to go someplace warm full-time. Get outta Dodge, if you know what I mean.”

She didn’t. “You’d like a one-bedroom? Two?”

“I want to see both.”

“Are you married?” She gave him an almost-flirty smile.

My fiancée just gave me thirty days’ notice. “Being a cop doesn’t go great with marriage. I was. A long time ago.”

True enough. And he had a son again. He and Evan had stayed in touch since Wells’s trip to Dadaab. They talked once a week, mainly about Evan’s struggles to get off the bench for the San Diego State basketball team, which had the politically dubious name the Aztecs. For the first time in his life, Evan was playing every night against guys quick enough to beat him off the dribble. He had a beautiful seventeen-foot jumper, but he needed to quicken his release and extend his range. Even then, he might never be more than a spot starter.

Wells encouraged him but didn’t have great advice. He’d played football at Dartmouth, been a good linebacker by Ivy League standards. But football wasn’t basketball. In college basketball, powerhouses and second-tier teams regularly played each other. In football, a team like Alabama would shred Dartmouth. Not just on the scoreboard. The ambulances would be full by halftime. So Wells had always been shielded from his limits as an athlete. He’d known them, but knowing wasn’t the same as having them exposed on the field, grabbing at air when you were certain you were in place for the tackle. Sports were a cruel master. All the practice in the world couldn’t replace raw talent.

Not that Wells planned to tell Evan any of this. The boy had plenty of time to learn it on his own. In truth, the conversations between father and son verged on banal. No matter. Wells counted the rebirth of his relationship with his son as a minor miracle, considering he’d missed the boy’s entire childhood.

Julianna brought Wells into 2310, a two-bedroom. Over the next few minutes she pointed out the appliances—all General Electric—the master bathroom—his-and-hers marble sinks, and the price—among the lowest per square meter in the center city. She was charming without being pushy, pretty without being a distraction. Wells hoped she would find a job at a more expensive building. Her talents were wasted here. He asked enough questions to prove he was serious. Then they were done, and back in the lobby.

“You really can’t stay?”

“I’m sorry. Believe it or not, I’m going surfing.” She seemed embarrassed that she’d given him that personal detail and returned to the pitch: “But look around. I’ll see you tomorrow. You won’t find a better value than the Oro Blanco.”

Wells shook her hand. Walked out. Drove off. Parked four blocks away. Waited forty-five minutes. Ran back to the building. Out of breath. Frazzled.

“Julianna here?”

The doorman shook his head.

“I left my phone upstairs. In one of the model apartments. Maybe the two-bedroom—2310, right? I know they’re not locked. We just walked in.”

“I’m sorry, sir. Only tenants and guests.”

“Please, you just saw me. That phone has my whole life — if you can’t let me up, can you go yourself?” Wells was betting the answer was no.

“I can’t leave—”

“I had to sign in to take the tour. She’s even got a copy of my passport.”

“All right. But find it quick, okay? Don’t be screwing around up there.”

“You are a lifesaver.” Wells rode to twenty-three, knowing the doorman would watch the elevator. The Oro had two sets of fire stairs, which offered access to every floor from the inside, according to Julianna. Some people, they have friends a floor or two away, they like to take the stairs. Wells ran two floors down. The twenty-first floor was identical to the twenty-third, down to the hallway paint, a muted subtropical orange.

Besides a standard lock, 2106 had a deadbolt plate. Wells put an ear to the door. Silence. Then a woman in the apartment across the hall. Wells wondered how to explain his presence. But she turned away, walked deeper into her apartment. Wells reached for his miniature electric pick set, a special CIA design. It popped the standard lock in two seconds, the deadbolt in seven.

Behind the door he found a clean living room, bare wood floors, cheap modern furniture. A black cloth sofa sat prayerfully close to a flat-panel television. Only an acoustic guitar case saved the room from complete abstraction. Wells headed for the kitchen. Tacked to the refrigerator, a sheet of black-and-white head shots of a woman with tan skin, a crinkled, too-big nose, long ringlets that looked almost silver. Two photos in the center were circled. They had been lit to look more dramatic than the others. My voice will take you to a place of mystery. And I don’t mean the DMV.

A desk was built under the kitchen cabinets. In the center drawer, Wells found bills and a bank statement for Sophia Ramos. Lots of small withdrawals, a mortgage payment, and two seven-thousand-dollar wire-transfer deposits from a sender called the ABCD Exchange Center, Georgetown, Barbados. Wells suspected that if he went looking for it, he would find servers and fiber-optic cables in place of an actual office.

Beside the bills, a rubber-banded stack of postcards. Sophia walking on a beach, strumming her acoustic guitar. Sophia Ramos: Escucha La Música! Wells took two. Now, at least, he had her photo. He would look her up, see if she had a regular gig. Nothing about the apartment screamed brilliant singer, but then he was no expert on artistic temperament. Maybe she saved her passion for the songs.

Underneath the postcards, he found a flowery Spanish birthday card, the words inside printed in blocky semiliterate handwriting: MI AMOR SOPHIA, PIENSO QUE SIEMPRE — EDUARDO. On the facing page, the letters bleeding together in an excess of emotion: TU VOZ ES MÁGICA!!! The card seemed impossibly sad. Wells dropped it like it was on fire.

At the back of the drawer, he found a photo of Ramos and a Latin man on a beach, their arms around each other. The man was small and solidly built, with a cross tattooed on one pec, the angel of death on the other. She gave the posed smile of her publicity photos. On the back, the same shaky handwriting: Eduardo y Sophia, Miraflores. So this was Eduardo Nuñez. Wells had seen enough killers to know they came in all shapes and sizes, but the calm melancholy in Nuñez’s eyes was disconcerting. Wells wondered if they’d ever meet.

He copied Ramos’s bank and mobile account numbers, enough information for the NSA to trace her. Then he left. Sophia Ramos was a lead to a lead, not worth arousing the doorman’s suspicions. In past years, Wells had pressed too hard too early on missions, forcing unnecessary violence. He’d already broken a street kid’s elbow this weekend. He preferred to keep future civilian messes to a minimum.

“You find it?” the doorman said as Wells left.

He held up his phone. “Thanks.”

After an Internet detour that led him to a strip joint in Panama City, Florida, a search for Sophia Ramos Panama music turned up a standing ten p.m. gig on Monday nights at a club called Cortes Frescos. Not exactly prime time, but a break for Wells. No waiting. He’d see her tonight.

The club was in Casco Viejo, one of the city’s original neighborhoods, dating from the Spanish colonial era. Now the area was in mid-stage gentrification, art galleries and boutique hotels scattered among empty lots and worn buildings. Cortes Frescos — Fresh Cuts — was a converted butcher shop. Hooks hung from its ceiling. Its walls featured close-up high-gloss photos of T-bones and lamb chops. A painted sign behind the bar warned “No Yanquis,” and the tatted bartender looked at Wells disdainfully. Wells wanted to ask for a Bud, just to see how the guy would react. He restrained himself and ordered a Balboa, which seemed to be the local beer.

Though he wasn’t drinking these days. He’d decided a few months before that he needed to respect Islam’s restrictions on alcohol and pork. He knew he wasn’t so much recommitting fully to the religion as avoiding hard decisions. Giving up booze was easier than prostrating himself to Allah five times a day, seeking the submission that was Islam’s very name. Not to mention trying to understand if he could consider himself part of the umma, the worldwide brotherhood, when he’d shed Muslim blood more times than he could remember.

Wells picked at the Balboa’s label as he waited for Ramos. He didn’t see how the moody singer he’d seen in the head shots would fit at this Panamanian version of New York’s now-departed CBGB. Sure enough, he was one of only eight people in the place as she stepped to the stage. The acoustic guitar from her apartment was strapped around her neck. She took the microphone confidently, wearing jeans and a blue halter top that highlighted her best feature, her smooth brown arms.

“Gracias a todos por venir. Even Americanos who got lost looking for the Hard Rock Cafe.” She stared at Wells. He wondered if she’d made him somehow, then realized new faces might be rare at her shows. “And now I tell you, escucha la música! Listen to the music!”

Wells was glad Ramos spoke English. Less glad that he’d guessed right about her talent. She sang in Spanish, but he didn’t need to understand the words to recognize that her voice was reed-thin. Wells and the other patrons shifted in their seats, avoided one another’s eyes. After forty-five interminable minutes, Ramos finished with an instrumental number on the acoustic, her fingers working the strings. Her guitar playing was far stronger than her voice. Wells suspected Ramos couldn’t admit that truth to herself. She would sing alone in empty clubs forever instead of joining someone else’s band. Wells wondered how Eduardo Nuñez had come across her. The Peruvian assassin and the Panamanian songstress seemed an unlikely match.

She finished to relieved applause. “Gracias. Thank you. Come back next week — I’ll be here, trying new material. Escucha la música!” Even before she stepped away from the microphone, the club’s speakers returned to the Violent Femmes, picking up mid-chorus: Two two two for my family and Three three three for my heartache… Musical whiplash.

A tall man waited for Ramos at the bar, a Latin hipster in skinny jeans and thick black glasses. He tried to kiss her on the lips but she ducked him, gave him her cheek. Wells had hoped to approach quietly, put her at ease. But she wouldn’t want to talk about Nuñez in front of this guy. Wells would have to pry her away. He moved to the bar.

“Sophia?”

She tilted her head, trying to place him.

“You were great. The guitar especially.” He had to shout to be heard over the Femmes. “My name’s Roger Bishop. I see you’re busy. I just wanted to tell you, I’m”—Wells was about to say “an A&R guy,” then realized he didn’t know if they still existed—“with an Internet company, streaming radio.”

“Pandora?”

“Yes. Exactly. Pandora. Always looking for exclusive content. If you have a minute, I’d love to buy you a drink—”

“You have a card?”

“Just gave out my last.”

Her friend frowned, whispered into Ramos’s ear.

“Look, we can sit right there—” Wells nodded at a battered table in the corner.

“Long as you don’t ask me to sign anything,” Ramos said.

“Of course not.”

They sat. Now Wells had to switch gears, hope she didn’t toss her beer in his face. He nodded at the bar. “He’s right.”

She lapsed into Spanish. “Qué?”

“I lied. To get you away from him. I’m looking for your boyfriend.”

She shook her head. “He’s not my boyfriend.”

“Eduardo Nuñez.”

She pushed away from the table like Wells had told her he was carrying a deadly, highly contagious virus. “How did you find me?”

“A man named Juan Pablo Montoya. In Guatemala.”

She leaned in, wrapped her fingers around his forearm. “Tell me who you are right now.”

“I work for the CIA. Montoya told me Eduardo’s involved with an American who calls himself Hank. That Eduardo—”

“Call him Eddie. His name’s Eddie.”

“That Eddie called him, said Hank was planning to kill a CIA officer. They were supposed to talk more, but Eddie never called back.”

She tilted her head back, looked at the ceiling. Wells noticed for the first time that it was covered with decals of cows.

“I want to find him before something bad happens.”

“You know what Eddie did in Mexico.”

Wells nodded.

“Don’t you think something bad has already happened?” Her voice was a sneer. She raised her arms Superman-style “Here you come to save the day.”

“I want to help.”

“Of course you do. Come back here tomorrow, ten p.m. I’ll tell you what I know.”

Wells wondered why she’d changed her mind so abruptly. “Thank you.”

“And you’ll bring one hundred thousand dollars in cash.”

A hundred thousand seemed to the going rate. Wells was about to argue. But they both knew she’d probably seen the last of those handy deposits from ABCD Exchange. She was a lousy singer, but she wasn’t dumb. Anyway, he didn’t mind spending Duto’s money. “Fine.” Wells decided a warning would serve them both. “But understand, the money won’t be all I’m carrying. Try to take it for nothing, I’ll be upset.”

She nodded.

“And so we’re clear, you can tell me where to find Eddie.”

“Yes.” Her eyes slid sideways with the lie. “Yes.” More conviction this time.

Wells figured she had a lead, a phone number or a plane ticket. Not the whole picture. He’d find out soon enough. “See you tomorrow.”

She nodded, went back to the bar without a second glance.

At his hotel, Wells called Shafer.

“Hundred thousand seems steep.”

“Foreign aid.”

“She can get us to him?”

“She has a lead. A good one.” An exaggeration.

“I’ll tell our friend. He may want to talk to you about it.”

“Tough.” Wells was still angry that Duto hadn’t told him how dirty Montoya was. He was done with Duto. For now.

“I’ll tell him that, too.”

In the morning, Wells found a text: Kibble in your bowl by noon. Delicious kibble. He imagined Shafer smirking as he sent the message. At 12:10, Wells saw the extra money in his account. A Web search revealed several Chase branches in Panama City. By 12:30, he had presented his passport to a polite assistant manager and in turn received ten slim packets of hundred-dollar bills. The manager showed a discreet disinterest in Wells’s desire for hard currency.

Even so, Wells took a cab to the Trump Ocean Club instead of his hotel, in case someone at the branch had tipped off friends. An American carrying a hundred grand made an easy target. The real problem was once again his lack of a firearm. Wells hung out for ten minutes in the Ocean Club’s lobby before hailing a cab to a Walmart in the suburban sprawl west of the city. He bought an aluminum bat and an ugly knife. He’d have happily traded the metal for a rusty .22 like the one he’d grabbed at the Parque Central. If Ramos didn’t think she had enough information to sell, she might try to take the money preemptively.

Still only 4:15 as he approached his hotel. When in doubt, move first. The wisdom of Guy Raviv, the best trainer Wells had ever had. Lung cancer had galloped Raviv to the grave, but Wells still heard his rusted-out smoker’s voice every so often. Why give her time to set a trap? Wells nodded to himself and Raviv, headed for the Oro Blanco.

Julianna mustered a dim smile as he walked into the sales office. “Señor Bishop. Your appointment was for ten-thirty. Six hours ago.”

“It was unavoidable.” A formulation that left open the question of what exactly it was. Wells spread his hands wide. “I’m sorry, Julianna. But am I lucky? Are you free now?”

“Between appointments, yes.”

“Listen, I asked my friend the name of his friend here. Sophia Ramos, in 2106. I’d love to talk to her.”

“Why not just ask her, then?”

“I don’t know her well enough. I thought we could both go up together.”

She shook her head. He could almost hear her thoughts: A jerk for sure, but still a potential buyer… I hope. He opened the packet from Chase, showed her the money inside. “I brought my down payment.”

She ran a hand through her hair. “You want to talk to Ms. Ramos—” Her voice was perplexed.

“See what she likes, if there’s anything I should know about the building—”

“And you want me to come up?”

“At least see me to her door.” He saw she wanted to say no. But the money was a powerful lure.

“All right. If she’s home and doesn’t mind.”

She led him to the doorman’s station.

“Miguel. Call 2106.”

The doorman buzzed, handed Julianna the phone. After a rapid-fire Spanish conversation: “She asks, can you turn to the camera so she can see you?”

Wells did. He was giving Ramos a choice. He’d proven he could find her at home. She could see him under these relatively controlled conditions, or send him away and risk that he wouldn’t be so polite the next time he wanted to meet.

He took the phone. “I brought my down payment.” He held up the open envelope so she could see the money inside. “A hundred thousand.”

“This wasn’t what we agreed to.”

“No, this place is perfect.” Wells gave Julianna a thumbs-up. “I’d really like to talk. I’m giving you back to Julianna now. Just let her know it’s okay.”

Wells rode the elevator alone. He had to admit he was pleased. In Guatemala, Montoya had treated him like a fool. Here he’d forced a meeting on his terms.

He was lucky the elevator was slow. Around twelve, he wondered why Ramos had agreed so readily. Why she hadn’t asked Julianna to come up, too, if only to have a second set of eyes on him?

He heard Raviv in his head again. Never trust it when it’s too easy. He jabbed at the button for twenty, stepped off, flipped the fire alarm to freeze the elevator. Wells ran for the fire stairs as the alarm bell shrieked. If she had a pistol and was waiting in the corridor when the elevator doors opened, he had no play.

Wells vaulted up the stairs to twenty-one, opened the door a crack. Ramos stood outside the elevator bank, a pistol in her hands. So much for forcing the meeting on his terms. He wondered if she was any kind of shot. She was holding the gun too hard, her arms rigid. On the other hand, she was barely fifty feet away. Even someone who’d never pulled a trigger before could get lucky that close. Only one choice left. He opened the door.

“Sophia.” She looked to him. He raised his hands. “Do not put a hole in me.”

“Qué?”

“Don’t shoot. Please.”

She swung toward him. Even from fifty feet, he saw the pistol barrel shaking.

“Leave me alone.”

“Let’s go inside. Talk.”

“Eddie said someone like you would be coming.”

He feared if he took even a single step, she’d start shooting.

“Think it through. If I’d wanted to hurt you, I wouldn’t come in such an obvious way. With the doorman and Julianna knowing I’m here. And I wouldn’t have brought the money.” He raised the envelope.

Her arms sagged, like the pistol weighed a hundred pounds. The strain would rise in her until she surrendered or pulled the trigger.

“We were supposed to meet tonight.”

He didn’t answer. Inch by inch, the pistol drooped, until finally the barrel was vertical. The elevator alarm still rang crazily a floor below.

“I don’t want you in my apartment.”

Too late. “There’s a pool on the roof, right? Put away the gun, we’ll go up, talk there.”

“Not the roof.”

“The gym?” Julianna would have been pleased. All the Oro Blanco’s amenities were making an appearance.

The developers had skimped on the gym. Behind the frosted glass double doors of the Oro Blanco Fitness Center were two small rooms of treadmills and Nautilus equipment. Second-floor windows overlooked the street. Wells and Ramos sat side by side on a padded exercise bench.

“Let me see.”

He handed the envelope to her. She thumbed through a packet of bills. Then she tucked the envelope at her feet and without further ado told him what he’d come to hear. “I met Eddie five years ago. I was working as a masseuse.” She spat the word. “You understand?”

“I think so, yes.” A prostitute.

“He came from Mexico a year or two before. He drank all day. But quietly. Rum and Diet Coke. He wasn’t an angry drunk, a showy drunk like a lot of our men. This was to hide something very deep inside him. When I told him I was a singer, he came to hear me. After that, he decided to support me, get me out of the life.”

“He believed in your music.”

“Of course.” Matter-of-factly, as though Nuñez was one of a legion of fans. “He kept drinking. I didn’t try to stop him. We didn’t get married or anything. I’m barren—” A word Wells couldn’t imagine an American woman using. “I didn’t used to be, but I had a bad abortion. I told him. He didn’t care. He said he didn’t want children, didn’t deserve any.”

“Did he tell you about Mexico?”

“Enough. He didn’t seem like one of those men, but I never doubted him. Then — this must have been a year, a year and a half after we met — an American called him, came to meet him.”

“You met this man?”

“No. And Eddie never told me his name. He said the less I knew, the safer I would be. He said he’d known the man in Peru. Anyway, the man wanted to hire him.”

“So this was more than three years ago?”

“Right. And Eddie didn’t take long, he agreed. I was born to be a mule, he told me. It’s time for me to get back in the harness. He stopped drinking. I didn’t think he could, but he had three bad nights and then it was gone. Like he’d never touched the stuff.”

“But he wasn’t doing anything then. For this man.”

“No, he was. That first year, he went away several times.”

“He say where?”

“Europe. That was all. But I’m sure he was doing jobs.”

“Three years ago.” Wells couldn’t understand how this group had operated so long without being noticed, much less caught. Either Nuñez hadn’t been killing anyone back then, despite what Montoya and Ramos thought, or an intelligence agency was funding these guys and maybe helping with coms and transport.

“Three years, yes. He worked for more than a year. Then everything stopped. He was home several months. He bought this apartment. I thought it might be done, but Eddie said they were still paying him.”

“All this time, he didn’t tell you anything specific?”

“Nothing.”

“I don’t mean targets. What about how many men he worked with? Who was behind it? He never showed you a fake passport? Nothing?”

“You don’t understand.”

She was wrong. Wells had lived for seven years among al-Qaeda guerrillas who would have gutted him if he’d ever hinted at how he felt about them. He knew the value of silence.

“So he was — off duty, let’s say — for a while. Then what?”

“Last May, he left again. Said he might not see me for a while. He came back for a few weeks in September and October. Then gone again. Finally, two weeks ago, he called me. He was angry.”

“He said that?”

“No. But he spoke in a way I’d never heard before. ‘This man wants revenge for something that happened a long time ago. A woman. It’s a mistake.’ I told him, leave. He said he had never quit halfway through a job, that he would try to make Hank change his mind. He said he could handle Hank.”

“He mention the CIA? A station chief?”

“No. Since then, nothing. No call, no email. Of course, he has disappeared before, but this is different. I think he’s dead.”

“I’m sorry to keep asking the same questions, but this American who hired him, all Eddie said about him was that they worked together a long time ago in Peru?”

She reached down, picked up the packet of money.

“That’s right. I don’t think I know anything more. But you could ask, if you like.”

Wells had a thousand questions for the woman who sat beside him. How could she be so clear-eyed about Nuñez, who he was, what he’d done for her, the sadness of their partnership, yet so delusional about her ability as a singer? How had she wound up as a prostitute? Was she in on the joke at Cortes Frescos? Or did she think she was one song away from her big break? And, on a more personal note, how close had she come to pulling the trigger upstairs?

But a judge would strike them all as irrelevant, and potentially upsetting to the witness. Wells would carry only speculation in his baggage.

“Did Eddie ever mention Iran?”

Her face was a blank. “No.”

“Revolutionary Guard? Hezbollah?”

“I never heard of those.” She tucked the packet to her chest like she feared he might change his mind and take it. “Gracias for this.”

“Can I call you if I have questions?”

“I’m going away from Panama City. I have family in Bogotá. No one can find me there. But I’ll have my phone.”

“If you have your phone, someone can find you. Leave it. Get a new one.” He scribbled one of his email addresses on the envelope. “Set up a clean email account, send me your number at this address, and then never use that account again.”

“It’s like that.”

“Yes.”

At the door, she turned to him. “You think Eddie’s alive?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re lying.”

“He’s a survivor type.”

“Like you.”

“Sí.”

“Remember this, then. When you remember me. Mr. Bishop or whatever your name is. Everyone dies. Even the survivor types.”

He half expected her to pull a pistol and plug away. Instead, she pushed open the door and bowed her head as she walked off. He understood her not at all, but he was sure she’d told him the truth about Eddie.

Back at the hotel, he passed the word to Shafer.

“‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ cried Alice.”

“Who’s Alice?” Wells said.

“My sister-in-law. Got Alzheimer’s. All she can remember are nursery rhymes. You went a long way for that story. Spent a lot of money.”

“I believe you pointed out it wasn’t ours. Anyway, we have a timeline now that dates back three-plus years.”

“Which doesn’t make sense.”

“I know.”

“So we’re looking for an officer who was in Lima back in the day.”

“And got into it with someone else—”

“Over a woman. To the extent that this officer holds a grudge a decade or more later.”

“Sounds like someone should remember it,” Wells said.

“So what’s your next move?”

Wells found himself wanting to see Ramos settled to safety. He read the feeling as protective, not sexual. Her singing career seemed no less noble for its inevitable failure. He wondered if she had touched a similar streak in Nuñez. “Lima, maybe?”

“Whole station’s turned over two, three times since then. Anyway, we’re low on time. Nuñez has been gone for a couple weeks. The Iranian warning came in last week. Assuming they’re connected—”

“You think the Rev Guard would hire an American to put together a hit squad?”

“Not impossible. A few years back, the Iranians tried to hire a Mexican cartel to kill the Saudi ambassador to D.C. Lucky for the Saudis the guy they went to was a DEA agent. Check the court records if you don’t believe me. Come on home, we can talk this through in person.”

“Plus I’ll have the joy of seeing you face-to-face.”

“I thought that was understood.”

10

White-knuckle night driving was another of aging’s indignities. Oncoming traffic streaked blurrily by. The road itself seemed as narrow and slick as stones in a stream. Shafer kept his hands at ten and two, stayed below the speed limit. He’d never been much of a speed-limit guy. But then he’d never been old. Worse, he was sure the drivers stuck behind him were thinking Outta my way, geezer. He’d have thought the same, a few years back.

Fortunately, he hadn’t misplaced his mind. Not yet. He hadn’t visited Duto’s house in years, but he knew every turn. He rolled up to find a black Chrysler 300 parked outside the front gate. He handed his license to the unsmiling man inside.

The guard looked it over, handed it back. “The senator’s expecting you.”

“You mean Vinny.”

The guard ended the conversation by raising his window.

“Don’t you need to frisk me?” Shafer knew he was acting up. The security annoyed him, though Duto needed it. Former agency directors made ripe terrorist targets, none more than Duto, who had run the CIA’s drones as enthusiastically as a queen bee.

The Chrysler edged into the street and the gate swung open, revealing two more sentries in a black Chevy Tahoe. Shafer waved at them. They stared back like they were looking for an excuse to shoot.

The front door was unlocked. Shafer let himself in, found the man himself sitting on a rocking chair in his glass-walled back porch, sipping a glass of something brown. A cigar smoldered in an old-school black plastic ashtray at his feet. The Post and Times lay on the table at his elbow, alongside a BlackBerry and iPhone. Shafer had known Duto for decades. Even so, he couldn’t be sure if he was watching a subtle self-parody: I, Washington Insider.

“Is Ward Just eavesdropping in the kitchen?”

“Ward who?” Duto reached down, came up with a square bottle. “Straight from Kentucky. Delicious. Have a splash, take your cares away.”

“Have a what? When did you turn into Lyndon Johnson’s love child?” Nonetheless, Shafer dribbled a finger of the stuff into his glass, took a sip. Duto was right. It was delicious. Too bad he couldn’t drink more of it. Not until his car learned to drive itself.

“What do you think?”

“That it violates a gift limit. Can I tell you what Wells found or do I have to gaze with wonder at the backyard first? I sho’ do love yo’ oak trees. Mulberries, too.”

Duto exhaled a cloud of cigar smoke at Shafer for his insolence. “Go.”

Three minutes later, Shafer was done.

“One hundred grand for that? Glad it wasn’t my money.”

“Whose, if you don’t mind sharing?”

“Someone who’s in my office a lot. Told him the truth. Not for me, not illegal, might mean a lot to the country. Two hours later, I had a cashier’s check for ninety-nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine dollars. At a hundred, he would have needed an extra signatory.”

“You threw in the last dollar yourself? On a senator’s measly salary? Charity lives.”

“Let’s assume the story’s true. That the station chief who’s been targeted misbehaved back in the day in Lima. Then what?”

“Any tales of one-sided wife-swapping make it over the Andes to your happy house in Bogotá?”

“Assuming we can trust the timeline, this happened right around 2000. I was gone.”

“Beginning your climb up the skull ladder.”

“Exactly.”

“Would Cannon know?” John Cannon had followed Duto as Bogotá station chief.

“Too nose-in-the-air to care about who diddled who. Spencer might, but he hates me. Maybe Hatch—”

“Don’t know that name.”

“Chip Hatch. He was in Colombia for around five years about that time. At Lockheed now.”

“Course he is. It’s a wonderful world.”

“There’s a couple other guys, too. I’ll make calls.”

“They won’t talk to me.”

“Sadly, no.”

The great irony. Shafer couldn’t stand Duto, but he wished the man had never quit. Everyone senior at Langley had known that Duto used Shafer and Wells when he wanted to steer clear of agency rules. As long as Duto was DCI, Shafer had juice. Even when he wasn’t working for Duto, people assumed he was.

Now Shafer needed to beg for even small favors. So far he’d worked mostly as a conduit on this mission. Not the way he hoped to end his career. He sucked down the last of his bourbon, hoping to anesthetize his self-pity. As soon as it hit his throat, he knew he’d made a mistake. The Honda would feel like an eighteen-wheeler on the way home.

“Care for a cigar?”

“Pass.” Shafer’s bones creaked like a bridge in a hurricane as he sat up. “I have to go.”

“Call you if I hear something. Though I have to say if anybody but Wells came back with this, I would have laughed. If we had to worry about every ex — case officer with a grudge, we’d be in a world of hurt.”

Every ex — case officer with a grudge. The words gave Shafer an idea. Sure, Duto had the money, the power, and maybe even the friends. But Shafer had the brains. The bourbon filled his stomach and warmed his heart. He upgraded his self-assessment. Not just brains. Genius.

The next morning, Shafer reached his desk before sunrise. He spent two hours concocting a realistic-sounding memo, printed it out, called Lucy Joyner. It was barely 7:30, but he wasn’t surprised when she picked up.

“Lucy.”

“Ellis.” Which sounded like A-lis. Three decades in Washington hadn’t touched Joyner’s Texas accent. She used it as she did her bleached-blond hair, to hide a fierce intelligence and loyalty to the agency.

“We’re overdue for dinner.”

“How come you only call when you want something?”

“Who said I wanted something?”

Joyner didn’t bother to answer.

“Let me explain in person. Five minutes. Ten at most.”

“This going to be”—gun be—“ten minutes I regret? Had a few of those in my life.”

“Maybe.”

“Then get down here primo pronto. ’Fore my admin gets here and this becomes an official and scheduled visit.”

During much of Duto’s time as director, Joyner had served as the agency’s inspector general, its second-worst job. When he left, her reward was a transfer to the worst job of all, director of human resources. A less committed employee would have taken the hint, retired, cashed her pension. But Joyner, who had never worked as a case officer, had deep and unrequited love for those who did. Shafer had seen the attitude in other support staffers. I’m not worthy of front-line duty, but I will carry water as best I can. Abuse me. I deserve it. In her twenty-ninth year at CIA, Joyner still worked sixty hours a week.

Most officers and desk heads regarded the human resources department as useless at best, an impediment at worst. Joyner didn’t try to change their minds. She focused on recruiting, where she did have leverage. After September 11, the agency had hired heavily from the armed forces. Veterans knew government bureaucracy, and many came prequalified with security clearances. But they inevitably contributed to the CIA’s creeping militarization. Joyner was enlarging the pool of civilian candidates by recruiting older employees. She had increased the agency’s presence at elite scientific universities like Caltech and at times pressed for hires with smudges on their background checks.

Shafer understood her goals, though he worried the experiment might end badly. The Snowden case proved the risks. If one of the new hires went wrong, the CIA’s congressional overseers would howl, and Langley would wind up leaning even more heavily on the military than before.

Meantime, Joyner was one of the few people Shafer still trusted. Years before, she had seen Duto at his Machiavellian worst, using Wells and Shafer against the Director of National Intelligence. The episode had cemented her relationship with Shafer. They ate together every few months. Shafer was married, Joyner was divorced, but they had reached an age where they could have dinner without misunderstandings. At their last meal, Shafer had made the mistake of suggesting they might even have made a good couple once upon a time. Joyner chortled so loudly that even the waitresses looked at her.

“What?”

“My type’s a little more—” She laughed again in big honking hoots. Finally, she broke off, rubbed her jaw. She was a solidly built woman, the type who turned almost masculine in late middle age. “I don’t want to hurt your feelings. Let’s just say cowboy.”

Shafer took the cheapest shot he had. “Sure you don’t mean cowgirl.”

“Completely.”

Joyner leaned over her keyboard, editing a PowerPoint slide titled Retention Rates at SIS-1 Level by Geography and Subspecialty.

“Fascinating.”

“We also serve. How you messing up my life today, Ellis?”

“As it happens, I also have an interest in retention. Specifically, case officers who served in South America, including TDYs, and who were fired or left under duress between four and twelve years ago.”

From the timeline that Montoya and Ramos had given Wells, the rogue officer must have left at least four years before. The twelve-year outer limit was arbitrary, but Shafer was short on time and needed to shrink the pool of suspects. For the same reason, he had limited his search to officers who had been fired or forced out. Of course, the suspect might have nursed his grudge quietly, left the agency with a clean record. But the showiness of the planned attack struck Shafer as the work of someone who had flamed out spectacularly and wanted revenge.

He knew he faced long odds trying to find a traitor this way. The alternative was to sit in his office waiting for Duto to call.

“You want this why?”

He handed her the memo he’d concocted. “I want to look at station management techniques. This is the first step.” The story was as far from the truth as possible without technically being a lie.

She read the top paragraph, pushed the memo back. “Wanna tell me what this really is?”

“Not a bit.”

“All those personnel records are TS, and some are SCI, you know that.”

He did. He also knew that Duto’s departure had cost him his super-duper all-access backstage pass. Why he was reduced to these games. “I’m looking for a name. Someone with a grudge.”

“And you can’t tell me more—”

“Better if I don’t.”

“Define left under duress.”

The fact that they were still talking gave him hope. “Resignation or retirement after a negative evaluation, a failed poly, referral for alcohol or substance use. Et cetera.”

She sighed like the sweet San Antonio girl she’d once been. “May take a couple days.”

“Too long.”

“I’m liking this less and less.”

“It’s an active grudge.”

“This is the only way?”

“Unless you want me to have to depend on Vinny Duto.” The truth, though he knew she’d read the words as sarcasm.

“Your piece of short fiction, please.”

He passed back the memo. She read the whole thing this time.

“Thinner than an oil slick. And twice as ugly. Let’s hope nobody ever asks about it. Set up in there”—she nodded at her conference room—“so I can keep an eye on you. I’ll have a tech bring in a laptop with the files. You take paper notes only, leave the laptop here whenever you leave. Call of nature, whatever. Everything stays in the room. I’ll handle my assistant. She’s a little bit nosy. Actually, a lot. In fact, it would be better if you just snuck back at lunch, stayed in there the rest of the day.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Don’t screw me on this, Ellis. I still have some things I want to do at this place.”

“I won’t.”

“And don’t call me ma’am. You’re even more decrepit than I am.”

“No cowboy, either.”

“For sure.”

That afternoon Shafer hunched over a laptop, scanning personnel records for forty-two case officers. He wasn’t expecting to find anything as obvious as a note explaining that an officer had lost his wife in an intramural three-legged race. He planned a process of elimination, looking for guys who had been thrown overboard in rough seas. He hoped to end the day with a few names worthy of further scrutiny. The agency didn’t usually require ex-officers to register their addresses or new jobs. But the older targets should be trackable through their pensions. As for the rest, Shafer would have Social Security numbers and photos. They ought to be easy to find, unless they were hiding, which would be a red flag in and of itself.

He knocked out twenty-five names with little trouble. Fifteen had worked only in Argentina, Brazil, or Chile and couldn’t have known Eduardo Nuñez. Ten more had resigned to join other government agencies and had no problems with their records. He assumed Joyner’s staffer had included them by mistake. Seventeen officers were left, a manageable number.

He paged through, looking at all the ways a CIA career could implode. Seven officers had evaluations no worse than mediocre but had been transferred repeatedly to smaller and less prestigious stations, a sure sign that they had problems with senior officers. Eventually all seven had quit. Six others had resigned or retired after warnings about their failure to recruit agents or general lack of productivity.

Maybe one of those thirteen was angry enough to decide to assassinate a station chief years later. But none jumped at Shafer. They were second- and third-tier case officers who had been winnowed out. It happened.

The other four names on the list were more interesting.

Gabriel Lewis was sent to Johannesburg after a successful rotation in Bogotá. In South Africa, he spent thirty-two thousand dollars on a recruiting trip that turned out to be a ten-day vacation with his mistress. His station chief was angry enough to argue for referring the case for criminal prosecution, though Lewis was ultimately allowed to repay the money and resign. But Shafer saw one immediate problem with Lewis as a suspect. Based on his name, he was probably Jewish. An Iran connection was hard to imagine.

Ted Anderson had started in Lima and moved to Saudi Arabia, then Spain. In Madrid he flunked a routine five-year polygraph, registering as deceptive on a crucial question: Have you ever had contact with a foreign national that you failed to reveal? He denied committing espionage, and that answer registered as true. But when he was asked why the poly showed deception on the other questions, he didn’t know. Three months later, he resigned.

The agency reviewed all his files, found no evidence that he’d given up classified information, and quietly closed the case. A one-page note at the end of the file revealed that Anderson now worked for a Geneva hedge fund that specialized in oil trading, which might explain his lie on the poly. Maybe he’d been selling information to the fund all along. Shafer viewed him as a long shot, too.

Fred Beck had served all over Latin America during the nineties, including temporary assignments to Lima and Bogotá. His career went sideways in 2002 in Nicaragua. Beck accused Steve Antoni, another officer in Managua, of lying about a car accident. Antoni said he’d been alone, but Beck claimed a “female host-country national” was involved.

Beck was probably right. No matter. Antoni was well connected, popular at the station. Beck wasn’t. After a cursory investigation, Antoni received the mildest of wrist slaps, a loss of three vacation days for failing to report the accident promptly. Beck was snubbed as a troublemaker. Has difficulty understanding the complex realities of recruitment, his station chief wrote the following year. May be better suited as an analyst. About the worst slur the clandestine service could offer.

Beck quit in 2004. On his way out, he wrote an angry letter to the inspector general’s office about “the rancid cesspool of corruption in Managua — in fact, all over Latin America.” The letter might have gotten more attention if the agency hadn’t been desperately trying to fix Iraq. Of even more interest to Shafer, Antoni was now chief of station in Tunisia.

Glenn Mason, the fourth of Shafer’s top suspects, had been a solid officer in his first posting in Lima. Then his career got interesting. From 2003 to 2006, he served with distinction in Baghdad. But in fall 2006, he came unhinged. He accused an Iraqi translator of being a double agent for al-Qaeda. A few weeks later, he was found outside his trailer, yelling incoherently and holding a pistol. He claimed not to remember the incident. An agency psychiatrist insisted he be transferred out. The agency gave him several months’ leave and then moved him to Hong Kong, as he requested.

But his posting there started badly and ended in disaster. He was absent for days at a time. Because of his Iraq commendations, the chief of station was loath to challenge him. He was asked if he wanted to transfer to another station, and he refused. By the end of his second year, he’d used up any goodwill from his time in Baghdad. The station recorded his failures, building a case to fire him. He was written up for drinking at work, offered inpatient treatment for alcohol abuse. The files depicted him as curiously passive. Without ever having met Mason, Shafer could see him apologizing to his chief in a flat, dull voice, making promises he had no intention of keeping. Finally, the station’s security officer insisted he take a poly. He failed questions about cocaine use, consented to a drug test, failed that, too. He was fired.

Shafer read the file twice. He found himself unsatisfied. Mason’s instability disturbed him. The man had worked impossibly hard in Iraq, then thrown away his career. Why hadn’t he tried to save himself, worked with the agency’s clumsy efforts to help him? Was he a casualty of Iraq, or broken even before Baghdad?

By the time Shafer finished looking at the files, it was past midnight. Joyner had stayed until eight, then conceded defeat. “I’m trusting you.”

“Scout’s honor. Nanoo-nanoo.”

Now Shafer looked at the pages of notes he’d compiled. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d worked an eighteen-hour day, but he felt exhilarated. His next step would be seeing what Lewis, Beck, and Mason had been doing since they’d left.

Shafer had left his phone off all day aside from two short calls home. He turned it on now, found messages from Wells and Duto.

He called Duto first. “Where have you been all day?”

“Detecting. You have a name?”

“Hatch said he’d heard rumors of weirdness in Lima, but he couldn’t remember the details. I’m waiting on the other guys. You have to remember, Colombia back then was crazy. Then 9/11 happened. And this was all a long time ago.”

“Call Hatch back, see if these names jog his memory.” Shafer read them off.

“Why those guys?”

“Just do it, Vinny.”

“Now? Past midnight?”

“You want me to read you the names again or can you remember them?”

Ten minutes later, Shafer’s phone rang.

“How did you know, Ellis?”

Almost Retirees 1, All-Powerful Senators 0.

“Tell me how.”

Shafer pressed his luck. “It was Mason, right?”

“Soon as I said it, he remembered. Mason walked in on another officer with his girlfriend, she was Peruvian, this was just before September eleventh, literally the day before, so it all got forgotten.”

“Who was the other guy?”

“James Veder. He’s—”

“Chief of station in Manila. It’s real, Vinny. It’s happening. Now we just have to make Hebley believe it.”

“I’ll call him.”

Shafer still didn’t understand how these pieces fit together. Was Mason working for the Iranians? What had he and everyone he’d hired been doing for the last three years? They would have time to answer those questions. Right now they had to make sure Veder knew he was at risk.

“We’re a hundred percent sure this is real?” Duto said.

“You’re the one who hooked Wells up with Montoya.”

Duto was silent for a while. Then sighed. “I still have the emergency numbers for the stations. I’ll call Veder, tell him to watch his back. I’ll call Hebley tomorrow.”

“Will he believe you?”

Duto hung up without answering, much less thanking Shafer. No matter. They both understood the truth. Duto would have come up with the name eventually. Someone would have remembered Mason and Veder. But Shafer’s intuition and hard work had saved crucial hours, if not days.

Neither of them had any way to know that they were already too late.

11

Like other Pacific Rim megacities, Manila no longer had morning and evening rush hours. Traffic choked expressways and surface roads from dawn until midnight. Men wearing tissue-thin white masks waded between cars, hawking newspapers, water, and buckets of fried fish and rice.

To James Veder, the traffic was like Manila itself: maddening, though with a certain loopy charm. He almost never drove himself, so he could work or catch up on email. And every so often he saw something that made him wish he could lower his bullet-resistant windows and take pictures. A month before, a fiftyish woman in the next lane had given herself a haircut as she inched along. Not a trim, a full haircut. With shears. Even more amazing, her car was a subcompact. She could barely move her head. She positioned the blades with surgical precision before each cut. Two days ago, Veder had caught a man in an early-eighties Michael Jackson outfit singing full throttle with his windows up. No doubt practicing for karaoke. Veder would never understand the Filipino obsession with karaoke. Even the smallest villages had at least one crude machine for everyone to share.

His tour here was nearly done. In six months, he’d be on to his next posting. He expected Mexico City, though the move hadn’t been finalized yet. But he would miss the Philippines. The post had drawbacks, not least the twelve-hour time difference from Virginia. At least once a week someone at Langley woke him at three a.m. Still, Manila was a pleasure to run. He’d overseen a successful op aimed at the Chinese navy, which was encroaching on the Spratly island chain. He’d managed counterterror raids against the Islamists in Mindanao. He’d even helped the Pentagon track the pirates who popped up in the Celebes Sea. The Philippines were important enough to merit attention and resources, but not so vital that he had to endure endless visits from seventh-floor managers proving their importance.

Best of all, Filipino women had shucked their Roman Catholic scruples long ago. As a group, they were the filthiest bedmates Veder had known, and he had plenty of experience. Maybe after he retired, he’d publish his memoirs. He had the perfect title already. Screwing the World: My Life with the CIA. Too bad the censors wouldn’t approve. He would sell a million copies.

Because of Manila’s traffic, Veder preferred not to leave the embassy during the day. Today, though, he had no choice. He was lunching at a club outside the city with Admiral Juan Fortuna Ocampo, vice chief of staff of the Philippine navy. The navy knew about the meeting, but not the nineteen thousand dollars Veder would leave in the admiral’s golf bag. Veder wasn’t sure the money bought anything that Ocampo wouldn’t tell him for free. The Philippine government was close to the United States. But the CIA liked to pay sources. Friends could walk away. Co-conspirators couldn’t. Analysts took purchased information more seriously than what was freely given. It was as if Langley didn’t believe anyone would help the United States for any reason but money.

So Veder had a slim envelope filled with hundred-dollar bills in his briefcase. After all these years, Veder still got a charge from carrying cash. He knew some case officers didn’t like the agency. They questioned the work, the bureaucracy, the morality, the drones, the blah, blah, blah. He never argued. Let them whine. But what he wanted to say was: Shut up and man up. Being a case officer is the best job in the world. If you’re too dumb to realize it, we don’t need you. Go ahead and quit.

Though no job was perfect. Now the agency was having one of its periodic panic attacks about what the security guys called TTP, threats to personnel. The Revolutionary Guard had jerked the agency’s chain with a mysteriously vague threat against a station chief. Veder would bet every dollar he was carrying that the source for this so-called plot was an Iranian plant. Iran had enough problems keeping its own scientists alive. No way would the Guard come head-on at the agency. Instead, it had invented this little threat to gum up ops all over the world.

Veder wanted to give the Iranians credit for the ingenuity, but he was angry that his security chief had made him give up his predawn jogs in Rizal Park. He was traveling with a second bodyguard now, too, and switching vehicles every day. He regarded the exercise as silly. No matter. In a couple weeks, the threat would fade, and he could get back to running.

Motorcycles were the best way to beat Manila’s traffic jams, at least during the dry season. So Veder wasn’t surprised when one rolled slowly past his window, a big bike. The driver and passenger were dressed identically in full leather and black helmets with mirrored visors.

The bike stopped beside the driver’s window, rose on its springs as the driver dropped his feet to the cracked asphalt. The passenger reached into his messenger bag and pulled out a piece of steel almost three feet long. He slapped it against the Suburban’s front and back driver’s-side doors so that it extended about a foot on either side of the seam between them. Isaiah Thorpe, Veder’s driver, popped the door locks, tried to shove open the door. Thorpe was too late. The rod was attached magnetically to both doors, jamming them in place.

Veder banged against his door, trying to force it open, doing nothing but bruising his shoulder. No. He needed to go the other way, out the opposite door. And even as he processed this thought, the motorcycle passenger reached again into his bag and came out with another piece of metal. This one about the size of a dinner plate, perfectly circular, at least an inch thick. He ripped off a thin plastic backing and pressed it against the window.

“Oh, shit—” Thorpe said. He was a wiry, tough-as-nails ex-Ranger from south Alabama. Veder had never heard him curse before. A single word rang in Veder’s mind. Away. He swung his legs, kicked himself off the window like a swimmer making a turn. On the other side of the glass, the motorcycle rolled off, accelerating through traffic. Neither the driver nor the passenger had raised their visors or spoken a word. Not Allahu Akbar, not Die CIA, nothing. Not a single wasted moment. The rod had locked them in, and the plate would blow them up.

Thorpe worked to pull his carbine with his right hand while frantically trying to lower the window with his left. But the plate was attached firmly and its bulk kept the window jammed closed. “Shoot across me,” Thorpe yelled to Steve Clark, the second guard in the Tahoe. “Shoot!” But Clark was leaning away from Thorpe, opening his door—

Veder scrabbled across the backseat, reaching for the passenger door, trying to get out or at least get the bulk of the SUV between him and the bomb. Too late.

An avalanche caught Veder, doubled him up, threw him down a rabbit hole covered in the softest white fur he could imagine. He wasn’t unconscious, but he wasn’t conscious, either, and though he couldn’t remember what had happened, he knew what would happen next. Like time was running backward. Then the avalanche ended and he landed in the backseat. The rabbit fur was gone and the pain seeped in, not all at once, but steadily rising.

He couldn’t hear anything, not even a hum. A thousand colors clouded his vision, a cable feed that had gone funny. Somehow he pulled himself up, looked at the driver’s seat. Thorpe didn’t have a head anymore, it was gone, replaced with a smear of brain and blood on the windshield like half-mixed baby food. Weirdly enough, the rest of his corpse was still vertical in his seat, apparently undamaged from the neck down.

Veder looked for Clark, but Clark wasn’t moving, either, he was slumped against the front passenger door with a metal arrowhead spiking from his temple. No, Veder said, or thought he did; he wasn’t sure if he could speak anymore.

But he was still alive. He knew that. He didn’t know why the men had put the bomb on the front window instead of his own, but they had. So he was still alive. Dense white smoke filled the passenger compartment. He was sure he was coughing, though he couldn’t hear himself. Out. Before the Suburban burned up. Then the rear passenger door swung open. A hand reached down, looped under his shoulder, pulled until his head and neck were free. A miracle. Life.

Thank you, Veder tried to say, wanted to say. Then the man stopped pulling and Veder could see he was wearing a motorcycle jacket and a helmet with a mirrored visor. The miracle was no miracle at all. The man reached under his jacket, came out with a pistol. Veder tried to pull himself away, but he had no strength left, not even to beg—

The man leaned in close so only Veder could see him and lifted his visor. And Veder saw himself looking at a familiar face, but he couldn’t think of the name. He wanted so much to remember. If he could only think of it, he was sure he could connect with this man, an American, not just an American, a case officer. Veder’s mind circled the name, another moment or two and he’d have it, he could change the man’s mind—

Veder felt the touch of steel against his temple—

South America—

He remembered all at once, that apartment in Lima on the day before the World Trade Center burned, Glenn, Glenn Mason—

He thought he’d spoken aloud. But the man shook his head, a single firm shake. Veder felt overwhelming regret. He’d been so sure—

He knew his last hope had vanished into the unsmiling face above. Veder could argue no more with his death. He closed his eyes even before his killer pulled the trigger.