The End Game

3

Mamaroneck, New York

A gray-white union of sea, land and sky was barely worrying the drapes when consciousness seeped back into me. I twisted around and checked the time: noon. I know this sounds very decadent, but I’d only got back from Jersey just before six.

Nick and I had handed over to Deutsch and Lendowski shortly after five, a move that generated the usual sardonic, if unmerited, quip from Lendowski. I had plenty of time for Annie Deutsch. She was in her early thirties and usually wore that earnest demeanor shared by many ex-cops during their first couple of years with the Bureau, her face locked in an expression that looked like its wearer has been told they weren’t allowed to smile ever again. She was attractive and single, two facts on which most of the discussions regarding her had quickly zeroed in. Lendowski, on the other hand, I could do without. Six foot two and pure muscle, he possessed a personality one would describe as belligerent-if one were being kind. He also had that holier-than-thou attitude that always made me suspicious, like it was a fine line between which side of the law he’d ended up on.

I’d given Nick a lift to Federal Plaza so he could retrieve his own car from the parking garage. Neither of us had much energy left for conversation. The city had looked coldly beautiful as dawn forced its way across Manhattan’s skyline. A few Christmas lights shone in pockets of synchronized color, and it was enough to remind anyone who had forgotten that New York was still the greatest city in the world.

These overnights were actually a killer. As Nick climbed out of the Expedition, he reminded me to try and stay awake on the final leg. A couple of nights back, I’d very nearly fallen asleep at the wheel and had needed to pull over and grab an hour’s shut-eye before driving home. Then I’d woken with a jolt at two in the afternoon, convinced that my alarm had sounded only moments before. Throw the body clock out of whack and the mind can do strange things. I was now looking forward to doing away with the Nosferatu schedule and getting back to a more normal, mortal routine.

Tess had driven my five-year-old son Alex to school and left me to finish off my fitful six hours. Miss Chaykin-we’re not married-is my partner in everything but law enforcement, although that last bit was debatable, given our various adventures these last few years. I’ve never slept easy alone, and the past few weeks of night shifts and disrupted schedules had only served to underline how addicted I was to having Tess’s warm body beside me.

We joked that, as a couple, this could be the closest we’d ever get to the sleepless nights and constant demands of caring for a baby, given that we hadn’t had one together and were still debating whether having one now would be a good move. I was in two minds about that. It wasn’t something I’d ever experienced. I’d missed the first decade or so of Tess’s daughter Kim, who was now fifteen, given that Tess and I only met a few years ago.

I’d also missed out on most of my own son’s young life, given that his mom-someone I had a brief, but intense, fling with a few years ago-had neglected to tell me about him until she and I had reconnected last summer. Not exactly your classic Hallmark family, but these days, I guess, few families are.

Kim was a great girl, more a fine testimony to Tess’s single-parenting skills than to anything I had contributed since we’d all started living together. She and I got along really well. Much like her mom, she was impossibly headstrong and as sharp as The Bride’s samurai blade, by turns delighting us with her growing independence and infuriating us with her dismissal of entirely reasonable boundaries. After the mortal risks I’d seen her mother take, survive, then thrive upon, I really shouldn’t have been at all surprised. I even liked her boyfriend, Giorgio, a year older than her and a junior who already had Yale in his sights, despite their current sub-seven-percent admission rate. I’d once pictured myself pulling the Bad Boys routine on my daughter’s boyfriend’s ass, shotgun, wife-beater, and bottle of whiskey included, but the darned kid, clever and yet cool and sporty, had cruelly deprived me of any such pleasure.

Alex, on the other hand, still hadn’t shaken off his demons. But at least he and Kim had bonded pretty much instantly. To her credit, she had happily embraced the big sister role that had been thrust upon her, and seeing them together was a source of solace in the bittersweet world I seemed doomed to inhabit.

I threw on a T-shirt and some sweatpants and lumbered down to the kitchen. Despite still feeling groggy, it didn’t take long for the Daland/Maxiplenty case to recede into inconsequence, shoved aside by the resurgent and aforementioned white whales that were crowding my mind. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. My globetrotting adventures with Tess had served to reinforce the notion that we’re never done with the past. Or rather, the past is never done with us. It’s just a matter of the correct key being turned in the right lock and all the secrets come tumbling out. And we can never know how we’re going to deal with them until they’re staring us in the face.

Shuffling into the kitchen, I could hear Tess in her home office, tapping away at her desk with the usual deft precision. It still took me twice as long as it should to file a simple report. I poured myself some coffee, glanced at the front page of the New York Times on Tess’s charging iPad, then wandered, mug in hand, into the study, where my very own bestselling novelist/paramour was busy knocking out yet another page-turner.

She sat behind a very cool, huge aluminum desk that had been crafted from the tip of an old aircraft’s wing; a gift from yours truly after her first novel hit the New York Times bestsellers list. Her eyes lingered on her screen as I sat down in an armchair facing her, coffee cradled in both hands. My attention was drawn to the rear of the house. The deck and small garden were, I now noticed, dotted with strands of miniature red and green lights. I gazed through the French doors, transfixed for a moment, then Tess looked up and smiled that radiant smile that always makes me give a conflicted and perverse thanks for the violent night when we first met.

She swung her long legs out from behind the desk. “Christmas lights and two thousand words already. Not a bad morning’s work, huh?”

I smiled. “You’re such a slacker. No lunch break for you.”

She tilted her head and pursed her lips. “Actually, I figured we’d skip lunch and just head upstairs and you could help me choose which dress to wear Thursday night. Unless you have other plans?”

I was about to voice an objection-I mean, sure, we were going to be having dinner with the president. The president. At the White House. The dress choice was, I guess, important-and then, the look on her face as she’d said it hit a certain sweet spot inside my skull and I realized that this was code for something else entirely.

Jeez, I love this woman.

I titled my head, mock-studying her. “I did, but I know how much the holiday season means to you and the last thing I’d want is to disappoint you.”

She flashed me a grin. “Hang on to that thought, cowboy.”

I did have plans. I’d arranged to meet Kurt Jaegers in Jersey. Kurt was a white-hat hacker, a tech wizard who was helping me out privately, totally off the books. He’d asked for a meet, which could mean he had news for me, good news. I wasn’t holding my breath, but I also had some new ideas on how he could help me with the white whales I was hunting.

Right now, all that could wait.

I needed to live a little first.

So, about those white whales I mentioned earlier, the ones preoccupying me during the stake-out at Daland’s house. The ones Nick and the Bureau couldn’t know about.

Not one, but two things eating away at me, chewing me up from the inside.

Come to think of it, I’m not sure whale is the best metaphor here. Something like the alien from, well, Alien, the one that burst out of John Hurt’s chest in the first movie, is probably a better fit.

It all had to do with my son Alex, and my dad.

For starters, I was still trying to track down the elusive “Reed Corrigan.” Corrigan-real name, unknown-is the ex-CIA spook who had orchestrated the brainwashing of Alex earlier this year. A son I never knew I had, up until then. His mom, Michelle, an ex-DEA agent I’d dated while on assignment in Mexico, before I met Tess, had never told me she got pregnant. While living out in California, Michelle and Alex had got caught up in a sick plan to flush out a psycho Mexican drug baron nicknamed “El Brujo”-the sorcerer. The plan involved brainwashing Alex and using him as bait. Corrigan had worked on the CIA’s mind control programs and had arranged to have some pretty disturbing things dumped into Alex’s brain. The plan had gone seriously wrong and I’d got sucked into it. It had ended up causing Michelle’s death and left me and Tess to pick up the pieces with Alex while Corrigan, whoever he was, was still out there somewhere.

I wasn’t going to stop until I found the bastard.

Alex was now doing better, thanks to a shrink we’d been taking him to see every week. His nightmares had subsided, but they were still there, off and on. Moreover, the nasty things they’d planted in his mind about me were, I felt-maybe more out of hope than out of anything concrete-starting to subside. I didn’t get the feeling that he was looking at me as apprehensively and fearfully as he often used to. We were tiptoeing our way into doing some normal father-and-son stuff, like me taking him to Teeball practice on Saturday mornings, but we still had a long ways to go.

To find Corrigan, I’d recruited Kurt to help me get into the CIA’s files. When that didn’t work, I’d resorted to blackmailing a CIA analyst Kurt had identified for me, a sleazeball called Stan Kirby who’d been having an affair with his wife’s sister. That exercise had mixed results. On the one hand, and totally unexpectedly, it turned out to be key in saving the president’s life-hence our forthcoming dinner at the White House with the Yorkes themselves in a couple of days’ time. On the other hand, it hadn’t been much use in helping me get my hands on Reed Corrigan.

Kirby had dug up three case files that mentioned Corrigan, but they were all highly redacted and weren’t much use.

One of them, though, kicked up the second whale, or alien, or whatever metaphor you feel works best here. That file, which concerned an operation called “Cold Burn” that Corrigan and Fullerton had been part of, also mentioned something called “Project Azorian.” Not particularly ominous in itself, except that it then mentioned someone with the initials CR.

I knew the name Azorian. As a ten-year-old, I’d seen it on a printout on my dad’s desk. It had sounded funny and caught my eye. When I’d asked him about it, he’d brushed it off as nothing important, and we’d joked about it being a good name for a comic book or sci-fi movie, à la The Mighty Azorian.

That wasn’t long before I’d found my dad slumped behind his desk shortly after he’d blown his brains out.

My dad-Colin Reilly.

CR.

Seeing his initials alongside a mention of Azorian in the same file that concerned Reed Corrigan had jolted me like few things I can remember. First, my son, and now, my dad too? I was now even more determined to find this Corrigan, not just out of a burning desire to make him pay for what he did to Alex, but to find out the truth about my dad’s suicide, if that’s what it really was. I didn’t know what to believe anymore, and I had a strong feeling there was more to it. I mean, given what this creep and his crew were capable of, and given their abilities when it came to manipulating people, I was imagining all kinds of dark scenarios surrounding my dad’s death.

It was all the more painful as I never really got a chance to know him. He was a tenure-track assistant professor at George Washington University, an expert in comparative law and jurisprudence, and he was consumed by his work. He wasn’t the most gregarious or emotive person I ever met, and he always seemed to have weightier things on his mind than hanging out with me. I don’t think he was ever able to fully park the issues that fired him up or kick back and enjoy the simple pleasures of a family life. When he was home, he spent a lot of time in that study of his, which was off limits to this ten-year-old, not an unreasonable rule given the books and paperwork that were stacked all around it and my propensity to sow havoc. I do know he was well respected, though. A lot of people turned up to his funeral, men and women who, to me at the time, seemed like a very dour bunch of people, even given the circumstances.

My mom didn’t talk about it much. Growing up, the subject of his suicide was off limits. Not that I asked much. At the time, all she’d told me was that, after his death, she’d discovered that he’d been depressed and was on medication. It was the most I’d ever got out of her on the subject. I don’t think she ever really dealt with the grief or the sadness that he’d never told her about it. She just bottled it up, same as he had, I guess. Then, when I moved out and went to study law at Notre Dame, she remarried, moved to Cape Cod, and threw herself into her new life. We never talked about my dad after that. It was like her first husband had never existed.

I learned later that it’s perfectly normal for a ten-year-old boy to repress the memory of his father’s blood splattered against a wall-indeed, the first time in decades I had recalled the memory so vividly was when reading the redacted file from my reluctant CIA source about the man who had brainwashed my son. Mothers, however, are generally expected to ensure that the memory doesn’t become buried too deep. On balance, maybe we both came out of it OK.

Thinking about my absent father also reminded me of how I wanted to always be there for Alex. My line of work, however, wasn’t the most risk-free of occupations. It was something I needed to figure out.

One thing I didn’t need to figure out, one thing I knew with absolute certainty, was that I would never forgive the man who subjected a four-year-old boy to treatment that was still beyond belief, even though I’d seen the results with my own eyes. Whatever it took, I was going to find him. Nothing would ever change when it came to Reed Corrigan and me.

I hadn’t shared any of this with Nick. I knew he could sense it. Ten years of sharing the line of fire with someone usually does that. If it didn’t, you were probably in the wrong business. But he knew better than to ask. He knew that if I wasn’t sharing something, I was probably doing it for his own good. To give him deniability, to let him keep his job and not face prosecution. Because to get to the bottom of the shark-infested sinkhole that had first sucked me in a few months ago, I’d probably need to break a law or two. Nick got that-but he wasn’t happy about it. Which was why we’d spent a lot of hours in strained silence outside Daland’s house while we avoided the whales/aliens/elephants in the room-well, the cabin of our Ford Expedition, anyway.

The big problem was, Corrigan was proving impossible to track down. The CIA was clearly protecting his identity, for reasons they weren’t about to share with me. He was obviously a valuable asset, and I’d run out of options in terms of flushing him out.

Project Azorian also turned out to be a blind alley, both regarding Corrigan and my dad. Also named “Project Jennifer,” it was the CIA’s code name for an eight hundred million dollar operation to raise a sunken Russian submarine from the Pacific Ocean floor back in 1974. Howard Hughes had lent his name to the project to help with the cover story that the vessel that would raise the sub, the Hughes Glomar Explorer, was out mining manganese deposits. It had been one of the most expensive and technologically complex operations in CIA history-and one of their biggest successes-but the huge dossier about it was, in terms of what I was after, a dead end. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what the sub project had to do with my dad, or what it or my dad had to do with the CIA op called Operation Cold Burn.

The link with my dad, though, could open up some fresh possibilities. I’d asked Kurt to take another peek inside the CIA’s servers to see if they had anything else on my dad. So far, he hadn’t had much luck on that front either.

All of which left me with two final angles of attack.

One was for me to bully Kirby, the CIA analyst/Lothario, once again. Get him to fish for files about my dad, this time, see if following that trail instead would lead me to Corrigan.

The other was to talk to my mother and see if she knew more about my dad’s death than she’d let on.

I really wasn’t looking forward to either of them.

4

Newark, New Jersey

I walked across to the north side of Riverbank Park and waited, glad to be out in the open air and, for that matter, anywhere other than the inside of a Ford Expedition. Out here, most of the snow had already melted, though more was apparently due later tonight.

On the other side of the Passaic stood the Red Bull Arena, home of New York’s MLS team and subject of one of the most protracted development tales in recent New Jersey history. I had promised to take Alex to watch the Red Bulls at some point after we’d enjoyed watching the US soccer team at last summer’s World Cup in Brazil, though I had a nagging concern that once bitten, he’d want to attend every single game. On the other hand, sports seemed to be turning into a genuine passion for him, and anything that promoted a healthy, distracting routine in him was positive.

I’d crossed paths with Kurt Jaegers for the first time a few years ago when he moved up to the seventh spot on the FBI’s cybercrime watch list after hacking into the UN’s server farm, using the same skill set I needed to track down Corrigan. He agreed to help me and hacked into the CIA’s databanks after I promised him a get-out-of-jail-free card should he ever get arrested for something reasonably defensible. Kurt soon embraced the project with gusto, which surprised me. I was supposed to be one of the bad guys, as far as he was concerned-you know, big brother and all that. But Kurt and I connected. He had a good heart. I liked him, and I enjoyed hearing about the fantasy idealist world he inhabited.

For our meetings, Kurt always insisted on different locations and times to ensure that I hadn’t been followed, even though I was pretty sure I was perfectly capable of doing this myself. His levels of paranoia weren’t too outrageous, though, considering the people we were up against, although time was tight, me being due to meet Nick at Federal Plaza at four for the Daland post-arrest briefing.

I took a few steps toward the river and casually scanned through three-sixty. I was clean.

Kurt told me that he’d read a stack of books on fieldcraft and practiced covert techniques within MMORPGs-the “massive” in Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game, he’d assured me jokingly, not a reference to his waist size. People overuse words a lot nowadays-everything is amazing, everyone’s a genius-although in his case, massive was an understatement. But as he emerged from the tree line to the south, it was still bizarre to see the new, thinner Kurt. He’d lost a ton of weight-OK, maybe not an actualton. I thought I could take some credit for him dropping so much flab. Our regular meetings not only got him out of the house, but also appeared to have given him a sense of purpose where previously, he had none.

Over the months he’d been helping me out, I’d got to know Kurt well. He’d opened up to me-probably more than he’d done with most people, I thought, given what he’d told me about his life. He hadn’t had it easy, not that I’d imagined otherwise.

Throughout his school years, Kurt had been the butt of exceptionally cruel jokes-both verbal and practical-by a clique of particularly vicious girls. This systematic campaign had stemmed from his temerity in asking one of them to a dance at their fifth grade end-of-year party, a crime seemingly so heinous that he deserved to be punished for it till the end of his schooling.

By middle school, this clique had shared their hatred of Kurt with their meathead boyfriends and his final two years of education had been off-the-charts intolerable. If it hadn’t been for his Sony PlayStation, his dial-up modem and the trailblazing Internet chat rooms he’d joined as soon as they launched, he would have put an end to his miserable existence long before he’d had a chance to think through the long-term consequences of such a decision.

As with many other social outcasts, the Internet and the rapidly growing gamer culture it fed off ended up giving Kurt a reason to live. And like most hardcore gamers, he was a neophile at heart and wanted to see what would come next. He instinctively knew that games would become better, faster and more immersive and he wanted to be around as they did so. By the time he was twenty, he was as addicted to console games and the online world as he was to food, his treatment at the hands of the witches of East Brunswick having served to confirm his withdrawal from the world of women made of flesh and his dedication to those made of pixels.

If I didn’t need Kurt myself, I’d probably have recommended him to our Cyber Division by now, but he and I had developed a routine and neither of us seemed to want to mess with it. Over the last few months, we’d worked together enough for me to mostly can my sarcastic instincts and accumulate no little respect for Kurt’s doggedness. I also knew enough about the way things were going with surveillance and data-trawling capabilities, drones, high-powered mikes and micro-cameras to understand that one day, real-world agents would be almost entirely redundant. I just hoped that day didn’t come until I had taken my pension.

Kurt was grinning from ear to ear as he ambled toward me, his gait still that of someone carrying the hundred extra pounds he’d recently shed. Maybe it was because of the holiday season. Christmas turned guys like Kurt back into Fifth Graders-happy ones at that. If it wasn’t for keeping our meetings on the down-low, I fully suspect he would have been wearing a green knitted sweater that featured a reindeer.

Glancing from side to side, he covered the final few yards to where I was standing and gave me a small bow.

“Kon'nichiwa, watashi no kunshu.”

This was another of his tradecraft obsessions: routing our phone calls through Japan-based Skype accounts that he’d hijacked and never referring to himself or to me by our real names on any calls or texts. Which made no sense at all, given that we weren’t even remotely Japanese. “Kurt, seriously. We’re actually here, together.”

“No names, dude,” he said, flinching. “Come on. What if someone’s tailing you and listening in on us?”

“I think I’ve got that covered,” I said, then added, pointedly, “Kurt.” With a juvenile half-grin.

He just brought it out in me.

He groaned, then gestured around him. “What do you think? Cool spot for a meet, no?”

“Pure genius.” See what I mean? We all do it.

On the other hand, I did resist saying “Kurt” one more time.

Instead, I said, “You sure you haven’t spent time at Quantico?” No way could I kill the sarcasm entirely. Especially when Kurt had me on a continuing tour of the myriad attractions of Essex County.

“Quantico, shwantico,” he scoffed. “I’d like to see how long you and your guys would survive in the siege of Orgrimmar.”

I ducked asking what that was-the cultural reference gap between us was beyond unbridgeable-and studied his face, then I scanned him up and down more carefully. Something else had changed, something other than the dropped weight: a general overhaul on the grooming front. Then it hit me. The Amazing Shrinking Kurt was chasing a female. As impossible as that sounded, I was somehow sure he was definitely on the prowl, and his upbeat manner made it clear he thought he was getting somewhere.

Not ideal, from a purely selfish point of view. Last thing I needed was for Kurt’s mind to be diverted from the hunt.

I spread my hands quizzically. “Who is she?”

Eyes wide, Kurt pulled back his head for a second. “What? No!”

“Come on.”

“How’d you-?” Then his grin returned and he wagged a puffy finger at me. “Oh, you’re good. You’re like so totally in the zone.”

I tilted my head, my expression egging him for an answer. “Spill.”

“You’re gonna love her. She’s great. And she’s solid, a real asset for the team. She’s going in deeper than I ever could.”

I felt a stab of bile in the back of my throat. “‘Going in?’ What are you talking about? You told her? About us?”

Kurt backed away a couple of steps. “Relax, dude. Hear me out. She doesn’t know who you are, doesn’t know why we’re looking for Corrigan. But she’s got skills, man. Real skills.”

I took a deep breath and calmed myself down. Kurt was no fool. He also wasn’t having much success in penetrating the CIA’s servers beyond what we already knew. Maybe he did need help. I was well aware that hacking government agencies had become considerably more difficult since the exploits of Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden. But this was a dangerous game to invite someone to play.

I gestured to an empty bench. We both sat, Kurt edging away till there was a couple of feet between us.

“OK, so… who is she?”

Nervously, he crossed and uncrossed his legs. “She’s called Gigi. Gigi Decker. Here…”

He took out his smartphone, swiped his finger across its screen to unlock it, and handed it to me. Its screen showed a full-figured and surprisingly attractive redhead who was-presumably, knowing Kurt’s interests as I did-dressed in the garb of some kind of World of Warcraft character.

Gigi was clearly screensaver-serious.

He reclaimed the phone. “Lady Jaina Proudmoore. Archmage of Kirin Tor. That’s her real hair, by the way.” He added this last part with genuine pride.

“I can see what you mean by solid. She seems totally… reliable.” I can’t really raise one eyebrow, but if I could, it would have been up.

Kurt looked offended. “Hey, when she’s not in Pandaria, she’s one hell of a hacker. I mean, truly outstanding. She’s hacked the CIA’s D-bases deeper than anyone I know. And the cool part is she’s ideologically neutral. She hacks because she can.”

“And to impress you, of course.”

He beamed. “What can I tell you? I’m a catch.”

I rolled my eyes, but my mouth smiled. He really was a lovable son of a bitch. I hoped Gigi wasn’t about to break his heart, and not just because that would screw us both.

“OK, so she’s amazing.” Clearly, I need to retract my grumpy earlier criticism about contemporary word use. “So what did she find?”

He grimaced. “Well, it’s good and it’s bad.”

My entire body tensed in anticipation. Maybe our search was finally going to move out of park. “What do you mean?”

He closed the space between us. “She went in and snooped around the user records and protocol logs related to the terms I’d been using in my searches around both Corrigan and your dad and came up with nothing. Then she went in again and went deeper. Still nothing. Then a couple of days later, we tried again, only this time, the logs and the user records themselves were gone. Everything that had data links to our target folders. Gone. I mean, up until now, they’ve been changing the access codes as per standard operation procedure at Langley. But in the last week, they’ve modified the protocols and wiped dozens of files.”

He gave me that knowing look, the one loaded with portent.

I already knew the answer, but I asked anyway, “So they know we’ve been looking?”

He nodded, his eyes even wider with conspiracy.

“I’m having a hard time seeing anything ‘good’ here, Kurt.”

“Well, yeah, agreed, that part’s not great. But there’s more. Gigi, she doesn’t give up easy. And this was like a challenge for her, like they’d thrown down the gauntlet. So she goes into overdrive and starts trying all kinds of things, including this little trick of hers. She tries misspelling Corrigan in her trawl. She thinks laterally like that, you know?” He paused and nodded, more just to himself, grinning with admiration, savoring the thought. “And she got a hit. One with an ‘m’ at the end, as in, Corrigam.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m telling you. She says it was more common than you’d think before spellchecking technology closed that crack.”

He went quiet again. Kurt had this irritating habit of pausing to build portent. Maybe he’d watched too many badly written TV shows and it had affected the cadence at which he spoke.

“And…?”

“She found a reference to Reed Corrigam-with an ‘m’-in a deep archive. It was in a report from the Direccíon de Inteligencia-the DI, Cuba’s intelligence agency.”

I knew what the DI was, but I didn’t want to burst his bubble. We at the Bureau had been known to butt heads with their operatives in Miami. Instead, I just said, “Makes sense. They would have been operational in El Salvador back then.”

Kurt nodded, then looked around suspiciously, gave our surroundings a second pan-and-scan, then pulled some folded papers out from his pocket and handed them to me. “It’s all in here. It talks about a meeting a DI guy had with Corrigan. It says there was a leak from the DI, and the DI agent is only referred to by his initials, but it mentions the name ‘Octavio Camacho’ as well and I googled that. The hit that seemed most promising was this guy,” he said as he flicked through the printouts before pulling out a particular page. “He was a Portuguese journalist.”

“‘Was?’”

“Yep. Camacho died in 1981.”

I flicked back to the report about the meeting. It had also taken place that year-a couple of months before Camacho’s death.

I could feel my shoulders drop. “That’s it?”

Kurt’s face followed suit. “So far. But she’s still at it. She’s trying to hack some digitized archive backups. The encryption-compression algorithms aren’t as secure as those for live data. At least not for Gigi when she’s in the zone.” He brightened at her name. The guy was totally lovestruck. “But maybe you’ll come up with more on the Camacho front. Maybe you could check with Portuguese Intelligence, see if they’ve got something on Corrigan.”

“Or Corrigam.”

He smiled. “Exactly.”

I wasn’t thrilled. It wasn’t much-not much at all. Just another dark alley with an insurmountable brick wall at its end.

Kurt read my face. “Dude, we’ll find something. She will, anyway. I know it.”

I shrugged. “All right. Do me a favor. Check on something else for me.”

“Shoot.”

“You remember our little Casanova down in DC?”

Kurt gave me a curious look. “Our man Stan?”

“Exactly. See if you can find out what his calendar looks like for Thursday.”

He scratched the top of his ear with his thumb. “This Thursday? The day after tomorrow?”

“Yep.”

“Thursday was Stan’s booty night.”

I said, “I’m wondering if it still is.”

He nodded slowly to himself, the ear-scratching slowing down too. “No problemo. Easily done.”

“Great. Thanks.” I tapped the printouts as I stood up. “I’ll let you know what I find.”

“Cool,” he said as he got off the bench too. “I’ll say hi to Gigi from you.”

I gave him a chastening scowl.

He said, “Dude, lighten up. It’s Christmas.”

I took a couple of steps, then turned back toward him.

“Treat her right, Kurt. She seems like a keeper. But don’t let her push it too far. I don’t want either of you ending up in an orange jumpsuit or as permanent houseguests of the Ecuadorian embassy. Not so soon after you’ve found each other.”

Kurt beamed and patted his heart. “Thanks, man. Truly. I’m just… thanks.”

“Don’t push it, Jaegers. My Christmas spirit only extends so far.” I turned and walked away. I couldn’t resist a smile as I headed back toward the Expedition, but I felt deflated. The Kurt route-now the Kurt and Gigi route-was going nowhere. Once he got me the info I needed about Kirby, I thought I might have to set him loose. I’d miss him-but this was getting us nowhere, and it was putting him and his archmage, whatever that was, at risk.

I was getting into the Expedition when my work BlackBerry rang.

I checked the screen. There was no number appearing on it. It was a private caller.

I took the call.

“Agent Reilly?”

I froze. The voice was cavernous and artificially monotone. The caller was using an electronic voice changer.

Never a good sign.

5

In these situations, my mind immediately goes to Tess, Kim and Alex.

I don’t know why. I don’t usually deal with psychos or serial killers. The cases I normally work on rarely have the kind of personal angle that can spiral into a vendetta against my loved ones or me. But right there and then, I thought of them. And it sent a spasm of worry through me.

I just said, “I’m listening.”

“Are you interested in justice?”

I forced out a small chortle. “It’s really hard to take that question seriously from someone who sounds like he has a Darth Vader fetish.”

The man paused, then said, “I know things, Agent Reilly. Things you need to hear. Things I need you to do something about. Many innocent people have died because of this. The question is, are you ready to put your life on the line to do something about it?”

I didn’t know what to make of this. We get these whackos more frequently than you’d think, but they usually call the Bureau’s switchboard. Special Agents’ cell phone numbers aren’t easy to get hold of.

I said, “That’s kind of my job description. Who are you? How’d you get this number?”

“What I know, what I want to tell you about, goes way back. It involves a lot of people. Powerful people.”

“OK, I’m going to hang up now, cause we’ve hit our quota on scoops about Area 51 and-”

He interrupted me. “What about your father Colin? You hit your quota on that too?”

That got my attention.

I caught my breath as the savage image that had been seared into my mind ever since I was ten came bursting out of the cage I tried to keep it in, the image of my dad in his office at home, slumped at his desk with a gun by his hand and the back of his head blown off.

“What do you know about my dad?”

“The truth. Look, I’m prepared to tell you everything. All the information you need, proof to back it up. I’ve kept a record of it all and I’ll give it to you. But I need to know you’ll make sure it gets out.”

I was seething inside, but I knew how to keep it at bay and stay calm. I was fully aware that I was probably being played, but whoever it was was pressing some pretty nasty buttons inside me. “You didn’t answer my question.”

After a moment, I heard him cough-a weird, jarring sound, when it comes out through a voice box-then he said, “Let’s not play games and let’s not waste each other’s time. I can’t stay on this call much longer. All you need to know is, this is on the level and I need you to hear the truth-about your dad, about the others, about Azorian… just meet me.”

I didn’t have much choice. “Where and when?”

“Tomorrow. One o’clock. Times Square. By the Duffy statue. You know where it is, right?”

“Of course.”

“Come alone. I won’t show if I think you’ve got anyone else there. And, Reilly? Keep it quiet. I’m saying this for your own good.”

“Oh?”

“The last person I reached out to-the only person I tried to tell about it-he’s dead. And I’m sure it wasn’t pleasant, not that death ever is, but-burning to death in his own home because of some electrical fire the day after I called him? Give me a break. I told him not to look into it, but some of these guys, it’s just in their blood. They can’t help themselves.”

“Then why not cut the whole charade and come in to Federal Plaza? I can protect you.”

His voice stayed calm. “No. You can’t.”

“You’d be in federal custody. My custody.”

“No. The people I’m talking about-they’re your own people. That’s why I need you to hear it first. Alone. So you can think about what you're going to do about it before they come after you too.”

I couldn’t help but sense that he was telling the truth. He was scared. Even with the voice box, the fear was palpably there.

“OK,” I said. “I’ll be there.”

“Good. Let’s just both hope you stay alive long enough for it.”

Then the line went dead.

6

Ocracoke, North Carolina

“We have a problem.”

Gordon Roos frowned as he settled into an armchair on the wide deck and looked out over the sleepy, small harbor. Steam rose from the mug of coffee he held in his other hand, vaporizing in the crisp evening air.

He took a sip, then said, “We always have problems. So what else is new?”

“It’s Padley.”

The Outer Banks hardly ever saw snow. A couple of winters back, they’d had several inches, which was all the more notable for its idiosyncrasy. Roos didn’t mind it. He liked the added privacy it offered. Since his move to Ocracoke, he was even more remote than his previous house further up the coast, and it was exactly how he liked it-as long as he could hop in and out efficiently, and fast. His car rarely left the island. He kept a Cessna Skyhawk single-engine prop plane at the small airport, which was little more than a runway with a small, unattended cottage for a terminal. He also kept a sixty-foot sport fisher in the harbor, but that purely for pleasure.

He loved the winters here. The late fall tourists were long gone, leaving the island to its few hundred year-round inhabitants. His house was part of a small cluster of buildings on the south-east side of Silver Lake harbor, all of which were occupied by locals. On one side was an artist. On the other, a folk musician, of a style that Roos found rather pleasing-which was fortunate, given the man’s proclivity for late night sessions. The neighbors mostly kept to themselves, though they always shared a drink at Christmas, a tradition that Roos found he enjoyed much more since his wife had left him. They’d never had kids, so there were no big family gatherings over the holidays, no grandchildren running around opening presents, and his parents were also long dead-Roos himself was over sixty-so he had zero obligations on that front too.

He had been looking forward to a quiet holiday season-reading, playing some golf and some platform tennis, taking his sport fisher out into the Gulf Stream for some bluefish tuna, and bringing in the occasional paid companion for an overnight or two of carnal bliss. Roos was in great shape and prided himself on his fitness. In fact, his deep-seated need to deny nature its natural course and stay young physically was almost obsessive, and he was pulling it off: given his looks and the upbeat, animalistic energy he projected-particularly towards attractive women-most people he met assumed he was at least ten years younger than he really was.

The holiday season was shaping up nicely indeed, but then the call had come in on his encrypted satphone. Only one person had the phone’s number. Edward Tomblin had been Roos’s decades-long colleague at the CIA, though unlike Roos, Tomblin was still at the agency. Tomblin was also Roos’s closest-and perhaps his only, in the true sense of the term, at least within the limitations of their line of work-friend. And Roos knew his friend well enough to read the gravity in his tone.

He asked, “Say again?”

“The leak? With the reporter? It was Padley. He’s going off the reservation-or, more like, he’s lost his fucking mind.”

Roos took a moment to process it as he took another sip of his coffee. He felt the pleasing sting of the hot liquid as it hit the back of his throat and jacked his sharp mind into even more focus.

“How do we know this?”

“He made a second call. We only caught it because it was to someone on an active watch list. ”

“Who?”

“Oh, you’re going to love this. Reilly. Sean Reilly.”

The sting turned venomous.

“What did he tell him?”

“Not much. Just that he has stuff for him. Information. Records-of everything. Stuff he wants Reilly to go public with. Stuff that includes his dad. The doc’s playing it smart, though. He’s using a prepaid and a voice changer. He also avoided using any keywords we would have picked up. We only fingered him after we ran the recording through our red list and got a match. I guess he doesn’t know we have decryption software for any voice box he can get hold of in this country.”

“Or anywhere else, for that matter.”

“I was being modest.”

So they’d got lucky. They would have missed the call if they hadn’t been monitoring Reilly.

Reilly. That damned Reilly. Again.

Roos put that particular sting aside. “Padley, of all people? Why? And why now?”

“He’s dying.”

“What?”

“We ran a full sweep on the prick after we ID’d him. Turns out he’s got pancreatic cancer. Aggressive and metastasized. He’s terminal. Doesn’t have long.”

“Jesus.” Roos let out a long breath, then took another sip. He’d been in the game long enough that he already knew what they’d need to do. The thought still displeased him.

He liked the doc. Sure, the man had some irritating idiosyncrasies. Today, people would probably consider him to have some level of Asperger’s. But they were all control freaks in their own way. The nature of the business demanded it. Lives were often at stake-especially their own. You learned early on that the only person you could definitely rely on was yourself.

But this-this was a shock. Padley had come to them. He’d never wavered in his commitment, never questioned the tasks he’d been assigned, even when he wasn’t given all the information, information that may have made him question things. To turn like this, to sell you out, for-what?

“So this is about redemption?” Roos asked. “The good doc wants to repent so he can get on the guest list at the pearly gates?”

“That’s what it looks like.”

Roos nodded to himself as he took in a lone sailing yacht that was motoring into the harbor. “OK,” he said. “I don’t see how we have a choice here. I’ll get the Sandman to take care of it.”

“No point bringing the doc in for a chat and showing him the error of his ways, is there?”

“What’s the point of that? He’s dying anyway. I almost feel bad that we’re saving that backstabbing little shit from all the crap that’s waiting for him. I watched my dad go through it… Hell, if you ever see me about to go through something like that, do me favor and sick Sandman on me.”

Tomblin chortled. “It would be my pleasure.”

It was Roos’s turn to chuckle. “Asshole.”

“What about Reilly?”

“What about Reilly, indeed.”

Roos had wanted to deal with Reilly a few months ago, after they found out he was gunning for “Reed Corrigan”-Roos’s code name on some of the CIA projects he worked on with Tomblin, back when Roos was still an active agent. Tomblin had counseled him to wait. Reilly turned into even more of a pest when he got involved in the Sokolov affair and prevented Roos from getting his hands on the fugitive Russian scientist who’d managed to give both the KGB and the CIA the slip, the incredible-and outrageously dangerous-technology he’d invented, and the monster payday that would have ensued. Then the son of a bitch went and saved the president’s life and Roos had to back off, big time.

He wouldn’t back off now.

“I think he needs to be item two on Sandman’s to-do list.”

Tomblin seemed to demur the length of a breath, then said, “Agreed.”

“Especially now. Reilly can’t be allowed to interfere this time. But we need to be real careful with him. He’s a slippery bastard.”

“Reilly’s girl-she’s a handful too.”

“The novelist?”

“Yes. We need to make sure she doesn’t have a bone to chew on after it’s done.”

“Sandman hasn’t let us down yet.”

“True,” Tomblin said. “But like you said-she’s like him. Resourceful.”

“According to the surveillance logs, he doesn’t seem to be sharing everything with her, correct?”

“Yes. The bastard’s keeping us in the dark too, but at the same time, it just might end up being what keeps her alive.”

“If she decides to turn into a pain, we’ll just have to deal with her,” Roos told him. “In the meantime, keep me posted. And better get our lapdog up to speed too. Maybe he’ll finally start earning that retainer we’re paying him.”

“Agreed.”

Roos clicked off and looked out. The yacht was reversing into its slot. He kept his gaze on it, judging the skipper’s maneuvering.

For any mere mortal, the news was more than unsettling, but Roos had seen a lot worse over the course of his long career in the shadows. It took a hell of a lot to rattle him. He’d chuckled when he’d seen Mark Rylance’s character in Bridge of Spies repeatedly answer “Would it help?” every time Tom Hanks asked him if he was worried; it mirrored his own take on events, events that took place is a far more brutal version of the world he’d watched on screen. Calmness under fire was crucial in his line of work, perhaps the key quality an agent needed to possess. It was something Roos had mastered.

He wasn’t about to change any of his plans. He would finish his coffee, take another look at the weather forecast, then go for a jog along the dunes, like he did most every evening. He was even considering getting a dog. He’d had one when he was a boy, but his father had shot it just before they’d moved to the city.

If he did buy a dog, the only person who was going to shoot it was him. And then only to spare it the years that Roos had no intention of suffering through himself. He figured he had ten good years left-twenty if he were lucky-more than enough for the useful lifespan of a purebred.

He smiled at the continuing years of uninterrupted leisure stretching out in front of him. He firmly believed he’d earned them many times over. And nothing-nothing, especially not Sean Reilly-was going to interfere with that.

7

Lower Manhattan, New York City

We were all at the Beekman, one of our favorite haunts, a family-run Irish pub that purportedly served the best pint of Guinness in the entire city. Not that I would know. I was enjoying my second ice-heavy Coke, the decision not to drink having already earned me an hour of slating from the more old-school agents.

Our boss, Ron Gallo, hadn’t even bothered to show. No surprise there: the Assistant Director in Charge of the New York Field Office was the kind of leader who thought getting down and dirty with the troops would lower him in their estimation. As if that were possible. He and I had little time for each other anyway. I don’t know if it was due to his particularly poor management skills, although he ticked all the boxes: anger fits, hogging credit, going back on his word. He just exuded that smarmy, insincere, politically astute career focus that made me picture a weasel every time I saw his elongated, narrow-eyed face.

I was still weary from all the overnight stints in New Jersey, for sure-that, and that damn phone call. It was still weighing heavily on my mind when I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to find myself facing Special Agent Annie Deutsch. I knew only rudimentary facts about her due to her being the most recent addition to the office. Right now, she was smiling, the cocktail in her left hand and the general camaraderie around us having obviously served to loosen her attitude. I feared for her around Nick. Although she was a petite brunette and thus didn’t conform to his usual bombastic type, he’d commented on her attractiveness a few times already.

“Agent Reilly?”

“Agent Deutsch.”

I detected the stirrings of a smile. “It’s Annie.”

“Sean.”

Her eyes sparkled with that same elusive combination of intelligence, wit and lightly worn acceptance of a sure-fire ability to attract attention that I found so appealing in Tess.

She leaned in and whispered, close to my ear. “I need to get away from Lendowski. He seems to think I want his tongue down my ear.”

I looked around. I could see Lendowski laughing loudly a few feet away from us, his leer locked on Deutsch. “Why me?”

I was only half joking.

Lendowski’s often-embarrassing exploits with the ladies were widely known within the Bureau, mainly because he insisted on sharing them with anyone who would listen. He made Nick look like a monk. Lendowski had narrowly avoided at least three sexual harassment charges, and he always seemed to emerge looking like the victim, which was no mean feat for a guy who wouldn’t look out of place on the WWE Network. He also loved to gamble, maybe even more than he loved annoying women.

The question seemed to throw her a bit. She hesitated, then said, “Because you’re standing here.” She paused again before adding, “And because of how she describes you.”

“Huh?” I had no idea what she was talking about.

“You’re Jim, right? Mia’s knight errant?”

I shook my head and chortled. “Oh, Jesus.” It was going to happen eventually, but the longer time passed without it happening, the more I had started to believe that it wouldn’t.

Once she had heard that Tess was a bestselling novelist, it wasn’t much of a leap for her to deduce that the male hero of her first two books was modeled in some way on Tess’s very own man of action. The hazing about this was merciless with each new book, especially since Jim Corben had a goatee and lived on a cattle ranch when he wasn’t traveling the globe on archaeological adventures at the behest of a mysterious secret society.

“Well, for starters, I’m no cowboy.”

She tilted her head to one side. “And I ain’t no buckle bunny either.” Her faux-Texan accent was pitch-perfect, then Lendowski planted a hand on her arm.

“Mind if I cut in?” he said. “Annie and me were just talking, but she somehow got waylaid when I went to the bar.” He flashed us a big, overly toothy grin. How many teeth did this guy have? “Get it? Way-laid?”

She gently removed his paw as he laughed at his ingenious crack. “Len, how about you just lay off instead?”

He threw me a half-drunk wink. “They just love playing these games, don’t they? It’s all about the tease with these chicks. You should have seen how her eyes lit up when I told her ‘endow’ was the root of my family name. Isn’t that right, babe?”

He went to put a hand on her waist, but she swiveled round so that he grabbed a handful of air instead.

He laughed and tried again, this time getting hold of her with both hands and attempting to maneuver her away from me and over toward the bar and a couple of his SWAT buddies.

The last thing I needed was Lendowski as an enemy, but he was clearly the worse for drink and I could tell that Deutsch’s patience was running thin. But I also knew she realized that if she got on the wrong side of him-especially while they were partners-he was likely to set her career back some, or indeed stall it altogether. I, on the other hand, was part of the furniture and had enough goodwill aimed my way to ride out any macho posturing the big lug felt he might need to inflict upon me.

I moved in, grabbed his wrists, and firmly removed his hands from Deutsch. Then, as low as I could say it and still be heard, “Go back to your buddies, Len. Next round’s on me.”

He swung around viciously and his fist made the air move enough to create a piercing whistle in my left ear as my head jerked away from the blow.

Deutsch judiciously lurched backwards as I feinted the other way to avoid the follow-up, then Lendowski charged into me. I’d already vacated the space at which he was aiming so he hit a couple of suited Wall Street bankers instead.

He disentangled himself, pulled himself upright, and swung a right hook at my head, but overbalanced. All I needed to do was apply the slightest additional momentum to his leading shoulder to send him crashing to the floor-which I did.

Staggering to his feet, he cracked his knuckles and cricked his neck like the stereotype into which he had already fallen. He even gave me the thousand-yard stare, but somehow I resisted the urge to laugh, a reaction that would have done far more damage to our professional relationship than repeatedly punching him in the face.

It was all threatening to turn very ugly, but as Lendowski prepared to charge me again, Nick appeared and grabbed him from behind and said, “Yo, time for a break, big guy.” He ushered him away.

I remembered that Nick and Lendowski used the same gym, and I hoped that they’d built up enough of a rapport for Nick to be able to reason with the guy.

Deutsch moved back toward me. “Thanks. Mia’s a lucky girl.”

I laughed at her insistence on using the name Tess had given her fictional alter ego. “That’s what I keep saying.” I decided against relaying this message, Tess definitely not being the kind of woman who enjoys being complemented on her choice of man by an attractive-and available-professional female colleague. Especially not one who was showing no sign of trying to find someone else to talk to.

We watched Lendowski nod grudgingly at Nick, then head out of the bar.

Annie said, “How does a Neanderthal like that manage to keep his badge?”

“Your mind’s clouded by alcohol. He’s actually a very charming individual. If you’d only give him a chance.”

She eyed me curiously for a second, like she wasn’t sure if I was being serious, then her expression brightened and she actually laughed-a first. “Now why couldn’t they partner me with someone like you instead?”

“You’ve got to earn me, Annie.”

I immediately regretted opening my mouth-even more so given the curious, but not turned off, look in her eyes.

“Earn you. Now that’s an intriguing prospect.”

“And that’s my cue,” I said, with a smile. “Seriously… just ride it out. They’ll reassign you, I’m sure. They’re not blind.”

“I hope they do-I might not hold back next time.”

“Just make sure you’ve got plenty of witnesses around.”

I waved at her, turned and headed for the door. I stopped to tell Nick I was going home, then left. It was getting late and I was physically and mentally exhausted. We all were.

Outside, I saw Lendowski leaning against a wall in the alleyway that ran alongside the bar. At first I thought he was throwing up, but then I realized he was talking on his cell, which probably meant his bookie had called with more bad news.

I gulped a lungful of cold air and stuck out my hand for a taxi so I could reclaim my car from the Federal Plaza parking garage. In less than an hour, I’d be back in my castle, cuddled up with my fair maiden.

Lendowski had sobered up the second he’d heard the voice on the other end of the call, a voice that, although not that of his bookie, filled him with the same level of dread.

He owed his bookie about sixty thousand dollars, and he had no idea how he was ever going to pay it all back. They’d threatened him already, and the fact that they didn’t bat an eyelid about doing that to an FBI agent left him under no illusion about how serious and unforgiving these people were. They had him sweating-not an easy thing to pull off with Nat Lendowski. Then, a couple of months back, he’d taken a call from someone else that knew about his debt. The guy had offered him five hundred dollars a week just to keep tabs on Reilly. Nothing too elaborate. He just wanted Lendowski to let him know if Reilly did anything odd or disappeared for any length of time without explanation.

Lendowski made no real effort to earn the money, but continued to collect the envelopes of used bills from his apartment building’s laundry room every other week. He could have used the money to pay down the debt, but instead he gambled it-and lost. Which meant he was now at the guy’s mercy as well as that of his bookie.

When he’d answered his cell, the guy cut to the chase.

“Hey, Len. It’s time to start earning your keep.”

Len scowled. “What do you want me to do?”

“Reilly,” the man said. “Stay close to him. Imagine your life depends on it.”

With a sinking feeling, Lendowski realized this wasn’t going to be particularly easy, especially following what had just happened in the bar. But at least he could offer something.

“He’s on his way home. I know he’s got some big social engagement out of town tomorrow night. Heard him talking to his partner about it. He’s taking his lady.”

“OK. Good. Anything else, call me immediately.”

The caller hung up.

Lendowski pocketed his phone, then turned and emptied his stomach against the wall.

8

Mamaroneck, New York

The mystery call still had me in its thrall.

I was in two minds about what to make of it. There was a chance it was genuine. The man’s pitch sounded real. On the other hand, I couldn’t ignore the possibility that I was being played. Either way, I had to go to the meet. There was no way I wasn’t going, despite the usual complications, including the main one: I couldn’t tell Nick about it, and he’d probably sniff it out and start hassling me about what I was hiding. It would also be safer having him there, but I’d started this thing on my own and I wasn’t about to jeopardize his career over it this late in the game. I also couldn’t risk spooking the caller if he was indeed genuine and had something of value to say.

I was lying on the bed, deep in thought, wondering about it all, while in front of me, Tess was busy pulling out one outfit after another from her wardrobe and parading them for my opinion.

“What about this one?” she said as she gleefully presented me with a long, shimmering bronze dress that flared out at the bottom. “You said you liked it when I wore it to that gala at the Institute.” Her expression then clouded with thought just as fast as it had brightened up. “Then again-do you think the guest list at the White House might have anyone else who was also at that gala besides us?”

I raised my eyebrows and nodded positively, though evidently not with a lot of enthusiasm. I mean, by dress number three, I was fresh out. I went with the failsafe response: “They’re all great. Besides, whichever one you choose, you know you’re going to be the hottest girl in that room.”

OK, I knew that wasn’t going to cut it, and it didn’t. Tess just gave me that deadpan look that signaled a lot of hard work ahead for me to make up for it and said, in her best ironic French accent, “You have such a silky tongue, Monsieur Reilly. No wonder women swoon over your ever utterance.”

“It’s my cross to bear,” I replied before heading out to the kitchen. “You want a beer?”

“Monsieur, you spoil me with your exquisite taste.”

“I’m assuming that means you want foreign?”

“Moi?”

I smiled. “One Bud, coming up.”

I hit the fridge, took a long chug, then sat down at the kitchen table and mapped out tomorrow in my mind.

I had to be at Times Square at one. I didn’t think it would be a long meet, and that’s assuming Darth showed up at all. The guy sounded so jittery it felt like anything would spook him.

On the other hand, he could show up and turn out to be the real deal. If so, I might try to convince him to come into custody, which, if he did, would obviously wipe out our little DC excursion. I could already picture how cheerfully Tess would take that.

She was all excited about our mini-break. She’d arranged for her mom, who lived up in Westport, to come down and look after Kim and Alex while we were out of town. It would be just the two of us, shacked up in a nice hotel room in the capital. Which would be great. Having to miss it would be bad. Then again, my covert meeting could go all wrong and morph into something nasty and intense, which was a different worry altogether.

I needed to be at Penn Station at two for our Acela Express down to DC I was already going to be on thin ice with Tess once I told her I’d be ditching her at Union Station and meeting up with her at the hotel later. That would be tight too-I’d be jumping in the rental car that was waiting there for me and driving out to have my chat with my favorite philandering CIA agent before joining her in time for the star-studded Christmas dinner.

That wasn’t a conversation I was hugely looking forward to. I hadn’t felt great about blackmailing Stan Kirby the first time, even though he was a cheating scumbag. It hadn’t exactly endeared me to him either. He’d probably blow a gasket at having me show up again, and at his house for that matter, but I didn’t have any other choice. A phone call wasn’t going to have the full effect, not if I wanted to convince him to look into what the CIA’s servers had on record about my dad. I couldn’t show up at his office. And Kurt had called to tell me that his snoop into Kirby’s digital footprint showed that his Thursday evening trysts with his sister-in-law seemed to have ended, and that he drove home from Langley straight after work pretty much every day. Maybe my little intervention had actually put him back on the straight and narrow. Or maybe his mistress had just got bored with his sorry ass. Who knows. Still, I couldn’t afford not to go out and see him. The dinner invitation to the White House was timely, a great opportunity to slip away and have my little chat with him without raising too many flags.

I decided it wasn’t hugely productive to keep mulling over it any more. I just needed to get out there and see how both events would play out. Right now, the best call was to get back to the bedroom with Tess’s beer and make up for not fawning over her overpriced selection of haute couture.

I didn’t get much of a chance to fawn. Within moments of me handing Tess her exquisite brew, I saw her eyes move away and land on something by our bedroom door.

I followed her gaze to see Alex standing there, his face tense with worry despite clearly being half-asleep.

“Oh, baby,” she said warmly.

She started to get out of bed, but I stopped her and said, “I’ve got this.”

I turned and padded over to him, slowly. He just watched me in silence as I dropped down to one knee in front of him.

“Hey,” I said softly, giving him a kiss on his forehead. “What’s going on, champ? It’s very late.”

He stared at me, his lower lip curled out and quivering a bit, his big brown eyes brimming with anxiety.

He didn’t need to tell me what was going on. This wasn’t the first time he’d had a nightmare.

“Come on,” I said as I lifted him up and hugged him against me. “Let’s get you back to bed.”

I glanced back at Tess. She gave me a pained half-smile and a small, warm nod, and I carried him into his bedroom.

“Story,” he mumbled, clinging to me tightly.

I melted a bit. Despite the anger roaring through me regarding what he was going through, what they’d done to him, at least he was now letting me comfort him, and not just Tess.

It was such a bittersweet feeling-enjoying holding my son tight against me, feeling him cling to me like this, his protector, his dad-but at the same time wanting to pound the guys who did this to a pulp.

“OK,” I told him as we cuddled up in his bed. “What are we in the mood for tonight? Some gobblefunk or that clever mouse and his big, toothy friend?”

Alex smiled.

I melted some more.

“Gobblefunk,” he murmured.

“Good call,” I said, and raised my hand for a high five, which he gently tapped back before rubbing his eyes with tight fists in that glorious way kids do.

We cuddled up and sank together into the wonderful world of the Big Friendly Giant. Alex’s breathing got louder and slower, his little snores a symphony to my ears, a balm to my tired senses.

Once I was sure he was comfortably asleep, it was hard to extricate myself from that lovely cocoon and move back to our bedroom, but I needed to. I had to get some good zees in.

Tomorrow was shaping up to be a day of a complication or two, at best.