‘Just give me a second,’ he said. ‘I’ll get my paper and pencil and get started on the laundry list.’

*

‘You’re sure about this?’

Concern furrowed the brow of General Tusk Musso, USMC (retired). His office was much less grand than that of his opposite number over in the Hood. Unlike in Blackstone’s lair, there was no sign he had ever served in the military. Just pictures of his family on the desk. A woman and two boys Caitlin knew had Disappeared.

‘The sooner I do it, the sooner I can get out of this graveyard and go home, General.’

Musso sat back and regarded her with a contemplative air. ‘So your home isn’t here anymore? America, I mean – not Temple, of course.’

‘It’s where the heart is, sir,’ she said, being careful not to stare at the pictures of his dead family, even though, as the only adornment in the spartan office, their images drew the eye. She wondered if a day went by when he didn’t think of them. The same way she didn’t think of Bret or Monique.

Probably not. Musso seemed like a good man, and he had probably been a much better father than she was a mother.

‘Can’t argue with that,’ he agreed, apparently speaking to her private thoughts. ‘Are they letting you stay in camp over at the Hood?’

‘As if I’d want to,’ she replied. ‘They might have some surveillance rigs over there actually worth the money they spent on them.’

Her Siemens handset lay on Musso’s desk, the screen lit up, displaying an image of one of the bugs in her room. It sat squatting between them like a poisonous metal spider. The director of the Federal Center couldn’t stop his gaze drifting back towards it. Even though Caitlin had used the cell phone to scan his office, and declared it clean, she could tell that the former Marine had been rocked by the revelation of a traitor somewhere within his command. He was being very circumspect now, as if he thought Mad Jack Blackstone himself was listening to every word. Caitlin. however, had more faith in her equipment and in TDF security’s general lameness.

‘I’ll have more freedom of action if I’m not right under their noses,’ she said. ‘There’s plenty of accommodation in Killeen. I’ve asked them to find me a room over there.’

‘They’ll be all over you like a cheap Chinese suit,’ he said, frowning at the cell phone.

‘Just a day at the office, sir, and hopefully it won’t even be necessary, except as cover. If I can get in and out tonight, Colonel Murdoch will be on a scheduled flight three days from now, with McCutcheon and Blackstone waving her off at the airport.’

‘And if that doesn’t pan out?’

Caitlin paused. Just long enough to feel her heart beat once.