Outside the bullet- and soundproof windows, the expanse of the Washington Mall flowed away like a stream on which ten thousand pleasure boats drifted back and forth.

Whit appeared entirely unmoved. He’d heard this lament before from the members of the Alchemists. “Like you say, my focus is on my team, and because of this snafu one of them is dead and another is injured. It’s unacceptable.”

Cutler was wrenched away from his contemplation of USA’s future. “Are you really going to make me say that we all know the risks?” he said, clearly annoyed. “In our business, it’s such a fucking cliché.” He was a big man in all directions, tall and wide as a Mack truck. He was an ex-Marine, had seen combat three times that Whitman knew of. Divorced twice, two kids, one from each marriage. They stayed in touch, even if his exes didn’t. “Worse than a cliché.” He had a head like a football, his hair still shorn in a Marine high-and-tight, and there was not a gray strand to be found on him. His knife slash of a mouth was always grim, his nose constantly questing for danger. “Honestly, Gregory, this talk will go better when you simmer down to a rolling boil.”

“You weren’t there, boss. You didn’t see…” Whitman gritted his teeth, stopping of his own accord. “We were betrayed. There was a leak, a breach of security, call it what you want. The upshot is that someone from inside—one of us, boss—didn’t want us to get to Seiran el-Habib.”

“We were warned that el-Habib had connections.”

“No fucking kidding.”

Cutler’s green eyes seemed to flare. “What did I just tell you? Nothing’s going to get settled when you’re too hot to handle.”

“Why shouldn’t I be hot? It’s a fucking miracle we weren’t all killed. Not only did Seiran el-Habib’s people ambush us inside the compound, but his patrol outside the perimeter knew our exact escape route, and were lying in wait for us. That meant they not only knew the day and time of the raid, but the details of the brief as well. But how could they have known? This is the question that’s been eating at me ever since I watched the hellish landscape drop away as the helo took us out of there. There’s only one answer. We need to go mole hunting.”

Cutler held up a fistful of black-jacketed files. “Here is everyone who had knowledge of the Seiran el-Habib brief. I’ve already started vetting them—movements, travel, mobile phone records, bank accounts, family, friends, acquaintances, the whole nine yards.”

“Yeah, well, everyone’s already been vetted up and down the yin-yang, so don’t forget to look in all the dusty, unremarked corners of their lives.”

Cutler cut across his words. “That includes Orteño and you, hotshot.”

“Maybe it was Sandy.” Whitman’s tone hung heavy with sarcasm. “Maybe he was shot on purpose to keep him from blabbing.”

“That’s enough.” Cutler put down the files. “We need to move slowly and carefully. NSA and DARPA personnel are involved.”