“Jameson is guilty, Mr President,” Pryce said softly. “He knew the code words. He knew the names of false flag programs in memos that were never leaked. I saw it. I predicted that they’d take out the car. And they did. You told me to find out if we created the PLF. I’m telling you – we did.”

Pryce held herself steady, kept herself from shaking.

Stockton sighed from behind his hands. “OK.”

Pryce looked down at the floor, then looked back up. “What does that mean, Mr President? ‘OK’?”

Stockton spoke, his hands still covering his face. “It means…” he paused. “I still can’t believe it. But it means I trust you. And it means I’ll confront him. And if it’s true…” He brought his hands down, leaned forward again, looked Pryce in the eyes. “I’ll nail him.”

Pryce nodded in relief.

“But Pryce,” he said, staring at her.

“Yes, sir,” she answered.

“No. More. Secrets.” He emphasized each word. “No more hiding things from me, you hear?”

Pryce nodded. “Perfectly, Mr President.”

“Good,” Stockton said. He rose, clearly viewing the meeting as over.

“Mr President,” Pryce said.

“Now there’s more?” Stockton asked.

“Actually, sir,” Pryce said. “I’d like to request Secret Service protection.”

Stockton looked surprised. “They really spooked you, didn’t they? First time for everything, I suppose.”

Pryce shook her head slightly. “Sir, with Becker dead, and Holtzman, and Barnes, it just seems prudent.”

Stockton frowned. “Becker was a heart attack,” he said, sharply. “Barnes was the Chinese. Unless there’s intel you haven’t shared with me yet?”

Pryce cursed herself. She shouldn’t have gone there.

“No sir,” she said. “No evidence linking those. Just… a lot of bodies.”

Stockton nodded, looking suspiciously at her. “You have told me everything, haven’t you Carolyn? Anything else on your mind?”

Pryce closed her eyes, then opened them. She’d had time to think about this. Lots of time. On the hike. In the chopper. On the plane home.

“Sir, there is something.”

Stockton sat back down. “Go on, Carolyn. Better now than later.”

“If we created the PLF, if we ran those missions, if they were fakes…” she paused. “Then we’ve been tricked. We’ve been tricked into creating policies on the basis of facts that aren’t facts at all.”

Stockton frowned at her.

Pryce tried again, from another angle. “Sir, as a false flag, the PLF worked. It worked as a psy-op on us. Look at what it’s tricked us into doing. Locking up kids?”

Clips from the video came back to her. She’d watched it again on the plane. She’d found it hard to look away. We did this… why? Because we were lied to? Because we fooled ourselves into doing it?

She thought of her own reaction to the videos, the way it was driving the protests out there.