“Think about it, Denny. We’re going to have to beef up your security protocols, and we’ll be putting assets on Gentry’s known associates in the city. There is no way that can happen without Brewer learning about it. She’s an outsider now, but we bring her in and give her password access to the Working Group, and she’ll become an ally instead of an impediment.”

“And when she learns we don’t want Gentry alive?”

Mayes didn’t hesitate. “Operational expediencies won’t trouble her. If you tell her this target needs to die, she’ll make it happen.”

The elevator arrived on the seventh floor. Mayes reached out and took Denny by the arm before he left the car. He spoke softly to him. “I was also thinking . . . if Gentry is here to target the Agency, and this manages to make some noise outside of the Agency, God forbid, we might want to frame this to the media as some kind of an external threat. If Suzanne is involved, beefing up the guns and gates of our facilities, it will only help us sell it as some lone-wolf terror attack on the Agency.”

Denny looked at his second-in-command. In a louder voice he said, “One, this is a terror attack on the Agency. Gentry didn’t come all this way to pick up an old paycheck. And two, keeping this shit in house is paramount. No one breathes a word. We’ll take care of it.” Carmichael took off, heading up a brightly lit hallway towards his office.

Mayes knew when to fight with his boss, and he knew when to let his boss wrestle with his own arguments. As he caught up with Carmichael he said, “So . . . Suzanne. Yea or nay?”

After a moment the director of National Clandestine Service gave in, to a point. “Maybe. But before I bring her into the program, I want to know more about her.”

“She’s reliable. I’ve worked with her myself. She’ll play ball.”

Denny slowed and turned back towards Mayes, but before he could say anything Mayes preempted him by handing over the plastic file folder. “Here’s her two-page write-up. You want more, I can send it to your office.”

Carmichael took the file, but said, “I want it all. Nobody gets read in on Violator unless I know them inside and out.”

—

Ten minutes later five men and one woman converged in a glass-walled conference room that could easily accommodate sixteen, took their seats quickly, and then all eyes turned to a pair of side-by-side monitors on the wall. A satellite linkup had been established with Tel Aviv and fed to one of the monitors, but until the commo people on the Israeli side of the connection gave the word that their attendee was on camera and ready, the screen just glowed blue. Next to this, a larger screen displayed an interactive map of the greater Washington, D.C., area.