“Unfortunately for this Mossad deep-pen agent, he’s been compromised, and he doesn’t have a clue. A group of Pakistan al Qaeda are meeting them in Italy, and shit’s about to get nasty.”

Court said, “We know the Israeli agent is compromised, but the Mossad doesn’t know?”

“Affirmative. Like I said, another partner nation gave us the heads-up. We can’t tell the Israelis, apparently, because we don’t want to tip them off that we have a liaison relationship with this other nation.”

Court asked, “Who is the other nation?”

Hightower made a face at Gentry. “If we were supposed to know that, Hanley would have told us.”

“Right.”

“Anyway, this entire thing in Italy is a setup to get this agent away from his area of operations, so he can be liquidated without it causing a rift between the two AQ divisions. The plan is for one of the Pak AQ operatives on the trip to smoke him in Italy, then blame it on the Serbs.”

Court said, “And I need to stop that from happening.”

“You are so much smarter than you look. Anyway, you’ll be driven to Dulles within the hour. From there you’ll fly commercial to Milan. In Milan you will take a train to Trieste.”

Court wrote nothing down.

“You will ID the Iraqi guys when they arrive at the port, identify the Israeli asset among them, and follow them to their safe house. As soon as it’s prudent get him out of there. Tell him he is compromised and take him to the train station. After that, he is the Israelis’ problem. Remember, he must not know you are American. He speaks Hebrew and Arabic only, and you speak neither, so things shouldn’t get too chatty between you two.”

“Guess not.”

Court still wondered why CIA didn’t just pick up the phone and call Israel and tell them to rescue their own dumb agent. Seemed to him like the CIA could have just not revealed where they got their intel. But that was strategy, and that was above Court’s pay grade.

As usual, Court just figured the graybeards knew what they were doing.

Hightower asked, “Any questions?”

“Just the obvious. Why me? Why solo?”

“Hanley’s orders, but it looked to me it was Jordan Mayes’s order, which means it was Denny Carmichael’s idea. My guess is we’re afraid Mossad will find out we are in the area if we roll in with the whole task force. I imagine the Israelis will have support personnel monitoring their agent while he’s out of the Middle East. Hanley thinks you can get in and out low profile, stay fast and light if you don’t have the high drag of moving with the Goon Squad.”

Court just nodded. It wasn’t how they normally operated, but whatever.

“Got it.”