They arrived at Glenwood Cemetery and Six pulled through an entrance that led him to a series of winding roads through rolling hills dotted with trees and tombstones. They passed a mausoleum on the left. There were a few cars parked here and several people dressed in formal attire, some carrying flowers. Catherine wondered if she could just open her car door and roll out. This would alert the dozen or so by the mausoleum, but she didn’t know if the man driving the car would just hurt them along with her if she tried this.

She stayed still, and soon they were driving around a quieter part of the cemetery grounds.

Six said, “I can’t say I’ve ever given an interview. How do I start?”

“I need you to prove you are who you say you are. How do I know you didn’t just read my article and snatch me like this as part of some delusional fantasy? You could be pretending to be involved in all this.”

To Catherine’s surprise, the man reached to his waist and hefted both his hoodie and a long-sleeve thermal he wore under it. Lifting both up high enough to first expose the butt of a pistol on his right hip, and then a heavily bandaged area on the right side of his rib cage. Dried black and dark red stains covered the beige compression bandages.

“What is that?”

“It’s a gunshot wound. I can unwrap it if you really want to see it.”

“I’ll take your word for it. What happened?”

“I got shot the other night. Up in Bethesda.”

“Is it . . . serious?”

“It’s not much fun.”

Catherine nodded slowly. “That’s one way to prove your involvement.”

“Are you satisfied?”

“Yes.” She looked back at her purse behind her. “Is there any chance I can take notes for the interview?”

“None whatsoever.”

Catherine did not push it. “You said you have been running from someone. Who? The CIA?”

“Yes. Among others.”

“For how long?”

“Five years.”

“And before that?”

“I was an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency for over a decade.”

Catherine asked, “In what capacity?”

“SAD. Deniable special missions.”

“That’s a unit name?”

“A job description. My group didn’t have an official name.”

“It’s the government, Six. Everything gets a name.”

A pause. “They called us Golf Sierra. It was a call sign. But that wasn’t exactly on the phone extension list at Langley.”

“You were SAD black operators?”

“There are black units, and then there are the guys who walk in the shadows cast by the black units. That was us, I guess.”

Catherine wondered if this could all still be just what Denny Carmichael had asserted in his interview. A figment of the imagination of an insane person.

“Do you have some proof?”

“Proof of?”

“What you did while working for the Agency.”