“Yes, sir. Unfortunately, the enemy gets a vote, and this personality we are after has proven extremely difficult to remove from the chessboard.”

“Cathy King over there at the Post says it’s a homegrown threat. That true?”

Carmichael heaved his shoulders. “More or less.”

D/CIA cocked his head and looked at Carmichael through narrow eyes. “More? Or less?”

“He used to be one of ours. Former SAD Ground Branch.”

D/CIA winced as if he’d just put his hand on a hot plate. “Don’t tell me it’s the Gray Man.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“My predecessor told me about this one. He’s on the presidential kill list. Number one target, from what I remember. Is that right?”

Denny corrected him gently. “Actually he’s the number one target who is also a U.S. Citizen. He’s number nineteen on the list overall.”

“Right,” D/CIA said. “You know, I get to claim some plausible deniability with you and your exploits, since the president has supported your work for so long. I mean, hell, when POTUS is also president of your fan club, I can let a lot of things slide. But not this time.”

Carmichael said, “If you can run interference with Congress and do your best to keep the DOJ away from this, even for just a couple more days, then I give you my personal guarantee that we will terminate this individual, and there will be nothing more to do but handle a little after-action fallout.”

Carmichael expected D/CIA to open his drawer and pull out a bottle of Maalox. He wasn’t suited for this type of work. But the next thing the man from Alabama said surprised him greatly.

“What alternative do I have? I can already hear them in the congressional inquiries. Carmichael’s your top spook, they’ll say . . . This happened on your watch. Hell, the Republicans are already plucking the chickens and heatin’ up the tar.”

Denny said nothing. Must have been some sort of Alabama reference, he assumed.

D/CIA said, “I can take some heat and buy you some time. But not much. What else can I do for you, something that might make killing this man easier?”

Carmichael blew out an inward sigh of relief. Then he decided to press his luck. “There is one other initiative that might be helpful, sir.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“Unmanned aerials.”

“Unmanned aerials? You mean drones?”

“Small ones. No more than three up at any one time. Crisscrossing the District. We have the best facial recognition suites known to man, but this personality has gone to great lengths to defeat them. If we were able to find, fix, and finish him from the air, then we could end this situation in short order.”

“Finish.” D/CIA said it softly, a statement, not a question, weighing the import of that word.