The EE agreed. “And when we find anything about this patient, we’ll go to work on figuring out his identity. It doesn’t matter if we can’t dig into his government file; we just need to know where he lives, so when Catherine lands in Tel Aviv tomorrow she can hit the ground running.”

“We don’t know he’ll know anything about the event in Trieste,” one of the other reporters said. “We just know he helped Six.”

“That’s true,” Catherine said. “And from that we know he has goodwill towards Six. If he doesn’t know about Trieste, maybe he can help us find out who does.”

Andy was the most junior reporter in the room, so he was surprised when the editor pointed to him. “Shoal, I want you to go back to Chevy Chase and to Dupont Circle. I want you interviewing everyone who lived or worked in the immediate area, as well as first responders and commuters who passed by at the time of the shootings. I want you digging even harder for evidence than the cops dug. Find somebody who saw something other than this guy named Six running around.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And Catherine.” The executive editor turned to her. “While you’re on that plane I want you e-mailing every government official. Call in every favor. Don’t bring up the fact we are going after this wounded guy the suspect named, but do ask for comments about an Israeli asset rescued by American intelligence in Italy six years ago. I don’t care if they won’t speak on the record. I want to know what they don’t say just as much as what they do say. If you get a lot of ‘No comments,’ or denials that sound like they are coming out of an official echo chamber, then we’ll know we’re on to something.”

“Will do.”

The huddle in the executive editor’s office ended by four, and Catherine ran back to her desk, threw as much into one of her roll-aboards as would fit, and then rushed to the elevators.

Five minutes later she was in the back of a hired car booking a six ten flight to Tel Aviv from Dulles while the driver wove through D.C. traffic.

—

Court looked down at his watch as he passed the sign announcing he was leaving Virginia and entering North Carolina. It was seven forty-five in the evening; he’d been on the road less than two hours.

This meant he had another nine to go, and with that realization he reached down into the cup holder of the big pickup truck and lifted his massive cup of coffee. Half empty, half cold.

It was going to be a long, long night.