“Meaning this.” Mayes opened his briefcase, took out an iPad, turned it on, and offered it to Denny. Confused, Carmichael took it.

Carmichael saw a film waiting to run, so he tapped the “play” icon with the tip of his finger.

It was the video Andy Shoal had obtained from the woman working in the sandwich shop that morning.

Carmichael watched the entire video without comment and without emotion. When it was over, he simply handed the device back.

“Where did you get it?”

“Out of the e-mail account of Andrew Shoal, the Washington Post reporter. It came from an account belonging to a woman who works at a fast-food restaurant in Dupont Circle. So far Shoal hasn’t sent it anywhere else. I had the tech alter the coding of the video, corrupt it, which just means if he tries to send it now it won’t play. But he’s seen it, he obviously gave some import to what he saw there, and the woman who recorded it presumably still has it on her mobile device.”

Carmichael looked out the window. “What do you think you see there, Mayes?”

Mayes couldn’t believe the question. “Obviously, Denny, it shows a bunch of wounded cops who I seriously doubt are cops. One of these men looks like he probably died within minutes. Nothing like this was reported by Metro D.C. If this gets out, the press will—”

Carmichael shouted, tension in his voice, “It won’t get out!”

“Tell me what is going on, Denny.”

The older man rubbed his face in his hands a moment. After some delay he nodded, looked back to Mayes, and softly said a name.

“Al-Kazaz.”

Mayes cocked his head. “The Saudi intel chief? I know you are old acquaintances. What does this have to do with him? These are his men?”

“You might say, for purposes of the Violator operation . . . these are my men.”

Jordan Mayes started to sit down in a chair at the table, but it was as if his knees gave out suddenly near the end of the movement. He dropped roughly into the chair.

“Mother of God.”

—

Over the next thirty minutes, Denny Carmichael told Jordan Mayes everything about Gentry and the Saudi relationship to him.

Not just their service in the Violator hunt—but everything.

When Carmichael finished, his second-in-command looked out the window to the southwest. A thick bank of clouds grew low, gray, and ominous, approaching like a wall closing in on Washington, D.C. After a moment Mayes just said, “Jesus Christ, Denny.”

Carmichael kept his eyes on Mayes’s face. “Of course, you see the problem here.”

Mayes nodded distractedly. Then, “Of course I do. Why didn’t you—”