Carmichael interrupted. “Anything I did or did not do is all water under the bridge now, isn’t it? Could I have managed this better from the beginning? Absolutely. I acknowledge that. But you see I had to make a series of on-the-fly critical decisions. Some I got right. A great many, as a matter of fact, but they have been eclipsed in importance by the very few decisions I got wrong.”

He shrugged. “And here we are today. You are now in the fold, and I need to know that I can count on you for the good of the future of this Agency.”

Mayes finally looked away from the window and towards his superior. “You just told me all this so I would know the stakes.”

“I just told you because you asked me to tell you.”

“Bullshit. If I turn and walk away, you’ll send Hightower or someone else to term me.”

Carmichael’s face was impassive. “Of course not. Jordan. That’s ludicrous. We’ve been together for twenty-five years.”

“We have . . . and that’s the first time you’ve ever called me Jordan.” He stood and headed for the door on shaky legs.

Carmichael followed him. “You walk out on this and you know what this will do to the Clandestine Service. You have to see this through now. Court Gentry must die, because if he reveals what he knows, our human intelligence operations will be set back a generation.”

Mayes thought about everything Carmichael had just told him. It was true. Right or wrong—and right now this all seemed so fucking wrong—Gentry had to be terminated. If not, Carmichael’s assertion that CIA covert HUMINT would suffer for a generation seemed, if anything, like an understatement.

He said, “This is a lot to take in, Denny. I just need to go home. I just need to think.”

Carmichael’s severe face hardened even more. Mayes had never seen colder eyes in his life.

Carmichael said, “Think all you want, Mayes. But do your thinking alone, and in silence.”

“Yes, sir,” he said, and he left through the door to the narrow hallway, passing DeRenzi and his men without a word.

64

The café on Tel Aviv’s King George Street offered outdoor seating that afforded a nice view of Meir Garden, but Mossad officer Yanis Alvey wasn’t taking in the view. He sipped his espresso at a small table outside, but mostly he just sat there, looking at nothing and no one. A smoky bus thumped by, and other patrons at the tables around recoiled or covered their noses.

Alvey just ignored it, lost in his melancholy.

The sun had set an hour earlier, and the evening air cooled more and more each minute. Alvey wore a short-sleeve shirt with a light cashmere vest over it, not enough to ward off the April breeze, but he wasn’t thinking about the cool air, either.