Catherine did not know what to say. After a time, though, she just said, “I am sorry, Six. But I have to catch my flight. Please tell me we can talk when I get back home. I won’t write about any of this, not until we talk. I promise you.”

“Okay.” Court’s voice was barely audible. “Catch you later.”

He hung up the phone and put it back in his pack.

Suddenly every last vestige of energy melted away from him. He had nothing left to give.

He no longer cared.

He could hear Maurice’s voice in this little room. Gravelly from chain-smoking and the wear of middle age, yet powerful and commanding.

What would Maurice say now, seeing his student broken and defeated, sitting on the floor?

Court knew. Maurice had said one line to him when Court found himself wallowing in his own misery and unable to complete his objective.

“Suck it up or you’ll fuck it up.”

Court didn’t know if he could suck it up this time. He didn’t think he could go on.

He didn’t hear the truck pull up, but he should have. He had been trained to remain in condition yellow, always on guard. The very idea he could be sitting in a dark and silent location and not hear a truck pull up a gravel drive to within twenty-five yards of his position was impossible to fathom. And yet it happened.

The trailer brightened with the beams of a vehicle’s headlights. He’d been compromised. He had failed again.

He only heard the sound of a car door shutting.

Court decided then and there that he had no more fight in him. He could shoot the men outside the trailer, but why? None of these static security guys who would be converging on him right now were responsible for the murder of the most successful deep-penetration agent ever to infiltrate al Qaeda.

These guys are blameless, Court thought. Unlike him.

He thought about standing, walking out the door, and pointing his gun at the armed guards—suicide by security goon—but he didn’t feel like getting up. No. He’d stay right here, here in the little room where it all started so many years ago.

Court decided this would be the perfect place to end the miserable saga that was his life.

He pulled the Glock from his bag, opened his mouth, and jammed the muzzle in, biting it with his teeth. Tears streamed down his face, wet his lips, and carried on down the barrel of his gun.

He had no fear of dying; he never had. His fear had always been failure.

And now he saw his failure in Trieste as the realization of his greatest fear.

He moved his thumb inside the trigger guard and placed it on the trigger. Took a short sharp breath and began to squeeze his hand.