And Catherine felt a sense of responsibility for it all. It had been her reporting that started everyone looking in the wrong place, had taken eyes off Carmichael and his Agency.

And she wondered if, once the shock wore off, she would feel responsible for what had happened to Andy, as well.

For the twentieth time since she’d been off her flight from Tel Aviv she tried to call Six. As with all the other times, there was no answer. She wondered if he was still alive, or if all this commotion in the country about him was continuing on long after he was no longer around to take the blame for all these things he did not do.

Catherine headed back to her office, knowing good and well that the second she arrived she would be surrounded by her investigative team and the executive editor, and they would want to know everything about Tel Aviv and how it all related to Andy Shoal’s murder. Most would agree that the man who kidnapped her at Union Station three days ago was an assassin, and that Catherine’s Stockholm syndrome had just blinded her to this fact.

And she wouldn’t argue with them; she didn’t have the energy.

—

The Fashion Centre at Pentagon City was a large multistory mall with a luxury hotel and several restaurants. The average shopper would not realize it, but the mall also had dozens upon dozens of security cameras.

And all of these cameras were part of the network of image feeds that ran through the software at the Violator tactical operations center.

At six p.m., video monitors at the TOC came alive with images and facial recognition hits. While the men and women working in the TOC struggled frantically to pin down the location on a map of the building, they saw shot after shot of Court Gentry’s face, totally exposed without a hat or sunglasses. He entered the north entrance of the mall at the ground floor, walked south through the food court, stood in line for a minute to buy a cup of coffee at a kiosk in the center of the large crowded space, and then took his drink to the escalator.

By now the TOC had him fixed and they had live feeds from the Fashion Centre camera network, so they were able to track him in real time. While one analyst contacted the JSOC operatives, who were twenty minutes away in the center of D.C., a second analyst ordered all CIA contract officers in the area into the location.

A third analyst, under orders to do so, contacted the head of the National Clandestine Service. Due to the death of Jordan Mayes, and Suzanne Brewer’s hospitalization with a broken leg, Denny Carmichael had taken over operational control of the Violator TOC. Denny had the live video feed patched through to his Alexandria safe house, and he immediately disconnected the call.

—