Denny understood the intel business; you had to pay to play. And he also understood what Kaz wanted. Kaz wasn’t here in the U.S. running ops against the U.S. No, he was working against his country’s enemies. Economic intelligence against other oil-producing states. Political intelligence against those of Saudi Arabia’s Middle Eastern neighbors who swam in the waters of the United Nations, the American media, and D.C.-based think tanks.

Denny had known Kaz a long time, and although he couldn’t say he trusted the man—Saudi Arabia was always looking out for the interests of Saudi Arabia, after all—Denny felt like he understood the man’s motivations. Kaz wasn’t running around America with a team of assassins knocking off congressmen. Allowing the Saudi intel chief some latitude to pursue his nation’s objectives in the United States was, as far as Denny Carmichael was concerned, a fair price to pay for what he was getting in return.

As he drove back over the Woodrow Wilson Bridge on his way to Prince Georges County airport, Denny allowed himself a moment of pride and satisfaction. He saw himself as the chess master, controlling the pieces on the board.

The moment faded as he thought about Gentry. Not because Gentry was the problem at hand. No, he thought about Gentry now, because in the fifteen years Denny Carmichael had worked closely with Murquin al-Kazaz, there had only been one major misstep in the relationship. One time where intel from Kaz had led, for one reason or another, to an unmitigated intelligence disaster.

That time was years earlier, and the end result of that intelligence failure was now running free on the streets of America, wholly unaware of what he did to bring the full force of the U.S. intelligence community down on him like so many missiles from the sky.

—

Murquin al-Kazaz sat quietly in the suite at the Kimpton Lorien for twenty minutes, using the time to send text messages and to clear other matters out of his inbox. Then he, too, left the suite, wiping the door latch with a handkerchief on his way out.

He was picked up on Duke Street, two blocks from the hotel. He folded into the back of a Jaguar sedan, and then he was off to his office in the center of a small motorcade of unmarked Land Rovers and Escalades.

Kaz stared out the window silently as they returned to the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia, just across New Hampshire from the Watergate complex. His offices were there at the embassy, taking up a large portion of one wing of the building.