“Why?” he pushed McFadden. “Why not let ERD reel him in?”

McFadden took another drag. “You know what ERD is like, Kevin.” His eyes kept boring into Nakamura’s. Nakamura squinted. “Lane can’t fall into their hands. He can’t fall into Defense’s hands either, or FBI’s, or anyone else. Only us.”

He handed Nakamura a third sheet. “Instructions for delivery,” McFadden said.

Nakamura thumbed it, scanned the text that appeared, committed it all to memory.

Nakamura looked up at McFadden. “What about Cataranes?”

McFadden ground out his cigarette on the concrete pillar, took out a small metal case, dropped the butt into it. No DNA to be left behind.

“We know you were close,” McFadden said. “Use your discretion. Just bring Lane back, alive.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Nakamura saw another car pulling off the road, its windows as tinted as the first.

“Burn those papers, Kevin,” McFadden told him. “And do this quietly. Get Lane before ERD’s bounty hunters do. And don’t let anyone figure out that we took him.”

Then the Deputy Director was striding away, towards the car door that was opening for him.

Nakamura sat cross-legged on the floor of his apartment, spine erect, hands folded in his lap.

This place was so empty now, since Peter had left. Since Peter had decided that it wasn’t working, that he couldn’t live with a husband who disappeared for weeks or months at a time, who felt more alive away from home than in it, who wrestled with demons but couldn’t share any of them with his partner in life.

Just another failed relationship in a long string of them. Forty-seven years old now. What did he have to show for his life? He’d killed people on six continents. He’d saved lives. He’d thwarted terrorists and gleaned intel and completed missions whose purpose he still didn’t understand.

I’m getting maudlin in my old age, Nakamura thought. He forced himself to bring his attention back to his new assignment.

Trust. It all came down to trust. CIA didn’t trust ERD or the rest of Homeland Security. Homeland Security didn’t trust CIA. And none of them trusted Defense.

And he, who did he trust? Who was he loyal to?

They’d picked him because he was available, because he was experienced with totally black, totally deniable missions, because he had a deep distrust of ERD, because he’d known and trained Lane before his trip to Bangkok. And because of Sam.

Sam. That was one life he’d saved. He’d done that much good in the world. Back when he was FBI. Before he’d come into the ERD at the ground floor, at its very inception. Before lies and half-truths and missions that seemed more about stopping progress than protecting people had turned him into a cynic and sent him into the welcome arms of the CIA.