Because if it did, she certainly wasn’t going to sit on her hands while the Shepherds took the fall, regardless of Steve’s orders. The day she was comfortable walking away from a trusted partner was the day she needed to find a new job. Resigned to her decision, she stepped out of the office and headed back to the conference room to give the Shepherds the “good” news. She’d never been part of an operation to defect an asset from a Communist country, and the prospect both excited and terrified her.

As she pulled the door open to the SCIF, she couldn’t help but think, So this  is what it feels like to be a spy.

PART II

What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction?

ROMANS 9:22

CHAPTER
FOURTEEN

ROOM 4105

RENAISSANCE HONG KONG HARBOUR VIEW HOTEL

NO. 1 HARBOUR ROAD

WANCHAI, HONG KONG SAR, CHINA

1112 HOURS LOCAL

“Where do you want me to start?” Jed said, pacing back and forth in front of the picture window with the breathtaking view of Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour outside. “I mean, there are literally a dozen things I hate about this op .”

“Well, how about we start with what has you the most concerned,” Eli said from an oversize chair beside the window, coffee in hand, ankle propped up on his knee.

“About our safety or mission success?”

“You pick,” the former CAG operator said, sipping the frothy beverage he’d gotten, along with a plate full of fruit and cheese, from the concierge lounge they had access to.

Jed sighed and dropped into the other chair beside the small round table between him and Eli.

“Mostly I don’t like that we’re dependent on nameless, faceless bureaucrats at OGA who we were forced to partner with on this op,” he admitted.

“Ah,” Eli said and sipped his coffee again. Then as if he’d made some psychoanalytical breakthrough on a patient, he added, “But, bro, that’s just the life of an operator. How many times were you at the pointy tip of the spear on some half-baked scheme with poorly shared intelligence to satisfy some unknown OGA agenda?”

“Plenty,” Jed said, finally able to chuckle at the absurd sight of his friend snacking on cheese and crackers in the luxury hotel room. “And I hated it then, too. But this—I don’t know—this is worse because we’re not in Iraq or Afghanistan or North Africa with some QRF contingency. If this goes sideways, I’m worried that CIA will walk away like we don’t exist and leave us to rot in some Chinese prison.”