In a gesture of compromise, Grayton sat down and waved his hand toward the chair behind Dunne’s desk. Dunne accepted the invitation to sit and looked hard at Grayton. The man never blinked. And he kept his line of vision at a perfect ninety-degree angle to his erect, perfect-posture torso. Grayton was one of the Game Boys. That’s what Dunne called them. They loved the covert game. They relished concocting schemes. They got off knowing they possessed grand secrets. In the security-intelligence world, there were those who enthusiastically embraced secret-keeping and clandestine actions. They might occasionally concede that it was just too bad that god-awful means had to be used to protect free society. But they were in it as much for the means—if not more so—than the ends. Then there were the reluctant ones who considered the dirty work necessary but who pondered the consequences of official lies and secrecy-by-bureaucracy. Grayton and Dunne were in different camps.

“Okay, sure,” Grayton said. “Sit in. Enjoy. But I want your agreement.”

Dunne tried to keep his face expressionless.

“I know the inclination here. You feel like shit. And you should. After all, you did let someone place two bullets into the face of the most powerful man on the planet.”

Don’t react, Dunne told himself.

“Now, you want to do something,” Grayton continued. “Because you think that will keep you from feeling like shit. So you want to keep busy. And think about what you’re doing, not what you didn’t do. So here’s the promise you’re making to me right now: You will do nothing without letting me know. You will not take one breath of our air—without first telling me about it.”

Dunne nodded. “You’re the man.”

“And once an agent always, right?”

Grayton was referring to Dunne’s seventeen-month stint in Hoover’s FBI. After six years on the police force, he had joined the feds. Dunne’s career in the Bureau ended when he punched a fellow agent who had thought it was amusing to call him a nigger during a training session. He subsequently found a job with the Secret Service and now was into his twenty-eighth year.

“Oh, by the way, let me tell you,” Grayton said, an accommodating smile on his face. “Our missing Mr. Sandlin said nothing unusual in his office before he left. In fact, so far—nothing unusual about him. Just covering the White House for a crummy, dying Midwest chain of small-town, asswipe papers. And not doing such a hot job, his boss said. Drinking. Problems at home. No oddball friends anyone knows of. No Arabs, no kooks—right-wing or otherwise. We’re still waiting on the phone calls. Damn phone company. They made us go to a judge.”

Grayton leaned forward in his chair.

“I’ve spent enough time on this. I have to go.”