A timid knock was answered by a muffled voice that he took as an invitation. After entering, he closed the door behind him and examined his environment. Like the other areas of the White House regularly used by the Cooks, it had been significantly modernized. The structural elements—molding, fireplace, and wood floor—remained, but most of the furniture and artwork had been replaced. The exception was the treaty table itself. Originally used by Ulysses S. Grant for cabinet meetings, if he recalled correctly.

Both of them were there but not sitting together. The president was on a sofa that dominated the central conversation area, while his wife sat at a writing desk near the far wall. She turned when Nash entered, her movement highlighting the stillness and silence that dominated the room.

“You wanted to see me?” he said when that silence stretched to the breaking point.

The president just pointed to a stack of eight-by-ten photos on the coffee table in front of him. Not sure what else to do, Nash advanced and picked them up. He hadn’t been invited to sit, so he retreated to a more comfortable distance and examined them standing.

At first, there wasn’t much to see. The shadowy silhouettes of two men partially obscured by palm trees. He paused when he came upon a depiction of one of them climbing a fence that separated two residential properties. Based on the quality of the images, all were likely taken by private security cameras.

“Who are they?” Nash said, glancing up at the president.

“The fat one is Bashir Isa.”

Nash shook his head to indicate that the name didn’t register.

“Keep going,” the president said. “There’s a better picture of the second man near the end.”

Nash leafed through the rest of the photos, finally stopping on one near the end of the stack. It looked like it had been captured at an airport’s passport control area and this time the man couldn’t keep his face out of the camera.

“When was this taken?” he asked.

“Four days ago.”

Nash suddenly didn’t care if he’d been invited or not. He took a seat in a chair that maintained some distance between him and the Cooks, continuing to stare down at the image.

Mitch Rapp. Alive.

Emotions crashed over him with an intensity and speed that made it impossible to distinguish between them. Fear. Relief. Shame. The sensation of gravity being replaced with the sensation of drowning.

“He’s not dead,” Catherine said. “He—”

The president held up a hand, silencing her. Nash felt a glimmer of gratitude at Cook’s intervention. He needed to think. About the history of this thing and his role in it. About where it was going and whether it could be stopped.