“Stop right there,” said Nick. “We’ve moved on to target possibilities, but I don’t want to hear any names. Names carry connotations—history, backstory, political biases—all of which we must put out of our process. Thus, the gentleman you were about to call by name shall henceforth be known by his Secret Service code name, which is Mogul. To us, he is not a man, he is a cipher standing for an office only incidentally occupied by a human being. We are protecting the office, that is all. Is that understood?”

“Since you brought it up,” said Bob, “it seems like I ought to ask something everybody’s been thinking.”

“Been waiting for this,” said Nick.

“If you read the papers, or breathe, you know in some quarters Mogul is not popular. What if in all our digging and probing and chasing, we come upon some evidence of Americ—”

“Again, stop,” said Nick. “I don’t want to hear that. It is groundless speculation, and in this part of the forest, groundless speculation is poison gas. That is why we are proceeding on this one totally as a criminal investigation, not as some kind of coup. That is why I have tried to keep the Agency out of it and stay as low-key as possible with the Secret Service. That is why I have not made overtures to the White House. We need clarity, not a drunken-monkey orgy. If—and I say ‘if’—you come across any such thing, it is only to be discussed with me, not among yourselves. I will make a determination whether to take it to the Director. But if it gets out—if even the possibility gets out—that, using foreign assets, someone, somewhere, with influence and connex here in D.C. has set up the elimination of Mogul, you know as well as I do that a drunken-monkey orgy is definitely in the cards. Not good for anybody except the drunken monkeys. So, barring hard evidence of that scenario, noses down, eyes locked in, small picture, not big. Understood?”

The lack of comment and response meant yes.

“Okay, handing these out, look hard and see what you’re getting. Sorry, Mr. Gold, can’t show ’em to you.”

This was the real work of the day. Swagger ran his eyes over the photos, which were hazy, blurry sky-down views of unknowable zones, each with a circle centered on the executive’s appearance location, the circle being 3,694 yards in diameter, putting anyone on the circle the required 1,847 yards from the center—that is, the target. That meant the shooter could be hiding anywhere on the circle.