“I won’t undermine Hungry.”

“Wouldn’t ask you to,” Eady said.

They knew they had him at Botha. But he sensed something else. These two old spies breathing out their pale fog were obscuring something.

“And Sharon?” he asked. “I don’t work for you anymore, remember?”

“I’ll have a quiet word,” Eady said.

“She’s had me on ice.”

“Of course she has. You were mine. She wants hers. I will take care of it.”

A harpoon hung lengthwise above the room’s fireplace. The plaque beneath it read, “Whale iron carried on board the Essex, 1820.”

Man hunting whales—that’s what Eady and Barrow were counting on.

“I have a condition,” Klay said.

“See a doctor,” Barrow grumbled.

“My condition is, I do this job and I’m out.”

Files destroyed, he continued. No record of his work with or for the CIA. Tabula rasa.

Eady turned to Barrow, who shrugged, leaving it to Klay to decide who to trust and what to hope for.

Klay had a rule about trust and hope. He trusted people to act in their self-interest. It was his responsibility to figure out what that was, not theirs to tell him the truth. Hope did not figure into it because hope was not certainty. Hope was certainty’s flirtatious cousin. Yet here he was, sitting with two men trained to lie, watching one of them study his hand and the other one shrug his shoulders, hoping he could trust them.

Eady started to wrap up their powwow. “You’ll go in as a knock, of course.” NOC—nonofficial cover—the Agency’s standard disclaimer. “But The Sovereign will support you. As always.”

Klay laughed. “Terry Krieger’s The Sovereign now, Vance. Are you speaking for him?”

Eady cleared his throat. “I was assured PGM will continue my policy of protecting any journalist in the field regardless of circumstance.” Eady paused. “Nevertheless, let’s not fuck it up.”

TWO-MAN TEAM

Arlington, Virginia

Klay stood in the kitchen of Tenchant’s home. A black SUV was waiting outside. He rinsed his coffee mug and set it in the sink. Eady had not only cleared the assignment with Sharon; he’d gotten Tenchant approved, too. Tenchant had often asked to work with him in the field, but Klay had always found a way out. He preferred to work alone. But Eady was right. This trip was records-based, and he could use Tenchant’s computer skills. The man had a gift.

Maggie Tenchant straightened the front of her husband’s new Patagonia windbreaker. “You take care of him.”

“I will,” Klay said, amused.