‘No need to ask if you’ve heard the news, then?’ Kirk indicated the television screen with a nod as she spoke.

‘Hard to miss,’ Dempsey replied. ‘Looks like a future problem avoided, the way things were going.’

‘Silver linings.’ Kirk did not smile as she spoke. ‘We’ll come back to that. What’s your first take on what you’ve seen?’

‘It’s a bomb. It’ll take an investigation to know more details, but with debris scatter like that? No doubt.’

‘My thoughts exactly.’

‘Has anyone claimed it?’

‘Not yet. But it’s only been half a day, and just an hour since Victor was confirmed on board by the airline. I wouldn’t expect anything for another twenty-four hours. Maybe thirty-six, even.’

Kirk was not looking for Dempsey’s agreement. He moved on to the next question.

‘Any word from the White House on this?’

‘None.’ Kirk’s voice was flat as she answered.

‘They’d have known about Victor as soon as they knew the flight was down, surely?’

‘Certainly before it was reported, yes,’ Kirk replied. ‘They’ll have been monitoring his movements. And that means the White House has known Victor was dead since this morning.’

‘Have they reached out to us? To you?’

‘When do they ever, Joe?’

There was a hint of bitterness in Kirk’s tone as she asked the question. Dempsey recognised it well and he knew its source.

The White House and President John Knowles.

President Knowles had been sworn in three years earlier, and before that he had been elected on a wave of public and political support that rivalled Dale Victor’s following. But unlike Victor, Knowles had achieved it without controversy. Without manipulation. Instead he had pursued an agenda of justice and old-fashioned morality. A campaign of right versus wrong that had ultimately gained the support of even the most cynical political operators.

None more cynical than Elizabeth Kirk.

A lifetime with the CIA could make a disbeliever of anyone; access to information only a few would ever see tends to wash away naivety and dispel myths. In her thirty-two years with the agency, Kirk had seen man after man rise to power on a campaign of promises, and time and again she had seen those promises broken. Any hope she may have had that any candidate would be different had died long ago.

Then she met Senator John Knowles.

As a senior intelligence officer, Kirk had long been aware of Knowles’ military service. Uniquely for a politician, the current President was even more of a hero than his political campaigns claimed. As a former Lieutenant-Commander of Red Squadron, US Naval Special Warfare Development Group – or SEAL Team Six, as it was more commonly known – his role and the details of his service were highly classified and so not generally known to the public.

But they were known to Kirk.

It was this, Kirk had once told Dempsey, that set Knowles apart from every other politician she had ever known. But more than that had brought her to his side. The causes he pursued as a two-term senator had shown her a man of both kindness and steely determination. His refusal to claim credit for his successes and his dedication to his young family had shown her a man of integrity. And his dedication to the military – both to the men under his command and beyond – had shown her a man who had not forgotten his origins.