Boston said, “I doubt it. They get copies of the STO but unless one of their specialists is activated, they don’t even open them…And, as much as I hate to say it, we can’t dismiss the office here completely.” The twist of his impressive head indicated NIOS headquarters.

Granted. A co-worker in this office might have sold them out, as painful as it was to think about.

Boston continued, “I’ll check with IT security about the servers, copiers and scanners. Polygraph the senior people with download permissions. I’d do a major Facebook autobot search. Well, not just Facebook but blogs and as many other social media sites as I can think of. See if anybody with access to the STO’s been posting anything critical of the government and our mission here.”

Mission. Killing bad guys.

This made sense. Metzger was impressed. “Good. A lot of work.” His eyes strayed to the vista. He saw a window washer on a scaffolding three or four hundred feet up. He thought, as he often did, of the jumpers on 9/11.

The Smoke expanded in his lungs.

Breathe…

Send the Smoke away. But he couldn’t. Because they, the jumpers on that terrible day, hadn’t been able to breathe. Their lungs had been filled with oily smoke rising from the crest of the flames that were going to consume them in seconds, flames roiling into their twelve-by-twelve-foot offices, leaving only one place to go, through windows to the eternal concrete.

His hands began to shake again.

Metzger noted that Boston was regarding him with a close gaze. The NIOS head casually adjusted the photograph of him, Seth and Katie and a snorting horse, taken through a fine set of optics that happened, in that instance, to record a dear memory, but wasn’t dissimilar to a scope that could very efficiently direct a bullet through a man’s heart.

“They have proof of completion, the police?”

“No, I don’t think so. Status is closed, that’s all.”

Kill orders were just that—instructions to eliminate a task. There was never any documentation that an assassination was actually completed. The standard procedure when asked was to deny, deny, deny.

Boston began to ask, “Are we doing anything…?”

“I’ve made calls. Don Bruns knows about the case, of course. A few others. We’re…handling things.”

An ambiguous verb and object. Worthy of the Wizard.

Handling things…

Spencer Boston, of the impressive white mane and more impressive track record as a spy, sipped more tea. The straw eased farther through the plastic lid and gave a faint vibration like a bow on a viola string. “Don’t worry, Shreve. I’ll find him. Or her.”

“Thanks, Spencer. Anytime. Day or night. Call me, what you find out.”

The man rose, buttoned his ill-tailored suit.

When he was gone Metzger heard his magic red phone trill with a text from his surveillance and datamining crowd in the basement.