As she munched her Danish, Ellie began to prepare for the meeting. She took out her tablet and connected it to the projector that she was going to use during her presentation. She flicked through her notes as the others began to arrive. There were senior staff from the DEA, the FBI and the Joint Special Operations Command, and she was a little nervous. She had given presentations before, but she had never really reached a stage where she was comfortable with doing it. Her old man had been the same. They both much preferred being in the field.

The others gathered their refreshments and took their places around the table. Baker tapped his pen against his empty glass. “Let’s get started,” he said. “There’s a lot to discuss.” The room came to order. “Let’s go around the table and introduce ourselves. I’m Special Agent-in-Charge Patrick Baker, FBI. Ellie?”

“Ellie Flowers,” she said. “Also FBI. Lead investigator on this case.”

“Gerhard Schmidt,” said the man to her right. “CIA. To my right are my colleagues Fiona Jules and Luke McKibbin.”

“Nicholas York,” said the tanned man with the impressive moustache that looked as if it belonged in the nineteen-eighties. “DEA.”

“Commander William McSweeney,” said the man with the short black hair and the narrow face. “JSOC.”

“Elizabeth Flynn, also JSOC. I’m here as the commander’s intelligence chief.”

Ellie glanced around the table at them all. Five men and three women. They were keeping the list of attendees as compact as possible. They suspected that the ambassador had been sold out by a rat in the embassy, and there was nothing to suggest that the traitor had been found. The rat hunt was underway, but hadn’t turned up anything yet.

“Thank you,” Baker said. “Ellie has point on this investigation. I’m going to hand things over to her.”

She got up and collected a clicker that had been left on top of the projector. Baker dimmed the lights and Ellie pressed the button to wake the machine. She waited a moment until the FBI seal filled the screen. She looked at the motto—“Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity”—and knew that they were going to need plenty of all three if they were going to bring this case home.

“As you know,” she began, “Michael Cochrane was murdered in Bogotá ten days ago.”

She pressed the clicker and a photograph of the ambassador’s bombed-out car was displayed.