The last few years had been a solid run, gaining her the gratitude of multiple heads of state and generating a serious legend at the CIA, MI6, and a few other acronyms. The problem was that the dead enemies and friends, the blur of missions, and the constant moving were starting to get a little depressing. It was something she once again promised herself that she’d work on when she got back to the States. And with Charles Hashem finally rotting in hell, maybe she’d actually do it this time.

She pulled on a pair of old sweats and a T-shirt with a giant smiley face and the slogan “Have a Nice Day.” A gift from a Mossad operative with a sense of humor.

All she needed now was a drink, a comfortable bed, and ten solid hours of unconsciousness. Tomorrow she’d mix in with the tourists and businesspeople for a midmorning flight to Reagan and then a hysterical reaming for killing an American who everyone agreed needed to be dead. In the end, though, it would be little more than a bunch of bureaucratic ass covering. Nothing she needed to worry about any more than last time or the time before that.

Sure, one day they’d throw her under the bus, but not yet. They’d wait until she slowed down and wasn’t as useful anymore. For now, though, she had the comfort of knowing they needed her to do the things that they didn’t have the skills for, or that they thought could come back to bite them at a confirmation hearing. People with her talents and track record were hard to replace.

Randi rubbed the towel over her head a few more times and then pushed through the bathroom door into her hotel suite.

One of the things that had kept her alive for so long was the fact that there was no loss in translation between what her mind commanded and what her body did. By the time the man sitting in the leather chair next to the bar looked up, she’d pulled a knife from the pocket in her sweats and drawn her hand back to throw it.

He just frowned disapprovingly and looked at her over his wire-rimmed glasses.

“Mr. Klein,” Randi said, not yet lowering the knife. “What are you doing here?”

Fred Klein was the mastermind behind a loose confederation of independent operators that went by the intentionally vague designation Covert-One. The president of the United States—a childhood friend of Klein’s—had quietly authorized the formation of the organization years ago in the face of the government’s increasing paralysis. Covert-One had become an organization of last resort, brought into play only when time had run out and the consequences of failure were too dire to contemplate.