Long before Potomac Pilot, he’d told Sissy staff that if any of them leaked, quarterly accounting of special-access programs would end. For over a year, no one squawked. But as often happens, someone somewhere passed along the report, in this case, from what Will had learned, to the National Security Council staff. He didn’t know how or when.

It hadn’t shown in papers or television. The report was so messy, any reporter who got it would probably get lost in it. He liked to think of it as censorship by inundation. It was working, but it wasn’t intentional, and it certainly wasn’t a plan. So Will was chasing this thing. He couldn’t quite catch it. He had someone on the NSC he almost trusted. He needed to see if anyone on his own staff knew anyone on the NSC staff.

Yet none of it—not Potomac Pilot, not the Sissy report—compared to one leftover from his pre-Chair days. Like any case officer, Will had recruited agents inside foreign governments willing to sell info. The Pentagon handed them off after he became Chair, but one, Hoseyn, he kept. Yet Will had seen him only once these last years.

Recruitment between any officer and agent was dirt seduction masquerading as coincidental friendship, but in Hoseyn’s case, Will’s first recruitment, it had turned a newer bend. The Pentagon agreed that Hoseyn, a scientist in Iran’s nuclear program, was too valuable to risk to another officer’s handling. That was true. The gnawing in Will was of another type. He missed Hoseyn.

Vera Hastings walked with Jesus, but pacing herself was a forever problem. She prayed staccato, wouldn’t kneel, and praise of His name was lighthearted and doubt-dipped. “Faith of our Fathers” sped in her rendition. She wanted to belt it. Ruined it, according to the choir. (She’d quit last March.) As for God’s will—her mother’s surety—Vera was waiting to see it.

She wasn’t Southern Baptist, neither extra-strength nor hundred-proof improved, as born-agains seemed to want to be, with their wavy hands and hoodoo Amens. She was raised Catholic in Northeast D.C., so it was catechism, not Sunday school; priests, not reverends. Baptism came once, to babies, not after adultery or thug life, and never in a swimming pool, pond, fountain, or fake river. The Lord’s Prayer did not end with Luther’s kingdom, power, or glory, but the Catholic word Vera understood—evil.