Hakim waved and said, “No worries. Be safe.” Right as he said it, he heard the door open behind him. Hoping he had imagined it, he kept his eyes on the father and son. They were turning to leave but then they suddenly stopped. Hakim watched the expression on the father’s face turn friendly before his entire demeanor changed. Hakim felt the old porch boards sway under the weight of an additional person. He pulse began to quicken.

“Hello,” the man said in a nervous voice.

Hakim turned his head slowly to see Karim standing beside and just behind him. His gun was clearly visible in his right hand. Casually he raised the weapon and pointed it at the two men. “Why are you really here?”

Hakim whispered in an angry voice, “I had this under control.”

Without taking his eyes off the two visitors, Karim said, “You are a fool.”

LAKE ANNA, VIRGINIA

RAPP walked over to the closest metal desk and picked up a plain manila file. Being asked to come into the room at this juncture was either a good or a bad thing depending on your perspective. Rapp’s guess was that it was a bad sign for Adams. He punched in the code and opened the door. Maslick was right behind him. Adams was seated where Rapp had left him and despite looking tired, he still managed a smug look of defiance.

“Glen here thinks you’re the problem,” Hurley announced.

“Really?”

“That’s right. He doesn’t want to talk about what he was doing last night.” Hurley rolled his eyes. Turning to Maslick he said, “Grab the cart.”

Maslick wheeled a three-level cart into the room and left it in the corner. Then, dragging the table away from Adams, he pointed at the nearest chair and said, “Sit.”

“Listen,” Adams said while holding his hands up in an affable manner, “I don’t know who you are, and I don’t have to know who you are, but trust me when I say you don’t want to be involved in this.”

Rapp stood in the doorway, his hands on his hips, a determined expression on his face. “You’re wasting your breath, Glen. He’d just as soon kill you, but he’s a good soldier, so he’ll wait until I tell him. In the meantime, sit down and do what you’re told.”

Adams hesitated so Maslick helped him back into his chair. Then the big man grabbed some flex cuffs from one of the cargo pockets on his khaki pants. Adams complained while his wrists were pulled behind the back of the chair and bound. Next came his ankles to each of the chair’s front legs. Rapp wheeled the cart over. On the top sat a polygraph machine.

Hurley stood in front of Adams and asked, “Glen, since you’re so smart, I’m wondering if you could tell me what makes a guy like Mitch here get out of bed and bust his ass for people like you?”

“I don’t pretend to know the criminal mind, but if I had to guess, I would say it’s a perverse thrill that he derives out of inflicting pain on others.”

“That’s the best you can do?” Hurley asked. “No other reasons?”

“None.”

“Well, I trained him, you dumb ass. If I thought for a moment that he was some sadistic brute who was two ticks away from being a career criminal, I’d a bounced his ass right out of the program, and trust me I know the difference, because I got rid of plenty of them over the years. The only thing that a guy like Mitch gets out of climbing down in the gutter with these religious nut jobs is the knowledge that he is fighting the good fight. That he’s doing the honorable thing, while all the overeducated assholes like you sit in your nice leather chairs and criticize his every move.”

“And you would have me . . . what? Let him defy the rule of law? Let him kill whoever his pea-sized brain thinks deserves killing?”

“No, but at a bare minimum I expect you to resist the urge to delude yourself into thinking our enemies would like us if only we were nicer to them.”

Adams exhaled a tired sigh as if to say they were wasting his time. “Do you want to wait until the poly is hooked up so you’re sure I’m giving you the right answer?”

“We’re not going to bother with the poly,” Hurley said half laughing. “Any clandestine officer with half a brain knows how to fool that thing.”

Rapp stepped forward, grabbed Adams’s shirt, and tore it open. “Normally, I’d try to stay detached while interrogating someone, but this is going to be tough.”

“You are making a huge mistake,” Adams warned.

“The only mistake I’ve made in the last twenty-four hours was not killing you sooner.”

Adams laughed nervously. “I know all about your methods.”

“As usual, I think you’re talking out of your ass.”

“You’re going to scream at me, you’ll keep me up for seventy-two hours . . . you’ll raise and lower the temperature in this room, you’ll probably give me more vodka.” He shook his head and added, “In the end you’ll learn nothing and you’ll have to let me go. After that I will march straight into the attorney general’s office and demand that you be brought up on kidnapping charges, and that’s just for starters. So . . . if the three of you can scrape together enough brain cells to see that the only rational course is to let me go while I’m still in the mood to forgive this lack of judgment, you might be able to avoid some serious jail time.”

“There’s one big problem with your plan,” Hurley said as he leaned against the wall and lit a cigarette. “When we’re done wringing the truth out of you, I’m going shoot you in the head with this.” Hurley pulled back his jacket and drew a pistol from a shoulder harness.

Adams was suddenly transfixed by the gun.

“It’s a Kimber Stainless Gold Match Two, .45 caliber pistol. Finest production pistol in the world.”

Adams blew off the threat as theatrics. “You wouldn’t dare. The Intelligence Committees, the DOJ, the FBI . . . they all know I’m close to exposing this cancer in the clandestine service. They know I’m on to Rapp, and if I turn up dead, they’ll be all over you guys.”

“Who said you’re going to turn up dead?” Hurley looked at Rapp and said, “Show him the file.”

Rapp held a photograph in front of Adams. “We got this off the surveillance cameras at JFK. It was taken last night. Does the guy in the bottom right corner look familiar?”

Adams studied the grainy black-and-white surveillance photo and after a second saw the mirror image of himself.

“Here’s the flight manifest.” Rapp placed another sheet in front of him with Adams’s name highlighted in yellow. “Your flight will land in Caracas in one hour. You will be seen leaving the airport, and then you will simply vanish.”

Adams swallowed hard. Feeling real nerves for the first time, his mind scrambled to find a way out. “You don’t think I’ve taken precautions?”

“You mean like the safety deposit box you have at the First Bank of Bethesda?” Rapp asked.

“And the used Dell laptop you have stashed behind the workbench in your garage,” Hurley added. “The one you’re using to write your book.” He took a big puff from his cigarette and then pointed the hot end at Adams. “You have a lot of problems, Glen. Chief among them is the fact that you’re insecure. It’s not unusual . . . in fact, most of the assholes I’ve come across suffer from the same affliction. It’s the reason you could never cut it in this line of work. Not because you’re not smart enough-you’re far from retarded. The problem is . . . when you’re as insecure as you are, the only way you can make yourself feel good is to convince yourself that your enemies are stupid. And in this line of work, you can never underestimate your enemies.”

“It’ll never work.” Adams forced a smile onto his face and some confidence into his voice. “There are too many people in Washington who know I was about to blow this thing open.”

Rapp could see he was going to have to jump-start things if he was going to make it back to Langley by nine. He held up his right hand and said, “You see this?” Rapp watched Adams’s eyes zero in on his right hand, and then with his left hand, he unleashed an open-handed slap that cracked Adams flush across the face.