Adams yelped like a wounded pup, and then in a panicked voice yelled, “That’s it. You’ve crossed the line. I am going to make sure you spend the rest of your days in a jail cell. I’m going to-”

He never finished the threat because Rapp whacked him again, this time with his right hand. He then grabbed him by his thin silver hair and forced him to look at the sheaf of documents in his left hand. “Do you think those defenders of yours know you’ve been going through two bottles of vodka and another six to eight bottles of wine a week?”

“That’s a lie!”

“It’s the truth! You’re a frickin’ drunk! We have your bank statements, credit card receipts, ATM withdrawals . . . we even have video of you buying booze at three different liquor stores, and they’re the only three we checked. We found vodka in your trunk, your desk drawer. We even have video of you stopping at a park to dump your extra bottles.”

“Marty and Mary are out of the house,” Hurley chimed in, mentioning Adams’s two children. “Off to college and calling home once every couple weeks. You and Gretchen don’t even sleep in the same room anymore. Hell . . . we’ve had your house bugged for a week . . . you don’t even talk. You’re the classic bitter narcissist who’s pissed at the world because everyone has failed to recognize his genius. The biggest laugh of all is that we don’t even have to plant evidence. It’s all right there for them to see, and trust me they’ll find it. Your wife . . . your kids . . . your friends . . . they’re all going to get put through the wringer.”

“The curtain’s going to get pulled back,” Rapp said in a dire tone. “You really want your kids to find out their old man is just a bitter alcoholic? A failed fucking bureaucrat, who committed treason?”

“It won’t work,” Adams said with sweat cascading down his forehead. “Kenny Urness will know you guys killed me, and he’s not the only one. They won’t rest until you’re brought to justice.”

“Who,” Hurley growled, “other than some fucking looney, anti-American, CIA-hating scumbag is going to A, care that you’ve disappeared and B, spend the next five years of his life trying to find out what really happened?”

“You have no idea how powerful my contacts are!”

“Really?” Hurley said skeptically. “Is that why you had to fly up to New York and meet with an ambulance chaser last night? So you could hatch a plot to write a tell-all book and line your pockets?”

“That’s not why I went to New York.”

“Almost two hundred of your countrymen were killed last week, and you’re out trying to get rich off it.”

“That’s a lie and you know it,” Adams spat. “You two are the problem . . . not me. You are why they hate us, not me.”

Hurley smacked him across the head and yelled, “You’re a fucking embarrassment to your family.”

Adams felt his options slipping away. Felt really for the first time that they might actually kill him. “You don’t know Kenny Urness if you think he’ll just drop this whole thing when I don’t show up for work.”

“What Kenny Urness saw last night was a drunk,” Rapp said in a flat voice. “A delusional drunk, and when he finds out that you flew to South America and disappeared, he won’t waste more than two minutes trying to figure out if it’s true.”

“And if he comes after us,” Hurley said, “tough shit. He can look all he wants. We’ve been through your shit. If you had any real evidence you would have already taken it to the feds.”

“That’s not true!” Adams pleaded.

Hurley stepped forward and extended the big .45 caliber pistol. “Any last words before I blow your head off.”

With tear-filled eyes, Adams shook his head and cried, “You can’t do this, Uncle Stan. You and my father were best friends.”

“I can, and I will.”

“But my father?”

“You were a disgrace to your father,” Hurley growled. “You broke his heart.”

“But . . . I didn’t know,” Adams pleaded, tears now rolling down his cheeks.

“You didn’t know because you’re a narcissistic fuck. The only person you’ve ever cared about is yourself.”

“That’s not true,” Adams half yelled. “I have sacrificed. I have done what I thought was right.”

“Well, you were wrong.” Hurley placed the muzzle of the pistol against Adams’s forehead and squeezed the trigger.

THE report of the big .45 Kimber was deafening. Rapp didn’t have time to cover his ears. He’d barely had enough time to grab Hurley’s wrist and deflect the shot. Just barely, as was evidenced by the red powder burn that was now painted in a cone shape across the top of Adams’s forehead. The slug was now lodged in the concrete wall beyond Adams’s head. A crater the size of a fist marked the spot.

Rapp couldn’t hear a thing but he could see just fine. Hurley was screaming at him and Adams was sobbing-his eyes closed, his head down, his chin bouncing off his chest every few seconds as he gasped for air, snot pouring out of his nose. Hurley pointed his Kimber at Rapp and began to use it to punctuate whatever point he was trying to make. Rapp, none too fond of having a gun pointed at him, almost snapped the older man’s wrist, but caught himself in time. He slowly brought his hand up and gently moved the muzzle of the gun to a less threatening direction.

After pointing at his left ear, Rapp mouthed that he couldn’t hear what Hurley was saying. He walked over to the door and gestured for Hurley to follow him. Rapp hit the intercom button and asked for the door to be opened. As he stepped into the outer room, he found Nash, Lewis, and Maslick all standing there with shocked expressions on their faces. Rapp placed both palms over his ears and pressed down for a good five seconds while he swallowed several times and flexed his jaw. The first words he began to recognize belonged to Hurley. He was still cursing up a storm.

Rapp looked at him still waving his gun around and yelled, “Put that damn thing away before you shoot someone.”

Hurley pointed the gun at Rapp again and barked, “Someone! You’re the only one I’m thinking about shooting!”

Rapp’s entire posture was instantly transformed. Like a big black panther who had been stirred from a lazy nap, his muscles flexed and his weight was transferred onto the balls of his feet. His eyes narrowed and his brow furrowed and he half shouted, “Stan, put that gun away right now, or I’ll break your wrist.”

Hurley, having trained Rapp, knew not only that he meant it, but that there was a good chance that at this close distance, Rapp could do it before he got off a shot. Slowly, and with a not-too-happy look, he shouldered his pistol and asked, “Why in the hell did you stop me?”

The answer was complicated, although there was one really good reason and several decent ones. Rapp decided to go with the big one- the one they all should have thought of to begin with. “Where in the hell is he getting his information?”

“We’ve already gone over that,” Hurley said in an irritated voice. “He’s filling in the gaps. If he had anything real, he would have taken it to the Justice Department.”

Rapp shook his head. “He still had to start somewhere. Someone is talking to him.”

“He’s the Gestapo. We’ve already found dozens of bugs. He has half the offices on the seventh floor wired.”

The inspector general’s office at Langley was often called the Gestapo by the front-line troops at Langley. This was exactly what Rapp had feared-that they would let their dislike of Adams cloud their judgment. He took a deep breath and asked, “What’s our rush?”

“You know as well as I do, you can’t let shit like this fester. The best can lose their courage, and besides, we have bigger fish to fry.”

“And we also have one shot at finding out what he knows.”

“We’ve gone over this,” Hurley snarled. “We have what we need. We kill him and whoever he was talking to won’t know if he’s dead or if he’s disappeared. Either way the effect is the same. We send a clear signal that we’re done fucking around.”