"I'm sure you're pleased." James had a dry, gravelly voice. "I know what you're thinking." He didn't smile. He didn't frown. He looks like a robot, Mike thought. He rubbed his palms on his trousers, abruptly uneasy.

"You're dead right," James continued. "I am a political appointee. I'm here because certain parties in the administration want to keep a tight lock on the operational cycle of the Family Trade Organization and ensure it doesn't run wild. You're currently stovepiped into NSA and DEA, but that's got to change. We're keeping the DOJ connection, but it's been decided that the operational emphasis in the organization is going to be moved toward the military side. So my public title is Deputy Director, Political-Military Affairs, reporting to NSC. In reality, I'm going to be moving into your turf here as your DD/OI, liaising with NSC and the White House to keep them appraised of whatever you HUMINT guys can get out of our assets, and also to keep Justice in the loop. Are we clear, yet?" He cracked a wintry smile.

Mike glanced at Smith, registering his close-faced expression. This is not good. "Not entirely, sir," he said slowly, trying to get his thoughts in order. "I understand the oversight aspect. But am I right in saying that you see this as primarily a national security problem, rather than a domestic policing one?"

"Yes." James laid his hands flat on the tabletop, fingers spread wide across it. "We will be emphasizing national security approaches. These-this 'Clan'-is an external threat. They've got nuclear material, and the narcoterrorism angle is, in our view-that is, the strategic view received from the top down-of subsidiary importance to the question of whether a hostile power is going to start blowing up our cities."

"Am I still needed?" Mike asked bluntly, a disturbing sense of anger and helplessness stealing over him. "Or did you call me up here to reassign me?"

James smiled again, like a shark circling wounded prey in the water. "Not exactly. Colonel Smith tells me that in the eighty-one days since this organization got off the ground, the organization has laid its hands on just one willing HUMINT asset, and he's of questionable worth. You've been tasked with interrogating him, because you were his first contact. I find that kind of hard to believe-can you summarize for me?"

Mike felt his pulse quicken. Smith set me up. He glanced at his boss, who narrowed his eyes and shook his head infinitesimally. No? Then it was James. Spook tactics. Double-check everyone against everyone else, trust nobody, grab the situation by the throat-hang on. "Can you confirm your clearances for me? No offense, but so far all I've got to go on is your word." He nodded at Smith. "Standard protocol." Standard protocol was trust nobody, accept nothing, and it was supposed to apply at all levels-which was why Swann checked Mike's ID and clearances every morning before giving him the keys to his own office. He tensed: if James wanted to make an issue of it-

But instead he nodded agreeably. "Very good, Mr. Fleming. Badge reader over there." He stood up and walked over to the machine. "Why don't you clear yourself to me, at the same time?"

"I think that would be a very good idea, sir," Mike said carefully. They both ran their badges through the scanner, and Mike noted James's list of clearances. It was about a third longer than his own. "Great, I'm allowed to tell you that you exist." He smiled, experimentally, and James nodded as he returned to his seat.

Mike took a deep breath. Okay, so he's not a total jerk. I can live with that. "We have a problem with intelligence assets," he began. "All we've got is one willing defector and two prisoners. The defector, as usual, is willing to tell us one hundred and fifty percent of whatever he thinks we want to hear. And the prisoners not only aren't talking, I don't think they can talk."

James grunted as if he'd been punched in the gut. "Explain." He held up one hand: "I've read the backgrounder and played the debrief tapes from Matt. Color me an interested ignoramus and give it to me straight, I don't have time for excuses. Pretend I'm Daddy Warbucks, if you like. That's where this buck stops."

"Uh, okay." Mike sat down again, head whirling. The Office of the Vice President? He's in charge, now? Notoriously strong-willed, the VP in this administration more than made up for any lack of experience in the Oval Office. But this was still news to Mike. Later.

He cleared his throat. "We got a windfall in the form of Matt. Without him, FTO wouldn't exist. We'd still be looking at eight to ten gigabucks of H and C per annum transshipping into the east coast with no clue how it was getting past the Coast Guard. We're still probably looking at half that, but for now-" He shrugged. "First thing first, Matt is probably the most valuable informer any American police or security department has acquired, ever."

He swallowed. "But we hit a concrete wall in the follow-through stage."

"Concrete." James made a steeple of his fingers, elbows braced on the transparent tabletop. "What do you mean, concrete?"

"Okay. In our first week, Pete and I holed up with Matt and milked him like crazy. Apart from the side trip to the black box down in Crypto City, of course." He nodded at Smith. "By day six on the timeline we were ready to move. Thanks to the courier snatch on day two, the other side already knew we were active, so it wasn't much of a surprise when we rolled eight empty nests in a row. The haul was pretty good but the assets had flown, money and bodies and drugs. If you've seen the details of what we found"-James nodded-"you'll know it was a very substantial operation. Disturbingly well structured. These guys are like a major espionage agency in their approach, sort of like the old-time KGB: organized in teams with secure communications and safe houses and an org chart. This isn't some street gang. But we didn't catch anyone. There's another raid going down today, as it happens, but I expect that one to draw a blank too. These guys are way too professional."

James nodded, his expression thoughtful. "Tell me about the two prisoners."

"Well. Pete and I went back to Matt, who filled us in on the other side's security architecture. We put our heads together and took a stab, with Matt in the loop, at second-guessing how the other side's head, the Duke, would rearrange things in the light of Matt's disappearance. Matt said he'd arranged a cover that would make it look like he'd died, so we tried a few fallbacks on the working assumption that they hadn't twigged that Matt was in our pocket. We also hit another nine that we knew would be evacuated, in case they put two and two together about Matt. The decoys got the same treatment as the first wave of raids, but for the special targets we pulled strings to get some special assets in for the party."

Mike leaned back. Special assets-the sort of people the CIA had been forbidden ever since the Church commission, the wake of Operation Phoenix, and the other deadly secrets from the sixties and early seventies. Guys with plastic-surgery fingerprints and briefcases full of very expensive custom-built toys. "We drew a blank on one site, but number two had about sixty kilos of uncut heroin, plus a bunch of documents in Code Gamma. The third site, we hit pay dirt and three couriers. One of them died in the extraction process"-killed by fentanyl fumes, brain-dead before the special assets could hook her up to a ventilator-"but the other two we bagged and tagged and shipped off to Facility Echo. Turns out there's no record of these guys anywhere-they're ghosts, they don't exist. Didn't even have any fake ID on them. I liaised with Special Agent Herz and we arranged a section 412 detention order. Because they're of no known nationality there's no one to deport them to, and once INS punches their ticket as illegal aliens we get to keep them out of the court system. Better than Camp X-ray. Shame we can't get anything useful out of them," he added apologetically.