“I’m telling you, I won’t talk!”

Seamus had to stifle his laughter. Harold Bemis was clenching shut his eyes and mouth and standing rigid as a stick. He looked like nothing so much as a little boy who was determined to hold his breath till he passed out.

Seamus saw security arriving through a back entrance. Better late than never. He pulled out his ID and waited.

Are-are you going to waterboard me? Then take those awful pictures?”

“It might come to that,” Seamus said. “But for the moment, I think I’m content to extract information from your cell phone.”

“What? How?”

Seamus pulled up the last text message Bemis had received and saw that the number was blocked. No surprise there. He checked the recent cell activity on the phone. Bemis had received a lot of blocked-number texts in the past few weeks. But the four that had come today were local, and a few knowledgeable taps into the inner workings of the phone showed Seamus that they had a different point of origination than the others.

Because today, Seamus surmised, Ishmael was at the base firing the missiles according to Colonel Zuko’s orders.

The security officers started barking questions. That lasted about five seconds, until Seamus flashed his badge and demonstrated that they were not the top-ranking officers on the premises. He didn’t like to be rude, but he was working under a deadline and he simply had no time for rent-a-cops, especially not ones who took about twice as long to react to a dangerous scene as they should have done.

“I’ve got to get out of here. Call my office when you’re ready to write your reports.”

“Yes, sir. We’ll secure the crime scene.”

“Right. Oh, except-” Seamus crouched down by the inert body of the man who had tried to kill him-and yanked his car keys out of the back of his neck. “I’ll need these.”

The security cops stared at him, their mouth gaping.

Seamus left the two suspects in their care and started back toward the street, hauling Arlo behind him.

“How do you know where the base is?” Arlo asked, walking fast, trying to keep up.

“I don’t. Yet. But I will.” He punched a few buttons on Bemis’s phone. Someone picked up on the first ring. “Zira?”

“I’m here, Seamus. Have you found the base?”

“Almost. Two things first. Do you have a fix on my location?”

“Of course.” Like everyone else in the Agency, Seamus had a cell phone equipped with a homing device that allowed the central office to track him at all times.

“Good. I just left two suspects about two hundred feet behind me in a Macy’s department store. One is the computer genius who’s been conspiring with the enemy. The other is muscle. Gun muscle, anyway. You might want to send some boys over to interrogate them. Although the muscle may be dead. I’m not really sure.”

“Seamus, what in-”

“And I don’t think the geek knows anything,” he continued, ignoring her. “But it never hurts to try.”

“Seamus, so help me, if you’ve done anything-”

“I haven’t. Honest.” He had to smile. Tweaking Zira was his only pleasure in this otherwise grim day. “But here’s what I need you to do. I’m calling you now on the geek’s phone. Get a lock on the signal and look up his calling records. Someone has texted him four times today. The calling number was blocked. But I know you can get around that.”

“In a New York minute.” She began barking orders to some underling nearby.

“Can they do that?” Arlo asked while they walked.

“Which? Hack into a private citizen’s phone records, or pierce the veil to learn who made a given call? Doesn’t matter. Either way, they can.” And the NSA does it a lot more than we do, he wanted to add. But some family secrets were best kept private.

By the time they reached the car, Zira had an answer for him. “The phone was purchased at a convenience store. We’re triangulating on its signal to find its current location.” She paused. “It’s in northern Maryland.”

“Got it.”

“Call me as soon as you know something?”

“Always.” He snapped the phone shut and slid behind the wheel. Arlo hopped into the passenger side.

“Um, look, kid… I think this is where you get off.”

“What? No way.”

“You’ve been helpful, finding Bemis and all. But this next stop is likely to be dangerous. I can’t bring a civilian into it.”

“I saved your life.”

“And I appreciate what you’ve done-but not enough to let you get killed at the next stop.”

“But what if you need me to identify some computer gizmo or something?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. What kind of stuff do international terrorists usually have?”

Seamus smiled. “Get out, kid. I’ll send you a postcard when it’s all over.”

“I refuse.”

“Don’t make me get rough.”

“What if this isn’t the base? What if you need to track down another computer geek?”

Seamus craned his neck. “Well…”

“It’s possible.”

“It’s… remotely possible.” He frowned, then put the car into drive and pulled out into the light traffic. “All right. You can stay. But you do everything I tell you to do.”

“Got it.”

“Most important, this time, when I tell you to stay in the car, you actually stay in the goddamn car!”

“Got it!” Arlo said, holding up his hands. “I understand. Completely!”

“Good.” Seamus turned down a side street. He knew a shortcut that might get them to their destination ten minutes earlier. Especially since traffic wasn’t bad.

“So,” Arlo asked, “what are you going to do when you get there?”

Seamus shrugged.

“Right. You make it up as you go along. But if these people are launching missiles and hiding from the government, don’t you think the place will be guarded?”

“I can handle guards.”

“What about alarms? Motion detectors? Laser webs?”

“Been there, done that.”

“Ugly men with big guns? More than you can take down at once?”

Seamus gave him a fierce look. “I’m bringing in the people who blew up my man’s memorial. Before they can do something even worse. No matter what it takes.” He paused, then turned his eyes back to the road. “Even if I have to die in the process.”

Admiral Cartwright had granted Ben what was possibly the most generous gift he had ever received in his entire professional career: five minutes. From the fewer than forty they had left.

He joined Kyler in the briefing room. He had never expected to be in a position to woodshed the president of the United States, but that’s what it had come to.

“You need to level with me,” Ben said. “What’s going on?”

President Kyler held up his hands helplessly. “I just don’t know!”

“Do you know what brings these episodes on?”

“If I did, don’t you think I would’ve done something to prevent it?”

“Do you remember what happened when they’re over?”

“Sort of. In a hazy way. Almost as if I were recalling a dream. Something that seems almost real but isn’t.”

“Was Sarie lying?”

“I don’t think so.” He lowered his eyes. “I don’t have any reason to believe so.”

“Her account is pretty much the way it happened?”

“Yes,” he said quietly.

“So you remember sitting on the roof talking about offing yourself on live television, but it never occurred to you that maybe you ought to get some help?”

“The president does not have the option of just getting help!” he exclaimed. “The president can’t do anything without a hundred different people knowing. A thousand! I can’t even get a prescription without it going through a dozen desks, and then they have to buy it under at least three assumed names so no one is sure what exactly, if anything, went to me. And there’s a reason for that. Do you know what would happen to my standing in the world community if these medical issues came to light? Or what would happen to my chances for reelection?”