“Suit yourself.”

“This Triple Six guy might be a complication. We might be talking thunderstorm status.”

Seagraves shook his head. “We do that, things will really heat up. For all I know he’s still got connections. And if I did him, I’d have to do his friends. That’s a lot of room to make a mistake and get the wrong people suspicious. For now he thinks Behan’s the guy. If that changes, then the weather forecast might read differently.”

“Are you really sure that’s a good strategy?”

Seagraves’ features turned a notch darker. “Let’s do a reality check, Trent. While you sat safely behind your little wonk desk in nice, comfortable Washington, I was putting my ass on the line in places you’re too scared to even watch on TV. You keep doing what you do, and let me worry about the strategic planning. Unless you think you can do it better than I can.”

Trent tried to smile, but his fear didn’t allow for it. “I wasn’t questioning you.”

“It sure as hell sounded like it.” He suddenly grinned and clamped an arm around Trent’s narrow shoulders. “No time to fight now, Albert. It’s going way too well. Right?” He squeezed tightly and only released his grip when he felt the pain in the other man’s body. It felt good, to feel another man’s suffering up close like that. “I said, right?”

“Absolutely.” Trent rubbed his shoulders and actually looked like he might start crying.

You must’ve had the crap kicked out of you on the playground every day.

Seagraves changed the subject. “Four State Department liaisons dead. That was some original spin.” He’d actually known one of the murdered men; in fact, he’d served with him. A good agent, but millions of dollars easily trumped any friendship he’d ever had.

Trent said, “You expect the government to be creative? So what’s next on the list?”

Seagraves tossed his cigarette down and glanced at his companion. “You’ll see it when you see it, Albert.” He was actually getting a little tired of his junior partner. That was partially what this little jam session was about, making it clear to Trent that he was and would always be a subordinate. And if things got dicey and it looked like the house of cards might tumble down, Trent would be the first person he’d kill for one simple reason: Mice always break under pressure.

He parted company with the staffer and walked to his car in a restricted area. He waved to the guard there who knew him by sight.

“Keeping my wheels safe?” Seagraves said with a grin.

“Yours and everybody else’s,” the guard said as he chewed on a toothpick. “You keeping the country safe?”

“Doing all I can.” Actually, the next thing Seagraves would pass Trent would be key elements of the NSA’s brand–new strategic surveillance plan for foreign terrorists. The media always assumed the NSA was doing things outside the law. They didn’t know the half of it, and neither did the myopic folk up on Capitol Hill. But some well–heeled haters of America living seven thousand miles away and at least eight centuries in the past were willing to pay millions of dollars to know all about it. And money, man, money always carried the day; screw being a patriot. To Seagraves’ mind, the only thing patriots got were a trifolded flag for their troubles. And the major problem with that was you had to be dead to get one.

Seagraves drove back to his office, finished up a bit of work and headed home, which consisted of a thirty–year–old split–level rancher with three bedrooms and two baths, on a quarter acre of drainage–challenged dirt, that cost him nearly half his salary in mortgage and property taxes. He did a quick but intense workout and then opened the door of a small closet in the basement that he kept locked and protected by an alarm system.

Inside, arranged on the walls and on shelves, were mementos of his earlier career. Among other items was a brown glove trimmed with fur in a glass display box, a button from a coat in a small ring case, a pair of eyeglasses on a plastic holder, a shoe hanging from a peg on the wall, a wristwatch, two ladies’ bracelets, a small, blank notebook with the monogram AFW, a turban on a shelf and a worn copy of the Qur’an under glass, a fur cap and a child’s bib. The bib he felt a little remorse for. Yet when one killed the parents, often the child was sacrificed as well. A car bomb, after all, was indiscriminate in whom it destroyed. Each item was numbered from one to over fifty and held a history known only to him and a few others at the CIA.

Seagraves had gone to great pains and undertaken considerable risk to collect these objects, for that’s what this was, his collection. Whether they realized it or not, everyone was a collector of some sort. A lot of people migrated to the ordinary end of the spectrum, collecting stamps, coins and books. Then there were those who accumulated broken hearts or sexual conquests. And then there were those who found gratification in the accumulation of lost souls. At the far end of the continuum, Roger Seagraves collected personal items from people he’d murdered, or assassinated rather, since he’d done it under the color of serving his country. Not that such a distinction made much difference to the victims; they were still dead, after all.

He had come here tonight to place two new objects in the room: a pen belonging to Robert Bradley and a leather bookmark of Jonathan DeHaven’s. They were given places of honor on a shelf and in a shadow box respectively. He did so, placing a number on each one. He was approaching sixty in total. Years ago he had contemplated reaching a hundred, and he’d gotten off to a strong start, since at that time there were many in the world his country needed dead. Then his last few years on the job the pace had slowed considerably; a spineless administration and even weaker CIA bureaucracy had been the cause. He had long since given up his original goal total. He had instead gone for quality over quantity.

Any sane person being told the history of these items might judge Seagraves to be a psychopath maliciously collecting personal items of murdered people. They would be wrong, he knew. It was actually a measure of respect accorded someone from whom you’d taken the most precious thing they had. If anyone ever succeeded in killing him, Seagraves trusted they’d be a worthy enough foe to afford him the same honor. He locked up his collection and went back upstairs to plan his next move. He had something to get, and with DeHaven dead and buried, now was the time to get it.

• • •

Annabelle Conroy sat in a rental car at the corner of Good Fellow Street. It had been many years since she’d been here, and yet the place hadn’t changed all that much. You could still smell the moldy stink of old money, though it was now mingled with the equally foul aroma of new currency. Annabelle, of course, had had neither, a fact that Jonathan DeHaven’s mother, Elizabeth, had been quick to pounce on. No money and no breeding was what she had probably told her son over and over until the saying was ingrained on his very impressionable brain, finally allowing his mother to bully him into an annulment. Annabelle had not contested it, because what would the point have been?

Still, Annabelle held no ill feelings toward her ex. He was a man–child in many ways, erudite, kind, generous and affectionate. Yet he possessed not even a sliver of a backbone and ran from confrontation like the proverbial kid with glasses did from the bully. He had been no match for his omnipotent and acid–tongued mother; yet how many sons were? After the marriage had ended, he wrote Annabelle loving, moving letters, showered her with gifts, told her that he was thinking of her all the time. And she never doubted that he was. Deception was not part of his nature; that had been quite a new concept for her. Opposites apparently did indeed attract.

And yet he had never once asked her to come back. Still, compared to the men she’d known in her life, all of them like her on the wrong side of the good and bad equation, he was the light of pure innocence. He held her hand and was quick to open doors for his “lady.” He talked to her about issues of importance in the world of normal people, a place as alien to her as a distant star. And yet Jonathan had made it less strange, less distant, in the brief time they’d spent together.