“I don’t know his name! How would I know China has a mole inside Mossad?”

Dewey ran his fingers back through his hair.

“Here’s the deal,” said Dewey, wiping the muzzle of the gun on his jeans. “You can either tell me the name of the mole, or you can tell Menachem Dayan and those nice fellas at the madhouse. I have a feeling their jokes aren’t going to be as funny as mine. Also, they’ll kill you. After they dunk your head in water a few hundred times.”

Bhutta screamed again.

“You tell me the name, and the only one who gets hurt is the mole,” Dewey said. “You go free. We can arrange some sort of relocation program inside the United States. Some sunny state.”

Bhutta’s face was pale and drenched in sweat.

“What about my daughter?” asked Bhutta, tears streaming down his face.

“Her too.”

“What about my knee?” asked Bhutta, in agony.

“It can go too.”

“Fuck you!” Bhutta howled. “You know what I mean.”

Dewey sat up and aimed the gun.

“No, not again. I want something in writing. An affidavit from the CIA or the Justice Department.”

“Not going to happen. If you want me to choose between shooting your kneecap off or calling some lawyer at Langley and explaining why I haven’t already dumped you off to the Israelis like I was supposed to, all I can say is, that ain’t gonna fuckin’ happen.”

“You’re a bastard.”

“Yeah, I am,” said Dewey. “But if I say I’m going to do something, I’m going to do it. Tell me the name of China’s spy inside Mossad.”

“Fuck you.”

Dewey stood up, then chambered another round. He aimed the gun at Bhutta’s left knee.

“No!” Bhutta screamed. He looked at Dewey. “Dillman. His name is Dillman. That’s all I know. Tell me you won’t fuck me over.”

Dewey stuck the Colt M1911 in his shoulder holster and walked to the door.

“I never break a promise.”

Dewey walked down the hallway and pulled out his cell.

“Get me Menachem Dayan,” he said into the phone as he walked upstairs.

A moment later, Dewey heard the raspy cough of Israel’s top military commander, General Menachem Dayan.

“Hello, Dewey.”

“I finished interrogating Bhutta,” Dewey said. “I know the name of China’s mole inside Mossad.”

“Who is it?” asked Dayan.

“I want your word, General,” said Dewey. “Kohl Meir gets to put the bullet in him. Then he’s buried.”

“You have my word.”

“His name’s Dillman.”

1

MOSSAD SPECIAL UNIT, AKA “THE MADHOUSE”

TEL AVIV, ISRAEL

Dayan stepped into Fritz Lavine’s sixth-floor corner office, which overlooked the Mediterranean Sea, the U.S. embassy, and downtown Tel Aviv. Lavine was the director general of Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service. He was a tall, rotund man with receding brown hair and big ruddy cheeks pockmarked with acne scars. Dressed in a white button-down shirt, sleeves rolled up, he stood behind his desk, inspecting a sheet of paper. Two men were seated in chairs in front of Lavine’s desk: Cooperman, Mossad chief of staff; and Rolber, head of clandestine operations.

All three turned as Dayan entered, slamming the door behind him.

“What the fuck happened?” asked Dayan as he crossed the office, his voice deep, charred by decades’ worth of cigarettes. “How many years did you three work with this son of a bitch traitor and you never suspected a goddamn thing?”

“There’ll be plenty of time for blame, Menachem,” said Lavine, icily. “Right now, we need to find this motherfucker and put a bullet in his head before he does any more damage and before he escapes.”

“What is the damage?”

“It’s extensive,” said Cooperman. “So far, we can trace the exposure of at least sixteen MI6 and CIA operatives back to Dillman. As for Mossad, the number appears to be seven dead agents.”

“Jesus Christ,” Dayan whispered, looking in disbelief at Cooperman.

“TGI succeeded in rebuilding Dillman’s digital biograph, correspondence, you name it,” said Lavine angrily, throwing the paper down on his desk. “He gave the Chinese everything. Every Far East operation we conducted over the past decade was known ahead of time by Fao Bhang and the ministry. Their knowledge was so extensive that it appears they even tolerated certain activities inside China so as not to raise suspicion. Dillman passed on detailed aspects of anything Langley supplied to us. This includes nuclear infrastructure.”

Dayan walked to the glass and looked for a few brief seconds toward the U.S. embassy.

“Have we notified Calibrisi?” asked Dayan, referring to the CIA director, Hector Calibrisi.

Lavine nodded. “Chalmers too,” he added, referring to Derek Chalmers, head of MI6.

“And what was the reaction?” asked Dayan.

Lavine stared back at Dayan but remained silent. He didn’t need to say anything. They all knew Dillman had set all three agencies back years, decades even, and that both London and Langley would be extremely angry.

Dayan shook his head. He sat down in one of the chairs in front of Lavine’s desk.

“Where is he?” asked Dayan, calmer now, his hand rubbing the bridge of his nose, eyes closed.

“We don’t know,” said Rolber. “We’re looking, carefully. If he suspects anything, he’ll run.”

“If he goes to China, we’ll never see him again,” said Dayan.

The phone on Lavine’s desk chimed, then a voice came on the speaker.

“Director, they’re waiting for you.”

“Patch us in.”

The phone clicked.

“Hector?” asked Lavine.

“Hey, Fritz,” said Calibrisi on speaker. “You have me and Bill Polk here at Langley along with Piper Redgrave and Jim Bruckheimer at NSA.”

“MI6 is on also,” said Derek Chalmers, in a British accent. “Where are we on this?”

“We have nothing,” said Lavine. “We’re looking everywhere. Last contact with the agency was two days ago. General Redgrave, has NSA developed anything?”

“No,” came the female voice of the head of the National Security Agency. “And to be honest, I’m not going to start using NSA assets on Dillman, or on anything else, until we make damn sure our systems and protocols haven’t been contaminated by this mole. If the Chinese are inside NSA, we have bigger problems than Dillman.”

“What’s the plan if and when we do find him?” asked Calibrisi.

“We have three options,” said Rolber. “One—we watch him, use him, plot an architecture of disinformation back into Beijing. Two—we bring him in, interrogate him, then let him rot. Three—termination.”

“Why not two and three?” asked Calibrisi. “Grill him then kill him.”

“If we bring him in, China will find out, Hector,” said Cooperman. “There has to be some form of check-in and tip-off. If he misses that check-in, Fao Bhang will immediately try to exfiltrate him, or, more likely, just kill him.”

“Then Bhang will move on Western assets before we have time to clean up inside the theater,” said Chalmers. “Every MI6, CIA, Mossad agent in China will die, not to mention anyone else Dillman has exposed. It will be a bloody mess.”

“It already is a bloody mess,” said Dayan.

“So what about option one?” asked Calibrisi. “What would the design look like?”

“We locate him then hang back,” answered Rolber, “carefully monitor his movements, and tightly control information flow to him. In the meantime, we put our assets in the Chinese theater on high alert and prepare for exfiltration. When Dillman is no longer useful to us, or he suspects something, we bring out our teams, then bring him in. We can shoot him later.”

“Fuck that,” yelled Dayan, hitting the desk with his hand. “We’re not waiting. Dillman dies right now. Period, end of statement. If I have to do it myself in downtown Shanghai with a dull butter knife, this motherfucker dies.”

“Dillman is just a symptom, General,” said Calibrisi. “It’s Fao Bhang who’s behind it all.”