He came at Fisk with a meaty hand. “Fisk,” he said, trying to kill him with his grip.

“Easy,” said Fisk. “What’s with the squeeze?”

“Catching me at a bad time, bro,” said Dukes. “I got all this shit on me, and my wife is due to deliver our third in nine days.”

“Nine days?” said Fisk. “First of all, congrats. Second of all, I think you’ll make it through UN Week.”

“It’s not the birth I’m stressed about,” said Dukes, leaning closer. “She’s big as a house and feeling every pound. And we got two kids already under four. You hearing me?”

Fisk shook his head.

Dukes looked at him with disgust. “I forget you don’t have kids. I’ve never hated you more than I do this moment.”

It was hard to tell sometimes when Dukes was joking, but Fisk was pretty certain this was one of those times. “What am I missing?”

“It’s what I’m missing, you son of a bitch.” Dukes leaned in again. “Sex, all right? I have to draw you a picture? I’m going out of my skull. But you don’t care. Talk to me when you get married, man. When you got little ones running around, climbing in your bed. When your wife’s feet are swelled up like a Flintstone’s. I ought to shoot you right here.”

“Easy, big fella,” said Fisk. “Didn’t know what I was walking into here.”

“I’ve got two hundred door-to-door details going simultaneously, not including sixty-some-odd State Department security details for lower-level protectees. I’ve got nine hundred aircraft going in and out of JFK over the next handful of days, all bearing dignitaries. I’ve got prescouting and security on literally hundreds of events across the city. All of which has to be done safely and expeditiously.”

Dukes sat down on the edge of a desk. Even inside the office, he wore the Secret Service uniform: a dark suit with a noticeable paunch, a light blue shirt, a red tie. The paunch, of course, was not the result of a lack of exercise or late-night bowls of sugary cereal. It held his gun, his radio, his handcuffs, and his badge.

The Secret Service was different from any other branch of law enforcement anywhere, in that its most important tool was not handguns but radios. The agency zealously maintained and monitored some sixteen distinct radio channels—an enormous luxury given the limited amount of available bandwidth—each of them encrypted by the National Security Agency. An agent’s lost radio was many times more serious than a lost gun. The quickest way to earn a demotion in the Secret Service was to lose one’s radio. Any time a radio went missing, every single receiver had to be rekeyed by the NSA, which took a lot of time and effort.

“Hey,” said Dukes, suddenly appearing contrite. “Sorry about all that marriage talk, that was stupid.”

Again, people walking on eggshells around Fisk because of Gersten. Fisk quickly waved it off, needing to move on. “How’s it looking?”

“It’s holding together. But that can change in an instant. I don’t need to tell you, the last few terror attempts in this city failed not because they were detected by law enforcement, but because the dumb shits made stupid mistakes. With one glaring exception.”

Jenssen. Fisk nodded. That was how he and Dukes had met, in the after-action interviews months after the Freedom Tower dedication. The Secret Service was one of the largest consumers of intelligence data in the entire United States government national security complex. Intelligence collection was not in its brief, except as it pertained to improving its own strategic and tactical protective procedures.

Dukes asked, “How is it on your end?”

Fisk looked around. “I always think we have the best of the best until I walk in here.”

Dukes nodded. “Federal versus state, man. We have the best toys. What brings you in?”

Fisk leaned back against the edge of the cubicle wall. “So I’m trying to head off any entanglements or anything else that will jam up the city any more than it already is this week.”

“Of course.”

“You’re going man to man, we’re looking more at the big picture. Big threats. That said, I had an interesting meeting this evening and I want to follow up with you. You heard about the beheadings in Rockaway?”

“The what in what?” said Dukes.

“Thirteen bodies. Found earlier today.”

“I’ve had my head in the sand of diplomatic security here.”

Fisk nodded. “That’s what I thought. The Mexican president is flying in tonight.”

“Just landed,” said Dukes, correcting him.

Fisk nodded again. “You guys are good. What color socks is he wearing?”

“That’s classified.” Dukes smiled briefly. “Where you going with this?”

“Mexico and the United States have a treaty signing going on sometime this weekend. Mexican president and POTUS signing.”

Dukes’s eyebrows went up at the mention of the U.S. president. “Now you’re worrying me.”

“Just putting it on your bulletin board. Got a visit from a Cecilia Garza, a federale attached to President Vargas.”

“Ah, yes. The comandante,” said Dukes. “Came in for a briefing two, three days ago. A man in my heightened state of anxiety does not forget a woman like that. No, quite the opposite. They say Latin women are too volatile? I say bring on the pain. But something went wrong in my Puerto Rican head. I married a nice midwestern girl. White bread. The best. Still, who doesn’t like cinnamon toast?”

“Cold shower, man,” said Fisk. “Doctor’s orders.”

“Gotta get someone to hose me down like a mad dog.”

“President Vargas’s intel assessment bring up anything worth knowing?”

Dukes looked at the ceiling. “Not that I remember.” The analysts at the Secret Service’s Protective Intelligence and Assessment Division in Washington prepared detailed profiles on all protectees, including threat assessments and sensitive foreign intel. “He was an anticorruption candidate, though in Mexico that’s a tough sell. He seems to have upheld his end of the bargain, though it’s early days. Fired hundreds of crooked federales—hundreds. He’s vetting new ones, going after college graduates, bringing in something like fifteen thousand new recruits. He’s gearing up for a battle with the cartels. But in a land where everything runs on money—police bribes have their own name, mordidas—this sort of thing takes a while to age out of the system. We got a lot of cartel noise, the usual. He probably receives a dozen threats on his life every day. You think our job here is tough. Those EMPs he has watching him have to do more with a whole lot less.”

“The treaty is a narcotics and human trafficking agreement of some sort.”

“What do you think, was this beheading a warning? Related?”

“I don’t know yet. But the visit from Garza . . . something is hinky. She wanted more info from me than she was willing to ask for. She was fishing like she already knew there was a big fish in the lake. This kind of body dumping is way outside the norm for the United States. All I have are question marks, but they are bright red and flashing.”

Dukes said, “So you just thought you’d stop by and see how you could make my job even more difficult.”

“Exactly,” said Fisk.

“Okay,” said Dukes. “I’m aware, and I’m on it.”

Fisk shook his hand before leaving. “Cold shower,” he said again.

Dukes shook his head. “No time.” Then, before he released Fisk’s hand, “Good to see you back.”

CHAPTER 24

The midtown Four Seasons was a fifty-two-story, five-star hotel. President Umberto Vargas was staying in one of the three-bedroom royal suites located on the thirty-second floor, the same floor as delegations from Namibia and the Republic of Georgia.

With the soft click of a door, the frenetic task of transporting a head of state from JFK Airport to midtown Manhattan was over.