So Ross found himself playing dumb and looking to an old colleague from the Senate for confirmation. “What’s wrong?”

“Ah…” Stokes sighed, “I’m not even sure I know where to begin.”

“I’m a little miffed here, Martin. Last I heard, this thing was a slam dunk.”

“That’s what I was told as well, but now some problems have popped up. Some potentially embarrassing problems.”

“Such as?”

“Such as…the man we have in custody might not be the right guy.”

“Excuse me?” Ross’s eyes got wide and he thrust his chin out.

“The man in question is a Greek citizen. He has proclaimed his innocence since the moment he was handed over to the FBI on Sunday afternoon.”

“This wouldn’t be the first time a criminal claimed he was innocent.”

“Tell me about it. If it was just that I wouldn’t give it a second thought, but there’s more, or should I say less.” Stokes shared an uncomfortable look with his two deputies. “For starters the Greek ambassador is filing an official letter of protest that I’m told will be delivered to the State Department this afternoon.”

“Why?”

“They are claiming that the CIA kidnapped this man.”

“Who really cares?” Ross had thought this one through. “If this is the man who attacked the motorcade, the Greeks can file all the damn letters of protest they want.”

“The problem is, we’re not sure this is the right guy.”

“What do you mean, you’re not sure?”

“We were told this is the guy. We were told there was hard evidence against him.”

“And?”

“We’ve seen nothing.”

“What do you mean, you’ve seen nothing?”

Stokes let out a frustrated sigh. “On Sunday afternoon we received a prisoner. The prisoner was wounded. He’d been shot four times. Once in each knee and once in each hand.”

“Tortured?” Ross asked.

“I’d say so.” Stokes looked to his deputies for a consensus and both men nodded.

“Has the man admitted to anything?”

“Not to us, but the CIA claims he confessed during transit from Cyprus back to the States.”

“While he was being tortured,” Ross said with his best, you’ve got to be kidding me look.

“That is what he’s claiming.”

“The suspect?”

“Yes.”

“Shit. Do you have a tape of the confession?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“We’ve been asking the CIA for over a day, and have gotten nowhere.”

Ross cocked his head to the side. “Excuse me?”

“I assume you’ve heard it was Rapp who found this guy.”

“I have heard that rumor.”

“Well, it’s true. The problem is no one knows where he is. This was his op. He was the one who found him.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“We don’t have a single shred of evidence in our possession that can connect this guy to the crime. The prisoner has submitted to and passed a lie detector test, and the Greek government has no record of him leaving Cyprus during the time of the attack. The suspect claims to have witnesses that will swear to the fact he was at home, on Cyprus the day of the attack.”

Ross turned to look at Garret who in his typical unvarnished manner blurted out, “It sounds like Rapp grabbed the wrong guy.”

The three men from the Justice Department all shared uncomfortable looks and then Stokes said, “No one is willing to say it yet, but that’s our worst fear.”

“For Christ’s sake,” Ross swore. “Have you told the president any of this?”

“I’m heading over to the White House for lunch. I’ll break it to him then.”

“What about Josh?”

Stokes shook his head. “Maybe you could break the news to him.”

Ross acted like he didn’t want to, but he did. It was an opportunity to prove to his running mate how well connected he was. “I’m having lunch with him today. I’ll tell him then. In the meantime, you’d better find Rapp. We don’t want our new administration to start out under the cloud of scandal.”

Ross had intentionally used the first person plural possessiveour. Stokes was a useful man in that he was both politically hungry and well liked. For months they’d been dangling the possibility of carrying him over into the next administration. They’d even hinted that there might be something bigger on his horizon.

The warehouse was old. Built during the early days of WWII, it housed crucial supplies for Britain. It was all part of the Lend-Lease program that FDR had fought so hard for. Once the United States entered the war, the brick building doubled in size and became a beehive of activity until the Nazis surrendered. After the war U.S. Steel moved in and the Marshall Plan kept things busy as the U.S. continued to ship supplies to help rebuild Western Europe. Business remained good for U.S. Steel until the mid-seventies, and then things really slowed down. The entire area fell into a long cycle of neglect and disrepair.

When Scott Coleman first looked at the place, there wasn’t a window that wasn’t broken, the roof leaked, and a series of bad tenants had come and gone without bothering to take their junk with them. For most people the smell of urine and years of neglect was hard to get past, but Coleman, who had traveled the world with the U.S. Navy, was used to such things. Where others saw nothing but neglect, Coleman saw an opportunity. As a friend in the Navy used to say, “They aren’t building oceanfront property anymore.”

The place was out on Sparrows Point, just south of Baltimore on the Patapsco River. The SEAL Demolition and Salvage Corporation was Coleman’s brainchild. He’d seen too many of his fellow special forces operators leave the military and grow miserable living the civilian life. Coleman himself used to have nightmares that one day he’d be forced to take a job as a greeter at Wal-Mart. During long deployments, he began to flush out the idea for his own company. Going to work for someone else didn’t seem very appealing. Not after taking orders from others for so long. He asked himself one simple question. What skills had the navy taught him? There were many, but some of the more unique ones were diving, shooting, and blowing things up. Legally speaking, the first and last skills were more transferable than one might think. Ports and shipyards all over the world were in need of expert divers who knew how to get rid of debris.

SEAL Demolition and Salvage Corporation started with that express purpose, and their very first job illustrated the need for such special talents. British Petroleum had a problem brewing that needed to be solved before it became an international issue. They had quietly contracted to have one of their abandoned oil rigs in the North Atlantic demolished. Somehow, word had leaked out, and Greenpeace was mobilizing a group of protesters to occupy the rig and prevent the demolition. They wanted BP to dismantle the rig girder by girder. To the executives at BP the decision was simple: demolish the rig at a cost of two hundred thousand dollars or dismantle it piece by piece at an estimated cost of five million.

BP scrambled to get its people together and blow the rig before Greenpeace could mobilize. BP’s best estimate was that they could have all of the charges in place and ready to go within forty-eight hours. They found out that a boat loaded with Greenpeace activists was docked in Reykjavik, Iceland, and set to leave port the following morning. The activists would arrive at the rig by noon the next day and storm the platform, creating an international media event that would bring public and political pressure on BP to dismantle it piece by piece. BP needed to slow the protesters down so that the company would have enough time to blow the rig.

The vice president of operations at BP was told to find a way to stop the activists from reaching the rig, and to make sure BP was insulated from any fallout. The executive made several calls to his contacts in America and Britain and found out that there was a new upstart company in Maryland that might be perfect for the job. The man called Coleman and explained the situation to him. He had twenty hours to get to Reykjavik and stop the boat from leaving the harbor. He didn’t care how it was done, just so long as no one was hurt.