The assistant director stood up, went over to a laptop computer, and tapped a key. The wall above the fireplace, which was being used as a makeshift screen, lit up. A photograph of grainy surveillance quality appeared, showing a man with the flat, pale features of an Eastern European, his sideburns and mustache a little too bushy to be stylish in the United States. "A month ago this individual contacted our Washington Field Office and requested a meeting. He was guarded in the information he supplied but said that he was an intelligence officer with the Russian embassy here in Washington. He would not identify himself by name but instead used the code name Calculus. At this meeting, to qualify himself as legitimate, he turned over five classified documents. When we asked him what he wanted from us, he said he had a list of Americans, some employed by the government and some by corporations with defense contracts, who were supplying information to the SVR, which if you've been keeping up, know is the new KGB. He wouldn't say how many were on the list or where they worked. However, one of the individuals, he was certain, worked in the U.S. intelligence community. He didn't know which agency."

"The documents he turned over-how critical was the information?" Vail asked.

"Nothing earth-shattering, but enough to convince us that he could have access to what he claimed. Why do you ask that?"

"Just curious."

Kate watched Vail carefully. She detected a note of discovery in his voice.

"I assume he wants money," Vail said.

"Why else would someone betray Mother Russia and risk the executioner?" Langston said. "The way he set it up was quite clever. He would give us, in his words, the 'smallest fish first, the largest, last,' which we assume is the intelligence agent. Once we identified the first one, we were to wire-transfer a quarter of a million dollars to a Chicago bank, for which he provided an account number. He said it's a large bank and that the account, which was opened by one of his relatives who works there, is in a dummy name. He warned that if the Bureau tried to find out who it was or trace the funds, the relative would be alerted and all contact with us would be severed, because if he couldn't trust us, he was as good as dead. Once the relative notified him that the money had been deposited, we would get the next name. He wanted a quarter of a million for each of them and a half million for the last one, because according to him it's a highly placed highly placed intelligence agent." intelligence agent."

"Did he say how quickly after payment you would get the next name?"

"In fact, he made that quite clear. We would get it, in his words, 'immediately if not sooner,' because he felt the longer this dragged out, the better the chances of his being exposed. He said the SVR had been given strict orders by Moscow that it must never become public knowledge that the Russians were spying on the United States again. Although their agents are extremely cautious to start with, apparently that directive has made them completely paranoid. Even the faintest hint of disloyalty launches an all-out probe."

Vail said, "So he gives you a name, you arrest that person, and then wire a quarter of a million dollars to the Chicago account. Once it's deposited, you get the next name, and so on until the intelligence agent is caught, and then you send a half million."

"Right."

"Does that mean he's given you the first name?"

"More or less," the assistant director said.

"As far as spycraft goes," Vail said to the director, "this sounds pretty paint-by-the-numbers. Why am I here?"

"A couple of reasons," Langston said. "Two days ago we got a short, cryptic text message from him. He has been recalled to Moscow unexpectedly."

"Uh-oh," Vail said.

"What?" Kate asked.

"When someone is suspected of spying, the Russians find some routine excuse to get them back to Moscow. Once there, they're interrogated, for months if necessary. Should they confess or if the SVR develops any proof, the suspected individual is usually executed for treason. And since it's not something the Russians are likely to make public, you'd never know," Vail said.

Langston continued, "Since the first letter, we've been trying to identify Calculus. And now we think we know who he is. The CIA has a fairly high-level source in the Russian embassy. In a rare act of cooperation, they've identified an individual for us. If they've given us the right name, he's an electrical engineer by training and is extremely cautious, even obsessive, which in the spy business is a good thing. His job is what we call a technical agent. He's sent all over the United States to their safe houses to wire them for sound and video and record meetings in case any of their double agents should get cold feet. Then they could be threatened with exposure, a foolproof way of keeping an asset's attention. The rest of it we're guessing at. We think, after meetings between American sources and their Russian handlers, he would collect the recordings and store them at the embassy. We think that with his financial future in mind, he started making a list of their identities. Maybe even keeping copies of the documents they turned over or other information we could use as corroborating evidence."

Vail said, "You got to love a communist who appreciates capitalism more than we do."

"Exactly."

Vail asked, "Well, let me ask you-hopefully for the last time-why me?"

"The only ones who know about this are the people in this room. If we gave this to any of our agents, I guarantee it would leak out. Your discretion has been established more than once. You have a certain reputation for getting things done despite obstacles that our agents would find ... well, procedurally insurmountable."

Vail laughed. "You mean none of you want to get caught."

The director said, "The rest of us here are not exactly street-ready, and this has the potential to get challenging. challenging. The men in this room haven't been out there in decades." Lasker glanced around to see if anyone objected. "Sorry, guys." The men in this room haven't been out there in decades." Lasker glanced around to see if anyone objected. "Sorry, guys."

Vail glanced at Kate and then back at the director. "When you offered me this kind of arrangement before, I said no."

The director pursed his lips. "That was because I thought your not being an agent was a waste of talent and I was hoping you'd eventually realize it. When you were vehement, I accepted it. But this is different. This is vital."

Vail got up and walked over to the window. He raised the shade and stared at the old Russian embassy across the street. "Funny, five years ago I thought this was exactly what I'd be doing right now. Instead I'm a bricklayer." He turned back and looked at the men. "While you may find that ironic, I find it unjust."

"Steve, we have to assume that Calculus is being interrogated in Moscow right now. If the Russians break him, there will be no list and all those spies will go on selling our secrets."

"I'm sorry. I'm going home."

Everyone in the room was silent. Finally the director said, "Could you come with me for a minute? There's something you need to see."

Vail followed him downstairs and then through a series of small, unfurnished rooms.

Once Lasker was satisfied they were completely out of earshot of the others, he said, "Did Kate tell you what happened to her just before Thanksgiving?"

"No."

"She almost died."

"What?"

"She left her car running at her place as well as the door to the garage open. She'd been drinking. Wound up in the hospital for a couple of days."

"You think it was a suicide attempt?" Vail's voice was accusatory.

"No, I don't. But it was a couple of days after she'd gone to see you in Chicago, which OPR tells me did not go well."

"Kate's way too strong for anything like that. And as up and down as we've been, I've never seen her depressed for a second."

"I couldn't agree more."

"She dumped me. I'm the one who's supposed to be suicidal."

"I thought you guys made up. Isn't that why you're here?"

"That was a lie. She didn't know I was coming. I was trying to patch things up. She was driving me back to the airport when she got the kidnapping call."

"Like I said, I know it wasn't a suicide attempt, but I can't call off the OPR investigation just because I think so. I'm sure you can remember how petty people can be in this organization when it comes to someone else's problems. When somebody is as successful as Kate is, they want to believe it. She's got people looking at her like she's a time bomb. I want her to work with you on this Calculus thing. If you two did half the job you did in L.A., all that petty whispering would come to a screeching halt."

Vail laughed. "Are you blowing this out of proportion to hook me?"

"When you and she walked into that room upstairs, did you notice that none of those men would look at her? When's the last time you saw that happen?"

Vail took a moment to consider what Lasker had said. "I'd be a fool to say yes to this." There was something in Vail's tone that told the director that was exactly what he was about to do. "Fortunately for you, it's not exactly construction weather in Chicago."

Lasker clapped him on the shoulder. "Thanks."

When they walked back into the upstairs room, the director said, "Steve's decided to give us a hand, and Kate will work with him."

Kate's eyes locked onto Vail. She had heard the surety in his tone when he'd said no to the director. She'd never seen him change his mind once it was so firmly set.

Vail looked back at her. "However, this time, if you're going to saddle me with Deputy Assistant Director Bannon, she has to understand that I am working with with and not and not for for her?" her?"

Kate took a moment to recover and then said, "Yes, those were the two big disruptions in L.A., me giving orders and you following them."

The director looked slightly distracted by what he was about to say, missing the humor in Kate's response. "I know how you feel about answering to anyone, Steve, but because this is so potentially explosive, I'm going to need you or Kate to report to Bill at least once a day so he can keep me advised."

"Define 'report to,' " Vail said.

"This is extremely complicated, so I need everyone to work together. Whatever other intelligence agency might be involved, add in the Russians and our own State Department and it's going to be a diplomatic high-wire act. The potential for disaster is incalculable. You have to keep Bill advised."

"Is that actually what you want us to do, or are you giving me one of those orders that when you're called in front of some congressional subcommittee, you can say I disregarded your instructions? If it's the second, I have no problem with it."

"I'm sorry, Steve, I need you to report daily. I wouldn't be much of a director if I didn't keep a very close eye on this one."

Vail knew that because of Kate he had no choice. "You do realize how this is going to end."

"I'm hoping it doesn't."

"Which means you can see exactly how it's going to end," Vail said. "Kate, I've got to tell you that this is the worst date I've ever been on." She just shook her head. "Guys, consider yourselves warned: This is not who I am, but I'll do what I can."

"Thank you," Lasker said.

Vail turned to the assistant director. "Bill, I don't know you at all. What I'm about to say is based on my personal history with Bureau bosses. If it doesn't apply, ignore it."

His face expressionless, Langston said, "Go ahead."

"If you try to obstruct me simply because of your ego, I'll be on the first available flight to Chicago, and I'm going to guess that won't make the director happy." Langston still showed no reaction. Vail turned to the others. "Okay, then, does anybody have any ideas where to start?"

The deputy assistant director, John Kalix, said, "The second time we met with Calculus, we had finished analyzing the documents that he had turned over to us and knew that he was legit, so we gave him a special phone. He was supposed to use it only to contact us. It's a miniaturized satellite phone, very ordinary-looking. That's all we told him about it. It had other capabilities, one of which was to constantly track his position, even when it was supposedly turned off. He used it only once, to text us about being recalled to Moscow. Six words, that's all. That was the last time we heard from him." Kalix got up and tapped the computer keyboard. A photograph of the message appeared.

To Moscow unexpectedly. Find CDP now!

"We're guessing 'CDP' are the initials of the first person on his list," Kalix continued. "We've checked them through every available database, most of which don't have middle initials, and have no clue who it is. Not everyone lists a middle initial. There could be hundreds, even thousands of them across the country. It's not much to go on. The only other thing we have is where he traveled. It's all documented in the dark blue file on the table there."

Vail took a moment to process what he'd been told and then looked over at the folder and nodded. "And where is the phone now?"

"As soon as that message was sent, we could no longer determine where it was. Somehow the GPS must have been disabled."

"The last location?"

"Inside the Russian embassy."

"That doesn't sound promising. Anything else that might help us?"

"That's it. Like I said, it's not much to go on."

The director stood up. "Thank you, guys." The men understood that the meeting was at an end and they were to leave.

After everyone filed out, the director closed the door behind them. "Steve, you two should probably work out of here. It's secure, and there's some equipment you might be able to use. The computers are current and have complete Bureau access. The building is alarmed, and there's a stocked kitchen, a shower, and some cots for sleeping. The briefcase on the table is for you. Gun, credentials, credit card, cell phone are all inside. Parked out front is a blue Chevy sedan. The keys are in the case, too." He took out a blank business-size card and wrote down a number on it. "If you need anything else-anything-call this number."

Vail said, "Any objections if I move in here?"

The director glanced at Kate. "If that's what you prefer, sure."

"It'll eliminate travel time from the hotel," Vail said, and Kate understood that he had offered the reason so she wouldn't be embarrassed at whatever way the director interpreted their relationship.

"And I'm only about fifteen minutes away," she said.

Vail said, "If we round up any of these people, aren't you afraid it'll point the Russians in Calculus's direction? If they're not already onto him."

"We do have an obligation to try to protect him as best we can, but we have a greater duty to protect this country. Actually, we have discussed our options for keeping this quiet as long as possible. Through legal and bureaucratic foot-dragging, we figure the whole thing could be kept quiet for about ten days. So if you do bring someone in, that ten-day clock will start ticking. After that, I'm afraid Calculus's anonymity could become tenuous."

Kate said, "Ten days isn't much time to get from A to Z. Especially since we're not sure where A is or how many letters there are in the alphabet."

"No, it's not. And to compound the problem, we don't know if we'll get any more information from Calculus. Steve, you have no idea how much I appreciate this. Between keeping everything secret and the idea of a bunch of traitors running around Washington, it was an impossible challenge. But now we have you. I'm sorry about handcuffing you with reporting daily, but this is a completely different situation from Los Angeles. If you have any problems, you've got my number."

" 'Abandon all hope, ye who enter here!' "

The director smiled. "Dante, right?"

"Rather than who wrote it, it's more important to know where it was posted."

"Which is?"

"It was the inscription at the gate to hell."

3.

After Kate had walked the director out, she came back upstairs. "Thank you for doing this. And for protecting my reputation with the director."

"Oh, how I wish your reputation actually needed protection."

"Me, too, Vail."

He stared at her for a few seconds and then went back to the window, again staring at the old embassy across the street.

She said, "What exactly did the director show you downstairs that changed your mind?"

"A large sum of money."

"Vail."