Without waiting for a response he disconnected the videoconference and then swiveled in his chair to the director of his security staff. "Where has the U.S. military taken Zha?"

The man looked down at a notebook in his hand. "We are working on getting this information. Surely to the United States, likely to Andrews Air Force Base. From there he will probably be turned over to the CIA for debriefing. They will use a safe house, since they will want to debrief him before placing him in official U.S. custody."

Tong nodded. "I want an address."

"I will get it for you."

- Valentin Kovalenko had been working full days and many nights for Center in the past few weeks. He'd planted bugs in corporate offices, pilfered wireless communications from tech companies, stolen RFID credit card information, and performed a number of other tasks.

Tonight, however, he was not working for Center. He had spent the day here in Barcelona getting pictures of a British politician who was on vacation in sunny Spain with a girlfriend while his wife was back in gray London with four kids.

But that was today. Tonight he was on a mission of his own. He'd purchased a prepaid cell phone from a convenience store several kilometers away from his Boulevard Rosa flat, then he went to an Internet cafe to look up a phone number he did not know from memory. After he wrote it down on a sheet of paper, he stopped in a bar and drank two quick glasses of Rioja to settle his nerves, then returned to his flat, locked the door, and sat down to make his call.

He looked at his laptop on his desk. Cryptogram was open and flashing.

Shit.

He headed to the little desk. He would check in with Center first, then he would be free to call his father, Oleg Kovalenko, in Moscow.

His father did not own a computer; he did not own a cell phone. He was, effectively, off the grid and out of the reach of the Center organization.

Valentin planned on telling his father as little as possible about his predicament, then sending the old man to the SVR in Moscow to talk to his old friends and explain the situation. His arrest for the John Clark episode. His escape from prison and his coerced recruitment into the Center organization.

His dad and his old friends would help him out of this.

He decided on this course of action after going to the Russian embassy in Barcelona, passing by a couple of times on foot, and then deciding it was not safe for him to make contact with anyone directly there. His father could do it for him, in Moscow, where Valentin knew many people and could direct his father to any one of a dozen friends who could help him.

But first he clicked on Cryptogram. Typed, "I'm here." He pulled the card out of his camera and slid it into the side of the laptop. Typed, "Uploading images now."

He initiated the upload on Cryptogram, and Center accepted the file.

But Center's reply, when it came, was incongruous to Kovalenko's message. The words "Everyone makes a mistake" appeared on the screen.

Kovalenko cocked his head. He typed, "What does that mean?"

"You made a mistake by deciding to contact your father."

Instantly sweat formed on the back of Kovalenko's neck. His fingers began to type some sort of denial, but he stopped himself.

How the fuck did Center know?

After a delay he typed instead, "He is my father."

"That is irrelevant to us, and he is irrelevant to your assignment. You will not have any contact with anyone from your past life."

"He is no longer with the government. He will tell no one."

"Irrelevant. You need to follow instructions."

Kovalenko looked over at the new mobile phone. No, there is no way that Center could have some sort of tracking or listening device planted on every new phone in every blister pack in the world.

The Internet cafe? Could they really be looking at every machine in every Internet cafe in Barcelona? In Europe? On earth? That was unfathomable.

Impossible.

Wait. Kovalenko pulled his own mobile phone out of his jacket. He had been working for Center long enough to put together some of the technological pieces of any operation they might be running against him. Maybe his phone was bugged with a GPS beacon of some sort. His movements could be tracked; if Center was really on the ball he could have seen him go to the Internet cafe. Then he could have-Kovalenko supposed-looked at the traffic coming out of those computers. The Internet search of the Moscow phone book. They could have recognized the name or done some other follow-up search to determine that he was trying to contact his father.

They could have monitored him at the market where he purchased the phone.

Is that how they did it?

Not a simple thing, but somewhat less than omnipotent.

Shit. He'd been stupid. He should have tried harder, come up with some more remote way to get his father's number.

He typed, "I have been working for you for three months. I want to return to my life."

The response he received from Center was not what he expected: "You will continue doing as you are instructed. If you had managed to contact your father successfully, he would be dead by now."

Kovalenko did not respond.

A new paragraph of text appeared on Cryptogram an instant later. "Documents will be dead-dropped to you in Barcelona today. You will use them to go to the United States. You will leave tomorrow. There you will rent suitable habitation in Washington, D.C., and you will operate from there. You have two days to get into position and to report in prepared to receive operational instructions."

D.C.? Kovalenko was surprised and more than a little concerned.

"I do not have a good relationship with the current administration." This flat declaration by Valentin Kovalenko could not have been more of an understatement. One year prior, Kovalenko had conspired with billionaire Paul Laska, a U.S. citizen, to destroy the election chances of Jack Ryan. Laska and Kovalenko had failed, and while Laska seemed to have gotten off scot-free, Valentin became an embarrassing inconvenience for the Kremlin, so he'd been thrown in a rat hole.

Kovalenko had no trouble believing that the Ryan administration knew all about him. Flying into Washington, D.C., to work for a shadowy criminal organization seemed like a terrible idea.

Center responded, "We know about your relationship with the John Clark episode and, by association, with President Ryan. The documents, credit cards, and cover for status we will give you will ensure your ability to get into the country and situated. Your own OPSEC and tradecraft will ensure your continued safety once there."

Kovalenko looked at the screen for a moment before typing, "No. I do not want to go to America."

"You will go." That was all. Just a demand.

Valentin typed "no," but he did not press the enter key. He just looked at it.

After several seconds he removed the "no" and typed, "How long an assignment?"

"Unknown. Likely less than two months, but all depends on your skill. We feel you will do well."

Kovalenko spoke aloud in his flat. "Yes. Threats and flattery. Kick an agent in the ass and then give him a blow job." He knew nothing about Center, but he could easily deduce that the man was a seasoned spymaster.

The Russian typed, "And if I refuse?"

"You will see what will happen to you if you refuse. We suggest you do not refuse."

FORTY-THREE.

The life of a CIA officer in the field had its moments of raw adrenaline and pure excitement, but there existed many more moments like this.

Adam Yao had spent the night in the small waiting room of an auto body shop in Sai Wan on Hong Kong Island, just a few kilometers from his flat. He'd brought his neighbor's Mitsubishi minivan here the previous evening, and he'd paid the shop owner and his assistant handsomely to work through the night to clean blood off the upholstery, to fill in and buff out the bullet holes, to repaint the vehicle, and to replace the broken windows.

It was seven a.m. now, and they were wrapping up, which meant Adam would, he hoped, just be able to get the minivan back in time to park it in its place in the parking garage before his neighbor came down from his flat to head for work.

None of this was a thrilling postscript to the excitement of the past few days, but these things happened, and Yao could not very well just give the Mitsubishi back to his friend as it was.

His neighbor, a man Adam's age named Robert Kam, had three kids and owned the minivan out of necessity. He had been driving Adam's Mercedes for the past two days, and he had not complained one bit. Though Adam's car was a dozen years old, it was in fine condition, and a hell of a lot better ride than the Mitsubishi Grandis minivan.

The body shop owner tossed Yao the keys, and they inspected it together. Adam was impressed-he could see no evidence of the damage to the car's body, and they had replaced the side windows with tint that perfectly matched the tint on the windshield and back glass.

Adam followed the manager to the counter and paid his bill. He made sure to get an itemized receipt. It had cost an arm and a leg to get the vehicle repairs expedited, and he'd paid with his own money. He had every intention of sending the invoice to Langley, and to pitch a white-hot fit if he wasn't reimbursed for this expense.

But he was not going to be sending that invoice in anytime soon. He was still over here, in the field, operating under a strong suspicion that there was a leak in the pipeline of information between Asian-based CIA officers and Langley.

The last thing he wanted to do was send a cable that revealed the fact he had been involved in the shoot-out the night before last.

Adam raced home in the minivan now, checking his watch every minute, hoping he could get the Mitsubishi back in time for his neighbor to find it in his parking place.

Adam's place was in Soho, a trendy and pricey area of Central on Hong Kong Island built into a steep hillside. Yao could never afford his small but modern flat on his CIA salary, but his place fit his cover as president and owner of a business investigation firm, so he justified it to Langley.

His neighbor Robert, on the other hand, was a banker with HSBC, and he probably raked in four times Adam's salary, though Adam could imagine that the expense of having three boys would cut into Robert's discretionary income.

Adam made it back to his building and pulled up the ramp into his parking garage just after seven-thirty a.m., and he made the turn to go find the Mitsubishi's numbered parking space.

Up ahead of him, at the end of the lane of cars, Adam saw Robert stepping up to Yao's black Mercedes with his briefcase in his hand and his suit coat over his arm.

Shit, Adam thought. He could still switch out cars with him, but he'd have to come up with some excuse why he was just getting the vehicle home right now. Adam's fertile brain started working on something as he headed up the parking lot to Robert's numbered space a row over from his own.

He saw Robert open the door of the Mercedes, then sit down, just as Adam pulled Robert's Mitsubishi into its parking space facing him across the lane.

The CIA officer put the minivan in park as Robert looked up and noticed him. Adam smiled and waved sheepishly, an apologetic grimace for not having the minivan back until now.

Robert smiled.

And then Robert Kam disappeared in a flash of light.

The Mercedes exploded right in front of Adam Yao's eyes, fire and shrapnel and a shock wave visible as a wall of dust rocked the parking garage, the new windows of the Mitsubishi shattered, and Adam's head was slammed back against the headrest with the violent blast.

A hundred car alarms of luxury vehicles began whining and screaming and chirping, and pieces of car and concrete from the ceiling of the lot rained down on the minivan, cracking the windshield further and tearing holes in the hood and roof. Adam felt the trickle of blood on his face where auto glass cut into him, and the choking smoke of the explosion in the enclosed parking lot threatened to suffocate him.

Somehow he forced his way out of the damaged Mitsubishi and stumbled toward his Mercedes.

"Robert!" he screamed, and he tripped over an I-beam that had fallen from the ceiling. On his hands and knees he pushed and kicked through the twisted metal of other cars, his head pounding from the concussion he just received and his face dripping blood freely now. "Robert!"

He climbed on the hood of the Mercedes, looked into the burning interior, and he saw the charred remains of Robert Kam in the driver's seat.

Adam Yao turned away with his hands on his head.

He'd seen Robert with his wife and his three young boys in the elevator or climbing into or out of their minivan a hundred times in the past year. The image of the kids in their soccer uniforms laughing and playing with their father rolled over and over in Yao's mind as he stumbled and fell away from the burning wreckage of his car, back over the broken concrete and shattered Audis, BMWs, Land Rovers, and other twisted wrecks of hot metal that had been, seconds before, rows of luxury automobiles.

"Robert." Adam said it this time, he did not shout it. He fell to the ground dazed and bloodied, but he fought his way back to his feet, then wandered through the dust and smoke for a minute, his ringing ears assaulted by the car alarms. Finally he found a clear lane to the exit through the smoke and dust, and he walked to it.

Men and women from the street ran up to him on the drive and tried to help him, but he pushed them away, pointing toward the scene of the blast, and they ran on to look for more survivors.

Adam was on the street a moment later. It felt cool here this morning high on the hill, above the congested streets of Central and the air thick with humidity down by Victoria Harbour. He walked away from his building, down a steep decline; he wiped blood from his face as emergency vehicles raced past him, up the winding roads toward the black smoke now two blocks behind him.

He had no destination, he just walked.

His thoughts were on Robert, his friend, a man just about Adam's own age who had sat down in Adam's own car and taken the full brunt of the bomb that had clearly been meant not for Robert Kam but for Adam Yao.

When he was five blocks from home, the ringing in his ears lessened and the pounding from the concussion abated just enough for him to start to put salient thoughts together about his own situation.

Who? Who did this?

The Triads? How the fuck would the Triads know who he was, where he lived? What car he drove? The only people who knew his identity and who knew he was CIA, other than CIA, were the Hendley Associates men and whoever was managing to compromise cable traffic out of Hong Kong and China.

No way in hell the Triads were getting intel directly from the CIA. The Triads ran hookers and pirated DVDs, they did not assassinate CIA officers and compromise tier-one intelligence agencies.

If it wasn't the Triads, then it had to be the PRC. Somehow, for some reason, the PRC wanted him dead.

Had FastByte been here in China working with the Triads for the PRC?

None of that tracked with anything Adam understood about the way these organizations worked.

As confused as Adam was about what had just happened and what he'd stumbled onto, there was one matter on which the bruised and bloodied CIA operator was crystal fucking clear.

He wasn't calling in to CIA; he wasn't saying one damn thing to anybody about anything. Adam was a one-man band, and he was getting the fuck out of here on his own.

He continued staggering down the hill, toward the harbor, wiping blood out of his eyes as he walked on.

FORTY-FOUR.

Brandon "Trash" White checked the seal of his oxygen mask over his mouth, saluted the catapult officer on the deck to his right, then placed his gloved left hand on the throttle of his F/A-18 Hornet. With some reluctance he wrapped his right hand around the "towel rack," a metal bar handgrip high on the canopy in front of his head. He was just seconds from being airborne, and it was his natural inclination to keep his hand on the controls of his aircraft, but carrier rules were different. The catapult shot would shove Trash's body back hard against his seat, and if his hand was holding on to his stick, there was a high probability his hand would fly back with the high g-forces, pulling the stick along with it and pitching the airplane up and out of control on takeoff.

So Trash held on to the towel rack and waited to be shot off the boat like a marble from a slingshot.