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a stowaway on board.”
    “How did he get off?”
    “A supply launch left the boat two minutes before the marines boarded. Figure Gentry was on it.”
    Denny knew they wouldn’t catch Gentry sound asleep in his cot. “He’s in the wind. Who do you have assembled here?”
    “The JSOC liaison, the NSA liaison, the NGA liaison, the DS&T guy read in on Violator, and the communications officer on the task force. We’ll have eight in the meeting in total.”
    Denny kept walking, but said, “There are only seven in the Violator Working Group.”
    “I’ve asked Suzanne Brewer of Programs and Plans to join us.”
    The two CIA execs and DeRenzi all had their IDs scanned, and then they entered the elevator, leaving three of the bodyguards behind. Carmichael’s clipped voice showed his displeasure. “What does Brewer have to do with this?”
    “Among her other duties, she has been red-celling a lone-wolf attack on domestic CIA infrastructure for over a year. She’s got the background of a good targeting officer, and she knows how to prevent an attack by a determined enemy. If Gentry is here, and if he’s got CIA in his sights, Suzanne might prove useful.”
    “She doesn’t know a damn thing about the problem at hand. Gentry isn’t some raghead with an AK taking potshots at cars at the south gate, for God’s sake.”
    “Brewer is as sharp a counterterror mind as we have. She’s spent a decade on risk mitigation involving Agency facilities and personnel overseas, and she’s developed protocols for dealing with sophisticated homegrown terror hazards as well as high-level foreign actors who might target Agency assets.”
    “I don’t like bringing outsiders into the fold.”
    “Think about it, Denny. We’re going to have to beef up your security protocols, and we’ll be putting assets on Gentry’s known associates in the city. There is no way that can happen without Brewer learning about it. She’s an outsider now, but we bring her in and give her password access to the Working Group, and she’ll become an ally instead of an impediment.”
    “And when she learns we don’t want Gentry alive?”
    Mayes didn’t hesitate. “Operational expediencies won’t trouble her. If you tell her this target needs to die, she’ll make it happen.”
    The elevator arrived on the seventh floor. Mayes reached out and took Denny by the arm before he left the car. He spoke softly to him. “I was also thinking . . . if Gentry
is
here to target the Agency, and this manages to make some noise outside of the Agency, God forbid, we might want to frame this to the media as some kind of an external threat. If Suzanne is involved, beefing up the guns and gates of our facilities, it will only help us sell it as some lone-wolf terror attack on the Agency.”
    Denny looked at his second-in-command. In a louder voice he said, “One, this
is
a terror attack on the Agency. Gentry didn’t come all this way to pick up an old paycheck. And two, keeping this shit in house is paramount. No one breathes a word. We’ll take care of it.” Carmichael took off, heading up a brightly lit hallway towards his office.
    Mayes knew when to fight with his boss, and he knew when to let his boss wrestle with his own arguments. As he caught up with Carmichael he said, “So . . . Suzanne. Yea or nay?”
    After a moment the director of National Clandestine Service gave in, to a point. “Maybe. But before I bring her into the program, I want to know more about her.”
    “She’s reliable. I’ve worked with her myself. She’ll play ball.”
    Denny slowed and turned back towards Mayes, but before he could say anything Mayes preempted him by handing over the plastic file folder. “Here’s her two-page write-up. You want more, I can send it to your office.”
    Carmichael took the file, but said, “I want it all. Nobody gets read in on Violator unless I know them inside and out.”
    —
    T en minutes later five men and one woman converged in a