Brewer had spent the majority of her career focused on threats to the Agency, working in the Middle East during the global war on terror, all over Asia, and back here stateside at the CIA’s sprawling complex in McLean, Virginia, so a facility compromise investigation was nothing new to her. Still, the scope and scale of the attack, especially considering it happened inside U.S. borders, was entirely unique.

As was the fact that she herself would be coming under scrutiny about what happened. Had she correctly assessed the threat to the asset? Had she arranged for enough security?

Her stomach churned as she thought about the potential comebacks on her about this whole debacle.

Her secure mobile rang and she grabbed it without looking. She expected it to be one of the teams canvassing northern Virginia and D.C. for Anthem, but instead she heard Violator’s voice.

“The prisoner was exfiltrated by helicopter.”

Shit. The other matter was running into yet more difficulties as well. Brewer had back-burnered Violator’s situation; nobody could place any blame on her about some detainee she didn’t even know being recovered by an unknown enemy force, but she was still Violator’s handler, so she knew she was stuck with him and his problems.

“Tell me you at least got the tail number of the helo.”

A pause. “Didn’t get it. I got a phone off the shoot-team leader. I’m downloading all the data to my device and will upload ASAP.”

“Tell me there’s more.”

“A little. Apparently the shooters were from different gangs around the UK. They were brought in for this hit by a guy named Mr. Fox.”

“A pseudonym, probably. Useless.”

Court sighed. “The name of the shooters’ leader was Anthony Kent. He only became the top dog when the two guys above him got fragged at the airport. None of these men had worked together before, apparently.”

“They killed a lot of intelligence professionals. They certainly seemed like they knew what they were doing,” Brewer said.

“Yeah, they caused a lot of damage, but their hit wasn’t clean like a well-trained outfit. Ternhill was an ambush; they had all the advantages, but they still lost a half dozen dead. Here in the East Midlands I took out that many more.”

“You are saying you engaged them alone? Was that smart?”

“Would have been smarter if I’d stayed in Zurich and didn’t get on your damn plane!”

Brewer drummed her fingers on her desk. “That tail number from the helicopter would have been helpful.”

She heard nothing for several seconds. Then Violator replied. “You know? Maybe I need you to come show me how it’s done. How about next time you hit the building filled with armed assholes while I hang back at my desk and bitch about your performance?”

Brewer didn’t respond to this. Instead she asked, “Is that it?”

Court sighed into the phone. “There’s an abandoned hospital where the interrogation took place, just a few miles behind me now. Look into it and see if it’s tied to some group. They didn’t just stumble on this place. They came straight here.”

“Understood. What are you going to do?”

“I’m going shopping.” The line went dead.

* * *

• • •

Zoya Zakharova had been waiting for fifteen minutes at the front door of the Nordstrom Rack on 12th Street in D.C. when the doors opened at nine a.m. She bought a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, a zip-up jacket, two casual tops, a pair of slip-on flats, and a new pair of running shoes. She headed across the street to a Starbucks to change in their bathroom, stuffing the clothes she had been wearing, her shoes, and the shopping bags all in the trash.

At nine forty-five a.m. she sat at a computer terminal at the Northwest One Neighborhood Library, doing research on the Internet. She jotted down pages of information with paper and a pen she borrowed from a high school kid and, while she did this, she shot her eyes up and around the room every few seconds. She knew CIA had robust facial recognition technology, and she’d not been able to avoid all the cameras on the streets or in the library, but she also knew CIA was not supposed to use their tech inside the United States.

Still, she came from Russia and had worked in their government, so she knew how a government’s intelligence services could be easily and efficiently turned around on its own people. She couldn’t be sure the same was not happening here in the States, so she remained ever vigilant.

She had planned four different escape routes out of the library if the walls started closing in on her, and she was ready to fight if the men who’d attacked the safe house the evening before reappeared.

But no one came to take her away, and she continued with her work.

And by ten thirty she knew where she needed to go and what she needed to do.

She was a woman on a mission, a highly trained asset with a plan.

First things first, though. To accomplish her operation she had to get out of the United States and into Europe. This wasn’t going to be easy, since she had no passport or identification, but she knew a way.

It would take all her abilities of manipulation and deception to pull it off, but she’d been a student and a practitioner of high-level social engineering since she was a child, so she knew she could get it done.

CHAPTER 16

FOUR MONTHS EARLIER

North Korean virologist Dr. Won Jang-Mi stepped out of her office at the European Centre for Disease Prevention, her lunch swinging from a plastic bag in her hand. Stockholm was in the midst of winter and the temperatures were below freezing, but in her heavy down coat and knit cap it wasn’t unbearable. On sunny days like this Won liked to take her lunch alone outside on one of the wooden benches just behind her building.

Her two security officers had returned to North Korea when she moved to Stockholm; there was no rational overt reason for the woman to have men at her shoulder all the time, and they could hardly reveal they were her bodyguards. Since then, she had been alone for nearly two years, except for during her workdays at the center. This sequestration of herself from others was one third due to the tradecraft ingrained in her by the North Korean intelligence apparatus, one third due to her absolute hatred of the West, and one third due to her crippling social anxiety that made personal relationships here, or anywhere, nearly impossible.

The other change made when she’d moved from Shikhany, Russia, to Stockholm twenty months earlier, under orders from North Korean intelligence and with the help of Russian intelligence, was replacing her Korean given name Jang-Mi with the Westernized “Janice.”

Now Janice Won sat down on her bench after wiping it off with a hand towel she kept in her bag for that duty.