We’re still five hours from landing when Zack Hightower takes the airphone sitting on the table next to him and punches a couple of buttons. He places the call on the cabin overhead intercom, and then we all sit there silently for half a minute listening to it ring before we hear a click.

“Hanley.”

I let Zack start things off, which he does with, “Hey, Matt. ID check Whiskey, Yankee—”

“The package is with you?”

Hightower clears his throat. “Yes, sir. You’re broadcasting on the intercom.”

“The package is listening now?”

“Yes, sir. He wants to speak with you.”

“Violator,” Hanley says. His voice relays his annoyance, which is cute, because I’m fucking furious right now.

“I have some questions for you,” I say.

“Take me off the comms and we can talk.”

I shake my head at Zack. “Everybody around me is TS/SCI with all appropriate read-ins, and what I’m about to say is personal, it’s not classified in any way, shape, or form. You pull me off comms and you are telegraphing to these seven men and one woman that you’re afraid of them hearing our conversation. Is that what you want?”

Another pause; I can feel Hanley’s palpable sense of concern about what I will say.

“Go on, then.”

“You lied when you told me you didn’t know about the Consortium. You were the one who told Brewer where to task Ground Branch, which means you are well aware of their activities. You refused my request for resources in saving two dozen sex trafficking victims, and you sent men to pick me up to stop me from doing anything to the Consortium by myself.

“I’m no detective, but that all tells me you are somehow involved in this international sex trafficking ring, either directly or else you are helping to cover up their activities.”

“That’s ridiculous, Gentry. You know me.”

I say, “Then who’s pulling your strings?”

I can hear Matt sigh, which he does with regularity when talking with me. He asks, “What do you know?”

“Not a chance, Matt. Let’s hear you talk.”

Hanley next says, “Court, have I ever lied to you?”

This is rich, coming from him. “Have you ever lied to me? Fuck, Matt, you tried to kill me. Does that count?” I glance at Hightower next to me. “Both of you did.”

Hanley barks back instantly. “That was under orders!”

And Hightower raises a hand in the air. “Same. Get over it, dude. Move on.”

Hanley says, “I did not know about the Consortium. Not by name, anyhow. But when you called Brewer, I looked into it. We know about their operation, and we knew about the meeting tonight in Venice.”

“Who is the American who runs it?”

“He’s an asshole, apparently. But he’s also an asset.”

I understand. “He is providing you some sort of intelligence product, and in return you are protecting him. Is that it?”

“That’s it.”

“So, Matt, when you gave me that impassioned plea for me to drop this pipeline thing and haul ass back home so that Zoya wouldn’t die alone in some shit-stained hellhole, it had less to do with Zoya and more to do with you trying to protect international criminals so they could continue to feed you intel product.”

“If I say yes, are you going to show up at the foot of my bed in the middle of the night?”

I don’t answer him, but I get the reference. I did come to him one rainy night for a chat, and it was clear he did not appreciate the intrusion.

After my silence, Hanley adds, “People in the real world aren’t like you, Court old buddy. The rest of us, we take orders. We work to the best of our ability to satisfy the wishes of our higher-ups. I’ve got bosses I listen to and respect, unlike you, out there just winging it, dancing to your own music playing in your goofy head. Music nobody hears but you.”

“You’re stacking your metaphors, Matt.”

“Let me help you understand, then. I’m saying this. I was told the man at the center of this—”

“What’s his name?”

“I don’t know his name. I just know his code name.”

“The DDO doesn’t know the name of an intelligence asset? Bullshit.”

“He’s the one who’s kept it hidden. He came to us originally, a walk-in, and he set protocols in place to where we can’t easily identify him.”

“All right,” I say. “People in the Balkan pipeline call him the Director.”

“Okay, fine. The Director, he works with us, and the intel product he generates takes precedence over whatever side business he may or may not be involved in.”

“Side business? For God’s sake, Matt! He’s running a massive international sex slavery ring; this isn’t a fucking chain of Pinkberrys!”

The rest of the cabin around me is dead silent.

I believe Hanley to be a good man, despite how he treats me sometimes, and he wouldn’t want to be part of a scheme to ruin the lives of thousands of young women and girls. But still, his devotion to his duties is stronger than his moral compass, because he says, “I truly hope that sex slavery operation gets shut down. But it can’t be shut down by stopping the Director. He’s proven himself too important to America’s national interests.”

“How the fuck so, Matt?”

“He’s doing something we need him to keep doing.”

I’m not the sharpest tack, but I’ve been in this game a long time, so I had been suspecting this all along.

“This is about international banking. I know the Consortium has money laundering down to an art form. He’s working with other entities. Terror groups, rogue states, weapons proliferators. And he’s passing that info on to you.”

“Can neither confirm nor deny,” he says.

I’ve known Matt ten years, and when he says this, he is one hundred percent confirming, not denying.

I say, “But . . . you do understand he’s only playing ball so you guys will run interference for him while he conducts criminal activity, right? Every country I’ve been in over the last week is full of government personnel either working for him outright, supporting his efforts in some way, or covering for him. I’m sure he pays out millions of dollars to those who can be bought off, and he gives vital information to those who cannot.”