He’d last seen her at the safe house in Great Falls a few nights earlier, the evening of the attack on the facility there.

Renfro didn’t know Brewer’s actual job under Hanley, but he was aware that she was the point person for a code-word program called Poison Apple.

Operations was a career builder for an exec, for sure, but the black ops Brewer was assigned to, Renfro could tell by her near disappearance from meetings, weren’t going to do a thing to propel her ascent towards the seventh floor.

Before he said anything he stopped thinking about her and began thinking about himself again. What did she want? Was this the next step in the process arrayed against him? Would she take him into custody, deliver him to a safe house, and have CIA men, Hanley’s men, rough him up?

He put on the most composed face he could muster and said, “Suzanne. Don’t see much of you on Capitol Hill these days.”

“No, sir. Actually, I’m here to see you. Do you have a moment to talk?”

Renfro glanced around for others, men in suits with earpieces who would whisk him away, and when he saw none, he looked back to the attractive woman in the blue blazer and slacks. “Have you been sent?” He meant by Hanley, but Suzanne would know this.

“No, sir, and I truly hope you don’t mention our conversation to my deputy director.”

Renfro raised an eyebrow. “You have me intrigued, then. There’s a bench by the Reflecting Pool. A few tourists will be milling around, but if we keep our voices down, we should be fine.”

They walked in near silence for a few minutes, then sat down at a quiet bench in front of the water. Tourists were indeed present, but they were all taking pictures closer to the Reflecting Pool and well out of earshot.

Renfro scanned the area over and over, looking for more surveillance. Finally he said, “We both have to get on a plane for London tomorrow. I imagine you have as much work to do as I do, if not more. So cut to the chase.”

“I have important information for you. Information of a personal nature.”

A personal nature. He’d calmed himself during the walk, but now his terror returned anew. He swiveled his head back and forth, and he looked back over his shoulder.

Brewer noted this, clearly, because she said, “You needn’t concern yourself with the man who’s been tailing you. He’s one of mine. I called him off thirty minutes ago so we could speak in private.”

Renfro’s graying eyebrows furrowed, an authentic facial gesture, because he was seriously confused. “I’m being tailed by one of Matt Hanley’s assets?”

Brewer nodded.

“But . . . why?”

Brewer said, “First. I’m no saint. I want to help you, but I want something in return.”

Renfro leaned closer. “What would that be?”

“I want away from Hanley, away from Ops.”

He shrugged, confused about the lowball request. “Of course you can come and work for me. You’d be a hell of a catch. Everyone on seven knows your talents.”

Brewer shook her head. “Hanley would not allow that at this point and, frankly, he holds more sway with the director than you do.”

Renfro made an annoyed face at this, but Suzanne Brewer just waved a hand in the air, as if the fact were obvious.

“You want away from Hanley, you want my help, but you say I can’t hire you.”

She replied, “Not as long as Hanley’s in his position.”

Renfro slowly began to understand what was happening. “You think you have some way to get Matt fired?”

“I would like him to resign. That would suit me very well. You might be able to aid in this.”

“Five minutes ago I said I was intrigued. Now I am positively riveted.”

* * *

• • •

Brewer told Renfro about Hanley’s suspicions that he was the mole, and Renfro looked at once stunned and angry. If he was the traitor, Brewer determined, he was a damn good actor. She explained to him how Hanley had had four people tailed by a contract agent, Renfro himself included, although the deputy director of Operations had no authority whatsoever to move pieces on the chessboard like that here on U.S. soil.

Renfro took it all in, then said, “If this is true, I could nail his nuts to the wall by talking to the right person in that building over there,” he said, pointing to the U.S. Capitol looming on the other side of the reflecting pool.

“The information can’t come from me, but I can give you the identity of the asset, and you can easily connect the dots back to Hanley.” She hesitated. “Of course, if you are the traitor, you will just be bringing more attention to yourself by screaming to a senator that the head of Ops is having you tailed.”

“If you really thought I was the traitor,” Renfro said, “I doubt you would be associating with me at all.”

“That is correct. I don’t believe it to be you.”

Now Renfro scooted himself to where he was almost shoulder-to-shoulder with the younger woman.

“Tell me about Poison Apple?”

Brewer was taken aback. “No, sir. That I can’t do.”

“You can conspire against the DDO, but you can’t give me information on one of his programs?”

“That is correct, and you know why, sir. I can scheme against Matt all day long to try to better my position at the Agency. You can tell him, and he can fire me or demote me or send me off to La Paz if he wants, but that’s all he can do. But if I pass intel on a code-word operation, even to you, I will go to prison.”

She shook her head again. “I’m not going to prison, Deputy Director.”

He nodded. “I understand. But if you are running this asset you mention, I am going to operate under the suspicion that he is involved with the program you manage.”

Brewer knew Renfro would put these pieces together on his own. She hadn’t mentioned Poison Apple, refused to give out information about it, but she could, and would, give him a man’s name. That Renfro would deduce this was a Poison Apple asset was a given, and Suzanne Brewer was fine with that.

“Look into the record of a man named Zachary Paul Hightower. He is fifty, a former SEAL DevGru operator, former Ground Branch paramilitary. He is the man Hanley has on your tail in violation of federal law. From what I can deduce, this asset’s association with the DDO goes back fifteen years or more.”

Renfro didn’t know this name, but that was no surprise, because he didn’t work directly with the “sled dogs” who did the actual physical operational work for CIA. “Excellent,” he said. “I’ll look into him.”