Zack typed back, I bet it was Renfro. That dude was obviously hiding something big.

After a time a response came. Yes. I concur. I’m going to talk with DDO about this again.

Brewer logged out of the chat, and Zack closed his own computer. He had his orders, and he would obey them. For now it was time to watch a movie and get some sleep.

* * *

• • •

Suzanne Brewer moved over to an empty seat next to Matt Hanley, who had just returned from a short meeting with the director in the rear of the aircraft. He was handed a bourbon by a flight attendant, and he sipped it as he noticed Brewer’s arrival.

“What’s up?”

“I’ve been messaging Romantic. He feels certain Wheeler is clean. We’ve also established that Palumbo was not the mole.”

Hanley said, “I knew it wasn’t Marty. So . . . that leaves Karlsson.”

“Well, sir, that is one theory. The other theory is that we had it right all along. It was Renfro.”

Hanley shook his head.

“Sir, I have to ask. Why have you suddenly become Renfro’s champion? You hated the guy, everybody knows that. Romantic said he was hiding something, he was scared of his own shadow, always looking over his shoulder. What the hell else would Renfro have to hide other than being the traitor?”

Hanley took the glass next to him, then drank down the remains of his bourbon. He leaned forward just a little, although no one was in earshot considering the low volume of their voices. He spoke even softer now. “Marital infidelity.”

Brewer cocked her head. “What are you talking about?”

Hanley’s big chest filled with air and he let loose a long sigh. “Lucas Renfro was sleeping with a woman at an apartment he owns in Woodley Park. Her name is Katrina Lawrence, it has been going on for some time, and his wife is very much in the dark about it. Renfro was worried he’d been found out, and this is why he was freaked out by Hightower’s surveillance of him.”

Brewer did not hide her shock. “That’s an incredible compromise for a deputy director. How could he pass his periodic lifestyle polygraph if he was having an affair? He would be fired in an instant if that ever came to light.”

“Narcissists don’t poly well. He probably thought nothing of it.”

She cocked her head. “How the hell do you know about this affair?”

“I’ve known it for a very long time, actually. Katrina Lawrence . . . is my ex-wife.”

Brewer was gobsmacked. “You knew Renfro was screwing your wife, and you didn’t do anything about it?”

“Ex-wife,” he repeated, then shrugged. “We’ve been divorced for years.” He shrugged again. “Renfro broke up the marriage.”

She just stared at him, astonished he’d never confronted the man about sleeping with his wife.

Hanley understood the reason for her expression. “It’s the spook in me, Suzanne. I wanted to hold this bit of intelligence in my pocket till I needed to leverage it against him. I could have called his wife and told her whenever I felt like it, I could have told the director, but I wanted to save my big reveal for the moment it could do me the most good, or Renfro the most damage. Even getting him fired was setting my sights too low. I wanted to destroy him personally, professionally, psychologically.”

Brewer sat back in her cabin chair a little. “Well . . . just because he was committing adultery, that does not mean he wasn’t also a traitor.”

Hanley said, “Very true, Suzanne, but there were enough clues at his crime scene to tell me he had help with his death. I did not do it, much as I would have liked. Removing me as the prime suspect, my conclusion is someone killed him because they wanted . . . they needed to implicate him in the treason. Perhaps to throw us off the scent.”

“So . . . then, who did it? Romantic insists Palumbo and Wheeler are clean.”

“He hasn’t evaluated Karlsson yet.”

Brewer smiled. “Romantic’s on a flight right now. Will be in London a couple hours after we land.”

Hanley nodded. “This is exactly why you are in the position I have you in.” He reached for his iPad and began thumbing through some work.

Brewer started to stand, but Hanley took her by the arm gently and she leaned down to him.

“Suzanne, Romantic and Violator are weapons free, as of right now. If Anthem is recovered alive, she is now officially a Poison Apple asset, and she is weapons free, as well. I want them to find the traitor, with Romantic tracking the potentials while Violator works the problem from the other side, tracking Belyakov and his Russian mob connection.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, wanting to put up some sort of a fight, but knowing resistance was futile at this point.

Hanley added, “MI5 and MI6 are both operating under the assumption they have a mole, same as we are. Therefore, Poison Apple will not be supported by local assets in the United Kingdom. The two of them . . . the three of them, if Anthem shows up, are going to have to find a way to do this themselves.”

Hanley looked towards the rear. Walt Jenner and his seven other operators sat close to one another in the low light. Many slept; a few watched movies on tablet computers.

“Scratch that,” Hanley said. “I’ve got a Ground Branch team available to assist them in an in extremis situation. Let Violator know that.”

Brewer closed her eyes, unconcerned that her boss would see how much she fundamentally disagreed with what she was being ordered to oversee. CIA assassins and paramilitaries running willy-nilly and without local approval across the United Kingdom, targeting Russian mafia and sleeper agents, a CIA mole, and God knew whatever else was involved.

This entire shit show was about to blow up even more, Suzanne Brewer could just feel it, and she hated her life.

Then her phone rang, and everything suddenly got so much worse.

“Brewer?”

It was Violator. “Zakharov is alive, he is in play, and I think he’s going to attack the Five Eyes conference.”

“What?”

“I don’t know how, but he’s in Scotland, and he’s planning some sort of retributive strike against the UK and America for what they did to his family.”

“What the hell did we do to his family?”

Court explained everything that he knew, then finished by saying, “You have to get them to call off that conference.”

“You don’t just call off the Five Eyes symposium. I will let Hanley know about this new threat, see what he wants to do.”

“We don’t even know what the threat is, Suzanne. How do you protect against that?”