that he’d resort to something like this. After that, I can only speculate. My best guess is that he used this to make contact with the cartel that transported the anthrax and made a case for them to hire him. It’s really incredible. This is dangerous to the point of being insane. I mean, we’re talking a ninety-nine percent chance the cartel just tortures him to death for stealing their product.”
“Bullshit!” Barnett shouted. “That asshole isn’t just coming up with all this on his own. He and Kennedy have been friends for years. She fed it to him and sent him out on a media tour.”
“And where do you think this man is now?” one of the interviewers asked.
“Dead,” the FBI man answered, genuine anger audible in his voice. “If he actually managed to succeed in getting inside that cartel operation, they would have executed him the second that story leaked.”
“And our ability to track the terrorists and cartel operations died with him,” the host said by way of a quick summary. “We’re being told that the White House press conference is about to start.”
The screen shifted to a view of the briefing room, and Gray watched Alexander’s press secretary stride onto the podium.
“This is going to be short,” he said and then began reading a prepared statement. “The events described in the Post this morning are largely accurate. We did intercept an anthrax shipment in San Ysidro and a CIA operative did assault three DEA volunteers in an attempt to infiltrate the cartel that had partnered with ISIS. What you don’t know is that the operation was successful. Our man was able to access the top echelons of that cartel and was using those contacts to locate Sayid Halabi and the rest of the ISIS hierarchy. He was also able to thwart a second attempt to smuggle a quantity of anthrax across our border. However, as of this morning, we’ve lost contact with him and he’s now presumed dead. Unfortunately, the information he was able to gather to date wasn’t specific or conclusive. Having said that, our law enforcement agencies are doing what they can with it. Further, the FBI has picked up the reporter who wrote the article and are questioning him about his source. There’s not much more to say at this point, other than to thank the men and women who have risked everything to keep this country safe. They won’t be forgotten.”
Hands in the audience immediately went up and he pointed to one of them.
“Do we know if we’ve intercepted all of the anthrax or if there could be additional attacks in process?”
“We’re reasonably certain that the anthrax threat has been neutralized,” Alexander’s press secretary said. “But without a man inside, we can no longer monitor the situation on an ongoing basis.”
He pointed again.
“Can you tell us more about the operations you’re carrying out with regard to ISIS and the cartels?”
“No,” he said and indicated another reporter.
“Was Christine Barnett aware of the existence of this undercover operative?”
Kevin Gray stared at the television screen and held his breath. The Alexander administration tended not to like to politicize these kinds of things. Would he stay that course?
“We had no choice but to brief the senator about the initial anthrax attack,” he said, and Gray felt his heart sink.
Leave it there. Please, God, just leave it there.
“She was not, however, aware of the existence of our undercover agent. That information was shared on a need-to-know basis. For reasons that should now be obvious, we were concerned with leaks.”
Gray squeezed his eyes shut and let out a long, shaking breath. There it was. The press secretary for the president of the United States had just implied that Barnett couldn’t be trusted with sensitive information out of fear that she would leak it. And now that leak had happened.
He barely heard the rest of the news conference or Barnett’s increasingly deranged ranting, only opening his eyes when the screen turned back to the roundtable of pundits.
“They didn’t say their man was dead,” the host said. “Only that they lost contact with him.”
The former FBI man shook his head in disgust. “Losing contact with an undercover agent almost always means the same thing. Take it from me—because of this newspaper article, that magnificent bastard is lying in a ditch somewhere with his throat cut.” He leaned forward, planting both elbows on the table. “I’ve been enforcing the laws of this country my entire life. But as far as I’m concerned, the