in the mail. Well, I’ll try to wrap this up before everyone jets off to their little powwow.”
Hightower shook Hanley’s hand, then reached for the door handle, but stopped. Facing the deputy director of Operations once more, he said, “Sir, since I’ve got your ear for a moment, can I speak with you about my code name?”
Matt Hanley fired up the Land Cruiser. “No, you cannot, Romantic. Those are randomly assigned. You get what you get. Luck of the draw.”
Hightower nodded, then reached again for the door handle. Turning back, he said, “Night Train?”
Hanley cocked his head. “I’m not tracking.”
“Night Train. Gotta admit, sir, it’s a hell of a code name, and it kind of fits me, don’t you think?”
Hanley leaned across Hightower now and opened the door for him. “I don’t think, Zack. Not about shit like that. Get out of here, and get me something actionable on Renfro.”
“Sir,” Zack said, compliantly, and he headed back to his Suburban.
* * *
• • •
Lucas Renfro sat in a booth at the Monocle Restaurant, a couple blocks north of the U.S. Capitol. It was early afternoon; he’d lingered over a boring lunch with his staff and peers from other U.S. intel agencies, checking his phone every few minutes for a text or call from Trina, his mistress, and trying not to worry about the people following him.
This was impossible. Between each nod in response to a colleague’s comment, before and after every sip of his Bordeaux blend, each bite of his flatiron steak or piece of his crusty bread, he looked over the room, searched out through the front window, glanced into the eyes of the men and women seated with him. Was the guy in the aviators watching him? Were his colleagues aware of the surveillance on him?
The tail had been on him today already. He’d left his home at seven a.m., and the concern of the previous evening kicked off again in seconds, when the black Suburban began rolling behind him just as he left his neighborhood.
The same bearded man behind the wheel.
He didn’t try to shake the tail. He knew this guy was Agency, and of course he knew why he was being tailed by Agency assets. He had a secret to hide, and now, it appeared, the secret was out.
With lunch ended, Renfro shook some hands and headed out the door, going back to the Capitol building for another three hours of hearings.
He’d made it most of the way, still checking for messages from his mistress and scanning for Mr. Aviators, when a woman’s voice called out from just behind him.
“Deputy Director Renfro?”
He stopped on the sidewalk, turned around, and saw Suzanne Brewer. He knew her from staff meetings and such but had no real relationship, working or otherwise, with her. Marty Wheeler, Renfro’s deputy, knew her much better. Still, Renfro was well aware that she had been an absolute rising star at the Agency for the past fifteen years, until she recently and inexplicably switched over to Ops to work under Matt Hanley.
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