I arrived in D.C. on an Amtrak train from New York, having flown to JFK from Munich. I preferred not to use obvious routes to or from the places I might be expected. Dox, Larison, and Treven had traveled somewhat less circuitously, and had therefore arrived ahead of me, but that was their risk, not mine.

The meeting was at the downtown Capital Hilton, a large and appropriately anonymous conference hotel Dox had recommended and where he’d made a room reservation. I had the cab drop me off at the Hay Adams, across from the White House, instead, thinking I’d walk the few blocks to the Hilton rather than give the driver a chance to note my actual destination. But instead of heading straight to the meeting, I succumbed to a strange urge to join the throng of tourists milling along the tall iron security fence at the edge of the expansive front lawn.

I strolled over, my pores opening immediately in the afternoon humidity. It was a cloudy day, but somehow the absence of sun exacerbated the heat, which felt like it was radiating from everything rather than from some single, identifiable source. Even the squirrels in Lafayette Square seemed listless, lethargic, as motionless as the nearby humans slouching on park benches and sweating under the useless foliage in rolled shirt-sleeves and loosened ties.

As I exited the park, I was immediately struck by how fortified the area was. Pennsylvania Avenue had been shut down to automobile traffic, presumably out of fear of truck bombs. There were steel vehicle traps through which delivery trucks had to pass for inspection; multiple guard posts; swarms of uniformed cops and military personnel patrolling on foot, on bicycles, and in cars. The windows of the far-off building itself stared insensate through the thick iron bars separating the grounds from the citizenry, as blank and impenetrable as the tactical shades of the scores of men guarding them. What had once been a residence and office was now, in essence, a bunker.

I moved on, heading southwest in the beginning of a long loop that would give me ample opportunities to confirm I wasn’t being followed before arriving at the Hilton. Outside the garrisoned grounds of the White House, the city was unremarkable, even bland. The streets were wide and straight; the architecture unimaginative; the ambiance, nonexistent. I noted that, along with London and New York, Washington seemed one of the few remaining cities where men were determined to wear jackets and ties even in the summer. The difference being that in London and New York, the men knew how to dress. But what they lacked in sartorial sense, Washington’s office workers made up for with a certain bounce in their gait. I wondered what might account for their perkiness, and decided it was proximity to power. After all, a dog wags its tail even when it’s begging for a scrap, not only when it receives one.

I had called Horton from the airport and briefed him on what happened in Vienna. As with Shorrock, he’d already heard. He told me the money had been deposited and proposed that we meet to discuss the next assignment. But I saw no upside to a face-to-face. We still had the communications gear he’d given me in L.A. I’d ditched the cyanide, and didn’t think I’d need a replacement. So I declined, telling him to use a secure site I’d set up, instead.

I paused in another park, fished the iPad out of my shoulder bag, and found a public Wi-Fi network. I checked the bank account and confirmed deposit of the three hundred thousand. Then I checked the secure site to see if Horton had uploaded the target file.

He had. I opened it and saw the name. I would have recognized it even if it hadn’t been immediately followed by her title:

Diane Schmalz. U.S. Supreme Court Justice.

No, I thought, shaking my head at the screen. Not a chance.

He was ignoring my rules about women and children. Maybe he thought I wasn’t serious, that the money would matter more. If so, he was wrong. I’d lived by my rules for a long time, and even the one deviation hadn’t really been an exception, because I did it for personal reasons, not as part of a job. I wasn’t going to change now.

But what if killing her saves thousands?

No. I didn’t care. If there’s one thing I know as well as I know killing, it’s how subornment works. One baby step at a time. The art of getting someone to cross a line he doesn’t even see until he looks back and realizes it’s already impossibly far behind him.

I glanced through the file. Photographs. Home addresses, both in D.C. and a weekend place in western Maryland. Schedule. No observed security consciousness and no protection, because no Supreme Court Justice had ever been assassinated.

But it didn’t make sense. I’d never had much interest in what passes for justice in America, but I knew Schmalz’s name, and I knew she had a reputation as one of the court’s last guardians of civil liberties. It was hard to imagine her being part of a plot to end those liberties. If anything, I would have expected her to be on the other side.

I scanned down and saw that Horton must have anticipated my concern. He had written:

When the president declares his assumption of emergency powers, he’ll be sued. There are four authoritarian Justices who will back him. The other four might or might not. Schmalz would absolutely oppose him, leading to a possible five-four defeat. Not necessarily fatal to their plans, but certainly it would be a major public relations setback not to secure the Supreme Court’s blessing along with that of Congress.

Schmalz’s son is a lawyer, married with three small children. He is a closeted homosexual and the plotters have graphic photographic and video evidence of his infidelities. He has also twice threatened suicide, and received therapy and other treatment afterward. Schmalz understands that were her son’s homosexuality revealed, it would destroy his family and career, devastate her grandchildren, and likely cause this unstable man to take his own life. She will do what’s she’s told to prevent all this.

But not if she passes away beforehand.

I reread the relevant paragraphs and felt an uncharacteristic anger taking hold of me. One of my rules has always been no acts against non-principals. Meaning no deaths of non-principals primarily, but still, I’ve never liked the idea of solving a problem with Person A by going after Person B. Kill Schmalz? If I really wanted to do something good in the world, I thought, I ought to go after the people who were threatening to ruin her son and grandchildren just to secure a favorable vote.

I wondered why Horton didn’t do something arguably less extreme. Find some way to out the son in advance and defuse the blackmail bomb by preempting it? Maybe he thought that would tip his hand to the plotters in a way that a kindly-looking grandmother’s peaceful demise in her sleep wouldn’t.

But I didn’t care. I didn’t like the smell of this thing anymore, or where it seemed to be taking me. The others could do what they wanted. I was out.

I exited the site and purged the browser, then found a payphone, called the Hilton, and asked for James Hendricks, the name Dox had told me he would check in under. “We on?” I said.

“Gang’s all here, partner. Twelve-thirty-four.”

That meant they were in room 901. My habit with Dox was to use a simple code when mentioning exact dates, times, room numbers and the like. We just added three to each digit. It wasn’t much and wouldn’t be all that difficult to crack, but one more layer of defense never hurt anyone.

“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” I said, then hung up and unobtrusively wiped down the handset with a handkerchief. Being in the belly of the beast was making me twitchy.

I headed over to the Hilton. The lobby was crowded, apparently due to the annual convention of something called The American Constitution Society. I couldn’t help smiling a little. If you only knew.

I took the elevator to the tenth floor, then the stairs down to nine. I emerged into the middle of a narrow corridor about a hundred meters long. I looked left, and at the far end saw two men in suits and shades who looked like bodyguards waiting outside a VIP’s room. Not so unusual, and easily explained by the convention downstairs or by one of the nearby embassies. Still, I wasn’t sorry to see from a sign that 901 was to the right. I walked to the end of the corridor, made a left, and found the room. I knocked once and the door opened instantly—Treven. He must have been watching through the peephole. I nodded in acknowledgement and walked in. Dox and Larison were sitting across from each other on the room’s twin beds, eating sandwiches. I heard Treven latching the door behind me.

“You hungry?” Dox said, holding up an Au Bon Pain bag. “We got tuna, turkey, and roast beef.”

On the beds alongside them were a couple of pistols. A Wilson Combat, which must have been Dox’s; a Glock that I assumed was Larison’s. I wondered if Treven was carrying, too. Seeing the guns gave me mixed feelings. In general, better to be armed, yes, but I didn’t know Larison or Treven well enough to like the feeling of their carrying firearms around me.

“Where’d you get the hardware?” I said. “The underground redneck railroad again?”

Dox grinned. “This time, just a gun show in Chantilly. You know, better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it. Picked out a Wilson for you, too. These hombres here like their Glocks, but you know me.”

He handed me a Tactical Supergrade Compact and two spare magazines. I put the magazines in my front pockets, then checked the load and secured the gun in my waistband. It felt good. If Larison and Treven were going to be carrying, I was glad I was, too.

“Sandwich?” Dox asked.

“No, I’m good,” I said. “You eat, I’ll talk.”

I sat down next to Dox. Treven hesitated, then did the same next to Larison, across from me. I briefed them all on what had happened in Vienna. Then I told them who the next target was. And told them I was out, and why.

“I don’t get it,” Dox said, when I was done. “I mean, who cares if her son is gay? I thought we were living in the twenty-first century. Hell, I love gay men. If they stick to loving each other, it just means more ladies for me.”

“It’s not that he’s gay,” I said. “It’s that he’s closeted. That’s the exploitable aspect. Although I agree it’s a shame.”

Larison and Treven hadn’t said anything yet. I was surprised they were being so quiet.

“Anyway,” Dox said, “I’m not exactly okay with euthanizing a little old lady. But even more than that…damn, a Supreme Court Justice? I mean, we’re already practically making history here with some of the targets we just took down. But being the first to rack up a Supreme? I’m starting to feel like we might be growing bullseyes on our backs, and I don’t think I like it.”

“I don’t care one way or the other,” Larison said. “You know why I’m in this. But if you feel like we’re growing targets on our backs, congratulations, it means you’re starting to wake up.”

I looked at Treven. “You want this?” I said. “Do it yourself and it’s a two-million dollar payday.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Larison said, looking at Treven. “It’s a setup. This whole fucking thing is a setup. Go out on your own and you’ll be the first one to get picked off.”

A long moment went by. Treven said, “Whether you’re in this for the money, or whether it’s because you want to save a lot of lives, the calculus is the same. A false flag terror attack is still a terror attack. Innocent people die either way. If removing one more player makes the difference, I’ll do it, with or without the rest of you.”

“A player?” Dox said. “Have you ever seen a picture of this woman? She looks like my grandma. I’m not holding a damn pillow over her face, no sir. Give me nightmares for the rest of my life.”

I didn’t like Treven’s response. It struck me as the product of bluster, not of thought. I wondered why he’d be so touchy. Had he been feeling left out? Jealous that he hadn’t been at the center of things with Shorrock and Finch? It seemed silly that someone so capable and experienced could also be so adolescent. If I could have been paid either way and stayed at the periphery, I would have been glad to.

But it was all the same to me. “Here,” I said, firing up the iPad and accessing the secure site. I input my pass code, then saw a message from Kanezaki: Call me ASAP.

I deleted the message and handed the iPad to Treven. “Hold on,” I said. “Looks like we might have some new information about Horton.” I popped the batteries in my phone, turned it on, and called Kanezaki.

He picked up instantly. “Did you do Jack Finch?” he said.

I was taken aback but didn’t show it. “What are you talking about?” I saw the others glance over.

“Stop playing with me. The president is about to announce his replacement. Colonel Horton.”

My stomach lurched. “Finch’s replacement is…Horton?” I said. Larison was nodding as though he already knew.

“That’s not all. Shorrock, the guy you say died in Las Vegas because of an ironic act of God? He was giving secret testimony to Congress about abuses within the National Counterterrorism Center. He was just a civilian manager, he wouldn’t know an op if one snuck up and bit him on the ass, the last guy in the world to want to run, or to be able to run, a false flag attack. But you know who’s replacing him?”

I felt sick. “No.”

“The number two guy there, Dan Gillmor. And Gillmor’s no civilian appointee. He’s former JSOC, one of Horton’s guys. Been part of the military/intelligence/corporate/security complex his entire life. And he’s a fanatic. Knights of Malta like James Jesus Angleton and William Casey, crusader challenge coins—”

“Crusader challenge coins?”

“Some of these guys, like Erik Prince, think what we’re doing in the Middle East is a holy war, a new Crusades. It’s a network of zealots. And this one is now perfectly positioned to run the groups Horton told you were being used for these impending false flag attacks. Now his interfering boss is out of the way, and he’s number one. He can do anything he wants without having to explain himself to some meddling civilian.”

I didn’t say anything. There was so much to process, I couldn’t sort it all through.

Dox, Larison, and Treven were all watching me, their sandwiches forgotten. I’d said little, but my expression and posture must have told them everything.

“Did you do it?” Kanezaki said. “Shorrock? Finch? Was it you?”

I didn’t answer.

“Jesus Christ, John. You’re not preventing a coup. You just cleared the way to one.”

Still I didn’t answer. I was struggling to connect the dots. Larison was right. I’d been an idiot. An idiot.

“Do you get it?” Kanezaki said. “Horton isn’t trying to stop this thing. He’s one of the plotters. He mixed a lot of truth into his lies just to—”

“Stop,” I said. “Let me think.”

Dox said, “What’s going on?”

I held up a hand, palm out, and said to Kanezaki, “This announcement about Horton’s new position. When is it scheduled to happen?”

“I don’t know. But the word is, soon.”

“What about Gillmor? When will that be announced?”

“The same.”

I put my thumb over the phone’s microphone and looked over at the others. My mind was racing but I kept my voice calm. “Schmalz is a setup. We need to get out of here. Get ready. Just trying to learn a little more, then I’ll fill you in and we’ll talk about how to bug out.”

The three of them stood. There was an electric feeling building in the room that I didn’t like.

I moved my thumb and said to Kanezaki, “Anything else?”

“Yes. Why are you asking about the timing? Of the announcement about Horton and Gillmor.”

“If the announcements are any time soon, Horton didn’t care that I could hear of them before doing the third target. That means the third target was a setup.”

“Third target…there’s another? Who?”

“Diane Schmalz.”

“The Supreme Court Justice? Are you fucking insane?”

“Relax. I was already going to turn it down. But he never expected me to do it in the first place. It was just a ploy to get me to Washington.”

“Shit. You’re in Washington now?”

“Yes.”

“You need to get out of the city. D.C. is the last place you want Horton hunting for you. Especially now, he has local resources that can lock down that place like he’s closing the door on a closet.”

“Thanks for the information,” I said, preparing to click off. “I’ll call you when I’m somewhere safe.”

“Wait,” he said. “Hold on. Just got something on my screen. It’s…oh, fuck.”

“What?”

“Terror alert. Goes out to everyone in the intelligence and law enforcement communities. CIA, FBI, local and state police, everyone. It says…hang on, okay, Shorrock and Finch didn’t die, they were murdered. According to toxicology tests, with cyanide. And that you were involved. You, the two ISA operators you asked me about, and Dox. And that you’re all armed, special-ops trained, and believed to be in the Washington metro area right now, planning another terror attack.”

It had to be Horton. No one else knew about the cyanide. And Horton didn’t know that I hadn’t even used it.

“You can’t get out of there now,” Kanezaki said. “Every airport, every train station, every bus station, they’ll be crawling with personnel. Every surveillance camera in the city will be looking for you.”

“Do they have photographs?”

“Grainy in the alert. Like blow-ups from surveillance cameras.”

Las Vegas, I guessed. Our best bet would be cabs, at least to start with. The farther we got from the city center, the less concentrated the opposition would be. But we had to move fast.

“All right, at least they’re grainy,” I said. “I doubt the average cop—”

“You don’t get it. You’re not going to be arrested. The president has an assassination list, don’t you know that? There’s a NOFORN addendum to this alert that says you’re on it. All four of you. They’ll shoot you on sight. And if you do wind up captured, there’s Guantanamo, Bagram, Camp No, the Salt Pit…and those are just the ones that have been disclosed. There are others they can put you in the Red Cross has never heard of, let alone visited, you understand? You’ll have a number, that’s it. No one will know your name. John, some of these places, you might as well be on another planet, or in another dimension. You get there, you’re just—”

“I need to go. I’ll call you.”

“Wait. Let me help you.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Because you’re the only ones who can stop this thing now.”

“Bullshit. Spill it to the media. Don’t you have contacts at the New York Times?”

He laughed. “You think the Times would do anything with this, even if I had proof? They sat on Bush’s illegal domestic surveillance program until after he was safely reelected. Their editor-in-chief asks the White House for permission to publish, for God’s sake, and is proud of it, too.”

“Then one of the networks. ABC, CNN, whatever.”

He laughed again. “Did you catch Jeremy Scahill’s report about the Agency’s secret prison in Somalia? The seventh floor had apoplexy, it was so dead-on accurate. They used Barbara Starr and Luis Martinez to discredit it. ABC and CNN, the watchdog media.”

“Then call Scahill.”

“The people we’re up against will just instruct the networks to ignore or discredit him. The networks work for us, John. Which I admit is mostly useful and I’ve taken advantage of it many times myself. But it’s working against us right now.”

“Wikileaks, then.”

“Now you’re making sense. But I don’t have any proof. Get me some.”

“No. I don’t want to get further into this. I want to get out.”

“You’re telling me you’re not going to make Horton pay for setting you up?”

I didn’t answer.

“You think he’s going to stop coming after you? You know as well as I do that he’ll be more motivated now than ever.”

Again I said nothing.

“Damn it, John, let me help you.”

I was in a box and I couldn’t see a way out of it. “Goddamn it. How?”

“I’ll come to you. Put you in the trunk of my car and drive you out of the city.”

“The trunk? There are four of us. What kind of car do you have?”

“Honda.”

“What model?”

There was a pause. “Civic.”

I looked over at the collective mass of Larison, Treven, and Dox. “No way,” I said.

“You’d be amazed what you can fit into a tight space with a little Crisco,” Dox offered, apparently having intuited what we were talking about.

“You have a better idea?” Kanezaki said.

“We’re talking about eight hundred, maybe nine hundred pounds. You couldn’t get us all in there with a chainsaw and a blender. And even if you could, the back of the car would be riding suspiciously low.”

“I’ll borrow my sister’s minivan. You can all hunker down. As long as no one stops me, no one will see you. It’s built to hold seven, the shocks won’t even be noticeably compressed.”

That sounded more promising. “When can you be here?”

“Where are you?”

If it had been anyone but Kanezaki, I would have been suspicious of a setup. But I trusted him as much as I did anyone other than Dox. Plus, I had no choice.

“Capital Hilton,” I said.

“She lives in Chevy Chase. It’s not that far, but we’re getting into rush hour now.”

“Can you have her meet you someplace in between and swap cars there?”

“That’s a good idea. I’ll be there in an hour. Maybe less. If there’s a problem, I can’t reach her or she’s out with her kids somewhere, or whatever, I’ll call you.”

“Leave a message on the secure site. My phone will be out of commission.”

“Right, okay.”

“We’ll meet you in the lowest level of the parking garage. Away from the elevators.”

“Got it. See you soon.”

I clicked off and disabled and pocketed the phone. Larison, Treven, and Dox had moved out from between the beds and away from each other. Everyone’s arms were loose and their hands open. They looked liked gunslingers in a western a half-second away from drawing.

“What the fuck is going on?” Treven said.

I didn’t like the accusatory tone I heard in the question, and reminded myself to be extra calm in my response. Four armed, dangerous, and suddenly distrustful men in a small room…if things got out of hand, it was going to be very bad.

“You were right,” I said, looking at Larison. “Horton set us up. Shorrock has been replaced by one of Horton’s guys, and Finch is about to be replaced by Horton himself. The government just issued some kind of all-points terror alert saying the four of us killed both of them with cyanide. We were just put on the presidents’ kill list. And they know we’re in D.C.”

“Horton and that damn cyanide,” Dox said. “So that was just supposed to incriminate us and sound scary to the public, too?”

I nodded. “Yeah. And the hell of it is, I never even used it. And no one else…”

I stopped, realizing I’d missed something obvious. Dangerously obvious.

Treven’s eyes narrowed. “What?”

I didn’t answer. I realized there were three people who thought I’d used cyanide on Shorrock: not just Horton, but also Larison and Treven. Either one of them, or both, could have mistakenly told Horton that I’d used the cyanide. That would have given him additional confidence to order the faked toxicology reports. He would have believed there really would be evidence of cyanide if anyone examined the corpses more thoroughly.

“Then how did you do Shorrock?” Larison said. “The way you did Finch?”

I was struck that despite the tension in the room, he could remain so detached and professionally curious.

“Doesn’t matter,” I said. But if Larison and Treven were working for Horton, they wouldn’t be on that terror alert, right? Unless the idea were to make it look like we were all in the same boat, when in fact…

Treven tensed. In my peripheral vision, I saw Dox spot it, too.

There was a blur of movement, and an instant later all four of us had our guns out. Treven and I were pointing at each other. Dox was aiming at Treven. Larison had the muzzle of his angled toward the floor, but his head and eyes tracked from Treven to Dox to me and back again.

“You think I had something to do with this?” Treven said. “I’m as fucked as you are.”

I saw his hands were as steady as mine. “Put your gun down if you want to get unfucked,” I said.

Treven said nothing.

Larison’s head kept tracking. He looked like a rattlesnake trying to make up his mind about in which direction to strike.

I thought we had maybe two more seconds before the tension boiled over. I couldn’t figure out a way to stop it.

Suddenly, Dox brought the muzzle of his Wilson Combat up to his own neck. “Hold it,” he said. “The next man makes a move, the nigger gets it.”

I blinked and thought, What the fuck?

“Drop it,” he said. “Or I swear, I’ll blow this nigger’s head all over this town!”

He looked from one of us to the other, his eyes wide in faux lunacy.

Larison started to grin, then guffawed. “All right,” he said. “You win. You win.” He eased his pistol into the back of his waistband and held up his hands.

Treven glanced at Larison, then his eyes went back to Dox. His pistol stayed on me. “What the hell are you talking about?” he said.

“Good Lordy-Lord,” Dox said, his voice a falsetto now. “He’s desperate. Do what he say! Do what he say!”

“You’re crazy,” Treven said, but he lowered his gun a few inches. I did the same.

“What,” Dox said, “y’all never saw Blazing Saddles? Cleavon Little? I always wondered if it’d work for real.”

Treven’s gun dropped a little more. “You’re crazy,” he said again.

Dox kept his own gun in position at his neck. “Well, it’s a film, you see. A very fine film, in which—”

“I know the movie,” Treven said.

Dox took the gun from his neck and slid it into the back of his waistband. “Well, maybe the part you’re missing, and this could be due to the subtlety of my delivery, is that two seconds ago we were on the verge of committing a big old group suicide here. Besides hoping to get y’all to come to your senses, that’s what I was trying to demonstrate. You see, placing my weapon to my own neck was a metaphor—”

“We get it,” I said, slowly lowering my gun. Treven did the same.

“I’m waiting for someone to thank me for not doing the campfire scene,” Dox said.

Larison was still grinning, and I imagined this was the first time he appreciated just how cool Dox could be when the shit was hitting the fan. And how much method there was to his hillbilly madness. “Oh baby, you are so talented,” he said, and it was incongruous enough to make me realize it must have been another line from the movie.

“And they are so dumb,” Dox said, confirming my suspicion. They both laughed, and I thought maybe they would be okay now. He wasn’t a man you’d want to fuck with, but laugh at Dox’s jokes and chances were good you’d have a friend for life.

Treven, though, was still an open question. I slid the gun back into my waistband. Treven hesitated, but then followed suit.

“Let’s try to stay chilly,” I said. “We have enough people trying to kill us just now without doing the job for them.” Dox and Larison were still laughing, so the message was mostly for Treven. And, I supposed, for myself.

I briefed them on my conversation with Kanezaki. We all agreed that, overall, our safest move was to stay put until we met him in the garage.

“I should have known these targets and this thing were too big for them to leave us alone afterward,” Dox said. “I let the damn money cloud my reason.”

No one spoke. Dox looked at Larison. “I believe you’ve earned the right to say ‘I told you so.’”

Larison shook his head. “The question is, what do we do now?”

“Exactly,” Treven said. “Wherever your guy takes us, all right, we’re out of the crosshairs, at least for the moment, but what do we do then?”

I turned to Larison. “You said you had a way of getting to Horton.”

He nodded. “If you’re really ready to hear it.”

I looked at him. “I am.”

“Okay, then. We’re going to need your friend’s car. Not just to get out of the area. To get back to Los Angeles.”