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elements in his own government are opposing the idea. Shots of a rubble-strewn street in Jerusalem, the blast where a bomb has destroyed a storefront. The Israeli prime minister, well known for his moderate views, begging for calm.
    I change over to MTV.
    A show about teen dating.
    It’s supposed to be a reality show, but it is not. I can see that the people are lying. They have memorized their lines.
    This is what I’ve been taught:
    If you want to know if someone is lying, turn down the volume. In real life that means stop listening to what they’re saying and watch their actions.
    People will say anything. But the things they do—that’s the real tell.
    I turn down the volume on the television.
    I look at the teens on the show, all smiles and white teeth, mouths opening and closing in a pantomime of love.
    I think about my father. Not the man whose e-mail I wait for. My real father.
    I think of him coming home from work when I was a boy. What he wore, the briefcase he carried. I think of the day he brought me to work at the University of Rochester and introduced me to his colleagues.
    I was young then. I trusted. I believed.
    No more.
    Questionable loyalty
. That’s what Mother told me when I got to The Program. I asked her why I had been brought there, and she said, “Your father had questionable loyalty.”
    She said it like it was damning, like my father had wavered in his allegiance. To what or whom, I don’t know.
    In my memory, I turn down the volume and I watch my father at the university. I see him speaking to his colleagues, his mouth moving, no sound coming. I watch as he introduces me. I look into his eyes. I watch as he passes a security card through a locked door and brings me into the research lab. I remember how important I felt, how lucky to be in this place where no guests are allowed. My father was special. He had privileges.
    I scan his office. I try to understand who he was and what he was doing.
    If not a professor, then what?
    If not a research scientist, then what?
    If not a good man, then what?
    I run the scene again and again in my mind, but I don’t find anything questionable.
    Only my father, telling the truth in the month before he died.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THREE DAYS PASS.
    Three long days in Providence. I sleep, I work out, I go to the movies alone.
    Mostly, I wait.
    I do not establish patterns, and I make no friends.
    It’s Tuesday morning when a chime wakes me from a restless sleep.
    I roll over and check my phone.
    An e-mail from The Program.
    Check out this video. Funny!!!
    Dad
    Funny.
Three exclamation marks.
    That’s code for an urgent communication. I remember this from my operational training, but it’s never been used before.
    Something critical needs my attention. A new assignment.
    It is beginning again.
    At last.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I ORDER A LARGE COFFEE AT THE LOCAL STARBUCKS.
    “You want to add a shot to that?” the barista says.
    “Why do you ask?”
    “You look like a man on a mission. A little pick-me-up couldn’t hurt.”
    I look at the barista, monitoring his face for anything out of the ordinary that would suggest he knows who I am. If need be, I could leap over the counter and be on him in an instant.
    “It’s just a shot,” he says. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
    He smiles. I smile.
    I can see now that he’s harmless. I’m misreading the situation. Maybe the Chinese spies shook me up a little. Or maybe it’s the waiting. No matter. I’ve got business to attend to.
    “Make it two shots,” I say to the barista.
    “My man,” he says.
    I find an empty chair in the very rear of the store, and I log on to the free Wi-Fi.
    I can make my phone secure, but for assignment instructions, it’s safer to have another layer of anonymity between me and the world. Nothing more anonymous than a local Starbucks.
    I’ve been taught a few simple tricks, all of them the same trick.
    Hide in plain sight.
    It’s the best way to make yourself