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give you a compliment.”
    “You must want something. My target in Rome is missing, and you’re dishing out compliments. Doesn’t add up.”
    Speers slid the lollipop between his cheek and gum. “You say you’re not good at case management, but you are.”
    Carver frowned. “ So you want me to take on a larger role. We both know I’m not wired to sit behind a desk. You promised me this was temporary.”
    “And I meant it. Stop being so paranoid. I’m just stashing you here until the whole thing blows over.”
    It didn’t feel temporary. By the time he had returned to Washington from Arizona, he’d found that Eva Hudson’s enemies were already hard at work trying to find ways to invalidate her line of succession to the presidency. They were demanding investigations into every aspect of the operation that had discovered and ultimately suppressed the mutiny. That in itself hadn’t been so shocking, until Carver found that he himself was the focus of a misguided witch hunt that threatened to blow the anonymity he had spent so many years cultivating.
    “How much longer until I can get back into the field?”
    “It’s up to you,” Speers said.
    Carver looked up. He hadn’t heard that one before. “Up to me?”
    Speers nodded. “You have to appear before the committee tomorrow.”
    So that was it. The House Committee on Domestic Intelligence had been pressuring the president for months to make Carver testify. Then they had gone to Speers, who had bought him some time. Apparently there was very little sand left in the hourglass.
    “The administration has, ” Speers said, “for the most part, satisfied the committee’s appetite for bloodlust already. You’re the last person on their list. And you can make this go away for all of us. Just tell them is where Nico Gold is.”
    T hey had been through all this before. The committee needed one person they could single out as a scapegoat. Nico Gold was one of world’s most gifted cybersecurity experts. He was also considered a convicted felon who, in Carver’s opinion, had earned a pardon for his good deeds.
    “If it wasn’t for Nico,” Carver said, “ there probably wouldn’t be any committee. There might not be any congress either, for that matter.”
    “ You’ve gotten too emotional,” Speers said. “It’s enough to save your country. You can’t save everyone.”
    “ That’s your rationale for throwing a hero under a bus?”
    “ I disagree. One heroic act doesn’t change the fact that Nico Gold is a criminal.”
    “It was actually a bunch of heroic acts that added up over a period of days.”
    Speers shook his head and opened the office door. “Give it some thought, Blake. They’re not asking you to be the judge and jury. They just want to know where they can find him.”
    He didn’t need to think about it. The committee could crucify him, for all he cared. There was no way he was selling out the greatest intelligence asset he had ever worked with. Besides, someday, they were going to need him.
     

 
    Piazza del Popolo
    Rome
     
    Lars drove the motorcycle around the enormous piazza once, and then again, so that he could make sure he and Adrian Zhu had not been followed. At this time of night, only a handful of tourists were present, all of whom seemed to be photographing the 24-meter-high obelisk at the center of the square known as the Flaminio. Like most of the obelisks in Rome, the Flaminio had been taken from Egypt. After being brought to Italy in 10 B.C., the obelisk had stood at the Circus Maximus, where it witnessed countless chariot races before being moved to the Piazza del Popolo, where it had seen an equal number of public executions. 
    Although the sun had been down for nearly four hours, Lars kept the tinted visor of his helmet pulled all the way down, covering his entire face. The visor on Zhu’s helmet was painted black. It wasn’t that they didn’t trust him. They had spent years vetting him. But at least if he were