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boss, Assistant Special Agent in Charge Wendell Donahue. But what was he doing here? Donahue was never in the office past 4:30. A standing joke, at least with the senior agents, was that Donahue was a reverse vampire. If the sun went down before he got home he would burst into flames. And Donahue wasn't alone. With him were four men in dark suits. Jake heard handcuffs being ratcheted tighter. He heard Favreau groan.
    Donahue looked down at Jake. "Are you all right, Agent Miller?"
    "Yes, sir," Jake said. "But I...What's going on?"
    Three of the dark-suited men looked like clones of the ones Jake had run into outside the diner, young, fit, short hair, and clean-shaven. The fourth was older, mid-forties, but just as hard if not harder than the others. He spoke to Donahue. "We need these men separated. Immediately."
    Donahue pointed to Jake. "He's an FBI agent. He works for me."
    "Not right now he doesn't," the older man said. "Right now we're treating him as a potential terrorist."
    Jake had the sudden feeling that the floor beneath him had tilted, maybe the entire building. As if something important had come unhinged. The alarm klaxon was still sounding. His head hurt. He looked up at the ASAC. "What's he talking about?"
    Donahue glanced down at Jake again but looked away quickly. "It's not my call," the ASAC said. "I'm sorry."
    Then two of the suits yanked Jake to his feet. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Favreau facedown on the floor, hands cuffed behind his back.
    The two men positioned themselves on either side of Jake and started searching him, beginning with his collar and working their way down. Pulling off his empty holster
    "Where's your weapon, Agent Miller?" Donahue asked.
    Jake didn't know what to say, so he didn't say anything.
    The suits stripped Jake of his keys, his wallet, and his Blackberry, going all the way down to his ankles and running their fingers through his socks. They were very thorough. Both would have scored well on the "suspect search" block of instruction at the FBI Academy.
    "Put him in a room," the older man said when they were finished. Then he turned to Donahue. "Defuse the situation with your security guards downstairs. Tell them these two are undercover agents." He pointed to the ceiling. "And turn off that damned alarm."
    The two suits shoved Jake down the hall and dumped him in an empty interview room. They left him alone and closed the door behind them. Jake heard the lock snap into place. He grabbed the knob and tried to turn it, but, of course, it wouldn't budge. He beat on the door a couple of times with his fist. Then he turned around and surveyed his surroundings.
    The only furniture in the nine-by-nine room was a metal table and three metal chairs with thin cushions. All gray. Jake had interrogated suspects in this very room, one of four identical interview rooms on this floor. He looked up at the small inverted dome protruding from the ceiling in the corner. It was made of dark shatterproof glass, and behind it was a camera lens. Jake's head still hurt so he sat down.
    He looked up at the camera again and wondered who was watching him.

Chapter 8

    "Who is he?" Wendell Donahue asked.
    Bill Blackstone was staring at the four closed-circuit video monitors, each showing a high-angle view of one of the interview rooms. One monitor showed Special Agent Jake Miller seated at a small table. Another monitor showed Andre Favreau, the man Blackstone had been tracking for ten days, since Favreau had slipped into the United States from Quebec.
    "He's a terrorist," Blackstone said.
    "He sounds French."
    "That's because he is French," Blackstone said, glancing sideways at the FBI agent and guessing he couldn't be more than a few years away from the Bureau's mandatory retirement age of fifty-seven. "His real name is Andre Favreau, but he's lived under a variety of aliases for years. He's an ex-French Army paratrooper who fought in Algeria and later joined the OAS."
    "Forgive my ignorance of