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officer.”
    â€œReally? You got a spook working for you?”
    â€œWell, Jim found him. But I’ll be coordinating the effort.”
    â€œGood, good. Jim has his hands full trying to keep those damn liberals in the senate from spending all our money.” Buck Halsey coughed for a moment now, his right hand barely strong enough to cover his mouth with a paper towel already spotted with blood.
    Brock waited, helpless. Finally, the coughing over, he asked, “Are you okay? Do you want the doctor?”
    â€œI wanna be forty again in bed with a thirty-year-old brunette. But that ain’t gonna happen. First order of business. Get me the hell out of here! I will not die in Virginia. The tax implications aside, you get me on a private jet to Texas by the morning. You understand?”
    Nodding, Brock said, “Yes, sir. But what if the doctor says you’re not strong enough to travel.”
    â€œFuck the doctor. I’d rather die trying to get back to Texas than try to explain to St. Peter how the hell a Texan ended up dying near Washington, DC. Now you make that happen.”
    â€œJim isn’t going to be happy with this,” Brock muttered.
    â€œA man can’t decide where they’re brought onto this planet, but we sure as hell gotta have something to say about where we leave it.”
    Hard to argue with that. “Yes, sir. What else?”
    â€œDraw up a new will and have it ready for me to sign in the morning before I roll out onto that plane. And here’s what I want you to change.”
    Buck Halsey went on with great detail explaining everything he wanted done. The man was not only of sound mind, his faculties were much sharper than most men half his age. But now Brock was in a quandary. He had a fiduciary responsibility to his oldest client, but he also had to keep working with his good friend Jim Halsey. And what the elder had just told him was not necessarily in the best interest of the senator. He would have to walk a tightrope on this one, he knew.

9
    During the hour and a half flight from Rome to Malta, Jake and Elisa, the Italian intelligence officer, talked only about how much fun they would have on the beaches—nothing about the real reason for their visit. Jake had purchased his ticket with a debit card he had from a bank in Canada. He kept no more than a couple thousand dollars in that account at any given time, and only used it when he also used his fake Canadian passport. He guessed that the Italian woman had her agency buy her ticket for her, untraceable as an officer of the state.
    When they got to the Malta airport, Elisa rented a car, a VW Passat, and they decided to finally give their tail the slip.
    He thought about his last visit to the island nation, and realized not much had changed. Perhaps a few new buildings, the stark, white stucco in sharp contrast to the azure sky and aqua marine sea. Glancing at the hills in the distance above the harbor, he remembered how he had met that GRU defector and barely escaped the island with the man. The Russians had shot up a perfectly good BMW as the two of them raced to an awaiting U.S. Navy Seahawk helicopter that brought them to an aircraft carrier just over the horizon to the south. That mission, like most Jake had accomplished, remained classified.
    Jake, the reluctant passenger, leaned back into the leather chair as Elisa picked up speed once leaving the airport terminal area. He glanced behind him and saw that the men had been forced to get into a taxi to try to follow. “I think we should have no problem leaving them behind,” Jake said.
    â€œThanks to you,” she said, as she shifted into fourth gear and hit the gas even harder. “That was a good idea having you hold the taxi out front while I ditched my tail and got the car.”
    Jake couldn’t take all the credit. “Well, it was you who set up the car on your cell phone from the bathroom of the plane.”
    She finally hit