READ MORE PROLOGUE CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO YOUR TOUR IN PHOTOS READER REVIEWS BUY THE LAST SPYMASTER REVIEWS "...fascinating characters, nerve-tingling pace, and a great story.  It reminds me of Robert Ludlum at his very best.  This cements Lynds' reputation as one of the premier espionage authors of our time." — Vince Flynn   "A sizzling thrill ride... seamlessly melding global politics, cutting-edge technology, and the dark world of espionage into a compelling, full-blooded novel.  [Lynds is] a master of the spy thriller." — Steve Berry   "The Queen of the International Spy Thriller is back ... great plotting, fascinating characters, amazing technical accuracy, breath-taking action." — Marcus Wynn

Washington, D.C.

Controlling her excitement, Elaine Cunningham drove her Jaguar S-Type Sport 3.0 — red, sleek, and sumptuous — across the Potomac River and into the District. As the beat of Headshear’s “Walking Tapestry” pounded from her speakers, she reveled in the Jag’s power and balance, the seventeen-inch Herakles alloy wheels, the bird’s-eye maple dashboard, and the softer-than-skin leather upholstery. She knew her love affair with this lump of luxury was shallow, and she did not care. It whispered when it cruised, and it growled when poked awake. Who could resist that?

Dupont Circle was just a mile northwest of the White House. As she drove around it, she maintained her usual second-stage alert, studying buildings, the mass of cars, the mobs of pedestrians. A towering water fountain sparkled in the center of the parklike circle, while beneath it people jogged, drank caffe lattes, and played chess. The world looked safe and innocent. But it was not, which was why she always carried a weapon since Rafe’s death.

She turned the Jag up a hilly street, its gears sweetly adjusting, and found the address of the special unit—an old two-story Victorian with a wide front porch. A brass plate proclaimed:

Institute of International Concerns A Think Tank for the New Millennium

It was a busy neighborhood. People filled the sidewalks and cars lined the curbs. Dupont’s parking was nearly impossible; only Georgetown’s was worse. She rounded streets until she found a slot in which to wedge the Jag. Carrying her shoulder bag, she headed back, wondering again what was so vital that the DDO himself had personally interviewed her.

As she hurried up the Victorian’s brick walk, the front door opened, and an old woman stepped out. She was slumped and lined. Silver hair wreathed her wrinkles. She wore a black dress, opaque support hose, and Hush Puppies.

“Welcome. We’ve been expecting you.” The woman’s voice carried easily, a tremor in it, convincing to anyone passing by.

“Thanks. Good to be here. I’m looking forward to working at the Institute.”

Cunningham climbed the steps to the porch, noting the woman’s hair was a wig and the cobweb of wrinkles only makeup, so finely done that only an expert would know. Passing the woman, she moved indoors and in a single, practiced sweep took in the needle-nose cameras embedded almost invisibly in the ceiling and the pinhead-size spots on the flocked wallpaper indicating motion detectors. As expected, the security was well cloaked and impressive. She felt herself relax, and yet her alertness increased. She turned. “You’re Hannah Barculo?” According to her assignment letter from Litchfield, her contact was Barculo, chief of unit. The unit was code-named Whippet.

“I am. This hornet’s nest has been mine for five years.” The woman closed the door. A series of firm clicks sounded, indicating electronic locks had snapped into place. “Our gatekeeper’s on assignment. Sorry for the getup, but I’ve been working. Just got in. Let’s go to my office.”

As they strode through a long foyer decorated with fake antiques, Barculo’s posture straightened, and her movements grew fluid and athletic. She was a good thirty years younger than she first appeared, probably in her mid-forties.

“Litchfield says you’re good to go,” Barculo said. “That right?”

Cunningham felt her chest tighten. Then she shook it off. “Absolutely.”

“I’ll be frank. I didn’t want you.” Barculo’s expression was worried.

Cunningham had not expected to be greeted with open arms. “I’ll be frank, too. We both know the hunters considered first-tier are on assignment overseas. But now there’s some big emergency here. That means I’m the best choice of the lesser lot. If there were someone else without my checkered history, the DDO would’ve chosen him or her.”

Barculo nodded. “Litchfield said we needed someone who could think without a book. In this case, that’s you. It’s also one of the qualities our quarry’s known for.”

They turned down a hall. All doors were shut, and no one was in sight. As their footsteps sounded on the hardwood floor, the old house creaked. Otherwise, it seemed eerily quiet, but safe headquarters were sometimes soundproofed completely.

Barculo opened an unmarked door. As she walked through, she sighed, peeled off her wig, and shook out her short walnut-brown hair. She sat behind a massive desk, where two steaming ceramic mugs waited. The rich aroma of freshly brewed coffee filled the office. It was spacious, with an elegant cove ceiling arching above. There were chairs, side tables, shelves of books, and a TV. In another era, it had probably been a sitting room.

As Cunningham closed the door, Barculo said, “Grab some caffeine and a seat.”

Cunningham took a mug and chose a weathered armchair. She dropped her shoulder bag. “Anytime you’re ready, I’d like to know what’s going on.”

Barculo stirred her coffee, gazing into it. When she looked up, she appeared to have reconciled something in her mind. “Did you ever meet Charles Jay Tice?”

“I heard him talk, but I was never close enough to be introduced. Does this have to do with one of his old operations?”

“Maybe. What do you remember?”

“He was a Cold War icon, of course. A legend in the Company. Supposed to have been a genius at running individuals and teams.”

“Right. One way or another, he had a hand in a lot of our most critical actions in Europe. You must’ve studied some of them at the Farm.”

“We never knew which were his. But I was told he was so devious he could outwit even Markus Wolf.” She asked curiously, “Is that true?”

“I have no direct knowledge, but I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“I also heard that one of the moles Moscow executed had intel that might’ve stopped 9/11, but because of Tice’s betrayal, it died with him.” The words alone appalled her.

“True.”

Cunningham digested that. “I read about his million-dollar numbered account in Switzerland and the lie-detector tests he failed, but in my experience there’s always more.

How was he really uncovered?”

“After we got Rick Ames in ’94, and the FBI arrested Bob Hanssen in ’01, there was a feeling we were safe from traitors, because we’d put away our top two. But Langley wanted to be certain. So we invited the FBI to help us create a computerized master grid of known and suspected leaks and breaches dating back into the early eighties. The grid’s deep black, by the way, its existence not to be repeated.”

“And the program turned up Tice?” Cunningham drank coffee.

“Exactly. Some of the worst violations couldn’t be attributed to either Ames or Hanssen or any of the ‘lesser’ traitors we’d uncovered. So we fed in the names of officers, assignments, and schedules. Tice’s name came up red-flagged. Remember that blank between 1991 and 1999 when Russian intelligence had no record of Hanssen spying for them at all? By then, Tice was selling out the store.”

Even after the Cold War and the intense ideological rivalry ended, the Kremlin’s primary espionage target remained the United States. As she sipped coffee, she thought about Jay Tice. When he was arrested in 2002, he was DDO—second in power only to the Director of Central Intelligence, the DCI. He had access to many of the nation’s most closely held secrets. His arrest had exploded in a spy scandal of global proportions, blaring from headlines around the world for a year.

Adrenaline shot through her. “Wait a minute. You need a hunter. It’s an emergency. For Tice?”

Barculo sighed worriedly and sat back. “He escaped from prison early today with an inmate named Frank Theosopholis. Because this is national security, the U.S. Marshals have no jurisdiction. The DCI cut a deal with the FBI so it still gets to conduct the prison investigation, but the CIA gets apprehension responsibility. The DCI handed it off to Laurence Litchfield, and Litchfield assigned it to us—Whippet. We have a high success rate in under-the-table missions, plus we’re so covert we’re not even listed in Langley’s directories. We’ve got only two days—that’s it. If we fail, the FBI takes over. We must put Tice and Theosopholis back behind bars quickly and quietly.”

“Only two days!”

“God knows what damage Tice can do now that he’s out again. And Langley needs no more black eyes with the public or Congress.”

“Agreed.” Cunningham put confidence into her voice. “We’ll have to meet the deadline. Sooner would be better. What have you done so far?”

“I’ve sent people to surveil the Russian embassy and Tice’s old haunts. We’re watching airports and train stations and car rental agencies. We’ve staked out the storage locker he rented for the things he kept after he sold his house, and we’re monitoring his last remaining bank account. We’re following the same protocols for Theosopholis.”

“Theosopholis isn’t a familiar name. Someone Tice turned overseas?”

“He’s not in any of our active databases. I’ve sent a request for copies of the old discs. Theosopholis has been serving time for killing a DEA asset. As soon as we have a dossier on Theosopholis, you’ll get a copy. Here’s Jay Tice’s.” She slid a fat file folder across the desk.

“How did they escape from Allenwood?”

“We don’t know yet. All we’ve got is that their prison cells were empty, and both were missing. They slipped past the guards, the security cameras, and the gates without tripping a single damn alarm.”

The folder was two inches thick. Cunningham opened it. Inside were printouts, photos, and copies of clippings. There was also a CD with Tice’s name on it. “Both of them would’ve had phone access. What about our Ferret and Rhyolite satellites? The Keyhole satellites?”

Orbiting several thousand miles above the planet, the football field–size antennae of the Ferret and Rhyolite satellites picked up talk flowing through ground lines all over the globe. Keyhole satellites could read a newspaper’s headlines from outer space, as well as the thermal signatures of cars, tanks, buildings, and people. Some had imaging lasers and could produce three-dimensional replicas of what was on the ground, right down to a wristwatch—or a flight ticket.

“We’ll have those reports today,” Barculo assured her.

“If one of the Keyholes had an orbit in the right position, we might have images of them bunking out of Allenwood.”

“We can hope, but we can’t wait. I’ve got a plane standing by at Andrews to fly you there.”

“Good. Do you have ForeTell?” Based on PROMIS software created in the late 1970s, ForeTell was revolutionary—the most sophisticated organizing and tracking and analytic program on the planet. Highly secret and possessed only by U.S. intelligence and the military, it could collate data at a speed beyond human capacity, eliminate superfluous lines of inquiry, then group it into patterns for analysis.

“We do.”

“I need to get some analysis started before I leave.”

“No. Go to Allenwood first.” Barculo frowned. “We’ve lost enough time.”

Hunters were independents, a difficult concept for some who were accustomed to issuing orders. Controlling her irritation, Cunningham stood up and said calmly, “I understand, and thanks for the advice. Nevertheless, my first stop has to be data analysis.”

Hannah Barculo remained behind her desk a full ten seconds. Then she slapped the flats of her hands onto the top and pushed herself erect. “All right. I’ll take you.”

The hallway was still deserted, and the house silent. Cunningham peered at the closed, unmarked doors. “Is the unit out looking for Tice and Theosopholis, or is the whole place soundproofed?”

“Both.” Barculo indicated a wide staircase. “Your office is on the second floor. The last single-occupancy. I figured you’d want to be alone.”

She ignored the remark. “Did you know Tice?”

The Whippet chief glanced at her, surprised. “As a matter of fact, I did. A long time ago—in the mid-eighties in West Berlin. My first overseas assignment.”

“What did you think of him?”

“He was a hard one. I never did meet anyone who felt like he truly knew him. Of course, many of our people admired him, really enjoyed him. He had a way about him that was pure charm. At the same time, there were those who hated him.” She hesitated, then confided: “He could be unreasonably demanding. He always thought he knew best. I have no idea how his poor wife put up with him.” She opened a door. “This is it.”

The room was as large as Barculo’s office. A continuous shelflike desk rimmed three walls. On it were phones and keyboards and flat-screen monitors. Only one person was at work, a man in his thirties, wearing wire-rimmed glasses and dressed in casual shirt and pants. He peeled off headphones and looked up with a friendly smile.

Barculo introduced them. “Elaine Cunningham, meet Mark Silliphant.”

“You’re the hunter?” he asked.

“Sure am. And I need your help. Can you access Jay Tice’s personnel records?” She set her purse and the dossier on the desk beside him.

As he started to shake his head, Barculo said, “I’ll authorize it.” She leaned over his shoulder and whispered instructions.

Silliphant’s fingers drummed the keyboard as Cunningham paced across the parquet floor, arms crossed, planning.

At last he said, “Okay. I’m in.”

She smiled. “Good.” On the screen were Jay Tice’s name, photo, Social Security number, and Bureau of Prisons register number. “Extract every proper noun—names, cities, countries, buildings, corporations, that sort of thing—and their descriptors. Then crossreference.

Then organize by date and cross-reference. Organize by location and crossreference again. I’m looking for connections. For instance, maybe Tice had a favorite cafŽ in Rome that’s known for a certain dish or spice, but that cafŽ has moved to Richmond, Virginia, or he found a cafŽ in Richmond with that dish or spice. Next, isolate people, living or dead. Wherever Tice was, I want to know who was nearby but not necessarily, or apparently, in touch—and what they were doing, if possible. I especially want to know where they are now. And cross-reference again.”

Silliphant did not look up. “I can sort for interactions they had on their own, too, away from Tice. If the information’s available, that is.”

“Please do. There should also be a list of the various government and public databases in which he or his missions appear. Integrate those.” ForeTell could integrate innumerable databases without requiring reprogramming, no matter the code language used. She looked at Barculo. “Whatever you get on Theosopholis, I’d like Mark to run the same sort of questions about him.” When Barculo nodded, she continued, “Do you have a wireless laptop I can borrow? That way, Mark can send me his results, and I can view the CD in Tice’s file.”

Barculo opened a closet and removed a notebook computer and a titanium case. She put the computer inside the case. “Anything else?”

“Thanks. That’s it.” Cunningham stowed the file folder on top and lowered the lid, keyed in a code, and locked it. “I wish I could stick around to work with Mark, but I agree with you—I should get to Allenwood.”

Barculo’s grave eyes softened. “I’ll lead you out.” They returned to the hall.

Cunningham had not forgotten their earlier conversation. She picked it up again: “Why exactly did people dislike Tice?”

Barculo thought about it. “Something happened in ’83 that’ll give you an idea. That summer he was running an undercover team I was on. One of the new men got a tip that Johannes Weinrich was up to something. In case you don’t remember, Weinrich was one of Carlos’s top lieutenants, and in those days Carlos the Jackal was the world’s most wanted terrorist. He was Europe’s Osama bin Laden.”

“So a bloodbath was likely.”

“Exactly.” Barculo opened what looked like an ordinary office door, but inside was a deep broom closet, with a vacuum cleaner and shelves loaded with cleaning supplies. “Follow me.” At the far end, she opened a second door and walked out onto a stairwell landing lit by a single bulb. The air smelled of mold and dust.

“So what happened?” Cunningham prodded.

“Our new man slipped across into East Berlin to follow Weinrich. But Tice got wind of it and chased him down in some alley. Tice didn’t believe him, and he threatened to fire him for leaving without permission. Then he took him back to West Berlin, which left no one to keep tabs on Weinrich. A day later Weinrich picked up Nitropenta explosives and passed them on to two other terrorists. They planted them in the Maison de France in West Berlin. The blast was devastating. It was a miracle only one person was killed. The final tragedy was that the damn terrorists got away clean—they escaped back into East Berlin, where the Stasi protected them.”

Cunningham stared. “Good God. How horrible.”

“Yes. An outrageous attack on civilians. And the new man might’ve been able to stop it—if it hadn’t been for Jay Tice.” Barculo descended wood stairs into a dank cellar lined with brick.

Cunningham followed. “Who was the new man?”

At the bottom, Barculo turned. Nothing showed on her lined face. “Larry Litchfield.”

“Laurence Litchfield? Our DDO?” The official who had assigned her to hunt down Jay Tice.

“It was a long time ago.” Barculo shrugged. “Larry was furious and shaken. But he was also a damn fine operative. Obviously, it didn’t kill his career.” She cracked open a door, and a line of sunlight seeped in. “This is our backup entrance. Use it whenever possible. I’ve programmed a code for you, and you’ll have to press your left thumb on the hidden keypad, too. Also, you’ll need my cell number. I have yours, of course.” She related both numbers and explained how to use the security system.

Cunningham memorized everything then asked, “Why do you think Tice turned?”

“Vanity,” Barculo answered instantly. She opened the door wider and leaned out. “Looks clear.” She stepped aside.

Cunningham peered out at a cobbled alley rimmed by parked cars. The morning light bathed the vehicles and houses in a deceptively rosy glow.

“See you soon, Hannah.”

There was the briefest of smiles. “I’d rather see Tice—back in prison. Don’t try anything fancy, Elaine. Remember, you hunt. We capture. You’re not trained to the degree we are, and we don’t want you to get hurt. Find him fast. Then phone me.”

Gripping the handle of the computer’s carrying case, her purse slung over her shoulder, Elaine Cunningham nodded and looked around carefully. Pulse racing, she slipped outdoors and nonchalantly walked away.