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“Okay, well, there’s basically three phases. In the opening, both sides are positioning their forces. So for Smith, that was his time on the run, building a network, recruiting followers. Then comes the midgame, which is a lot of testing weaknesses, trading pieces. It can be bloody, but it’s not the real conflict. Like the last few years: assassinations, the explosion at the stock exchange—”

“The Children of Darwin?”

“No,” she said. “They were the beginning of the endgame. Nothing is safe in the endgame—your most powerful pieces, the positions you’ve spent the whole game building, all of it can be sacrificed. All that matters is winning.”

Sounds like John Smith in a nutshell. “So what’s his play?”

“I don’t know. But it’s big, and it’s imminent.”

“Tell me.”

“So, first warning is that Smith’s lieutenants have fallen off the radar. They all ran pretty deep anyway, but we’d always get ripples: a face-match arriving too late, some credit activity, coded messages in online havens, that sort of thing. Over the last days, that’s all stopped. I mean, gone. Then there’s the financials. You remember his smurfed bank accounts in the Caymans and Dubai?”

He nodded. The phrase “follow the money” may have been made famous by a movie, but it was standard procedure in intelligence and antiterrorism work. The DAR had a huge staff of forensic accountants dedicated to freezing illegal money. In Smith’s case, they’d never been able to prove accounts belonged to him. But there was a difference between proof and certainty, and for years, a number of suspicious offshore accounts had been closely monitored.

“In the last forty-eight hours,” Valerie said, “fourteen have gone empty.”

“How much in total?”

“North of a hundred million dollars.”

“Holy—can you trace it?”

She shook her head. “Our hottest coders had backchannel routines to prevent any withdrawal. I mean gray-hat stuff, quasi-legal hacks that could provoke international incidents. But the money is still gone. Worse, no alarm bells were tripped. If Quinn hadn’t asked me to look, we wouldn’t even have known.”

His stomach had a sour feeling like he’d eaten raw chicken. Cooper stared, processing. “So he’s going all in. Any guess as to his intentions?”

“Not specifically. But this is John Smith we’re talking about, right? You called him the strategic equivalent of Einstein.” Valerie shrugged. “Whatever he’s planning, it won’t be what we expect.”

And it will be devastating. Cooper said, “Bobby, you have to take this to the director.”

“You think?” Quinn shook his head. “I love you, man, but my paychecks read DAR. I talked to her before I texted you. But remember what I said in that dive bar?”

“Yeah, that the whole world is on fire.”

“And that there’s a shortage of water.” Quinn shrugged. “The director understands the threat. But across the country we’ve got brilliants being persecuted, burned out, lynched. There are massive food shortages. Riots in a dozen cities. A militia rampaging through Wyoming. Three assassination attempts on the president in the last two weeks. The metric for threat is a moving target.”

Cooper’s headache hadn’t been improved by any of this, and he leaned his elbows on the table, dug his fingers in just above his eyes. “Did you share my theory about the tier zeroes?”

“Sure,” Quinn said. “Had to explain to the powers that be how an egghead kicked my butt.”

“Any response?”

“They agree it would be bad.”

“Terrific.” Cooper sighed, straightened. “Listen, I know you all took a risk sharing this with me. I appreciate it.”

“Oh, don’t be an asshole,” Luisa said. “Just wish you were here, boss. This is getting grim.”

“Don’t worry,” Cooper said. “I’m still fighting.”

Quinn said, “All right, partner. We need to go earn our paychecks.”

“Yeah. Thanks again.”

“No sweat. Just remember, beer is on you.”

“Forever, buddy. Forever.”

His old friend smiled and opened his mouth to reply. Before he could, everything went white, and his office window exploded in a rain of fire and sparkling glass.

The video connection failed.

But in the fraction of a second before it did, Cooper heard screaming.

CHAPTER 19

Owen Leahy was in the shower when the man came for him.

December didn’t often mean snow in northern Maryland, but somehow that was how he always thought of Camp David: bare trees brittle with frost, and a swirl of faint snowflakes. The image stuck in his head even in summer, and he’d find himself feeling chilly, craving extra blankets and hot showers. He’d been standing in the billowing steam for half an hour, thinking, idly tracing the pattern of liver spots on his forearms with water-wrinkled fingers.

Then suddenly there was an officer in a naval uniform in his private bathroom. “Mr. Secretary? There’s been an attack.”