2

Rome

Former FBI agent Clancy Johnson sat across the table from the informant, surrounded by the hot-blooded clamor of Rome. He’d been on the move since he’d bungled the assassination of then-Senator Gina Hayes last November. He was tired of running. That made it okay that they’d tracked him down.

“It’s got to happen in London,” Clancy said. “During the Climate Change Summit.”

The informant’s brow furrowed. His face was so potato-bland that Clancy suspected the man could blend in anywhere. Definitely an asset in this line of work. “The president’s security detail will be even tighter at such a high-profile event.”

“Yes and no.” Clancy patted his rumpled shirt and tugged out a pack of Camel Straights. He’d quit six years earlier but had recently decided that, as a dead man walking, he deserved to smoke.

“More security, less certainty,” he continued. “It’ll be chaos at the summit. Protestors. Media. Hayes has the world on fire. Everyone will be watching her. Plus, we have someone the president trusts on our side.”

“Who?”

Clancy grabbed the sleeve of a passing waiter. “Light?”

The waiter scowled but flicked a matchbook out of his pocket. The good thing about Rome was that everyone smoked. That, and the pepper cheese pasta served in every corner bistro. Clancy could bathe in the stuff, it was that good. He inhaled deeply on the soothing fingers of smoke, letting them stroke his lungs. “Before I give up that information, I’m going to need verification you’re with the Hermitage.”

Across the table, the man’s potato-face started twitching. Clancy at first thought the informant was going to laugh. When that didn’t happen, he decided the guy was hiking the north side of a seizure. That’d be a damn shame because it would mean he’d need to dress up and sell this plan to someone else. Before Clancy could muster a reasonable response, the man’s twitches rode deeper, and a sound like wishbones snapping popped off his face.

Clancy wondered if he was on some bizarre hidden-camera show.

Or maybe he was asleep, the past year a single dream, his wife of forty years lying next to him in bed, his reputation intact?

Turned out to be neither of the above.

With a jerk, the man’s face completed its metamorphosis. Suddenly, he was so beautiful it hurt to look at him.

If Clancy’d had any food in his body, he’d have shit himself.

The man spoke, his eyes watering from pain, his face an angel’s. “In Europe, we don’t call ourselves the Hermitage. Here, we’re the Order.”