“You’re hopeless at the politics.”

“I’m working on that,” she said.

“Yes, but you’re still hopeless.”

“Not without hope of improvement,” she said, contradicting him.

Lance smiled a little. “Well, you can hope.”

“Lance,” she said, “I hope this is all a prelude to a big promotion, a larger office, a huge increase in salary and a Company Cadillac.” This was said less than half in jest.

“As I said, Holly, you can hope.” Lance pushed back from his desk, crossed his legs and sipped his coffee. “Actually, you have to leave us.”

Holly clamped her teeth together to keep her jaw from dropping. “I don’t know how to respond to that,” she managed to say.

Lance’s eyebrows went up. “Oh, it’s only for a time, say a month.”

Holly stared at him, uncomprehending.

“I’m not firing you,” he clarified.

“Good, then I won’t have to kill you,” she replied. “Now what the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m not doing the talking; other people are.”

“Talking? Not about you and me, surely.”

“Well, maybe that, too. What they’re talking about is Teddy Fay.”

Teddy Fay was a name never mentioned at Langley, a great embarrassment to everyone in the building, except to those who secretly rooted for him. Teddy was the former deputy chief of Technical Services, the division that supplied operational officers with everything they needed to accomplish their missions: a weapon, a wardrobe, an identity or a cyanide capsule. Whatever, Tech Services obliged. But Teddy Fay, after retiring, had gone off the reservation, had started killing right-wing political figures, Middle Eastern diplomats-anyone who Teddy felt did not have the best interests of his country at heart-and no combination of the Agency’s and the FBI’s resources had been able to stop him or even find him. Holly was the only CIA employee who had ever even seen him since his retirement and then only when he was disguised.