There were no politics for you - just the right way to get the job done." "What if it hadn't worked?" I asked as I set my coffee down on a coaster emblazoned with the Bureau's emblem. "Well, hell, then you wouldn't be here now and we wouldn't be talking like this. Seriously, though, there's one thing I want to caution you about. It may seem obvious to you, but it's a lot worse than you imagine. You can't always tell the good guys from the bad ones in the Bureau. No one can. I've tried, and it's almost impossible." I thought about what he was implying - part of which was that Burns already knew that one of my weaknesses was to look for the good in people. I understood it was a weakness sometimes, but I wouldn't change, or maybe I couldn't change. "Are you a good guy?" I asked him. "Of course I am," Burns said with a wholesome grin that could have landed him a starring role on The West Wing. "You can trust me, Alex. Always. Absolutely. Just like you trusted Kyle Craig a few years back." Jesus, he was giving me the shivers. Or maybe the director was just trying to get me to see the world his way: Trust no one. Go to the head of the class.

AT A LITTLE PAST ELEVEN, I was on my way down to Quantico. Even after my "final" in Baltimore, I still had a class on "Stress Management and Law Enforcement." I already knew the operative statistic: FBI agents were five times more likely to kill themselves than to be killed in the line of duty. A Billy Collins poem was floating through my brain as I drove: "Another Reason Why I Don't Keep a Gun in the House." Nice concept, good poem, bad omen. The cell rang and I heard the voice of Tony Woods from the director's office. There had been a change of plans. Woods gave me orders from the director to go straight to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. A plane was waiting for me. Jesus! I was on another case already; I'd been ordered to skip school again. Things were happening faster than even I had expected, and I wasn't sure if that was a good or a bad thing.