The Mark of the Assassin

cold and very dark; the
    only light came from the glow of office windows above him, tinted green
    by soundproof glass. In the old days his office was the back streets of
    Berlin or Athens or Rome. He was still more comfortable in a Cairo
    coffeehouse than Starbucks in Georgetown. He glanced quickly at his
    watch. Another relaxing dinner. He stuffed his cigarette into a
    sand-filled ashtray and went inside.
    THE BRIEFING ROOM was directly across the hall from the bull pen--small,
    cramped, most of it consumed by a large rectangular table of cheap
    government-issue wood. On one wall hung the emblems of every government
    agency with a role in the Center. On the wall opposite the doorway was a
    projection screen. Michael arrived at precisely 11:45 P.M. He was
    straightening his tie when two men entered the room. The first was
    Adrian Carter, the director of the Counterterrorism Center and an
    operations veteran of twenty years. He was small and pale, with sparse
    gray hair and bags beneath his eyes that gave him the appearance of
    perpetual boredom. Michael and Carter had a professional and personal
    friendship dating back fifteen years. The second was Eric McManus, the
    Center's deputy director. McManus was big and bluff with an easy smile,
    a thick head of ginger-gray hair, and a trace of south Boston in his
    voice. He was FBI and looked it: navy blue suit, crisp white shirt, red
    tie. When Michael's father worked for the Agency, an FBI man in such a
    senior role would be considered heresy. CIA officers of the old school
    thought FBI agents could fit everything they knew about intelligence on
    the backs of their gold shields. That was not the case with McManus, a
    Harvard-trained lawyer who worked in FBI counterintelligence for twenty
    years before his assignment to the Center. Monica Tyler, as was her
    habit, entered the room last and precisely five minutes late. She
    regarded her time as priceless, never to be wasted by others. A pair of
    identical male factotums trailed softly after her, each fervently
    clutching a leather-bound briefing book. Except for Personnel, no one
    within the Agency claimed to know who they were or who had spawned them.
    The office wits said they were conveyed with Monica from her Wall Street
    investment firm, along with her private bathroom and mahogany office
    furniture. They were slender and sinewy, dark-eyed and watchful, and
    silent as pallbearers. They seemed to move in slow union, like
    performers in an underwater ballet. Since no one knew their true names,
    they were christened Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum. Monica's detractors
    referred to them as Tyler's eunuchs. McManus and Carter got to their
    feet without enthusiasm as Monica entered the room. She squeezed past
    McManus's bulky frame and took her customary seat at the head of the
    table, where she could see the screen and the briefer with an easy turn
    of her regal head. Tweedle-dee placed a leather-bound notebook on the
    table in front of her as though it were an ancient tablet and then sat
    behind her against the wall, next to Tweedle-dum. "Monica, this is
    Michael Osbourne," Carter said. "Michael's dealt with counter terror most
    of his career and has been working on the Sword of Gaza since the group
    surfaced."
    Tyler looked at Michael and nodded, as though she had been told
    something she did not know. Michael knew that was not the case. Monica
    was renowned for reading the files of any officer with whom she came in
    contact. The rumor mill said she THE wouldn't bump into an officer at
    the water cooler without first having read his fitness reports. She
    turned her gaze from Michael to the blank screen. Her short blond hair
    was perfectly styled, her makeup fresh. She wore a black suit with a
    high-collared white blouse beneath. One hand lay across the table; the
    other held a slender gold pen. She nibbled at the tip. Monica Tyler had
    no life other than her work; it was the one personal trait she made no
    attempt to conceal from her colleagues. The Director brought her to the
    Agency because she had followed him to every government job he'd ever
    had. She knew nothing of intelligence, but she was brilliant and an
    extremely quick study. She usually could be found in her seventh-floor
    office late into the night, reading briefing books and old files. She
    had the corporate lawyer's gift for knowing the right question to ask.
    Michael had seen her reduce ill-prepared briefers to ashes. Carter
    nodded at Osbourne. He dimmed the