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R ESTON , V IRGINIA

B rendan Rogers exercised great caution to make sure he wasn’t followed. An hour and a half after leaving his motel, he arrived at a small café and bakery where he ordered a large black coffee and a breakfast sandwich, then took a seat at one of the tables outside.

The temperature was already in the low eighties and it was only going to get hotter. He had purposefully picked a spot that would remain shaded for at least the next couple of hours. There was no telling how long he would have to wait.

Another large coffee and a bottle of water later, he had his answer.

The blacked-out Mercedes Sprinter van came around the corner and headed toward the underground parking garage across the street. As it approached, the security bollards dropped and the heavy metal doors opened wide, like the mouth of an enormous whale about to gorge on a cloud of krill.

Rogers watched as the van was swallowed up and disappeared inside. Making himself comfortable, he waited fifteen minutes and then placed a call.

Somewhere high inside the glass and steel office tower across the street, a phone rang. When a receptionist answered and asked to whom he wished to be directed, Rogers only had a first name to provide her. He had no idea if the man he was calling even had a last name.

When asked for his own name, Rogers gave an alias—a name that he knew wouldn’t be appreciated, but which would instantly be recognized.

It was the shortest hold time in history.

“The only Colonel Josef Kozak I know,” a voice said, taking his call, “is dead. So you’ve got three seconds to tell me who this is before I hang up.”

“I’m the man who first identified Kozak to you. I need your help.”

Ten minutes later, the service entrance at the southwest corner of the building opened and two ex–special forces operatives in suits waved him inside.

They made sure that Rogers was alone and unarmed before walking him into a private elevator and accompanying him upstairs.

Avoiding the reception area, they escorted him down a back hall to a secure conference room where a very small man with two very large white dogs was waiting.

In his past life, the man, with primordial dwarfism, was known as “The Troll.” His friends and coworkers at the Carlton Group knew him as Nicholas.

“Ambassador Rogers,” Nicholas said, using the honorific that had been assigned to him as the Hostage Czar. “This is an honor.”

“Sorry to show up on your doorstep announced,” Rogers replied, pausing as he took in the enormous Caucasian Ovcharkas on either side of Nicholas. “Argos and Draco, right?”

“You have a good memory.”

“May I?” he asked, indicating that he wanted to approach the dogs.

“Of course. Just do it slowly.”

Nicholas then gave a quiet command and allowed the dogs to sniff the visitor’s hand.

Ovcharkas had an amazing ability to catalog and recall scent.

They immediately remembered Rogers from the time they had spent at the Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell.

Nicholas remembered it as well. It was one of the most dangerous and stressful cases of his life.

Even the former president had felt the need to make a personal appearance at the cell to reinforce to every single employee how important it was to rescue Scot Harvath and bring him home.

From start to finish, Rogers had done an amazing job. It was why, once Nicholas had confirmed that Rogers was indeed Rogers, he had swept the man into the building and up to the Carlton Group’s heavily secured offices.

Thanking the security officers, Nicholas waited until they had closed the conference room door and then, shaking Rogers’s hand, offered him a seat and said, “Of all the names you could have used. Colonel Josef Kozak? ”

Kozak was the Russian GRU colonel who had been in charge of the Spetsnaz team that had killed the Carlton Group’s founder, its acting director Lydia Ryan, a Navy Corpsman who had been taking care of Carlton, and Harvath’s then wife, Lara, before putting a bag over his head and dragging him off to Russia.

Without Rogers and his amazing team at the Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell, there was no telling how things might have ended up for Harvath.

“I’m sorry for the cloak-and-dagger,” Rogers replied. “I didn’t know where else to turn. And I’m way out of my depth. If nothing else, I figured the less people who know I am here, the better.”

“Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”

Rogers eyed the carafe of coffee on the table and Nicholas motioned for him to help himself.

Pouring a cup of coffee, he said, “Three weeks before the inauguration, we received intelligence that Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian Quds Force, was going to be traveling from Damascus to Baghdad.

Both the United States and the European Parliament had designated the Quds Force a terrorist organization.

Soleimani and his soldiers were behind the deaths of hundreds of American and coalition service members.

“Soleimani was responsible for advancing Iran’s goals of religious fascism by supporting militias such as the Houthis in Yemin, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and a whole host of Iraqi terrorist groups.

He helped orchestrate proxy wars in Syria and Iraq, was responsible for the mass killings of civilians in multiple Middle Eastern countries, and helped the mullahs in Tehran brutally crack down on uprisings across Iran.

The man was both a terrorist and a straight-up war criminal. ”

“In other words,” Nicholas clarified, “a legitimate tier-one target.”

“As far as the National Security Council was concerned, absolutely.

He landed in Baghdad shortly after midnight and we had an Air Force MQ-9 Reaper drone on station, loitering above the city.

He and his entourage, which included several pro-Iranian paramilitary personalities, split themselves between a Toyota sedan and a Hyundai van.

As they were exiting the airport via an access road, the President gave the order to engage.

“Cleared hot, the Reaper then fired multiple Hellfire missiles, obliterating the convoy. We later identified Soleimani’s remains via DNA testing on a severed finger found in the rubble, which still had the gaudy silver and red ring he was known to wear.”

“It was a bold move, especially at the end of an administration,” Nicholas offered.

“It was unquestionably bold. And if we had to do it all over again, I would still recommend it to the President wholeheartedly and without reservation.”

“Our new president is a bit of an isolationist, so that might be a tough sell, but I’d like to think that when push comes to shove, he’s willing to do the right thing.”

His comment caused Rogers to grimace. It was a quick, involuntary reaction and it immediately vanished, but Nicholas had noticed it nonetheless.

Looking at him, he asked, “You don’t agree?”

“That’s part of why I’m here,” said Rogers.

“In the aftermath of taking out Soleimani, a press photo from that night was released by the White House. It shows all the key National Security Council members gathered in the Situation Room. Two of the people in that photo are now dead. I believe the Iranians had them killed. I think I’m next. ”

“Wait a second,” said Nicholas, somewhat shocked. “You’re talking about the former secretary of state and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, right?”

Rogers nodded.

“One of whom fell down a set of stairs at home and broke his neck, while the other died from a massive coronary. You think these were assassinations? Hits by the Iranians?”

Rogers nodded again.

“I don’t have to tell you that the SecState was a well-known, heavy drinker.

Port was his poison, if memory serves. And the chairman of the Joint Chiefs wasn’t exactly in fighting shape.

He was a somewhat portly man and a smoker.

What’s more, they were both getting up there in age.

Neither of them was in any condition to outkick the actuarial tables.

In fact, it’s a wonder neither of them died while in office.

With all due respect, if you were running a dead pool, you’d be crazy not to have had squares on both of them. ”

“All I know,” said Rogers, “is that the Iranian Republic swore to get revenge against every person in that photo.”

“Undoubtedly, nothing would make them happier. Soleimani was like a cult figure in Iran and the cult has only grown bigger since his death. But a bad fall and a heart attack don’t necessarily add up to a murder spree. Do you have any evidence? Any intel that they were assassinated?”

The man shook his head. “Not until yesterday.”

“What happened yesterday?”

“Two men, who had been following me earlier in the day, ended up chasing me through Rock Creek Park last night while I was on a run.”

Nicholas’s expression changed. “ Chasing you?”

“If I hadn’t been able to flag down a park ranger, I don’t know what would have happened.”

“What did they look like?”

Rogers gave him the same report he had given the Park Police and then laid out everything he had done afterward—right up until he had arrived at the Carlton Group this morning.

When Nicholas asked why he hadn’t taken any of this to the Secret Service, the former National Security Advisor’s answer stunned him.

Pulling out his phone, Nicholas knew what he had to do next. He composed a quick text and hit send.

When he was finished, he looked up at Rogers, who asked, “Who’d you send that to?”

“The one person who can help you.”