ICOLAS CREEL HAD NEVER BEEN an overly religious man, yet this amount of good fortune must surely have at its epicenter a divine light. His life of balancing good works with the sale of deadly weapons was clearly paying off, judging by the latest golden opportunity to present itself.

He’d reviewed the surveillance tapes of The Phoenix Group’s building and watched in astonishment as a woman identified as Anna Fischer and none other than the legendary journalist Katie James walked into the place practically arm in arm!

He now had the remaining piece to his game plan. Creel had dossiers on a dozen promising candidates, yet Katie James had never even occurred to him because she’d dropped off the radar screen. He’d had an entire file assembled on her within an hour of seeing the woman on the video. And the man liked what he had seen.

Her fall from the top had been swift. Allegations of alcoholism, stories botched or never written. Relegated to the obit page and she was several years shy of forty. Her two Pulitzers had not saved her from that fate. She looked hungry on the film.

Well, Creel would play her dreammaker. He would give her the one story that would catapult her right back to the top.

He called Caesar and told him to be ready to go in two days. Putting down the phone, he sat back in his chair as the door to his study opened and Little Miss Hottie sauntered in holding a bottle of champagne and wearing only what she’d been born with.

“I love your office,” she said. “It just feels like you. I come in here sometimes and just soak it in.” She sat down in his lap and drank straight from the bottle.

“This is a nice surprise,” Creel said as he ran his hand along her naked thigh. “It wasn’t on the schedule, sweetie.”

“A thank you for that kickass ring you got me, baby,” she slurred. She was drunk, and, from the shrunken appearance of her pupils, also high. Yet Creel had found his wife was at her lovemaking best while stoned out of her mind.

“It’s amazing, really, what twenty carats will get one these days,” sighed Creel, as Hottie slid up on his desk.

The buzzing sound woke Shaw. He instinctively sat up and scanned the room, until he realized where he was. Next to him Anna was still sleeping. He rubbed his face and glanced at his phone. It was Frank. He snatched it up and went into the next room, looked out the window onto a moonless London night. The rain had passed but a chill mist still floated down the street obscuring everything it touched.

“What do you want?” Shaw said.

“Spending the night? The lady must really love you.”

“You go near her again, Frank, I’ll kill you.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, my friend.”

“What the hell do you want?” Shaw snapped.

“Well, since you didn’t seem all that interested in the assignment from MI5 it’s my job to put your ass back to work. And I hope you’ve got the notion of freedom right out of your head. Or else the little woman can come and visit you in the biggest shithole prison I can find.”

His reconciliation with Anna was so powerfully euphoric that Shaw found himself immune even to Frank’s taunts. “Where?” he asked curtly.

“Paris. You’ll take the Chunnel over this afternoon. Initial instructions at St. Pancras. The rest in Paris.”

“Piece of advice, Frank, always watch your back.”

The line, however, was already dead.

Shaw smiled and clicked off. He had Anna. That’s all that mattered. The enormous weight lifted off him almost made Shaw feel he could fly.

He ate breakfast with his fiancée, kissed her good-bye, and was about to leave the apartment while she showered when he remembered he’d left his jacket in her cluttered office off the dining room. When he retrieved it, he happened to see the card on her desk and picked it up.

“Katie James, New York Tribune,” he said slowly, his anger rising.

He flipped the card over and saw the London address penciled in there. That’s how Anna had known about Scotland. He checked his watch. He had time. He slipped the card into his pocket.