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Tricks. Anthony’s position was founded on his record as a war hero and a series of Cold War coups. But some people wanted to turn the CIA into what the public imagined it to be: a simple information-gathering agency.
    Over my dead body, he thought.
    However, he had enemies: superiors he had offended with his brash manners, weak and incompetent agents whose promotions he had opposed, pen-pushers who disliked the whole notion of the government doing secret operations. They were ready to destroy him as soon as he made a slip.
    And today his neck was stuck out further than ever before.
    As he strode into the building, he deliberately put aside his general worries and focused on the problem of the day: Dr. Claude Lucas, known as Luke, the most dangerous man in America, the one who threatened everything Anthony had lived for.
    He had been at the office most of the night, and had gone home only to shave and change his shirt. Now the guard in the lobbylooked surprised and said, “Good morning, Mr. Carroll—you back already?”
    “An angel appeared unto me in a dream and said, ‘Get back to work, you lazy son of a bitch.’ Good morning.”
    The guard laughed. “Mr. Maxell’s in your office, sir.”
    Anthony frowned. Pete Maxell was supposed to be with Luke. Had something gone wrong?
    He ran up the stairs.
    Pete was sitting in the chair opposite Anthony’s desk, still dressed in ragged clothes, a smear of dirt partly covering the red birthmark on his face. As Anthony walked in he jumped up, looking scared.
    “What happened?” Anthony said.
    “Luke decided he wanted to be alone.”
    Anthony had planned for this. “Who took over?”
    “Steve Simons has him under surveillance, and Betts is there for backup.”
    Anthony nodded thoughtfully. Luke had got rid of one agent, he could get rid of another. “What about Luke’s memory?”
    “Completely gone.”
    Anthony took off his coat and sat behind his desk. Luke was causing problems, but Anthony had expected as much, and he was ready.
    He looked at the man opposite. Pete was a good agent, competent and careful, but inexperienced. However, he was fanatically loyal to Anthony. All the young agents knew that Anthony had personally organized an assassination: the killing of the Vichy French leader Admiral Darlan, in Algiers on Christmas Eve in 1942. CIA agents did kill people, but not often, and they regarded Anthony with awe. But Pete owed him a special debt. On his job application form, Pete had lied, saying he had never been in trouble with the law, and Anthony had later found out that he had been fined for soliciting a prostitute as a student in San Francisco. Pete should have been fired for that, but Anthony had kept the secret, and Pete was eternally grateful.
    Now Pete was miserable and ashamed, feeling he had let Anthonydown. “Relax,” Anthony said, adopting a fatherly tone. “Just tell me exactly what happened.”
    Pete looked grateful and sat down again. “He woke up crazy,” he began. “Yelling ‘Who am I?’ and stuff like that. I got him calmed down . . . but I made a mistake. I called him Luke.”
    Anthony had told Pete to observe Luke but not to give him any information. “No matter—it’s not his real name.”
    “Then he asked who I was, and I said, ‘I’m Pete.’ It just came out, I was so concerned to stop him yelling.” Pete was mortified to confess these blunders, but in fact they were not grave, and Anthony waved aside his apologies. “What happened next?”
    “I took him to the gospel shop, just the way we planned it. But he asked shrewd questions. He wanted to know if the pastor had seen him before.”
    Anthony nodded. “We shouldn’t be surprised. In the war, he was the best agent we ever had. He’s lost his memory but not his instincts.” He rubbed his face with his right hand, tiredness catching up with him.
    “I kept trying to steer him away from inquiring into his past. But I think he figured out what I was doing. Then he told