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son’s death. We would’ve had to invade Lebanon to find the guy. Even now it wouldn’t be a straightforward operation. He moves around the hills above Beirut on a nightly basis. He has a series of tunnels and safe houses spread over a couple hundred square miles. He’s guarded by a small battalion of Al-Muqawama. We would have to just saturate those hills with bombs. The toll in civilian casualties would be tremendous.”
    “But it sounds like we could’ve killed him in the past twenty-four hours,” said John Nova, the secretary of Homeland Security. “Is that right?”
    “Yes, John,” said Jessica. “But El-Khayab would still be president of Pakistan. Iqbar would still be president of Iran. It wouldn’t change a thing.”
    “The point is,” said the president sharply, looking at Jessica, “there was no discussion. No debate. I should have been told we had the guy in the crosshairs. We could’ve still determined not to take him out.”
    “So that’s how we want to conduct strategy against the terrorists?” asked Jessica, not backing down an inch, looking first at John Nova, then the president. “Seat of the pants? ‘Hey, Mr. President, I’ve got Aswan Fortuna on radar. Should I kill him?’ Is that what you want?” Jessica paused, held the floor, looked around the Oval Office. “We have a policy. That policy is established. The policy is: leave Fortuna alive. Listen to him. Watch him. Track him. Avoid the potentially greater danger of his substantial resources being dispersed across the jihad infrastructure. We can change the policy. We can change it right here, right now. But we shouldn’t change the policy just because we suddenly have the guy in the crosshairs.”
    The room was silent. The president, slightly chastened, looked at Jessica sternly. Then, a slight grin came across his face.
    “You’re right, Jess,” said President Allaire. “As usual. We do have a policy. It’s the correct policy, for now. But I would like to review it. I want to know where Fortuna’s money is. If we can identify the location of enough of it, isolate it, build contingency around what happens if he’s gone, does it make sense to reassess the policy and remove him?”
    “The timing for a review makes sense,” said Jessica.
    “For the first time in nearly a year we are tracking him in real time,” said Calibrisi. “Thanks to the sighting in Tehran, we now have redundancy between the air and ground. We should be able to keep him under tight surveillance.”
    The president nodded. “Anything else?” he asked, looking at Jessica.
    “Nothing urgent,” she answered.
    “Okay, that’s a wrap,” said Allaire. He stood up. “See you at noon.”
    The daily briefing broke up, and everyone except the president left the Oval Office.
    In the hallway outside the Oval Office, Jessica felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned. Hector Calibrisi, the CIA director, looked at her. He nodded, indicating he needed to speak with her. When the rest of the national security directorate passed by, she stepped forward and stood in front of Calibrisi.
    “I need to talk,” said Calibrisi. “I have some information I think you need to hear. It won’t take long.”
    “Let’s go to my office,” said Jessica.
    Calibrisi followed Jessica down the low-ceiling hallway to her office suite in the West Wing. Jessica’s corner office had large windows that looked out onto West Executive Avenue and the Old Executive Office Building. Snow fell in wind-driven gusts against the windows.
    “What is it?” Jessica asked as she stepped around her desk and sat down. “Sit down.”
    Calibrisi remained standing. “It’s about Dewey.”
    Jessica leaned back in her chair. She smiled at Calibrisi. She looked down at her desk. Then her eye drifted to the mint-green-colored wall behind Calibrisi’s head. A framed photo hung of her standing next to Dewey as the president hung the Medal of Freedom around his neck. She hadn’t seen him or talked to