Falls Church, Virginia, March, 2078, Friday…

"He'll see you now, agents," said Pennestri's administrative assistant.

Caitlin smiled at Dan.

The bluff with Pennestri had worked.

At least he has an assistant who is a real person. I hate dealing with robot receptionists. Only real high ranking VIPs had real assistants anymore. As acting National Intelligence Director, aka Secretary of Homeland Security, Pennestri qualified as high ranking. Both posts were cabinet level.

Pennestri offered them seats.

"Mr. Secretary -"

"Call me Bill." He offered a hand to Dan Summers. "Bill Pennestri. I presume you're Summers. And you I know of course." Instead of offering a hand to Caitlin, he got up from his chair and came around in back of them. She began to feel uncomfortable. "Caitlin, don't think your bluff worked. I knew you wouldn't go to the press. But because you were willing to make the bluff and because you're here in person, I agreed to see you." He put his left hand on her shoulder, the right on Dan's. "This had better be damn good." He walked back behind his desk and sat down. "Now, spill it."

They tried to make it brief, but Pennestri kept plying them with questions, jotting down the answers in an old fashioned notebook as if he were sitting in a class at Harvard.

"You think these people know you've got Padraig O'Neil?"

"Maybe, maybe not," said Caitlin. "What do I care? I want to clean house here."

"A noble sentiment in this town, one that has been many a politician's undoing." He winked at her. "Jason is small potatoes, believe me. O'Neil is big. He'll probably lead to someone big. Your overseas connection, for example. But here in this country this could go all the way to Delgado, which would be a national crisis on the order of the Stephanie Williams debacle."

"The VP for Fulton. I thought she died of an aneurism or something."

"We'll leave it at that. Ask your friend Asako O'Brian sometime. She has a longstanding gag order, so tell her I gave my permission. I'll give it to her in writing if she likes. She can give you a very personal account of what happened back then."

"Well, this goes back a lot further than Fulton. I have every reason to believe that Sergio Battaglia was very much involved with the Remington assassination, but I can't prove it. Nonetheless, I would like to bring him in and question him. I think that has to be done at your level, sir, because it's probably going to need a lot of clout. Battaglia is an international figure."