The Assassin by Andrew Britton

Rachel.” Harper was getting tired of this argument; he’d heard it too many times before. “We set up Special Activities for that specific reason: to avoid all the oversight. On this matter, I was personally briefed by Pete Hemming. He’s the head of special operations over at Tyson’s Corner, by the way.” This was a reference to the National Counterterrorism Center, a state-of-the-art facility located in McLean, Virginia. “He assured me that the man they used on this is one of their best. If he took Kassem out of the city, it was done for a reason.”
    “You’re telling me that you have no idea who this man is?” Ford asked skeptically.
    “Unfortunately, no,” Harper replied mildly.
    “Even if we get some good intel out of it, nothing changes the fact that he broke every rule in the book. Unless I’m hugely mistaken, we don’t have a presidential finding authorizing any of this. There has to be some accountability here.”
    “And there will be. You’ll get a full report as soon as I do. Until then, we deny everything. Arshad Kassem may have a lot of friends, but he’s got his share of enemies, too. We can play it off easily enough.”
    But Ford wasn’t done. “I want the name of this operative,” she said heatedly, “and I want him out of the Agency—”
    “That’s enough, Rachel.” Ford’s head spun around at the director’s first words. Her cheeks flushed slightly at the mild rebuke, but she settled back in her seat, her angry gaze still fixed on Jonathan Harper.
    “Inquiries will be made,” the DCI continued. “But we have a more immediate issue to take care of. Jonathan?”
    Harper nodded and cleared his throat, then went on to explain about Rashid al-Umari, Erich Kohl, and the tape found in al-Umari’s London home. “Anyway,” he concluded, “we received a lot of cooperation from the British on this, and the voice analysis seems to confirm that Jason March is still alive and working in conjunction with al-Umari.”
    Ford shook her head, her dark red hair flashing against pale skin. “I saw the after-action report on that. March was killed in an airstrike last December….”
    She trailed off when she saw that Andrews was already shaking his head. “First of all, Jason March is not his real name, and he didn’t die in a Libyan training camp.”
    Perplexed, Ford said, “I don’t understand.”
    The DCI gave Harper the nod, and the DDO turned to Rachel Ford, whose expression had softened in her confusion.
    “Shortly after the Senate majority leader was assassinated last year, the president gave us carte blanche to hunt down the killer. We had a pretty good idea who was responsible, but the man you know as Jason March was — is , I should say — a former Special Forces soldier. As such, he was decidedly difficult to track, and everything pointed to something more.
    “So we brought in a retired field man to hunt March down, somebody with, well, relevant experience. You see, our man was ex-army himself; in fact, he trained March in the late nineties. Then, while on deployment in Syria in 1997, Jason March went rogue. He shot five men in his detachment and nearly killed his commanding officer — our operative.”
    “And who is he ?”
    A subtle glance at Andrews brought another prompting nod. Reluctantly, Harper went on. “His name is Ryan Kealey. He’s been with us for four years.”
    Ford made a mental note to pull the man’s file. “And?”
    “Once we had Kealey on board, we paired him with an analyst from the CTC, Naomi Kharmai. Together, they were able to learn March’s true identity: William Paulin Vanderveen, a South African national. As it turned out, Vanderveen harbored some real hatred toward the United States, hatred that stemmed back to his father’s death during apartheid. You’ll have to read the briefing folders to get the whole story, but ultimately, the chase ended in Washington. What you may not know is that after the failed assassination attempt,