My mother had spent six months patiently, elegantly, over cups of good coffee, trying to convince my wife that no rescue was coming — that even her own husband, when he learned what she’d signed, would side with the family over the lonely woman who’d given everything away.

The bruises would heal.

What my mother had done was designed never to.

Chapter 10 — Three Calls

At dawn I made three calls.

The first was to Commander Halvorsen — my commanding officer, and the one person who knew that my last deployment had involved sensitive financial-intelligence work, which is to say that I had spent six months learning, in precise professional detail, exactly how money is moved in the dark and exactly how it is traced back into the light.