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“That’s the way my mind works,” he said of the hazelnut trees.

Military discipline and control.

“He was a silver-spoon kid from Connecticut with a law degree from Yale,” Galloway raps out. “Gung ho on the Bureau, wanted to be led the right way and do the right thing. He starts out on a moral crusade but gets corrupted by the forces he’s mingling with—drug dealers, radicals. Apparently, he had a powerful father on Wall Street.”

“It’s always about the father.” Angelo winks grotesquely at Peter Abbott with his bad eye.

“Maybe part of it was rebellion,” Galloway says, “but we didn’t have undercover school and contact agents back then. These single guys had no support system, nothing to pull them back to our side. The subculture was their best friend. Stone was in his twenties, let’s remember, living with the hippies and vulnerable to their influence. They told him America was wrong. Capitalism was wrong. The war in Vietnam was wrong. Marxism was right. Law enforcement meant working for the Establishment. Does that jibe with your impression of Stone at the time?” he asks Abbott.

“He was stubborn. Not a team player.”

“Agent Grey worked up a profile of the bomber who made the signature device that killed Steve. Older. Impatient. Practical. Doesn’t care about perfection.”

Abbott: “I’ve read it.”

Galloway nods. “There are still some people in the Bureau who think Stone got a bum deal.”

“From us?” Abbott asks incredulously.

“That he took the fall for our failed policies. Spying on civilians did not turn out to be a popular song.”

People shift uncomfortably, loyalty prickling. We give it our all, every day. Don’t ask us to justify the past.

Galloway shrugs. “There was no understanding of the psychological vise you put someone in when they go deep cover. It’s not easy to assimilate back.”

Angelo: “At this point, what does headquarters want?”

“We want Stone.”

Galloway: “Do we walk in with federal warrants and blow the operation? Or do we see where this is going? This could be bigger than Stone. We don’t know. We’re just getting our arms around it.”

“I’ll tell you one thing.” Angelo is leaning forward, elbows on the table. It is interesting that he in his narco threads and I in my Oregon grunge have cornered one end of the table: two actors still in wardrobe; street players in a room of merchants. “We should install a listening device in Omar’s bar. Put undercovers there around the clock. If that’s where Stone hangs out, and where they buy and sell, it’s likely he gets his explosives there, and Steve Crawford was following the trail.”

“Done,” says Abbott. “I understand Agent Grey is embedded in the cell?”

“I’m not in bed with them yet, sir.”

Galloway shoots me a warning look, but Abbott only chuckles.

“Stone won’t let her on the farm,” Galloway explains. “His paranoia is aroused. She’s got to make her bones with the organization.”

“We’ve been kicking around a sting operation.” I sense Abbott’s support and decide to cash in the chips. “The BLM is doing its annual roundup of the wild horses. They cull the weak ones from the herd, put them up for adoption, and send the rest back to the wild. It’s called ‘a gather.’ We don’t like it.”

“We?”

“Me and my homies in the movement. The BLM uses helicopters to run the horses down. We think it’s cruel. Megan Tewksbury, aka Laurel Williams, told me right before I came down here that they’re organizing to free the mustangs as soon as they’re in the corrals. If I get myself arrested, it would prove my commitment. Get me access to whatever’s going on at the farm.”

“We’ve got the tech support in motion for deep cover,” Donnato says. “They should be bringing Ana up a secure phone.”

Peter Abbott addresses me carefully. “You will be up against a skilled undercover operative with a long-simmering grudge against the U.S. government.”

“I know.”

“Do you have any doubts about continuing?”

“Why would that even cross my mind?”

Abbott’s expression is predatory, like that of a tiger carefully placing one paw after the other in a nest of snakes.

What