Comprising a large suite on the top floor of the white building are the offices of Cheltenham Security Services, a private firm that contracts executive protection officers, facility guard personnel, and strategic intelligence services for British and other western European corporations working abroad. CSS was conceived, founded, and run on a daily basis by a sixty-eight-year-old Englishman named Sir Donald Fitzroy. Fitzroy had spent the early part of Wednesday hard at work, but now he forced himself to push that task out of his mind. He took a moment to clear his thoughts, drummed his corpulent fingers on his ornate partners desk. He did not have time for the man waiting politely outside with his secretary—there was a pressing matter that required his complete focus—but he could hardly turn his visitor away. Fitzroy’s crisis of the moment would just have to wait. The young man had called an hour before and told Sir Donald’s secretary he needed to speak with Mr. Fitzroy about a most urgent matter.
