Tom Harriman has superpowers. His speed, strength, and night vision give him tremendous advantages against foes of the US, which makes him very effective as the president’s “troubleshooting diplomat.” On a snowy evening in Bosnia, he walks calmly up to a heavily fortified house, rapidly disables the front-door guards, leaps to the second floor, knocks out the house’s resident, war criminal Vlad “the Bad” Radovic—“The Rat,” Harriman calls him—and carries the portly villain like a shield past rear-guard soldiers and into the woods, beyond which lies his Jeep.

He drives the Jeep at race-car speeds to the airport in Zagreb, where he piles the captive into a waiting private jet and taxis away just as Radovic’s men arrive. As he turns onto the runway, Harriman sees a white-haired man standing quietly on the tarmac. He knows the man whose presence shakes him. He takes off anyway.

Though he doesn’t know exactly what his father, Tom Harriman, does for the president, Zach Harriman is proud of him. Still, he misses his dad when he’s away, and he worries about him. He hurries across Central Park in Manhattan to the luxurious Fifth Avenue