The broker / John Grisham.

In his final hours in the Oval Office the President grants a controversial last minute pardon to Joel Backman, a notorious power broker who has spent the last six years in a federal prison. The president issues the pardon only after receiving enormous pressure from the CIA. It seems that in his broker heyday, Backman may have obtained secrets that compromise the world's most sophisticated satellite surveillance system. Backman is quietly smuggled out of the country and given a new identity and home in Italy. Eventually, after settling into his new life, the CIA will leak his whereabouts then sit back and wait. The question is not of Backman's survival, but who will kill him.

Notorious Washington powerbroker Joel Backman receives a surprise pardon on his twenty year sentence from the President. He is smuggled out of the country on a military cargo plane, given a new identity, and tucked away in a small town in Italy.