The Middleman

by Olen Steinhauer

  The pilot pushed the old jet to its limit, and by twelve thirty she’d landed at Watertown Regional, where a Bureau Suburban was already waiting. The driver, Special Agent Lawrence Young, was a heavyset black man who asked excited questions that were all variations on Ashley’s: You’re really going to close down the Brigade tonight? “All I know is that we’ve got a long night ahead of us.”

  He drove her through flat farmland and past signs for Lake Kampeska. Trees lined one side of the road, while the other side extended into the nighttime darkness, and she found herself thinking not of the forthcoming arrest but of the hours and days that would follow. She had questions that only Benjamin Mittag could answer. Who killed Martin Bishop, and why? Who had been funding the Massive Brigade through Magellan Holdings? What was the next step in Massive’s grand plan? That last one nagged at her. The followers they’d picked up in Sheridan and Nephi were aimless and, more often than not, confused. What did their leaders imagine they were going to do?

  Eventually, they headed up a driveway where the Bureau had commandeered a house owned by an elderly couple who tended ten acres of soybeans. Outside, a dozen men and women, some in flak jackets and the rest in FBI windbreakers, talked on phones and conferred over tablet screens. Gonzales met the Suburban as they parked. He was younger than the commander in Sheridan, a leather-skinned crewcut with a pencil mustache. He pumped her hand, then pointed westward. “The target is one klick in that direction, and I’ve got twenty-three men with M-4s lying in the fields around it. No one has entered or exited the premises.”

  “Any more sighted?”

  “We’re up to nine, ma’am—three women, six men.”

  “Let’s not waste any time, then.”

  He took her into the house, and on the way said, “Sergeant Phillips is with your man at the vantage point, a half klick away.”

  She stopped. “My man?”

  “Owen Jakes, from Headquarters. He does work for you, yes?”

  She tried to hide her surprise. “Of course. I just didn’t expect him to land so soon.”

  In the claustrophobic living room, the farmer couple sat silently with cups of coffee, and she took a moment to thank them for their assistance. The husband stood on shaky legs and gave her a rigid salute. “I went to Vietnam for this country. This is the least I can do.”

  Gonzales introduced her to the rest of the team in the kitchen, where a map of the area had been laid out on the dining table, surrounded by five rugged laptops with reinforced shells. They took her through the plans, and she tried to foresee disaster; given the flat terrain in this part of the country, everything looked bad. But there was nothing else to do. Unlike in Sheridan, she wasn’t going to walk up and knock on the door. She wanted to be alive to see Mittag arrested.

  Then Owen Jakes entered the kitchen, and all eyes turned to him. He was rubbing his hands together when he noticed Rachel. “Agent Proulx. Good to see you.”

  “Can we have a word, Owen?”

  She walked him out the kitchen door to the back porch, into the cool, clear night, but before she could speak he launched into it. “Rachel, I’m not stepping on anything here, don’t worry. I was in Chicago when Paulson called me, and I lucked out with one of those new Gulfstreams that fly like the wind.”

  His line caught her off guard. “When did Paulson call you?”

  “Just after you talked to him, I guess. He wants to be sure there’s plenty of Bureau presence—which, now that I’m here, I totally get. They showed me the terrain, and it’s going to be tricky.”

  The kitchen door opened, and Gonzales poked his head out. “Looks like fresh activity in the house—a bunch of them ran upstairs. It’s now or never.”

  “Then I guess it’s now,” she said, and followed Gonzales inside. Once Jakes passed the threshold, she told everyone, “Agent Jakes will remain here. We don’t need a crowd out there.”

  The insult flashed across Jakes’s face, but he recovered quickly. “Of course, ma’am.”

  On the drive, she called Paulson and talked him through the plan. He shared her concern about the lack of natural cover, but he was eager to put an end to this. “It has to be done quickly,” he said. “No standoffs. Hit them hard. I don’t need a Waco on my watch.”

  “Agreed,” she said, and glanced at Gonzales in the seat beside her, who was thumbing through messages on his phone. She lowered her voice. “Sir, why did you send Owen Jakes?”

  “Is he making trouble?”

  “No, it was just a surprise. It would’ve been nice to know beforehand.”

  Silence, then: “He’d gotten in touch about some other matters, and so I told him he’d be more useful in South Dakota.”

  “He said you called him.”

  “He would, wouldn’t he?” Paulson said, then sighed. “You’re right, I should have informed you.”

  She appreciated the apology. “Thank you, sir.”

  “Now let’s do what we do best.”

  Their approach was concealed by a blue barn flaking paint, and they joined another Suburban parked behind it. Gonzales introduced her to the local sheriff, Carl Donegal, who adjusted his flat cap and led them through the barn, past a foldout table where a technician kept check on two monitors, and on to an open window on the other side, which looked across a wide soybean field toward the house.

  “Where’s that old boy?” Donegal asked as he handed her a pair of binoculars.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Jakes. He said he was coming back.”

  “He’s not,” Rachel said, staring across the field. Two lights were on in the second floor of the farmhouse, but she couldn’t make anything out. “Think he’s a good old boy?”

  “He’s from Kentucky. Least that’s what he told me.”

  “Put him out of your mind.” She handed back the binoculars and headed to the table with the monitors. On display was infrared footage from cameras attached to two SWAT members’ helmets. From their positions, lying among the plants in the deep darkness, she saw two rocking chairs on the porch, which struck her as undeniably quaint. To Gonzales, she said, “Is everyone in place?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Okay, then.” She checked her watch. “It’s one thirty-six, and we’re a go.”

  24

  KEVIN HAD been sitting at the kitchen table with Michael and Keira, drinking beer, and in the quiet of the house the sound of the phone on the wall was deafening. Keira said, “Who has that number?”

  “Just us,” said Michael.

  Others entered—two young women, and Ben. Everyone stared at the phone.

  “Someone should get it,” said Keira, rising. “It could only be one of us.”

  “Or a telemarketer,” Kevin suggested. “In which case I wouldn’t—”

  But by then Ben had stepped forward and snatched it.

  He put it to his ear and said nothing. From the table, Kevin heard the tinny sound of a woman’s voice, but not the words. Ben’s expression changed. He said, “Where are you?” Then he listened, and as the tinny sound continued, worry took over his face, and the beginnings of anger. Nausea was already sinking into Kevin’s stomach when Ben turned and settled his gaze on him. That was when he knew. He stood slowly, so as not to attract attention, but it made no difference. Ben shot out a finger and said, “Don’t let him leave!”

  Confused, Michael and Keira converged on Kevin as Ben spoke quietly into the phone. Then he hung up and said, “Please escort Mr. Moore up to my room.”

  But these people hadn’t known Ben long, and when they joined the Massive Brigade it was Martin they had looked up to. They needed more. “Why?” asked Michael.

  Ben sighed and shook his head. “Because he’s a fucking federal agent.”

  That was enough for them. Kevin felt hands on his shoulders and arms, and they pushed him along. He felt a fist strike the back of his head, another his lower back—that one hurt. There were five people shoving him up the stairs, and another four in the living room, watching, ha
tred in their faces. As Kevin reached the second floor he heard Ben say, “Pack up your shit, everyone. We’re getting the fuck out of here.”

  But by then, Kevin knew, it was too late for them. He just didn’t know if it was too late for him as well.

  When they pushed him into Benjamin’s room, he stumbled and fell to the floor, and that seemed to light a spark in his captors. Someone—he didn’t know who—kicked him in the ribs. Then another kick struck his kidney. He instinctively curled up into a fetal position as the blows fell on him. Fucking traitor! House nigger! Motherfucker! It went on until Benjamin arrived and said, “Enough, okay? Leave him.”

  As they withdrew, Kevin tasted blood. Ben’s Springfield semiautomatic hung from his fist as he looked down at Kevin.

  “Leave me with him. Go pack.”

  Again, they hesitated, watching as Benjamin walked up to Kevin, who had gotten to his knees. He threw a hard fist. Knuckles like four stones hit Kevin’s temple and threw him back onto the floor. Benjamin turned around, gave everyone a nod, urging them out, then shut the door in their faces.

  Kevin’s head throbbed as he pushed himself up again. There was blood on the floor, but he didn’t know which part of his body it had come from. Ben dragged his wooden chair across the room and set it in front of Kevin. He sat down, knees open. He said, “What the fuck is your problem?”

  “You really believe her?” Kevin asked.

  Benjamin just watched him.

  “She disappears, just like that, then calls in order to turn me in? Why didn’t she do it while she was here?” He pressed his fingers into his forehead, fighting the urge to puke. “Looks to me like she was trying to throw the scent off of herself.”

  “Where’s my phone?” Benjamin asked.

  “How the hell should I know?”

  Benjamin got up and went to the shelf, where he took down the zip-lock bag with the two parts of the Nokia. He held the bag up to the light, then set it down. He said, “She told me about this. She told me about the phone and the bag and the battery. I never showed it to her. She never saw it until she saw you outside with it.”

  “That’s a stretch,” Kevin said, though he knew it wasn’t. Ingrid had told Benjamin just enough to prove her story. Christ, he was stupid. He’d entirely misjudged Ingrid Parker. For the gift of empathy he’d been given a death certificate.

  Benjamin returned to the chair and spoke quietly. “Now that that’s out of the way, tell me who. FBI, right? Who’s running you? That Rachel Proulx woman?”

  Kevin didn’t answer.

  “Christ,” Benjamin said, shaking his head. “Just tell me what the plan is, okay? Let’s not end this with me putting a bullet in your head.”

  Though he didn’t want to, Kevin said, “You’re going to put a bullet in my head anyway.”

  Benjamin stared, as if offended by the notion; then he smiled. “Man, you’ve really got it all wrong, don’t you? We’re on the same side.”

  “What?”

  “Or, we used to be.”

  The lights went out suddenly, and in the darkness they heard the boom of a collision somewhere downstairs. Then the crack crack of gunfire. “Motherfucker!” Benjamin shouted as he shot to his feet, just visible in the moonlight, the Springfield up by his shoulder, and headed for the door. Before opening it, he turned back to Kevin and said, “This is your fault.” Then he ripped open the door and ran out.

  Confused, Kevin did the only thing he could think of as screams and gunfire sounded throughout the house. He lay facedown on the old, musty carpet and spread his arms out straight. And waited.

  25

  ON THE other side of the soybean field, the smell of dust in her nostrils, she watched the two monitors that lit up the foul-smelling barn. She watched the silent approach in infrared, soft footsteps up to the doors and windows, the placing of small charges, the 3-2-1 countdown, and then chaos.

  Flashes of people, bright lights, shouts, and commands.

  Screams.

  Women, men.

  Shouted commands.

  Furniture crashing.

  The barrels of those M-4s swinging left, right, up, down.

  Then a single shot—crack.

  More screaming.

  A voice: “That’s a grenade!”

  Crack, crack, crack.

  Screams. Stairs—up up up …

  “Where is he?”

  “Gun!”

  Crack, crack, crack, crack.

  “Down, down, down!”

  “It’s him!”

  Crack, crack, crack, crack, crack, crack, crack.

  Silence. Distant wailing.

  Rachel looked at Commander Gonzales, who was breathing heavily, his finger glued to the communicator in his ear. “What the hell just happened?” she demanded.

  But he was only listening to his men. “It’s clear now,” he finally told her. “Two survivors. Benjamin Mittag—he didn’t make it.” His face was so pale. “It’s over.”

  “What the fuck was that?” she shouted at Gonzales, who raised his hands, turning away.

  Sheriff Donegal, just behind her, said, “They was just following your orders.”

  “What?”

  “What that old boy told them.”

  She turned on Donegal, saw that he’d popped a cigarette in his mouth and was trying without success to get a flame from his lighter; his hand shook too much. “What did Jakes say?”

  He eyeballed her a moment, then took the unlit cigarette out of his mouth. “Gave them a pep talk. Reminded everyone that these people had killed congressfolk. Enough of due process, right? Intel said the house was wired for explosives—don’t take no chances.”

  Rachel didn’t say another word to the sheriff, and Gonzales had already headed out across the field to join his men. She wasn’t in the mood to look at what they’d done. Not yet. She told Young to take her back to base. She wasn’t going to call ahead, wasn’t going to give him a chance to run or weave some elaborate lie. Which was why, when she burst in and stood over him, she found Jakes sitting in the kitchen, talking on his phone to Paulson.

  “Just a sec,” he whispered to her, and raised a finger for patience.

  That was when it took her over. The way he raised his index finger, condescending, then turned in the chair so that he could have a little privacy. Everything stopped, yet at the same time it moved too quickly. There, on the table, was the map covered in pencil markings, and the five sturdy laptops. And right in front of her was the soft white bald spot on the back of his head. She picked up the closest computer. She took aim.

  THE AGE OF NO

  EIGHT MONTHS LATER

  TUESDAY, MARCH 13, TO TUESDAY, MARCH 20, 2018

  1

  LATELY, RACHEL had been snapping awake early, a tickle in her unconscious alerting her to … to what? Her cramped studio was no different. No intruders. No sign of attempted entry. Her alarm system hummed along without warning. Yet, often before four, she’d wake in a sweat. She’d sit on the edge of the bed, massaging the Y-shaped scar that had been branded onto her aching thigh, searching for the answer to an urgent question she couldn’t even put into words.

  Was it a question, though? Probably not. It was a statement, or a phrase—some medical term. Whatever doctors said to mean mild, ever-present paranoia. The kind of perpetual disquiet that chopped her nightly sleep into unsatisfactory fragments. There was something familiar about this disquiet, an unsettled state of being that she had known so well when she and Gregg were still married. But Gregg was long gone, and this feeling was borne of other things.

  Next came 40 mg of dihydrocodeine washed down with a bottle of Poland Spring. Then she pulled the dime-store cane from under her bed and used it to reach the bathroom. This was all she allowed herself; after that first hour of assistance she slipped the cane back into its place and lived the rest of the day as if she’d never broken down and bought one.

  On these early days, when it was still too dark to see Elliott Bay from her window, she’d b
ring a coffee to her desk, open her laptop, and study the old files, perusing interviews and refreshing her memory with newspaper articles and influential blog posts from last year. The breathless accounts of terrified civilians, the stuffed-shirt punditry, the follow-up investigative reports that led to industrial wastelands and college campuses that had been the breeding ground for the Massive Brigade. She had a folder of posts from The Propaganda Ministry that she’d collected before the site was shut down on July 5. Another folder was devoted to videos and opinion pieces by Sam Schumer, most of them hyperbolic rants with wordy headlines, like THE MASSIVE brigade IS COMMUNISM’S FINAL ASSAULT ON THE AMERICAN DREAM. Then the later ones—his mysterious inside line on Bishop’s murder, and afterward: LEAD AGENT ON MASSIVE INVESTIGATION RESIGNS AFTER BREAKDOWN.

  Resigned? Stripped of badge and service weapon. Told by Paulson to get the fuck out of his office.

  She’d done it to herself, of course. She’d grabbed that computer and smashed Owen Jakes right on his skull. Then, taken over by a sense of purpose that she hadn’t felt in a long while, she’d gone back out to the Suburban and told Agent Young to take her to the Massive safe house, which had in the space of minutes become a mausoleum. OSWALD, aka Kevin Moore, was in the back of an ambulance, his shoulder bandaged where a stray bullet had found him on the floor of an upstairs bedroom. She wanted to know everything, but the drugs had made him groggy and wired at the same time, dragging him from dumb silence to manic bursts.

  Yes, Bishop had been killed by a sniper; no, he didn’t know who was behind it.

  Who was the woman who’d been with them outside Lebanon? Ingrid Parker. Rachel pressed—is she in the house, one of the dead? He shook his head, and told her that Ingrid walked off before they ever got to Watertown.

  What were they doing in Lebanon? Fighting. Bishop and Mittag, fighting.

  Why? A shake of the head.

  Who in the Brigade was communicating with Sam Schumer? Kevin had no idea what she was talking about, and though she wanted to press further she was interrupted by Agent Young. “Ma’am, this way, please.”