The Middleman

by Olen Steinhauer

  “Neighbors?”

  “There’s a nice couple up the road. We share recipes.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No, Agent Proulx. I’m not.”

  “So you’re not a hermit.”

  He shrugged, not caring what she thought of him. “Want to come inside?”

  He’d gained some weight since they’d spoken in Watertown. Back then, he’d had the thin and wiry frame of someone who’d spent weeks on the road, and when he’d answered her questions in the ambulance he’d spoken in short, clipped phrases. He’d been in shock, of course, but his answers had been lucid and detailed, with a manic undercurrent, as if he hadn’t quite come down from the contact high you get from touching the Revolution. Since then he’d gone cold turkey, and eight months later his body was returning to its equilibrium. Perhaps to replace that high, he’d taken up smoking, and his little cabin in the woods reeked of the Marlboro Golds he took from a carton marked with a persuasive color photo of open-heart surgery. He offered her one, but she declined.

  They sat in his kitchen and drank bitter tea he prepared from Lipton bags. He was, he told her, on extended leave.

  “You mean you’re out of the Bureau?” she asked.

  “My paperwork’s still in order.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I’m still meditating on it.”

  It was an answer of sorts. “Still in touch with Janet Fordham?”

  “Keeping my distance.” He grinned. “The news these days doesn’t help. The idea that very soon the whole world will have access to a report with you in it is a little disconcerting.”

  “Your name will be redacted.”

  “But I’ll be a subject of speculation. Pressure will be applied. Someone along the way will slip up, or more likely leak, and then there’ll be a caravan of television vans leading up to this place. I’ll probably have to leave the country,” he said, nodding toward the back of the cabin. “Got my passport and a change of clothes all ready.”

  “Aren’t you a ray of sunshine,” she said.

  He looked at her a moment, frowning, as if she’d said something inappropriate. Then he took a drag. “The rules of conduct have been broken for a long time. You’ve been in town, right?”

  “The marchers.”

  “Three days straight. Just to force the government to release a single FBI report a few days sooner than planned. You’d think there’d been a massacre or something. Nine people were killed in Watertown. You know how many people were killed on the streets of Chicago last week? I don’t see anyone marching for them.”

  “The report,” she said. “Have you seen it?”

  He shook his head. “I told them what I knew, then I got the hell out of there. Is it damning?”

  “I wasn’t on the distribution list.”

  He raised a brow, curious.

  “I wasn’t in a position to argue the point.”

  A look of understanding passed across his face. Though he’d been lying in an ambulance when she attacked Jakes, he had to know about the incident. He said, “Well, we’ll both be able to read it soon enough. PDF download.”

  She looked at the brown liquid in her cup, muddy at the bottom.

  “So?” he said. “What’s this about?”

  “Can’t I make a nostalgic visit?”

  He smiled. “You know what I remember about you? That short time we sat together in the ambulance, talking through everything, you had your phone in your hand. Every couple of minutes your eyes would move over to it, checking for messages. You’d even pick it up and look at it while I was speaking. It was pretty rude.”

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “You’ve been here a half hour now, and you haven’t taken it out once.”

  “I’m trying to break my addictions.”

  “No, you’re not. People like you never do.”

  She wanted to ask what that meant, people like her, but more important she wanted to know why he didn’t seem surprised by her appearance. He showed no worry that she was sitting in his cabin, the place he’d come to hide away—from many things, but the Bureau in particular. Or was he simply a terrific actor who, on the inside, was frantically running through his options, all the gradations of fight-or-flight?

  He got up and threw the dregs of his tea into the sink, then refilled the electric kettle and switched it on; it hummed. He turned to look down at her, hands behind himself against the edge of the counter. “So? Why don’t you tell me, Rachel. Tell me what you’ve come here to find out.”

  I’m here because the Bureau is trying to kill me, she wanted to say, but she didn’t know Kevin Moore, not really, and she didn’t know where he stood in this. She didn’t know where anyone stood.

  “Everything,” she told him. “I’ve come to find out everything.”

  He said nothing, just stared at her, the gears in his head working away. What was he thinking? Had he already sent a signal to Johnson and Vale while she wasn’t looking? Maybe he’d sent it from the woods, after he’d seen her but before he’d said “Hey.” Or was he merely what he seemed to be, a mildly disillusioned undercover agent who wanted to be left alone?

  He straightened and took her teacup away, poured it into the sink, opened a cabinet, and brought out a bottle of Knob Creek bourbon. He put a splash into her cup and poured more for himself. He brought the drinks to the table and sat across from her again. He had made up his mind.

  “Thank you,” she said, then took a sip; the taste of smoke filled her mouth.

  10

  UNLIKE THE Kevin Moore she’d met in Watertown, this one was matter-of-fact, telling her without embellishment of his departure from San Francisco, his entry into the underground of the Massive Brigade, and the arrival of Benjamin Mittag. The first time she noticed a crack in his serene exterior was when he reached Key Biscayne and looked down the scope of his M-40 and made the decision that, he could admit, he would never be able to defend to himself, much less to a court of law.

  “You would’ve lost everything if you hadn’t,” she reassured him. “There was no other choice.”

  “There’s always another choice,” he said, then sipped his drink. “You just have to know how to find it.”

  He brushed over his brief respite in sultry Louisiana, then focused on the second cross-country drive with Mittag. “It was clear by then that there was tension at the top. Ben wanted to run it his way—that was why he’d collected me and the others, the people who knew how to kill. Martin saw it differently. I didn’t really understand until I saw them arguing in Lebanon, and after.”

  “You got in touch with Janet Fordham before Lebanon, right? From a gas station.”

  “In Marshall, Texas. Yeah.”

  “And then in Lebanon you saw Bishop and a woman named Ingrid Parker.”

  He said nothing, just stared, and she realized he was holding back. Why? She thought back over everything she knew about Ingrid, which wasn’t much—the slanted descriptions her husband had given, the suspicious Tor-encrypted conversation from work and subsequent flight, appearing next to Bishop in Kansas before disappearing again. And Johnson and Vale—It would be really helpful if we could find her.

  Rachel said, “Tell me about Ingrid.”

  He hesitated, then rocked his head. “Not much to tell. She was traveling with Bishop, and she was there when he was killed. It was hard on her. She was pregnant. We drove off together.”

  It was starting to come back to her, the interview eight months ago in the back of that ambulance. “But she didn’t make it to Watertown, correct?”

  “We dropped her off somewhere in Nebraska. St. Paul. Left her at a gas station. It was too much for her.”

  She leaned back and crossed her arms over her stomach. He was very convincing, which must have served him so well, even as he followed through on Mittag’s orders and shot a congresswoman in Florida, carefully shifting his sights in order to maim but not kill. Briefly, she closed her eyes and remembered Agent You
ng driving her to the airport, and her reading the emails that were flying in the wake of nine deaths. She said, “That night in Watertown, when they were patching you up, I got a preliminary inventory from the house. Know what they found in the upstairs bathroom?”

  “I do not.”

  “A bottle of prenatal vitamins.” He didn’t answer, so she pushed further. “None of the women in that house were pregnant.”

  “Of course not,” Kevin said dryly, “because they were dead.”

  She watched as he took another sip of whiskey and placed his cup on the table.

  “She’s gone now,” Rachel said. “No one’s going to find her. So, please. Just tell me the real story. Okay? There’s more riding on this than Ingrid Parker’s safety.” He didn’t seem moved, so she said, “I’m not the only one wondering what happened to her.”

  He shook his head, then surprised her by saying, “You guys don’t give up, do you?”

  “What?”

  “I already told him.”

  “Told who what?”

  “That I don’t know where she is.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He sighed, and from the way he spoke it was clear he wasn’t buying her ignorance. “Ingrid Parker got in over her head. Those others, the kids—they’re young, their time with the Brigade is a blip on their résumés. It’s street cred. Otherwise, it makes no difference. But by now Ingrid’s made a life with her daughter, and the last thing she needs is you or me coming in to fuck it up.”

  Rachel took a moment to absorb this, then said, “Who already asked about her?”

  Instead of answering, he said, “Why do you care about Ingrid?”

  Why, indeed? Because Johnson and Vale cared about her, that was why. “I’d like to speak to her.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I never talked to anyone who really knew Martin Bishop. You didn’t spend time with him. Ben Mittag is dead. People only talked to Bishop for minutes at a time. They worshipped him, but no one actually knew him.”

  “And you think she knew him?”

  “Why else would he bring her along to Kansas to meet with you and Mittag?”

  Kevin looked into his cup and, seeing that it was empty, pushed it, scratching, to the center of the table.

  Again, Rachel said, “Who already asked about her?”

  Kevin nodded at the window, to the trees beyond. “A week ago, Owen Jakes comes right up that muddy road with a couple of suits, wanting to know where she is.”

  “He came personally?”

  Kevin looked at her, not bothering to answer.

  “Why does he care about Ingrid Parker?” Rachel asked.

  “Same reason you do, I suspect.”

  “Is that what he said? That Ingrid knew the most about Bishop?”

  Kevin got up and took the Knob Creek from the counter, then turned around, the bottle in both hands, and said, “They were running through the report, prepping it for dissemination. Crossing their t’s and dotting their i’s. He knew there would be questions about her, since her husband’s publishing stories about her. So what could I add? I told him to look at my debrief, because I already told them everything I knew.”

  “And that was it?” she asked. “He came out to the middle of nowhere for that?”

  Kevin returned to the table with the whiskey bottle and sat down. “We talked a few hours, Jakes and me. Right here. The two suits he’d brought sat in the living room over there, reading magazines. They were cool customers.” Kevin aimed the bottle at her. “We talked about you, too.”

  “Me?”

  “He told me about your breakdown. I knew what had happened, of course, but he said it was more than just anger. The Bureau shrink worried you were unstable. Maybe bipolar.”

  “Well, my therapist never mentioned that to me,” Rachel said, a queasiness growing in her stomach.

  “He asked how you were when you interviewed me that night. How you took my words. Did you seem upset by how things had gone down? Suspicious? Did you believe me?” Kevin shrugged. “I told him I didn’t know what was in your head. I told him you were professional.”

  “Thanks,” she said, but it came out as a whisper because she didn’t have much air. Bipolar? Christ, whatever was happening to her had been going on for weeks.

  Kevin didn’t seem to notice. “He wanted to know if you had spoken to Ingrid Parker. I told him I seriously doubted it.”

  Rachel stared for what felt like a long time, and she knew that her gaze was uncomfortable for him, though he showed no sign. He, too, was professional, even now.

  She said, “The suits who came with Jakes. You remember their names?”

  The question seemed to confuse him. He thought a moment. “The man … Lyle Johnson. And the woman—”

  “Sarah Vale,” she said.

  Just as she often woke to an anxiety of indeterminate origin, Rachel had fled Seattle plagued by a fear that hadn’t come into focus. Of death, yes, but she hadn’t quite swallowed the idea that her employer was trying to kill her. It was just too much. Now, the chain was undeniable: a contract killer, Vale, Johnson, and Owen Jakes, and she was the through-line connecting them. The terror that she had wrestled with for two days had gotten to its feet, shaken itself off, and raised two sturdy fists.

  Her feelings must have been all over her face, for Kevin uncorked the Knob Creek and splashed plenty more in both their cups.

  11

  RACHEL COULDN’T help but remember Janet Fordham’s critique of Kevin Moore, that he cared too much. There had been that woman in New Orleans he’d risked his life to protect—she wondered if he was doing that now with Ingrid Parker. She said, “When you and Mittag went to Kansas to meet Bishop, were you afraid?”

  “I was fucking terrified.”

  “But you’d proven yourself to them. You’d proven yourself better than nearly anyone else.”

  Kevin considered this as he lifted his cup. Then, reconsidering, he set the cup down. “You’ve worked undercover?”

  “A little.”

  “Then you know. From the moment you go under, the fear starts, and it never leaves. Not even after you get out.” He finally took a sip of whiskey. “It’s here, now, in this room.”

  She knew what he meant; she knew fear better than he could imagine. She said, “And Ingrid was there, in Lebanon.”

  He nodded. “I’d never met her before, never heard of her. But Ben had. He said, ‘So that’s her. The bitch who’s been fucking with his head.’” Kevin tilted his head. “You should know that I never told them this.”

  Rachel frowned. “The Bureau?”

  “She wasn’t their business.”

  “Then why are you telling me now?”

  He looked her straight in the eyes for five full seconds. A thin smile. “Because I don’t think you’re bipolar.”

  “Thank you,” Rachel said. It was one of the stranger compliments she had received, but she took it, and by accepting it she felt as if she and he had become closer, that they were beginning to build a little room of shared secrets. She felt an urge to push it further, to deepen their connection by telling him what had happened in Seattle, but she didn’t know how far he was willing to go. Would that ever-present fear raise its head again and convince him to report her to Jakes, if only to save his own skin? Her life was too valuable a thing to risk on the unknown.

  She thought back again to the interview she’d conducted with him in the ambulance, when—apparently—she wouldn’t let her phone be. “You told me that Bishop went directly at Mittag. That he was angry.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you couldn’t hear what they were saying because you were too far away.”

  “And it was windy.”

  “Right. Was that the truth?”

  This time he stared at her longer, blinking. Maybe now, she thought, was the time to tell him about Seattle. Maybe he was waiting for her to offer up something in return, and as he stared he was making his own risk assessment, d
eciding whether or not to stonewall her until she left. Then he said, “It was a partial truth.”

  “How so?”

  “Because Ingrid took part in their argument.”

  She inhaled deeply. “I can see why you skipped that.”

  “Do you?”

  She hesitated to say it aloud, but: “If Ingrid was important enough to be an equal in that argument, then that means the Brigade hasn’t been wiped out.” He didn’t bother replying to that, so she went on. “Which may be why they’re looking for her.”

  “But they’re wrong,” he said.

  She thought on this, her mind inevitably drawn back to the image of Owen Jakes sitting in this crummy little cabin, quizzing Kevin. “But if you never told the Bureau these things about Ingrid, then why is Jakes looking for her? Why doesn’t he think of her as just another follower who’s vanished?”

  He closed his eyes, then opened them. “That, Rachel, is a question I don’t have an answer for. They certainly never heard it from me, and I check this place twice a week—no one’s listening to us now.”

  Of course he’d taken precautions. That’s the kind of person Kevin Moore still was, even out here. She sipped her whiskey and decided to let go of the enigma of Owen Jakes for the moment. “The pickup truck. The one in the field. It didn’t follow you?”

  He shook his head. “Didn’t see it again. Ben floored it, heading west and then north, but he stuck to country roads. The highway was a no-go.”

  “And what did Ben and Ingrid think had happened?”

  “They didn’t know what to think. Not at first. It was pretty emotional. Ben was scared, and then angry—all over the place. Ingrid was crying. But after a few hours they started processing it all. Ben was the first—it was clear to him that the Bureau had done it. One safe house had been closed down, and while we were driving we heard about the second bust in Utah. He said the Bureau was closing in and wiping us all out.”

  She thought back to what she’d said to Johnson and Vale—the unthinkable alternative, that the Bureau had killed Bishop. “Did that strike you as a possibility?”

  “I considered it,” he said after a moment. “When I called Janet the day before, I didn’t know where we were headed, and I didn’t think anyone would be able to track me. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe they had gotten access to a satellite and tracked us from Marshall, all the way to Lebanon.”