The Middleman

by Olen Steinhauer

  He’d written up a bare-bones Hushmail report for Rachel, giving her an account of Vivas’s eye-opening yet unhelpful story of a secret CIA department, since disbanded, that had among its employees one Milo Weaver. Now working for the United Nations, Weaver had been in Bilbao when Martin Bishop appeared, still in shock from Berlin. “This Milo Weaver—he’s also known as James Sullivan?”

  “Just so.” Vivas was amiable enough, once Kevin had agreed to leave.

  “And why was he funding Bishop?”

  A shrug. “That, my friend, you will have to ask him.”

  “I’d like to. Where can I meet him?”

  Vivas laughed, patted Kevin on the shoulder, and pointed him to his gate.

  On Monday morning, as he waited for Elijah to drive him to the airport, Kevin drank hot tea with Mattie in the living room. The television was on mute, but he noticed BBC News’s bright red BREAKING NEWS chyron, and the words: FBI SCANDAL and OFFICIAL IMPLICATED. He set down his tea. “You mind if I turn that up, Mattie?”

  What he heard stunned him. Sam Schumer, a right-wing commentator he’d never paid much attention to, had broken their story last night. BBC admitted that it was a long, detailed piece—as yet uncorroborated—but the essential details were that an FBI official named Owen Jakes was responsible for multiple outrages: the 2009 Berlin explosion blamed on the Kommando Rosa Luxemburg, the assassinations of three members of Congress and attempted murder of a fourth, and the murders of Martin Bishop and Benjamin Mittag. As if that weren’t enough, there was an angle Kevin hadn’t even considered: that Owen Jakes had been running Mittag as his own agent. The FBI, as yet, had released no statement. “As we said before, this story is developing and has not been confirmed, but it is causing enormous uproar in the United States at the moment.”

  Mattie saw the look on his face. “You all right, baby?”

  On the drive to Heathrow, Elijah talked constantly, but Kevin heard little of it. He was trying to put together the knowns and unknowns. By then he’d watched Schumer’s segment and read the accompanying article on his site, which went on and on, with some notable omissions. Milo Weaver wasn’t mentioned; nor was Alexandra Primakov. Kevin wasn’t named either. The story answered so much while leaving other questions entirely unasked. Though it was out now, he felt increasingly uneasy. This couldn’t be the end of it. It was too explosive to be over.

  The unease stuck with him the whole flight, and when the woman in the neighboring window seat struck up a conversation he was ready for a diversion. Her name was Linda, she told him, and she was an investment banker coming back from a business trip. He was grateful that she didn’t ask his line of business. She talked about the ways in which London had changed over the years, and he found himself drawn into her observations until, about an hour into the flight, she said, “How about the news, huh?”

  “What?”

  “The FBI. Christ.”

  It turned out she’d also watched Schumer’s report, and she was working on theories to find the connective tissue between the disparate facts. “Owen Jakes must have thought he had it all. He’d gotten Ben Mittag right next to Bishop as the Massive Brigade grew.”

  Kevin agreed. Mittag had been Jakes’s Kevin, his inside man. Jakes had been able to keep an eye on Bishop from the early days, but how was he supposed to know, back in 2009, what the Massive Brigade would become? “Eventually,” he told Linda, “the Brigade had become so big that no one could get rid of it.”

  As if this question had just come to her, Linda said, “But why didn’t Jakes get rid of Bishop earlier? That would’ve taken care of everything.”

  “Maybe he was afraid Bishop would reveal what he’d done in Berlin. Maybe that was Bishop’s protection.”

  “I mean kill him,” Linda said. “He did it last summer. Why not eight years ago?”

  She seemed very interested in how he might answer that, but to answer that he would have to delve into the mystery of Bishop’s guardian angel, Milo Weaver, who had not been part of any of the reporting so far. So he shrugged. “I suppose they’ll have to put that question to Owen Jakes.”

  Linda looked back at him, eyes narrowed, and nodded.

  When she left for the bathroom, he closed his eyes and remembered Mittag’s wild anger after Bishop had been shot by that sharpshooter in that wheat field. Though he’d certainly reported Bishop’s location back to Jakes, it seemed clear to Kevin that Ben hadn’t expected it to end in murder. It didn’t matter that he’d always worked at cross-purposes to Bishop; they’d spent years together. So what did Ben’s next conversation with Jakes sound like? I’m going to blow this wide open. Yes, that’s how Benjamin Mittag would have reacted in the heat of his anger. Hours later, a SWAT team had shot him dead.

  “Excuse me,” Linda said.

  Kevin got up, and as she moved back into her seat he noticed the phone sticking out of her purse. “Is that a satellite phone?” he asked.

  She looked confused at first, then realized what he was talking about. A cynical smile. “Bankers aren’t allowed eight hours off the grid.”

  Linda laid off the Massive Brigade talk, and in fact seemed to sink into a quiet sort of depression. He wasn’t sure if he’d said the wrong thing, but at least he could catch a couple of hours’ sleep.

  When he woke, they were breaking through the cloud cover above Long Island, and Linda had returned to her cheery self. She asked where he was heading, and he realized he didn’t know. He was going to have to find Rachel, but now that the story had broken he no longer felt he was in a rush. “Hotel,” he said.

  “Need a ride into town?”

  He considered it, but he didn’t know how things would go for him after landing. Would the Bureau be waiting? A confrontation at passport control? He didn’t want to drag her into it. “I’ve got a car already,” he lied.

  They touched down, and once they’d taxied to the gate he made space for Linda to exit first. He watched as she navigated the narrow space between the seats. The flight attendants gave them forced smiles as they passed, and he thanked them for … for what, exactly, he didn’t know. There was a lot he didn’t know, but that was nothing new. He remembered looking down Benjamin Mittag’s gun barrel in that dilapidated farmhouse, Mittag accusing him of working for the Feds, and having no idea what would come next. Sometimes there was virtue in ignorance.

  As he walked up the jet bridge, he saw Linda hurry past other passengers and take a right toward immigration control. She glanced back to meet his eye before disappearing, but instead of a smile of farewell she gave him a cold look, as if … what? Making sure he was still there? Then she was gone, and his scalp tingled. A moment of imprecise terror.

  He slowed. An old woman grazed his arm as she passed, and he stepped to the side to let the other passengers move on. He looked back toward the plane, the exhausted faces of passengers heading toward him, oblivious. No, he couldn’t go back there. So he again joined the stream of travelers, turned the corner, and found, on the right side, Linda standing with a sad smile on her face. Behind her, two broad-chested men—one white, one black—stood at attention. “Kevin,” Linda said. “Let’s not make a scene, okay?”

  “Sure.” As he followed her, the men walked on either side of him, their shoulders brushing against his.

  There was a door with no handle in the white wall, and as the rest of the passengers passed, some glancing curiously at him, Linda knocked on the door and someone on the other side opened it. They entered a dim corridor that brightened at the next turn, then walked him into a windowless cell—table, chair.

  “Pockets, please,” said Linda.

  On the table, he laid his wallet, house keys, passport, cigarettes, and phone.

  “Freddy,” she said, and the black Fed proceeded to pat him down.

  “What’s the deal?” Kevin asked her.

  “Just want to have a conversation.”

  “I thought we did that already.”

  “I’ve got questions.”

  F
reddy finished up and stepped back. When Linda nodded, Kevin sat in the chair, hands on the table. “Is it you asking these questions, or is it Owen Jakes?”

  She blinked at the mention of that name. Even Freddy looked concerned. Something was up.

  Linda said, “Last night, Owen Jakes made himself a nice hot bath in his apartment, then slit his own wrists.” Kevin’s emotions must have been apparent in his face, because she leaned closer, elbows against the table, and said, “It’s all over the news.”

  “I’ve been on a plane the last eight hours,” he said, then remembered the satellite phone she’d had with her in the bathroom. He cocked his head and looked right back into her eyes. “No wonder you went quiet, Linda. You must have been pretty freaked out.”

  15

  IT HAD been a long time since she’d entered the Hoover Building. Crossing the threshold, she was faced with the wide lobby that smelled of dust. And there were the guards, one of whom—gray hair, saggy cheeks—she remembered from her old life, though he didn’t recognize her as she went through the metal detector and placed her ID on the scanner to unlock the turnstile. Instead of a green light, she got a red one, and the guard came over, frowning.

  “Hi, Nathan,” she said, and he did a double take, but it still wasn’t coming to him.

  “Nathan,” said another guard, and he looked back. “Four-one-seven.”

  Nathan’s expression hardened as he reached for the pistol on his hip. Rachel raised her hands, smiling, thinking, Do people get shot for simply entering buildings? Then she remembered Jerome Brown. “I’m Special Agent Rachel Proulx,” she said, quietly but clearly. “I’m at the Seattle office now, but I used to come in here every day.”

  Nathan’s pistol was trained on her as the other guards came to join him. He said, “I don’t care who you were, Rachel. I just care who you are now. Please lay on the ground, facedown, arms spread.”

  As she got down on her knees, she said, “I’m not armed,” but no one cared. She wondered if she’d made a brutal miscalculation.

  The feeling hadn’t dissipated ten minutes later when she was sitting in a holding room in the basement level, where there was a single chair but no table. She’d been stripped of her phone and purse. The two-way mirror was as wide as she was tall, the better to let a whole crowd of gawkers get a good look. To the empty room, she said, “I’m here to talk to Assistant Director Mark Paulson.”

  The room did not answer.

  She still hadn’t caught up on her sleep, and was starting to wonder if she ever would. After meeting with Schumer she’d returned to Waldorf, planning to get five or six hours, but instead found Gregg sitting alone in an empty house, drinking. “Where are Ingrid and Clare?” she’d asked.

  When he raised his glass of vodka she saw from his wavering arm that he’d been at it a while. “Vanished.”

  “What?”

  He finished the glass and slammed it on the coffee table. “The fucking bitch. What did she say to her?”

  “Focus, Gregg. What are you talking about?”

  A fresh wave of anger gave him enough energy to stand up and point an accusing finger at her. “You. You brought her. Cunt.”

  He’d reached a state of fury that she’d once been familiar with, and even though it had been years she knew that these things didn’t age well. So she left him to his misery and went to the kitchen, where she saw the note on the counter. It was from Mackenzie. She told him she was leaving him. She told him not to call. Then the back of Rachel’s head exploded in pain.

  Hours later, her skull was still tender from the punch he’d thrown after creeping up behind her. It was a sucker punch, because that was the kind of person Gregg Wills had always been.

  But she’d had worse pain in her life, his fist nothing compared to a .357 slug in the leg. In the kitchen she’d spun, arms raised, and thrust an elbow into his neck and jaw. As he gasped, she caught his right arm and pulled, then swung out a foot to trip him up. His legs danced in the air as he fell through the doorway and crashed into the dining table. He slid off and hit the floor, groaning, and she thought of the punches she’d taken, and the ones she knew he’d meted out to Mackenzie—for why else would she have left him like this? She thought of the girls she’d never known, the ones he must have brutalized in his teens and twenties, because men like him start young. She thought about those schoolgirls in Nigeria, who had been taken by an army of men like Gregg Wills, and who were still captive months later.

  Rachel gave him a swift, hard kick in the kidneys, then another one in the back of the head. And another.

  She came out of her memory, her fists tight, when the door opened. Nathan was standing there with a younger guard. He looked more relaxed, and so she released her fists, wishing away the anger. “Special Agent Proulx,” he said, “will you come with us?”

  She would.

  In the service elevator, he pressed number 6, and she leaned back against the wall to rest.

  Do not sleep, she told herself.

  No fear of that now.

  The elevator doors slid open, and she let Nathan put a hand on her elbow as he and his partner led her down the corridor, where federal agents she had never met gave her the eye. Paulson’s secretary was on the phone when they entered her office, saying, “She’s here.” Then she hung up and opened the door. Nathan and his partner brought her into Paulson’s bright, sterile office.

  “Rachel,” said Paulson, standing, a stiff smile on his face and hands on the back of his high, padded chair. “Sit, please.” As she took a seat, he waved the guards out as he sat down, too. “I think I can take care of myself, gentlemen.”

  Don’t be so sure, she thought, realizing that she hadn’t checked to see if Gregg was suffering from internal bleeding. When she’d left his house, he was still lying on the dining room floor, silent.

  Once they were alone, Paulson moved into his chair. “You heard about Jakes?” he asked.

  “This morning.”

  “Damn shame. I doubt his career would’ve recovered from this Schumer story, but taking your own life?” He shook his head. “That’s just giving up.”

  She almost contradicted him. Maybe he hadn’t given the order, and he didn’t know. Maybe Johnson and Vale had taken it upon themselves to stage a suicide to clean up the Bureau’s mess—were any Bureau employees that self-motivated? Jakes had been. Or at least he had appeared to be. “Yeah,” she said. “A shame.”

  He looked at the cluttered surface of his desk like a confused old man. “I don’t know how much of Schumer’s story I buy, but if even a little of it is true…”

  She didn’t bother finishing his sentence.

  He said, “The Germans are having a fit right now. They’ve given the legat office twenty-four hours to clear the fuck out.”

  “So I heard.”

  “And we picked up Kevin Moore at JFK.”

  She hadn’t gotten any messages from Kevin since his return to London from Spain, and she’d worried. “Is he all right?” she asked, sitting up.

  “Of course! Just debriefing him. But the question we’re asking ourselves is: Who gave the story to Schumer? We’re pretty sure he didn’t.”

  “And you know I can’t stand Sam Schumer.”

  “Right,” he said, smiling. “That’s right, Rachel. But it’s all so elaborate, isn’t it? It strains credulity. Jakes resurrected an applicant so he could secretly infiltrate the Massive Brigade?”

  “To keep an eye on Bishop, yes. He had to protect his Berlin secret.”

  “But why didn’t Jakes just get rid of Martin Bishop in 2009? Why waste time with Mittag, waiting until Bishop had become a national hero?”

  “Because he couldn’t. Bishop had a protector.”

  “A what? Schumer didn’t report that, did he?”

  She decided to ignore Paulson’s questions. “He called himself James Sullivan, but his real name is Milo Weaver. I’m told he works for the United Nations, but I can’t find his name attached to any departments. He
used to be one of ours.”

  “Bureau?”

  “CIA.”

  “Fuck,” Paulson said, spitting the word. “And what’s the UN doing mixed up in this?”

  She didn’t know, and wouldn’t until she’d met Weaver face-to-face. All she had to go on was what he’d said to her years ago, so she repeated it. “Fighting against the global power of corporations.”

  “You sound like you admire this Bolshevik.”

  She didn’t know how she felt about him.

  “Corporations, Rachel, are stability. You fuck with them, you fuck with our democratic way of life.”

  Until this moment, she hadn’t been sure she would take the next step, but there was something in his tone, something privileged that rubbed her the wrong way. Maybe she’d spent too much time with Ingrid, and that was why she couldn’t just let it go and take the comfortable route. She said, “The real question, Mark, is: Who benefited on July 4?”

  “Not the American people, that’s for damned sure.”

  Was he being purposefully thick? Perhaps. “The banks,” she said. “One of the biggest laundering investigations in US history was buried. And everyone was so distracted by the Massive Brigade that they didn’t even notice.”

  He pressed his hands together, as if in prayer. “What are you saying, Rachel?”

  “I’m saying it’s curious. The actions on July 4 killed or hospitalized the two people who were spearheading the investigation. What kind of leftist kills off politicians who are trying to break the banks? If Schumer’s report is right, and Jakes was giving orders all along, then July 4 makes sense. Mittag’s not crazy. He commits an act that he knows will ruin the Massive Brigade, and at the same time shield the financial sector from prosecution. He’s following orders. He’s a defender of your definition of stability.”

  She kept an eye on his face, the way he absorbed each little leap she was taking along the way. There, in his eye—a twitch. It could mean nothing, or it could mean everything, but the most important thing was that before coming to the Hoover she’d stopped at the Ballston-MU Metro Station and picked up Ashley’s report on Owen Jakes’s burner phone. Now, she took the three folded pages from her purse: times and numbers and coordinates. He noticed the pages but said nothing about them. Only: “Are you suggesting Mittag receive a Shield of Bravery? Maybe a Memorial Star for his mother?”