The Middleman_A Novel

by Olen Steinhauer

  She was on the road by four Monday morning, and by the time she crossed into Maryland the sun had risen to bleach derelict warehouses off the highway. She parked near her Arlington apartment, showered, then hurried to the office and conferred with her colleagues. It soon became apparent that, whether or not Bishop and Mittag had been warned about the police coming to pick them up, they had been prepared to disappear, for there was no ripple in the bureaucratic waters. One moment they were there, and then, after leaving Bill and Gina’s party, the two men simply vanished.

  But that wasn’t the worst of it. Reports were trickling in from field offices all over the country of dozens of young people also vanishing. Though they’d only had time to scratch the surface of these disappearances, the common thread became obvious as soon as they checked the young people’s online activity: They were all members of the Massive Brigade.

  3

  EIGHT YEARS ago, she’d thought, Someday this man will have crowds.

  He was no older than thirty, and genetics had blessed him with a permanent tan and a face too pretty to be wasted in academia. He stood at the podium under the fluorescent lights, speaking in a faintly quivering voice to the half-full auditorium. He was the next-to-last speaker of the day, smack in the middle of a five-day political colloquium hosted by the University of California, Berkeley. Given that Martin Bishop’s résumé consisted solely of community work in Austin, Texas, and a “research trip” to Germany, she was surprised he had been given space in the tight schedule, so she’d decided to check him out. The crowd was a mix of American political types: aging hippies, rumpled economists, poli-sci students sporting adolescent mustaches, and punk rockers with dyed and shaved heads who chewed gum, the smacking sound carried by the perfect acoustics of the room.

  Bishop said, “The classical checks on political malfeasance—the balance of government branches and free elections—have done little to fix a broken system. Politicians do as they like. So something else is needed. But what? Periodic votes of confidence? Annual independent investigations? What about actual threats to their person? You see where I’m going here. I’m looking for ways to instill fear in our representatives, because American democracy is built on the most basic of human motivators: self-preservation.”

  Only one audience member, sitting three seats in front of her, seemed out of place: a fortysomething in suit and tie, alternately listening to Martin Bishop’s critique of American democracy and checking messages on his two cell phones. This businessman, like the punks, chewed gum, but he was polite enough to keep his mouth shut.

  “Because there will come a time—and we’re closing in on it—when the hypocrisy and anger will reach such a fever pitch that mass revolt will seem the only option. Not just for the disenfranchised, but also for those who have been well served by the system. Even the rich, rumor has it, possess hearts.”

  A titter of polite laughter spread through the auditorium.

  Despite the mild self-consciousness, which experience would wash away, Bishop moved as he spoke, using his hands as props, shaping the air as if caressing the faces of the downtrodden electorate he worried so much about. His voice, once he got rolling, had an actor’s timbre, rich and liquid and flavored with just the right measure of emotion without risking mawkishness.

  A phone hummed, but it wasn’t hers; the businessman took out a third phone, read the number, then put it to his ear and whispered, head down. She couldn’t make out the words, but the rhythm was odd, off. It was … it wasn’t English. It was Russian.

  When Martin Bishop finished his remarks and modestly thanked the crowd for its attention, he was greeted with light applause. He smiled, shuffling away from the podium. While most filed for the door, a handful approached the stage to talk with him. Rachel did neither. She pulled out a small digital camera and surreptitiously took photos of Bishop’s admirers. She was surprised when the Russian businessman approached, too, and … there: in Bishop’s face, an instant recognition—first surprised discomfort, then a glowing smile. The Russian leaned close and whispered into his ear, handed over something from his pocket, then left, climbing the stairs toward the exit.

  Rachel got up and followed.

  She kept her distance the way she’d learned to do over months of shadowing people in the Bay Area, giving her quarry plenty of leash as he wound a path through the university’s bucolic grounds. The sun was uncharacteristically hot that day, but he was in no hurry, nor was she, and she watched him take and make four or five calls by the time he left the campus and reached Durant and Fulton. There, he entered an unassuming watering hole called the Beta Lounge.

  She waited on the street, checking her watch and thinking, as she often did these days, of how quickly a divorce changes a life. Only hours after signing those papers in a cramped DC lawyer’s office and looking Gregg in his hateful eye for the last time, this project had come to her like a divine vision. Get away, far away, to the other side of the country. Shed all the useless detritus of a decade in the DC suburbs. Devote herself to the pure acquisition of knowledge.

  She put on her Sunday smile and went inside.

  The Beta Lounge looked more like a lunch spot than a bar, and at the six-person tables couples drank beer and wine. Her Russian was at the minimalist counter, reading his phone, a half-full, damp martini glass in front of him with a pair of olives on a bamboo pick. He was still chewing gum. She climbed onto a stool two down from him and nodded to the bartender, a bald guy with a bar code tattooed to his neck.

  “Glass of white,” she said.

  “What kind?”

  “Cold and dry. That’s the kind.”

  The bartender grinned as he went for a bottle. The Russian put away his phone. She cocked her head as if realizing something mildly surprising. “Wait—were we just at the same lecture?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Were we?”

  Even though he spoke and, with his sad, bruised eyes, looked Russian, his bland midwestern accent was entirely American. She said, “Martin Bishop.”

  “Then, yes.” He lifted his glass, a light smile. “I guess we were.”

  The bartender returned with a bottle of Riesling and a glass, then poured her a taste. She sipped, approved, and watched him fill it up as she said to her Russian, “You live here?”

  He shook his head. “Just a tourist today.”

  “Pretty lousy tourist, wasting your time with lectures. Where are you coming from?”

  He stared at his glass for a few seconds. Ah, she thought. She’d overstepped. “Sorry, not my business.”

  He snapped out of his reverie. “No, no. Switzerland. I work for a pharmaceutical out of Bern.”

  “Good for you,” she said, and stuck out a hand. “Rachel Proulx.”

  “James Sullivan.”

  Now that she had a name, she could relax, and they talked about Europe and America and travel. He was smart and charming and not entirely unhandsome, and while he never mentioned a wife or children she noticed the telltale white strip of flesh around the tanned ring finger of his left hand. A man on vacation who takes off his wedding ring when going to a bar … it didn’t take a special agent in the FBI to figure out what he was game for.

  “And what pays your rent?” he asked.

  “Writer. Well, I’m trying to be one.”

  “You write; therefore, you’re a writer. What got you started?”

  There was the story that she’d lived on for five months, which hued close to the truth—a divorce with ample savings and a desire to reinvent herself. But she hesitated to use that now, and she wasn’t sure why. Yet before she could come up with something new, he raised his left hand and showed off the pale band on his finger. “This is why I’m a shitty tourist. Three weeks.”

  So there it was. She relaxed. “It gets easier.”

  He furrowed his brow. “How long for you?”

  “Eight months.”

  “Ah,” he said, then finished his drink, waved to the bartender, and pointed at his gla
ss for another. Then, to Rachel: “You?”

  “Why, thank you, Mr. Sullivan.”

  When their fresh drinks arrived—Sullivan’s martinis were vodka—he asked how long she’d been married. Lying didn’t even occur to her. “Six years. You?”

  “Eight.” He lifted the pick from his glass and slid off an olive with his teeth. “His fault, I assume.”

  “Of course.”

  “Affair?” He held up a hand. “Sorry, now I’m the one prying.”

  She surprised herself by stating the truth. “He hit me.”

  James dropped his pick, and his somber face looked so full of hurt that she wanted to stroke his hand and say, It’s all right, but didn’t. Finally, he spoke in a voice that had become deep and cold. “Well, I hope he only got one chance to do it.”

  “Of course,” she lied, because the truth was an embarrassment. It had taken four of those six years, the endless naïveté, the belief that a man who expressed disappointment with his fists could magically change. Remembering the woman she’d been—and it wasn’t so long ago—was humiliating.

  So after another sip she turned the conversation to politics. At the start of the year, America had sworn in its first African American president, and the optimism, particularly on the left, was still high. She’d even seen it among the radicals she’d gotten to know, though their enthusiasm was always tempered by a wait-and-see attitude—no matter the color of his skin, the man was still a politician.

  James wasn’t derailed by the shift in subject, so she asked what he thought of Martin Bishop.

  He set down his glass and rocked his head noncommittally. “Hard to tell from a single lecture.”

  She was disappointed that he wouldn’t admit he knew Bishop. She so wanted to know: What was Martin Bishop, a budding political agitator, doing with friends in the international pharmaceutical industry?

  “He is a compelling speaker,” she pushed.

  “There are a lot of compelling speakers,” James said, “especially in America. We’re raised to be salespeople; we sell ourselves. Guys like Bishop—clever as he might be—are a dime a dozen. There’s no reason to think that he’s going to move any mountains.”

  “I got the impression you knew him.”

  “I don’t,” he said, steamrolling over that impression. “I just think a guy like him … he’s an insect in the face of the global power of corporations.”

  She held back her instinctual laugh, but Sullivan caught the suppressed smile that broke out. He shrugged; then a phone started humming. He took out one of his and read a message. A disappointed look crossed his face. “Ah, shit. I’m late for a meeting,” he said as he got off the stool.

  “While on vacation?”

  “There’s no such thing as a vacation anymore.” He waved his phone. “Not with these things.”

  “Too bad.”

  He said, “I’d love to meet up again, but my flight’s this evening. I’m not going to have a spare minute.”

  “Next time.”

  He offered his hand, which seemed a little formal, but what did she want? A kiss? “It’s been very good to meet you, Rachel Proulx. Keep writing. You’ll do well, I’m sure.”

  “Better than Martin Bishop?”

  He grinned. “Of that I have no doubt.”

  Later, when she handed over her photos from the lecture and asked Washington for a trace on James Sullivan, pharmaceutical executive based in Switzerland, it was almost no surprise that the office called her back to explain that there was no James Sullivan working for any international company registered in Switzerland. The name James Sullivan wasn’t on any hotel registries in the Bay Area that week, nor on any flight manifests for the night of September 25.

  4

  IBRAHIM ANSARI’S parents had moved from Pakistan on student visas thirty years earlier—Mariam was a pediatrician, Faisal a professor of political studies at the University of Maryland. They sat with Rachel in a Mount Sinai waiting room done up in calming colors. Their son, she let them know, was not under arrest, but the situation was serious. He had joined a subversive organization, “and were it not for his medical condition he would be with them now, in hiding.”

  On June 18, twenty-four-year-old Ibrahim had been struck down by a brain aneurysm while riding a Greyhound from Baltimore to Richmond. He’d been in a coma for six hours, snapping out of it early Monday morning. Now it was Tuesday, and Rachel had stopped by on her way to Manhattan to confer with the field office at Federal Plaza, bringing along Ted Pierce, a young agent, to act as witness. Ibrahim had been taken out of the ICU and moved to a private room, his cranium wrapped in bandages to cover the piece of skull that had been removed by a surgeon in order to reach his brain.

  “I know what you people do,” Mariam said. “You’ve got nothing on this Martin Bishop. Empty hands. So to make yourself look good you find kids who can’t defend themselves, so that when Congress asks what you’ve been spending tax dollars on you can list off kids in hospitals.”

  “Mariam,” said Faisal.

  “Mariam, what?” she snapped. “I’ve been through my son’s room. He didn’t even pack a bag. How was he going to vanish without a change of clothes? Tell me that, woman.”

  “Lauren Harrison,” said Rachel. “Frank Sellers, Laura Nell, Soon-Yi Koh, Kyle Vanderbilt, Daniella Piotrowski. Those are six people, off the top of my head, who disappeared in exactly the same way. One was heading to the grocery. Two climbed out of their bedroom windows. The other three were on their way to work. None of them packed a change of clothes. They all left their phones behind.”

  “Are you listening to her?” Mariam asked her husband. “She tells us that they showed no signs, and then they disappeared. Now our son showed no signs, so he must have been trying to become a terrorist!” To Rachel: “You need to take a logic class.”

  She didn’t need their consent to talk to Ibrahim. She’d known this going in, and Pierce had even suggested they skip the step. But Rachel knew how difficult it could become for the Bureau if the parents made a stink afterward, so she called them beforehand and asked for this conversation. She reached into her briefcase, took out a slender manila folder, and said, “I understand how you feel.”

  “You do not.”

  “Let her speak,” said Faisal.

  “Over the last forty-eight hours,” Rachel told them, “the Bureau has been deluged with missing persons reports. All young people, between the ages of eighteen and thirty-two, and a disproportionate number of them are college students like your son. They all vanished on Sunday, the same day Bishop disappeared. Of that particular group, only two have been found.”

  “How many?” Mariam asked. “How many is enough for you to harass my son?”

  “A hundred and twelve. From all across the country. But that number’s growing every hour.”

  Conversation stalled as Ibrahim’s parents looked at each other.

  “While these people showed no signs that they were going to disappear, nearly all of them were connected to Martin Bishop’s group. Emails, chat rooms, blog comments. Here.” She passed the folder to Faisal. He opened it, and Mariam, after staring hard at Rachel for the better part of a minute, looked over her husband’s shoulder and began to read with him.

  “Where’d you get this?” Faisal asked without looking up.

  “Does it matter?”

  “You’re damned right it does,” he said, but without venom.

  “NSA gave it to us.”

  He went back to reading, along with his wife, an analysis of Ibrahim Ansari’s online activity over the last six months. Rachel saw the expression in Mariam’s face shift from anger to confusion.

  Pierce was standing outside Ibrahim’s room, typing on his phone. He looked up at her. “Yes?”

  “Let’s go.”

  But then her phone vibrated, and she checked the screen: SCHUMER, SAM.

  “You ever going to answer that?” Pierce asked.

  “Not until I have to,” she said, and put away th
e phone.

  Ibrahim had been awake for twenty-four hours, but the medication still kept him fuzzy. He listened to their names, and when they showed their badges he shook his head, grinning. “My luck.”

  “How do you mean?” Rachel asked as she pulled up a chair to sit close to him.

  “What you think? I go from free to this.” He looked down his arm, where a tube supplied him with a steady drip. “And now you.”

  “Where were you going, Ibrahim?”

  “Richmond.”

  “And then?”

  “Just Richmond.”

  “Who were you going to meet?”

  “A friend.”

  “Who?”

  He sighed, then looked across to the door; through its window his mother was peering in, expressionless. He shook his head again. “You can’t find them. You know that, right?”

  “Can’t find who?”

  “There’s thousands of us. Millions, probably. We’re everywhere.”

  Rachel shook her head. “There are maybe a hundred and fifty of you, Ibrahim. Not a thousand, and certainly not a million. We know this because we’re the FBI and we know a lot of things. More than you do. More than Martin Bishop knows. So don’t play the ominous card with me. Just tell me who you were going to meet.”

  Ibrahim frowned. “Pass me that water.”

  Rachel took the plastic cup from the side table and watched him sip from the straw. Behind her, Pierce’s phone hummed and he put it to his ear, turning to face the corner and whisper. Finally, Ibrahim said, “George. I was going to meet a guy named George at the bus station.”