Harder to grow up without a father or, worse, with an absent father. Devlin’s father’s business was entirely his own. Later, Devlin understood the nature of that business, perforce embraced it, and took it to lengths his father never could have dreamed. Ironic that he hated his father, hated the business that kept his father away from him, hated the thing that took both his father and his mother away from him, and yet here he was. In it, deeper and darker than dear old Dad ever could have hoped to be. Not by choice, of course.
Until it ended the way it ended, that trip was the happiest memory of his life. Corfu, Biarritz, Palma de Majorca, and finally the Eternal City, where they’d stayed at the Villa Hassler atop the Spanish Steps. How beautiful his mother looked in her bathing suit on the Mediterranean beaches, in her evening dress when they went to the opera performances, in her slacks and blouse, sweater thrown casually over her shoulders, when they threw the petty coins into the Fontana di Trevi, when they stuck their hands in the Bocca della Verita and hoped the Thing inside the Mouth of Truth wouldn’t bite them off.
And the best part was, they didn’t even have to travel that far. Not one of those long trips that his father took, not one of those overnight airplane flights, the daylong train trips. They were living in Munich, where his father was working at Radio Free Europe, although some of the German kids in his Grundschule liked to tease him that RFE really meant CIA. When Devlin would ask his mother where his father was, she would always reply that he was trying to stop some very bad men who were trying to hurt people. American a couple of other tongues that Devlin did not have, practically in midsentence, as they often did.
He was too young to follow everything they spoke about, but he could still catch scraps. At eight, Devlin not only spoke fluent German, but Bavarian as well. From listening to ORF, he had also picked a very fashionable, if slightly goofy, Austrian accent, and could differentiate among Tyrolean, Viennese, and the Italian-inflected Südtirolisch of Merano and the Alto Adige; his mother loved to ski. Languages were something he didn’t even have to think about. They were like listening to music, or working out long division in that particularly German way that so mystified his American-born parents. No “carry-the-anything.” Keep the whole thing in your head and just do it.
One of the things they were talking about—no, arguing about—was some kind of animal: a hyena, a dingo, something like that. Devlin had read about beasts like these, opportunistic scavengers that ripped the living flesh from wounded animals, and he wondered why three grown-ups would be discussing creatures from the veldt in the middle of the night.
A burst of Russian followed, and he picked out the word, “Ilyich,” and he was proud that he already knew who he was: Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. His father spent a lot of time in the Soviet Union; not that he ever admitted it to Devlin, directly, of course, but from time to time Devlin would find a few unused rubles in the coin cup on his father’s dresser and, once in a while, a tin of caviar in the refrigerator. He liked it when his father went to Russia.
Now they were talking about Hungary and Syria and Radio Free Europe. The talk grew louder, more agitated. Somebody yelled something about somebody named Sanchez. Finally, his mother asked for quiet, and the conversation fell back into low murmurs. He listened as long as he could until he drifted off to sleep…
Bang. He was in Rome now. In the airport.
No, not bang. Crack. That was the sound: crack. The sound of the world splintering.
It was a sound he had since made his friend over the intervening years, a sound that at once announced the truth—la Bocca della Verita. Once his enemy, no matter that it became the enemy he loved, the enemy he relied upon, the enemy he could not do without. The friend he could never quite trust.
CRACK.
His father knew that friend immediately.
His mother had been in denial—“No,” she was in midsentence—when Dad suddenly shoved her to the ground, knocking her on top of Devlin.
It wasn’t the first time his father had pushed his mother, not the first time he’d hit her, struck her, really, a hard blow that sent her to the floor, but it may have been the first and only time such a blow had been delivered out of love instead of anger or jealousy. Devlin himself had been on the receiving end of many such blows, but this was the first and only one that saved his life.
Memories.
Imagine a string of the loudest cherry bombs you ever heard going off. Imagine the branches of every tree in your neighborhood suddenly and simultaneously stripped from their trunks, as if by some sudden ice storm, and sent cra
Other than Marcus, his only boon companion was the movies, which his stepfather took him to as often as possible.
And all of this because his parents had decided to take a Roman holiday. To create the finest intelligence officer in the service of the United States of America. The “Branch 4” prototype. Creation by expiation of a man without a name, without a country, without a native language, without so much as a social security number. A man who, in short, did not officially exist.
The fellow officer’s name was Armond Seelye.
The boy’s name is Devlin.
Chapter Twelve
FALLS CHURCH/WASHINGTON, D.C.
At last, the phone rang.
Not the black phone. A nonexistent phone, in fact, one that registered in his consciousness as the sound of chimes, gently clanking in the wind. Except, of course, it wasn’t chimes at all, but a distinguishing ring tone that was signaled to him in one of his many compartmentalized capacities and incarnations. He spoke into a Blu-Ray mouthpiece as he answered:
“Mr. Grant’s office,” he said. Whenever he took a call on this line, his voice was altered to sound like a British woman’s—the status symbol of executive assistants in Los Angeles.
Another woman was on the line. “Hello, Helen,” she said, “it’s Marjorie Takei, just calling to remind Mr. Grant that he’s due to speak at RAND the day after tomorrow.”
He pretended to consult something on the computer. Click-clack, click-clack. “Yes,” he replied, “I have the appointment in the book. ‘Assessing the Threat: The Legal, Practical, and Moral Challenges.’ He’s very much looking forward to it.”
“Good,” replied the caller. Her tone changed. “It’s terrible, what’s going on in St. Louis, isn’t it?” “Helen” was silent. “Well, I suppose that makes Mr. Grant’s remarks all the more topical, doesn’t it?”
“There’s a silver lining in everything, I suppose,” said Helen, ringing off. British secretaries were nothing if not curt, and nobody, especially in LA, thought them rude.
“Archibald Grant” was one of his favorite identities, yet probably his most dangerous. He was not just an off-the-shelf disposable cover, but an ongoing creation with his own richly imagined life, invented past and borrowed memories. Unlike Devlin’s other shades and apparitions, Grant had a continuing existence as one of the RAND Corporation’s most important consultants, whose expert exigeses on international terrorism and counterterrorism were delivered at the highest levels of the Santa Monica–based think tank, and think of it, was how he met her.
An old-fashioned “ring,” just like real phones used to ring before they started playing snatches of 50 Cent, took him out of his reverie and back to reality. The black phone.
His hand picked up the receiver. Fingerprints scanned, the line was uplinked via satphone to one of the NSA’s birds, scrambled with level three remodulation logarithms. A stealth-encryption field descended, so that even the most adept or malicious hacker would be left trying to apprehend emptiness.
Now “Tom Powers” looked into the receiver. His iris scan was digitalized, encoded, and flashed over the separate T-3 line to Fort Meade for confirmation.
“Devlin,” he said.
He knew who it was right away. “This is DIRNSA,” said Seelye. “You’re on with POTUS and the SecDef. You’re fully up to speed on the sit in Edwardsville.” A statement, not a question. Typical Seelye.
�
�Who else is there with you?” His voice had an otherworldly quality as it crackled over the hidden speakers.
Seelye looked at Hartley, then to the president, who shook his head. “Nobody,” he lied.
“Wrong answer.”
“We don’t have time for games.”
“Neither do I. I’ll speak to you, the secretary, and the president. That’s the way it is, and it’s non-negotiable. You’ve got ten seconds to get whoever I hear breathing in there the hell out.”
Rubin saw that Tyler had that look on his face that he got whenever he was about to blow his stack. He shot him a warning look: don’t do it. The president controlled his temper. Hartley got the message and slipped out the door.
“This is President Tyler. I’m—”
Devlin didn’t care that he was talking to the president of the United States. He interrupted him anyway. “Not recommending direct Branch 4 involvement at this time.”
“Why not?” barked Tyler.
“Because something about this stinks, Mr. President.”
President Tyler’s eyes flashed. “Are you saying we should just sit back and do nothing?”
“No, I’m saying we need to observe.”
“Those kids need to be rescued.”
“Yes, sir, they do. We know it—and the terrorists know it. But I don’t think this is really about the kids.”
The president was irritated at this display of independence. Who was commander in chief around here? “Then what do you think it is?”
“Not sure yet. Some kind of feint, or probe, to see how we react.”
“You’re children’s lives. Getting me involved now could potentially make things more difficult for all of us in the end.”
“That’s a chance I’m willing to take,” said the president. “Where are you now?”
“That’s classified, sir. And even your authorization doesn’t reach that high.”
Tyler exploded, “Goddamnit, I’m the fucking president of the United States!”
Even with the electronic scrambling, Devlin’s voice came across low and clear and confident. “Yes, sir,” he said, “you are. At least until the next election.”
Inwardly, General Seelye smiled. Rubin kept a poker face, badly. Devlin paused for a moment, then continued, “I’ve got your feed on my screen, General. Run the reporter’s tape again. I’ll show you what I’m talking about.”
“Cueing it up now,” said Seelye. Once again the tape: the kids, the bombs, the teachers, the shotguns—.
“Hold it. Right there,” said Devlin. “See it?” Seelye paused the feed. What was Devlin talking about? “The guy on the bench there, at click 4,156.07.” A blond man in a sport coat and tie, lying on the bench with the tied-up teachers, his face only partially visible.
“One of the teachers, obviously,” said the president.
“Why, obviously? Look at the way he’s dressed. Look at that sport coat—it’s an Armani, costs two thousand bucks. Middle school teachers don’t wear things like that. General, run an NSA physio scan on this guy. Complete reconstruction—” They could hear the sound of typing. “And match it up with this.”
Tapping into the school’s internal video feeds, Devlin brought up a shot from inside the school: the main hall, looking toward the front doors. A man in the doorway, holding open the door as a boy rushes in, late.
Zoom. The man up close, from behind. Grainy, but visible.
“Full reconstruction—strip him naked and build him back up again.” It wasn’t protocol to give orders to the president, but this was no time to stand on ceremony.
Everyone could see, but just barely make out, the man under discussion. Tallish, powerfully built, with his back to the camera. But the back of his head was clearly visible, including one ear. “That ear will be especially helpful,” said Devlin.
“We’ll get him,” said Seelye. “Mag it up—see his hair?” Closer: light hair, maybe blond.
“Not a lot of blond Muslims, Mr. President,” observed Rubin.
“Which is why he could be anybody,” said General Seelye. “A merc, a Russian spesh-op, a white South African glory hunter.”
“Or a teacher,” said the president, stubborrestricted by race, religion, or ethnicity. I don’t want any PC bullshit here. Any tics, any gestures. Run video hair-and-fiber infrared analysis, see what you come up with. Got that, General?”
Tyler bristled at Devlin’s tone. “Listen, Devlin, I don’t think I like your—”
“On it,” said Seelye, intervening.
“Overfly ASAP, let’s get a radioactivity read, just in case. We don’t want any surprises in the basement or the girls’ bathroom.”
“On that, too…”
“And I’ll need our best guesstimates of their weaponry, worst-case. Then, I’ll call you back.”
The president look confused. Was this “Devlin” on the job or not? He wished that America were a kinder, gentler nation, one that didn’t need hard, rough men like Devlin to keep the women and children safe from people with legitimate grievances and misunderstood motives. He swallowed his pride. “Are you in or are you out, Devlin?”
“I’m not sure yet. What about chatter?”
“Nothing specific or credible,” replied Seelye.
“September eleventh was neither specific nor credible until the first plane hit the World Trade Center,” said Devlin.
“So what action do you recommend?” asked Tyler.
“That we await developments. I’ll put a team in place. But things might have to get worse, before I can make them better. As in the level of causalities. It’s a risk-reward situation, especially for me, and under the terms of my employment, not even you get to make that call, sir.”
“That is unacceptable.” Devlin could hear the steam escaping from Tyler’s ears. “I will not sacrifice another innocent person.”
“Then, with all due respect, sir, let the FBI handle it. Just make sure you have enough body bags when they fuck up and the shit hits the fan. In the meantime, you might want to start learning Arabic.”
President Tyler looked over at Seelye and Rubin, absorbing the confident audacity of the man at the other end of the line. A Branch 4 op had every right to refuse a presidential request. With their lives on the line every time, they were the arbiters of their own fate. No choice but to play it his way. “Okay,” said Tyler.
“Also, this really is it for me. If we go red zone and score, I’m out. Last job. I disappear, you never hear from me again, and you damn sure never contact me. Yes or no, General?”
The only thing to do was lie. “Agreed,” said Seelye. “But—”
“One last thing. If I so much as smell a fart wafting from Langley’s direction, I’m gone.” And then he really was gone.
At last, Tyler broke the silence. “You’re sure nobody else knows about this Branch 4?”
Seelye and Rubin looked at each other. Seelye spoke first, “No one except the three of us and, now, your
The president felt the sting. Maybe he had been rash in insisting on political cover. But what was he supposed to do? He was a politician. “But he doesn’t know the details. The specifics.”
“He knows everything he needs to know to blow Branch 4 sky-high,” said Rubin. “And, given his track record, “Senator Sieve’ is just about the last person I’d want entrusted with the combination to my high school locker, much less the national security apparatus of the United States.”
“So you’re telling me I made a mistake?” The question answered itself. “What do we do about it then?”
“We make it work for us,” said Seelye.
The president got up and started pacing around the room. What had he done? “How?” he asked.
Seelye took over. “You heard Devlin himself tell you how, sir,” he said. “He smells a rat here. And he’s right to do so. Here’s why.” Seelye opened his laptop, and as it awoke from standby he placed it on the president’s desk. The White House wi-fi was as encrypted and as safe as the best mi
nds as the NSA could make it, which didn’t preclude an Israeli or Bulgarian teenager from hacking in occasionally. But it was a chance that, for a brief moment, they were going to have to take.
He tapped a couple of keys and an animated dossier sprang onto the screen. Tyler pondered what he was looking at, trying hard to absorb it all, then nodded. Seelye tapped another key sequence and suddenly the electronic version of the dossier was atomized—scattered to the four winds of cyberspace
“The evidence is all circumstantial, but that’s not surprising. These forces have been coming together for quite a while, like a perfect storm. But if our suspicions are correct…”
The president got it. “If your suspicions are correct, then you’ve asked me to send our most valuable operative into a situation that might be—no, is—a trap.”
As Seelye nodded dispassionately, Rubin observed, “A very special kind of trap, sir.”
“And you’re willing to run that risk?”
“Absolutely we are, yes, Mr. President,” said Rubin.
“But why?”
“So we can run the same trap on them.”
“Won’t they be expecting that?”
“Of course they will, sir,” replied Seelye. “Which is why we have to play the hand out. First guy that blinks, loses.”
As a candidate, Tyler campaigned against the “wilderness of mirrors” that was the playing field for America’s intelligence agencies. He had promised the electorate a new transparency. And yet now here he was, in the fun house with no way out.
“People think intelligence work is complicated, and it is,” explained Seelye. “But what it’s not, is complex. It’s actually very simple. What counts is not what’s true, it’s what you can make the other guy believe is true. So we play these elaborate games of she-lovloves-me-not—or perhaps a two-hand version of musical chairs would be a more apt analogy—and the last man standing wins the pot. To mix a whole bunch of metaphors.”
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