“I’m so sorry about that.” She looked genuinely sorry, sad eyes looking away from him.
Jackson flicked his hand, waving her sympathy away. “Thanks, but it’s okay.”
“Are you really okay, though? It must be so hard.” She bit her bottom lip.
“It’s been a difficult transition.” He took another sip of beer and then placed it down.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly.
“No, stop with that. Just ask me some more questions.”
“Okay.” She stared at him, biting her lip again.
“Well?”
“I’m going to want to do a full, formal interview after this. How long are you here?”
Jackson had no idea. No obligations back home. And no shortage of extensions at his four-star Virginia Beach hotel. Everything was open and clear for him to perhaps clear his name—or at least help Annica avoid disaster with whatever kind of story she’ had planned.
“I want to dig deep,” she said. “Is that okay?”
“I guess it depends how deep.”
“I’m thinking a three-part story, something stretched over a few issues. Something really substantial.”
Jackson nodded, and then as casually as possible, asked his most important question. “Have you interviewed anyone from the official side? For the official story?”
“Anyone in the military?”
“Aside from my friends, the Admiral, and Rhodes?”
“No.”
“Who’s Alice McMurray?”
“I don’t know,” she said without skipping a beat. “Someone’s assistant from high up the chain. That’s all I know.”
Jackson knew a lot more than that. He’d seen her name in one of Annica’s email chains. It was perhaps the only little tidbit that sent up red flags in the otherwise clean search. “You know she’s been in contact with your editor?” Jackson asked.
“Okay,” Annica said. “But how did you know?”
Jackson wasn’t ready to spill the beans completely about just how thorough his research on her was. The following and the gun waving were bad enough. “Listen, Annica . . . Let’s say things with your story got too dangerous . . . Let’s say it started putting peoples’ lives at risk. If that happened, and I asked you to kill it, could you?”
Annica stared at him. She hadn’t blinked in a long while.
“Or does your editor have final say in that?”
“Why?”
“You know this is rough territory for some of us.”
“That’s what I’m still trying to understand. And that’s why I thought I was put in contact with you, so you could clarify.”
“I could clarify, yes. But I need to get clarification from your end, too.”
She cocked her head to the side. “About what?”
“I need to know who’s behind this.” Jackson’s eyes were trained hard on hers, studying their micro-movements. “I know it’s just not your editor. Alice McMurray works for someone associated with . . . some people I’d rather not be associated with.”
“Well, I don’t know the full story on that. Like I said, I get assigned a story, and then I go with it. Just like you, getting assigned something.”
He shook his head and looked away. “You already know what happened.”
“Excuse me?”
“Why even bother with all this?”
“Tell me what you mean,” she said, a look of concern crossing her face.
“You know what those Libyans did.”
It was a look of concern, but also a poker face. “They did their mission.”
“Go ahead,” Jackson said. “What was their real mission? What really happened?”
“See,” she said, suddenly smiling and raising her beer. “I finally got you to loosen up.”
“Hardly.” He glanced at his beer still sweating on the treasure chest, and then back to her. “Tell me what you know. Not the conspiracy stuff on the internet.”
She cleared her throat and said, “I know who your Libyans killed.”
It was like a kick to the chest, his lungs collapsing under the shock wave. She couldn’t have really known . . . Jackson shook his head, shaking the thoughts out. “They weren’t mine,” he finally said.
“You trained them.”
“To kill some other Libyans.”
“And they ended up killing two CIA agents.”
His hand was at his knee again, this time almost clawing through and carving into his flesh.
“Two Americans,” she said. “And then someone tried blowing you up.”
“And how do you know this?”
“I’ll be honest with you, Jackson.”
“Please.”
“Someone told me. Someone from inside.”
“Who?”
“I can’t.”
Jackson stood up. He needed to stretch his legs. He needed to be anywhere but directly in front of this beautiful reporter who already knew way too much. He walked around the sofa and over to an empty fish tank. No water, no fish. Just sand and large rocks, and a dark fluorescent bulb above it, as if it had been the recent home of an iguana. Maybe later he’d ask her about it.
“I’m sorry,” she said, apologizing a little too much for Jackson’s liking.
He spun around and said, “So if you already know the story, what do you want from me?”
“I need the go-ahead.”
“For what?”
“To run the story,” she said. “I can only get that from you.”
“Not your editor?”
“No.”
He turned around, back to the fish tank, hoping that her iguana was just roaming around the house somewhere and not dead.
“Jackson, I don’t know how to say this, but . . . I really . . . respect you.”
“That’s great and all, but, we just got started here. I mean, we’ll have to work together for a little while so I can . . .”
“So you can what?”
He walked away from the fish tank and back to the sofa. “I need to get a better read on you.”
“How can I help?”
“Work with me.”
“Yeah.” Her eyes brightened up. “I’d love to.”
“Would you help me get access to Veteran’s Valor?”
And then her eyes dimmed. “What kind of access? Something shady?”
“I won’t let it get traced back to you.”
She laughed dryly. “So now I’m the one in danger.”
“You were the moment you took on this story.”
7
MATTHIAS
In his dream he was captured and bound with sharp twine. He was forced to divulge secrets in a dark and dank little room that smelled of mold and kerosene, to an impatient North Korean interrogator who’d held a live wire and an ice pick as instruments of persuasion.
But when Matthias woke up, it was the smell of simmering pasta sauce and his little nephew’s fingers poking at his neck. He found himself coming to, again, in Fayetteville, North Carolina, on the old yet comfortably saggy couch in the living room of his sister’s mobile home. He’d been there for three days, turning the old couch into his bed. Today, it was the location of his midday nap after having gone a night without sleeping. There had been too many worries floating around his head for that. Especially the news of Jackson finally reaching out to Annica.
He’d wanted that to happen all along. But it still made him nervous, the steps of his plan suddenly speeding up exponentially. Now he’d have to get to Virginia Beach, and to Jackson, before the pace got out of control. He, Matthias, who started it all.
“Hey, Beth,” Matthias said, calling to the kitchen. “You in there?” He rose up to a sitting position and then wrapped am arm around the squirming three-year-old.
“I’m in here,” Beth shouted over the oven fan. “What’s up?”
“Just making sure you didn’t leave Mikey in charge of dinner.” Mikey squirmed out of his grasp.
“He’s in charge of waking
you up. It’s six o’clock.”
Matthias covered his yawning mouth before combing through his hair, fingers brushing down the cowlicks of sleep. He gave Mikey another little shove before finally struggling to his feet, stiffly, groaning. “I’ll have to get going after dinner.”
“Why? Where?”
Matthias found his sister stirring a wooden ladle through a pot of thick bolognese. The tiny kitchen smelled wonderful. The dining table had been laid out with modest settings: plastic plates and cups. They used a lot of plastic while the cutlery, a family heirloom that Matthias had deferred to Beth, was polished antique silver. It was an interesting contrast, and it perfectly summed up the young couple’s meandering, hodgepodge existence.
“Smells good,” Matthias said.
“Where are you going?”
“Virginia.”
“Virginia Beach?”
Matthias nodded.
She went back to her sauce. “That reporter?”
“Yeah,” Matthias said. “Jackson’s there. I think he finally agreed to talk to her.”
“He’s cutting it close. They get shipped out in less than two weeks.”
She was talking about Will and Kyle. Will, her husband, and his best friend Kyle—otherwise known as Jasper’s brother. The military community was smaller than many thought, especially for special forces, and Will and Kyle had been friends for half their lives. They also shared the misfortune of being sent off to a situation that looked eerily similar to the original Libyan debacle. The same objectives, the same braintrust, the same dubious oath to secrecy.
“I’ll let Jackson know,” Matthias said, looking at a pile of large shoes stacked by the door. A man’s shoes. Will’s hiking boots, runners, dress shoes, all of them sitting at the ready as if Matthias’ brother-in-law was anywhere near that trailer in Fayetteville. In fact, Will was closer to Abu Dhabi than his shoes, his wife, and kid. He was also a lot closer to possibly entering the same nightmare that had been haunting Jackson’s crew. Two weeks close.
This business with Matthias and that reporter, Annica, was all about making sure that history wouldn’t repeat itself. His sister and their family depended on it.
“I’m doing the best I can,” Matthias said, taking Will’s empty seat at the head of the table.
Will and Kyle, as dispensable grunts, were about to embark on a similarly covert mission run by similarly shady personalities in the military. There had been hints and rumors about a most infamous name being attached to the whole thing: Hunwick.
“He’s too proud to back out,” Beth said, emptying a box of spaghetti into a pot of bubbling water.
“He won’t listen to me,” Matthias said. “So hopefully he listens to Jackson, and this story that might come out if it. It’ll paint a pretty horrible picture.”
“I just hope it’s credible.”
“Horribly credible,” Matthias said. “Enough so that he won’t have to make a decision with backing out of the mission. It’ll be done for him. If Jackson leaks what he should, it’ll turn the whole military upside down.”
Beth had set a timer on the stove and then sat on a stool by the fridge. Her knee was bouncing. “Either way, I want him out. I want him home.”
“Doing what? It’s all he knows.”
“Well if I can learn new tricks, so can he.”
Matthias looked at his younger sister, trying to gauge how much she’d aged by the new wrinkles on her face. He was a little mystified at the change, from youthful rebellion to stay-at-home domestics. She never had a career, per se, but she had passions. But through a surprise pregnancy, and motherhood, and all the recent stress of Will’s deployment, those passions were a little harder to see.
They sat there for a moment, listening to the gentle bubbling of the pasta water. Beth would occasionally check the timer, and then return her head to her hand, chin resting on her palm, eyes sweeping back and forth across the linoleum floor. Then she’d check the timer again.
There wasn’t much privacy at Beth’s, or anywhere outside in the tightly clustered trailer park. Matthias looked around at all the small, narrow homes, noting the distinct feeling of impermanence that went well beyond the usual for a literal mobile home. Sunny Pines was a holdover spot, a temporary refuge for families caught in the middle of some economic disaster. But mainly, due to its proximity to the army base, it was home to the wives and children whose futures were equally as uncertain as Beth and Mikey’s future. Some even equally as perilous.
If nothing else, Matthias wanted to at least lend them an iota of certainty. Mainly, certainty that Will wouldn’t be set up as a disposable pawn in a game much more grand and terrible than anyone at Sunny Pines could imagine.
Her phone answered on the second try.
“Annica. It’s Matthias.”
“He’s here.”
“Jackson?”
“Yeah, with me right now.”
Matthias stood up from his seat on his car’s bumper and walked around to the driver’s side door. He opened it and slipped inside, and asked, “Can you talk?”
“For a minute.” In Annica’s background there was the sound of a screen door slamming shut. Footsteps on a wooden deck. “He met me when I was, uh, visiting a friend. It’s kind of a long story, but we’re here now. At my place. We’re talking about it.”
“You’re interviewing him?”
“We’re just talking.”
“Is he really talking?”
“A little.”
“How does he seem?” Matthias asked. “Is he interested?”
“Well, he came all this way.”
“I’ll tell you right now, Annica, the biggest thing with him is trust, especially with someone like you. He’s going to be extremely suspicious. And especially with the subject matter.”
“Yeah,” Annica said quietly.
“He thinks it’s a trap.”
“Yeah, we talked about that.” Her tone of voice was a little more subdued than what Matthias expected from a journalist who just gained access to her most important interview.
He reclined his seat back and stared at the car’s gray ceiling. “He’s probably going to test you somehow.”
“I think he already is,” she said, with more sound coming in from her end. More walking. “But don’t worry, I’m totally ready. I’ve been waiting for this for months.”
Matthias looked along the ceiling to the plastic ring around the interior light, into which he had tucked several old concert ticket stubs. Venues from around the country, back when he had the time and money to travel around with tours. He missed the invigorating, purifying nature of life on the road.
“I think I’m gonna head out there tonight,” he said.
“Where? Here?”
He frowned. “You don’t think that’s a good idea?”
Annica sighed and said, “I have no idea. We’ve only been talking for a few hours, so . . . so maybe this first night should just be him and I alone.”
He let out a breath. At least he’d made it through the first hour with Annica. Knowing Jackson, he would have pulled the plug at the first sign of trouble. He’d become much more conservative, cautious, since Libya, almost to a fault. “Well, I’m still headed down there,” Matthias said, checking the time on his watch—enough of it to make it to Virginia Beach by midnight.
“Fine, but just give us some time. Okay?”
“Fine.”
“Have you heard anything from Will?”
“No. It’s driving my sister crazy.”
There was a noise on the other end, the creak of a car door perhaps, like Annica had gotten inside and was looking for something through the all cracks in the seats. “So,” she said with some strain in her voice “You’re going to tell him, right? About how we got in contact and everything?”
Matthias wasn’t sure how, or even if he could explain that one. Hopefully the chain of events would unfold in such a natural and productive way that it would render an explanation unnecessary.
<
br /> “Matthias? I just don’t want to keep any secrets from him. Especially if he’s cooperating.”
“I know.”
“It just doesn’t feel right.”
“I know,” he said, a little surprised at how quickly she’d felt concerned and beholden to Jackson. It was a good sign. A sign he wasn’t being a complete asshole. “Everything will be easier when I get there.”
“Is Stanton coming, too?”
“Maybe.”
Matthias thought over how he’d prepare for the trip. What kind of tools he’d have to bring. He knew how quickly it could escalate. One minute, an interview. The next, a mission.
“So what are you doing tonight?” He had left his car and was now trudging back through a patch of gravel to Beth’s trailer. “With Jackson, I mean. More interviewing?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Hopefully. I think we just need a quiet, boring night.”
“Yeah. Good luck with that.”
There was a pause on her end. And then she said, “What do you mean?”
8
JACKSON
He had been waiting behind the wheel of Annica’s car for half an hour. By his estimation, it would have taken her five minutes to walk through two rainy alleys and then to the front of the Veterans’ Valor headquarters, another five minutes of getting through the front doors with the old-school untraceability of a key, proceeding past the surveillance cameras with a raincoat hood covering her face, and then sneaking into the back offices where she’d insert a USB stick into her editor’s computer. Two minutes there for the tracking software to be covertly installed, and for it to run without a footprint as it sent back packets of data to a laptop sitting next to Jackson. After that, the steps would reverse and she should be back at the car in ten minutes.
So where the hell was she?
Jackson squinted through the rainy darkness between two old brick buildings, a large bakery and a law firm, one of the two alleys that she would have to navigate through. As late as she was in his timeline, Annica was nowhere to be found. It was dark, though he could see the faint outlines of a Dumpster. In the puddle next to it, the faint glimmer of a distant security light rippled out under the steady spray of rain.
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