by Ben Coes
“I know how to deal with it.”
“Nobody knows how to deal with it,” said Peck, “even me.”
“Are you the one we go to before they suggest we retire?” Dewey said. “You try and take us back from the edge, make us nice guys?”
“No,” she said. “The ugly truth is, the United States government needs you to be on the edge. They need operators like you taking Tier One risk and not asking why. Why you like being on the edge, why you need to be on the edge. You’re here because someone cares enough about you to ask.”
Dewey nodded.
“Isn’t it obvious?” he said.
“To me it is,” said Peck.
“And what’s your theory, Doc?”
“No way,” she said. “That’s one you need to figure out. I’ll help you.”
“Sounds like you already know. Why not just write it down and I’ll memorize it. Then we can skip all this.”
“Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that. You need to understand the why on an emotional level. That takes time.”
“You still haven’t answered why it matters. Why do I need to know?”
Dr. Peck nodded. “Because it might save your life.”
Dewey shifted uncomfortably in the chair.
“By understanding the why,” Peck went on, “you’ll be able to make informed choices when you’re in-theater.”
“I already make informed choices. I don’t need your help.”
Peck grinned.
“That came out incorrectly,” she said. “For Hector to send you here means you’re—”
“A ‘top asset,’” he said derisively.
“That’s not what I was going to say. It means you’re important to him. He told me that he loves you like a son. He wants you to be happy. He wants you to live a long life.”
“This is about Daisy, isn’t it?” said Dewey.
“Who’s Daisy?” she said.
Dewey sat back, pausing.
“Hector’s daughter,” he said. “He’s worried I might put her at risk.”
“Are you dating her?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Tell me about Damascus,” said Peck.
“What about it?”
“I read the file. Why did you go to Damascus?”
“Rick Mallory recruited a highly placed source inside ISIS. He had information involving an imminent threat on the United States. The live drop was in Damascus. Damascus exposed a secret arms program sending weapons to ISIS.”
“It also led to the capture of a dormitory filled with students,” said Peck.
“It led to the death of Tristan Nazir. A hundred times more dangerous than bin Laden. The dorm strike would’ve happened no matter what. The cell was already inside the U.S.”
“You don’t know that,” said Peck. “If Raditz hadn’t been exposed, the ship would’ve delivered the weapons and that’s the end of the story.”
“And ISIS would have controlled Syria and Iraq,” Dewey shot back. “They’d have a country. Legitimacy.”
“What do you care?” she asked. “Do you live over there?”
“No, I don’t. But give those fuckheads a country, and the problem goes from bad to worse. They’d have a foundation. A launch point. A recruitment engine. Permanent access to oil and resources. It would be a major problem. The only way to stop them would be with nuclear weapons, and that’s not going to happen.”
“So you went to Damascus to prevent the escalation of attacks on America?” she said.
Dewey stared at her, saying nothing.
“To prevent them from coming here and killing Americans?”
Dewey shook his head. “Are you saying I was responsible for what happened at Columbia?”
“Not at all,” she said. “And to be honest, it’s irrelevant to what we’re discussing. I’m not a historian, I’m a psychotherapist, and I want to know why you went to Damascus in the first place, Dewey.”
“I already told you.”
“You had no idea what Damascus would expose or where it would lead.”
Dewey sat back. His face took on a cold, hard look.
Dr. Peck glanced down at her notebook.
“Islamabad. Tehran. Beijing. St. Petersburg. Damascus. All were suicide missions.”
“Obviously, they weren’t.”
“Okay. Highly dangerous missions. Tier One exposure.”
“So what. It’s my life.”
“What about the people you put at risk?”
Dewey’s eyes flared with anger.
“Didn’t take you guys long to go there, did it?” he said.
“What guys are you referring to?” said Peck. “I work alone. Who do you think I was referring to?”
“You know damn well who. Jessica.”
Dewey shut his eyes and put a hand to his face. In that moment, he saw Jessica. She was in a white blouse, standing across the room in front of the French doors. The doors were open. A gentle wind was blowing from outside, enough to cool off the room and make her shirt ruffle as she turned to him, just as a low, faint boom sounded behind her. A second later, Jessica’s blouse was interrupted in a splash of red.
Argentina. They’d come for him and somehow he’d let it happen. He’d let her stand there in the doors. Dewey had allowed himself to believe it was all over, that it could be over, that he could escape it all. But the sniper’s bullet had awakened him forever from the crazy notion that he could ever get away from the world he lived in.
Informed choices.
Hector was right, of course, he usually was. Dewey had allowed himself to fall in love with Jessica. He’d asked her to marry him. He’d dreamed of the life that had been taken from him so long ago, the life of any man, with a home and children. The life of someone normal. It had been a choice—but it wasn’t informed, as the bullet from the Chinese assassin’s gun reminded him in that terrible moment.
He felt aching behind his eyes, as if he might cry.
“What is it, Dewey?” she asked gently.
“Nothing.”
“Jessica?” she whispered, her eyes showing sorrow and empathy.
“Yeah.”
“Killed in Argentina. She died in your arms.”
He nodded.
“You blame yourself?”
Dewey opened his eyes. “Who else is there to blame?”
“The man who pulled the trigger, for one,” said Peck. “Fao Bhang, who gave the order to kill you, for another.”
“I put her in that position.”
“Jessica Tanzer was the national security advisor,” said Peck. “Before that she was head of counterterrorism at the FBI. She knew the risks.”
“No, she didn’t. That’s a different world from the one I live in.”
“You killed Fao Bhang,” said Peck. “You killed his brother. That seems to mean nothing to you.”
“Should it?” he said.
Dr. Peck was quiet for several moments. She opened a small notepad and scribbled a few things down.
“If you could have that moment back, that day, that trip to Argentina, would you take it?”
An angry look crossed Dewey’s face. “What kind of question is that?” he snapped. “Of course I would.”
“You thought you could get on a plane and go to Argentina with your fiancée and everything would be normal. Safe.”
“If you’re trying to make me feel bad, there’s nothing you could say to make me feel any worse than I already do. Is that what you’re trying to do?”
“In a way, yes, it is,” said Peck.
“Well, that’s fucked-up if you ask me.”
“There’s something there and it’s important. A desire to escape, to live a normal life, to fall in love. To have a child. Yet you can’t escape.”
“I can escape anytime I want.”
“Can you? Can you escape the memory of watching Jessica die?”
“Leave me alone,” said Dewey.
Peck nodded, leaning forward and looking at Dewe
y with an intense expression.
“I want to ask you about your wife, Holly?”
Dewey reacted as if he’d just been kicked in the stomach.
“No.”
“She committed suicide, didn’t she?”
Dewey stared hatefully at Dr. Peck. He struggled to find words.
“Do you want to leave?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Why don’t you?”
“Maybe I will. And if I stay it’s not because of anything you said.”
She smiled. “Oh, really?”
“Yeah, really.”
“What is it, then?” she asked.
“You ask a lot of questions.”
“That’s my job. You never dealt with your post-traumatic stress disorder, no matter what you think.”
“Yes, I did.”
Peck shook her head back and forth.
“No, you didn’t. My guess is, you just filed it away, hid it somewhere. The problem is, it’s still there—the anger, the self-hatred, the guilt—and then it becomes part of you. You want a normal life? You’ll never have it, Dewey, not until you deal with the trauma you’ve witnessed. I barely know you, but I’d bet anything you push yourself into taking inhuman risk out of that guilt and self-hatred.”
Dewey shook his head.
“You’re right: you don’t know me.”
“I’ve seen it before,” said Dr. Peck. “It’s not exactly a suicide wish, but it’s related. Why not take the risk? you say to yourself. After all, if they do get me, I deserve it.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“You’re not even aware of it.”
Dewey sat forward, a cold look on his face.
“The things I do, the things I’ve done, it’s because I’m a soldier. You could never understand. Sitting here in your fucking office. Everything I’ve done is because I’m trying to protect this country.”
“You do what you’re told.”
Dewey grinned.
“I do what I think is right.”
Peck shook her head. She smiled at Dewey. She took several moments to let the tension in the room dissipate.
“I don’t usually start this way,” she said softly. “This is not a trial, Dewey. I’m not here to make you feel bad. I’m not a judge. I’ll never be judgmental. I understand how to help you. How to help someone who’s gone through trauma so that the rest of your life isn’t just a reaction to that trauma, so that you don’t spend the rest of your life trying to run from it, blaming yourself for it, taking unnecessary risks because you—”
“Don’t deserve to live,” he whispered.
“What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
Dr. Peck stood up and walked to the window.
“Can I ask you a few more questions?” said Peck.
Dewey was quiet. He stared at the floor.
“Do you still think about her?”
“Of course.”
Peck turned.
“I wasn’t talking about Jessica. I want to start at the beginning. Tell me about your wife. Tell me about Holly.”
Dewey involuntarily clenched his fists as another kick hit him in the stomach. He knew it would come to this, that this was where they would force him to go. Back to Holly. Back to the day he found her in their apartment near Fort Bragg.
“I won’t talk about her,” said Dewey. “You can’t make me. You can fuck off.”
“That’s what it all goes back to, doesn’t it?” she said from the window. “Holly. You loved her.”
“I said fuck off,” he whispered hoarsely, grabbing his knee and pinching his skin so hard he saw blood.
Dr. Peck walked toward Dewey and sat down across from him.
Dewey hadn’t heard the word come from somebody else’s mouth in so long. It was hard to remember the last time.
Holly.
The last image of her exploded in his memory. The morning he found her dead on the bedroom floor. The side of her face destroyed. A pool of crimson like a drowning pool beneath her. In her hand, his service pistol: Colt M1911A1.
Suicide.
He’d found her there after returning from a training run. He knew why that was the memory that always was the first to come into his head, and he hated it. He hated the memory. He’d long ago accepted her tragic death, just as he’d accepted their son Robbie’s death six months before, from leukemia. Yes, he’d accepted it long, long ago, but he couldn’t shake the memory. He tried to replace the awful picture in his head with a different one. The first time she came to visit him at Boston College. It was his freshman year. Holly was a sophomore at Bowdoin. She’d taken the bus down from Brunswick to Chestnut Hill to visit him. She was supposed to get there on a Friday night and watch the football game against Clemson the next day, but a snowstorm delayed her bus and she missed the game. Whatever frustration and anger Dewey had at Holly missing the game he’d taken out on the Clemson defensive line, rushing that Saturday for 160 yards and three touchdowns. Holly arrived after the game, as he was walking out of the stadium in his coat and tie, his hair still wet. Her long brown hair was braided in a beautiful honeycomb, and her face was red from the wind and so pretty. They were alone together, with no parents or siblings for hundreds of miles. Her smile that moment had been apologetic, conspiratorial, gleeful, and yearning.
Dewey lost himself for those few seconds, staring down at Dr. Peck’s hand, but said nothing. His lips formed into the beginning of a word, a sound, but he couldn’t talk.
“What are you thinking about?” she said.
But Dewey was silent.
Dr. Peck kept her hand there for a few more moments, then sat back. She crossed her arms and looked at Dewey.
“I think that’s probably enough for today,” she said.
10
QUEEN STREET
TORONTO
Special Agent Sean Walsh of the Toronto Police Service steered his black Chevy Tahoe past a police barrier two blocks out from the crime scene. Queen Street was closed off. A large crowd of television reporters, cameramen, and other onlookers were gathered at the barriers.
Within the crime envelope, the area immediately surrounding where the bomb had detonated was now behind a series of stanchions and black plastic, illuminated by portable klieg lights, completely shutting off the grisly scene to anyone outside the area. Walsh drove past the bomb site and parked on the sidewalk near the mosque.
Walsh walked to the rear entrance of the mosque, cutting between several ambulances, police cruisers, sedans, and other vehicles. A team from the Toronto coroner’s office was already on-site, though they, like everyone else, had not gone inside the mosque, per Walsh’s adamant instructions.
At the back door of the mosque, another black plastic visual barrier had been erected. Walsh stepped through a break in the barrier. A corpse lay awkwardly on the back steps, faceup. It was a man in black tactical gear: one of the FBI agents. A mess of blood and cratered skull marred the back of the man’s head.
Walsh knelt next to him and put a cell close to his face, then took several photos. Next, he took the man’s right thumb and pressed it against the screen, recording his print.
Walsh looked at one of the coroners.
“I want you to get the slugs out of the bodies STAT,” he said. “Do it on-site and have them couriered to ballistics. Make sure you segregate them carefully.”
“Yes, sir.”
Walsh stepped over the corpse and turned.
“McCarthy, follow me. Hurry up.”
A younger uniformed officer trailed Walsh into the hallway, which was a miasma of dead bodies and blood-splattered walls.
“I want head shots of everyone in the hall,” said Walsh. “Then get a scan of their right thumb. Make sure everything is clear. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
Walsh stepped over a dead man to the stairs and climbed up to the second floor. At the end of the hallway he found the second pocket of carnage. He moved methodically through the room, t
aking photos and thumbprints of every dead man. When he was finished, he hit speed dial.
“ETF base, this is Walsh,” he said as he headed for the stairs. “I need a remote upload and then I need you to get these down to FBI SIOC immediately.”
Walsh went back downstairs and found McCarthy, who was taking a photo of one of the dead Arabs.
“Second floor is off-limits until the Quantico team gets here,” said Walsh.
“Yes, sir.”
Outside, Walsh found the lead coroner.
“You guys are clear,” said Walsh, “except for the second floor. No one touches it until the FBI gets here.”
Walsh walked quickly past the Tahoe to the bomb site. The cab of the truck was on its side and partially destroyed. The back of the truck—what was left of it—was still a smoking carapace of twisted metal, low to the ground, much of it either melted by the heat or burned to ash.
One of the officers approached him. “What do you want us to do?” he asked.
Walsh looked at the officer, then past him to one of the buildings behind the truck. The bottom floor had been blown in by the explosion. Broken glass was everywhere. Even windows on the second and third floors were shattered. Walsh pointed at the building.
“Let’s get a TAC team in here. Quarantine the area and then do a room-by-room search of every building that had a sight line to the mosque or the truck. That means everyone in the buildings needs to be relocated. Have TAC logistics handle hotels et cetera. Put detective units at the hotels and process any witnesses.”
11
CIA HEADQUARTERS
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
Dewey climbed into a taxi outside the building.
“Langley,” he said. “CIA headquarters.”
At the CIA gates, Dewey did not even lower the back window, instead holding his pass against the glass. The green stripe that cut across the top of the small plastic badge told the guards: top priority figure, let him in immediately.
He entered through the main atrium and passed through two more security points, then went to the elevators. On the seventh floor, Dewey stormed off the elevator, his face red. At the armed security perimeter to the director’s suite of offices, Dewey did not slow down.
Dewey moved past office after office until he was at the end of the corridor. The walls became glass and expansive, letting in the sunlight and a view of trees in fall color. Lindsay, Calibrisi’s assistant, stood up as he approached.
