by Bentley, Don
“That’s because I quit,” I said.
“Bullshit,” James said, his single eye glaring at me from beneath the protection of his thick brow. “Men like us don’t quit. We stay until they carry us out in a wooden box. You needed space after the last operation. Fine. I gave it to you. Now it’s time to get your shit together and get back in the saddle. There’s work to be done.”
In the before, a speech like this would have had me saluting the flag and grabbing my rifle. But this was the after. James was right—men like him didn’t leave until someone forced them out. But was I still a man like him?
Did I even want to be?
I pictured Laila paging through her paperback while she waited for me to return from a fictitious operation. I’d lied to my own wife because I couldn’t look her in the face without seeing a dead girl’s mother, yet somehow I was seriously considering returning to work. What was wrong with me?
“You know what, Chief?” I said, pushing away from the table. “Thanks, but no, thanks. Find someone else. I’m out.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” James said, a flush creeping up his bull neck. “I thought you—”
“Chief.” Though he’d spoken softly, Frodo’s baritone still rang through the room with the unmistakable essence of command. As if he’d been struck mute, James stopped midsentence.
“Matty,” Frodo said, turning toward me, “I need you to watch something. The clip is less than three minutes long. If you still want out after you see it, I’ll walk you to the door myself.”
I hesitated before nodding, but the pause was just for show. A heartbeat ago, I’d been certain that my career as an intelligence officer was over. I’d faced down the great James Glass. If the President himself had walked into the room, I would have told him to pound sand. At that moment, I would have said no to anyone.
Anyone but Frodo.
Frodo picked up a remote from the table and activated the television hanging on the far wall. The footage was black-and-white, but the quality was fine. I was looking at the inside of a restaurant. Classy place with linen tablecloths, flickering candles, and actual china. The footage began with a panoramic view of the dining room, but zoomed in to just one table as the video began to play.
“Tech guys already did their magic,” James said, watching my expression. “Digital zooming, image smoothing, the works.”
I nodded as the silent drama played out. A man and a woman having dinner. The security camera was above and behind the happy couple. I couldn’t see much of her, but I had a good shot of him. Lots of smiles, expensive suit, fit-looking guy.
“Watch his hand,” James said.
I’d already noticed the tremor, but hadn’t yet determined if it was real or a function of the digital zoom. A second later, a shudder ran the length of the man’s body. The woman got to her feet, reaching the man just as his tremors became a full-blown seizure. He toppled from the chair before she could catch him. She cradled his head in her lap as he thrashed.
The seizure’s intensity increased. The man’s heels drummed against the floor. His body shook, his hand catching the woman in the face and snapping her head to the side. His back arched, straining at an impossible angle.
Then he sagged to the floor. Motionless.
The woman turned to yell for someone off-screen, providing a close-up of her features. Her lips were curled into a scream, eyes wet with tears.
The video ended.
“What was that?” I said.
“We’re not sure,” James said, then spit into his cup. “The woman’s fine. So is everyone else. The man’s dead. Autopsy is still pending, but the preliminary tox screen came back negative. Medical folks say it’s probably some kind of brain embolism. Rare, but not unheard-of.”
“But?”
“But the man was a CIA paramilitary officer. Less than twenty-four hours ago, he was part of a team that took down a suspected chemical weapons laboratory in Syria.”
“Son of a bitch,” I said.
“Exactly,” James said. “The team came under attack while they were exploiting the lab. The man in the video was attempting to pipette a sample of the chem weapon when the firefight started. The team had to pull out before he could finish, and he contaminated his gloves in the process. He degloved immediately and did an ad hoc decontamination. He seemed fine, but the Agency put him on a priority flight home just in case. They ran him through a full set of diagnostics at Walter Reed, and everything came back negative. He decided to have dinner with his wife before rotating back. He didn’t even make it through the appetizer.”
“Where did the intel on the lab come from?” I said.
“Israelis,” Frodo said. “A Mossad asset learned that an ISIS splinter cell was planning to launch a chem attack on U.S. soil. Supposedly, the chem weapon didn’t register on the CIA team’s detection sensors. It’s brand-spanking-new.”
“How did the terrorists get it?” I said.
“A Pakistani weapons scientist for hire created it for them.”
“Einstein.”
“Exactly,” James said. “As I said, the CIA team wasn’t able to fully exploit the lab, but what they did find suggests that the building they hit wasn’t where the splinter cell was conducting the bulk of their research. If we knew the lab’s location, we’d just drop a JDAM through the roof and call it a day. But we don’t. In fact, we still don’t know what exactly killed the paramilitary operator.”
“So we’ve got nothing,” I said.
“Wrong,” James said. “We’ve got Einstein.”
“After the raid,” Frodo said, “Einstein made contact. He offered to give up the weapon he’d developed and the lab’s location. But he had one condition—you. You have to be the one to bring him in.”
“Why?” I said.
“Ask him,” James said.
“Here’s the deal,” Frodo said. “The President has issued a finding directing the intelligence community to focus exclusively on determining the nature and location of this chemical weapon. As of now, every other tasking has taken a back seat. The CIA has operational control in Syria, but they have nothing on these jihadis or the weapon. Einstein is the only link, and he will only work with you.”
On the TV, the woman’s face was frozen midscream.
A CIA paramilitary team had stumbled across an undetectable chemical agent that passed through state-of-the-art protective equipment like it was Swiss cheese, and the terrorists who had the weapon were going to use it in America.
Unless someone stopped them.
Unless I stopped them.
“What happens now?” I said, looking from Frodo to James.
“Get your ass to Syria and do what you do,” James said, not bothering to hide his victory grin. “The President has convened a working group, headed by the CIA, that meets daily to update him on our collective progress. I’m the DIA’s liaison. Frodo will serve as your handler from here. Get to Einstein. If he can give us the chemical weapon and the lab’s location, bring him in. If he can’t, suck him dry and put a bullet in his skull. Your flight leaves from Andrews in three hours. Say good-bye to your wife and pack your shit. It’s time to go to work.”
And just like that, I was back in the game and everything was peachy. Except it wasn’t. My guardian angel couldn’t cut his own food, my wife looked like a dead Syrian, and a smiling toddler haunted me.
To make things even more interesting, at some point during James’s victory lap, my index finger had begun to twitch.
Just peachy.
EIGHT
ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA
The pavement flashed by beneath Peter’s feet as his sneakers pounded out a precise staccato. Though the GPS on his wrist beeped an affirming tone, Peter didn’t need satellite signals to know that he was exactly on pace.
As a skinny high school kid more interested in books than in
football, Peter had been an anomaly in his small Friday Night Lights–esque town. Even as a teenager, Peter had possessed a startling amount of self-awareness. He’d known by his second week of school that, if he had any hope of surviving the next four years, he needed an athletic endeavor, and he needed it fast.
Enter running.
Peter had shown up for his first cross-country practice, more out of desperation than out of desire to run, with only the vaguest idea of what the sport entailed. He was too small for football and not athletic enough for soccer, but as his dad had told him, anyone could run.
And run Peter did.
The first mile was the most painful experience of his life. His side ached, his breath came in labored gasps, and his throat was raw from bile. But as the first mile turned into the second, something magical happened. Peter heard the music—a type of undulating rhythm that beat out the pace to the required seven-minute mile in some sort of living tempo. By the third mile, his body and mind were synced. By the fourth, he’d fallen in love.
Peter’s gift had led halfway through his freshman year to a varsity position on the team and later attracted the attention of colleges across the nation, including Harvard. Technically, it was a need-based scholarship that relieved a financial burden his firmly blue-collar family could never have shouldered, but Peter understood the truth: He was admitted to Harvard because he could run.
Quite simply, running had changed his life.
If only Kristen instead of Peter had been born with the gift, everything might have been different.
But she hadn’t.
With a grimace, Peter increased his pace like he was resetting a metronome. He rocketed down a bend in the path, feet tattooing a rhythm that only he could hear as he tried to push from his mind the vision of the blond, ponytailed girl with the wide Bambi-like blue eyes. Without a second glance he raced by a pair of male runners twenty years his junior, running as if the devil himself were giving chase.
Everything he’d done since the day he’d heard his mom’s voice shatter into a thousand pieces over the telephone had been for Kristen. He’d finished Harvard in three years instead of four and turned down a lucrative position with a K Street lobbying firm to volunteer for a previously unknown Texas politician’s mayoral reelection campaign. A Texas politician who’d unintentionally made his national debut by offering calm, effective leadership to his constituents after a pair of back-to-back hurricanes had devastated his city.
Peter had watched Jorge’s first spontaneous press conference as the future President spoke off the cuff. Jorge had detailed his plan to rescue stranded flood victims in clear, concise statements even as rain streamed from the brim of his faded Astros ball cap.
In that moment, Peter had instantly known that Jorge was destined for greatness in the same instinctive way he’d known when his mile pace was exactly seven minutes. Ignoring the advice of mentors and friends alike, Peter had followed his intuition and moved to Texas.
And his intuition had been correct.
Now he was four days away from a second Gonzales term with projected majorities in both the House and Senate. Peter had spent the last four years cultivating relationships on both sides of the aisle, laying the groundwork for a progressive legislative agenda that would turn America’s focus away from pointless wars and toward forgotten priorities at home. Priorities like repairing the nation’s crumbling infrastructure, continuing the march toward single-payer health care, and, most important, providing free college education.
For everyone.
Never again would America’s sons and daughters have to choose between crippling student loans and flag-draped coffins just because they couldn’t afford college. This was the silent promise Peter had made to his dead sister, Kristen, twenty years earlier, and now his promise was almost a reality.
Assuming, of course, that Beverly Castle’s incompetence didn’t cost Jorge the election.
The thought of his rival’s self-righteous smile at the end of their last meeting almost caused Peter to increase his pace again, but he resisted the urge. He might be able to run from the memory of his kid sister’s death, but Beverly Castle was a problem he needed to face head-on.
But that didn’t mean he had to face her alone.
Glancing at the wrist-mounted GPS, Peter saw that he was a minute ahead of schedule and adjusted accordingly. The person he was meeting didn’t tolerate schedule deviations, and by common agreement both parties had left their cell phones behind.
The restrictions his friend placed on these meetings were onerous, but Peter didn’t complain. Operational paranoia was to be expected when your sometime running partner was a career intelligence officer.
Circling down through a strand of trees, Peter saw a pair of strategically placed water bottles resting against the base of a wrought iron bench lining the trail. One bottle was full, the other half-empty. The meet was still on, and Peter hadn’t been followed.
Peter thought these safeguards archaic at best. In an era in which nearly unbreakable encryptions came with every cell phone, he didn’t understand the need for tradecraft that predated his birth. But the man he was about to meet didn’t tell Peter how to run a Presidential campaign, so Peter wasn’t judgmental when it came to his contact’s area of expertise. After all, much had changed since they’d both been homesick college freshmen.
Up ahead, the familiar path split, the branch to the left continuing along the Potomac’s sunny banks, while the branch to the right led deeper into the woods. Peter turned right, and within a dozen steps, he was no longer alone.
As always, his companion seemed to appear out of thin air. One moment, Peter was pounding along the path at a precise eight-minute-thirty-second mile, and the next, his former teammate Charles Sinclair Robinson IV materialized at his side.
“I need your help with Beverly,” Peter said, not bothering with a preamble.
Because of their respective positions, and the topics they discussed, face-to-face meetings were both brief and rare. As such, both men had agreed to dispense with pleasantries during their infrequent conversations. After the voters sent President Jorge Gonzales back for his second term, the men would have plenty of time to rekindle their friendship. This conversation, however, like most that had occurred over the last four years, was strictly about business.
The business of getting President Gonzales reelected.
“Really?” Charles said, his breathing not the least bit labored. “From what I hear, you need help with Syria.”
“You know about the raid?”
“Four Americans dead and a helicopter destroyed. Everyone knows about the raid. Even I would be hard-pressed to spin that shit show.”
As the CIA’s liaison to the Directorate of National Intelligence, Charles reviewed and had the ability to shape every intelligence assessment that made its way from the intelligence community’s combined coffers to the executive branch and, on select occasions, to the press.
Prior to his current assignment, Charles had been the CIA’s Chief of Base in Syria. Then, three months ago, Assad had used chemical weapons against his own countrymen without warning, catching Charles completely unaware. In the ensuing political storm, only Peter’s quiet maneuvering had kept Charles from being cashiered altogether.
Charles had repaid Peter’s patronage by tailoring the intelligence community’s assessment of the ongoing Syrian conflict to reflect more favorably the administration’s preelection narrative. This effort had proven crucial to defusing the constant barrage of attacks leveled against the administration by Senator Kelsey Price, the Republican Presidential nominee.
But while Charles’s efforts had helped negate much of Price’s criticism, without someone on the ground he could trust, Peter had no one to supervise Beverly’s meddling.
The disastrous raid had been a perfect case in point.
“Can you fix it?” Peter s
aid.
“It depends,” Charles said, as always, his voice betraying no emotion. “What happened?”
Not for the first time, Peter was glad that he’d renewed his acquaintance with his old classmate. Four years ago, Charles had contacted Peter with an offer the future Presidential adviser couldn’t refuse—inside information on the dismal status of the ongoing Iraq War. Peter had taken the tidbits Charles had provided and crafted them into talking points that then–Presidential candidate Jorge Gonzales had used to wallop the Republican incumbent. In exchange, Charles had asked for help with his flagging Agency career.
Peter had been only too happy to oblige.
Despite the chaos that had occurred on Charles’s watch three months ago, Peter still viewed the deal he’d negotiated with his old friend in a favorable light. If it was possible to mitigate Beverly’s current disaster, Charles would know how.
“Beverly blindsided me this morning,” Peter said as the two men barreled across a wooden footbridge. “A helicopter shot down and four men dead days before the election are bad enough. Worse still, the President’s supporting Beverly’s recommendation. He issued a finding instructing the entire intelligence community to focus on this terrorist splinter cell and the chemical weapon they’ve developed. The President is seriously considering widening our Syrian footprint days before the election.”
“Why?”
Peter shook his head. “I’m not sure he even knows. This undetectable chemical weapon has him terrified. He ceded control of the entire Syrian theater of operations to Beverly.”
“Perfect.”
Peter tripped and would have fallen if Charles hadn’t grabbed his arm. Shaking off the offered hand, he turned on his friend. “Perfect? Have you listened to a thing I’ve said?”
“You want me to take care of this? Send me back to Syria. I’ll find the lab. You can hit it with a cruise missile without risking a single American life.”
