Man in the middle

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

We arrived at Andrews Air Force Base without my plane experiencing a mysterious and unfortunate midair mishap. Nor did I see a CIA welcoming committee to help me find my way to Langley. Phyllis was slipping.

Getting a taxi, even with two hundred unruly and ambitious soldiers in competition, was faster than you can say abuse of rank.

The instant the first cab pulled up to the guest terminal, I stepped forward and bullied a poor private out of the back, leaving two hundred mutinous soldiers in my wake.

A helpful steward on the plane had kindly recharged my cell phone, and I made two quick calls, first to a person who confirmed what I had already guessed, and second to a person who answered a few simple questions regarding my hypothesis. Then I told the driver where to take me.

As soon as we were outside the air base gate, I rolled the windows all the way down on both my left and right sides and relaxed back into my seat. The wind and air were freezing and, dressed as I was in thin desert battle dress uniform, I might as well have been naked. The pleasure, though, was indescribable-to breathe fresh air, American air, air that didn't smell like human dung, to be freezing rather than sweating, to drive without worrying about snipers or bombs. Have I mentioned yet that Iraq sucks?

The cabbie caught my eye in the rearview mirror. He mentioned, "Back from Iraq, huh?"

"What gave me away?"

"A lot of them do that," he replied, referring, I guess, to my silliness with the windows.

I could observe only the rear of his head: an older gentleman, pockmarked neck, gray hair, my father's age or thereabouts. "You fooled me… at first," he continued. "Most guys head for the nearest bar."

"Well, I'm stuck with pleasure before business."

"How about a woman?" he charitably suggested. "Hey, I know a place, in Bethesda. Real patriotic ladies. They got welcome-home specials for vets that'll turn your pecker red, white, and blue. Yeah?"

"No. Thank you."

"Suit yourself."

"I was there only a few days," I informed him.

"That right?"

"I almost lost the war," I explained, truthfully. "They sent me home."

"Good for you. You still don't look tan enough."

"Office job. Lucky me."

"No kidding?" he asked, sounding slightly disappointed.

"It wasn't all milk and cookies. I picked up some nasty paper cuts and fell off my chair a few times. Want to see my scars?"

This got a chuckle out of him. He said, "Y'know, we really believe in what you boys are doing over there."

"That's why we do it."

"Yeah, horseshit. Saw some action myself. 'Nam, '68 through '69."

"Bad war."

"Name a good war."

"The one you make it home from."

"Hey, that's a good one." He started a long riff about his war, which I didn't really want to talk about. I interrupted and asked, "Which idiot are you voting for?"

"Neither guy. I'm a Nothingican. Like I said, I went to 'Nam. Politicians suck. All of 'em." He laughed.

He went on a bit, while I tried my best not to hold up my end of the discussion. Unfortunately, he was a conversation in search of a passenger and he wouldn't shut up. He eventually said, "Unbelievable about them Saudi princes. Know what I'm saying?"

"Sure do," I replied absently. If I had a gun, I would've shot him, or myself.

"We should form our own charities and send terrorists to kill Saudis. What's good for the goose, make it suck for the gander." He added, "Lord Limbaugh said that. Good one, ain't it?"

"Good one," I said agreeably. I had an important call to make and it really was time to pull the plug on this guy. I said, "Excuse me, but-"

He cut me off. "I mean… do those Saudi assholes really expect us to believe that coincidence crap?"

"Coincidence?"

"Yeah… them supposed accidents."

"Accidents?"

"You didn't hear? That first guy, Prince Faud, having a car wreck. And that other guy-Ali?… Abdul?… whoever-the same day skiing off a cliff in Switzerland. My ass. That jerkoff got an involuntary flying lesson."

Goodness. I leaned back in the seat. "Where did you hear this?"

"Radio. The Saudi day-night massacre-that's what the shock jocks are calling it." He asked, "Hey, you don't think our government finally got some balls and whacked them two?"

"Balls? Our government?"

"Yeah… what was I thinking?" He laughed.

"Both dead?" I asked.

"Well, when a sixteen wheeler head-ons your ass, or you forget to pack a parachute for your skiing lesson, dead is the usual result. Ha-ha. Those lousy Saudis, though… claiming it was just a coincidence. Bullshit. That's what it is-bullshit."

I needed to mull this over, so I sat back, flipped open my cell phone, and pretended to speak into it.

The first thing that struck me was how far behind the power curve I still was. I had spent a lot of time on the plane trying to piece together what Bian had done, and why, and I should've seen this coming. Obviously, I hadn't.

Said otherwise, I was closing in on Bian geographically, and yet mentally we weren't even on the same planet.

Because, second, I now understood who had given the expose to the press about these two rotten princes, but, more important, now I understood why. As a matter of fact, the Saudis would never turn this pair of princes over to the United States. But neither did they want or need the diplomatic heat or image problem from harboring members of the ruling family known to be funding the deaths of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians. In effect, for the princes, public exposure was tantamount to an execution order.

It occurred to me, too, that Bian's fingerprints were all over another leak. I recalled the moment on the plane in Baghdad, back when Phyllis, Waterbury, and the sheik had first shown up, and Bian and I were informed that somebody had tipped off the Saudis about our impending capture of Ali bin Pacha.

It was interesting that everybody, including Sean Drummond, assumed that that disclosure was the handiwork of some anonymous person back in D.C. And why wouldn't we? That is where the disclosures and intelligence compromises usually occur. Bian's camouflage, in other words, was our own cynical preconception regarding Washington and its appalling laxity with secrets, about which nobody was more brutally conscious than she. A sweet irony, if you think about it. I'm sure she did think about it.

But was this Saudi angle part of her plan from the beginning, from point A? No, I thought not. I was sure that Bian was genuinely surprised, as were we all, to learn what Charabi and his Iranian pals had offered Cliff Daniels in exchange for his betrayal: Ali bin Pacha. But, experienced as she was in the shadowy politics of Arab terrorism, Bian was very quick to understand the opportunities bin Pacha posed, for us and for her.

Ultimately, Daniels and Charabi were her real targets, but chance had thrown this promising new opportunity into her lap and she went with it. So while we all sat in Phyllis's office trying to unravel and understand Daniels's betrayal, Bian's mind was on other matters, spontaneously devising a plan to exploit our own worst impulses. And the plan she devised was both brilliant and corrupting, because what she set in motion rested on two possibilities of dishonorable conduct.

One, she strongly suspected that Saudi intelligence was well aware that Ali bin Pacha, himself a Saudi national-and thereby his boss, al-Zarqawi-were getting contributions and assistance from important Saudi citizens, and was desperately trying to keep it hidden. She was a veteran intelligence officer with regional experience, after all. Wherever there's naughtiness in the world of Islam, Saudi money usually is involved. Usually, it's the motor.

Also, I recalled the private conversation Bian and I shared on the plane after Phyllis and Waterbury had delivered the new directive from Washington; to wit, the Saudis were getting bin Pacha and we weren't getting within a thousand yards of Charabi. I was hot as a pistol, and ready to rumble. Bian's mood had been one of casual acceptance, a pessimistic surrender, and that had surprised me. I had expected anger and disillusionment from her, not resignation.

With the view of hindsight, I now understood, because Bian's moment of disillusionment, her journey from idealism to cynicism, had happened long before, in a back alley in Sadr City.

For this play, however, there was no script. All the actors had a free choice because Bian designed it that way-do the right and honorable thing, pursue truth and justice. It was interesting that nobody did.

So even before she flew to Baghdad, she had thrown the dice and notified the Saudis about our impending capture of bin Pacha. Maybe her time in Iraq left her with some low-level contacts in the Saudi intelligence service, or maybe she just placed a direct call to the Saudi embassy in D.C. How she sent up the red flag to the Saudis about bin Pacha didn't matter then, and it didn't really matter now-it was merely the bait that lured the actors onto the stage.

Which led to assumption two: She was betting that Washington would succumb to Saudi pressure and join into what my Italian lawyer friends call insabbiatura-burying an inconvenient case in the sand. It was Bian who had suggested the joint interrogation of Ali bin Pacha, a solution that seemed to assuage everybody's concerns.

But I did not believe she understood or even guessed that the Saudis would ultimately murder Ali bin Pacha. How could she? I don't believe she minded, though.

And by eliminating Ali bin Pacha, the sheik and his royal masters thought they had taken care of the problem… except for one nasty detail-that hidden recording. This was big trouble for the Saudis, because it was incontrovertible physical evidence of murder and conspiracy. Phyllis saw it as troublesome as well, but she also saw it as an opportunity, a device to squeeze a few new terrorist names from our Saudi friends.

So Sheik Turki al-Fayef made his deal with Phyllis and walked smugly out of that conference room, pleased that he had purchased silence for his country, and pleased for himself, because the ruling family owed him a big favor for saving two royal asses.

And then there was Bian's impassioned tantrum afterward-her display of anger, frustration, and disillusionment that in retrospect was as effective as it was affected. And I understood why. She was offering Phyllis one last chance, the chance to choose principle over practicality-the chance to do the right thing.

And Sean Drummond, too, had been offered that choice.

In fact, Bian was a brilliant seductress who preyed upon everybody's worst instincts and impulses-the Saudi predilection for buying or burying their way out of trouble, and America's susceptibility to make stupid deals in the name of diplomacy, oil, and political expediency. I have no idea how she kept a smile off her face. I could not have pulled it off. Nobody had the slightest clue what fools we were making of ourselves.

Then, later, probably with the same tip Bian had given her blonde reporter friend about Charabi, for good measure she threw in the tale about the two rotten princes. This time, Washington no longer had a choice; as it eventually did, it was forced to publicly request their extradition.

The Saudis had a choice, but they had already tried option A-buying off the problem-so they defaulted to option B-burying it.

For Mahmoud Charabi, public exposure of his lies and his treachery meant embarrassment, and big complications for his future ambitions; for the two princes, it meant death.

So I had worked my way from Z back to M. I knew enough now to speculate about Bian's motive, MO, and intent. Yet, a key piece- maybe the key piece-was still missing. So I punched a number into my cell phone, and Barry Enders answered. After I identified myself, he replied sarcastically, "Drummond?… Drummond? Sorry… can't seem to place you."

"I was busy, Barry. Somebody had to win the war."

"Oh… we won?" He laughed, not nicely. "Where are you?"

"Back. Any breakthroughs?"

"A few, yeah." He said, "Hold on. I need to relocate." A few seconds later, he said, "Where was I?" After a pause, he said, "Oh, yeah-Daniels's phone records. Sprint handled his home service, so I got the numbers and names of his recent girlfriends and paid them a visit."

"And…?"

"Let me say first, two of those ladies won't have sex lives without him. Know what I'm saying?"

"He was generous with his attentions."

"Don't you have a way with the words?" He said, "The third lady's named Joan Carruthers. Said she suspected him of cheating on her. Said she was thinking of breaking it off."

"Jealousy. Possible motive, right?"

"Well… here's another thing. There was no cell phone in Daniels's apartment. Right? And neither was there a cell phone account at his home carrier, Sprint, so we never considered he had one. You following this?"

"Okay."

"I got to thinking, though-a guy who works in an important Pentagon office… this day and age, and no cell phone?" He said, "So I checked around, and turns out he used a different service. Cingular."

"And what did that reveal?"

"More calls to the same three ladies, but, well… there were calls to and from another lady."

I knew where this was going, and to save him the trouble said, "Bian Tran." And I knew, further, why the cell phone was missing from his apartment. Here again, the name was Bian Tran. Aware that she had made calls to that phone, probably minutes after Daniels died she had lifted it to throw us off an easy lead. Very slick.

He asked, "What's going on here, Drummond?"

What was going on was that I neither needed nor wanted Barry and the police to pursue this investigation any further. For one thing, as I said, this had become personal, and I wanted to take care of it myself. But also, if everything I now suspected panned out, a thousand tons of shit was going to land on anybody involved with this. Though I knew he wouldn't see it this way, I decided to do Barry a big favor.

"What's going on is not what you think," I lied. "Daniels was suspected of espionage-I told you that. And Bian was a lead investigator. So, yes, they were acquainted before his death. And yes, they spoke over the phone."

"About something as sensitive as espionage? Over an insecure airwave? Do I look that stupid to you?"

Actually, Barry Enders was the farthest thing from stupid. Of all the people I had met in this case, he was the smartest, and he had come closest to uncovering the truth.

Well, on second thought, that made him the second smartest. Bian was the smartest. And Sean Drummond, who had looked over her shoulder every step of the way, was the biggest halfwit.

Because, here again, Bian had cynically gambled on the government's worst instincts-the institutional infatuation with covering up failures and embarrassments. And, here again, the government came through with flying colors; the Feds were dispatched to quash Enders's investigation and Bian got more of the one thing she desperately needed-time. Time to pursue more leads, time to get to Iraq, time to place the noose around the necks of her targets.

"Are you out of answers, Drummond?"

Not yet. I explained, "Bian's assignment was to establish a social connection, to create trust, and see what she could learn about his activities." I added, "They not only spoke over open airwaves, they even met in public places a few times."

"She never mentioned that she even knew Daniels."

To me either, Barry. "What can I say? It was a highly classified government investigation."

"Yeah?" There was a long, dubious pause. Reaffirming my high estimation of him, he said, "I also accessed her phone records and her charge card."

"So what?"

"Well… they went on two dates. September 20, a nice dinner at Morton's steakhouse, she had lobster, he had steak, and somebody slurped five scotches and two very expensive bottles of red wine. That came to three hundred big ones. October 15, they attended a ballet at the Kennedy Center-tickets at two hundred a pop." He added, "You know what's really interesting? She booked the reservations on her phone, and she paid both bills. And with cash, not charge."

"Tell me something I don't know. It's in her expense reports."

"As a taxpayer, I'm incensed. I saw Daniels's other lady friends. She didn't have to spend a nickel to get this guy."

"Welcome to our new, kinder, gentler federal policy. We try to send them upriver with a nice memory." I said, "Barry, she's not a suspect."

He said, with real steel in his voice, "I'm the cop. I say who's a suspect, and I say she's a suspect."

"Forget about her."

"Where is she?"

"Someplace you can't touch her. She's-"

"The hell I can't. Watch me."

"… in Iraq and-"

"A subpoena will fix that. Have her ass on the next-"

"Shut up… just listen, Barry." He quieted down. "Bian was shot and kidnapped by terrorists two days ago."

He went quiet.

I reminded him, "They don't respond to subpoenas."

He stayed quiet.

"We all feel bad, Barry. She's a fallen hero. You'll look like an unpatriotic shit if you push this."

This, obviously, was not what he expected to hear, and for a moment there was a stunned silence. Eventually, he said, "Well, I'm…" Whatever it was he was going to say, he changed his mind and told me, "You know what? If I had a buck for every time you've lied to me, I'd be eating at Morton's."

"Call the public affairs office in the Pentagon. They'll confirm that she's listed as MIA."

He promised or, considering the circumstances, threatened to do just that. On that distrustful note we both punched off.

There was one more loose end, and Phyllis was dangling at the end of it. So I dialed her next and, when she answered on the second ring, I said, "Drummond here."

She replied, with a note of impatience, "Where's here?"

"Back." I told her very nicely, "And by the way, thank you for not blowing up my plane. It meant a lot to me. Seriously." I asked, "Did you get my message about Hirschfield and Tigerman?"

She did not respond to my paranoia, yet could not resist reproaching me about procedural minutiae. She said, "You know better than to leave an electronic message. What if I misplaced the phone, or if I hadn't checked my messages?"

"They'd be dead. So what? I never liked them anyway. Neither do you."

"You wouldn't be so cavalier if they were dead."

"Wouldn't I? There are more where they came from. Arrogant eggheads are a dime a dozen."

"I don't think I like your attitude." That was the whole point. Phyllis had decided there were things she didn't want me to know that turned out to be things I needed to know. As a lawyer, I expect clients to mislead me and withhold important information, because they are guilty and they want to hide it. So now it was time to learn the source of Phyllis's guilt. She said, "Tell me what that message was about. What exactly is the threat to Tigerman and Hirschfield?"

"I'm not in the mood." I changed subjects and asked, "Hey, how about those two dead princes? Did your sheik friend freak out or what?"

"It's very… unfortunate. Turki won't even take my calls. In our business, these deals are supposedly sacred." She added in a tone suggesting I should be very concerned, "The White House is ordering a full investigation."

"So now we're investigating our investigations. Do you realize how stupid that sounds?" I added after a moment, "You should remind them that investigations don't always turn up results they like. Consider this one."

She now sensed that Sean Drummond was a problem employee whom she was mishandling. She said in a far friendlier tone, "Sean, come straight to Langley. We're all waiting for you."

"I don't think so. I'm now the spy out in the cold. Isn't that how you people phrase it?" I added, "I told you to get rid of me. You should've listened."

"Don't be foolish."

"I know about it, Phyllis. About the leak, about the soldiers who were killed, and about the Agency's effort to keep a lid on it. I'm not sure it need ever have been hidden. But it shouldn't stay hidden."

For a moment she said nothing. I had just moved the conversation from the abstract to the specific, and she needed a moment to think about this. She took that moment.

She asked, "What do you want?"

Smart lady. "A name. The courier for your exploitation cell."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

I remained silent.

She asked, "How do you know it was a she?"

"You're wasting time with stupid questions. I'm three minutes from the Washington Post building-that's two minutes longer than you have to answer. Are we on the same wavelength yet?"

Long pause again. "Diane Andrews."

"What happened to Diane Andrews?"

"Why did anything have to happen to her?"

"Who's your favorite Post reporter?"

"Sean, please, let's-"

"Personally, I'm torn over where the Pulitzer should land-Mideast desk or national desk? Hey, what do you think?"

"She's dead."

"Dead how? Heart attack? Another fake suicide? Another skiing accident? What made her heart stop ticking, Phyllis?"

"No… it was murder. Open and shut."

"Tell me about the murder."

"About seven weeks ago, jogging in a park, at night, not far from here, somebody drove a hatchet through her forehead. No fingerprints, and no forensic evidence. Even the footprints were swept clean with a broom. There were some bruises on her arms, suggestive of a slight struggle, and her killer was right-handed."

"And obviously her killer wasn't caught. Who are the suspects?"

"There are no suspects. Just theories."

No suspects? I thought about this. "But you knew it was premeditated and planned, and the killer understood enough about police procedure to clean up the trace evidence. You knew she wasn't an arbitrary victim and you knew it probably was related to her work."

"Those were our assumptions, yes."

Except that the killer had made no effort to mislead about the cause of death, this smelled a lot like the murder of Cliff Daniels. But before I made that leap, I needed to know more. I took a stab in the dark and asked, "Had she been tortured?"

"Yes… no." She said, "Two fingers had been cut off. Her right pinkie and ring finger." She added, "Possibly it was torture. Or, just as possibly, she tried to use her hand to fend off the blow."

"What did she look like? Physically?"

"I don't believe this is getting us anywhere."

"Wow, nice building. I'm cruising the block around the Washington Post. Do you think they'll run my picture? I didn't have time to shave."

"Stop threatening me."

"Start telling the truth."

"All right… she wasn't… she was not overly attractive. Short, about five foot one, chubby, dark-haired, and… Is there a point to this?"

This was my turn to ask questions, so I ignored her and asked, "So you became worried when you learned she was murdered?"

"We became… concerned. Sad. Diane was one of our own, Sean. She was a nice person and well liked. Nearly twenty years of good and honorable service."

"You know what I'm implying."

"Yes… we considered it. Of course we did. But we weren't married to any particular theories."

"Tell me about your other theories."

"Andrews had worked other things, been involved in other sensitive operations. The monsters that haunt us often have long shadows."

As she had from the start of this thing, Phyllis was parsing and limiting information. Had I known about Diane Andrews in the beginning, I would've understood we were dealing with two connected murders, I would've approached the investigation differently, I would've flipped over different rocks, and maybe I would've found Bian lurking beneath one. But Phyllis had put secrecy above effectiveness, and institutional ass-covering over truth. When you get your priorities wrong, you get bad results, and a pissed-off subordinate.

I couldn't resist. "Speaking of long, guess who her boyfriend was?"

Her not having observed Daniels's one memorable anatomical feature, this clue sailed by her.

"Here's another hint," I told her. "She and her lover are now forever together. In heaven-maybe that other place."

This clue struck home, because she promptly said, "There was zero indication of that. Mating habits are always probed during polygraphs. Cliff Daniels never came up."

Interesting phrasing. But during my plane ride, I had given some thought to this mystery, and I asked, "Her murder, did it happen before or after you initiated your leak investigation?"

"It was… the exact dates, I can't remember… but I think, nearly coincident. Why?"

"I'll lay you even money the affair occurred after her last polygraph session, and that she didn't live long enough for another one. Check it out."

"Who told you about this affair?"

"Does it matter?"

"Sean, stop acting paranoid."

"Stop? I should've been this way from the beginning."

She took a moment to clear her throat, or to turn off the recording machine. "Please come in, Sean. Now. We all want the same thing."

But that wasn't exactly true. What Phyllis and her boss wanted was to get the Agency off the blameline for the lousy prewar intelligence, with enough ammunition to screw the Pentagon, and enough clout to remain first among beltway equals at a time when Congress was considering a new national intelligence apparatus that might knock their beloved Agency down a few pegs. At least, that was what they wanted at first.

But once she and her boss learned the scale and breadth of this thing, their appetites swelled. And why not? Handled properly, the President and his political people, who for four years had treated the Agency like a bureaucratic pi-ata, would be made to see the error of their ways. In exchange for four more years, the President would have to do a little penance, his people would have to kiss a lot of Langley butt, and in return, the Director would keep a special file locked in his office safe, labeled "For Emergency Use Only."

Or alternatively, this President was already so high on Langley's shit list that a contract extension was out of the question-and his competitor would be awakened in the dead of the night by a dark man in a trench coat and handed a packet of interesting information, and Phyllis and the new President would share a victory waltz at his inauguration ball.

Either way, the Agency couldn't lose. Perfect. What could go wrong?

Bian Tran could go wrong. Neither Phyllis nor her boss had factored her into the equation. They missed what people in Washington usually miss: the human factor.

With that thought in mind, I told her, "If you and I wanted the same thing, we wouldn't be where we are." You can't slam down a cellular, so I settled for punching off with my middle finger.

Now I had another important piece I needed to consider. After Mark's death, Bian had returned from Iraq, mad with pain, grief, and guilt; not emotionally mad, not metaphysically mad-literally mad. And as it so often goes, pain bred anger, fury begat revenge, and revenge meant murder.

But where to start? That was Bian's question.

Kemp Chester had said that everybody in the G2 exploitation cell assumed that compromised intelligence-however it had occurred- had caused the death of Mark Kemble. Chester also described Bian as a hunter by both training and natural instinct. For her, finding the betrayer would be child's play because, unlike the jihadis in Iraq, her prey had not a clue they were prey.

So, Diane Andrews. That was the one name Bian knew-that was where she would enter the trail.

And as would later happen with Cliff Daniels, Bian tracked down Ms. Andrews, studied her habits, and like a couturier of death, she designed the kill around the victim's lifestyle and vulnerabilities. For Cliff Daniels, this would mean his seedier traits-his drinking, his brazen womanizing, his susceptibility to a fatal seduction. Ironically for Diane, her healthier impulses would be her ticket to hell.

So, one dark night, while chubby Diane was out jogging, shedding a few of those unattractive extra pounds, in some isolated spot Bian showed up with a hatchet. Nobody uses a hatchet for murder in this day and age. Too savage. Too messy. Plus, from a forensic angle, you get splattered with your victim's blood and brain matter. Bian, a cop, would know this. But on a different level, what could be more primitively satisfying than bashing in your enemy's brains? As an instrument of primal rage, it was the perfect weapon. And if Bian had thought to bring along a broom in her murder kit, surely she included a flashlight to help brush away her tracks, fresh clothing, baby wipes, and a shovel to bury the DNA-enriched evidence in some nearby woods.

I tried to picture it. Alone together on a dark path, Bian accused her, and Diane desperately denied everything. So strong, quick, athletic Bian pounced, wrestled Diane to the ground-chop-off went one finger-chop-off went a second, and then, with the hatchet hovering, Diane chose confession over further mutilation. So she explained about Iran's broken code, and about her affair with Daniels, and how she might-innocently or not-have exposed this secret to her lover.

So Bian now had the name of her next kill, Cliff Daniels. And poor Diane had confessed to a crime for which neither tolerance nor leniency were ever in the picture. Plus, for Bian, Diane had become a liability-from her trips to Baghdad, Diane recognized her, Diane would report this terrifying assault to the cops, and Cliff Daniels would evade his retribution.

Whack-the hatchet in the head took care of that problem.

So there it was. Open and shut.

Was it persuasive? Yes. Was I convinced? No. Not exactly. But maybe.

What disturbed me was that image of Bian ruthlessly torturing her suspect. Sweet, funny Bian Tran? Did such a soulless monster lurk behind those warm and intelligent eyes?

Well, I had watched her shoot four terrorists in the leg without a hint of remorse-that also surprised and shocked me. There's a big difference, though, between squeezing a trigger to wound four men and the close-in, more personal work of lopping off body parts.

Well, a little difference. Maybe.

The cabbie was performing an extended monologue, about the weather, about his daughter in college, about college bills, about life, about politics. I tuned him out as, inside my head, I conducted the summary court-martial of Bian Tran, soldier, patriot, almost-lover, and, very possibly, the most ballsy and clever murderer I had ever met.

I must've been thinking long and hard, because before I knew it, I felt the cab come to a stop and the cabbie said, "Here we are."

I looked out the window and saw that we were underneath the epic overarch of Dulles International Airport. I paid the cabbie one hundred and twenty bucks, threw in a twenty-dollar tip, and stepped out onto the curb, slinging my duffel over my shoulder.

It was time to confront Bian Tran and her monsters.