Man in the middle

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

I unlocked the door to my apartment, threw it open, and flipped on the lights.

The first thing I noticed was good and bad news. Nothing had changed in my absence. The place was a complete mess, so obviously my maid hadn't come and straightened things up, which I guess I understood since I don't have a maid.

If you're interested, I tend to be very neat and tidy, which is maybe my only virtue, but in my rush to prepare for Iraq, the place looked like Berlin after the Russian army sacked it. If you're still interested, my apartment is small, with a few pieces of ratty, cheap furniture I had purchased at a secondhand store, thrown around an outrageously expensive big-screen TV-bachelor chic, I believe it's called.

But Army life is migratory, Army movers are endlessly cruel, and only hopeless optimists buy nice or expensive furnishings. I take my chances with the TV.

The second thing I noted was the envelope that had been slipped beneath my door, which I stooped down and picked up. It was the plain white variety without an address, stamp, or return address.

My name was written in small neat letters, so I knew who it was for, and I had a fairly good idea who it was from.

I placed the letter on the kitchen counter, threw my duffel on the couch, pulled three Michelobs from the fridge, and headed straight to the bathroom, peeling off my smelly combat uniform as I walked. I twisted the cap off the first beer and stepped into the shower, where I remained until three dead soldiers littered the floor, and the last Iraqi dirt and sand had been scrubbed and rinsed off. My motto is always wear the dirt from where you are, not where you've been. I wish life was that easy.

I dried off, threw on clean sweats, and returned to the kitchen. I poured a tall glass of scotch, threw in a few ice cubes, sat at the dining table, and opened the white envelope. There were six handwritten pages, and I read:

Dear Sean,

I won't apologize.

By now, I'm sure you've figured it out. At least, most of it.

After Mark died, I thought I would go mad. Actually, I did go mad, and once you've been to that dark place, I don't know if you ever fully return. You once asked me about my dreams. So, I'll tell you now the dream that comes every night: Mark dying in an ugly street, in an ugly city, in an ugly war, because of an ugly act.

General Bentson believed my best hope of recovery was here, near my childhood memories, near my mother, with a job where the most stressful thing I would deal with was some randy old colonel who chased a female underling around his desk. It wasn't working, it would never work, but at least I made it through the days without crying. My nights, well, they were another story.

Six weeks after I returned, Diane Andrews, who had been the CIA courier, contacted me. During her frequent trips to Baghdad, we became friends. When she learned about Mark, despite being under orders not to discuss this with anybody, she couldn't live with herself. She invited me to dinner at her apartment, and over a bottle of Chardonnay, she cried and told me about Cliff. She had no idea why she had an affair with him, or why she ever trusted him, or why she told him about the exploitation cell; she knew men didn't find her physically attractive, and she was desperate, she wanted to impress him, and acted stupidly. Nor was she sure that Cliff was the source of the compromise. But her instincts said it was him.

She said she knew her career was over, it should be over, and she would handle this in whatever way I decided. I told her to confront Daniels, and she agreed. But he wouldn't return her calls, so she accosted him one night at the Pentagon exit as he was leaving work. He denied everything, so she threatened to turn him in, thinking it would force his hand, because an innocent man wouldn't care. He became enraged. She was thankful they were in a public place, because he threatened to kill her, which terrified her, and she literally ran from him.

So it was in my hands, she said. I asked for a few days to make up my mind. Little did I know, I was about to become responsible for another death.

The next morning, browsing through the morning newspaper, I saw that Diane had been murdered the night before. I waited two weeks to see if the police or the Agency would figure it out. They didn't. So Daniels was about to get away with Mark's death, and with Diane's murder.

I couldn't let that happen.

I sipped from my scotch before I flipped to the next page. I had been right about Diane's murder and that was gratifying. In retrospect, it seemed so obvious-now, at least-that Diane had sought out Bian and voluntarily turned her on to Cliff Daniels. And likewise, as her former lover, it was logical that Cliff Daniels knew when and where Diane jogged. Having already sold his soul to his ambitions and then descended to treason with Charabi, it was a short step to the next level, murder, and Daniels made that leap. By eliminating Diane, he thought he had covered his tracks, he thought he was free and clear; in fact, he invited his own murder.

I continued to read. Over the next two pages Bian described how she approached and entrapped Cliff Daniels, first locating his office in the Pentagon, and from there following him to his car, to his apartment, learning where he got his hair cut, shopped for his groceries, bought his hooch, and she even followed him on a date with one of his mistresses. Then, after a week, in one of the Pentagon cafeterias she fell into a chair at his table, struck up a conversation, and asked him out. What followed was a blow-by-blow account of where and when they went, and what they did. I wasn't sure why she felt it necessary to include all this detail, but maybe the explanation would come later. Interestingly, she never wrote that she slept with him-she used more delicate expressions like "the evening ended on a romantic note"-but I understood.

I thought of that pig having sex with Bian, and I wanted to kill him. I got to that night, and it read:

I took him to dinner at a local bar where I handled the bill. With cash, as I always did. He liked it when I paid. It appealed to his vanity and his selfishness. As usual, the jerk got drunk, and kept putting his hands all over me while I had to act like I enjoyed it. I promised him a night he would never forget, and I meant it. The fool laughed.

Maybe you've already figured this out-but why that night? I knew the maid was coming the next morning and I needed to be there when the police arrived. So I kept him out till midnight, until almost all the other residents of his apartment complex were in bed and asleep. I slipped on a blonde wig and long silk gloves before we got out of the car, and told him this was part of what I had planned for him, which he liked. He had kinky appetites, but I don't think you want to know the details, and I damned sure don't want to recall them.

Upstairs, I asked him to get me a drink of water, and while he went to the kitchen, I went to the bedroom, got his pistol from his bedside table, screwed on the silencer I had earlier ordered via the Internet, and chambered a round. When he came into the bedroom, I told him to undress and get on the bed. He was so excited he nearly ripped his clothes off. I turned on the radio, found an easy listening station, and did a slow striptease that got him more excited. He lay back, fondling himself and watching me. I really hated him, Sean. He kept making obscene comments, telling me the things he was going to do to me, and all I could do was imagine what I was about to do to him. I was down to my bra, my underpants, my wig, and my gloves. Believe me, he was even more disgusting, more selfish and corrupt than you were told. I still didn't know all the details about how he caused Mark's death, but I was sure he did, and I knew he murdered Diane-he split open her skull and left her like garbage in the woods.

So I climbed on top of him, and he told me he loved me, and I told him how happy that made me as I reached for the Glock I had prepositioned under the mattress. He didn't even notice when I held it by his head.

The moment of truth. I thought about not doing it; it wasn't too late to just turn him in. But not very long and not very hard. I thought about telling him everything. How gratifying would that be, to watch his face as I let him know why.

But in the end I simply said, "You're going to die," and then I blew his sick brains out.

I stared at the wall for a moment. I was sure that Bian had never killed before, though it didn't sound like she was very troubled by guilt, which I guess I understood. But also, no matter how much she detested this man, in the end, she couldn't force herself to mentally torture him. Good people may do bad things, but they don't have to enjoy it.

She then briefly described how she straightened up afterward, getting dressed, taking Daniels's cell phone, and she then sat down and accessed his computer-trying to learn who he had colluded with-only to discover an impenetrable roadblock: the encrypted files. So she placed the computer inside the briefcase and positioned his briefcase in the place where I first saw it, with the corner sticking out from beneath the bed. She continued:

I drove back to my apartment, showered, changed into my uniform, drove back, and then I sat in my car in the parking lot, waiting for the maid, and then for the police to arrive. I thought about what I had done, and about what I still had to do. I knew my career was over, and that was okay. My career was over the instant the bullet tore through Mark's heart. I knew what would happen if I got caught, and that, too, was okay. There were still so many unanswered questions and guilty parties. And it wasn't just about Mark. Not anymore. It was about all our soldiers in Iraq, who trusted people in Washington to do what was right. So that was my plan. Involve myself in the investigation, find out who did what, and punish them. I would be the avenging angel. Nothing and nobody would stop me.

Enter Sean Drummond. I didn't like you much. Not at first, anyway. You annoyed me and you frightened me, and worse, you nearly figured it out. My God, you came close. Then I found myself liking you too much. You are so much like Mark. I thought I was with a ghost, or that maybe Mark's spirit had sent you. I know, silly. The problem is, Sean, once you've committed murder, there is no going back. And once I had a better inkling about what Daniels had done, I couldn't let myself go back. I was falling in love with you, but it was too late for that, because it was too late for me, which meant it was too late for us.

So, there it is. To be truthful, I don't regret it. Except for one thing. You. Also, you might be in career trouble because you were my partner, and because you might be blamed for things that went wrong, like the leak. Thus, this letter-this is your alibi and this should help you clear up any loose ends about the investigation. I've laid out everything in a way that should be easy to verify.

Don't waste your time looking for me. You won't find me. I love America, and I will miss it, and I will always regret losing the chance to see if it would work between you and me.

But I need to start over.

Love, Bian I put the letter aside, refilled my glass with scotch, and walked out to my small porch. I looked down on the traffic, at the lights and sights of northern Virginia, at my busy cross section of America.

Bian Tran had taught me something about myself, and if people in Washington were paying attention, she had taught them something as well.

War, they say, is supposed to be an extension of politics by other means; for those who are fighting it, though, and for those who love them, it becomes an affair not of the mind but of the heart.

Before you open the gates and unleash the dogs of war, it is wise to remember that the dogs have a mind of their own. Bian was not starting over; she had returned to the beginning.