The God's Eye View

CHAPTER 27

Manus drove east toward Baltimore/Washington International Airport, severely disturbed. He couldn’t understand what had just happened. The director had told him to stop seeing Evie because she had checked out, she wasn’t a problem, there was nothing to worry about. Okay, fine. But none of it was true. The woman was obviously distraught, terrified, oppositional — all the things the director had tasked him with discovering. So why had the director pulled him off? What was going on?

He parked the truck in a motel complex near the airport and got out, needing to walk, to get some fresh air, to think. The periphery of a motel parking lot was a good place to leave a car at night — numerous transient vehicles, no registration, people coming and going at odd hours after arriving from or departing for a flight. He had a pair of stolen plates no one was going to report hidden in the truck’s toolbox — you never knew when you might need a little privacy — but judged that kind of precaution unnecessary at the moment. No one was going to notice one more vehicle here, much less remember it, much less report it. Not that it mattered anyway — he was here for a walk, not on an op — but he liked to keep good habits, especially when he was feeling anxious.

There were some woods behind the parking lot and he headed into them, wanting the dark, the feeling of being enclosed and enveloped. The oppressive heat of the day had dissipated, and the air in the woods was cool and soothing, city smells momentarily eclipsed by leaves and bark and earth. He made his way by the diffused light of the nearby highway and office parks until he came to a thick stump. He sat on it, breathed deeply in and out, and tried to figure out what the hell was going on.

Why would he pull me off? It was going well. Better than he could have expected. The meeting at the baseball game, the invitation to her apartment… he should have wanted me to keep going. What happened?

All right, true, he hadn’t told the director everything. The way the woman made him feel when he looked at her. The way her relationship with the boy somehow conjured a forgotten part of his own life. And what had happened that night after the boy had gone to sleep… no, he hadn’t told the director any of that. But how could it have been relevant? If anything, it was all a way of getting closer, of finding out what the director wanted to know.

But it didn’t feel that way to you.

No. The truth was, none of it felt like what he was supposed to be doing for the director. In fact, the director had told him to steer clear of the woman, and yet Manus had gone to see her anyway. He hadn’t meant to. He’d thought about little other than contacting her since getting back from Turkey, but he didn’t because he knew the director didn’t want him to. But then, when she’d sent him that text, and asked him if he still couldn’t stop thinking about it, he just… he couldn’t help himself.

He closed his eyes, and remembered the way she’d looked at him just a couple of hours earlier, like she’d been… craving him, or something. The way she’d pushed him back against the door and kissed him. The way he’d kissed her back. The taste of her skin. How it had excited her when he’d touched her. The way he could feel her moaning into his mouth while he was moving inside her.

He was getting hard from the memory and shook the images away. It didn’t matter what had happened. Because how would the director know any of it? After all, it wasn’t as though he could have seen—

It hit him then. Hit him so hard that for a moment, he couldn’t breathe.

The director had black-bagged her apartment. Sound, low-light video, everything. Of course he had. What had he said? I don’t want to leave anything out. What did that mean? Was it even conceivable the director would be as concerned as he obviously was — so concerned he wanted Manus to spend time with the woman and personally assess her — and at the same time not make sure he knew every single thing that happened inside her apartment?

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

For one moment, the notion — the image — of the director watching what had happened between him and the woman filled him with rage. The director had no right. It wasn’t his business.

He breathed deeply in and out, willing it away. Of course he had a right. He knew things Manus didn’t. And wasn’t the director the one who told Manus to watch the woman as part of an operation? What was the director supposed to do, look away if Manus forgot himself, forgot why he was with the woman, let his own stupidity jeopardize an operation Manus didn’t even understand?

He realized the director would have watched everything tonight, too. All of it, from the moment Manus walked through the door. Again, the rage gripped him.

Calm down, calm down, calm down.

The woman. Why hadn’t she just left him alone? He was only supposed to watch her. He wasn’t going to hurt her. Or her son. But she had asked him to come over, and to stay for dinner, and he’d tried not to, but it would have looked strange, and he was supposed to get close to her anyway, wasn’t he? And then she’d given him wine, and asked him why he wouldn’t look at her, and she’d unbuttoned her shirt, and—

Why do you think I wouldn’t look at you? Because of this! This! Look what you caused!

He was suddenly frightened. What was he going to do? The director knew he’d been dishonest. First, in not telling everything that had happened. And second, in disobeying, disobeying that very evening.

Could he know about Hamilton? That you saw him and didn’t tell?

His heart started hammering in growing panic.

Calm down, calm down, calm down, CALM DOWN.

He took a deep breath and blew it slowly out. Again. And again.

Why did he pull you off?

Yes, that was the question. The heart of it.

Because he knew you were dishonest. He knew he couldn’t trust you anymore.

He stood and started pacing. What had happened? When had he started lying to the director? When he’d seen Hamilton in the van, that was when. It had been a mistake. The man was so messed up, it would have been merciful to kill him. It would have been good for everyone. He imagined himself closing the van door, placing the muzzle firmly against the base of Hamilton’s skull, pressing the trigger, the man’s head jerking forward from the shot… and he groaned aloud at the terrible mistake he’d made, the opportunity he’d lost.

He’d fucked up. He’d let Hamilton live. And he’d never told the director. That was a lie. And one lie had led to another. And now he was just… he didn’t know. Ashamed. Angry. Alone. Afraid. And he didn’t know how to make things better.

He continued along through the woods and emerged into another parking lot, this one behind a 7-Eleven. A white pickup was parked in the far corner, its engine idling, tobacco smoke drifting from the open windows. Manus knew his presence here was completely random and he wasn’t unduly concerned. Still, he glanced over as he crossed the parking lot and saw two men sitting inside. They both had long hair and were wearing baseball caps. They eyed him as he passed. He didn’t like them.

Halfway across the lot, he glanced back at the truck. The men had gotten out. Tee shirts, jeans, heavy work boots. Truckers or day laborers, he guessed. They were coming toward him. Their hands were empty. One of them was saying something—Hey, buddy, maybe? The light was too dim for Manus to be sure.

Manus checked his surroundings. There was no one else around. He stopped and watched them. They didn’t look like pros. More like opportunists. Just idling here in the 7-Eleven parking lot because the bars were closed, they had no money for girls, they needed more cigarettes. They were broke, they were bored, they saw an opportunity for quick cash or at least a little entertainment. Or both.

He watched them, waiting. Mostly, people left him alone because of his size, his demeanor. But sometimes he would run into someone who was too drunk, or too desperate, or too stupid to know better. And sometimes he would run into someone for whom a big man was a challenge, as though size itself was a personal insult that could be neither overlooked nor forgiven. Most of these people, when they came in for a closer look, he could warn off with a smile. People didn’t like his smile. These men looked like that type. He felt himself wanting to smile, and decided not to.

They weren’t even spreading out to make it more difficult to drop them. Probably they found nearness comforting, even two against one. He took note of the metal clip he saw in each of their right front pockets. Folding knives, and each man right-handed. Of course he was carrying the Espada himself, but thought he’d prefer the Force Pro tonight. He’d left it in the truck when he’d gone to see Evie, but he was carrying it now. He stepped back with his right leg, bladed his body, and rested his right fist against his hip, inches from the grip of the gun. They didn’t even notice the move, or understand what it might mean.

They stopped a few feet away from him. “Hey, man,” the one to Manus’s left said. His tee shirt had a big smiley face on it. “Why don’t you answer when we call out to you?”

Manus looked at him, then at the other, whose tee shirt bore a large, faded print of an American flag, then back to Smiley. “I didn’t hear you.”

Smiley looked at Flag, then back to Manus. “What are you, deaf?”

One of Manus’s instructors at the CIA’s Military Operations Training Course had taught him there were five rules for avoiding impending street violence: Don’t challenge him, don’t insult him, don’t threaten him, don’t deny it’s happening, give him a face-saving exit. Manus had learned the rules the hard way in the institutions he’d grown up in, but being more conscious of them helped him commit fewer violations. And only when he wanted to.

The way he did right now.

He looked Smiley up and down and said, “You must be the brains of the operation.”

Smiley glanced at Flag again. Flag nodded. The nod said, Yeah. Good to go.

Their hands went to their pockets. Manus brought out the Force Pro, quick as a magic trick, simultaneously stepping offline to his right to line up the men more neatly while creating extra distance between their right hands and himself. He pointed the muzzle at Flag’s face and said, “Anything comes out of those pockets and you’re dead right there.”

The men froze and stared at him. Their hands drifted away from their sides, the fingers splayed. From the way they complied, Manus had the sense they’d been rousted by cops before and knew the drill.

Smiley glanced at Flag, then back to Manus. “Hey, man, we were just—”

“You’re under arrest. Use your left hands to take those knives out. I’d do it very slowly if I were you. Just ease them out and drop them.”

“Under arrest?” Flag said. “Come on, man, we were just—”

“You can either comply,” Manus said, “or I will shoot you.”

Of course the situation was odd. A deaf cop? Alone, on foot, not calling for backup? And not producing a badge? But there were always anomalies. The trick was to maintain the pressure, to keep things moving too fast for someone’s brain to catch up to his gut.

Smiley looked at Flag. When Flag reached across with his left hand, eased the knife out, and dropped it, Smiley did the same.

“Now step backward. Two long steps.”

The men complied. Manus kicked the knives away.

“Now on your knees, hands laced behind your necks.”

Flag laced his fingers together and got on his knees, and Smiley followed suit. Smiley was obviously the beta. Without Flag to show him the way, he’d hesitate, maybe even freeze. That suggested the proper order of operations.

Manus moved counterclockwise, going behind them. He switched the Force Pro to his left hand, and with his right removed a flashlight from his pocket — a SureFire Defender Ultra, close to six inches of mil-spec hard-anodized aluminum, with a sharp, crenelated bezel and tailcap. A great tool.

“Knees wide. Wider. Lace those fingers tight.”

To men of their apparent experience, it would feel like the familiar dance steps of being handcuffed. So Flag was probably surprised, or would have been, anyway, when Manus stepped in, brought the Defender high, and hammer-fisted the crenelated bezel into the top of the man’s head, caving his skull into his brain.

Flag pitched forward without a sound. Smiley turned his head and watched, his face aghast, trying to process what had just happened. Manus didn’t give him time. He put his boot heel into the back of Smiley’s laced fingers and stepped through hard, blasting Smiley’s face into the pavement. Smiley gave a muffled cry and managed to unlace his hands. He got them on the ground to push himself up, but before he could, Manus stomped the back of his neck again, crushing it.

He looked around. The area was still deserted. He glanced down at the two men. Neither was moving, not even a twitch. He clicked the Defender’s tail cap and the light came on. But there was tissue and hair around the lens. He’d have to replace it.

He would have liked to walk more, but obviously now he needed to leave. And besides, though his heart rate was up from adrenaline, his mind felt clearer. He was glad the men had wanted to hurt him. It was what he needed. He walked back across the parking lot and into the dark of the woods, where he wiped down and buried the Defender.

Back in his truck, he headed northwest toward his apartment in Ellicott City. Even at that hour, there were plenty of other cars on I-95, and there was nothing about his pickup or his driving that anyone would find memorable. He kept to the speed limit, just a workman getting an early start, on the way to a job in Baltimore or Frederick or Hagerstown. He saw no one and no one saw him.

He tried to think things through again. And realized there was only one chance. One hope. He had to do now what he should have done the first time. Go to the director, and tell him everything. Everything that had happened, everything he had done.

And pray the director would forgive him.