The God's Eye View

CHAPTER 3

Twenty minutes later, there were two firm knocks on the door. Anders looked up and said, “Come.”

Thomas Delgado entered and closed the door behind him. Five-five and fit as a ferret, he was wearing an immaculately tailored gray suit and white shirt, the absence of a tie his only stylistic concession to Maryland’s late August heat. As if in recompense, a half inch of white linen emerged from the breast pocket of his jacket. The outfit was ostentatiously stylish in the corridors of NSA, especially during shirtsleeves summer, but Anders supposed the look had its merits — chiefly that it at least partly disguised the fact that once upon a time, Delgado had earned a reputation as a technology-savvy killer for various East Coast crime organizations, foreign and domestic.

That had been ten years ago, when Anders had warned him about and ran interference with an FBI task force looking to put him behind bars. The warning had of course been part of a quid pro quo, and Delgado had proven enormously capable — imaginative, discreet, decisive. You told him who, you told him where, you gave him parameters about how. He never asked for anything beyond that, and he never failed to take care of the problem. If he had a shortcoming, it was that he enjoyed aspects of his work a little more than might be considered… desirable. But no one was perfect.

Delgado sat. His breathing was regular, but there was some perspiration along a row of hair plugs that seemed to be struggling to take root.

“You come from outside?” Anders asked.

Delgado nodded. “Fucking murder out there. Like a hundred degrees. Remar said you wanted to see me right away.”

Anders steepled his fingers. “We have a problem in Ankara. You’ll be leaving on a military flight from Andrews immediately. This one can’t be a suicide. Can you make it look like a car crash?”

Delgado smiled. “You know I can, especially if it’s a newer model.”

There was something about Delgado’s smile that always looked like a sneer. Well, the man wasn’t employed for his charm.

Anders thought of the fancy European car he knew Perkins drove in Ankara. “New enough. If you can’t get inside yourself, I’ll have a Tailored Access Operations team as backup.”

“I won’t need them.”

“Probably true, but they’ll be available in case.”

The TAO people were magicians. One team had been tasked with developing access to the checked baggage computer networks of every major airline. Now it was child’s play to cause a bag, or better yet a whole planeful of bags, to be temporarily “misplaced,” and, while the bags were missing, to replace a wheel or a handle or the heel of a shoe with a listening or tracking device. After a few hours, perhaps a day, the airline would discover its error, apologize, and send the bags on to their proper destinations. Airline incompetence was so universal that no one ever thought to question whether sometimes something else might be at work. Snowden had revealed a lot of these capabilities, but not all. Thank God.

Delgado wiped a bead of sweat from his scalp. “The particulars?”

“General Remar will provide you with an encrypted file on your way out. You can read it when you’re airborne.” He paused, then added, “You won’t be able to liaise with the local field office. The problem is the head of that office.”

If Delgado was surprised by that, he didn’t show it. He simply nodded and said, “Well, now I know why you want a car crash. Are you going to stick me with the freak, or do I get to operate alone this time?”

“You’ll be on a plane together. It’s already waiting at Andrews. Manus will be in the region, but on something else.”

As if on cue, there were three soft knocks on the door. Anders waited. If it was someone else, the person would leave. If it was Manus, he wouldn’t hear Anders’s command to enter.

The door opened, the office beyond it briefly blotted out. Then Marvin Manus was inside, the door closed behind him. Delgado turned so that Manus could read his lips and enunciated extra loudly and clearly, “Well, don’t just stand there, genius. Sit.”

Not for the first time, Anders wondered at Delgado’s animus. The smaller man had a mean streak, that much was clear. But did he also have a death wish? Delgado was formidable, yes. But Manus… Manus was something else, something elemental. Anders had rescued him fifteen years earlier, when Manus had just turned eighteen and was about to graduate from the juvenile correctional center in St. Charles, Illinois, to the maximum-security adult facility in Pontiac. It said a lot that Remar was nervous about him. Because Remar, who had fought his way back from wounds and endured pain that would have killed most other men, wasn’t nervous about anyone.

Manus ignored the taunt and looked to Anders for his cue. Anders glanced at Delgado and said, “Go.”

Delgado hesitated, then stood and sauntered past Manus, eyeing the larger man up and down as he moved. He paused so Manus could see his lips, then said loudly, “Glad we’ll be traveling together. I’d miss your scintillating conversation.”

Manus watched him leave, saying not a word. Anders knew how to handle Manus, of course, but even so he sometimes found his stillness… disquieting. Especially when it was in response to something that would have produced some evidence of anger in an ordinary person.

Anders gestured to a chair, then simultaneously signed and said, “Marvin. Thank you for coming.” The courtesy was deliberate. With Manus, it was powerful currency. And though he knew Manus was an excellent lip-reader, whenever he could he still tried to add some of the bits of American Sign Language he had learned, because he knew how much Manus appreciated his efforts.

Manus nodded an acknowledgment and lowered himself onto one of the chairs, gripping the arms gingerly as though concerned he might inadvertently snap them off.

“You’re going to Istanbul,” Anders said. “Same military plane as Delgado, different assignment when you get there. General Remar will give you an encrypted file with all the particulars. This is only a snatch. A journalist, presumably not security conscious, presumably unarmed. It doesn’t matter if he sustains some damage when you take him, as long as he’s alive and basically intact.”

“What do I do with him?” Manus’s voice was low and sonorous, the pronunciation slightly off because he couldn’t hear himself talking. Overall, his tone offered no more clue to the thoughts behind it than did the more customary silence.

“You’re going to turn him over to a group of Turkish middlemen who have contacts on the other side of the Syrian border. General Remar is arranging the logistics now, and I’ll brief you in the air as soon as I have details. Any questions?”

Manus offered a single shake of his head.

Not a surprise. If there were more Manus needed to know, Anders would have told him.

Anders looked at him. “How are things with Delgado?”

There was a pause. “How do you mean?”

The tone was as neutral as a flat-lined heart monitor.

“He’s got a lot of hate,” Anders went on. “But he’s useful to me.”

Manus nodded.

Anders sighed. “I appreciate… what you sometimes put up with.”

Another nod. But Anders sensed the loyalty behind it. The response to what might have been the only kindness this man had ever really known.

“When you’re back,” Anders went on, “I have something else for you. An employee about whom I have some… doubts. I want you to keep an eye on her.”

Manus frowned slightly, perhaps dubious. It wasn’t the type of task for which Anders ordinarily employed him.

“Her little boy is deaf,” Anders said. “It might provide an opening for you, a way in.”

The frown smoothed out. “All right.”

“Of course she’ll be monitored electronically, but she’s smart, she’ll be sensitive to that. I’m looking for something else.”

“What?”

Anders drummed his fingers along the desk. “I’m concerned what’s about to happen in Turkey might upset her. And I want to know… is she satisfied? Settled? Content? Or is her conscience troubling her? Is she a team player? Or is she starting to think of herself as an outsider? We learn a tremendous amount from SIGINT, yes, but there are people who forget the human aspect, the unquantifiable, the ghost in the machine. I don’t want to leave that out. I don’t want to leave anything out. Your firsthand impressions will be useful in that regard.”

For a moment, Manus looked at his huge hands, as though he might find some answer in them. Then he said, “You want to know everything.”

Anders only nodded. Didn’t everyone?