The Midnight House

1

A chauffeur.

That’s what Jack Fisher was, when you came right down to it. A chauffeur.

He didn’t mind, not too much.

When the new administration came in, he read the politics like everybody else. The rules were changing. The lawyers were putting their noses everywhere. Anybody too close to the black stuff might have a tough time. And he’d been close. Very, very close. And things had gotten messy at the end, for sure. But nobody could say they hadn’t gotten the goods in the Midnight House.

So be it. Let the big brains weigh what they’d done, the pros and cons, the morality of it. Fisher didn’t have an opinion. He wasn’t a big brain. He slept fine. No bad dreams. Even if Rachel Callar had tried to give him some of hers. And look what had happened to her. Fisher didn’t have much sympathy. As far as he was concerned, she was a coward who’d gotten what she deserved. But, Callar aside, after the freedom they’d had, he wasn’t planning to ask some twenty-eight-year-old lawyer “Mother may I? ” when he wanted to make a detainee stand up straight. Nope. Not interested.

So Fisher quit, took the deal they were offering, the extra severance and the enhanced pension. A lot of the guys in 673 had reached the same conclusion. Which was probably how Langley and the Pentagon wanted it.

Even with the pension and the severance, staying retired wasn’t an option for Fisher. Not with two ex-wives sucking him dry. He thought about working security for a company like General Electric or Boeing. Would have taken him about two days to get a job. The multinationals couldn’t get enough former CIA operatives.

But after twenty years of working for the government, Fisher didn’t want to swap one bureaucracy for another. He wanted to work for himself for a change. And live in California, like he always said he would. He’d grown up in backwoods Maine, a crummy little town called Caribou, halfway between Canada and nowhere. Some of his friends liked the winters, hockey and skiing cross-country, but Fisher wasn’t one of them. For as long as he could remember, he’d thought of California as the promised land. He printed up some fancy business cards: Jack B. Fisher, Fisher Security Consulting. Moved to Berkeley with wife number three. And rented an office in the Mission, a formerly down-and-out neighborhood in south San Francisco that was now as fat and happy as the rest of the city.

Fisher figured he’d start with freelance work for guys he knew at Kroll and Brinker. Jobs that were too small for them, too messy, that pushed the limits of the legal. He wouldn’t mind those jobs. In fact, he’d like them. He took out ads on late-night local cable and posted on Craigslist and waited for the calls to come in. But with the economy lousy, business was slower than he’d expected. After a couple months, he wondered if he might wind up at GE after all.

Then this gig dropped into his lap. He was sitting in his office, trying to think of ways to get his name out, when his cell phone buzzed. He didn’t recognize the caller ID. He answered anyway. He always answered. Couldn’t afford to piss off any potential customers. He’d probably work for his exes, if they’d hire him. Ex number one, anyway. Number two was a real piece of work.

“Jack? It’s Vince. Heatley.”

Fisher had gotten into a small-time poker game, mostly dollar-ante stud, with a bunch of retired FBI agents. Vince Heatley was a regular, former special-agent-in-charge of the San Jose office, now running security for George Lucas. Heatley was a solid guy, tightassed for Fisher’s taste but no worse than the average Fed. He usually lost a little but didn’t seem to mind. Which probably meant he had money.

“Free for a drink? ” Heatley said.

“If you’re buying,” Fisher said. And wished he hadn’t. He sounded desperate.

“Meet me at the Four Seasons.”

OVER A COUPLE OF BEERS, Heatley outlined the deal.

“Ever heard of Rajiv Jyoti? ”

Fisher shook his head.

“He’s a VC,” Vince said.

“He’s Vietnamese? Sounds Indian.”

“You really are new in town. No, a venture capitalist. You know, they invest in tech companies, start-ups. Rajiv was early in Google. He’s worth maybe a billion now, a billion-two. Depends on the day.”

“Nice.”

“He’s looking for a new head of security. And he loves ex-govs. FBI, military. He’d probably get hard just at the idea of a CIA op.”

“What happened to the guy who was working for him? ”

“Gone to work for Larry Ellison. The CEO of a company called Oracle.”

“I’ve heard of it,” Fisher said, though he hadn’t.

“Ellison’s richer than Rajiv. Heck”—only Mormons and FBI agents said heck instead of hell, Fisher thought—“Ellison’s richer than just about everybody. Point is, Rajiv’s friends with George, and he’s been bitching to George about needing a new guy. George asked me if I had any ideas. I thought of you. You seem solid, and I know your business — I mean, I know the economy isn’t great.”

“Personal security.” Not exactly what Fisher had imagined when he quit Langley.

“You might like it. Someone like Lucas, these Star Wars fans get freaky about him. He really needs the protection. But Rajiv, outside San Francisco, nobody’s even heard of him. Probably he’s never gotten a threat in his life. He likes the idea of having somebody around, is all.”

The job sounded less and less appealing. “What’s he like?” Fisher said.

“These guys all have egos, but from what I see he’s low-key, better than average. You wouldn’t have to live at his house, anything like that.”

Fisher sipped his beer. “I’ll think about it.”

“Before you say no, the money’s great. Rajiv told George he was paying his old guy two and a quarter a year. Now he figures he’s got to up that. I think for you, if he likes you, he might go to two-seven-five.”

“Two hundred seventy-five thousand dollars.” The rent on Fisher’s office was five grand a month, every month. And the electricity, and the insurance, and the phone. And the alimony. Never forget the alimony. His exes sure didn’t. Suddenly, working for a venture capitalist didn’t seem so bad. “You think he’ll like me? ”

Heatley coughed into his hand. “Before I called you, I checked in with a couple guys I know at your shop.”

“You backgrounded me? Guess I’m not surprised.”

“Anyway, I don’t think you should have any problems. So? Interested?”

“Maybe,” Fisher said. “Long as I don’t have to walk the dog.”

AND HE DIDN’ T. Jyoti was all right. Not exactly a bundle of laughs but quiet and even-tempered. He spent most of his time tapping away on his iPhone. Plus, the job came with a few perks. Billionaires hung together. Fisher went to a party on Ellison’s yacht, The Rising Sun. Yacht wasn’t even the right word. The thing was a cruise ship. Five hundred feet long. He met Arnold Schwarzenegger at a fund-raiser and sat with Mark Cuban at a Warriors game. Jyoti even leased him a car, a beautiful silver Lexus LX600h sport-utility, by far the nicest vehicle that Fisher had ever driven.

The work wasn’t tough, either. So far, Jyoti had called Fisher at home only twice. Once on Halloween, when kids egged the gate of his mansion in Sea Cliff. The second time after his wife’s poodle escaped. No kidnapping, no extortion, not even any stealing by the housekeepers.

Fisher’s biggest complaint was that the job was too easy. He hated being bored. He figured he’d work for Jyoti another year or two, until he’d saved a couple hundred grand and the economy turned up, then go back out on his own. Or maybe work for Halliburton someplace like Nigeria, for a couple of years. Though his wife would have a fit. Not that it mattered. He’d never been too good at listening to women.

But Jyoti did have some quirks. The most annoying was his insistence that Fisher come to Sea Cliff every morning to pick him up for the drive to his office in Atherton, in Silicon Valley, twenty miles south of San Francisco. Jyoti said he liked the certainty of knowing that Fisher would be outside his house every morning. He said the drive would give them a chance to talk over the day’s security arrangements. Fisher knew the truth. The truth was that Jyoti liked having a former CIA agent drive him to work.

So Fisher was a chauffeur. And that didn’t bother him.

Okay, maybe it did. A bit. But for two hundred seventy-five thousand dollars a year, plus medical and dental and a one-hundred-thousand-dollar hybrid, he would suck it up.

Sometimes he wondered what the guys from 673—his old unit — would make of his new gig. They knew he was in San Francisco. He’d even told a couple of them he was working for a billionaire, though he’d made the job more interesting than it really was, hinting he had gotten into high-stakes corporate espionage.

And here he was, at 7:05, parked outside Jyoti’s front gate. Ten minutes early. Jyoti was precise. If he said 7:15, he meant 7:15. He expected the people who worked for him to be precise as well. Fisher didn’t mind. He’d never needed much sleep. He got up at 5:15 and was out of the house by 6:00 to head over the Bay Bridge and into San Francisco. Assuming he didn’t hit any accidents, he usually had time to stop for a smoothie and a coffee — no bacon and eggs for him, not anymore.

Of course, by the time he reached the mansion, the smoothie and the coffee had to be gone. Jyoti didn’t like food in the car, especially not in the morning. He liked what he called a “sterile environment.” No crumbs, no newspapers, no radio except NPR on low. Nothing except a bottle of chilled Fiji water in the center console. After eight months with the guy, Fisher had reached the considered opinion that Jyoti was kind of a puss. Still. Two hundred seventy-five thousand dollars.

IN FRONT OF THE GATE of Jyoti’s mansion, Fisher cut the engine. “Global warming, Jack,” Jyoti had said. “We must conserve where we can.” Fisher had restrained himself from pointing out that Jyoti could save even more gas by trading in the six-thousand-pound Lexus for a smaller ride to work. Billionaires didn’t appreciate backtalk.

Jyoti had one other quirk. He insisted that Fisher be armed. So Fisher dusted off his old Glock and got himself a concealed-weapons permit. Even Berkeley could hardly deny that a former CIA agent might have a legitimate need for protection.

Jyoti’s mansion sat on two acres in Sea Cliff, probably the most exclusive neighborhood in San Francisco. It didn’t look like much from the front, flat and wide and two stories high. But the property opened onto a priceless view of the Pacific and the Golden Gate Bridge. Though maybe priceless wasn’t the right word. Fisher had checked the property records, found that the place was assessed for 21.5 million dollars. It had a squash court and a pool. The rooms were stuffed with high-end Indian art, bronze Buddhas and paintings of fierce-looking gods. Jyoti knew how to live, Fisher gave him that much. He knew how to stay married, too. His wife wasn’t much of a looker, but he seemed devoted to her, never even checked out other women. Fisher would have to ask him the secret sometime.

Seven ten. Another cool San Francisco morning, fifty-five degrees with a touch of fog. By mid-afternoon the city would be in the low seventies, the Valley a bit warmer. Perfect for a hike or a mountain bike ride — Fisher had seen the first biker of the day go by just a couple of minutes before, headed up the hill toward Golden Gate Park, then turning out of sight.

Fisher took a quick check of the Lexus, making sure it was clean, no papers or receipts in sight, the leather in the front passenger seat showroom-new. Jyoti liked to sit up front with him, his nod to Fisher’s equality. Fisher appreciated the gesture. He would have appreciated even more not driving the guy to work.

HIS CELL PHONE RANG. A blocked number. He looked at it, decided not to answer. He didn’t want to be on the phone when Jyoti showed up. He sent the call to voice mail and tucked the phone away.

A few seconds later, it rang again.

Blocked again. Strange. He flipped the phone open. “Hello.”

“Jack.” The voice was unfamiliar, eerily high-pitched. Fisher wondered if they had a lousy connection or if the guy was disguising his voice. “Jack Fisher.”

“Who’s this? ”

Silence.

Fisher hung up. He looked at his phone irritably, as though it were a misbehaving dog.

For the third time, the phone rang.

“Jack Fisher? ”

Again the unnatural voice. Fisher reflexively slid his hand toward his shoulder holster, then realized he couldn’t hold the phone and grab the pistol. He stayed with the phone.

“Who am I speaking with? ”

“Look to your right. At the house.”

Fisher leaned right, looked out the passenger-side window. Nothing. Suddenly he knew he was in trouble. Gun. Now.

He dropped the phone on the passenger seat. He reached his right hand across his body, trying for his shoulder holster—

And a tap on the driver’s-side window twisted him back.

No.

A pistol. With a silencer screwed to the barrel. A gloved hand held the gun and—

He’d fallen for it. Look right. He should have looked left, why hadn’t he looked left — he couldn’t die like this, it was impossible, not now, not as a goddamn chauffeur—

He didn’t hear the bullet, and he didn’t see it, of course. But he felt it, a rush of fire in his lungs. His training told him he had to go for his pistol. The pistol was his only hope. But the pain was too much, especially when a second bullet joined the first, this one on the left side of his chest, tearing a hole in his aorta. Suddenly Fisher felt an agony he could never have imagined, his heart clutching helplessly, unable to pump, crying its bitterness with each half-finished beat.

Fisher screamed but found that the sound he made wasn’t a scream at all, merely a whimper from high in his throat. His head flopped forward. His tongue lolled out. The world in front of the windshield raced away from him as if he’d somehow put the car — no, himself — in reverse at a million miles an hour.

The door to the Lexus was pulled open. Fisher sagged sideways in the seat. Already the pain in his chest was fading. But he wasn’t dying quickly enough for whoever was holding the gun. Fisher felt the touch of the silencer against his temple. He turned his head, tried to pull it away, but the pistol followed him.

He knew now he would die. He wasn’t even afraid, too far gone for that. In the fading twilight of his consciousness, he understood he was being mocked. The shooter wanted him to know he was dying as helplessly as a lobster boiling in a too-small pot. Even so, Fisher wished he could understand why death had found him this way, wished someone would tell him. And so he opened his mouth and asked, or tried to ask, or imagined asking—

The third shot tore open his skull and scattered his brains over the Lexus’s smooth leather. The shooter looked down, making sure that Fisher was dead. Unscrewed the silencer and tucked away the pistol. Looked up and down the empty street. Noticed the phone on the passenger seat and, the only unplanned moment in the whole operation, reached across Fisher’s body and grabbed it. Switched it off so it couldn’t be traced. Closed the door of the Lexus and smoothly walked away, to the mountain bike propped against a utility pole a half block down. Start to finish, including all three phone calls, the murder took barely a minute.

AT 7: 15 PRECISELY, Rajiv Jyoti walked out of his front gate, tapping away on his iPhone. He reached for the door. Then he looked at Fisher. And screamed and dropped his phone and trotted shakily around the Lexus. He opened the door carefully, even in his distress wanting to be sure that none of Fisher’s blood wound up on his six-hundred-dollar hand-tailored pants.

Jyoti wasn’t a doctor, but he could see that Fisher was beyond help. He looked at the body and up and down the empty street, wondering why no one had heard the shots, wondering if whoever had killed Fisher would be coming back for him, wondering if he had been the real target. The seconds stretched on and still Jyoti stood motionless, until the drip of blood on the pavement shocked him to life. He ran back into his front yard, slammed the gate shut, and ran into the house.

Then, finally, he dialed 911.

2

The trail wasn’t much, faded white chevrons every hundred yards, their paint hardly visible in the cloud-beaten light. They beckoned John Wells up the mountain half heartedly, with New England reserve. Come or don’t, it’s all the same to us, they said. Their lack of enthusiasm didn’t bother Wells. He stalked upward, eating ground with long strides, ignoring the mud sucking at his heels. A clot of clouds covered the sky, and a moist wind blew from the north, promising rain or even snow.

Wells hadn’t dressed for snow. He had deliberately left himself exposed. He wore jeans, Doc Martens, a T-shirt, a light wool sweater. Wool socks were his only concession to the weather. He didn’t mind being cold. In fact, he wanted to be cold. But he didn’t want to lose a toe to frostbite.

Wells wasn’t properly equipped, either. He was thinking about camping overnight, but he hadn’t brought a sleeping bag or tent, only a cotton sleep sack and a foil blanket. No stove, only a bag of dried fruit and PowerBars. No GPS, only a torn map, a compass, and a pen-light. His gear fit easily into his blue daypack.

And no gun. Not a sleek black Beretta, not an old pearl-handled Smith & Wesson, not an M-16 or a 12-gauge. No knife, either. No weapons of any kind. His Glock and Makarov were tucked away in a lockbox at his cabin. Since coming to New Hampshire six months before, he’d touched them only twice, to clean them.

For twenty years, Wells had surrounded himself with guns. He’d put them to use in Afghanistan and Chechnya and China and Russia, Atlanta and New York and Washington. Now he was trying to imagine life as a civilian.

But he had to admit that more and more he found himself missing the feel of the pistols in his hands, their heft and balance, especially his favorite, the Makarov, an undeniably lousy gun but one that had seen him through any number of tight spots. He understood now why ex-smokers said they missed the physical act of smoking, of flicking lighter to cigarette, as much as the nicotine itself.

WELLS WASN’ T ALONE on the trail. Trotting three steps ahead was his new companion. Tonka, a lean, agile dog, with a long snout and a thick brown coat. She banged her bushy tail against tree trunks as she climbed, sending Wells a single message: let’s go, let’s go, let’s go. She was part husky, part shepherd. In his too-thin sweater, Wells might have a rough night if the snow came down. Tonka would be fine.

Wells had rescued her from a shelter in Conway three months before, a couple of days before she was scheduled to be put down. She took a shine to him immediately, jumped onto the bench beside him and nuzzled against his shoulder. Wells had always gotten along with animals. People, not so much.

“Found her tied to the fence outside, no name tag, no chip,” the woman at the shelter said.

“Chip?”

“A lot of them have ID microchips implanted now, under the skin. That way we can trace them to their owners even without their tags. This little lady, she didn’t have a chip.”

“That happen a lot? The abandoning, I mean.”

“More than you’d think. ’Specially now. People have to choose between their kids and their dog, dog’s gonna lose. You can see she’s been cared for, she’s not afraid of people. She’s a good girl. I don’t think they, the owners, wanted to do this. Though who knows? ”

“I’ll take her,” Wells said.

“Just like that? ”

“Why not? ”

“Dog’s a commitment. Ever owned one before? ”

“Growing up.”

“You live around here?”

“Berlin.” Berlin was about fifty miles north of Conway. “Moved in a couple months back.”

“Do you travel a lot? ”

“Once in a while,” Wells said.

“And you’re sure you’ll be able to take care of her, Mr. Cant? ”

Wells’s new driver’s license and credit cards identified him as Clarkson Cant. Every time he had to use them, Wells imagined Ellis Shafer smirking. Shafer, his sort-of boss at the agency, a man with the sense of humor of a not-so-naughty ten-year-old. Wells had almost demanded a less ridiculous alias before deciding not to give Shafer the satisfaction.

“Yes,” Wells said evenly. He refrained from pointing out that the dog would surely choose him, whatever his flaws, over the alternative.

The woman looked Wells over, considering his patched-up jeans, shaggy hair, and half-grown beard. Finally she nodded. “Okay. Fill out the papers, pay the fee, she’s yours.”

Wells and the dog had gotten along fine ever since. She’d been a boon companion during the winter, which had been harsh even by the standards of northern New Hampshire. For two straight weeks in February the temperature stayed below zero, a lung-burning, skin-sloughing cold that kept Wells inside except for runs to the grocery store and stretches of wood chopping. Wells loved working the ax. The sky was bright blue and the air bone-dry, and the logs split easily under the blade. Tonka, no dummy, watched from inside the cabin. He couldn’t pretend he was entirely alone. Trucks rumbled distantly and snowmobiles whined along the creek trail. But Wells didn’t mind. In fact, he liked being reminded that the world was still there, with or without him.

A YEAR BEFORE, Jennifer Exley, Wells’s fiancée, had almost died in an assassination attempt aimed at Wells. In the aftermath, she’d demanded that he quit the agency. Wells couldn’t. But he couldn’t accept that he’d lost Exley, either. So he’d fled Washington, fled her. Though even Shafer, never known for his tact, was too polite to use that word.

For months he backpacked through Europe and Asia, bunking in hostels alongside students half his age. Then he rented a cabin in southwest Montana, where he’d grown up. But after a week, he left. Heather and Evan, his ex-wife and son, lived in Missoula with Heather’s second husband. Their proximity disturbed him. He wanted to make amends with Evan, at least announce his presence to the boy. Take him out for pizza. But the simple act of picking up the phone, asking to speak to his son, left him shaking his head.

Years before, when he’d last talked to Heather, she’d told him she wouldn’t let him parachute in and then disappear again. At the time, Wells understood. The agency had been on the verge of declaring him a terrorist. These days no one would question his loyalty to the United States. His judgment maybe, but not his loyalty. But he knew Heather’s feelings hadn’t changed. Quit the job, she would tell him. Come back to earth and then we’ll talk. Just as Exley had.

Only Wells couldn’t quit. He wished he could tell himself that his sense of duty and honor wouldn’t let him. And those fine words were part of the reason. But only part. In truth, he feared being bored. Feared, he supposed, that one day people would ask him, “Didn’t you used to be John Wells? ”

No, he couldn’t quit. But he wasn’t ready to work again — not yet, anyway. So no to Exley, no to Heather, no to Evan. He would be alone.

He left Montana, headed east, to the Presidential Mountains of New Hampshire. Wells remembered his surprise when, as a fresh-man at Dartmouth, he’d first seen the Presidentials. He’d imagined that mountains in the East were hummocks. But Mount Washington towered nearly a mile over the valley to its east. And its weather was fierce. The observatory at its peak had measured the highest wind ever recorded, 231 miles an hour. If the Sawtooth Mountains were out, the Presidentials would do.

Wells rented a two-room cabin on a gravel road in Berlin, a little town just north of Mount Washington. He had twelve acres to himself and a woodstove for heat. The place also came with DirecTV, and Wells had to admit that he watched more television than he’d planned. Still, he plowed through a couple books a week, mainly biographies. Jackson, Lincoln, Rockefeller, Churchill, great men facing great obstacles. War, slavery, depressions global and personal. No women, and no religion. Not the Bible, not the New Testament, not the Quran. In his cabin, alone, he wanted the tangible consolations of the world as it was, not the uncertain promises of paradise.

For the same reason, he worked out incessantly. He turned the cabin’s second room into a miniature gym. Every weekday afternoon he turned on the television — okay, he’d admit it, he watched General Hospital and then Oprah; he wasn’t proud of himself, but the truth was the truth — and spent an hour running and an hour lifting. On Saturdays, before the winter got too nasty, he hiked Mount Washington, carrying a frame pack loaded with twenty-pound bags of dog food. In the winter he substituted a three-hour climb on the treadmill, eight thousand vertical feet.

A mental renaissance came along with the physical. In his first months without Exley, he’d awoken more than once certain that she was beside him. When he reached for her and didn’t find her, his mind refused to accept her absence. He told himself that his fingers were lying, that she really was with him. As though he were an amputee insisting on the presence of a lost arm or leg. Then he would wake fully and feel the same emptiness he’d felt when he’d learned his mother had died and been buried while he was eight thousand miles away.

Slowly, though, his dislocation and loneliness faded. He still missed Exley badly, but part of him was happy that he was no longer hurting her. She’d made him choose, her or the job, and he’d chosen. One day, if they were meant to be, they would be.

As the days got longer and the worst of the winter faded, Wells felt his thirst for action returning. Hard as the job had been, it had given him the chance to see worlds most people couldn’t even imagine. Years before, during the worst sickness of his life, he’d had a dream — a vision, really — that the guns he carried were part of his body. He couldn’t put them down even at the cost of losing his chance at Heaven. Wells was no fan of tarot cards or psychics, but he had never forgotten that dream, or doubted its truth. He couldn’t stay in New Hampshire forever. Soon enough, the call would come, and he’d have to answer.

But for now he was free. And so this morning, with clouds hiding the sun and the wind whistling from the north, he had decided to brace himself with his first big hike of the new year. He hedged his bets slightly, choosing to go up Mount Adams, slightly lower and easier than Mount Washington. He packed his daypack and offered Tonka two cans of her favorite high-protein food. She knew where they were going without being told. When he opened the cabin door, she headed straight for his Subaru WRX, her tail wagging wildly. Then she stood against the front door and tried to open it herself.

NOW HE WAS CLOSING on the peak of Mount Adams, scrambling over trees that the winter’s winds had torn down. He hopped over an iced-over stream and landed in a thick patch of muddy snow that dirtied his jeans. As he reached the final stretch, a cold drizzle began, matting down his unkempt hair. Tonka had changed her mind. She looked up at him, asking wordlessly why he’d brought her out in such weather.

“You wanted to come. I warned you.”

The last half mile the trail turned to scree, loose rocks and boulders. Wells pulled his gloves from his pack and climbed hand over hand. He was cold now, cold through and through, and he loved the gray sky above and gray rock below, loved everything around him. He was free. If he slipped and broke a leg on this mountain, if the weather turned ugly and somehow he died up here, the earth wouldn’t care. He was in a mortal battle, and yet he didn’t have to hurt anyone to win. He needed only to survive.

His legs chilled and lungs aching, he reached the summit and surveyed the mountains around him. To the south, the mass of Mount Washington dominated. To the north, the range fell off sharply, and the narrow path of a river, probably the Upper Ammonoosuc, was just visible through the brown bark below. The trees had not yet budded for spring, and the valleys beneath Wells were almost monochrome, a mix of gray and white and flat dark green from the pines and firs, the only flashes of color coming from the cars and trucks rolling on Highway 2.

Tonka bumped against his legs and whined quietly, telling him that he might be enjoying this communion with nature, but she was cold and wet and wanted off the mountain.

“I thought you were tougher than this, bud,” he said. “You’re the one with the fur coat.”

He reached into his jacket for a PowerBar, gave half to her, swallowed the other half in two ungraceful bites. Still the dog’s tail drooped.

“All right,” he said. “I get it.”

Wells took a final survey of the land. And realized he wasn’t alone. Several paths climbed Mount Adams. Wells had come up the west face, the main trail for day hikers. But the mountain could also be reached from the northeast or the south, on a path that was part of the Appalachian Trail. A hiker had just popped out from a ridge on the northeast side of the mountain, a couple of hundred yards away.

“Just a sec,” Wells said to Tonka. “Let’s see.”

He was surprised anyone else had braved the weather, more surprised when the hiker turned out to be a woman. She was much better equipped than he was. She carried a solid frame pack with a tent attached and wore a red jacket and jeans and boots and a floppy hat to keep the rain away. She was tall and solidly built and moved confidently up the mountain. When she got close, she waved and gave him a friendly gap-toothed smile. He wouldn’t have guessed a woman alone up here would be so confident meeting a strange man and a strange dog. Then he saw the pistol holstered on her hip, half hidden under her jacket.

“Nice day for a hike,” he said.

“Isn’t it, though? ”

“Least you dressed for it,” Wells said. “I was gonna stay out overnight, but the dog says no.”

“You blame the dog? ”

“For everything.”

She reached out a hand and they shook through the gloves. “I’m Anne.”

“John,” he said, using his real name for the first time in months. He nodded to the dog. “This is Tonka.”

She smiled again. Despite the frigid rain, Wells felt a sudden warmth in his groin. He kept holding her hand until finally she let go.

“Hi, Anne.”

“What’s a nice flatlander like you doing in a place like this? ”

“Is it that obvious? ”

“You have all your teeth.”

“Is that joke allowed? ”

“For me.”

“I’ve been living in Berlin the last few months, but I’m from D.C.”

“And came to New Hampshire for the winter. Bold. Stupid, but bold.”

“I got a great deal on a cabin. Frostbite included.”

“I’ll bet.”

She smiled, and Wells realized he wanted very badly to keep the conversation going. “How about you?” he said. “I take it you’re a native.”

“Conway.” Conway was about forty miles south of Berlin. “I like being up here when it’s quiet. No city slickers to spoil the view.”

Wells nodded at her pistol. “Looks to me you could clear the trail whenever you wanted.”

“I don’t shoot anyone who doesn’t deserve it.”

“Fortunately, that leaves plenty of targets.”

“My ex-husband, for one.”

Now they were flirting, Wells thought. A deliberate mention of an ex-husband had to count as flirting. Though he wasn’t totally sure. He hadn’t flirted in a long time. Tonka let out a growl that turned into a deep bark, and he decided to quit while he was ahead. “She has better sense than I do,” he said. “We should get going.”

“Sure.”

“Maybe I could take you for a hike sometime.”

She laughed.

“I’m sorry. Too cheesy? ”

“Much, much too cheesy. How about this? I had a reservation tonight at a cabin past Mount Washington. But the weather’s so crummy I might change my mind. You know Fagin’s Pub? ”

“In Berlin.”

“None other. I might stop by tonight.”

“You might.”

“I might. You should, too.”

“I’ll do that,” Wells said. “On one condition.”

“What’s that? ”

“You leave your gun at home.”

3

The Accord was hidden behind a Silverado. It backed out fast, its driver as anxious to get home as everyone else, and Mike Wyly almost bashed it. He jammed his brakes and horn, and jolted to a stop a foot from its trunk. Its driver waved, a half hearted apology, and went back to her cell phone. Wyly had half a mind to give her a talking-to, but he’d been speeding, too. And she was cute.

Instead, he waved back and followed her down the ramps of the giant employee parking garage at Universal Studios, six levels of concrete, thousands of cars. He wondered if he’d ever get a pass to park on the lot. These endless left turns were a pain. Especially in a ’67 Mustang convertible without power steering.

Life was strange. If anyone had told Wyly two years ago that he’d be worrying about parking passes, he would have. well, he didn’t know what he would have done. Probably just laughed. Back then he’d been in the middle of the most secret war the United States had ever fought. Now he was wondering if he had enough points to join the Screen Actors Guild.

Wyly eased out of the garage and onto Lankershim. He fired a stream of dip-darkened spit into the Coke bottle in the passenger seat and plugged his iPod into the Mustang’s radio, an aftermarket addition, the only part of the car that wasn’t genuine Ford. The smooth twang of Brooks & Dunn poured from the backseat, and Wyly looked into the warm night sky. Another day done. Eight thirty-eight p.m., according to the iPod. Twelve hours’ work. With the overtime he’d made close to five hundred, pretax. Not bad.

When Wyly quit the army, he figured on staying in North Carolina, his home state. Working security in Charlotte. Then his wife, Caitlin, told him they were moving to Los Angeles. She’d always wanted to be an actress. She was twenty-four now, and if she waited any longer, she’d be too old.

Caitlin certainly had the looks. She’d been in a “Girls of the ACC” spread in Playboy five years before. But she couldn’t act her way out of a paper bag. Wyly had seen her try. He told her she would miss her family and friends; she could act in Charlotte.

No dice. She told him she’d divorce him if he didn’t “support her dream, help her reach her potentialities.” He’d always been “an avatar of failure” for her, she said. “Potentialities”? “Avatar”? Wyly didn’t even know what an avatar was, and he was sure Caitlin didn’t, either. He could always tell when she’d been talking to her sorority sisters.

He should have let the marriage come to its inevitable sorry end right then. He’d hardly seen her for two years. Still, he wasn’t ready to give up. And he figured he could work security in Los Angeles as easy as Charlotte. They could live by the ocean. He’d learn how to surf. So off to California they went.

But Los Angeles was more expensive than either of them figured. They got stuck renting in Chatsworth, the northwest corner of the Valley, a five-room house for $1,625 a month. Robbery. As for surfing, the traffic meant that they were an hour from the beach, on a good day.

To nobody’s surprise but her own, Caitlin didn’t land any gigs. To help pay the rent, she started waitressing at a restaurant called the Smoke House, by the Warner Bros. studio lot. A month later, barely three months after they moved to California, she told Wyly she was leaving. She’d met her soul mate. He made the mistake of asking Who is he? and got the dude’s résumé in return. Bart Gruber. He made the kind of movies that went right to the video store. Gruber had convinced Caitlin her career would take off if she would let the world peek at her C cups in his next movie, The Smartest Girls in the Room, something about lesbian scam artists. Even worse, Caitlin had convinced herself she was in love with him. Probably the best acting she’d ever done.

Wyly was through arguing. Thank God she hadn’t listened when he told her, that first year together, that they should have kids right away. He dragged her suitcases out of the bedroom closet.

“Careful,” Caitlin said, when he started tossing her clothes onto the bed. “A lot of that stuff is new.”

“Now I know where your money’s been going.”

“Mike. Aren’t you even going to fight for me? ”

A single tear ran down her cheek. Typical. Now that she was an actress, she wanted some drama. He almost laughed. “Fight for you. No.”

“Because you never loved me.”

“No, Cate, I loved you, best I could considering we’ve hardly seen each other. I don’t think you ever loved me. And I’m not inclined to take on a fight I’m bound to lose. But I do feel a tiny bit bad for you. You oughta marry a doctor back home, like Cindy and Sandy”—her favorite sorority sisters. “Put those tits to use before it’s too late. You’re gonna whore, get yourself paid.”

“Michael Steven Wyly. I won’t let you speak to me that way.” She hauled off and slapped him across the face. He let her. If he grabbed back, she’d probably call 911. He did not need a domestic violence charge on his back.

“Listen to me here,” he said. “I know you don’t think so, but I’m looking out for you. You wind up staying out here too long, these guys like Geller—”

“His name’s Gruber—”

“They’re gonna use you up. Go home while you still have it.”

“I love California.”

“Love. Sure. That word again. You wouldn’t know love if it gave you a hundred bucks to suck it off.” He guessed he was angrier than he knew. He’d never said anything like that to her before.

She tossed back her hair and tried to slap him again. “You’re a pig, Michael. Bart says you’re a Fascist, just like the Germans.”

Wyly felt his heart race. For a few seconds they were both quiet, and then he spoke, slowly, carefully. “This guy I’ve never met says I’m a what? Like the who? ”

“He says you and your unit, what you did to those detainees, it was criminal and you should be in jail—”

Wyly took a breath, stepped away from her so he wouldn’t do something he’d regret. They were in deep waters here. “What did you tell him about me, Caitlin? You know I don’t talk about that.” Not now, and not ever, Wyly didn’t add. He didn’t talk about it, and he didn’t think about it. Different guys had different ways of handling it. He’d decided as soon as he got out that the best way for him would be just to forget it. That plan was working pretty well so far.

“I said you were on an interrogation unit. That’s all.” She sounded defensive. Then her face hardened. “I didn’t have to tell him anything else. He says everybody knows what you did. He says we broke the Geneva convention—”

“You know what the Geneva convention is, Cate? You have any idea? ”

“He says you embarrassed the whole country—”

Ugly words went through Wyly’s mind, slurs about this guy Bart, but he didn’t say them. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction. He summoned his Ranger discipline and kept his voice even.

“He doesn’t know what it was like over there, and you don’t, either.”

“Just like Apu Grab, Bart says.”

“You mean Abu Ghraib? You don’t have a clue.”

“I know you think I’m stupid, but I have a college degree, Michael. Unlike you.”

“Physical therapy is not a college degree. Even if NC State says it is. Tell your boyfriend we were interrogating top-level terrorists. The guys who pulled the strings. Not random Iraqi farmers who got caught in raids.”

“Just answer me one thing. If you’re so proud of what you did, how come you never talk about it? How come you always change the subject?”

And despite himself, Wyly was carried back to the barracks in Poland. He pushed the images out of his mind. Past was past. “I’m a soldier, Cate. I did what they told me, my superior officers. That’s how it works.”

“Bart said you’d say that. You were the muscle, you followed orders. He said that’s an old story.”

Wyly stepped toward her, raised his hand high. Then he turned away, grabbed a T-shirt and shorts and his running shoes. Los Angeles had a chain of gyms called 24 Hour Fitness. He’d joined a couple of weeks back. If he wasn’t going to get arrested for assault, he needed to get out of this house.

HE RAN SEVENTEEN MILES that night, stayed on the treadmill until 2 a.m. When he got home, Caitlin was gone. A month later they finalized the divorce, a quick no-fault that split their assets — the two cars and the four thousand dollars in their savings account — right down the middle. Wyly celebrated by going to Hollywood and going home with the first girl drunk enough to say yes. She didn’t have Caitlin’s body, but she was a much better lay.

A week later, he saw a posting on a military-only chat board looking for ex-soldiers to do stunts on a television show. He thought maybe the post was a scam, but he applied anyway. It was real. And he got the job.

Now he was working regularly. Making decent money. Enough to pay the rent on the house and have a few bucks left over for this Mustang. Nothing fancy, a gunmetal-gray convertible with the six-cylinder engine. He would have liked a V-8, but he couldn’t make the math work. The odometer on this one read eighty-five thousand miles, which probably meant one hundred eighty-five thousand. It needed a little bit of work, had some rust on the right quarter panel, but nothing major.

He got a loan from the friendly bankers at Wells Fargo and picked it up for eleven-five. After a couple of weekends, he had it running smooth. Of course, it was no good for anything longer than a trip to the beach. These old engines overheated in a hurry, and the six-cylinder was underpowered by modern standards. He needed a week to go zero to sixty. But he could run it back and forth to work, and that was all he wanted.

Yeah, he couldn’t complain. California was all right. He thought about Caitlin less than he would have expected. A couple of weeks back he’d seen her at a club in Burbank, looking pissed, standing with another girl who could have been her twin. No guys around. He wondered if Gruber had dumped her already. He’d ducked out before she saw him, blown the fifteen-dollar cover. He had nothing to say to her.

Once in a while he remembered what Caitlin had said to him on their last night together. No, he couldn’t say he was proud of everything 673 had done. Especially at the end. But he was done now. He lived in the Valley and played drill sergeant to overpaid actors, none of whom cared about his time in the army. If they asked, he said, “Yeah, I was a Ranger.” People in Hollywood preferred to talk about themselves anyway, so most of the time he didn’t need to say anything else. On those rare occasions when somebody pushed him for details, he’d say, “I wish I could tell you. But it’s all classified. Maybe in fifty years.”

WYLY STOPPED at an In-N-Out Burger, thinking he’d refuel, then head out to one of the bars near his house, have a beer, watch the end of the Lakers game. While he was waiting to order, he changed his mind. He was eating too much junk these days. He’d noticed this morning that he’d gained a couple of pounds. Out here, that mattered. Being an ex-soldier wasn’t enough. He needed to look the part.

He pulled out of line, headed home. He had a date tomorrow night, a nurse he’d picked up at a Starbucks the week before. Girls out here were easy. He was pretty sure that if he paid for dinner and half listened to whatever she told him, they’d wind up back at her place. Playing doctor. Though he better not make that joke. He’d tried it with another nurse a month back. She hadn’t laughed.

At the Safeway on De Soto, he picked up a premade salad and low-fat turkey. The guys he’d served with would be laughing. So be it. If everything went right, in a year or two he might start getting regular acting gigs. He could deal with a few tasteless dinners.

Chatsworth was a dull middle-class neighborhood, built in the 1960s and 1970s as Los Angeles expanded into the northern end of the Valley. Houses here were packed tightly on small lots, separated by walls or hedges for privacy. Wyly made a left onto Lassen, a right onto Owensmouth, another left and right, the streets getting shorter and shorter, and finally swung into his driveway. The place had two narrow bedrooms, a galley kitchen, and a living room that barely fit a couch and a coffee table. Wyly didn’t mind. After living for years in army housing, and then that barracks in Poland, he was just glad to have a place of his own.

He caught the very end of the Lakers game, then flipped on ESPN. At about 11:30, he was watching SportsCenter, nursing a Corona Light, and slapping mustard on the low-fat turkey to make it go down easier, when the doorbell rang.

“Yeah,” Wyly yelled. “Who’s there? ”

“Domino’s.”

Wyly hadn’t ordered any pizza. A month before, Pizza Hut made the same mistake. Maybe someone was pranking him. But as a prank, ordering pizza for someone was lame. The Pizza Hut guy left, no argument, when Wyly said he hadn’t ordered it.

“Not mine,” he said. He pulled open the door, saw the Domino’s box—

And then his stomach was torn in half. The pain was worse than the worst punch he’d ever taken, not just his skin or his abs but tearing deep into his gut.

“Oh, God,” he said. He dropped his beer and stumbled backward. His upper body jackknifed, closed on itself, as he instinctively tried to protect the wound. He put his right hand to his belly and felt blood, his own blood, trickling through his fingers. Barely a second had passed. Wyly didn’t understand exactly what was happening, much less why it was happening, but he knew he was in trouble.

Wyly tried to raise his arm to defend himself, though he felt the power leaving his legs. In a few seconds, he’d be on the floor—

“No—” he said. “Ple—”

He didn’t even get to beg. The second shot caught him higher up, breaking two ribs and tearing into his right lung. His muscles collapsed. He went down hard, no acting job, no slow-motion fall into the beer puddling on the clean wood floor. No noise from the shots. A silencer. The gun, the pistol, hidden under the Domino’s box. Wyly got that much but no more. He understood the how, but not the who or the why. Wyly tried to raise his head and look at the shooter, the killer, since he knew now that he was dying, would be dead very soon.

Then the pistol spoke its lethal whisper twice more. Wyly twitched and died. Behind him, the ESPN anchors introduced SportsCenter’s top ten plays of the day.

THE SHOOTER SLIPPED the pistol, silencer still attached, into the empty pizza box, and pulled the door shut and walked to the Toyota in the driveway and slipped inside. And the car rolled out and disappeared into the blurry Los Angeles night.

4

Don’t take your guns to town. ”

Wells was pulling himself up a steep rock face, when Johnny Cash’s voice erupted from his cell phone. The dream left him, and he found himself in his cabin. He couldn’t remember why he’d been climbing, or what waited for him at the peak. He squeezed his eyes, hoping to recover the mountain. But the phone kept ringing — or, more accurately, singing — until Wells swept an arm across the bedside table and grabbed it.

“Hello.” The word stuck in his throat. His tongue seemed glued to the roof of his mouth. His pulse hammered in his skull, a metronome gone mad. He wondered how much he’d drunk the night before. Three beers, a couple shots. Hadn’t seemed like all that much. He supposed he wasn’t used to drinking.

“I wake you? ” Shafer sounded amused. “Long night, John? ”

Wells lifted his head, an inch at a time, peeked at the clock by the bed: 12:15. He hadn’t slept past noon in at least twenty years. Then he remembered the martini. The martini had done him in. Anne had ordered it for him at last call, over his protests. Shaken not stirred, she’d told the bartender. Then she’d winked at him. He’d wanted to be irritated, but the truth was he’d been flattered. He’d told her who he was two beers before. She was twenty-nine, a cop in Conway, divorced two years before and remaking her life. She seemed amused that he’d wound up in a cabin in New Hampshire.

“Shouldn’t you be in the other Berlin? Chasing Russians? ”

“The cold war’s over, sweetheart.” Sweetheart said like a 1950s movie star.

“Germans, then. Back in high school, I wanted to go to Berlin, see the Love Parade.”

“That big rave? ”

“That big rave. I read about it, and it sounded like the coolest thing ever. Remember, I was sixteen. Instead, I got stupid, fell in love, married Frank Poynter, and now look at me. Stuck in a bar with a guy pretending to be John Wells.”

“I am John Wells. At least I think I am.”

“Sure you are. I bet you run this scam all the time.” She laughed and kissed him. Even before the martini, they both knew she was going back to the cabin.

“WHAT DO YOU WANT, ELLIS?” But he knew, without knowing, what Shafer wanted. This call was overdue. He ignored the jackhammer in his skull and sat up. Anne reached out, ran a hand down his back.

“I want you,” Shafer said. “Your presence is requested down here.”

“Mmmph.”

“Soon as possible. If you can tear yourself away from your social obligations.”

Wells didn’t bother asking how Shafer had guessed he wasn’t alone. “Unless you want to send a plane, it’s going to be tomorrow,” he said. “That too late? ”

“Tomorrow’s fine.”

Wells hung up. His first thought, he couldn’t help himself: Something wrong with Exley? But Shafer would have told him. This was business.

Anne slid her hand over his chest.

“I have to go,” he said.

She ignored his objection and pushed him down.

When they were done, they lay still for a minute. She got up before he did and reached for the rainbow-striped panties bunched under the bed beside his jeans. Fifteen minutes later, she stood at the door to the cabin and pressed a folded-up piece of notebook paper into his hand before she left. “My e-mail address,” she said. “You’re leaving town? ”

“Looks that way.”

“Gonna do some super-secret stuff? ”

“Only kind of stuff I do,” Wells said, trying to roll with her.

“All right, then.”

“All right.” Wells tucked the paper into his pocket. “Look, Anne, you probably won’t believe it, but I don’t do this kind of thing very often. This was my first time in a while—”

“No, I believe it. You were a little rusty last night.”

He flushed. She laughed. “Don’t worry. Much better this morning, especially for a man your age—”

“Ouch,” Wells said.

“What I’m trying to say is, I had fun. Give me your number, maybe I’ll take a trip to D.C. See the monuments. Isn’t that what tourists do down there? ”

He found a pen, scribbled his cell number. “There’s no name on it.”

“Of course there isn’t.”

She kissed him on the lips, ran a hand through his hair, walked away in her battered hiking boots, her blue jeans cupping her ass. Wells didn’t expect to see her again, but he found himself waving as she got into her Silverado and rolled off. She had style.

TONKA DIDN’ T LIKE WATCHING him pack. She tugged at his jeans as he filled his duffel bag. He would have to bring her to Langley, he realized. He didn’t know how long he’d be gone, and he could hardly take her back to the pound. He grabbed her bowls, her treats and toys, and threw them in the Subaru beside his bag.

He took one final look around the cabin. He didn’t feel overly sentimental. It had served its purpose, given him a place to hide and to heal. From the bedside table, he grabbed the book he’d just started, a biography of Elvis. It had been Elvis or Gandhi, and Wells hadn’t felt like Gandhi. And thinking of Gandhi reminded Wells of what he had almost left behind. He reached under the bed for the lockbox with his pistols.

HE STOPPED ONLY ONCE on the drive down, for a tankard of 7-Eleven coffee and a jug of water. Somewhere outside Philadelphia, the hangover lost its grip on him and he settled in his seat.

He spent the night in a no-tell motel outside Washington. He assumed Exley was in the house they’d once shared. The motel room stank of smoke, and the bed was bowed like a hammock. Wells brought Tonka in with him, and they slept on the floor back-to-back.

When he reached Langley in the morning, the gate guards didn’t want to let him in. Aside from the agency’s own bomb sniffers, dogs were not allowed on the campus. Wells told them it was just for a few hours, they’d be doing him a favor. He didn’t have to tell them that after the last couple years, he had a few favors coming. They hemmed and hawed and made a couple of calls and finally waved him through.

“JOHN—” SHAFER BARELY STOOD before the dog jumped on him. On her hind legs, she was nearly as tall as he was. He ineffectually tried to push her away. She licked his face, eager to play. “I was gonna say I missed you. But this is a new low. I cannot believe you brought a dog in here.”

“Her name’s Tonka. And she likes you.”

Shafer pushed the dog aside and hugged Wells. Wells always felt awkward at these moments. Male affection baffled him. His dad had been distant, taciturn, not exactly cold but unemotional. Unflappable. A surgeon, in the best and worst ways. Wells had followed his example, packed away his emotions. Even as a teenager, playing football, a sport where passion was not just tolerated but encouraged, he had resisted showing off. When he scored, he handed the ball to the referee without a word. As his high-school coach liked to say, quoting Bear Bryant: “When you get to the end zone, act like you’ve been there before.”

Now Wells reached down, patted Shafer’s shoulders before disengaging himself. He tapped Tonka’s flank. “Come on, now. Over there.” He pointed to Shafer’s couch. The dog reluctantly complied.

“It’s good to see you,” Shafer said. “Even if you look like a survivalist. With the beard and the flannel. And this ridiculous dog.”

I am a survivalist, Wells didn’t say. Survival’s my specialty. Though the people around me aren’t always so lucky. Shafer’s desk was covered with army interrogation manuals, some classified, some not, as well as what looked like a report from the CIA inspector general. Wells decided not to ask. He’d find out soon enough.

“Actually, you look about ready to head back to Afghanistan,” Shafer said.

“That what this is about? ”

“Closer to home. I got the outlines this morning, but I don’t have details. Duto wants to fill us in himself.” Duto, the CIA director, Wells’s ultimate boss.

“Vincent Duto? What a pleasant surprise.”

Wells and Duto didn’t get along. To Wells, Duto was a martinet who saw agents as interchangeable parts, pawns in a game that was being played for his glory. And Wells knew that Duto saw him as valuable but uncontrollable, a Thoroughbred with Derby-winning speed and an ego to match. Duto had said as much, leaving out the second half of the analogy: We’ll ride you until you break a leg, John.

“Then off to the glue factory,” Wells said aloud.

“What?”

“Wondering why Duto wants to brief me, instead of letting you do it.”

“He misses you.”

“Do you trust him, Ellis? ”

Shafer’s only response was a grunt. The question didn’t merit an answer.

“Really,” Wells said, not sure why he was pressing the issue. “Do you? ”

Shafer sat on his desk — and knocked over a bottle of Diet Coke. He hopped up like he’d been scalded. Wells grabbed the bottle while it was still mostly full and set it on the coffee table.

“Still have your reflexes,” Shafer said.

“I try.” Wells didn’t mention the endless games of Halo he’d played in New Hampshire, trying to stem the inevitable decline in hand speed that came with age. He didn’t know if the games would do him any good in a gunfight, but he was an impressive killing machine on planet Reach.

“You can’t say you trust Duto or don’t,” Shafer said. “His value system doesn’t include trust. Your interests overlap, he’s your friend. He may even tell you the truth. Once he stops needing you, that’s that. It’s like, I read about this Hollywood producer, he wrote two memos every time he made a movie. One about how great the movie was, the other about how bad. When the movie came out and he saw how it did, he decided which memo to keep. It wasn’t that one was right and the other was wrong. They were both true, until they weren’t. Get it? ”

“I get it was a stupid question.”

Shafer’s phone rang. He listened, grunted, hung up. “Let’s go,” he said.

They walked out of Shafer’s office, Tonka trotting after them. “Can I make one request? Can we leave the dog here? ”

“Not a chance.”

DUTO MET THEM in the executive quarters on the seventh floor of the New Headquarters Building, a conference room down the hallway from his suite. Wells guessed Duto had been warned about Tonka and didn’t want the dog in his office.

Duto had upgraded his wardrobe in the year Wells had been gone. He wore a blue suit that fit like it was hand-tailored, a white shirt, and a crisp red tie.

“Running for something? ” Wells said.

“You’re going to want to shave that beard now that you’re back in civilization, John.”

Despite his distrust of Duto, Wells found himself strangely relieved that the man was still in charge. At least they didn’t have to pretend to be friendly. “And this is Tonka,” Wells said.

“She trained any better than you? ”

“I wouldn’t say so.”

“Too bad. Can we start, or you have any other pets I need to meet?”

They sat. Tonka sighed and lay down at Wells’s feet.

“Ellis got a little bit of this earlier, so I’ll start with you,” Duto said. “Ever heard of Task Force 673? ”

Wells shook his head.

“Joint army-agency group. Interrogated terrorists, high-value detainees.”

“I didn’t know we and the army ever did that together.”

“Everybody’s fighting the same war.”

“What Vinny means is that Rumsfeld kept pushing into our turf, and creating these teams was the only way to protect it,” Shafer said.

“Anyway, starting in 2004, we had a bunch of these squads. They went through various permutations, different names and squad numbers.”

“Translation: we and the army kept wiping them out and reconstituting them to make it harder for Amnesty or Congress or anyone to follow the thread,” Shafer interrupted. “I wish I could answer your questions, Senator, but Task Force 85 doesn’t even exist.”

“Do you want to explain, or should I? ” Duto said.

“You go ahead.”

“Thank you, Ellis. In late ’05, when the Abu Ghraib blowback was really bad, we eliminated all the black squads. But then at the beginning of ’07 we put one more together. Six-seven-three. The final iteration. Ten guys. Seven army, three agency. It ran out of Poland, a barracks on a Polish base there.”

“Okay,” Wells said, picturing the setup: the concrete building at the edge of the base, the one everyone pretended didn’t exist. Planes landing late at night, guards shuffling prisoners in and out.

“The army picked the commander. A colonel with a lot of experience in interrogations. Martin Terreri. And because of all the pressure we were under from the Red Cross and everybody else, we saved 673 for the toughest guys. This was not for routine cases.”

“Because of the tactics they were allowed to use.”

“In general, the way it worked, detainees came to 673 one of two ways. Some were in the system already — say, in Iraq — and somebody decided that they needed more pressure. The others, they were sent direct after capture.”

“Ghosts,” Shafer said. A ghost prisoner was a detainee whose existence the United States refused to confirm to outsiders, like lawyers or wives or Red Cross monitors.

“But not entirely. They were all in the system,” Duto said. “Legally, they had to be.”

“Got it,” Wells said. “Who oversaw Terreri? ”

“Nobody, really,” Duto said. “Six-seven-three, they were kind of ghosts themselves. Theoretically, Terreri reported to the deputy commander of Centcom”—Central Command, which oversaw all army operations in the Middle East and central Asia. “At the time, that was Gene Sanchez.”

“Isn’t Sanchez a lieutenant general? A colonel reporting to a three-star?”

“That was intentional. Sanchez wasn’t keeping a close eye on 673. It wasn’t on his org chart. The point was to let these guys do what they needed to do. In reality, the intel got chimneyed straight to the Pentagon.”

Chimneying — sometimes called stovepiping — meant moving raw intelligence straight to senior leaders instead of sending it through the normal analysis at Langley and the Pentagon. In theory, chimneying saved important information from being lost inside the vortex of the CIA and gave decision makers the chance to judge it for themselves.

“So, short version of the story, this 673 was a black squad with a straight line to the Pentagon,” Wells said.

“Pretty much.”

“They report to you also? ” Shafer said. “Or anyone on our side? ”

“Not directly.”

“What does that mean, Vinny? ”

“We saw the take after the army.”

“Even though you had guys on the squad? ” Wells said.

“That’s right.”

Wells didn’t get it, and then he did. “You didn’t like this squad. But you wanted to be sure you were involved, just in case they wound up with something good. You put a couple guys in, nobody important, protected yourself from whatever it was they were doing, but made sure you had a hand in the game.”

Duto was silent and Wells saw he’d scored.

“Always so clever, Vinny. Always playing both sides.”

“Guess you never broke the rules the last few years, John. Always please and thank you. May I go on, or you have more ethics lessons? ”

Wells laid his hands on the smooth polished wood of the table. He stared at Duto, and Duto stared back. The triple-thick windows and carpeted floors of the seventh floor swallowed conversations. Only Tonka’s panting spoiled the room’s silence.

“Vinny,” Shafer said. “You might take a different tone. Since it’s possible none of us would be here without John.” A reference to the bomb that Wells had stopped a year earlier.

“We would have found it,” Duto said, without any conviction. “We were close.” He tugged his tie loose, opened his briefcase, pulled out a folder, a physical effort to put the conversation back on track. “Like I said, 673 reported to the army, but we got their take.” Duto opened the folder, slid across a sheet with ten names on it. “Anybody on there ring a bell? ”

One name jumped at Wells. Jeremiah M. Williams, a soldier he’d met at Ranger training fifteen years before. “Jerry Williams,” Wells said. “I knew him a long time ago. Nice guy. Quiet. My ex-wife said something funny about him once. I can’t remember when it happened. But I remember her telling me he was built like a Greek god. You know, we’d just gotten married, so it was sort of a funny thing for her to say, but she was right. He was. Like a black Greek god. I’ll never forget it.”

“Your wife met him; you were friends with him.”

“Friendly.” Williams was tough to get close to. Or maybe Wells hadn’t tried.

“But you didn’t stay in touch.”

“When I started here, I didn’t stay in touch with anyone from the army.”

Wells wasn’t sure why he was going into so much detail about his non-relationship with Jeremiah Marquis Williams. Maybe to explain to himself how he’d gotten to this point in his life with so few people he could trust.

“He was a good man, Jerry. The type of guy who made training easier. Always pulled more than his weight.” Even as Wells said the words, he realized they sounded like a eulogy.

“He’s the only name you recognize? ”

“At first glance. Where is Jerry these days? ”

“Missing.”

“Jerry’s missing? All those guys are missing? ”

“Jerry’s missing. Presumed dead. The other six names with the asterisks, they’re dead for sure.”

Now Wells wished he hadn’t jerked Duto’s chain by bringing the dog. Headquarters brought out the worst in him. Acid rose in his throat. Another good soldier dead.

“How? ”

“In order. Rachel Callar killed herself in San Diego ten months ago. Overdose.”

Duto handed over two photographs. The first showed Callar in her army dress uniform. She was pretty and trim, her brown hair cut in bangs that covered her forehead. A practical-looking woman, freckles and a wide chin.

“Six-seven-three had a woman? ”

“She was the squad doctor. A psychiatrist.”

The second photo had been taken by the San Diego police at the scene of Callar’s suicide, a plastic bag pulled tight over her head. Wells passed the photos to Shafer without comment.

“Husband found her,” Duto said. “No note, but no reason at the time to believe it was anything but suicide. She was in the army reserve. Had done a couple of tours in Iraq, counseling soldiers there. Three months later, two Rangers, the most junior guys on the squad, were killed by an IED in Afghanistan.”

Duto slid across three photographs. The first two were similar, shots of broad-shouldered men in camouflage uniforms, both smiling almost shyly. The third focused on a blown-out Humvee, its armored windows shattered, smoke pouring from its passenger compartment.

“This one, we don’t know if it was related to the others — it was on a stretch of road where another convoy got hit the next week. Still, they were part of the squad, so it’s possible.”

“First the doctor in San Diego, then the two Rangers in Afghanistan,” Shafer said.

“Correct. Then we’re back stateside.”

Duto handed Wells two more photographs, the same macabre before and after. The first was a standard CIA identification shot. A paunchy man in a sport coat, striped tie, thick black hair. The second photo, a D.C. police shot. The same man, faceup on a cracked slab of sidewalk, dress shirt stained black with blood. His wallet sat open and empty on the curb, a few inches from his shoes.

“Three months after that was Kenneth Karp. Shot in D.C., east of Logan Circle, four months ago. About one thirty in the morning. Outside an ATM. He was one of ours, so it was reported to us, of course, but nobody made the connection. The cops figured it for a robbery gone bad, and so did our security officers. The ATM tape doesn’t show anything.”

“He live in D.C.? ” Shafer said.

Duto shook his head. “Rosslyn. Next question, why was he pulling five hundred dollars from an ATM in the District in the middle of the night? There’s a strip club a block from the bank. Karp had a weekly poker game in Adams Morgan. Apparently he had a routine. Leave the game at one, make a pit stop, get home at three. Wife never knew.”

“He did the same thing every week? ”

“That’s what his buddies told the cops.”

“Somebody could have figured out the routine, waited for him.”

“In retrospect, yes. At the time, we had no reason to think so.”

“What’d he do for 673? ” Wells said.

“He was the senior translator,” Duto said. “Spoke Arabic, Pashto, Urdu.”

Duto handed over a photograph, a bald-headed black man whose uniform stretched tight across his massive shoulders. Jerry Williams. No second picture, since Williams was missing, not dead.

“Williams’s wife reported him missing in New Orleans two months ago. Last seen at a bar in the Gentilly district. North of the French Quarter. He retired last year, after the squad broke up. He knew Arabic from his Special Ops training, so he worked with Karp on the translations. He was having marital problems, and the cops down there didn’t look too hard for him. If he’s alive, he’s laying low. He hasn’t been seen since, hasn’t used his ATM card or credit cards, hasn’t called his family, hasn’t flown under his own name. The cops haven’t officially ruled out his wife, but she’s not a suspect.”

Wells looked at the smiling man in the photograph and wondered if he was dead. “Let me make sure I have it straight. Callar, the doctor, hangs herself in San Diego. The two Rangers die. Nothing happens for a while. Then Karp dies here. Then Williams disappears in New Orleans.”

“Correct,” Duto said.

“Five missing or dead from a ten-person squad, nobody put it together?”

“Why would we? A suicide, an IED in Afghanistan, a robbery, a missing person. Four army, one agency. Hard to see a pattern. Until this.”

Duto slid two more sets of photographs across the table.

“Jack Fisher and Mike Wyly. Both killed two days ago. Fisher in San Francisco in the morning. Wyly in Los Angeles near midnight. Both shot at close range. No witnesses, and even though they were in residential areas, none of the neighbors heard shots. The cops are assuming a silencer.”

Duto didn’t need to explain further. Silencers were illegal, and good ones were hard to come by. A silencer meant a professional, or at least a semiprofessional, killer.

“Same gun in both shootings? ” Shafer said.

“Yes. Same as the one that got Karp, by the way.”

“Who were they? ”

“Wyly was a sergeant, a Ranger. Good guy, by all accounts.” He looked like a good guy to Wells. Tall, blue-eyed, big square jaw. He belonged on a recruiting poster. At least in the before shot. The after wasn’t so nice. He lay sprawled across a bare wooden floor, eyes dull, his hands covered with his own blood. Four shots in his torso, two in the abdomen, two up high in the chest. The shooter had wanted to be sure.

“Where was this? ” Wells said.

“His house, the San Fernando Valley. He’d just gotten divorced. The cops talked to his ex, but she has an alibi. Given the pattern of the shootings, there’s no reason to believe she’s involved.”

Wells handed the photos of Wyly to Shafer. He looked at Fisher, who was bald and offered a smile that revealed prominent canines. Wells hadn’t remembered the name, but the face was familiar.

“Rat Tooth,” Wells said. “I kind of liked him, but that was a minority view.”

“Rat Tooth? You knew him? ”

“He was an instructor at the Farm when I was a trainee. Even back then he was bald. Specialized in what he liked to call ‘tactical physical arts.’ Eye gouging, finger breaking. Halfway through, he disappeared. There were rumors he’d, quote/unquote, engaged in inappropriate physical contact with a trainee.”

“Bingo,” Duto said. “After that, we put him on the road where he belonged. He was in Colombia in the late nineties, the Philippines for a couple of years after nine-eleven. The places you could run without a lot of eyes on you. He liked it messy.”

Messy. The second photograph of Fisher was messy. He was slumped against a driver’s seat, head torn open by a close-range pistol shot. His jaw was open, and Wells couldn’t help but notice his teeth, long and sharp and nearly vampiric.

“Fisher had a reputation, I can’t deny it,” Duto said. “But he had his uses.”

He was as much as telling Wells and Shafer that Fisher had been the squad’s designated torturer. Though the United States didn’t torture, Wells reminded himself. Torture was wrong. And illegal. So whatever Fisher had or hadn’t done for 673, he hadn’t tortured. QED.

“You put all this together yesterday? ”

“The San Francisco police got the call on Fisher in the morning, two days ago. Once they figured out who he was, they got in touch with the FBI, which reached out to us. We didn’t know if his murder was connected to Karp, but we figured we’d better check on the other members of 673. We called Wyly’s house yesterday morning. An LAPD detective answered the phone.”

“What about the other three guys, the rest of the squad?” Wells said.

“All safe. Murphy, the number two, still works for us. He’s at CTC now”—the Counterterrorist Center. “Terreri, the colonel, he’s in Afghanistan serving at Bagram. The last guy, Hank Poteat, is an army communications specialist. He’s at Camp Henry in South Korea now. None of them have noticed anything off.”

“Is Murphy under guard? ”

“Yes.”

“The FBI is leading the investigation? ” Shafer asked.

“Correct. They’ve classified the murders as a possible terrorist attack. They’re putting together a task force. We’re assisting, and so’s the army. But the Feebs have jurisdiction. No different than the Kansi shootings.” In 1993, Mir Amal Kansi, a Pakistani graduate student, killed two agency employees near the main entrance to Langley. The FBI had led the investigation, capturing Kansi in Pakistan in 1997. He was convicted, sentenced to death, and executed in Virginia in 2002.

“And the local police departments are cooperating,” Shafer said.

“Of course.”

“So, John and me,” Shafer said. “Help us out here, Vinny. Where do we fit in? Since we’re not part of the task force, and the agency’s got no jurisdiction anyway.”

“I’ll get to that,” Duto said. “But first, let me ask, this sound like AQ”—Al Qaeda—“to you? Or any of the usual offshoots? ”

“It’s too subtle,” Wells said. “Too much work for the payoff. It’s not like shooting a Cabinet secretary.”

“Did anybody outside know we’d set this squad up?” Shafer asked.

“You might have noticed, there’s no shortage of articles about our interrogation techniques.”

“But 673, were they ever mentioned specifically? ”

“Last year, a jihadi Web site wrote about them. ‘The American squad 673 are rabid dogs who must be exterminated.’ Nothing specific about their tactics. Generic stuff. We have the pages cached if you want to see them. NSA tried to find the source, but it couldn’t.”

“We know how the squad ID number got out? ”

“It was reported in Germany last year. A prosecutor in Berlin opened an investigation into our rendition tactics. But the names of the squad members weren’t mentioned, not in the papers and not in the prosecutor’s report. As far as we know, they’ve never leaked.”

“Doesn’t mean jihadis couldn’t find them. Maybe they got help from somebody in Poland,” Shafer said. “Or somebody in the prosecutor’s office.”

“There’s another reason to believe it’s Al Qaeda. Yesterday morning a group calling itself the Army of the Sunni posted a claim of responsibility online. It refers to the murder of Mike Wyly. Looks authentic. At the time it was posted, his death hadn’t been reported. This morning the FBI backtraced the posting to a pay-per-minute computer at a Dunkin’ Donuts in L.A. The kind where you literally feed cash into a box. But the place doesn’t have cameras, and the counter guy doesn’t remember anyone special.”

“What’s the posting say? ”

“That the killings are revenge for the way we treat detainees. These sites are in Arabic, so the media hasn’t noticed it yet. But eventually they will. You can see the headlines. Payback for rendition, et cetera.”

“If it’s true, it’s got to be personal,” Wells said. “I can’t see why you’d pick these targets otherwise. Somebody who 673 interrogated and let go. But they’re all in our custody, right? ”

“All but two. One of them we can rule out. His name’s Mokhatir. A Malaysian national, caught in the Philippines with three soda-bottle bombs, looked like the kind you’d use to take out a plane. He was in custody for a few weeks, had some kind of health issue. They sent him back to the Philippines. He died in detention maybe eight months ago.”

“A health issue? ”

“That’s all we heard.”

“How’d he die? ”

Duto shook his head. Dead is dead. “If you care, ask the Philippine army. I wouldn’t bother. The other guy is the one we need to find. Alaa Zumari’s his name. We sent him back to Cairo two years ago, give or take.”

“Halfway through 673’s tour.”

“Give or take. He was arrested in Iraq with a bunch of cell phones and cash, suspected of being part of the insurgency. But 673 cleared him.”

“Anybody over there tried to talk to him? ”

“Tried, yes. Succeeded, no. The Egyptians lost him a few months ago. He’s gone.”

“Vinny,” Shafer said. “I’m still not clear on what you want from us.”

“I want you to investigate,” Duto said. “Start with Alaa Zumari.” He looked at Wells. “Go to Egypt, find him. If I recall, your particular skill set might come in handy for that.”

The idea was implausible. Wells had burned the jihadis twice and couldn’t see how he could get inside a third time. Even so, his pulse quickened. Aloud, he said only, “I’m guessing the FBI has about a hundred agents on this? ”

“There are complexities here. Which they may not see.”

“Just tell us,” Wells said. “What you’re dancing around.”

“Because this is interagency, the FBI is reporting to the DNI”—Fred Whitby, Duto’s boss, the director of national intelligence. The position had been created after September 11, when Congress and the White House decided a new Cabinet-level post was needed to oversee not just the CIA but the entire intelligence community. “I’m concerned that Whitby may not be giving the full picture to the Feds.”

“Meaning?”

“I can’t tell you more. At this time.”

“You want us to sneak behind your boss’s back—”

“He’s not my boss, John.”

“Actually, he is,” Shafer said. In fact, the relationship between the DNI and DCI was still being defined.

“I run the CIA. Fred Whitby’s got no operational authority here.”

“Have I touched a sore spot, Vinny? ”

Always, Wells thought. At Langley, and all over Washington, the men and women at the top always focused their attention on power plays and turf grabbing, as if the world outside the Beltway didn’t exist except as a kind of simulated reality, a way to keep score.

“You want us to interfere with the FBI,” Wells said. “Operate on American soil. Which is illegal, last time I checked. And you won’t even tell us why, exactly, except that you don’t trust Fred Whitby. I didn’t know we were such good friends.”

“It’s not interfering. It’s piggybacking. I’ll get you access to the 301s—” the reports that FBI agents filed after interviews. “The physical evidence. Lie-detector tests. After that, you do what you like. Say John wants to go to Cairo, find Alaa Zumari before the Feds or the Egyptians? Nobody can stop him.”

“What is it you’re not telling us? ”

Duto paused. “Without going into details. These guys, they broke something important. Major security implications.”

“Related to this Egyptian, Zumari? ”

“No.”

Wells and Shafer waited for Duto to go on, but he didn’t. The silence stretched on. The room’s air seemed to thicken. Even Tonka’s breathing slowed.

“I can’t tell you,” Duto said finally. “Not even you two. Only about eight people in the country know the whole story.”

“Vinnie, you know as well as we do, we’re coded for everything.”

“Everything here. These files, they’re at Liberty Crossing”—the buildings a couple miles west of Langley where the office of the director of national intelligence had its headquarters. “And Whitby’s holding them tight. He’s not even planning to tell the FBI what I just gave you. The Feebs, they’re getting the names of the squad members and the names of the detainees. Not their full records, just their names. I think there are ten. Along with the barest outlines of the way 673 worked. Nothing more. Nothing at all about what they found. I think Whitby’s making a mistake, and I told him so. But I’m overruled. So, yeah, I want you involved. Maybe I can feed you tidbits. The bureau comes back with a suspect, makes an arrest, great. They get lost, maybe you come up with something they don’t, steer them the right way.”

“And you embarrass Whitby and the FBI by doing what they couldn’t,” Wells said.

“You’ve gotten so cynical, John.”

“At least give us access to the full detainee records—”

“I don’t have them.”

“Then no,” Wells said. “Forget it.”

“We’re in,” Shafer said.

5

Why?” “When the director asks, it’s best to agree,” Shafer said.

“When the director asks, it’s best to agree,” Shafer said.

After the meeting, Shafer suggested they leave Langley, get some air. They were standing along the black granite wall of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial. Tucked behind the Mall, on the southwest edge of the Tidal Basin, the monument rarely attracted attention.

“New philosophy for you, Ellis,” Wells said. “Whatever this game is, I don’t want in.”

“Let me explain something, John,” Shafer said. “In five minutes you would have done it anyway. Here’s how it would have gone. Duto would have said it was a chance for you to turn the page with him, build a new relationship. And when that didn’t work, he would have appealed to your sense of duty, told you you needed to avenge Jerry Williams and the rest of the guys. That probably would have done it. And if it didn’t, he would have challenged your manhood and you would have bitten in about half a second.”

“No, he—”

“Yes, he. Because that’s what I would have done.”

Does Duto think he can manipulate me that easily? Wells wondered. Followed by, Am I that easily manipulated? Even now, after everything he’d done, he suspected that these men, Duto and Shafer, saw him as little more than a door kicker, playing the role they gave him.

Wells could have forced Duto to accept him as an equal. With his successes the last few years, he could have become deputy director of operations. He could have quit the agency entirely, moved over to the White House and the National Security Council. He could even have taken a job teaching, someplace like Georgetown, while he figured out his next move. But he knew he’d be bored out of his mind wearing a suit to work every day, running meetings. He belonged outside. But because he wouldn’t accept more authority, Duto and Shafer didn’t respect him.

Wells’s pulse crept higher. He forced himself to smile, not to give Shafer the satisfaction of seeing the sting of his words. “You like the FDR? ” Wells said aloud.

“Not so much. Too politically correct, don’t you think? The Democrats wanted it, and then the Republicans stuck it in the back of beyond. And all this self-conscious inspiration. We should have kept to Lincoln and Jefferson and Washington.”

“Where’s Exley?” Wells said, apropos of nothing. And saying Exley’s name made him think of Anne. He imagined he could smell her on his hands, feel her skin on his. Thinking about her made his mouth go dry. Yet, equally, he wanted to confess what he’d done to Exley. To apologize to her. And to make her jealous. Remind her of what they’d had. “How is she? ”

“Ask her yourself. You know how to find her. I’m not involved. You’re going to get back together, one of you needs to break already. Otherwise you’ll just make each other miserable.”

Suddenly a class of elementary-school kids, third or fourth grade, swarmed the memorial. Their teacher was barely old enough to shave, a hipster in black glasses, a well-meaning Teach for America refugee halfway between the Ivy League and law school. He was trying, but he could barely keep the kids in line. They bounced off one another, shifting foot to foot. Two boys ran off, chased each other around one of the marble benches at the edge of the memorial, playing at a gunfight. “You dead. Pump this shotgun on your head.” The other boy ducked behind a bench, then raised an invisible rifle in both hands. “Shotgun ain’t nothing. You the one is dead.”

“Let’s go,” Wells said.

“Depressing.”

“I hate watching it.”

“I mean, the waste of ammo. These kids can’t hit the side of a barn. And somebody needs to reload.”

“Nice, Ellis.”

“Can’t let everything get to you. You got to be able to smile sometimes, the absurdity of it.”

They left the kids behind, walked around the basin toward the Jefferson Memorial. A faint breeze fluttered off the stagnant water, carrying the muddy, briny smell that Wells would always associate with Washington. The swamp. A city that existed only as a kind of hotel for power. New York or Philadelphia would have been more natural sites for the seat of government, but the South wouldn’t agree, back in the day. So here they were.

Wells supposed the United States had been lucky to have D.C. If the capital had stayed in the North, the South might have seceded a decade earlier, before the Union Army could bring it to heel. And if the South had broken away, at least three countries would have formed in the area now occupied by the United States — a North, a South, and a West. Then the United States wouldn’t have been the dominant world power in the twentieth century. Perhaps World War I or even World War II would have ended differently. On and on the counterfactual history ran.

Kierkegaard was wrong, Wells thought. Life couldn’t be understood backward or forward. In the end, humans depended on faith as armor. But Wells’s own faith had faded. He didn’t know where to look. He’d lived as a Muslim for a decade. But how could he rejoin the umma, the community of believers, after what Omar Khadri had done to him? Yet Wells was even more perplexed by Christianity, the religion he’d been raised in growing up. He found Islam’s precepts easier to accept than Christianity’s, the relationship with God more personal.

The wind picked up and riffled the basin’s brackish water, scudding low waves against its concrete walls. Despite himself, Wells found himself looking for a fish in the pool. A fat, ugly carp or even a toothy pike. Lord, just show me a pike that got lost on its way up the Potomac, and I will never question your existence again.

No fish.

Wells shivered in the breeze. Duto had certainly ruined his mood.

“Cold? ” Shafer said.

“Wondering if I should become a Buddhist.”

“I don’t think it would suit you. You know what you need, John? A mission.”

“That what you think? ”

“I knows you fancies yourself a deep thinker,” Shafer said in a ridiculous southern accent. “But philosophy ain’t your thing, John-boy.”

“You were born an ass, you will forever be an ass, and you will die an ass.”

“At least I’m consistent. You ever see Gandhi eating meat? Barbecue? Pulled pork? A fat T-bone? Sirloin? Broiled in butter and served with a side of bacon? ”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, but you’re making me hungry, Ellis.”

“Follow your destiny,” Shafer said. “Put down the book, grasshopper. Pick up the gun. Can’t kill nobody with a book.”

Wells laughed. “When we get back to the office, I’m going to try. Then I’m gonna put you on a spit.”

“Meantime, get to it.”

“You really want to do this,” Wells said.

“If nothing else, don’t you want to catch whoever killed your friend?”

“You don’t know he’s dead.”

“He’s dead, John. Until proven otherwise. Let’s find out who killed him.”

“Simple,” Wells said. “And if the truth turns out to be complicated?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there. Or burn it. Whatever.”

“All right.”

“So, Duto wants us to play detective, we play detective,” Shafer said. “Spitball. Everything but the obvious, the jihadi connection. Save that for last.”

“You know anything more about 673? Anything Duto didn’t tell us? ” Wells said.

“Only this: we and the army paid the members of the squad their regular salaries. But the expenses were financed by the agency through what’s called a C-one drop. The squad got quarterly disbursements. No accounting of what happened to the money after that. No receipts, no oversight. It’s very rare. Seven-three got close to eight million through these drops.”

“Eight million for a ten-man squad. Not bad.”

“No, it wasn’t. Some went to the Poles who were running the base. Some for charter flights. Some for coms equipment, probably. Satellite gear, et cetera. But that’s another possible motive. Maybe whoever was in charge of the money skimmed a couple million. Now he’s worried the rest of the squad found out, so he’s eliminating them.”

“What I don’t see, why kill the rest of the squad now? You’re just calling attention to yourself. Doesn’t make sense.”

“I can’t disagree,” Shafer said. “Okay. Your turn.”

“What about the woman, Rachel? The doctor. One woman, nine guys. Maybe she was having an affair. Two affairs. A love triangle.”

“Then she gets home and one of the guys kills her? And makes it look like a suicide? Then starts in on the rest of the squad? Why now?”

“Same problem as the money,” Wells said. “The timing doesn’t work.”

“Okay, this is the worst yet,” Shafer said. “Say one of the members is actually a jihadi. Who worked for all these years for the agency. Or the army. Waiting to get put on this squad. And then, lo and behold — no. I can’t even say it. It’s so ridiculous.”

“Try this. Coincidence. The doctor killed herself. Jerry Williams walked out on his wife. Karp got shot in a robbery—”

“Tell it to the guys who just got popped in San Francisco and L.A.”

With that they stood and looked over the Tidal Basin. Two helicopters flew low overhead, most likely headed for the White House, as an overweight jogger huffed slowly along the path that circled the pool.

“Not the most productive ten minutes we’ve ever spent,” Shafer said.

“What if—” Wells said.

“Just say it.”

“What if, let’s say, someone inside the agency or the Pentagon is embarrassed by what 673 did? Somebody high up? ”

“So, they want these guys taken out? One by one? Okay, go with it. Six-seven-three was torturing detainees. They were dumb enough to keep evidence, videos or photos. And some senior official was stupid enough to put his authorization in writing. He’s got a problem.”

“Big problem. The kind that puts him in jail.”

“Sure,” Shafer said. “But that’s a lot of stupid. And even so, the risk of taking them out is huge.”

“People have been known to do dumb things when they panic.”

“True. But play it the other way. What if Duto’s telling the truth and 673 found something huge? Proof the Kremlin is financing terrorism against us. Evidence that the French were paying bin Laden before nine-eleven.”

“Now someone’s decided that the information is too important to risk a leak. And so it’s time for 673 to go.”

“In the immortal words of Avon Barksdale, ‘They got to be got.’ ”

“Who? ”

“Ever see The Wire?”

Wells shook his head.

“It’s great. You’d like it. You’re like McNulty, only less of a hound. So. Six-seven-three finds something big, gets the wrong people upset. ” Shafer trailed off.

“Doesn’t make sense, does it?”

“I never buy the big conspiracies. You know, half the time we can barely tie our shoes. And now we’re saying the SecDef or the President or the Pope is taking out these guys one by one? That they’re rubbing their hands together in the White House, whispering to each other, ‘First San Diego. Then New Orleans. They know too much. Kill them. All of them.’ Giggling. Bwah-hah-hah.”

“The Russians,” Wells said.

“The Russians do enjoy their conspiracies. They might be crazy enough to kill our guys this way. But if Duto and Fred Whitby think it’s the Russians, why wouldn’t they tell us?”

Wells couldn’t think of an answer.

The jogger had reached them. She wore red shorts over her doughy white legs and a pale blue T-shirt with the University of Maryland terrapin logo. She kept her head down and avoided eye contact with them. Looking at her, Wells had a vague sense of déjà vu. He didn’t know why. Then he did. She looked like a younger version of Keith Robinson’s wife. Keith Edward Robinson, the CIA desk officer who’d spied for China and then fled for parts unknown, leaving his alcoholic wife, Janice, behind. Wells had met Janice only once, in a house that stank of hopelessness.

“You like her? Didn’t think she was your type,” Shafer said.

“She makes me think of Janice Robinson.”

“Keith’s wife?” Shafer looked again. “Yeah, I can see that.”

“Never found that guy.”

“No, we didn’t. Probably buried in some jungle. He didn’t strike me as having much candle left. Though some of these guys, they last longer than you think. Keep pouring out misery. On themselves and everyone else. You know she quit drinking, right? Janice. Just in time, too. She had about two ounces of liver left.”

“Good for her.”

“Maybe one day he’ll send her a postcard, give us a chance to pay him a visit. No statute of limitations on what he did.”

“He got to be got, right, Ellis?”

“Exactly right. So. Assuming we’re out of wild theories. Let’s go back to the beginning. Say it’s a jihadi op.”

“Tell me how they got the members of the squad.”

“Bad opsec”—operational security. “Somebody in Poland found a flight manifest, didn’t put it in a burn bag like he was supposed to. Or the guy they released, Zumari, he knew where they were operating, and after he got out, he went back and bribed somebody there. Or the Berlin prosecutor’s office hates the agency and leaked the names.”

“I still don’t see it,” Wells said. “But if you got the names, you could do it. And maybe this is how you would. One at a time. Quietly. Once you’ve killed three or four, you lift the veil, go public with it. Shove it in our faces. Revenge on the American torture squad.”

“Makes as much sense as anything else,” Shafer said.

“How do we find out if the names leaked?”

“We don’t,” Shafer said. “That’s the FBI’s job. I’m going to work on Duto, push him to open the records. Even if he can’t give us the interrogation records, we’ve got to get more on the detainees. Names, nationalities, what we’re holding them for. And I’m going to talk to Brant Murphy.”

“The guy who still works for us.”

“Yes. At CTC”—the agency’s Counterterrorist Center.

“What’s that leave for me?”

“You’re going to do what Duto said. Go to Cairo to find Alaa Zumari. An encore performance. John Wells, back to his roots, undercover as a jihadi. For one night only. Acoustic. It’ll be fun.”

“And how do I get to him if the muk”—short for mukhabarat, the Arabic word for secret police—“can’t? I got it. I’ll ask Khadri and the rest of my buddies for references. Only they’re all dead. I killed them, remember?”

Though in truth, Shafer was right. Wells wanted to go, to be undercover again, to speak Arabic, to hear the midday call to prayer roll through dusty streets.

“As it happens, I’ve got an idea on that.”

6

The security at the big Egyptian hotels seemed good. It wasn’t. At the Intercontinental, a blocky pink tower on the Nile, a low gate protected the front driveway, and a bomb-sniffing German shepherd nosed around every car. But a determined bomber could have plowed through the gate, Wells saw. The guards had AKs and pistols, but they didn’t wear bulletproof vests. Wells wondered if the men he hoped to meet on this trip had made similar calculations.

Since the mid-1990s, dozens of terrorist attacks had hit Egypt, killing hundreds of tourists. Still, Americans and Europeans came here every day to gawk at the pyramids and visit the splendid tombs near Luxor. Wells wondered if they understood the resentments in the giant city around them.

Wells reached the Intercontinental’s front doors and gave up his cell phone to pass through the hotel’s metal detector. Inside, the lobby was air-conditioned, with a pianist playing at a black baby grand, its elegance oddly disconnected from Cairo’s dirt and noise.

At the reception desk, Wells handed over his newly minted passport, which proclaimed him William Anthony Barber, forty-one, of Plano, Texas.

“Mr. Barber. You will be with us for a week.”

“You got it, sweetheart.”

The receptionist tapped on her computer, handed over his passport and keycard. “Room 2218. Please enjoy your stay in Cairo.”

“Of course.”

Room 2218 had two queen beds and a pleasant view of the luxury hotels and apartment buildings along the banks of the Nile. Feluccas, single-masted Egyptian sailboats that catered to the tourist trade, puttered along the water, along with open-air cruisers that ferried tourists and even some native Cairenes between the riverbanks. Wells watched for a while and then pulled the curtains and closed his eyes. When he left this room again, the mission would begin in earnest.

HE SLEPT WITHOUT DREAMING and woke dry-mouthed but refreshed. In the bathroom, he stripped. A day earlier, at Langley, he’d taped a plastic bag to the back of his thigh. Now he pulled it off, trying not to take his leg hair with it. He showered and scrubbed, and when he was done, he looked himself up and down in the bathroom mirror. Despite the wounds he’d suffered on his missions, age had been kind to him. Being free to work out for hours every day helped, too. Only actors, pro athletes, and spies, perfect narcissists all, could devote so much time to their bodies. And, of course, he didn’t have a wife or family or kids to distract him. Though that wasn’t entirely true. Wells closed his eyes. His boy was a ghost to him. When this mission was done, he would go to Montana and insist on seeing Evan, whatever his ex-wife said. It was time.

Back in the bedroom, Wells popped open his suitcases. The first was filled with jeans, khakis, polo shirts, sneakers, even a Dallas Cowboys cap. Just what the housekeepers at the Intercontinental would expect William Barber to be wearing. Wells neatly folded the clothes in his dresser and turned to the second, larger case.

It held a different culture’s clothes. One brown galabiya, the simple robe worn by many Egyptian men. Two pure white dishdashas, the more elegant robes favored by Saudis and Kuwaitis. For his feet, heavy brown leather sandals. A cell phone with a 965 prefix, the code for Kuwait City. A thick steel Rolex. No self-respecting Kuwaiti man would be caught without one. Under all the robes, an expensive Sony digital video camera and a brushed-aluminum iMac.

Wells considered a galabiya, then changed his mind and decided on a dishdasha. Then he pulled the fake passport that the agency had given him from the bag he’d carried strapped to his legs. According to the passport, he was a Kuwaiti named Nadeem Taleeb. An Egyptian visa showed that he’d entered the country at Suez, on a ferry from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The passport came with Saudi entry and exit stamps to support the story.

Back at Langley, Mike Merced, a talkative twentysomething who was Wells’s favorite document geek, had promised Wells that the passport would hold up to almost any inspection. “As long as you don’t try to get into Kuwait with it,” Merced said. “Though I don’t know why anyone would ever want to go to Kuwait.” Besides the passport, Merced had given Wells a wallet stuffed with Kuwaiti dinars and Saudi riyals, along with credit cards and a driver’s license in Taleeb’s name.

But Wells was missing one item that he normally would have considered essential. A weapon. He could have connected with the station here for a pistol. Instead, he was coming in dark. Not even the chief of station knew he was here. He’d chosen this course for two reasons. One was logical, one less so.

First, the Egyptian mukhabarat would have tails on all the station’s couriers. Wells preferred not to risk blowing his cover before his mission even began. More important, this mission wasn’t the kind for which a gun would help. If he wound up sticking a gun in someone’s face, he’d already failed. No, to succeed in this mission, Wells would need to become Nadeem Taleeb. And Nadeem would naturally stay as far from the CIA as possible. So Wells wanted nothing to do with the agency. Now, as Nadeem, he flicked the television to channel 7, MBC, and watched an Arabic sitcom, talking back to the screen, finding the rhythm of the language for the first time in years.

After an hour, he rose, pulled the curtains. The sun was sinking behind the city. As the heat of the day eased, Cairo came alive. On the Nile, the boats flipped on neon lights and glowed red and blue and green. Couples and families and packs of teenagers filled the sidewalks on the Tahrir Bridge, savoring the breeze that fluttered down the river. Beside them, battered black-and-white taxis and boxy green buses filled the pavement. The sun disappeared entirely, and the sky darkened. From every direction, the calls to evening prayer began, eerie amplified voices that echoed through the city.

Wells turned east, away from the river — the orientation was easy enough, since the room faced straight west to the Nile — and fell to his knees and pushed his head against the carpeted floor and prayed. As Nadeem. As a Muslim.

A HALF HOUR LATER, he walked out of the Intercontinental’s side entrance, carrying the larger suitcase. Before he could even get a hand in the air, a cab stopped.

“Salaam alekeim,” Wells said. Peace be with you. The traditional Muslim greeting.

“Alekeim salaam.”

“Lotus Hotel,” Wells said in Arabic.

“Come on, then.”

Wells slipped in.

“Where you from?”

“Kuwait.”

The driver was silent. Other Arabs often viewed Kuwaitis as arrogant. Then, as if realizing he might be missing an opportunity, the driver put a hand on Wells’s arm.

“First time to Cairo?”

“First time.”

“Tomorrow. I take you to the pyramids! Giza, Saqqara, Dahshur. All-day trip. Only two hundred fifty pounds”—about fifty dollars. “Give me your mobile number!” The driver was a bit deaf, or maybe he thought he could shout so loudly that Wells would have to agree.

“I’m here on business.”

“I drive you around Cairo, then! Very good price.”

“Maybe.”

“Definitely! ”

Wells didn’t respond, and eventually the driver dropped his arm. They fought through traffic onto Talaat Harb, a brightly lit street crowded with clothing stores, restaurants, and travel agencies. The pavement ahead opened up, and the driver gunned the gas.

As he did, a woman in a burqa stepped into the road about fifty yards ahead. With her feet hidden beneath her black robes, she looked as though she were floating over the pavement on an invisible river. A very slow river.

The driver honked furiously. Still, the woman didn’t hurry, didn’t even turn her head to look at them, as if her robes were a force field that would protect her from harm. Finally, the driver gave in and slammed his brakes. The taxi, a cheap old Fiat, pitched forward on its springs and skidded to a stop just short of the woman. She walked on.

“Women,” the driver said. “Crazy. How many wives you have?”

“Only one.”

“Hah! And you a Kuwaiti! I have three. Three wives! And ten children!” The driver smiled at Wells with teeth as yellow and battered as the Cairo skyline. “How many children you have? Two? Three?”

“Eleven,” Wells said, trying not to smile.

“Eleven?” The driver frowned. Wells wondered whether he would try to have another baby tonight, or maybe two, to retake the lead. “And only one wife? You keep her very busy! I have six boys! How many boys you have?” “None.”

“All girls and no boys! You need new wife, habibi. She wastes your time.” The driver patted Wells’s arm happily. He might not have as many children as Wells, but he had more boys, and boys were what counted.

At the hotel, the driver, still hopeful, pressed a tattered business card into Wells’s hand. “Al-Fayed Taxi and Car for Transport.”

“You call tomorrow.”

“Shokran,” Wells said.

“Ma-a-saalama.”

“Ma-a-saalama.”

THE LOTUS HOTEL was eight floors of dusty concrete. The receptionist gave a bored look at Wells’s Kuwaiti passport, took his credit card, and handed over the brass key — no programmable cards here — to room 705. The elevator was an old-school model, a metal gate on the inside. When Wells closed the gate and pushed the button for seven, it didn’t move for a while and then ascended as huffily as a smoker in a marathon. His room was narrow and dark, with a creaking three-bladed fan pushing the stale air sideways. Wells stripped off his dishdasha and lay diagonally across the sagging double bed, his feet hanging off the corner. The perpetual honking from the street should have bothered him, but instead it soothed him. He fell asleep instantly.

He woke to the sound of the morning call to prayer, showered under a surprisingly hot stream, and slipped on his galabiya, feeling its loose folds envelop him. He lifted the mattress and slid the keycard for the Intercontinental into a tiny seam in its bottom, where it would be hidden from the most thorough of searchers. He peeked out the window. The street was temporarily empty, aside from a handful of teenage boys joking with one another. They looked as though they’d stayed out all night, smoking flavored tobacco from the tall water pipes Egyptians called shisha.

During the early twentieth century, Cairo had been one of the world’s most cosmopolitan cities, a place where Muslims, Christians, and even Jews lived together peacefully. During World War II, brothels had operated openly just east of downtown, in a district Cairenes had jokingly called “the Blessing.” Egypt’s version of Islam was generally more moderate than that practiced to the east in Saudi Arabia. After all, Egypt’s history long predated Islam. Its proudest moments had come not as a Muslim state but under the pharaohs. And almost ten percent of Egyptians were Christian.

In theory, Egypt still remained moderate today. The nation was the only big Arab power to have made peace with Israel. Women here were allowed to drive and didn’t have to wear head scarves, much less burqas. Cairo was home to an English-language radio station whose announcers openly offered relationship advice. Alcohol was legal, and the city’s big hotels even had casinos, though they weren’t supposed to be open to Egyptians.

But in reality, Egypt had swung toward Islam since throwing off Britain’s colonial yoke in 1952. High birth rates, government bureaucracy, and slow economic growth had left tens of millions of Egyptians living in destitution in the vast slums in and around Cairo. Millions more aspired to the middle class but could not find decent-paying jobs despite college degrees. Many saw Islam as the answer to their country’s crisis. Islamic charities fed and clothed poor families. Islamic courts offered quick decisions to people who couldn’t afford to wait years to be heard by the overcrowded government court system.

But as they promoted charity and community values, Islamic leaders also stoked a fierce anger among their followers: at Egypt’s government, at Israel, and at the United States, which supported both. The United States, so concerned about bringing democracy to Iraq but happy to look the other way when Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s president, rigged elections to stay in power. Egyptians called Mubarak “the pharaoh,” not only because he had been president for almost thirty years but because he was trying to anoint his son Gamal as his successor.

Year by year, the radicals gained influence. Despite being outlawed, the Muslim Brotherhood, the most important Islamist political party, had won twenty percent of the seats in the Egyptian parliament in the 2005 elections — more than ever before. On the streets, too, the changes were obvious. Even in downtown Cairo, most women wore head scarves, and burqas were not uncommon. Alcohol had largely disappeared outside hotels and a handful of restaurants that catered to tourists. The calls to prayer grew louder each year. And except for the Egyptian Museum, the pyramids, and a few protected neighborhoods, tourists — or non-Arab foreigners of any kind — were almost invisible in Cairo. Despite its grinding poverty, the city was not particularly dangerous for locals. In fact, street crime was rare. But foreign visitors, especially women, faced constant harassment. And with the threat of terrorism vague but real, most tourists stayed off the streets.

Too bad, because Cairo was fascinating, Wells thought. After breakfast he’d walked around downtown, orienting himself, talking to shopkeepers to scrape the last of the rust off his Arabic. Now he was heading east along Sharia al-Azhar, a narrow road that ran under the concrete pylons of an elevated highway. The streets around him formed an area called Islamic Cairo. Almost all of Cairo was Islamic, of course, but this district was the historic center of Islam in Egypt, filled with mosques and madrassas. At its center was al-Azhar University, the second-oldest degree-granting school in the world, established in 975 A.D., hundreds of years before Oxford and Cambridge.

Around Wells, boys carried trays of tea and coffee to men who stood outside their shops. In Cairo, as in many Third World cities, the stores clustered by type. This stretch of road had nothing but textile stores, as though humans needed only brightly colored cloth to survive. The din was constant. Three-wheeled tuk-tuks and skinny 125cc motorbikes buzzed by, and shopkeepers incessantly shouted the praises of their wares.

“Best quality, best quality!”

“Extra-special!”

“Sir, sir! Take a look!”

And step-by-step Wells edged closer to his destination, a mosque a few blocks south, in the very heart of Islamic Cairo.

AN HOUR LATER, just in time for midday Friday prayers, he arrived. The mosque wasn’t big or famous or even particularly old. It had yellow-painted concrete walls and a low minaret mounted with speakers to broadcast calls to prayer. It was the home mosque of Alaa Zumari, the would-be cell-phone mogul scooped up in Iraq and sent to Poland for interrogation by 673.

Wells could have gone straight to the house of Zumari’s family, of course. His dossier had the address. But Zumari was missing. And his mother and father wouldn’t exactly be eager to help a CIA agent find him.

The call to prayer blared. Wells shucked his sandals by the front door and joined the stream of men stepping inside. Islamic law barred artists from painting images of Allah, Muhammad, or even ordinary men and women. Such portraits were considered distracting and disrespectful to God’s majesty. So the mosque had almost no decoration, though its mihrab — the nook that faced toward Mecca — was laid in an ornate pattern of black-and-white tile. With high ceilings and fans spinning overhead, the mosque was notably cooler than the streets. Unseen pigeons cooed from windows high on its back wall.

The mosque’s central hall was nearly one hundred feet square, much bigger than it seemed from outside. Hundreds of men had already arranged themselves in front of the minbar, the wooden pulpit where the imam gave his weekly sermon. Muslims prayed five times a day, every day. But the Friday midday prayer was the week’s most important service, the time when the community gathered. Most men sat near the pulpit, but some stayed back, the cool kids in class, leaning against the walls and chatting with friends as they waited for the service to begin.

Men streamed in, filling the hall. Wells estimated at least a thousand had already arrived. And this was just one mid-sized mosque. Some, like the Mosque of Ibn Tulun south of here, were open squares as big as a city block, capable of holding tens of thousands of men.

The room was notably warmer now, and the odor of a thousand sweating bodies filled the air. Men were supposed to bathe before the midday prayer, but many came straight from work. The men were mostly Arab, though a handful were black, probably Nubian Egyptians or Sudanese from the Upper Nile. Many had faint bruises on their foreheads, a sign of piety. The bruising came from touching their foreheads to the ground as they prayed.

Suddenly the imam mounted the wooden pulpit and began the Surah Fatiha, the first verse of the Quran: “Bismallahi rahmani rahmi al-hamdulillah. ” In the name of Allah, the most gracious, the most merciful; All praises to Allah.

The imam spoke beautifully, Wells thought. Even without amplification, his voice filled the mosque. He finished the surah and began his sermon. “Brothers. Allah tells us that we are not to call ourselves pure. Only he knows who is truly righteous. ” Good deeds would not please God if they were done for selfish reasons, he explained. “Actions are judged by motives.”

As he listened, Wells remembered what he loved most about Islam, the strength and simplicity of its doctrines. The religion had five basic tenets: accept God and Muhammad as His prophet; pray five times a day; give to charity; fast during the month of Ramadan; and travel to Mecca for the sacred pilgrimage of the hajj. Anyone who followed those rules, or sincerely tried to, was a good Muslim.

The men paid rapt attention to the sermon. No watches were checked, no cell phones pulled out. Wells didn’t know how long the imam spoke; his words flowed together as smoothly as the Nile. When he finished, the muezzin gave the iqama, a second call to prayer performed only at the Friday midday service.

The men in the mosque clustered together shoulder to shoulder for the rakaat, the core Muslim prayer. Side by side they dropped to their knees and touched their foreheads and hands and toes to the floor, a thousand men affirming God as Muslims had for a thousand years.

AFTER THE SERVICE, the imam stood beside the pulpit, clasping hands with men who’d come forward for advice or a benediction. Finally, the last of the worshippers left and the imam was alone. Wells intercepted him.

“Salaam alekeim.”

“Alekeim salaam.”

“Your sermon today was filled with wisdom.”

“Thank you.” The imam gave Wells a puzzled smile. “I haven’t seen you before.”

“I’m from Kuwait.”

“You came this far to hear me preach?”

“I hoped you might help me find someone.”

The imam glanced at the front of the mosque, as if he wanted to ask Wells to leave. But he said only, “Please, come with me.”

He led Wells through a nook in the wall behind the pulpit and down a concrete corridor. His office was simple, square, and furnished only with a wooden desk and a bookshelf filled with Quranic commentaries. A barred window looked into a narrow alley. A heavy man with the full, bushy beard of a believer sat beside the desk, sipping tea. He hugged the imam, then looked suspiciously at Wells.

“Salaam alekeim,” Wells said.

The man let the greeting hang like an unwanted hand extended for a shake. Finally, he murmured, “Alekeim salaam.”

The imam nodded for Wells to sit. “Leave us, Hani,” the imam said. “And close the door.”

The man hesitated, then walked out. The imam regarded Wells across the desk.

“Your name?”

“Nadeem Taleeb.”

“From Kuwait?”

“Kuwait City, yes.”

“Where are you staying in Cairo?”

“The Lotus Hotel.” Wells paused. “I understand why you wonder about me. When I arrived, I saw a man watching this place. He wore no uniform. But I’m certain he was mukhabarat.”

“How do you know?”

“I know. He wore a black shirt and pants. He was drinking tea at the shop on the corner. The one that sells ice cream. He pretended to read, but he was watching your front entrance. Have your men check.”

“Hani—” the imam said. The door opened, and the fat man scuttled in. The imam whispered to him.

“Aiwa,” Hani said. Yes. He glared at Wells before he left.

“So, Kuwaiti,” the imam said. “Who are you looking for? ”

“Ihab Zumari.” Alaa’s father. “A friend told me he worships here.”

“You should leave,” the imam said. “Finish your tea and leave. I don’t know what game this is, but I know it’s dangerous. For both of us. I’m a peaceful man.”

Wells pulled a pen and pad from his robe and scribbled on it in English and Arab.

“You use computers, sheikh? The Internet?”

The imam looked almost offended. “Of course.”

“My apologies. Please. Look at this site. You’ll understand. I’ll come back tomorrow for another cup of tea. Inshallah”—God willing—“you’ll see me. If not, I won’t bother you again.”

Wells slid the paper across the desk, stood, and walked out, leaving the imam looking at a single note. A Web address: PrisonersofAmerica.com.

THE DIRECTORATE OF SCIENCE and Technology had done a good job, Wells had to admit. Two videos were up. They looked professional but not too professional, the interviewees giving long speeches about how they’d suffered as captives of the United States. One was supposedly an Algerian captured in Iraq in 2006 and released two years later, the second a Pakistani caught in Afghanistan in 2005 and let go in 2009. Both men wore bandannas to hide their mouths and had exceptionally common names: Mohammed Hassan and Ahmed Mustafa. They gave detailed descriptions of the deprivations they suffered. They spoke angrily but not so passionately that they seemed unhinged.

They were fakes, CIA employees, analysts in the Directorate of Intelligence. They’d agreed enthusiastically to the assignment, knowing that the interviews might be as close as they would ever get to the front lines.

The technical details were right, too. A commercial Russian Internet service provider hosted the site. Its content was uploaded through a Finnish server that guaranteed anonymity to its users. Even the IP address registration was backdated, so that the site seemed to have been up for months.

The site itself had a straightforward front page in English and Arabic: “Here you will find the stories of Muslims held captive. Here you will find the truth about the ‘peace-loving’ Americans.” No over-the-top rhetoric. And, of course, no pictures of Wells as Nadeem anywhere. He wouldn’t have been foolish enough to give up his anonymity.

WELLS LEFT THE MOSQUE and a few minutes later found himself on Sharia al-Muizz, a narrow street in the heart of Islamic Cairo. He took his time. If the imam had ordered him tailed, he wanted to show that he had nothing to hide. But no one seemed to be on him. After an hour of browsing the storefronts, he grabbed a cab to the Lotus. He would leave his room at the Intercontinental unoccupied tonight, the bed unmussed. The hotel wouldn’t care unless his credit card bounced.

At the Lotus, he couldn’t fall asleep for hours. During his time off, he’d forgotten the intensity, the perpetual vigilance, required for these missions. Finally he faded out. He found himself in a windowless room with Exley, interviewing her for the site. She wore a blue hijab and sunglasses and held a duck in her lap.

“Next question,” she said in English.

“Did they let you pray?” he said in Arabic.

“I prayed for you, John.”

“Please speak Arabic.”

“You know I can’t speak Arabic.”

The duck quacked madly. Exley petted its feathers. “He doesn’t mean to upset you, Ethan. He doesn’t know any better.”

“You named the duck after Evan? My son?”

“No. His name’s Ethan. Not Evan. He’s named after our son.”

Wells was confused. “We didn’t have a son—”

“We did. Would have, I mean. I was pregnant, that day Kowalski sent his men—”

No, Wells thought. It wasn’t so. He knew she was lying. “Tell the truth, Jenny.”

“You can’t handle the truth,” she said in Jack Nicholson’s voice.

“Why can’t you let me go?”

“I think you have it backwards, John—”

And with that, a strange scratching pulled him back to the world. Exley disappeared as he opened his eyes. The room was empty. He didn’t know the time, but the city was close to quiet. He guessed it was between 3 and 4 a.m., the quiet hour, when only insomniacs and cabbies prowled the streets.

The scratching, again. Low and quiet. At the door.

Wells waited. Let them come. Nadeem Taleb wouldn’t resist.

The door creaked open. Hani slid into the room, followed by a dark-skinned, wiry man. Hani flicked on the overhead bulb. He held a pistol, a small one. It looked almost silly in his pillowy hands. “No noise,” he said. He gathered Wells’s passport and watch and wallet from the nightstand and moved over to the window and tucked his pistol into his jeans. He flipped through the passport and set it aside. His movements were easy and purposeful, and something in them bothered Wells. Wells flicked his tongue over his lips in a show of nervousness. Then stopped, reminding himself not to overact.

“Get up, Kuwaiti. If that’s what you are. Get dressed.”

Wells rolled out, pulled on a galabiya. The wiry man rousted the room, pulling open drawers, rooting through Wells’s toiletries kit, shining a flashlight under the bed, a cursory but efficient search. Wells watched in silence until the man reached the suitcase.

“It’s locked,” he said.

“Why?” Hani said.

“There’s a camera inside.”

“Open it.”

Wells extracted a key from his wallet and unlocked the case. The wiry man pulled out the video camera almost triumphantly.

“Why do you have this?” Hani said.

“To film the interviews.” Wells took a slightly aggravated tone, as if he could hardly be bothered to answer such a stupid question.

Hani held up Wells’s Rolex. “You’re a rich man, Kuwaiti. Why stay here? Why not the Hyatt, with your cousins?” The Cairo Grand Hyatt had paradoxically become the favorite of the Gulf Arabs who visited the city. Paradoxically, because Hyatt was owned by the Pritzker family, who were not just Americans but Jews.

“The Hyatt? So the mukhabarat can watch me come and go? Does that seem like a good idea, habibi?”

“Stuff your mouth with sand and see if you make such smart remarks,” Hani murmured, to himself as much as to Wells. Again, his manner troubled Wells. A decade ago, in Afghanistan — and especially in the abattoir that was Chechnya — Wells had seen men who responded to any uncertainty with violence, the quicker and messier the better. Hani might be one of them. And yet he didn’t seem angry or volatile. Perhaps he didn’t want to be here, and the imam had forced the mission on him.

Hani pulled out his cell phone, typed a quick text, slipped it away. He tucked Wells’s passport and wallet into his jeans. “Time to go.”

“Where?” Wells wasn’t expecting an answer.

But he got one. “You wanted to meet Ihab Zumari, Kuwaiti? Now you will.”

OUTSIDE, A PEUGEOT 504 IDLED. A four-door sedan, boxy and black, with tinted windows. Hani ushered Wells into the back, tied a black bandanna over his eyes, tightly enough to ensure that light didn’t leak through.

Wells lay back, closed his eyes, tried to sleep. He wasn’t overly worried. Most likely the imam was just being cautious. And if not. he’d faced worse odds than this.

The car turned left, right, then accelerated. Even without the blindfold, Wells would have been lost.

“What’s your name, Kuwaiti?” Hani said.

“Nadeem Taleeb.”

“Where do you live?”

“Kuwait City.”

“And why are you here?”

“To interview Alaa Zumari. You know all this.”

“You’re a spy.”

“No more than you.”

The back of a hand stung his face.

“Be careful, Kuwaiti.”

Then Wells understood. The well-knotted blindfold. Hani’s two-handed pistol grip. His strangely relaxed attitude. He was no jihadi, however many years he’d spent at this mosque. He was mukhabarat. Very good, but not good enough to eliminate the traces of his training.

And he, even more than the imam, must be wondering what Nadeem Taleeb was doing here. Behind his blindfold, Wells puzzled through the permutations. The Egyptians couldn’t have penetrated his cover already. Cooperation between the Kuwaiti and Egyptian intelligence services was mediocre at best.

No. Hani didn’t know who Nadeem really was. His best move would be to play along, to hope that Nadeem could get him to Alaa Zumari. The Egyptians were embarrassed to have lost Zumari. Even if they didn’t want to arrest him, they surely wanted to find him again.

What about the imam? Did he know his deputy was an Egyptian agent? Could he be working for secret police, too? Wells guessed not, though he couldn’t be sure.

The car stopped. A hand tugged him out of the car. “Turn, facing the car,” Hani said. “Hands behind your back.” His voice was close. Wells smelled the coffee on his breath, the stink of his unwashed skin. Wells held out his hands, and Hani slipped handcuffs around his wrists and frog-marched him toward a second vehicle, a bigger one with a diesel engine.

“Two steps here,” Hani said.

As Wells reached the second step, Hani pushed him forward. He tripped, sprawled forward. With his hands cuffed behind him, he instinctively rolled onto his right shoulder to protect his face. Too late, he remembered that he should have rolled left. Two years before, he had separated his right shoulder, and then it had taken a terrible beating from two Chinese prison guards. He had rebuilt and strengthened the joint as best he could. Now he landed directly on it. It buckled up and came out of the socket with an audible pop, and Wells felt as if the joint were being prodded with a hot iron.

Through the pain, Wells remembered that Nadeem Taleeb had to swear in Arabic. “Sharmuta, sharmuta,” he said. The word roughly translated as “bitch.”

Wells squirmed onto his left side, trying to relieve the pressure on his shoulder. The handcuffs worsened the pain, pulling his arm down and out of the socket. His breaths were coming fast and shallow, and he didn’t know how long he could stay conscious.

Someone tugged off the blindfold. Wells found himself looking up at the imam.

“Are you all right, Kuwaiti?”

“The handcuffs—”

“Take them off,” the imam said to Hani.

Hani hesitated, then reached for the cuffs, giving Wells’s shoulder a final tug as he did. With his arms free, the pain was merely agonizing. Wells sat up, his right arm hanging limp. He was in a midsize panel truck. The imam and Hani sat beside him, a skinny middle-aged man in the corner. His hair was gray, unusual for an Arab. Wells recognized him from Alaa Zumari’s dossier. Alaa’s father, Ihab.

“Pop it in,” Wells said to Hani.

“What?”

“My shoulder.” Wells could fix the joint himself. He had before. But very few people had his pain tolerance, and they might wonder how he’d managed it.

Hani looked to the imam, who nodded. Hani grabbed Wells’s arm at the elbow and without hesitation pushed it up and into the socket. Wells’s body became a machine devoted to generating pain, the agony radiating across his chest. Then his arm settled in and Wells could open his eyes. He took two breaths, three, and then was able to move. He squirmed backward, leaned against the side of the truck.

“You are all right?” the imam said.

“Inshallah,” Wells said.

“Inshallah.”

Hani gave the imam Wells’s Kuwaiti passport and wallet. The imam leafed through them. “You came to Suez. Why not fly?”

“At the airport, every passenger is photographed. It’s best for me if my picture isn’t taken. The pharaoh’s men are everywhere.”

“That man”—the imam nodded at the man in the corner—“is Ihab Zumari. The one you’ve come to see.”

Wells braced himself to stand, but Hani put a hand on his left shoulder. “Salaam alekeim, Ihab,” Wells said.

“Alekeim salaam.”

“I’m Nadeem Taleeb. I’m sorry to disturb your sleep.”

Zumari nodded.

“Did you see my Web site? The videos?”

Another nod.

“Then you know why I’ve come to you.”

“Tell me,” Zumari said. His voice was low, each syllable measured. His dossier said he ran a small electronics store in a run-down section of Islamic Cairo, but he looked and sounded more like a law professor.

“I want to talk to your son. Interview him.”

“Why Alaa? It must be thousands of detainees who’ve been released.”

“Only a few from the secret prisons.”

Neither Zumari nor the imam looked convinced.

“You wonder why I do this. I’ll tell you about myself. I’m not a jihadi. I pray, sure, but I never hated the Kaffirs. Back in the 1990s, I lived in France. I liked it. But five years ago, a boy I know, a friend’s son, Ali, he went to Afghanistan. He wasn’t really a jihadi. Not very religious. He went with the Talibs for the adventure, I think.”

“Adventure,” the imam said.

“Kuwait, it’s boring. Office buildings, oil wells, desert. These boys have nothing to do but drive around all day. Not even a wife, unless they’re rich. The sheikhs take three, four women each, and there’s none for the rest of us. With the Talibs, they can fire AKs, throw a grenade. Pretend they’re soldiers.”

“You don’t have children.”

“I’m not a sheikh. I didn’t have the money to marry. Anyway, Ali, the Americans caught him in Afghanistan and kept him for two years. Finally, they released him. When he came back, he told me how they kept him in a little cage. I think it made him crazy. He was so angry. At the Americans, the Kuwaitis, his own family.”

“He was like that before he went to Afghanistan?”

“No. He was a regular boy. But once he came back to Kuwait, he wasn’t anymore. He only ever talked of martyrdom. And then he disappeared. I found out later, he went to Iraq, became a fedayeen”—a martyr.

“A bomber.”

“Yes. He killed himself outside a police station in Baghdad. Thirteen police died. And after that, I had the idea for these interviews. So that everyone will know what the Americans are doing. I know about computers and filming. But it isn’t easy to find the men, or get them to talk. They may be home, but they aren’t free. They know our police are working with the Americans and don’t want to be embarrassed. And lots of them are just—” Wells spread his hands out, meaning disappeared. Then winced as his shoulder caught fire again.

“You should go to Saudi.”

“In Saudi the mukhabarat are too good.” Wells paused. “And your son, there’s something else, another reason I want to talk to him. I heard he wasn’t a jihadi at all. Just a man who wanted to set up a cell-phone business. An innocent.”

“You heard this? Who told you?”

“People see the videos, the Web site, and they e-mail me. Most of the time I can’t confirm what they say. But this time I found someone who could.”

“Who?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Then I can’t help you.”

Wells looked to the imam. “It is best for all of us if I’m the only one who knows. For the same reason you took these precautions to pick me up.”

“And my son’s story—”

“He tells whatever he likes, as much or as little. I protect him, hide his face. Show just enough of him that people know he’s real. The video takes one, two hours to make. Three at most, if your son has a lot to tell. I send it to the Web site, and you never see me again.”

And along the way I’ll find out if he knows anything about the murders, Wells thought.

“Even if I wanted to help, I don’t know where he is,” Zumari said.

“But you can reach him.”

“I can try.”

“Then please try.”

They were silent as the truck rumbled on. Hani dialed his phone, spoke so quietly that Wells couldn’t hear.

“Do you have anything else to tell us? ” the imam said.

“No.”

The truck slowed, then stopped.

“Kuwaiti,” the imam said. “Your shoulder is all right?”

“I think so, yes.”

The imam handed Wells his passport and wallet. “Then this is where we leave you. There’s a ramp ahead. Take it down, go back to your hotel. Stay away from my house”—the mosque. “If we need to see you again, we will find you.”

“I’m sure,” Wells said. “I ask only this: whatever you decide—” Wells broke off.

“Yes?”

“Decide soon. It will be safer for all of us.”

An air horn blasted through the cargo compartment. Hani pulled up the back gate of the truck. Wells saw they were on a highway, the traffic piling up behind them.

“Ma-a-saalama,” he said to Ihab and the imam. Peace be with you. Good-bye.

“Ma-a-saalama,” they said in turn. Wells jumped out the back of the truck. A wave of dizziness hit him and his knees buckled, but he stayed upright. Behind him, the truck rumbled off. He didn’t turn to watch it go.

He found himself on an elevated highway, staring east, into the rising sun. To the north and south were endless zigzag blocks of misshapen concrete buildings. Many seemed unfinished, their roofs turned into dumps filled with half-melted tires and lumpy plastic bags of garbage. He must still be in Cairo, somewhere on the ring road that had once marked the outer edges of the city.

A Mercedes sedan nearly knocked him over. He turned to look for the exit ramp — and saw, looming over the city on a plateau to the west, the three great pyramids, just beginning to reflect the glow of the morning sun. Wells understood immediately why European adventurers had thought that they’d been built by aliens. They were immense, so much larger than the buildings around them that they seemed to be governed by entirely different laws of physics. Wells stared at them until a honk brought him back to the highway. He walked slowly down the ramp until the city swallowed up him and the pyramids.

HEADING BACK to the hotel, Wells saw the scope of the city at last. Close to twenty million people lived in Cairo, though no one, not even the Egyptian government, knew exactly how many. The shabby concrete and brick buildings went on block after block, mile after mile, unrelieved by parks or gardens or even palm trees. The place was overwhelming, ugly, primordial, Los Angeles without highways, Rio without the ocean. Year after year it had grown east and west into the desert and south along the Nile, swallowing every settlement in its path.

Wells had seen only one other city as big and dense, as noisy and smoggy: Beijing. But in Beijing the hand of the Chinese state touched every alley and dumpling stand. Beijing was order disguised as chaos. Not Cairo. Cairo was chaos, undisguised. Cairo lacked any organizing principle. Except Islam.

A minivan pulled in front of them, and the cabbie banged his brakes to avoid a collision. Wells stifled a groan as the seat belt grabbed his shoulder. The van, improbably enough, seemed to have a load of goats as passengers.

Suddenly, Wells badly wanted to find his way to the Intercontinental for air-conditioning, a hot shower, and a cold beer. He reminded himself that he’d spent a decade living without any of the three. No, he would go back to the Lotus, where he belonged. And as the traffic inched forward, he smiled to himself. The mukhabarat, the jihadis — he was back in the game.

7

The Counterterrorist Center was the CIA’s fastest-growing unit. To make room for it, the agency had built offices in a subterranean maze carved from the foundations of the New Headquarters Building. The fight against Al Qaeda ate a disproportionate share of the agency’s budget, so the new space had bells and whistles the rest of the CIA lacked: flat-panel screens, dedicated teraflop-speed connections to the National Security Agency and Department of Defense, and videoconferencing equipment capable of projecting in three dimensions. Somewhere, Osama bin Laden was quaking in his boots.

Or not.

Brant Murphy met Shafer at the main entrance to CTC, a miniature version of the agency’s main lobby, two guards overseeing a bank of turnstiles. The official logic behind the secondary checkpoint was that CTC needed extra security because it so frequently hosted visitors from other federal agencies and foreign spy services. In reality, the second guard post was further proof that the unit held itself apart from the rest of the agency.

Murphy was handsome and compact, with deep blue eyes and close-cropped blond hair that had lost its grip on his temples and was fighting a rearguard action against its inevitable fate as a widow’s peak. He had a firm two-pump handshake, friendly but manly. Shafer couldn’t understand how Murphy had ended up with 673. Spending a year-plus in Poland interrogating detainees didn’t seem like his idea of a great time.

“Ellis Shafer,” Murphy said. He had a clipped Yankee accent, a relative rarity at the agency, which recruited more from the South and Midwest.

“Good to meet you,” Shafer said. “I appreciate this.”

“The pleasure is mine,” Murphy said. He didn’t look pleased. “If the director asks, I’m glad to accommodate. And of course your reputation precedes you.”

“Follows me, too.”

Murphy led them into a high-ceilinged conference room, the walls of which were lined with expensive black-and-white photographs of Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Nice digs.”

Murphy looked around as if he’d never seen the photos before. “You spend as much time in here as we do, you hardly notice.”

“Just like Poland?”

“Not exactly, but sure.”

Shafer set a digital tape recorder on the table. “Do you mind?”

“And here I thought this was a social call. You don’t mind, I’d prefer we keep it informal.”

The room itself was almost certainly wired, but Shafer didn’t argue. He slipped the recorder away, reached into his pocket for a pen and a reporter’s notebook, its pages filled with an illegible scrawl.

“Tell me how you became part of 673.”

“Have you seen my file?”

Shafer grunted noncommittally.

“So, you know a couple years back I did a tour in Iraq. Mosul. My COS”—chief of station—“there was Brad Gessen. Remember him?”

“Yeah.” Gessen had been arrested for stealing 1.2 million dollars from a fund used to bribe Sunni tribal chiefs in Iraq. Starting in early 2006, the CIA and army had thrown cash at the tribes, hoping to turn them against the insurgency, or at least buy their neutrality. More than one billion in cash was distributed through the program, with only the barest accounting. Rumors of thefts were rampant. But only Gessen had been arrested, probably because he’d stolen so much money that some of the tribal leaders had complained to the army about the missing payments.

“Brad and I were tight,” Murphy said. “I mean, I had no idea what he was up to—”

“Sure about that?”

“I don’t appreciate that question.”

“One-point-two million, and the guy was your boss and you didn’t know?”

Murphy controlled himself, the effort visible. “There was a full investigation. The IG cleared me. But my career took a hit. Started hearing that I might get moved to Australia”—not exactly the agency’s hottest theater. “So 673, when it came up, I figured it was a chance to turn the page. High-risk, high-reward, but we get the right intel, we’re all heroes.”

Shafer started to like Murphy a tiny bit more. The man hadn’t sugarcoated this explanation. No talk of taking the battle to the enemy, broadening his experience. He’d made a clear-eyed analysis that going to Poland might rescue his career. He was a hopelessly ambitious careerist, but at least he wasn’t pretending otherwise.

“And what did you do in Poland?”

“Ran admin and logistic,” Murphy said, calm again. “Nine-person unit on a foreign base, plus the detainees, there’s a lot to do.”

“Thought it was ten.”

“I’ll get to that. I handled our relationships with the Poles, set up the supply chain. When there was significant intel, I summarized it and passed it to the Pentagon.”

“With so few men, how did you watch the prisoners continuously?”

“We had help from the Poles. They supplied food, picked up garbage, handled security around the building. At night they helped us monitor the cells.”

“But they weren’t actively involved in the interrogations.”

“No.”

“How often did you visit the detainees?”

“When necessary,” Murphy said. “Like I said, it wasn’t my role.”

“And how were they treated?”

“As illegal enemy combatants. If they cooperated, they received more privileges, and if they didn’t, they didn’t.”

“I’m sorry,” Shafer said. “I didn’t hear an answer.”

“I told you, I spent most of my time on admin.”

“The unit was short on manpower,” Shafer said. “You were basically running a jail with a ten-man squad.”

“Yes and no,” Murphy said.

“How many detainees did you have?”

“Ten.”

“And you’d hold one or two at a time?”

“Yes. Once we had three, but Terreri didn’t like that. Said it was too many. And he was right.”

“Walk me through a day in the life.”

“The interrogations ran about eight, ten hours at a stretch. Two or three men were involved: the interrogator — that was usually Karp — and a muscle guy or two.”

“So you could run two interrogations at once.”

“If we needed to. But we preferred to go one at a time. As you know, the squad was all men, except for the psychiatrist, Rachel, Dr. Callar. The org chart, LTC Terreri was the CO”—the commanding officer. “I was XO”—the executive officer, the number two. “Karp was the lead interrogator. Jerry Williams did swing duty; he knew Arabic, so he could handle interrogations. And also he oversaw the three Rangers, who were the muscle. And then Callar.”

“What about Hank Poteat?”

“He was technically part of the squad, but he was only there a couple of months, at the beginning. He helped set up our coms, and then he left. So that’s everybody.”

“It isn’t, though,” Shafer said. He flipped back through his reporter’s notebook. “CO is Terreri. XO is you. Karp is the interrogator. Callar’s the doctor. Williams and his three Rangers make eight. Poteat counts as technically part of the squad, even though he wasn’t there long. That’s nine. You forgot Jack Fisher.”

“Right,” Murphy said. “Fisher helped Karp with the interrogations. He would stay up late with the prisoners. If they wouldn’t talk, they needed an extra push. Sometimes Jerry Williams helped. The Midnight House, we called it sometimes. Fisher, he’d tell the detainees when they got there, ‘Welcome to the Midnight House.’ ”

“Funny.”

“We were trying to take the edge off. Stuck in Poland for a year and a half.”

“How tough was Fisher?”

“I don’t know. Specifically.”

“Friendly persuasion. Cup of cocoa. Tell me about your mother.”

“I wasn’t there.”

“You were the second-in-command and you didn’t know.”

“I told you, I wasn’t operational.”

“You strike me as the type who prefers to lead from the rear.”

Murphy stared at Shafer as if Shafer were a misbehaving brat he wanted to spank but couldn’t. In turn, Shafer made faces at Murphy, raising his eyebrows, throwing in a wink.

“I’m sorry,” Murphy said finally. “I didn’t hear a question.”

“Try this. Did the unit have internal tensions?”

“We were a small group living in close quarters in a foreign country. We couldn’t tell anyone what we were doing. Of course, we didn’t always get along. But nothing you wouldn’t expect.”

“Did you believe that the detainees were treated fairly?”

“From what I saw, yes.”

“Did 673 ever uncover actionable intel?”

For the first time, Murphy smiled. “Definitely.”

“What, exactly?”

“I can’t say. Vinny Duto wants to tell you, it’s his business.”

“But it was valuable.”

“You could say that.”

Shafer made a note. “Fast-forward,” he said. “The squad breaks up, a bunch of guys retire. You stay.”

“With the intel we’d gotten, I wanted to see where I’d be in a year or two.”

“Any idea why so many guys decided to leave?”

“Ask them.”

“Guilty consciences?”

“I’m not a mind reader. Not now or then.” Murphy looked at his watch. “The FBI’s coming tomorrow, and I’m sure they’ll be asking all the same questions as you, and more besides. Can we finish up later?”

“A few more minutes,” Shafer said.

“A few.”

“After you got back, did you stay in touch with the rest of the unit?”

“Colonel Terreri and I had lunch a couple times before he got sent to Afghanistan. I saw Karp upstairs once.”

“How about Fisher?”

“Talked to him once or twice. No one else. It was an ad hoc deployment, and we got scattered.”

“You didn’t know what was happening to the unit. The deaths.”

“Of course I did. We all heard about Rachel. Not right away, but we heard. Then Terreri sent me an e-mail that Mark and Freddy”—the two Rangers—“were KIA. Then Karp. By then we were all wondering a little bit. I remember saying to Fisher, ‘What’s the story? Somebody put a curse on us?’ But we didn’t know that Jerry was missing. I know it looks obvious in retrospect.”

“You don’t seem nervous.”

“Should I cry for Mommy?”

“Can you think of any reason someone might be after the squad?”

“Beyond the fact that we put the screws to some bad actors?” Murphy drummed his fingers on the table. In contrast with his neatly tailored clothes, his nails were jagged, bitten nearly to the quick. “My ass on the line. I’ve thought about it. I don’t know.”

“What about Alaa Zumari? ” Shafer said.

“I can’t tell you anything that’s not in the file.”

“Haven’t seen the file,” Shafer muttered into his teeth.

“Say again?”

“I said I haven’t seen it. Not yet.”

“You’ll have to work that out with Vinny.”

“How about you walk me through it?”

“How about not?”

Shafer wanted to reach across the table and slap Murphy, but in a way he was right. Duto had started this charade, asked him and Wells to try to find a killer without the background information they needed.

“Any chance Alaa Zumari’s connected to this?”

“If we thought he was a terrorist, we wouldn’t have let him go.”

“Maybe he lied. Withstood the pressure somehow. Could he have figured out who was on the squad? Your real names?”

“We were pretty tight about opsec. Never used real names with the detainees.”

“The Poles? Could they have leaked your names?”

“Anything’s possible.”

“Could anyone inside the unit be responsible for the killings?”

“You asking if I’m the killer? I’m gonna have to say no.”

“How about Hank Poteat? Or Terreri? Or Jerry?”

“I told you, Poteat wasn’t part of the squad. The colonel’s in Afghanistan. Jerry’s dead.”

“What if he’s not?”

The question stopped Murphy. He ran a hand down his tie, flipped up the tip, looked at it as if the fabric might hold the answer. “Jerry had a temper. And he was having problems with his wife, we knew that. And he thought he deserved a promotion. He quit when he didn’t get it. But I don’t see him taking it out on us.”

Murphy pushed himself back from the table. “Mr. Shafer. I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did. I have to get to work. I think of anything else, I’ll let you know.”

“Before you go,” Shafer said. “Tell me about the C-one drop.”

“What about it?”

“Eight million for ten guys for sixteen months? Nice work if you can get it.”

“Two hundred grand a month to the Poles to rent the barracks and the guards. Payments whenever we landed a jet. A million for coms gear that we bought over there. Charter flights.”

“You keep receipts?”

“Of course. We wanted to leave a nice long paper trail for all those congressional investigators. And the Justice Department.”

“I take it that’s a no.”

“You take it correctly.”

Shafer leaned forward in his chair, flared his nostrils like a terrier on the scent of a rat.

“Let me make sure I understand. You worked for a guy who stole one-point-two million dollars in Iraq. This squad, you’re in charge of eight million. And you don’t keep receipts.”

“I got verbal approval for anything over twenty-five thousand dollars.”

“From who?”

“Somebody in Sanchez’s office, usually.”

“Anybody keep records of those conversations?”

“Colonel Terreri knew where the money was going.”

“Terreri. He’s not dead yet, right?”

“You have something to ask, ask it,” Murphy said. The vein on his forehead had popped out again, visible proof that Shafer’s bluff had scored.

“Maybe I’ll wait until tomorrow, when the Feebs come to town.” Suddenly, Shafer understood. Every so often he had a flash like this, the pieces fitting together all at once. “Six-seven-three was your career saver? Guess again. You put in for it figuring on the unrestricted drop. Figuring you could skim. You saw Gessen’s mistakes. And you would have gotten away clean, if not for the murders.”

“Only one problem with that theory. It’s been investigated. And I’ve been cleared. No evidence of wrongdoing, and that was that. I’ve got it in writing. Now, you want to talk to me again, you call my lawyer.”

Murphy pulled open the conference-room door, walked out, slammed it shut behind him hard enough to leave a hairline crack in its porthole-shaped window.

“New construction,” Shafer said to the empty room. “Can never trust it.”

8

For two days, Wells cooled his heels at the Lotus, leaving only for a quick trip to the Intercontinental. The move was risky, but if his room stayed empty too long, the hotel’s managers might get nervous. Wells stayed an hour, long enough to muss his bed, take a shower, and have a brief conversation with Shafer on an innocuous Long Island number that routed through to the agency.

“Mr. Barber,” Shafer said. “How’s business?”

“I’m worried our client has another bidder. A local agency.”

“Maybe you should work together.”

“I think our needs are different.”

“You’re the man on the ground, so I defer to you.”

“Your man in Havana.”

“You’ve been reading again, I see,” Shafer said.

“Despite your warnings.”

“I recommend The Comedians. It’s excellent. Anything else I should know?”

“Probably, but I don’t feel like telling you.”

Shafer sighed. “Your honesty, so refreshing.”

“Have you learned anything new about my client?”

“No, but I did have an interesting talk with our friend Mr. Murphy,” Shafer said. “I’ll fill you in when you get back.”

“Something to look forward to. How’s Tonka?” After much protesting, Shafer had agreed to take the dog while Wells went to Cairo.

“She’s developed a taste for the rug in the living room. Aside from that, fine.”

“She miss me?”

“Without a doubt. Every day she leaves a note at my door asking when you’re coming back.”

“Good-bye.”

Wells left his air-conditioned room unwillingly. No question, he was getting soft. “A luxury once tasted becomes a necessity.” Wells didn’t know who’d popped that kernel of wisdom — someone richer and wit-tier than he, no doubt — but he had to agree. He needed to spend a few months in Haiti or Sudan, unlearn his bad habits.

Back at the Lotus he passed the time watching Al Jazeera and Lebanese soap operas. He figured he could wait a week, at most. If he was right and Hani was a mukhabarat agent, the Egyptians would put a tail on him soon enough — or just break down his door and arrest him. Part of him wondered why they hadn’t done so already. Probably because they didn’t want to scare him back to Kuwait, blow their chance at Alaa.

Or maybe Wells had gotten paranoid as well as soft. Maybe Hani was just what he seemed to be, a dedicated Islamist who had nothing to do with the police.

THE ENVELOPE APPEARED BENEATH his door on the third day, during the call to afternoon prayer. Inside, a single sheet of paper: 1 a.m. Northern Cemetery. Bring the camera. Nothing more.

Wells read the note twice to be sure he understood. The Northern Cemetery was a huge and ancient graveyard east of the Islamic quarter. Over the centuries, thousands of poor families had nested in the cemetery’s mausoleums and built one-room houses over its graves. Space was precious in Cairo, and the dead didn’t charge rent. Now, with fifty thousand residents, as well as paved streets and power lines, the cemetery was a city within a city, as crowded as the rest of Cairo. And so as an instruction for a meeting place, “Northern Cemetery” was strangely nonspecific, the equivalent of naming an entire neighborhood in an American city, like Buckhead in Atlanta.

Still, Wells had no choice but to obey and hope that the imam could find him. For dinner he had two plain pitas and two bottles of Fanta, the Egyptian version of his usual pre-mission meal of crackers and Gatorade, light and sugary and easy to keep down. And at 11:30, he slipped on his galabiya, tucked his camera into his backpack.

But at the door he stopped, took out the camera. He popped open the battery compartment and pulled out the flat black battery. Sure enough, a radio transmitter about the size of a nickel was taped to its underside. The bug was oldish, Russian, nothing fancy. Probably had a range of a few hundred yards, enough to help a search team track down a fugitive once he’d been treed.

Wells guessed that the mukhabarat had put the bug on the battery when he met with Hani and the imam. Wells was happy to be rid of it, happy his instincts were still sharp. Even so, finding it was a bad sign. For the first time since China, he was facing a professional secret police force. He reached a dirty fingernail under the tape and detached the bug. He’d toss it on the way to the cemetery, after he lost the tail that was surely waiting for him.

OUTSIDE THE LOTUS, the downtown streets bustled. Couples strolled side by side. A few even held hands. Discreetly, of course. A mother and a daughter, wearing matching pink head scarves, giggled as they bought Popsicles from a stooped man pulling an ice-cream cart. The lack of alcohol gave the streets a pleasant, relaxed feeling. The crowds were lively but not rowdy, the sidewalks free of broken bottles and shouting matches. And Wells walked, his hands at his sides, split from the ordinary lives around him by a wall only he could see. The curse of the spy, at once present and absent. He walked, and he wondered whether anyone was on him.

Build countersurveillance into your schedule. If you don’t have time for it, you don’t have time for the meet. Even if you don’t think anyone’s on you. Even if you’re sure no one’s on you. The life you save may be your own.

Guy Raviv, one of Wells’s favorite instructors at the Farm, had given him that lesson a lifetime ago. Raviv had striking blue eyes and a smoker’s hoarse voice and hair too black to be anything but dyed. He seemed to be in his mid-fifties, though he could have been older. My children, he called his trainees. My precious, precocious youngsters. He’d been introduced to Wells’s class as a legend who had shucked whole teams of Stasi agents in East Berlin. Wells assumed that the story was exaggerated. Instructors at the Farm had a habit of embellishing their résumés, perhaps with the agency’s encouragement. Far better for new recruits to believe that they were learning from stars than from failed ops put out to pasture.

But whatever Raviv had or hadn’t done in East Berlin, he was a master teacher, as Wells learned firsthand when he and a team of recruits chased Raviv through the crowded streets of Philadelphia on a Saturday in July. Raviv lost them twice in two hours. He didn’t run—Please remember that anything more than a brisk walk is reserved for emergencies—but he had what Wells’s linebacker coach at Dartmouth called “quick feet,” the ability to change speed and direction almost instantly. Coming back from Philly, Raviv stopped at a McDonald’s on I-95 and distributed a full tray of bon mots along with his Happy Meals.

Your first goal is to make your pursuer show himself. He knows you. You don’t know him. Before you can lose him, you have to find him. And give yourself time. Listen to the wisdom of Mick Jagger, children: Time is on your side; oh, yes it is. More time equals more moves. More moves equal more chances to make your pursuer show himself. Will you be eating those fries?

In retrospect, Wells was shocked that the agency had allowed Raviv near them. Langley had always been a tribal place, unfriendly to oddballs. In the 1980s, the agency had become especially macho, spending its energy and money running guns to tinpot Central American dictators, operations that didn’t exactly match Raviv’s skill set. Wells supposed that Raviv had survived the Reagan years by bobbing, weaving, and staying low to the ground, skills as useful at Langley as in East Berlin. He’d become an instructor around 1990, and by the time Wells’s class of recruits arrived, he had his act perfected.

After his stint at the Farm, Wells never saw Raviv again. Wells always imagined he would. He tried to look Raviv up after he got back from Afghanistan. But Raviv seemed to have shed the agency. Wells assumed he was retired, living someplace warm with his wife. If he had a wife.

“Whatever happened to Guy Raviv?” he asked Shafer.

“Good old Guy,” Shafer said. “Died. Lung cancer.”

“When?”

“You were in Afghanistan. Maybe three years ago. Don’t look so shocked.”

“You’re a sweetheart, Ellis. Real humanitarian.”

“He smoked like two packs a day is all I’m saying. Pretty good at CS, though.”

And that was Raviv’s epitaph.

WELLS WALKED toward Midhan Tahrir, the heart of Cairo, a big, brightly lit square formed by the intersection of a half-dozen avenues. A pedestrian walkway ran under the square, leading to a subway station and offering a dozen exits — a nightmare for a surveillance team. Once Wells got underground, any tail would have to stay close or risk losing him.

At the square’s northeastern corner, a waist-high railing blocked pedestrians from crossing at street level, forcing them to use the underground passageway. Wells stopped, apparently lost, as an old man walked slowly by. Wells touched his arm. “Salaam alekeim.”

“Alekeim salaam,” the man murmured, his voice barely audible above the traffic.

“Sorry to bother you, my friend. What street is this?”

“Talaat Harb. Of course. Very much so.”

“I’m looking for the movie theater.”

“The Cinema Metro?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“This way.” The man pointed up the street. “Past the next traffic circle. And then a few more streets. But I must tell you, there aren’t any more films tonight.”

“My mistake. Shokran.”

“Afwan.” Welcome.

The man walked on. But the conversation had given Wells what he wanted. From the mass of pedestrians around him, he’d picked out five possible tails. Two men in dark blue galabiyas, their arms interlinked, walking slowly down Talaat Harb. A tall, light-skinned man in a striped blue button-down shirt, lighting a cigarette just a few feet away. Another, glancing at a shoe store as he dialed his cell phone. And a fifth, younger, drinking a Pepsi, casually watching the traffic roll by. They weren’t the only possibilities, but they were the most likely.

Trust your instincts, Raviv always said. Unless they stink, in which case you shouldn’t.

But then you shouldn’t be in the field at all. So I’m gonna assume a certain level of competence here. And my point is, you have to guess. And always remember that most of the time there won’t be anyone on you at all. You’ll be playing a little game with yourself. And then sometimes it’s the other thing.

What other thing? someone had asked.

If you’re lucky, unlucky, however you want to look at it, at least once in your career you’ll wind up with a whole platoon on you. Cars, motorcycles, helicopters. I know it seems impossible, but it isn’t, not in Moscow or Beijing or Tehran or a few other places where these little games are taken seriously.

What do we do then?

Abort your meeting. Head for the nearest house of worship. And pray.

WELLS HOPPED the railing and picked through the slow-moving traffic on Talaat Harb. Across the street, stairs led to the underground walkway. Wells stepped down them, not quite running, the camera bouncing in his backpack. He made his way along the tiled corridors of the underpass, past a blind man selling packets of tissues, a grimy teenager wearing a New York Yankees cap. Wells turned right, left, and then jogged along a passage and up a stairway. He’d crossed all the way under the square, to its western edge. From here, a wide avenue, three lanes in each direction, ran west toward the Nile.

Wells stepped around the stairs, positioning himself so he could spot anyone coming up the steps without being seen himself. And sure enough the man in the striped blue shirt emerged from the passageway and jogged up the steps. His cigarette was gone, but he was the same man who was standing next to Wells on Talaat Harb.

Wells heard Raviv’s raspy voice: You found him. Now lose him. Wells stepped onto the avenue as a bus passed, moving maybe fifteen miles an hour. He moved around the back of the bus, then sprinted along its left side, where its body shielded him from the sidewalk. He kept pace, barely. A taxi honked madly at him, and its passenger-side mirror whacked his ass. He stumbled in his robes but didn’t fall. After thirty seconds, the traffic lightened and he crossed to the south side of the road.

The move was ugly and unsubtle, but it worked. Wells was two hundred yards from his pursuer, effectively hidden by the traffic. He kept moving, walking briskly to the Corniche el-Nil, a three-lane road that ran south along the riverbank. He reached into his pocket and tossed the bug into the Nile. It disappeared without even a splash. He looked back, but the tail seemed to be gone. He extended his arm. A battered black-and-white cab pulled over.

“The Hyatt,” Wells said. The hotel was a mile down the Corniche. Before they reached it, Wells touched the cabbie’s arm. “Stop here.”

He paid, waited for the cab to disappear, waited for any sign he’d been followed. But here the Corniche was nearly free of pedestrians and the traffic flowed fast and freely. Wells reached up a hand, hailed another cab. “Northern Cemetery.”

“Which part?”

“The entrance.”

“It has many entrances.” The cabbie looked puzzled but waved Wells in anyway.

As they drove, Wells closed his eyes and tried to think through the tail and the bug. They had to have come from someone at the mosque. Hani, most likely. Maybe someone else in the imam’s office. Possibly the imam himself. Whoever it was, Wells had to expect the Egyptian police to crash his interview with Alaa. He wondered if he should abort the meeting.

“Where are you from?” the taxi driver said abruptly.

Back in America, Wells had forgotten the Arab world’s obsession with ethnicity, its never-ending tribalism. Me against my brother. Us against our cousins. Our family against the family next door. Our block against the next. and on and on, to infinity. Or at least this universe against the next.

“Kuwait.”

“Ahh, Kuwait. Of course. You have business here? Maybe you take day off, I take you to the pyramids. Very exciting, very historical. ” He was off and running, and Wells couldn’t help but smile. One day he really would come back here as a tourist. He wondered who’d be with him. Or if he’d be alone.

THE CABBIE WAS STILL TALKING as they headed up a low rise. Ahead, the road seemed to dead-end at a wide avenue, almost a highway, six lanes of cars heading north and south. Beyond the avenue, a jumble of buildings loomed, darker and lower than the rest of the city. The cabbie pointed at them. “Northern Cemetery.”

“I can’t wait.”

The cabbie drove through a short tunnel that ran under the avenue and opened into the cemetery. He stopped in front of four nut-brown men sitting in folding chairs, passing a sheesha.

Wells paid the driver, unfolded himself from the cab. The men in the chairs looked curiously at him as it pulled away, trailing diesel smoke. Hani wasn’t among them, and Wells didn’t recognize any of them from the mosque. They were arranged in front of a store whose shelves, as far as Wells could tell, held only cardboard boxes of spark plugs.

“Salaam alekeim.”

“Alekeim salaam.”

The men’s galabiyas were gray with dust, their bodies limp, as if they had been sitting for so long that they were molded to the chairs. They could have been forty, or seventy. They struck Wells as the Egyptian equivalent of the old men who had — in the days before Wal-Mart and air-conditioning — sat in town squares in the South and watched the world go by.

“May I sit?” Wells asked the man on the far right. He seemed younger, or at least more awake, than the others.

“Sit, sit.”

Wells plopped down. Based on the regularity of the traffic passing them, the road through the cemetery seemed to be a major route to eastern Cairo. Wells couldn’t help feeling that running roads through a graveyard was somehow disrespectful. Yet did the dead prefer the loneliness of the immaculately maintained cemeteries in the United States? At least this way they were connected to the city where they had lived.

What nonsense, Wells thought. In truth, if this place proved anything, it was the foolishness of ghost stories. Wells didn’t claim to know where the dead went. But he was sure they weren’t here. Their bones might be, but their spirits were long gone.

The man next to him moved a few degrees toward vertical.

“I am Essam.”

“Nadeem.”

“You visit the cemetery?”

“Yes.”

“Now? At this hour?”

“Why not?”

Essam didn’t seem to know what to say next. He slumped in his seat, reached for the sheesha. Its coals were out. He whistled sharply. A very small and very dirty boy, no more than ten years old, emerged from the spark-plug store, carrying tongs and a brass brazier trailing white smoke. He plucked two red-black coals from the brazier, arranged them on the sheesha.

“You like to smoke?” the boy said to Wells. “Very good smoke. Apple, cherry, strawberry, melon—”

“No, thank you.”

“Very good smoke.” The boy tugged at Wells’s galabiya with a small hand black with coal dust. “You Kuwaiti?”

“Not you, too. Shouldn’t you be asleep?” Then Wells realized why the boy had asked. “Yes. Kuwaiti. You have something for me?”

The boy ran inside the store, reemerging with a piece of paper. “For you. One pound.”

“Who gave you this?”

“One pound.” One Egyptian pound was about twenty cents.

Wells gave him a pound, received the note in return. “Keep walking,” it said in Arabic. Nothing more. “Who gave you this?” But the boy had already gone back to spark-plug heaven.

“Who left this?” Wells said. “A fat man?” As an answer, Essam put the sheesha pipe to his mouth and took a long draw. He closed his eyes as the coals glowed red and the sheesha burbled happily. Wells stood, looked at the crumbling brick buildings around him, wondering if he was being watched, by the muk or the jihadis or both. But nothing moved.

Wells was gripped by a feeling he had never heard properly named, the sense that he could stay with these men for a thousand years, waiting for something to happen. Anything. And nothing would. Yet every moment would be as pregnant with anticipation as the one before, even as his feet took root in the earth, even as he turned into a living statue. The opposite of déjà vu. A state of permanent expectation.

“Good-bye,” Wells said.

Essam exhaled a cloud of white smoke. “Come back. Smoke sheesha with us.”

I know where to find you, Wells didn’t say.

“Ma-a-saalama.”

“Ma-a-saalama.”

THE STREET CURVED LEFT and then right. The dead were all around him — the living, too — huddled inside one-room mud-brick houses that reached the edge of the road. The neighborhood’s poverty was obvious here. The houses had uneven holes for windows. Mangy dogs slept fitfully in garbage-strewn lots, their ribs visible under thin brown fur. At the sight of Wells, they stirred but didn’t bother to stand.

Around the next turn, a narrow alley ran perpendicularly from the street. As Wells walked past it, a boy in dirty brown sweatpants hissed at him. “Are you the Kuwaiti?”

Kuwaiti. The magic word. The password for tonight’s adventures.

“Yes.”

“Follow me.”

Wells turned down the alley, following the boy. This section of cemetery sloped north to south. They headed south, down a narrow staircase, concrete steps crumbling. The alley shrank as it continued, buildings pressing on both sides, leaving just enough room for two men to stand side by side. Wells wasn’t happy. An ambush here would be lethal. He peeked over his shoulder but couldn’t see anyone.

“How much farther, boy? ” he said. The kid ignored him, trotting ahead.

THEY PASSED AN OPEN SQUARE filled with tombstones and one large mausoleum, the first evidence Wells had seen of an actual cemetery in the Northern Cemetery. Ahead, the alley swung left, a blind turn. The boy whistled and ran. Here it comes, Wells thought. As he made the turn, he felt rather than saw a man in a black mask stepping out of a hole in the wall behind him. He tried to turn, to protect himself, but something hard and metal crashed into the side of his head—

A sap—

His last thought — and then his legs sagged underneath him and he was out.

9

The letter was a single white page, typewritten, undated, no letterhead.

Not surprisingly, the letter was unsigned. The envelope carried a Salt Lake City postmark and the same Courier twelve-point font. No return address.

Four thick lines of classification were stamped across the top of the letter:

TOP SECRET/SCI/ PLASMA/76G

NOFORN/NOCON

DISTRIBUTION BY DCI ONLY

And just in case the message hadn’t gotten through: PRINCIPALS ONLY.

Shafer read the letter through twice. He was examining it a third time when Lucy Joyner, the CIA inspector general, reached across the table. “Time’s up,” she said.

Joyner was a tall, round Texan whose curly hair was dyed a striking platinum blond. She investigated internal allegations of wrongdoing at the agency, a job that made her as popular at Langley as a police officer at a pro-hemp rally. She couldn’t fit in, so she’d taken the opposite route. Her hair was defiance in a Clairol bottle. We’re here, we’re the IG’s office, get used to it.

“I’m a slow reader,” Shafer said.

She waggled her fingers at him, and he handed it over. They were in a conference room in Joyner’s office suite, on the sixth floor of the Old Headquarters Building. A framed map of Texas hung on one wall, beside a photo of Lyndon Baines Johnson wearing a cowboy hat and holding his dog, Little Beagle Jr.

“Can I see the original?” Shafer said.

Joyner had shown him a high-resolution copy of the letter, which was locked in her safe. “Nothing on it,” Joyner said. “No fingerprints or DNA. Whoever sent them was awful careful.” Joyner hadn’t lived in Texas in twenty-five years, but she sounded like she’d just gotten off a plane from Amarillo. Shafer wondered if she practiced at home. Bar-be-cue. Fixin’s. Largemouth bass.

“What about the other letters?” Shafer said. “To Gates and Duto and Whitby?”

“Destroyed. I asked Duto about it; he told me his office gets all kinds of crazy mail. Can’t check everything. Yeah, well, my office gets nutjob letters, too, but we know when one’s real. And so do they.”

“Except when they’d rather not.”

“This conversation shouldn’t be happening,” Joyner said. “Lucky for me, you have that super-fancy clearance.”

“They keep forgetting to take it away.”

“So, I don’t need permission to show you this. And I remember how they treated you after nine-eleven, Ellis. Which is to say I think we’re on the same side. But most of what you want to know, I can’t tell you. You have to go to the source for that.”

“A couple of questions.”

“Just a couple.”

“Murphy told me you’d cleared him.”

“Did he, now.”

“I’m guessing that isn’t exactly accurate.”

“It is and it isn’t.”

“How far did you get?” Shafer asked.

“He came in for a prelim—”

“A prelim?”

“A preliminary interview. No lie detector, no lawyers. It’s optional, but most folks agree to ’em, because if we can get our questions answered then, nothing gets into your file, nothing for the boards”—the promotion boards—“to see. Anyways, he came in. I showed him the letter, asked him if he could tell me anything. He said he couldn’t. I asked him whether 673’s records would exonerate him. He said it didn’t matter, because they were DD-and-above clearance”—that only deputy directors and Duto himself could see them. “I asked him about the torture. He told me that he was administrative, didn’t run interrogations. Then I asked him about receipts and he laughed. Literally. Laughed out loud. Asshole. That was it. He left. I figured I’d better check it out. But before I got anywhere, Duto called.”

“When, exactly?”

“Maybe two days after I spoke to Brant. He told me to find something else to do, that he was invoking the NSE”—the national security exemption, which allowed the director to overrule the inspector general and stop internal investigations if they were likely to damage vital national interests.

“Duto didn’t tell you what was behind the NSE.”

“He did not.”

“And that was it?”

“I’m not like you, Ellis. I get a direct order from the director, I listen. I called Murphy, told him not to worry. A couple of days later, his lawyer called, told me that wasn’t good enough, that Murphy wanted all records of the investigation destroyed.”

“Smart.”

“Yes. Too bad for him, I was able to tell him that wouldn’t be possible, that I had to hold the letter because of the allegations of torture, et cetera. So the lawyer asked me to certify that I had cleared Murphy of any wrongdoing related to 673. As an insurance policy, he said.”

“Without specifying what the wrongdoing actually was.”

“Correct, Ellis.” She paused. “So, I wrote it. Murphy had Duto on his side, and I figured it was more important to make sure this”—she looked at the letter—“survived. Then I locked that letter up and forgot about it. Though not entirely. I knew somebody would call. Sooner or later. Stuff like this doesn’t stay down forever.”

“You heard what’s happened with 673,” Shafer said. “The murders.”

“The day after Fisher and Wyly got killed, Duto called me to his office. I knew something was up, because normally he prefers to stay as far from me as possible. Anyway, he told me. Said there was an investigation starting up.”

“So, the FBI has the letter.”

Joyner shook her big blonde head. “Not exactly. Duto asked me whether I’d talked to the bureau. I said, how could I have done that when you just told me there was an investigation going. Then he told me that he was not authorizing distribution of the letter to anyone outside the agency.”

“Including the bureau.”

“Correct. Nobody had the clearance, he said. I had the distinct impression he wanted me to destroy the letter, but he didn’t come out and say so.”

“Did he ask you to purge it from your memory? Eternal sunshine, et cetera?”

“Not yet. That’s probably next.”

“He tell you his logic for hiding evidence in a criminal investigation?”

“He did not. If I’d asked, no doubt he would have pulled out the ol’ national security exemption, but I did not ask.”

“And he didn’t explicitly tell you to destroy it.”

“You know Vinny Duto better than that, Ellis. That would have needed to be in writing, and he wasn’t interested in having this in writing. And then, to my not quite surprise, you called.” She paused. “Wish I could be more helpful, but that’s pretty much all I have.”

“Do you think there’s a connection between the torture allegations and the theft?”

She tilted her head and clucked—chk-chk. “Aside from the fact that the same person’s making them? No. I mean, Murphy was worried about the money. Less so about the torture. You’d expect it would be the other way around.”

“It’s a strange letter,” Shafer said.

“Very strange. It reads like the writer didn’t grow up speaking English. The bolding, the capitalized words. But I think all that’s fake. It feels like it’s from somebody inside the squad. I can’t think how else anyone would have the specifics, the prisoner numbers.”

“If you worked for a foreign intelligence agency.”

“Maybe the Brits,” Joyner said. “But probably not even. Now do me a favor, figure this out, since I’m not allowed to.”

“I’ll do that, Lucy. But I need something.”

“Anything.”

“Really.”

“No. Not even close to anything.”

“It would be very helpful to me if you could freshen up. As they say in Texas and other such genteel places.”

She put a finger on the letter. “You can’t have it, Ellis.”

“It’ll be right here when you get back.”

“You’re very fortunate to have that clearance.” She stretched her arms over her head. “Well. I do believe I need to freshen up,” she said. “Be right back.”

She disappeared. And Shafer thumbed twelve ten-digit numbers into his BlackBerry:

3185304876—3184690284—4007986133—4013337810—4042991331—4041179553—4192578423—5567208212—6501740917—6500415280—7298472436—7297786130

The letter was just where she’d left it when she got back. Ellis wasn’t. He stood, examining the L.B.J. poster.

“What’s this about, Lucy? Texas pride or something deeper?”

“Wish I could tell you, but it’s a secret I never share,” she said.

“We seem to be heavy on those.”

10

An ocean and a continent away, Wells woke to cool water trickling down his neck. He lay on a mud floor, his hands bound behind his back, shoes and camera bag gone. His head throbbed, and the base of his skull had grown a soft sticky lump. Two identical imams sat on two identical chairs above him, pouring water onto him from two identically cracked pitchers.

Wells closed his eyes and counted slowly to ten in Arabic: “Wahid, itnayn. ” When he opened his eyes, he found that the two imams had merged into one. He moved his head carefully, taking in the room. It wasn’t much, a ten-foot square with smooth, windowless walls and a single naked bulb above. He saw only the imam and Ihab, not Hani.

“Kuwaiti,” the imam said.

“My name is Nadeem,” Wells said. His voice was low and cracked. “And it wasn’t necessary to hit me.”

“You woke up quickly.”

“I have a hard head. Inshallah. May I ask, sheikh? How did the boy find me? How did you know I’d come that way?”

The imam smiled. “He wasn’t the only boy, Kuwaiti. All over the cemetery they watched for you.”

“Where’s Hani?”

The imam set down the pitcher, knelt beside Wells, squeezed Wells’s cheeks between his fingers. “Why do you care? You miss him?”

Wells hesitated. Should he speak badly of the imam’s right-hand man? For all Wells knew, they’d been friends from birth and insulting Hani would cost him his shot at Alaa. But he didn’t see any other move. “I don’t trust him, your friend Hani.”

The imam’s eyes flicked to Ihab, then back to Wells.

“I don’t know how long you’ve known him, but I fear he’s one of the pharaoh’s men. I almost didn’t come tonight.”

“Why would you say such things about my good friend?”

“I’ve dealt with muk before.”

“Dealt with, Kuwaiti? Or worked with?”

Wells pushed himself against the wall, forcing himself into a sitting position before nausea overtook him. “I risked my life to come to you. And I’ve done what you’ve asked, everything. So, please, if you still don’t trust me, let’s end this charade.” He turned to Ihab. “In the truck, you asked me why I’d chosen your son. Don’t you see? I didn’t choose him. The Americans did. Do you want him to tell his story? Because if you do, I need to speak to him tonight. I can’t stay longer.”

The imam squeezed Wells’s shoulder. “Close your eyes, Kuwaiti. Sleep a bit.” The two men turned off the light and left.

WELLS WOKE to find his hands free. A third man had entered the room. Deep-set eyes, a soft chin, close-cropped black hair, a gentle face. Alaa Zumari. He didn’t look like a man who could have ordered a half-dozen murders.

The imam pulled a chair beside Wells. “Can you sit?”

Wells pushed himself up, took the chair. His stomach turned a somersault. He touched his skull, found his fingertips wet. He was still leaking.

“Salaam alekeim,” Alaa said.

“Alekeim salaam. You’re Alaa Zumari? I’m Nadeem.”

His camera bag and shoes had materialized at his feet. He pulled out the camera, mounted it on the tripod. He turned on the camera, then turned it off.

“First, you tell me your story without the camera, Alaa. Then we do it again, on tape. It will go more smoothly.”

“I understand,” Alaa said. He was his father’s son, quiet and collected. Wells wondered if his interrogators had misunderstood his composure as arrogance.

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-five. I was born in Alex”—Alexandria. “We moved to Cairo when I was six.”

“Are you very religious?”

“Not so much. He”—Alaa glanced at his father—“always told me to study the Quran, study, study, but I didn’t like it.”

“How did you end up in Baghdad?”

“Four years ago, when I was twenty-one, I was a waiter in the Sofitel.” The Sofitel was one of the bigger Cairo hotels, a tall, cylindrical building on an island in the Nile. “Sometimes I drove a Mercedes for a rich man who visited there with his girlfriends. A very rich man.”

“An Egyptian?”

“Yes. I worked hard. I wanted to save money, to get married. I drove for this man a lot. After a year, his son, at the time he was nineteen, he came to me and said, ‘Alaa. My father likes you. He trusts you. I trust you, too. I want you to go to Baghdad and start a mobile-phone business with me.’ He said, ‘You carry in the phones, and when you get there, you do an agreement with the Iraqicom’ ”—the biggest mobile-phone company in Iraq. “ ‘You buy minutes from them, a lot, millions. They give you a discount. Then you sell the phones with the time attached. If it works, we make a lot of money.’ That’s what he said.”

“But he didn’t want to go to Baghdad himself?”

“He’s not a fool. Unlike me.”

“So you said yes.”

“It’s a risk, okay, but I need the money. I said yes. He gave in fifty thousand U.S. and I gave in five thousand pounds.” Five thousand Egyptian pounds, about one thousand dollars. “All my money. We bought five hundred cell phones, cheap ones, in Qatar. The rest of the money was to buy the minutes.”

“And you went to Baghdad.”

“Yes. Over the border through Jordan. Very dangerous. I didn’t know how dangerous until too late. We drive in a convoy. Six cars, GMCs. Halfway through, the middle of the desert, one of the GMCs, it gets hijacked, the driver shot. The passengers kidnapped. Killed, probably. I don’t know. But we were lucky, we made it to Baghdad. And my rich friend, he has found a place for me to stay, because the hotels are too dangerous. He has a second cousin there. Named Amr.”

Alaa paused, hunched back against the wall, as if reliving his arrival in Baghdad.

“Have you ever been to Iraq?”

“Iraqis don’t like Kuwaitis.”

“Right. So. Baghdad. At first it seems okay. For a few days, I try to get an appointment with Iraqicom. But I can’t. Then one night two men come to the house where I’m staying. Jihadis. Fighting the Americans. They heard about my cell phones. They say, you must pay us a tax.”

“They heard. Who told them?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe Amr. Maybe your partner.”

“I don’t know!” For the first time, Alaa raised his voice. “So, they say, a tax. They take a hundred of the phones. And ten thousand of the money.”

“Did you argue with them?”

“No one argues with these men. I think they would have taken it all, but the man I’m staying with, he stops them. And a few days later, they come back, take more phones, more money.”

“You didn’t want them to? You weren’t there to help them? Tell me the truth.”

“I went there to do business! After they come the second time, I call my friend to ask him, maybe I should just come home. He tells me to stay. Tells me, ‘Stay with Amr. Do the deal. Sell the rest of the phones. We can still make money.’ A very good friend.” His voice was low and bitter.

“You couldn’t go home?”

“They told me, don’t try. They said they watch the bus stations, GMCs. They’ll kill me if I try.”

If the story was true, Alaa had been either betrayed by his host or, more likely, set up from the start as an unwitting courier. Wells imagined this quiet man in Baghdad in late 2007, with Iraq teetering close to anarchy. Markets and roads and police stations under attack daily. Wandering into the wrong neighborhood meant certain death. And Alaa, holed up in a house, unable to trust his host, waiting for the insurgents to return, and return again, until the money and the phones were gone and he was left with only his own skin to give them.

Unless, of course, he hadn’t been set up at all. Unless he’d gone to Baghdad to deliver cell phones and money to the jihadis. But if that was his goal, why hadn’t he dropped off his cache and gone back to Cairo to pick up another load?

“What happened next?” Wells said.

Alaa ran a hand through his hair. “What happened? Two days later, the Americans came. Many of them, maybe fifteen. It was the middle of the night. Amr went for his AK, and they shot him.”

“Were there any Iraqis with them?”

“I don’t think so, no. Just Americans.”

By that point all the regular combat operations were joint Iraqi-American, so American-only meant a Special Forces unit.

“They tie me up and put a bag on my head and put me in a helicopter. They say I’m a jihadi, they’re going to throw me out if I don’t tell them the truth. I tell them no, I’m there for the cell phones, I don’t know anything about the jihadis. The jihadis stole my money; they would have killed me if you hadn’t come. But the Americans didn’t believe me. When the helicopter landed, they beat me. This went on for a few days. I told them to look at my passport, my name. But they said they found a computer at the house with messages from Al Qaeda. They said Amr was a big man in the insurgency. To this day I don’t know whether what they were saying was real. Amr never said anything about jihad to me. They told me, just tell us the truth.”

“But you lied.” Wells understood now how Alaa had ended up in 673’s hands.

“I told them about what happened,” Alaa said. “But I didn’t say who sent me.”

“You made up a name.” Wells still wondered why Alaa had been so reticent to give it up, but he decided not to press. The answer would come.

“Yes. This was when I was still in Iraq. They beat me; they kept me in a room like this, no windows, very hot. Finally, I told them a name so they would stop. And they were happy; they stopped beating me. Then a few days later they got angry. They told me they knew I was lying and that I wasted their time. And they said they were going to send me someplace I wouldn’t like. Then the next day they put a hood on me and tied my arms and gave me a shot—”

“With a needle—”

“Yes, with a needle. And I fell asleep, and when I woke up I was on a plane. And then I was somewhere very cold.” Alaa shivered at the memory. “I don’t know where. Since I got out, I tried to figure it out. I think somewhere like Germany. But maybe not.”

“They never said.”

“No. And I couldn’t see anything about it, where they kept me. If I ever left the building, they put a hood on me. But it was Americans who ran it, I’m sure of that. It had a special name. They told me. They were proud of it. They called it ‘The Midnight House.’ ”

“Midnight House.”

“Yes.”

“Do you know why they called it that?”

“They said it was always midnight for the prisoners.”

“Were there a lot of prisoners?”

“Not that I saw. Mostly, I was alone.”

“And they hurt you?”

“These men, they were much different than the ones in Iraq.” He closed his eyes, took a slow, deep breath. “I know I must talk about it, what they did, but—”

He broke off. The room was silent, the only sound the faint buzzing of the bulb overhead. Somewhere outside, a dog barked fiercely.

“They told me, it’s very simple to hurt you. And it was. They make me stand all the time with my arms out, make me stay awake, hit me with the electricity. They put me in a very small cell, so small I can stand only like this—” Alaa hunched over. And even though he held the position for only a few seconds, his face went slack in fear and pain, the muscle memory overwhelming him. He stood up, slowly.

“Nothing that ever left a mark,” he said. “I would look at myself and wonder if I had dreamed it all. Yes, sometimes, when they stopped, brought me back to my cell and I fell asleep, I thought the sleep was real and the torture was the dream. I said, ‘Allah, Allah, help me, help me escape these evil dreams, sleep in peace.’ But he never helped. And you must see, they never stopped. Not like Iraq. In Iraq, the guards and soldiers, they came and went. They had many prisoners. But in this place, this house, it was only me, and they never stopped. And after a while, I don’t know how long, maybe three weeks, I couldn’t resist anymore. I didn’t know if they would kill me or send me back to Iraq or what they would do, I only knew I couldn’t resist.”

“Anyone would have done the same,” Wells said. “But what I don’t see, even now, is why you protected this man who sent you to Iraq at all.”

Alaa laughed, low and bitter. “Not to protect him. To protect my family. Do you know who it was, the man I drove? Samir Gharib. He owns half of Heliopolis”—a wealthy neighborhood in northeast Cairo. “His daughter is married to Mubarak’s grandson.”

“And it was his son who sent you to Baghdad?”

“Do you see now, Kuwaiti?” the imam said.

Wells saw. The American government supported Hosni Mubarak, for all his flaws, because he was viewed as a reliable ally against radical Islam. If his family had been connected to the Iraqi insurgency, the outcry in Washington would have been immediate and intense. Congress might have ended the billions of dollars of aid the United States gave Egypt every year. And Mubarak would have lashed out, setting his men on Alaa’s family. Angering a pharaoh was never wise.

What Alaa hadn’t realized was that his confession would be so toxic that the agency and the army had no alternative but to bury it. Then, with no reason to keep him, they’d told 673 to let him go.

Amazingly enough, the truth had set Alaa Zumari free.

IN THEORY, Alaa might still be responsible for the 673 murders. But why? His captivity had lasted only a few months and had ended with his regaining his freedom. Now he simply wanted to be left alone. Nonetheless, Wells figured he should ask about the murders.

“Are you angry with the Americans?” he said.

“The ones who hurt me? Sure, I’m angry.” Though Alaa’s voice was even. “I wish that they would see how it feels. But not the woman. She was kind.”

“The woman.”

“One was a woman. A doctor.”

“Did she talk to you?”

“Only a few words. I don’t think she knew so much Arabic. But she had a kind face. That’s the only way I know how to say it.”

“Do you know what’s been happening to them?”

“What do you mean?”

“This unit that held you.” Wells paused. “They’re dying.”

“I don’t understand.” The surprise in his voice was genuine.

“They went back to the United States. And now someone is killing them.”

“I don’t believe it,” Alaa said. “It doesn’t make sense.”

Wells was sure now that Alaa hadn’t been involved in the killings. He couldn’t be a skilled enough actor to fake this.

And then a distant high-pitched whistle breached the room, a long, warning cry. The imam stepped forward, cupped a hand around the wound on the back of Wells’s head. “They’re coming.”

“I swear on the Prophet it wasn’t me,” Wells said. “Hani saw the note you sent. He works for them.”

The imam’s silence was answer enough. Wells wondered if they had time to escape. If the mukhabarat had seen the note, they knew he was headed for the Northern Cemetery but not exactly where. They had put a bug and a tail on Wells, figuring it would be easier to follow a Kuwaiti than the imam and Ihab, who knew the local streets. But Wells had lost his bug and his pursuer. Now the police were regrouping. They had tracked him to the sheesha café and were going from there.

“Leave,” Wells said. “I’ll go the other way, draw them off.” But the imam seemed frozen.

Wells heard the distant thumping of a helicopter high above. Would the mukhabarat bring in a copter for this op? Apparently so. And no one would be surprised when Alaa was killed during the arrest. A suspected terrorist died early this morning in a counterterrorist operation in eastern Cairo, Egyptian authorities reported.

No. Wells wasn’t going to help the Egyptians kill this man, or send him back to prison. Alaa had suffered enough. Wells wondered briefly what the agency would make of his helping a fugitive who’d been connected to the Iraqi insurgency, and decided he’d care later.

Another whistle, this one closer. Wells stood, braced himself against the wall. He didn’t know how far he could run, but he’d have to try. “Follow me or don’t,” Wells said to Alaa. “But decide.”

Wells stepped out of the hut and found himself in the alley where he’d been sapped. Alaa followed. A helicopter buzzed overhead, but Wells couldn’t see it. Good. Like the bumper stickers on eighteen-wheelers said, If you can’t see my mirrors, I can’t see you. American helos had see-through-walls radar, but Wells didn’t think that technology had come to Cairo yet.

He pulled himself up to the roof of the one-room house where he’d been held, then squatted low and oriented himself. Alaa followed. They were in a tough spot. The cemetery was a long rectangle that ran more or less north-south. Its east and west perimeters, the long sides, were hemmed in by broad avenues that formed natural bulwarks, easily patrolled and defended. Getting to the northern or southern edges, where the cemetery blended more naturally into the the city, meant running a half mile or more through the alleys full of police, or over the rooftops — in full view of the helicopters. Two lurked over the cemetery, one to the north, one to the south, shining their spotlights in tight circles.

Despite the helos, Wells thought their best bet was to stay high for as long as possible. The rooftops were filled with debris and scrap metal. The police would avoid them and stick to the alleys. If Wells and Alaa could just get through the first cordon, they might be able to disappear.

Still bent over, Wells scrambled crabwise south along the rooftops. The helicopter to the south was shining its light in a slow, looping pattern, moving slowly north, trying to catch any movement on the roofs. It paused. Wells saw that a dog was caught in its beacon, barking madly upward. Then it moved on. Wells and Alaa reached a two-story building, a ruined mosque, with a low wall that offered concealment.

To the west, three motorcycles streaked along the avenue, their red-and-blue lights flashing, a flying patrol cutting the cemetery off from the city. In the alleys around them, flashlights popped up and disappeared. To the north, a whistle sounded. A man shouted, “You! Raise your hands!”

Between the helicopters, the motorcycles, and the men on the ground, one hundred or more mukhabarat officers had to be on this mission. Wells realized now that he’d unwittingly put Alaa in special peril. Lost in the Cairo slums, Alaa was no problem for Mubarak. But now that Alaa was a threat to tell his story to the world, the police were determined to find him.

Overhead, the helicopter closed in, the chop of its blades and growl of its turbine growing louder each second. A wave of nausea pulled Wells sideways, and he braced himself to keep from falling over. That crack on his skull was the gift that kept on giving. Right now he ought to be lying in a dark room with a compress against his head and a friendly nurse rubbing his shoulders. Forget the nurse. Forget the compress. He’d settle for the room. He almost laughed, then bit his tongue to stop himself.

He tried to stand and couldn’t. Too dizzy. He couldn’t get much farther.

“Nadeem,” Alaa shouted. “It’s coming.”

“I’m going into the spotlight. Pull it away. You go south, get out of here.”

“But—”

“Go.”

Wells bit his cheek, hard enough to draw blood, hard enough to jolt himself with adrenaline. He stood and ran along the uneven wall of the mosque. He stepped down, into an alley. He jogged through a narrow archway and found himself in a courtyard filled with crumbling graves. The spotlight swung at him and night became day. So much dust filled the air that the light seemed almost liquid, white fire pouring down from the heavens, setting the gravestones ablaze.

Wells tried to dodge, hiding behind a grave, knowing he couldn’t. The spotlight settled on him. He stumbled a few steps farther and then fell to his knees and raised his hands in surrender and waited for the police to come. He hoped they wouldn’t shoot him on the spot. He hoped Alaa had followed his instructions and run south. He closed his eyes, let the furious thrum of the helicopter’s turbine fill his ears and shake his skull until he disappeared.

The police found him quickly. They grabbed him and cuffed his arms tightly and marched him out to the avenue. Hani waited for him there, leaning against a black Audi sedan with tinted windows. He stepped forward, backhanded Wells hard, his gold ring digging into Wells’s cheek.

“What trouble you’ve caused us, Kuwaiti,” he said. “Now you’ll be our guest. See our prisons firsthand. You can make your own video when we’re done with you. Interview yourself.”

“Sounds like fun,” Wells said in English. “But I’m not Kuwaiti.”

“No? What are you, then?”

“American. A CIA operative. Name’s John Wells.” His last card. His trump card. Wells would rather have avoided playing it. Not exactly pukka sahib. He wished he could have made a clean escape, avoided the nonsense certain to follow. But he had no alternative. He wasn’t sure he could have gotten past the cordon tonight even if his skull was in one piece. His embarrassment was a small price to pay for Alaa’s freedom.

Hani must have known Wells was telling the truth, because he slumped back, his mouth half open, a fisherman who’d just reeled in the biggest catch of his life only to watch it wave and jump off the deck and back into the ocean. “John Wells. You work for the CIA,” he said finally.

“So they tell me, habibi.”