The Switch

31

Will was suffused with dread, almost paralyzed with it. He kept staring at the text on the screen, his stomach queasy and tight and roiling with acid.

Michael Tanner — who else could it be? — had killed a man named Dennis Hurley, the thug known as the Problem Solver. And not just a thug, but a hard man, a tough guy, a Marine. How was it possible that Tanner had killed him?

He went through it all again in his mind, as if he were replaying the videotape.

First, Tanner had flatly denied that he had the senator’s laptop, and then he’d killed the man Will had hired to retrieve it.

Which meant Tanner was not who he appeared to be, not just some businessman, some entrepreneur.

And that in turn raised the terrible question: Was it possible that Tanner had deliberately taken the laptop — that the switch was in fact no accident?

Will’s head swam, trying to make sense of all the countervailing facts. No, it just didn’t seem possible. Whoever Tanner was really, there was no way he could have deliberately ended up in line right behind the senator at the Los Angeles airport, or right in front of her... That theory just required too many coincidences. It strained credibility.

But what if... What if Tanner had come to realize that he’d ended up with the laptop belonging to a US senator, that on it were some of the nation’s — the world’s — most precious, most explosive secrets, and what if he had done something with it?

Say he’d recognized its value and he’d sold it to someone, to a ring. To any of a number of willing buyers. Spies from China or Russia or somewhere else, maybe even ISIS or al-Qaeda. Terrorists.

That would explain why all of his attempts, and the Russian’s, had failed. He was in over his head.

And as much as he dreaded it, he had to tell the boss.

The senator was wearing her navy-blue suit, which concerned Will. The somber blue outfit meant she was in one of her all-business, no-breaks, work-late-hours moods. It meant she was grouchy, impatient, peevish. She would not welcome a private talk, especially one that threatened to derail everything in her carefully ordered life.

Will had to be careful in what he told her. She knew nothing about the Problem Solver, and that was how it had to stay. She knew nothing about his efforts to retrieve the laptop. She had to be kept innocent of the operational details.

Senator Susan Robbins gave him the death-ray stare over her reading glasses, and Will felt his guts churning. “I’m not sure I understand,” she said, her voice quiet.

“I think there’s more going on than we thought originally. Without going into details, we took some serious measures, and we keep coming up with nothing.”

“What does that mean? You know what? No. Stop. Don’t tell me any more.” She put her hands up, palms out. “You have a job to do, and how you do it is up to you. What you have to do — I don’t care. I don’t want to know.”

“I think it may be time to tell the Senate Security Office.”

“Are you out of your mind?” she snapped. “We’ve talked about this. The moment they hear what I did, I’ll be sanctioned, I’ll be thrown off the intel committee, and the whole thing becomes public. And who knows where that leads? I could be forced to resign. Or worse...”

Will nodded, something bitter and metallic in his mouth. This was always the problem, the reason he’d told her it was ill-advised to slip classified documents out of the SCIF in the first place. If anyone found out, it could become a huge scandal. She was playing with matches in a gas plant.

But that was a fait accompli. It had been up to him to clean things up, and he’d failed at it. He was ashamed. Ashamed of having failed, ashamed to acknowledge his defeat. And — he might as well admit it — he was afraid of her anger.

“I don’t know what you’ve done, what hasn’t worked, but you have to do what’s necessary to get that thing back. You understand?”

He nodded, looked into her eyes.

“I wonder if you do. This is something you need to take care of yourself. Personally. This isn’t something you can... outsource. I think that’s clear now. But if you’re not comfortable with that—”

“No, I am—”

“If you don’t want to get your hands dirty, let me know now. Will, do we have a problem?”

He shook his head. “Not at all.”

“Sit down, Will.”

He did.

“You ever wonder why I hired you in the first place?”

He narrowed his eyes a bit, unsure how to respond.

But Susan didn’t wait for him. “The candidates I passed over for you. A Rhodes scholar from Yale, a lacrosse player, well-rounded. A summa from Middlebury with a graduate degree from the Woodrow Wilson School. An editor of the Harvard Law Review. That’s the caliber of people I could have hired. But I chose you. William Abbott, an awkward kid from a decent state school. Why on earth do you think that was?”

Will’s head was bowed, eyes downcast, a pensive pose. He shook his head.

“Because I saw something in you, Will.”

Will raised his head, now looking directly at her, like a flower turning toward the sun. He gave a small smile. He noticed, not for the first time, the blue of her eyes, dazzling like some rare mineral. The whites were a pure porcelain white, with no trace of red. Every movement of her hands was precise and controlled. Like she belonged to a species more refined than his.

“I saw something in you,” she repeated.

“Yeah?”

“You know what that was? Something damaged. Something not quite right. I’m damaged too, Will.”

Will felt cold now, and the smile faded quickly from his face.

“You’re damaged; I’m damaged. We don’t play it safe. We don’t always play by the rules. But it’s people like us who make shit happen. Because there’s a hole in us that can never be filled. Maybe it’s a bottomless pit. But we’re not like other people. We do whatever it takes. Can you do whatever it takes, Will?”

He swallowed hard, and at first his words were nearly inaudible. “Yes, I can, Susan,” he said. He cleared his throat and said it again, louder. “I can and I will.”

She leaned forward. “You know, for some people, being a United States senator would be the achievement of a lifetime. But for us, it’s a stepping-stone. You know that, don’t you, Will?” She leaned forward and gripped his forearm.

He nodded.

“If we get this right, and we catch a lucky break or two, you and I will be aiming higher. We have bigger things in mind, the two of us. Don’t we, Will?”

He felt tears leak into his eyes. He loved this woman like he loved no one else, not even Jen. But it was a different kind of love. Greater than the love of a man for his wife, a child for his mother. She was someone special, Will was certain; a person of historical importance. As she rose, so would he.

“Don’t we, Will?” she said again.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, we do.”