Truth or Die

Chapter 58

It doesn’t matter if you don’t know a door card from a river card or whether a full house beats a flush, anyone old enough to see the inside of a Las Vegas casino can walk right into the poker room at the Bellagio.

Walking into Bobby’s Room is a different story.

Bobby’s Room — named after Bobby Baldwin, the 1978 World Series of Poker champion — is the poker room inside the poker room at the Bellagio. It features two high-stakes tables that are completely walled off from the other forty some-odd tables, complete with a polished-looking host, a maître d’ of sorts, who stands guard at the door to make sure none of the riffraff ever make it in. Minimum buy-in is twenty grand. The games being played, however, almost always require a much bigger bankroll. Much bigger.

On the one hand, Bobby’s Room caters to a very privileged clientele. On the other hand, there remains a certain egalitarian element. Especially if that other hand is clutching a boatload of money. Better yet, a yachtload.

Truth is, almost any Tom, Dick, or Harry flashing a lot of cash is more than welcome to play in Bobby’s Room.

That goes for any Valerie, too.

Valerie Jensen, dressed in a leather Chanel skirt, a silk Valentino blouse, and a pair of red Christian Louboutin Lady Peeps, handed the host at the door a house marker for two hundred thousand dollars with the carefree ease of someone who had plenty more where that came from. The fact that she didn’t was the first lesson her father, a professional gambler, had taught her when she was a little girl back in Somers, New York.

Poker is a game of lies. If you want to tell the truth, go to confession...

“Gentlemen, I’d like you to meet Beverly Sands,” announced the host as he pulled out the lone empty chair at the table for Valerie. It was the “three seat,” three spots to the left of the dealer.

Valerie, aka Beverly Sands, sat down amid the polite nods from the other players. Save one, they were all pros. She looked around the table; she’d seen them numerous times before on TV, playing tournaments. And more times than not, they were winning those tournaments.

But as attractive as Valerie was — stunning, really — not a single pro allowed himself the slightest gawk or ogle. That would be a sign of weakness.

Never show weakness at the poker table.

That was the second lesson Valerie’s father had taught her. This one doubled as a life lesson, his mantra all during the battle with the lung cancer that ultimately took his life but never his spirit. Never show weakness... period.

“Two,” said the host, giving the dealer what would’ve been the peace sign anywhere else. In Bobby’s Room, it meant give the lady two hundred thousand dollars in chips, which was what the dealer promptly did after gathering up the pile of cards in front of him. A hand had just finished.

The game was No-Limit Texas Hold’em. Two cards facedown to each player, followed by five share cards in the middle. Best five from the seven wins. Simple as that.

Of course, if it were really that simple, there wouldn’t be nearly a thousand books out there dedicated to explaining how the game should be played.

Given the high stakes, there were no blinds to jump-start the betting. Instead, every player had a five-hundred-dollar ante. This meant Valerie wouldn’t have to wait for the dealer button to come around her way. She could be dealt in immediately.

With the speed of a robotic arm on a Detroit assembly line, the dealer placed the cards from the last hand in the automatic shuffler to his right and pulled out the second of the two decks used in the game. After a quick cut, he began to deal, giving Valerie a few seconds to look around the table again. Her father’s voice was so clear in her head, it was as if he were back from the grave, sitting right there next to her.

There’s a fish in every poker game. That’s the player who’s in way over his head. If you look around the table and can’t spot him, get the hell up immediately. Because you’re the fish.

Valerie smiled to herself. She wasn’t going anywhere.

Her fish was seated directly across the table in the eighth seat. He was the only other nonpro at the table, but everyone knew who he was. That’s just the way it is with multimillionaires. When you land in Vegas in your own Gulfstream G650, it’s tough to fly under the radar.

Shahid Al Dossari was a Saudi Arabian banker who was purportedly an advisor to the Saudi royal family, among other things. He was handsome, he was charismatic, and he was currently under investigation for money laundering by the US Government.

Including Special Agent Valerie Jensen.

“It’s your action, Ms. Sands,” said the dealer with a slight nod. The betting had been checked around to her.

Valerie reached for the sunglasses that had been resting in her blond hair, dropping them down across her blue eyes. Slowly, she lifted up her two hole cards on their edges, pulling them toward her across the felt as if she were giving the table a shave. Game on.

This one’s for you, Dad...

Chapter 59

Valerie wasn’t sure when the exact moment would come. Only that it was coming.

It could take an hour. Maybe upward of three or four. Or maybe only twenty minutes, over and done lickety-split. The cards had to cooperate, of course. But so did Al Dossari. And so far, he was.

Educated in the States — Yale undergrad, Wharton MBA — Al Dossari was as Americanized as a Saudi could ever be. He loved Tennessee whiskey, New York Fashion Week, and shoot-’em-up Hollywood movies, but most of all, what he loved was women. He worshipped them. Never mind that they were treated like second-class citizens back in his homeland. That was there. He was here. America. Where women had all the power. Just so long as they were pretty.

While the pros at the table maintained their well-trained discipline, paying far more attention to the action in the middle of the table than to the eye candy seated at one end of it, Shahid Al Dossari was a man distracted. Never a good thing in a high-stakes poker game.

In fact, forty-five minutes after sitting down, Valerie was fairly convinced that the only reason he flat-called her raise from out of position was so he would have an excuse to introduce himself. Maybe even flirt a little.

The moment had come.

Valerie had raised the initial bet of twenty-five hundred dollars, making it ten thousand. Al Dossari called quickly, while the remaining players all folded, including the initial bettor.

That left just Valerie and Al Dossari in the hand. Heads-up action, as the saying goes.

The dealer promptly buried a card and proceeded to turn up three cards in front of him, otherwise known as the flop.

7♣ 9♥ 8♥

It wasn’t just any flop; it was an action flop. There were straight possibilities. Flush possibilities. In fact, with two cards still to come, there were very few hands that weren’t a possibility at this point.

The betting was on Al Dossari, who promptly checked with a silent tap of the felt. Valerie had been the one who’d raised preflop, so this was hardly a surprise move. She had control of the hand, but the only way to keep it that way was for her to increase the pot. A “continuation bet.”

“Twenty thousand,” she said, reaching for her chips.

Behind her sunglasses, though, she wasn’t looking at her chips. Her eyes were focused on Al Dossari, hoping to see a reaction of some kind — a tell — that would give away the strength of his hand.

But he barely blinked. Instead, he snap-called her, tossing two ten-thousand-dollar chips into the pot.

So much for the easy way, thought Valerie. Besides, easy was boring...

Again, the dealer buried a card before flipping over the “turn” — the fourth card — faceup next to the other three. It was the ace of diamonds.

The betting opened with Al Dossari, who checked as he’d done before. As much as he was staring at Valerie, he still hadn’t said anything. At least, not out loud. The fact that he’d called her last two bets, though, was definitely telling her something. It was time to find out more.

“You wouldn’t happen to be stringing me along, would you?” asked Valerie, flashing the most disarming smile she could muster.

Al Dossari kept his stare, and for a moment or two remained silent. But it was no use. Beverly Sands, the buxom blonde dressed to the nines, was exactly his type. She was his Miss America.

“I was actually thinking the same thing myself, that you were stringing me along,” he said, smiling back with perfect teeth. “I’ve been known to have a weakness for women.”

That got a few knowing chuckles from around the table. Al Dossari’s reputation preceded him.

“So that ace of diamonds on the turn didn’t help you?” asked Valerie.

Al Dossari dropped a forearm on the padded rail of the table, leaning forward over his stack of chips. “Who said I needed help?”

And there it was, an absolute rarity at the poker table. Someone telling the truth. Al Dossari had a made hand. Valerie was sure of it. Because that’s what men do when they’re trying to impress a woman. They talk too much.

“In that case, I’ll check as well,” she said.

With a simple tap on the felt, Valerie surrendered any leverage she had in the hand. But leverage can be a tricky thing.

And there was still one more card to be played.

Chapter 60

The dealer tapped the table with a closed fist, the deck cradled tightly in the palm of his left hand. He peeled off the burn card before turning over the final card, the “river.” It was a jack of spades. The board was now complete.

7♣ 9♥ 8♥ A♦ J♠

Gone was the chance of a flush or anything higher on the pecking order of poker hands. Still, there remained a lot of possibilities. A pair. Two pair. Three of a kind. A straight. And, of course, nothing at all — which on paper would be the worst hand you can have.

But poker isn’t played on paper.

For those with the balls to bluff, the worst hand can easily turn into the winning hand. Those same balls are what usually separate the pro from the amateur. Or the sharks from the fish.

Al Dossari, however, wasn’t bluffing when he reached for his chips to open the final round of betting. Valerie had already seen the way he glanced at her stack to see how much she had left. Bet-sizing was as much a part of No-Limit Hold’em as anything else.

“Twenty-five thousand,” he said, slowly sliding the chips out in front of him.

The amount was a little less than half the pot, not exactly small but hardly big enough to force Valerie off a decent hand. Al Dossari was making the classic “value bet.” He wanted her to call.

But Valerie had no intention of calling.

“Raise,” she announced.

She made a move for her chips and then stopped, instead resting her forearms against the railing. It looked like indecision. Maybe even nerves. At the very least, Valerie wanted it to appear as if she were thinking, doing the math in her head and then doing it again while trying to calculate the right amount to come over the top of Al Dossari and get him to fold.

Once again, my darling daughter, poker is a game of lies...

There was no more thinking to be done. No more math, either. Valerie already knew there was no chance that Al Dossari was going to fold.

Finally, she lifted her hands, gathering them behind her entire stack of chips. That motion meant the same thing at every poker table in every language, but it wouldn’t be gambling — or any damn fun, for that matter — if you didn’t say the three words out loud in crystal-clear English.

“I’m all in,” she declared.

Al Dossari didn’t ask the dealer for a count of how much he now needed to match her bet. Nor did he give it much thought. He simply continued staring at Valerie for another few seconds, oblivious to the other woman who’d just sidled up next to her. Lady Luck.

“I call,” he said.

Valerie was supposed to show her cards first, but Al Dossari couldn’t wait. If he wasn’t about to win the hand outright, he thought for sure it would be a chopped pot — that they would both have the same straight.

Confidently, he turned over his two hole cards. “I flopped it,” he said.

Valerie, along with the rest of the table, looked at his 6♣ and 10♣. Sure enough, the first three cards on the board of 7♣ 9♥ 8♥ A♦ J♠ had given him a ten-high straight. It was a made hand, and the best hand, even after the ace of diamonds on the turn. But then came the river.

Saying nothing, Valerie reached for her cards. Everyone else at the table — all the pros — knew what she was about to turn over. She was no fish, and neither were they.

Al Dossari looked across the felt to see the 10♦ and Q♦ staring back at him. Valerie had a queen-high straight. It was the nuts, the best hand possible.

The pot? Over four hundred thousand dollars.

Al Dossari’s expression? Priceless.

But not because he was upset. He couldn’t care less about the money. Nor did he care about losing to a woman.

In fact, it was quite the opposite. And exactly what Valerie was betting on.

Al Dossari was more than intrigued. He was aroused. The fish was on the hook, all right.

Now it was time to reel him in.

Chapter 61

“Dealer, where would I find the ladies’ room?” asked Valerie, calmly raking in the pot.

The question wasn’t exactly the prototypical reaction after winning a big hand. In fact, a few of the pros around the table even let go with wry smiles. All in a day’s work, right, lady?

If they only knew. Poker pros were awfully good at reading people. Not that good, though.

Valerie knew exactly where to find the ladies’ room. She simply wanted to make sure the Saudi knew where he was going. After stacking her chips, she stood up from the table and walked away, not once looking back at Al Dossari to make sure he was watching. Hell, that would’ve been redundant.

Right on cue, he was waiting for Valerie when she stepped out of the ladies’ room a couple of minutes later. He was pretending to be finishing a call on his cell. She was pretending to be surprised to see him.

“Well played,” he said.

“The right card fell for me, that’s all,” she answered. “But thank you.”

He took a step toward her, extending his hand. “My name’s Shahid, by the way.”

Valerie extended her hand in return, smiling when he held on to it for a split second longer after she let go. “I’m Beverly.”

His black suit was clearly custom-made. The white shirt was silk, and the open collar showcased a gold chain that was gaudy but not quite rap star — esque. Some men will never learn that outside of a wedding band, jewelry is best left to the women.

“Where are you from, Beverly? I’m assuming not from here.”

“Back east,” she said. “DC.”

“I know the town well. I actually do a little business there.”

More than a little, Valerie was thinking. None of it legal, either. This charade, the entire operation, was all about proving it.

“And what about here?” she asked. “Is Vegas business, too?”

“Sometimes it is, yes,” he said. “This particular trip, though, is simply for pleasure.”

“I hope I didn’t just ruin it for you.”

He smiled. “That depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether or not I can buy you a drink.”

“If I’m not mistaken, we’re in a casino, Shahid,” she said. “The drinks are free.”

His smile widened. “In that case, I’ll buy you two.”

Valerie inched closer to him. It was subtle but unmistakable. “You’re quite the charmer, aren’t you?”

“Is that bad?” he asked, playing along.

“It may not be good.”

“According to Oscar Wilde, it doesn’t matter,” said Al Dossari, flashing his Ivy League education. “It is absurd to divide people into good or bad. People are either charming or tedious.”

Valerie tried to bite her tongue. The trickiest part of any undercover operation was forgetting who you were in light of who you were supposed to be.

She knew the quote. She even knew the Oscar Wilde play it came from, Lady Windermere’s Fan. But between her and Beverly Sands, only one of them had been a drama major at Northwestern.

Still, she couldn’t help herself. Besides, the goal was to beguile Al Dossari, wasn’t it?

Valerie took another step toward him, this one far less subtle. They were close now, very close. Had it been a Catholic school dance, the nuns would’ve surely separated them. “We are all in the gutter,” she whispered. “But some of us are looking at the stars.”

Immediately, Al Dossari took a step back. He was genuinely surprised. “You’re familiar with the play?”

Considering she’d just quoted another line from it, it was a rhetorical question. But Valerie wasn’t about to point that out. Neither was Beverly Sands.

“The girl can do more than just play poker,” she quipped.

He stepped toward her again, his crocodile loafers barely touching the ground. “I’d like to learn more about you, Beverly.”

Valerie smiled, the kind of smile that suggested the feeling was mutual. She’d practiced it many times in front of a mirror.

I want to learn more about you, too, Shahid. And I intend to. Far more than you could ever imagine, far more than you ever thought possible...

Chapter 62

It was more like a pit in the brain, as opposed to the stomach. I’m going to miss Claire’s funeral.

The thought had been lodged in the back of my head, if only because the rest of me was still grappling with the fact that there was going to be a funeral in the first place.

Maybe, just maybe, I’d thought, the fact that I couldn’t be there — or even, for the time being, explain why to her sister — would get easier to bear as the days pressed on. Instead, it was only getting more difficult. Especially after Owen and I left the city.

Every man has his price. For the driver of the livery cab who took Owen and me all the way from Manhattan to Washington, DC, it was nine hundred dollars. The guy made a big stink about having to get it all in cash. Little did he know that was the only way we could pay him.

Our credit cards, each and every one, had been canceled before we even crossed the George Washington Bridge into Jersey. A few attempts at some online purchases in an open Wi-Fi hot spot were all it took to find out. Presumably, our ATM cards were shut down, too.

So that was the game now. They — whoever “they” were — knew there was no point trying to find us courtesy of Amex, Visa, or MasterCard, or any bank withdrawal. That left the flip side, cutting off our funding and hoping it would limit our options travel-wise. It’s always harder to hit a moving target.

All the more reason why Owen and I were on the move.

Our first stop after the five-and-half-hour drive was the part of DC you never see in the brochure. It was a used-car dealership on the Anacostia side of the city in the Southeast quadrant. The owner, who looked like a walking mug shot, didn’t have a showroom. He didn’t even have an office. It was basically a dirt lot behind an abandoned warehouse with about a dozen beat-up cars, half of which had had their VIN numbers altered or filed away altogether.

“How the hell did you know about this place?” I asked Owen.

“I overheard some Georgetown frat boys talking about it in a Dean & Deluca,” he said. “Apparently, driving Daddy’s Mercedes around campus has fallen out of vogue. Junk is the new black.”

In that case, Owen and I were now the trendiest guys around. We drove away in an old Toyota Corolla that was dinged up so much you would’ve thought it had been parked out in the middle of a golf driving range. But it ran okay and came with plates, our two requirements.

As for the paperwork, that consisted only of the money that changed hands. Seven hundred dollars, cash. Needless to say, we didn’t ask to see the CARFAX.

“What a steal,” said Owen.

“Yeah, that’s because it probably was,” I said. “Stolen.”

From Anacostia we drove into Georgetown, heading straight to Biltmore Street and the town house of Dr. Douglas Wittmer, last seen — on camera, at least — deep inside the CIA black site at Stare Kiejkuty outside Warsaw. That was one hell of a house call, Doc. Care to tell us who hired you? Yes? No?

According to Google, Wittmer had been a thoracic surgeon at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan for eleven years, followed by a four-year stint at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Then he apparently quit the operating room, joining a medical research company, BioNext Laboratories, in Bethesda, Maryland, as its CEO. That was five years ago.

The website for BioNext looked legit, although that wasn’t really saying much. A tenth grader these days can build a believable website in less time than it takes to watch a rerun of The Simpsons. So, too, can the CIA.

“Do you think it’s a front?” I asked Owen.

“It doesn’t have to be,” he said. “The guy might simply be pulling double duty. It’s more common than you’d think among certain doctors, whether it be for the FBI or the CIA.”

For a few moments, I thought about my primary care physician back in New York, who once dropped my urine sample all over his suede shoes. Great guy and a good doctor, but somehow I just couldn’t picture him doing a secret gig for the government.

Dr. Douglas Wittmer was a different story, and as Owen and I walked up the steps of his faded brick town house, we couldn’t wait to hear it.

But that was exactly what we had to do. Wait.

We rang the bell, knocked on the door, and even peeked through the windows. No one was home. Wittmer’s phone number was unlisted, and for all we knew, he could’ve been back in Poland or at any one of a number of other black sites. Seeing the day’s mail waiting for him in his mailbox, however, gave us some hope.

Now all we could do was park our shiny new Corolla a little way down the street and keep watch. If only we’d known.

We were being watched as well.

Chapter 63

“Go ahead and ask,” said Owen.

“Ask what?”

He looked at me across the front seat like I was an idiot for trying to play dumb. “You want to know why I keep doing this thing with my hands, right?”

We’d been waiting for Wittmer for close to an hour, and half the time the kid was doing his dry wash routine.

“Sort of hard not to notice,” I said.

“You can blame my aunt Eleanor.” He rested both palms on his knees and explained. “My parents, both professors, weren’t terribly religious, but they thought it was important for me at a young age to experience church. So my aunt Eleanor was enlisted one Sunday to bring me to a service. I was five and doing complex algebra, but I also still believed in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy. So the minister is giving this sermon about temptation and sin and he’s all fired up, and I’m sitting there in the pew listening and hanging on his every word. And that’s when he quotes an old proverb, only I don’t know it’s a proverb; I take it literally. Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“Nope. That’s how it started,” he said. “Problem is, I haven’t been able to stop ever since.” He laughed. “You know, I’ve never told anyone that before.”

“Trust me,” I said. “You’ve got far bigger secrets these days.”

As if on cue, a black Jaguar XK Coupe pulled into the short driveway at the base of Wittmer’s town house. It had to be him. The wait was over.

Quickly, Owen and I stepped out of our slightly less expensive Corolla and approached him as he was getting his mail. By the time he looked up and saw us, we were practically in his face. No exaggeration, he must have jumped back at least three feet. We’d scared the shit out of him. Good.

Next up, with any luck, was getting the truth out of him.

“Dr. Wittmer?” I asked.

He was still catching his breath. Who the hell wants to know? said his look. But no normal person outside the Bronx actually says that in real life, and Douglas Wittmer appeared as normal as they come. With his glasses and neatly trimmed dark hair that was gray around the temples, he was a doctor who looked like the stock photo of a doctor.

“Yes, that’s me,” he said finally.

I introduced myself and was about to introduce Owen when I saw Wittmer’s eyes beat me to it with a squint of recognition. His jaw then literally dropped.

“Jesus... you’re the kid, aren’t you?” he asked.

“Alive and in the flesh,” said Owen. “Of course, you probably thought I’d be dead by now.”

Wittmer nodded almost sheepishly.

“Rest assured, it hasn’t been for lack of trying.” Owen turned to me and my beat-up face, the bruises just beginning to settle into a nice shade of eggplant. “And that’s to put it mildly.”

“Wait, what’s going on?” I asked. “How does he know who you are?”

To say the kid was quick on the uptake didn’t do him justice. “Because he’s been shown a picture of me,” said Owen. “And if I were ever to pay him a visit, he was supposed to let them know.”

“I wouldn’t, though,” said Wittmer. “I mean, I won’t.”

“Of course you won’t,” said Owen facetiously. “What possible motivation could you have?”

Now I was all caught up. If these weren’t their exact words, they had to be damn close. Help us find the kid before he brings us all down, Dr. Wittmer... including you.

“I don’t care that I’m in the recordings,” said Wittmer. “It was a mistake, and I can live with the consequences.”

“Actually, I don’t care that you’re in the recordings, either,” said Owen. “All I care about is who put you there. That’s what we need to know.”

Wittmer’s eyes shifted between Owen and me for a few moments, the latest issue of Car and Driver and the rest of his mail pressed hard against his chest.

It was one thing for him not to rat us out. It was another for him to rat out whomever he was working for. There would need to be a reason. A damn good one.

Wittmer looked up at the sky. We all did. The sun was beginning to set behind a mass of charcoal-colored clouds that seemed to have arrived out of nowhere. Much like Owen and me.

“I think we should go inside,” said the doctor. “It looks like rain.”

Chapter 64

It was a home for a guy who basically wasn’t home all that much. That, or he just didn’t care.

Not to say it was messy. Rather, it was sparse. In the few rooms we walked past before settling in the kitchen, the furnishings consisted of the bare minimum, or in the case of the empty dining room, even less.

I wasn’t much for metaphors, but Claire always was. For her, this would’ve been a lay-up. Dr. Douglas Wittmer clearly had money, but to see where he lived—how he lived — was to see a man defined by what he didn’t have. There were things missing in his life.

“You want coffee?” he asked, pointing to the Keurig machine on the counter near the stove.

Owen and I both declined. We were anxious enough as it was.

The three of us headed over to a small cherrywood table in the corner underneath a small clock, the kind you’d more likely see hanging in an office or waiting room. After we all sat down, Wittmer immediately stood up to remove his blue blazer, hanging it on the back of his chair. He wasn’t stalling, but he wasn’t exactly rushing, either.

Finally, after sitting down again, he took a deep breath and began.

“I was targeted,” he said, his tone straight as a ruler. To his credit, there wasn’t a hint of his trying to make an excuse for himself. He was stating the facts, or really just one fact. “They knew my wife was on Flight Ninety-Three.”

Owen and I both dropped our heads a bit. It spoke volumes about the events of 9/11 that a particular flight number could be so ingrained in the collective memory of a nation.

“I’m sorry,” said Owen.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“The thing is,” Wittmer continued, “grief and anger can help you rationalize almost any behavior in the name of revenge. I know that’s what he was banking on with me.”

It was so clear what we were witnessing. This was a man who needed to explain himself. Bare his soul a little, if not a lot. I was sure that Owen, even at his relatively young age, was thinking the same thing.

Perhaps it was that same youth, though, that had Owen wishing the doctor would explain things just a tad bit faster. Fittingly, the only sound in the kitchen other than us was the measured tick... tick... tick of the wall clock above us.

“He?” Owen asked impatiently. In other words, Please, for the love of Pete, start naming names...

“I don’t know if he’s the only ringmaster, but it’s certainly his circus,” said Wittmer. He drew another deep breath. “Frank Karcher is the one who first approached me.”

I didn’t recognize the name, nor, apparently, was I supposed to, given the way Wittmer was looking directly at Owen. And given the way Owen was nodding back at him, I guess it made sense. “The kid” absolutely recognized the name.

“Frank Karcher is the National Clandestine Service chief of the CIA,” said Owen, turning to me. “Basically, we’re talking the kind of guy who likes to kick puppies.”

“So human torture wasn’t much of a leap,” I said.

It was a quip, completely off the cuff. Still, the second the words left my mouth, I regretted them. I didn’t know Karcher, but I did know that Wittmer was sitting right in front of me. He was also on the recordings. At best, the doctor was an accomplice. At worst? That was between him and his God.

And that was the point. Owen and I were there in his kitchen to get information, not to pass judgment on him. And I just had. A bit unfairly, no less. I wasn’t the one who’d lost his wife on 9/11.

“I apologize,” I said to Wittmer. “I didn’t mean to—”

“That’s all right,” he said. He drew another deep breath. “At the beginning, I knew exactly what I was doing and why. Those recordings you have? As bad as they may look to a whole lot of people, there are just as many people these days — the Machiavellians in our so-called war on terror — who would believe the end justifies the means.”

“I’m confused, then,” I said. “What changed? Why would you be talking to us?”

Wittmer leaned in, pressing his palms down on that cherrywood table with what might as well have been the weight of the world. “Because those recordings you have don’t tell the whole story,” he said. “But mine do.”

Chapter 65

Wittmer pushed back his chair and disappeared from the kitchen, returning about a half minute later with an old Dell laptop. While he was gone, Owen and I didn’t utter a single word to each other. Really, what was there to say? The doctor had basically just promised to blow our minds. The only thing to do was shut up and wait for it.

Another half minute passed while Wittmer’s laptop booted up. Given the anticipation, it felt like an eternity. Finally, he clicked on a file and pressed Play, angling the screen in front of us so we all had a good view. It was showtime.

“This is from the same black site outside of Warsaw during the same time period,” he explained.

Indeed, from the get-go everything about the recording looked familiar. The windowless room shot in black-and-white. The lone metal chair with a Middle Eastern man shackled to it, followed by the two men in suits who restrained him while he received the shot to his carotid artery.

Of course, the doctor wielding the syringe looked familiar as well. We were in his kitchen.

“What is your name?” asked the voice off camera.

Immediately, a second voice translated the question into Arabic, and as with Owen’s recordings, the Arabic was translated back into English via subtitles. Everything was the same.

Except, in this case, the prisoner’s response.

“I speak English,” he said softly.

The two voices from behind the camera could be heard conversing, but even with the volume maxed out on Wittmer’s laptop, we couldn’t understand what they were saying. I assumed it was about the way they wanted to proceed, although you wouldn’t know it given how the first voice repeated the question — “What is your name?” — as if he were some automated prompt.

“My name is Makin Pabalan,” answered the prisoner.

Hearing him speak again, it was clear that he was fluent in English. His accent notwithstanding, there was no hitch from his having to translate in his head from Arabic. If I had to guess, I’d say he’d been educated at some point in the US.

Again, there was more talking behind the camera. We still couldn’t make it out. Whatever was said, though, it resulted in a deviation from the script.

“We’ll proceed in English only,” came the voice. “Do you understand? The questions now will only be in English.”

“Yes,” said the prisoner. “I understand.”

“And you will only answer in English. Is that understood as well?”

“Yes.”

“Please state your name again.”

“My name is Makin Pabalan.”

“Are you a member of Al Qaeda?”

“No,” said the prisoner.

“Are you aware of any plans by Al Qaeda to kill American citizens?”

“No.”

“Are you a member of any organization that considers the United States of America an enemy?”

“No.”

“Are you aware of any organization that is planning to bring harm to any American citizens anywhere in the world?”

“No.”

There wasn’t the slightest hesitation from the man in the chair as he answered each question. He looked nervous, but not to the point of fear. Nor was there any anger in his eyes. If I had been cross-examining him in a courtroom, he would’ve qualified as a cooperating witness.

More importantly, there wasn’t the slightest physical change in him. His jaw didn’t clench, the chair didn’t begin to rattle. There was no downward spiral of pain followed by even more pain. No sign of lie and you die.

He was telling the truth.

Owen and I exchanged glances, the thought being that the doctor had it wrong. This wasn’t the whole story, it was the same story.

In unison, we turned to Wittmer. What gives?

But he was still staring at the screen, a subtle but unmistakable cue that we should be doing the same.

The doctor knew exactly what he was talking about.

Chapter 66

IT HAPPENED so damn and scary fast.

One second, the prisoner was fine. The next, he wasn’t. Only this was different from Owen’s recordings. So very, very different. This began in an instant and barely lasted much longer. It was a flash. No, it was a detonation.

It was as if the man’s brain had actually exploded inside his head.

I watched as his eyes rolled back, his face convulsing like it was lodged in a paint mixer at Home Depot. The force was so strong it literally lifted the man off the ground, chair included. By the time gravity fought back, he and the chair were tipped over on the floor, motionless.

“Christ...” Owen muttered, his voice trailing off.

Wittmer reached out and hit the space bar on the keyboard, pausing the recording. It was right then that the thought occurred to me. As quickly as all hell broke loose in that interrogation room, it wasn’t as if the doctor couldn’t have tried to intervene.

But he was nowhere in the frame. Why not?

“That might have been the sickest part of all,” Wittmer said as if reading my mind. “The second I tried to help, I was literally held back. They didn’t want the guy saved. They wanted him documented. Like a lab rat.”

He hit the space bar again to resume the recording. True to his word, Wittmer finally sprang into the frame as if he’d just broken free from the two other guys behind the camera. Within seconds of his kneeling down and placing two fingers on the prisoner’s neck, he shook his head slowly. The man was dead.

“Was there an autopsy performed?” asked Owen.

“Yes. It was an aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage,” said Wittmer. “Each and every time.”

Boom.

“Wait... what?” I asked. But I’d heard him perfectly. So had Owen.

“It happened seven other times out of twenty trials,” said Wittmer. “At least, the twenty trials I was overseeing.”

Owen shook his head in disbelief. “A forty percent fail rate,” he said. “Was the prisoner cooperating each time?”

The doctor nodded, his gaze retreating. It was as if he had nowhere to look. “Karcher just calls it collateral damage,” he said, disgusted. “I call it murder.”

There was no pushing that last line aside, no ignoring its implications. The words simply hung there at the table, filling the silence. If I hadn’t known better, I would’ve sworn the clock above us had stopped as well. I couldn’t hear it tick.

Eventually, Owen spoke up. “Does Karcher know you have this recording?” he asked.

“If he did, I’d probably be dead right now,” said Wittmer.

It was hard to argue with that. Owen and I were living proof.

Immediately, all I could picture in my head was this guy, Karcher, arranging for Claire’s death. Then Owen’s. Then mine.

Sometimes the only thing more dangerous than a man with nothing to lose is a man with everything to lose.

Frank Karcher was every bit that man.

“What we need now is the link,” said Owen. “Proof that the serum exists, that it was used, and that Karcher’s fingerprints are all over it.”

Am I missing something? “Don’t we already have an entire film festival that proves the first two?” I asked.

“The recordings prove a lot of things,” said Owen. “Without the person responsible, though, it’s just an embarrassing home movie for the entire country.”

“Fine. So commence with the congressional hearings,” I said.

Owen turned to Wittmer with an air of certitude that people only grant you when you can back it up. “Excuse the assumption,” he said, “but you didn’t actually develop the serum, did you? Nor do you know the name of the person who did, using my research, right?”

“I was never told,” said the doctor.

Owen turned back to me, continuing. “And the two henchmen in the recording, the ones restraining the prisoner and ultimately restraining Dr. Wittmer? They’re undercover agents. So making the recording, any of the recordings, public would expose their identities. That’s never going to happen.”

“In other words,” I said, “what we need is proof that can go public.”

“Exactly,” said Owen.

Without a word, Wittmer pushed back his chair once more and left the kitchen. To quote Yogi Berra, it was déjà vu all over again. Owen and I simply looked at each other with nothing to say.

Until the doctor returned.

He placed what was in his hand on the table. “This might be your answer,” he said.

“Is that what I think it is?” asked Owen.

“Yes,” said Wittmer. He folded his arms. “But let’s be very clear about one thing. You didn’t get it from me.”

Chapter 67

The small white stucco building with only a number next to the door and no other signage wasn’t quite hiding in plain sight in the heart of Georgetown. But it wasn’t exactly off the beaten path, either. From where Owen and I parked, we could look over our shoulders and see the back entrance to a Starbucks out on M Street.

That just made this whole thing feel even weirder. Is that even the right word? Bizarre... surreal... unnerving? Break out the thesaurus...

Behind us were cappuccinos, Frappuccinos, and chai mocha lattes with pumps of gooey, sweet syrup. In front of us? A top secret CIA lab producing a lethal truth serum that skirts the US Constitution and the right of due process to the extent that the state of Kansas skirts the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

“What are the odds someone’s inside?” I asked, turning off the engine. We were an hour past sunset, a lone floodlight overhead providing what little view we had of the one-story building. There were no windows in front.

Owen shrugged his broad shoulders. Wittmer hadn’t been able to guarantee the place would be empty. “No clue,” he said.

It was the way he said it, though, as if those words were a bit new to him. I couldn’t help a slight smile. “That doesn’t happen to you a lot, does it?”

“What’s that?”

“Being clueless about something.”

He returned the smile, all modesty aside. “Nope.”

I reached into the backseat, grabbing my duffel, which was sitting next to his backpack. The kid had his bag of tricks; I had mine. “What about guns?” I asked. “Ever fire one?”

The look he gave me was the polar opposite of clueless. “I grew up in New Hampshire,” he answered.

Enough said.

I pulled out the semiautomatic SIG Sauer P210, checked the magazine, and handed it over. Live free or die...

“You ready?” I asked.

Owen unbuckled his seat belt, flipped the safety alongside the trigger, and with a blind hand hooked an arm through one of the straps of his backpack. “Ready.”

The walk from the car to the building’s entrance was no more than ten yards, albeit a zigzag given all the potholes filled with water from the earlier downpour.

I led the way with my Glock, never more thankful for its xenon light and red laser sight. With every measured step I took toward the entrance, that former weapons instructor of mine back at Valley Forge, the one with the sandpaper voice, was all but echoing between my ears. A prick and a prophet all at once.

Sometimes shit happens in the dark...

Chapter 68

“One more for luck,” I whispered to Owen, reaching out with my arm. I was making a fist so tight every fingernail was digging deep into my palm.

We’d stationed ourselves on either side of the windowless door, bags at our feet and our backs pressed hard against the stucco. I’d already knocked once. The second knock got the same result. Either the place was empty or whoever was inside wasn’t answering.

“My turn,” Owen whispered back.

In the age of retinal scanners, digital thumbprint readers, and whatever other paranoid-inspired gizmos exist that make sure only certain people get into certain places, Wittmer had given us a little piece of irony. A simple key.

Actually, it made complete sense. Banks need vaults and guards and security cameras because people know that’s where they keep the money. This, on the other hand, was four walls and a roof barely bigger than a shack tucked behind an alley with all the foot traffic of a Vineyard Vines store in Newark. In other words...

Just make sure you lock the door behind you, Doc.

Still, Owen and I couldn’t help wondering the same thing. Hoping, really. That we could trust Wittmer.

In a way, he was merely a middleman. The crucial part of his job was picking up the serum and transporting it overseas, an MD as human mule. Possessing all the requisite paperwork for an international humanitarian mission, he was above suspicion. Barely an eyebrow raised through international customs.

So much better than swallowing two dozen little balloons and a postflight meal of Ex-Lax.

“Okay,” I whispered to Owen.

He was holding up the key, his answer to the question that it would’ve been redundant of me to ask aloud. What now?

Slowly, Owen reached out, slid in the key, and gave it a twist.

We braced for everything. An alarm. An attack dog. The night cleaning crew. Everything.

Instead, pushing the door open, we got exactly what we desperately wanted. Nothing.

Just silence. And darkness.

I motioned for Owen to stay put, peering around the hinges like some guy who’d seen too many cop shows. Before turning on any lights, I wanted to shine my gun around a bit, as it were. The good news about that xenon light attachment was that being on the other side of it was like looking into the high beams of an oncoming car. The flashlight app on Owen’s phone times ten.

Basically, I was a walking one-way mirror.

The first surprise was that there was no reception area, just a short hallway. After a small kitchen to the left and an even smaller bathroom directly opposite on the right, everything was right there in front of me, and it was pretty much as advertised by Wittmer. “The facility,” he called it.

I stared through the blast of white light funneling out from my Glock, the red streak from the laser sight moving with my hands from one corner of the room to the next. Only the far wall had windows, three across with horizontal slat blinds that were drawn and closed tight.

What I was looking at was somewhere between a high school chemistry classroom and a meth lab, not that I’d personally seen a lot of meth labs. Truth be told, everything I knew about them — as well as pedophiles, runaway brides, high school teachers who sleep with their students, and people who try to hire hit men to kill their spouses — I owed to a guilty-pleasure habit of watching Dateline NBC.

Even in the moment, the thought was all but inescapable. This would make one hell of an episode...

The room was messy. Almost chaotic, even in its stillness. There were things everywhere on the large island in the center. Vials and beakers. A couple of Bunsen burners. A centrifuge, as well as a few other bulky machines that were a combination of glass and stainless steel, including one that was connected to a large ventilating air duct that shot up straight through the ceiling. There was also a red binder stuffed thick with papers.

What there wasn’t, though, was another surprise. We were alone.

I looked back over my shoulder, Owen’s silhouette peeking out from behind the doorway.

“No one home,” I said.

And technically, that was the truth.

Chapter 69

The smartest thing I could do was get out of his way.

Owen stepped into the room, flipped on the lights, and closed the door behind him so fast I was out of breath just watching him. The kid was on a mission.

At first, I didn’t quite understand the rush. Sure, we didn’t want to loiter, but it wasn’t like there was a shot clock ticking away in the corner. We had time.

Then I saw him reach for it. The way he reached for it.

Sidling up to the island in the middle of the room, he had over a dozen things to choose from, including what appeared to be the serum itself, contained in a rack of vials. He barely even noticed them, though. It was as if there was only one item he cared about, and that was when I understood.

With both hands, he pulled the red binder toward him.

Of all the base emotions that must have been kicking around in his head over the past few days — anger, fear, guilt, to name a few — they were still no match for what makes a genius a genius. Curiosity.

Someone had piggybacked on his brain and taken his work into uncharted territory. It might have been seriously misguided and ultimately doomed, but it was also something else, the one thing in common with anything that pushes the boundaries of innovation. It was bold.

And damn if Owen didn’t want to see the blueprint.

Silently, I watched him make his way through the pages in the binder, one after another after another, his index finger tracing the words and formulas like he was in one of those old Evelyn Wood speed-reading commercials.

I kept waiting for him to take some sort of mental breather, at the very least a simple pause. Scratch his chin. Shift his weight from one leg to the other. Instead, he kept plowing his way through, barely even taking the time to blink.

Then, suddenly, he froze. I took that as my cue, if there was ever going to be one.

“What is it?” I asked.

Silly me, thinking I was about to get an answer. I was pretty sure Owen didn’t even hear me. He was too busy now looking around the rest of the room, his eyes pinballing from one item to the next. Whatever he was searching for, though, he couldn’t find it.

That was when his head snapped back with an idea.

He spun on his heels, disappearing into the small kitchen by the door. I could hear the refrigerator open, followed by the shifting and rattling of metal and glassware. Again, it was like someone had a stopwatch on him.

“You okay?” I called out.

Owen reappeared, clutching a large Styrofoam cup. He was staring down into it. I couldn’t see from where I was standing, but I was guessing it wasn’t coffee.

“N-stoff,” he said, finally.

N-stoff? I looked at him blankly. It certainly wasn’t my first blank look since we’d been together. “Excuse me?”

“That was the code name of chlorine trifluoride at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Nazi Germany.”

Great. More Jeopardy! I’ll take Random Trivia When You Least Expect It for six hundred, Alex...

At my continued blank stare, Owen went on. “The Nazis experimented with chlorine trifluoride as a combined incendiary weapon and poison gas. What a big surprise, right? Thing is, though, it was too volatile. It would literally explode in their faces.”

“And that’s what you’re holding in your hand?” I asked. “Three feet away from me?”

Owen tilted the cup so I could see the slightly green-and-yellowish liquid inside it. “It doesn’t react with closed-cell extruded polystyrene foam,” he said.

I shot him a deadpan look. “You mean Styrofoam?”

“Yeah, sorry,” he said. “Of course, if this were most any metal, like an aluminum can, for instance... then boom.”

I swallowed hard. “Then thank God for Styrofoam,” I said. “But what does chlorinated—”

“Chlorine trifluoride,” he said. “CTF.”

“Yeah, what does CTF have to do with the serum?” I asked.

“I’m not sure it has anything to do with the serum.”

“Why are you holding it, then?” It seemed like the obvious question, as did my follow-up. “How did you even know it was here?”

“It’s listed in the binder,” he said.

“Under what?”

“Inventory.”

How neat and organized of them. “So they needed it for something, right? If not the serum, then what?”

I watched Owen. He was thinking. At least, that was what I thought. His head was cocked to the side, his eyes narrowed to a squint.

Of all things, he began removing his sneakers. Huh? I then watched as he tiptoed past me oh-so-quietly in his bare feet — he wasn’t wearing socks — and carefully placed the Styrofoam cup on the center island in the room before picking up my SIG, which he’d set down. What’s going on?

I was about to ask that very question when his index finger shot up in the air, stopping me. Right then I knew. He wasn’t thinking; he was listening.

He’d heard something.

And the next second, I heard it, too.

Chapter 70

It was the sound of someone trying not to make a sound, an otherwise quiet set of footsteps betrayed by the wet pavement outside the building.

My guess was running shoes, maybe cross-trainers. Something with a soft and forgiving sole, perfect for sneaking around.

Unless, of course, it happened to be after a rainstorm. Rubber and water don’t play quietly together.

I looked at Owen. He looked at me. We both looked at the light switch by the door. If those footsteps were coming for us, they already knew we were inside. No point making it any easier to be seen.

Owen grabbed the binder, stuffing it in his backpack before killing the lights. He settled in the doorway of the kitchen area by the entrance while I slipped off my Pumas and quietly lifted my duffel over to the doorway of the bathroom opposite him.

With our shoes off and bags in tow, we looked like we were about to go through airport security. Of course, what we wouldn’t have given for an X-ray machine to see through the door outside.

No one could blame us for being paranoid, and hopefully that was all we were being. But better to be safe than dead.

We had the door covered. Our shoes were back on our feet. I was on one knee with my Glock raised, the xenon light turned off and the laser sight aimed waist high.

Next to me, Owen was standing with his strong-side leg slightly back like a boxer and his elbows bent just a little. The Weaver position, as it’s commonly called among police and military. Smaller profile, greater stability.

Somewhere in his nineteen years, someone had clearly taught him that. Not surprisingly, the kid had paid attention.

A minute passed with Owen and me having an entire conversation without words. Just nods, shrugs, and prolonged stares.

Neither of us could hear what we’d first heard. In a glass-half-full world, that meant it was just some passerby. A random. Maybe some Starbucks employee — excuse me, barista — taking the back way into work.

Of course, in the glass-half-empty world...

We kept listening, our eyes now trained on the door. I could feel the sweat forming in my palms, my right calf cramping, the strain building in my left shoulder from trying to hold my gun steady. It was like a thousand needle jabs.

But all in all, the feeling was relief. The longer we went without hearing anything, the better. Way better.

Isn’t that right, Owen?

I glanced over at him, just a quick snapshot as I’d done before. It was so fast my eyes were already turning back to the door without really focusing on what I was seeing.

After all, I already knew what I was seeing. It was Owen in the same stance he’d had from the get-go.

We were maybe four feet from each other, give or take an inch or two. Of course, sometimes that’s the difference between life and death, isn’t it?

An inch or two.

Chapter 71

My head swiveled back to Owen so fast I could literally feel a breeze in my left ear.

He had moved ever so slightly to his right, just enough that his head — barely half of it, really — was now peeking out from the doorway of the kitchen area. Exposed.

And just like that, the red dot at the end of the laser sight from my Glock was trained on the back of his skull.

Only it wasn’t my gun. It was someone else’s.

“Down!” I yelled, diving across the hallway.

The sounds of the shot fired, the broken glass, and my shoulder barreling into Owen’s rib cage all rolled into one piercing crack! as a second breeze hit my left ear, this one courtesy of the bullet that had just barely missed me.

By an inch or two.

Owen and I crash-landed on the linoleum floor of the kitchen. Immediately, he had it figured out — the mistake we’d made ignoring the windows. Just because the blinds were closed didn’t mean the shooter was blind.

Two words. “Thermal imaging,” he said.

The next sound was the blinds being violently yanked down, followed by more glass breaking. We scrambled to our feet.

“He’s coming in,” I said.

“No, but something else is. In five seconds, it’s going to get real smoky in here.”

Actually, it was more like two seconds.

The canister landed with a thud, the sound of it rolling to a stop quickly overtaken by the hissing of the tear gas. I couldn’t help stating the obvious.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” I said.

“Not quite yet,” said Owen.

Not quite yet?

The gas was pushing toward us, filling the hallway. Our eyes and throats were about to get scorched. All I knew was that staying put gave us no chance. The fact that we were armed gave us at least a fighting chance.

But Owen didn’t even look at the SIG I’d given him, still gripped in his right hand. In fact, he put it down.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

But he was too busy doing it to answer. He was searching the cabinets above the counter, opening one door after another.

Until he found it.

Owen turned back to me, holding another large Styrofoam cup, this one empty. I had no idea what he was thinking.

“Please tell me that cup has something to do with our getting out of here,” I said.

Owen nodded. “It does,” he answered. “Now take off your socks.”

My socks?

Chapter 72

There was no time to ask why, not with my eyes feeling the first sting from the tear gas filtering into the kitchen. The first cough couldn’t be too far behind.

I quickly took off my socks and gave them to him. Hell, if he had asked me to stand on one leg and clap like a seal, I probably would’ve done that, too. Anything to speed things along.

“Now I need some cover,” he said.

But Owen didn’t pick up his backpack as if we were leaving. And when he stopped just shy of the doorway, waiting for me to line up behind him with my Glock, he wasn’t looking left toward the door. He was looking right. As in, right into the line of fire.

That was when I knew. He was getting that chlorine stuff, the CTF.

Not that either of us could actually see it by this point. He’d left it on the island in the middle of the room, but the cup holding it — along with the island itself — had disappeared in the cloud above the canister.

Owen lifted the neck of his T-shirt over his nose for a makeshift mask. Clearly, I’d picked the wrong day to wear a button-down.

“Go!” I said.

I squeezed off a few rounds through the shattered windows as Owen flung himself toward the island. For better or worse, whoever was out there, singular or plural, knew we were armed.

But there was no red stream of light aimed our way, no return fire.

Meanwhile, the coughing officially kicked in. Owen was doing the same. On the plus side, it was the only way I could get a read on where he was.

I was waiting for his signal so I could spray a few more bullets as he came back. He didn’t bother, though. Next thing I knew, he was crawling into the kitchen on his hands and knees.

Or, at least, one hand. In his other were my two socks. I didn’t need to ask what was inside them; Owen had put a cup containing some of the CTF in each one.

In fact, I was pretty sure I had it nailed, especially when the first thing he did was grab a lighter from his backpack. What he’d created was akin to a couple of Molotov cocktails straight out of the MacGyver school of impromptu weaponry. Light the fuse, aka my dirty socks, and let her rip.

Turns out, I just got the chemistry backward.

I knelt down with Owen, the only breathing room left being a foot off the floor. We were coughing up our lungs now, our throats burning. Tears were streaming down our cheeks.

Which made the question he managed to get out all the more bizarre.

“You ever play cornhole?” he asked.

Once, at a tailgate party before a Yankees game. Though I never could bring myself to call it that. It was beanbag toss, as far as I was concerned.

I nodded. “Yes.”

“Good. Because it’s not the fire, it’s the water,” he said. “Fire’s just the accelerator.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you’ve got to hit a puddle and you’ve only got one shot.”

Cornhole.

“Okay,” I said.

What the hell else could I say? It wasn’t exactly the best time to raise my hand and question how water could turn this liquid into a small bomb. Sometimes you’ve just got to go with the flow.

We grabbed our bags.

“Maybe there’s only one guy out there, but I’m guessing more. We draw their fire, and we fire back,” he said. “You throw left, I throw right, and then we both run straight as fast as we possibly can.”

“What about the car?” I asked.

Owen looked at me, and of all things cracked a smile. We were at death’s door — quite literally — and yet somehow he managed to seem more excited than scared, like a mad scientist about to flip the switch.

“Dude,” he said. “If this works... there won’t be a car.”

Chapter 73

Here goes everything...

I yanked open the door, barely jumping back into the bathroom in time to evade the barrage of bullets littering the hallway.

Owen had it pegged; there was definitely more than one shooter. The crisscrossing of all the red laser sights looked like a Pink Floyd concert, complete with the tear gas as smoke.

It was Us and Them, all right. They had a small army and automatic weapons. We had pistols.

Oh, yeah. And socks.

The split second the first wave ended, I crouched low and peeked outside with the xenon light, squeezing off shots while looking for the nearest potholes filled with water.

Not too near, though. Collateral damage is no way to die.

I jumped back as the second wave came; this one was even more furious than the first. The drywall was literally disintegrating all around us, every bullet launching a bit of white chalk through the air. Mixed with the tear gas, it was like we were in a snow globe from Hell.

“Where?” yelled Owen.

“Fifteen feet at ten o’clock,” I yelled back.

“And yours?”

“Twenty feet at two.”

He lit the bottom of his sock and tossed me the lighter. “I’ll throw first, then you,” he said.

“Fine. Age before beauty, dude.”

I flicked my thumb. The sock caught fire immediately. I’d say the feeling was like holding a live grenade, but it wasn’t like that. It was that.

Spinning around again, I sprayed bullets back and forth like a windshield wiper before stepping aside so Owen could throw. I was giving him light from my Glock the best I could. As soon as he released his sock, he unloaded the rest of his magazine and peeled to the side.

My turn.

There was no time to aim, but there was also no time to think about it and choke. I just let it fly.

It was the second little fireball tossed through the air. Who knows what they must have thought? Maybe nothing at all. They were too busy trying to gun us down as we dove back out of the doorway.

I tossed another magazine to Owen, who quickly reloaded. There was one thing he’d forgotten to mention. When this CTF stuff mixes with water, how long does it take before—

BOOM!

The explosion shook and shattered everything around us. Every wall, every nearby window. Suffice it to say, anyone standing outside was no longer on their feet. The proverbial rug not just yanked out from beneath them, but incinerated.

But how long until one of them got back up? Good question.

Run! Right now!

Owen and I did our best Butch and Sundance, launching out of the building with guns blaring. We were sprinting as fast as we could, hoping against hope that we’d bought ourselves enough time. That made for an even better question.

Was that boom the result of one sock or two?

That was when I saw him. Looking over my shoulder — it was one of the shooters. A clone of the two guys up in New York. Was there a factory somewhere?

Dazed but clearly determined, he was staggering to his feet with his arm raised, and it wasn’t to wave hello.

Thank God it was only one sock.

BOOM!

Owen and I caught the edge of the second blast; it seared our backs and sent us hurtling forward across the pavement for the Evel Knievel of road rashes. It hurt like a son of a bitch, like I was being skinned alive.

And I’d never felt luckier in my life.

As we helped each other up, we looked back to see we were the only ones still standing. Not that we were about to linger.

“I’d high-five you, but I have no skin left on my palms,” said Owen.

“Me, neither,” I said. “C’mon, I know a doctor we should see.”

Chapter 74

There’s angry. Then there’s smoldering. And then there’s literally smoldering.

“What’s that smell?” asked the cabdriver. “It’s like something’s burning.”

“It’s just our clothes,” I said matter-of-factly. The smell was also our singed flesh, but I didn’t feel the need to mention that.

Either way, that little tree-shaped air freshener hanging from the guy’s rearview mirror didn’t stand a chance.

We’d been burned, all right. Set up big-time.

And now it was time for a little follow-up visit with Dr. Douglas Wittmer. No appointment necessary.

He was so convincing in his kitchen. Of course he was. He was telling us the truth. The only lie was his allegiance. Who the hell did he call after we left him?

We had the taxi drop us off one block down from his town house. There was no telling if Wittmer was still alone, but first we had to see if he was there at all.

Maybe he’d gone to church for confession.

If he had, he’d walked. His black Jaguar was still there, parked in the driveway as when we’d first approached him.

Too bad he hadn’t given us a second key, the one to his front door.

“How soon before a neighbor calls nine-one-one?” I whispered to Owen, only half joking as I peered inside one of the windows.

With our tattered, bloodstained clothes and shredded hands, knees, and elbows, the two of us looked like we’d just wandered off the set of The Walking Dead. At best, we were a couple of burglars. At worst, it was the zombie apocalypse.

I turned back to Owen when he didn’t respond. He’d been right behind me.

Now he wasn’t anywhere.

Finally, I found him back down by the street. He was staring up at a telephone pole.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Looking for the camera.”

“What camera?”

“They were watching from either inside or outside. Actually, probably both,” he said. “Inside, though, gave them audio.”

I stood there trying to reverse engineer what he was saying. If we were being watched when we first showed up to see Wittmer, then that meant...

“Jesus, why didn’t you say anything?” I asked. “We were coming here to confront him; he ratted us out.”

“I never said that.”

“You didn’t have to. It was a given,” I said. At least, I thought it was. “You mean, he didn’t tip them off?”

“Highly unlikely.”

“Then why are we even here?”

Owen was still staring up at the pole. “To search for more evidence,” he said. “Stuff he didn’t share with us.”

“What, you think he’s going to let us just waltz right in and take what we want?”

Finally, Owen turned to me. “We’re hardly going to need his permission,” he said.

Before I could ask why not, he was already halfway back to Wittmer’s town house, heading up the steps.

Once again, the best I could do was try to keep up with him.

Chapter 75

There was zero hesitation, none whatsoever.

In fact, Owen had already taken off his T-shirt — what was left of it — and wrapped it around his hand by the time he reached the top step. I was only a few feet behind him, but I could see what was coming next a mile away.

What’s a little breaking and entering among friends?

With a quick right jab, the window to the left of Wittmer’s front door all but disappeared. Working clockwise, Owen knocked away the few holdout shards until we could both climb through without donating any more blood for the evening.

Just a guess, but being two pints down on a cavernously empty stomach is probably not recommended by the American Medical Association.

Owen put his T-shirt back on, entering first. I followed. And at no time did I bother asking him what he wasn’t telling me. I figured I’d know soon enough.

Even sooner, as it turned out, when our arrival in Wittmer’s foyer was greeted with nothing and no one. Just a dead silence.

The proverbial “bad feeling about this” was suddenly spreading fast from my gut.

“Upstairs,” said Owen.

He might have just been talking to himself. I couldn’t tell. Either way, there was no sign of the doctor on the first floor.

If “sparsely furnished” was the polite way of describing the downstairs of Wittmer’s home, the upstairs made the first floor look like an episode of Hoarders. Of the first three bedrooms we looked into, only one actually had a bed. And by bed, I mean a queen-sized mattress on top of a box spring on top of a Harvard frame. No sheets. No pillows.

And still no Wittmer.

Which only made it worse, that feeling of dread. The tightening of the chest muscles. The extra pull on the lungs with each breath.

The inescapable truth of something inevitable.

Because at no time — not for one fraction of a second — did I think there was a chance that Wittmer wasn’t there in his home. The only question was where.

“Here,” said Owen.

This time, he was definitely talking to me. Pointing, too. He’d turned the corner into the master bedroom.

Two steps past the doorway, I saw him. Wittmer, wearing the same clothes as when we’d left him, was lying in the bed on his back. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have said he was simply asleep.

But I did know better, if only because Owen knew better.

Wittmer was never waking up.

Chapter 76

Means and motivation. The whole story was right there in front of us, exactly as intended. Although it wasn’t intended for us.

On the bed next to Wittmer, where the ghost of his wife surely slept, was a large photo album opened to a spread filled with happy, loving pictures of the two of them in Paris. They were kissing in front of the Eiffel Tower, arm in arm beneath the external Habitrail-like piping of the Centre Pompidou in Beaubourg, and playfully leaning against Louis Derbré’s Le Prophète in the Jardin du Luxembourg, the golden head of the statue — and their faces — beaming in the sunshine.

Claire and I used to talk about going to Paris together. But life is ninety percent talk, isn’t it?

As if connecting the dots, my eyes moved from the photo album over to the empty pill bottle, the orange-brownish variety you get from your local pharmacy. Only, there was no label on it, no indication of a prescription.

Ironically, that made the story even more convincing. Wittmer was a doctor, after all. What pills wouldn’t he have access to?

It all made so much sense. Of course, that was why it was all bullshit.

I was catching on quick, all right. Certainly faster than the police would, if at all. Odds were they never would.

This was no suicide.

“Temazepam, if I had to guess,” said Owen with a nod to the empty pill bottle. “Very effective for insomnia, Michael Jackson notwithstanding. One injection, probably to the carotid artery, and the coroner would never know the drug wasn’t swallowed.”

The image of Wittmer giving injections to the prisoners in Stare Kiejkuty flashed through my mind. Oh, the irony...

Without even thinking, I leaned in, looking at Wittmer’s neck for a needle mark. I didn’t know why, I just did. I felt sorry for him. He’d made his choices, but he didn’t deserve this.

“Christ, we can’t even call the police,” I said.

Wittmer lived alone. There was no telling how long it would be before his body was discovered. The same could be said for the guy in my bathtub back in Manhattan, but I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about him. This was different.

“Maybe we could somehow leave an anonymous tip,” I said. “What do you think?”

I was still staring at Wittmer’s neck, waiting for Owen to answer. When he didn’t, I turned around. Again, he was gone. I called out to him.

“In here,” he responded.

I followed his voice to the only room left on the second floor we hadn’t searched. Wittmer’s office.

Unlike every other room, though, this one looked the part. A large, messy desk, stacked bookcases, and a well-worn leather armchair with an ottoman. There was even a rug — a faded crimson and gold Persian with tassels, some of them frayed, some of them missing altogether.

To call it a lived-in look would be an understatement. In fact, what it really was, was depressing.

This wasn’t Wittmer’s office. This was Wittmer. Period. In the wake of his wife’s death, his life had become defined by his work. This was all he’d had.

“What are you looking at?” I asked.

“Something I shouldn’t be,” said Owen. “Not if they’re trying to cover their tracks.”

Chapter 77

He was standing by one of the bookcases, staring long and hard at a picture in a dust-covered silver frame. It was an old photograph of Wittmer from his undergrad days at Princeton, a group shot of some members of the Cap and Gown eating club.

Of course, if it hadn’t been for the engraving at the bottom of the frame saying as much, I never would’ve known that.

So why is Owen staring at it so intently?

I leaned in close, focusing on Wittmer. He looked so young. Happy. Alive. “What am I not seeing?” I asked.

“The whole picture,” Owen said.

If I’d somehow lost the forest for the trees, there was still no finding it as I canvassed the other half dozen faces staring back at me in the photo. Owen all but expected as much, giving me a hint.

“He had a lot more hair back then,” he said.

With that, he reached out with his index finger, tracing a line from Wittmer to the guy on the end, who was lanky and, yes, had only a hint of a receding hairline.

But now I could picture him bald, and in doing so, all I could see — and recognize — was the same smirk masquerading as a smile that he always flashed in interviews as if there weren’t a question in the world that could ever trip him up.

Of course, that was according to Claire, who had, in fact, interviewed him for the Times. She said he reeked of coffee and cockiness.

“Clay Dobson?”

“Exactly,” said Owen.

“Okay, so Wittmer went to school with the president’s chief of staff,” I said. “What are you suggesting?”

“A connection.”

“Or maybe it’s just a coincidence.”

“Yeah, except for one thing,” he said. “There are no coincidences in politics.”

That sounded a lot like an Aaron Sorkin line, but I wasn’t about to debate it. “What kind of connection?” I asked. “Do you mean, like, orchestrated?”

“Of course not,” said Owen, as facetious as I was incredulous. “Nothing illegal ever happens in the White House.”

Point taken. Multiple points, actually. Arms for hostages... sex with an intern and then lying about it under oath... a certain botched burglary at a hotel only a handful of miles from where Owen and I were standing?

Suddenly, the only thing I could hear in my head was the voice of then-senator Howard Baker during the Watergate hearings, asking one of the most famous — if not the most famous — political questions of all time.

What did the president know and when did he know it?

Then again, maybe we were getting a wee bit ahead of ourselves.

I leaned in again, staring at the images of Wittmer and Dobson. “It’s still only a picture,” I said.

“You’re right,” Owen replied. “It’s possible that it’s nothing. Of course, it’s also possible that Lawrence Bass really did want to spend more time with his family instead of running the CIA.”

I’d forgotten about that. Owen hadn’t. We’d watched the announcement Bass had made with his wife and two young daughters in the East Room of the White House. The guy had been the president’s pick to become the next director of the CIA. Not only was he passing that up, he was resigning from the National Security Council.

Still. Forget Aaron Sorkin. This was starting to feel more like an Oliver Stone fever dream.

“So, now... what? Bass is somehow connected, too?” I asked.

Only, this time, I could hear it in my own voice. That incredulous tone was missing. Owen could hear it, too.

“Just for the sake of argument,” he said, “what if there really was a path to the White House? How would we follow it?”

Between the two of us, I was the only one with a law degree, but you could’ve fooled me, the way he asked that question. Because lawyers — the good ones, at least — never ask a question they don’t already know the answer to.

I wasn’t the only one with Watergate on the brain.

“For the record, you don’t look anything like Dustin Hoffman,” I said.

Owen gave me a quick head-to-toe. He smiled. “Yeah, and you wish you looked like Robert Redford.”