Truth or Die

Chapter 78

Clay Dobson gazed across the clutter of his large oak desk, locking eyes with his 9 a.m. appointment while doing everything he could not to break into a shit-eating grin.

It wasn’t easy.

The morning had already brought the good news from Frank Karcher that their little problem in New York had been taken care of — right here in their own backyard, no less. The kid and the reporter’s boyfriend were both dead.

Of course, so was his old college chum, Wittmer, but there was a reason Dobson had had cameras placed inside and outside Wittmer’s home. He’d never fully trusted the guy. Wittmer was weak.

So, too, was Lawrence Bass.

That was what made this meeting with him such a lay-up, thought Dobson, the former small forward for the Princeton Tigers basketball team. Dare he think it, a slam dunk.

After all, Bass hadn’t bum-rushed him out on Pennsylvania Avenue or cornered him with a clenched fist in the men’s room at the Blue Duck Tavern, where all the political heavyweights fed both their stomachs and their egos.

Instead, he’d made an appointment. An appointment? That was like knocking on a door instead of kicking it down. Total milquetoast. No balls.

“I’d like an explanation, Clay,” said Bass, sitting with legs crossed on the other side of the desk.

Even that was weak, thought Dobson. He’d like an explanation? No, you dolt, you demand an explanation!

Yeah, the decision to sandbag Bass, the former director of intelligence programs with the NSC, was looking better by the second. He would’ve made a lousy head of the CIA, not that he ever really had a shot at the gig. Bass was simply a decoy, the fall guy who would pave the way for Frank Karcher.

“Trust me,” said Dobson, folding his arms. “Karch is not the loose cannon you think he is.”

“So it’s really going to be him?” asked Bass. “The rumor’s true?”

“This is Washington, Larry. What rumor isn’t?”

Bass let go with a defeated sigh, slouching a bit. Dobson was happy to have him vent a little, but they both knew Bass had no recourse. He was a good soldier, and good soldiers fall in line.

As if having just reminded himself of that, Bass straightened up in his chair. The air returned to his lungs, his chest expanding.

“I serve or don’t serve at the pleasure of the president,” he said. “I understand the politics in play, and I appreciate your wanting to look out for me and my family.”

“You have my word,” said Dobson. “In a few months, you’ll have your pick of jobs and complete financial security.”

Bass nodded. “I know, and like I said, I appreciate that. It’s just that... Karcher? Really?”

“Listen, I understand your frustration, I really do,” said Dobson, rising from his chair. He walked over to the credenza and poured himself more coffee. It was his third refill of the morning. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, turning back to Bass. “Do you want a cup?”

“Actually, I do,” Bass said. “Thank you.”

Dobson cocked an eyebrow, surprised. The coffee offer was merely out of politeness. A perfunctory gesture. Everyone and their mother knew that Bass abstained not only from alcohol, but also from caffeine. It was the one and only thing he and Karcher had in common.

For a devout Catholic, Bass was more Mormon than most Mormons.

Was this the first loose thread, wondered Dobson? The beginning of the complete unraveling of Larry “Halo Head” Bass?

Coffee... then a little whiskey in the coffee... then hold the coffee, just give me the whiskey?

In the meantime, “How do you take it?” asked Dobson. “Cream?”

“No, but three sugars,” Bass said.

Dobson turned his back, reaching for the sugar bowl and spoon on the credenza. He began scooping. “You like it sweet, huh?”

“Yes,” said Bass. “Sweet.”

Like revenge.

Chapter 79

There were two things on Frank Karcher’s to-do list that morning. Both bordered on a death wish.

The first was lying to Clay Dobson. Bright and early, at oh-seven-hundred hours, he told the president’s chief of staff that the kid and the former lawyer were eliminated, their bodies disposed of so thoroughly that even God himself didn’t know where they were.

How much time this would buy Karcher, he didn’t know. But there was only so much bad news and perceived incompetence he could dump in Dobson’s lap, and that quota had already been met in spades.

So it was time for plan B. As in, bullshit. He’d played the game inside the Beltway long enough to know how things really worked. When the truth doesn’t cooperate, stop telling it.

Sure enough, Dobson was so relieved to think the kid was no longer a threat that the collateral damage — the stuff that actually was true — was taken in stride. When he was told about Wittmer, as well as about having to shut down the now bullet-ridden lab behind M Street, Dobson’s only response, after a pregnant pause, was “So the kid is definitely gone, right?”

Of course, the fact that the kid actually wasn’t gone was merely semantics, a minor detail, as far as Karcher was concerned. Sometimes a lie is just the truth that hasn’t happened yet.

Or so he’d convinced himself as he made his way to the outskirts of McLean and the off-site training gym of the CIA’s Special Activities Division, the same division he’d headed up years ago before moving up the ladder to become the National Clandestine Service chief.

The reason the gym was off-site was because it “officially” didn’t exist. Nor was it open to all the agents-in-training of the Special Activities Division. Only a select group was invited to join, the CIA’s equivalent of Green Berets.

Accordingly, hanging a sign out front that read MEN ONLY would’ve been redundant.

Paying a visit to the gym was the second item on Karcher’s to-do list. It promised to be one the young agents would never forget, although that was precisely what they were required to do.

Nothing “officially” happens in a place that doesn’t officially exist.

Barging through the door, his heels stomping the cement floor with each and every step, Karcher marched straight across the middle of the windowless gym toward an old-school boom box on a milk crate that was pumping out Metallica’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls.”

Without breaking stride, he grabbed a twenty-five-pound barbell off a rack and heaved it dead center into the boom box, a perfect strike that shattered the cheap molded plastic into a hundred pieces. The gym immediately fell silent, save for the lingering echo of Lars Ulrich’s drumbeats.

Then, as patiently as possible for a man desperate to save his career, Karcher waited until every set of eyes was looking directly at him. He scratched the chin underneath his oversized head before folding his arms, his deep voice filling the room until there was no escape, not for anyone.

“Okay, he barked. “Who’s the toughest motherfucker here?”

Chapter 80

There were no takers, no volunteers.

This, despite the fact that membership in this particular gym was predicated on being a badass, and being proud of it.

A smart badass, though. Someone not prone to unnecessary risk or exposure, or, at the very least, someone who knew a trick question when he heard one.

Karcher glanced around amid the deafening silence, making sure to lock eyes with the dozen or so men in the room. He was giving each and every one of them his live-grenade look, the full-on crazy, the kind of batshit stare that could make Charles Manson himself step back and say, “Hey, man, whoa... chill out.”

But Karcher was only getting started.

Slowly now, he made his way over to the largest agent in the room, a brick wall with a buzz cut who was sitting on the bench press between sets. The veins rippling up and down each arm looked like maps of the DC Metrorail.

“Do you know who I am?” Karcher asked, almost politely.

The young agent nodded. “Yes.”

Karcher’s face immediately soured. So much for polite. “Then stand the fuck up when I’m talking to you.”

The agent stood. He had four inches on Karcher, easy. But right then, right there, he hardly seemed taller.

“What’s your name?” asked Karcher.

“Evans, sir.”

“Was I ever here today, Evans?”

“No, sir.”

“Were any of us here today?”

“No, sir.”

“So none of it ever happened, right?”

The agent, Evans, blinked a few times. Confusion in his eyes. None of what? What’s about to happen?

Regardless, his answer wasn’t about to change. “No, sir,” he said. “It never happened.”

Karcher leaned in, his big head getting right in Evans’s grill. “I’ll tell you what definitely did happen,” he said. “The threesome I had with your mother and another whore last night.”

Evans cracked a slight smile. He’d hardly be in the CIA, let alone the Special Activities Division, if he’d taken the bait.

But this heap of chum was pushing things.

“Your mom’s quite the moaner,” Karcher continued. “You want to hear what she sounds like? Do you? Do you?”

Evans dropped the smile, his jaw tightening, his fists balling. He shifted his feet, if only to give himself something else to do besides decking Karcher, who was far from finished.

“You’re just going to stand there and take it, Evans? Huh? Like your mother did on her hands and knees? What kind of a pussy are you, Evans? You don’t want to take a swing at me? C’mon, boy, take a swing at me!”

As if that invitation weren’t open enough, Karcher stuck out his chin. He waited... waited... waited... before finally shaking his head in disgust.

“Yeah, I didn’t think so,” he said.

Neither did anyone else in the gym. A couple of the other guys even let out audible sighs of relief as Karcher turned to walk away. Only, he wasn’t walking away.

He was winding up.

Karcher spun around and threw his first punch like he was throwing a javelin, thrusting the flat of his knuckles square into Evans’s solar plexus. The bigger they are...

The young agent fell to his knees, immediately gasping for air that he no longer had. He was defenseless and teed up like a Titleist as Karcher began swinging, hitting him over and over and over in the face, the blood rupturing from his nose and mouth.

C’mon, you idiots, what are you waiting for? Stop watching me and do something. Get in here!

The group inertia from the initial shock wore off, the other agents collapsing on Karcher to pull him away from Evans. Karcher feigned a struggle, trying to break free from all the sets of hands holding him back.

But he wasn’t looking for peacemakers.

“That’s right, protect your boy, Evans!” Karcher shouted. “You probably all wipe each other’s asses, too. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if—”

Pow!

The punch came out of nowhere, as did the guy who threw it — a Hispanic agent with a shaved head who couldn’t have been more than five-eight while standing on his toes.

“Martinez, no!” someone shouted.

A couple of the other agents let go of Karcher so they could hold back Martinez, or try to. Martinez pushed them away, one after the other, and resumed going after Karcher, unleashing a barrage of right jabs until the skull-and-bones tattoo on the inside of his wrist became a blur.

Everyone backed away now. There was no stopping Martinez. Karcher fell to one knee and then both, his head whipping back and forth with each punch until finally he collapsed, his blood-soaked face hitting the ground with a nauseating squish.

Martinez loomed over him, like Ali over Liston, daring him to get up for more. But Karcher had no such plans. He’d gotten what he’d come for.

Martinez had just owned him in a fight. But now he owned Martinez forever.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner...

Chapter 81

“My name’s Trevor Mann,” I told the guy in the black suit who opened the front door. He looked far more bodyguard than butler. “I believe Mr. Brennan is expecting me.”

“He is,” I was told with a nod that somehow managed to be both deferential and disinterested at the same time. “He’s out back. I’ll take you.”

Great, you do that. Just so long as you don’t frisk me first.

As much as I didn’t really think that was a possibility, I wasn’t a hundred percent sure of anything. The guy’s boss, Josiah Brennan, didn’t head up one of the most powerful — and profitable — law firms in DC based on his good looks and Southern charm alone, although those certainly didn’t hurt his cause.

To read anything about this self-described “good ol’ boy from Tennessee” was to know that when he was done slapping your back, he was just as capable of putting a knife in it. And not just figuratively speaking.

Which pretty much explained the Glock in my shin holster.

Had Brennan already been tipped off? Did he know the truth about me? Or did he buy the lie?

I walked behind his henchman — all six foot six of him, if I had to guess — through the front-to-back foyer the size of a cathedral. Along the way, I did my best to get the lay of the land without being too obvious. A quick peek down a hallway here, a slight crane of the neck there. When the moment was right, I could ill afford to be wasting time in the wrong rooms.

“Very cozy,” I joked, my voice practically echoing.

Mr. Henchman smirked, opening a pair of oversized French doors to the backyard. “This way,” he said. “Follow me.”

Trust me, Lurch, I was following you before I even knew who you were...

For the past seventy-two hours, tucked away in the Comforter Motel near Arcola with $9.95-a-day Wi-Fi, Owen and I had done our best Woodward and Bernstein, taking Deep Throat’s advice from the moment we’d left the late Dr. Wittmer’s house.

Follow the money.

Not that the trail was easy. Tracing the title of the lab where Wittmer picked up the serum required a little more than a field trip to public records at city hall.

Whoever owned it didn’t want anyone to know. Check that... they really didn’t want anyone to know. The tangled web of trusts and LLCs was chock-full of misdirection and red herrings, not to mention the kind of firewalls designed to keep the most serious hackers on the sidelines.

Of course, there’s serious... and then there’s Owen. After a while, I simply stopped asking “How did you do that?”

From Georgetown to Delaware to the Channel Islands to a different bank in the Channel Islands and then back to Delaware, the money moved like a carousel, around and around.

But one thing stayed the same. Brennan’s law firm.

What was more, Brennan had personally drafted all the LLC agreements, including all filings with the state, the most boilerplate of legal documents. That was like hiring Mario Batali to heat up some Chef Boyardee spaghetti and meatballs for you. In a word, overkill.

Or maybe for a White House chief of staff taking no chances, just the right amount of kill.

Problem was, we were still missing that proverbial smoking gun: something that directly linked Brennan to Clay Dobson or whoever else owned that lab behind M Street.

Owen had hacked Brennan’s law firm’s network to no avail. Now the question was whether Brennan had a personal computer at home.

Good thing my face had healed, because it was time for my close-up.

I was on.

Chapter 82

Hey, rookie, look out for the left hook!

During my first year with the Manhattan DA’s office, when I was as green as a plate of peas, the chief assistant district attorney — a former Golden Gloves welterweight champion from Jersey City — used to put up his fists and bark that at me before the start of every trial. In other words... expect the unexpected.

“Watch your step,” warned Mr. Henchman.

“I’m sorry, what?”

The guy pointed to the ground as we walked through the French doors. “The drop-off,” he explained.

“Oh,” I said. That’s what you meant.

And with that, I stepped down onto a massive patio of blue slate with grass edgings, immediately wondering if I’d perhaps stumbled upon the set of a Ralph Lauren ad.

There were about fifty people, evenly split between genders. The men were all in blue blazers with Popsicle-colored slacks — cherry, orange, and lemon. On the women were sleeveless sundresses exposing tanned and toned arms.

Suddenly, I was keenly aware of the fact that I’d been wearing the same pair of brown chinos for the past three days. At least the sport coat and white button-down were new, purchased just for this occasion.

“He’s over here,” said Mr. Henchman with a glance back over his shoulder at me.

After another twenty feet, he peeled off at the exact moment that Brennan turned around to face me as if he had eyes in the back of his head.

“I know everyone else here, so you must be Trevor Mann,” he said, flashing a near-blinding grin. He promptly extended his hand. It was hard not to notice that in his other hand was a double-barreled shotgun.

At least it wasn’t pointed at me. Not yet.

No sooner did Brennan shake my hand than he practically spun me around so he could introduce me not just to the two couples he was talking to but to the entire guest list.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, playing up what remained of his Southern drawl after decades in DC, as well as a few years in Manhattan. “I think it was Will Rogers who famously said that you never get a second chance to make a good first impression. With that in mind, I have a favor to ask you all.”

He promptly put his arm around me as if he’d known me for years.

“This here is Mr. Trevor Mann,” he continued. “He’s an esteemed professor up north with the Columbia Law School, which, much to the chagrin of my Confederate flag — waving father, happens to be my alma mater. Mr. Mann called me two nights ago because he’s also a freelance writer for the New York Times and they’re looking to do a profile on me for their Sunday magazine. So the favor is this: Should Mr. Mann corner one of you at any point this afternoon and ask for your opinion about me, here’s what I need you to do. Lie with impunity.”

Everyone laughed, except for the Jessica Lange look-alike who weaved her way toward me, rolling her eyes.

“You’ll have to forgive my husband, there’s nothing he likes more than the sound of his own voice,” she said.

“Mr. Mann, may I present my beautiful and brutally honest wife, Abigail,” said Brennan.

The polite smile she gave me soured quickly as she caught sight of the shotgun in her husband’s hand. “Josiah, you promised,” she said.

He turned to me with no admission of guilt. “Have you ever done any skeet shooting, Mr. Mann?”

“No, I never have,” I said.

“Terrific sport, but the wife hates it, I’m afraid.”

“What the wife hates is having pieces of clay birds scattered all over her lawn,” said Abigail.

“They’re called pigeons, darling. Though would you rather I shoot at real birds instead?”

Abigail linked her arm in mine. It was flirtatious, but it was also an act. If I had to bet, I’d wager she was even smarter than her husband. “Have you ever noticed that, Mr. Mann?” she asked me. “The way lawyers have a comeback for everything?”

“I think that’s what makes them lawyers,” I said.

Brennan liked that answer. “Did you know that Mr. Mann here used to be quite the practicing attorney himself?”

“Used to be?” asked Abigail.

“Mr. Mann made a principled stand in a rather noteworthy trial up in New York,” said Brennan.

“Some say principled, others say boneheaded,” I pointed out.

“Indeed,” he said. “That’s the dilemma of a man’s integrity, isn’t it? One way or the other, there always seems to be a price to pay.” Brennan held my stare for a few moments before flashing that blinding grin again. “Now, c’mon, let’s go dirty up my wife’s lawn.”

Chapter 83

Social etiquette may vary from country to country, but in the good old USA, when the host of a party asks his guests if they’d like to watch him show off, there’s really only one answer.

Looking like a preppy parade, everyone followed Brennan off the patio to a long stretch of grass that was somewhere between a six and a seven iron. Off to either side were the small houses — or traps, as they’re also called — for launching the clay pigeons. One trap releases high, the other low.

Okay, so I lied to Brennan. It was more like a fib, really. I’d been skeet shooting before. Twice, actually. Speaking of my principled stand, the head of the hedge fund where I’d been general counsel was a huge fan of the sport. I’m sure he must have missed it terribly during his two-year stint behind bars.

Then again, in these white-collar-crime prisons that double as country clubs, maybe the skeet course was next to the tennis courts.

“Who’s first?” asked Brennan as we gathered in a semicircle around him. Translation? Who wants to suck at this first so I’ll look that much better when it’s my turn?

There were no takers, which hardly seemed to disappoint Brennan. If anything, he relished the apprehension among his invited male guests.

Finally, he got his volunteer. By choosing him.

“Harper,” he said, pointing. “I believe you’re the youngest of the firm’s partners, isn’t that right?”

Poor Harper, whoever he was. The guy stepped forward with a forced smile, taking the shotgun from his boss like a vegetarian picking up a double cheeseburger. Clearly, he was a city boy. Probably the only hunting he’d ever done in his life was for an apartment.

Brennan provided him with a quick tutorial before giving nods in the direction of both traps, each being manned by a guy sporting the universal hired-hand pose: feet slightly spread, arms behind the back, fingers clasped.

Pull!

Harper missed terribly with both shots. On the bright side, he didn’t kill himself or any of the rest of us. Same for the other “volunteers” Brennan summoned after him. No one could shoot a lick.

“Your turn, Mr. Mann,” I kept waiting to hear, and to be honest, the thought of shattering at least one of those little clay suckers, if not both, was feeling pretty damn good.

Brennan, however, never looked my way. “Perhaps it’s time I give it a whirl,” he announced instead.

But before he could even reach down into the box of shells by his feet, his wife, Abigail, chimed in with a nod to Title IX and her fellow women. “What about one of the girls?” she asked.

Brennan didn’t miss a beat. “Honey, we both know how much life insurance I have. The last thing I’m about to do is hand you a loaded gun.”

“I wasn’t talking about me,” she said once the laughter subsided. “Perhaps one of our female guests would like to try.”

“You’re right,” said Brennan. What else could he say? “How about it, ladies? I didn’t mean to exclude you.”

But of course he did. Had I truly been writing a Times profile on him, I probably would’ve noted that less than ten percent of his firm’s partners were women.

Still, as with the men, there were no takers. Just silence.

“C’mon, now,” he prodded. “I promise you won’t break a nail.”

Wow, he really just said that, didn’t he?

No one was groaning, though. Instead, the guests were too busy turning in search of the voice that had suddenly called out from the patio.

“I’ll give it a shot,” she said.

Chapter 84

On a scale of one to ten for entrances, it was easily an eleven.

Stepping off the patio and joining the Ralph Lauren ad on the lawn was the quintessential Benetton couple — a stunning all-American blonde on the arm of a handsome Middle Eastern man.

That said, all eyes were on the blonde.

She, too, was wearing a sleeveless sundress, entirely white with a plunging neckline, but amid all the tan and toned arms of the other female guests, hers appeared a little tanner, a little more toned.

“Shahid, you made it!”

Our semicircle around Brennan did a Red Sea part so the couple of the moment could greet the host and hostess. All anyone else could do was watch and listen as the man, Shahid, introduced his plus-one, Beverly Sands.

“Beverly and I only just met, so you need to make me look good,” said Shahid with a tug on his royal-blue blazer.

“I think you look pretty good already,” said Abigail, linking her arm with Shahid’s. This was clearly her signature move.

“Actually, I was going to ask the same of you, Shahid,” said Brennan before turning to find me among his guests. I stepped forward. “Trevor Mann, I’d like you to meet a client of mine, Shahid Al Dossari, and his friend, Beverly Sands.”

“Very nice to meet you both,” I said, shaking their hands.

“So you know, Trevor’s writing a profile of me for the New York Times,” Brennan explained.

Shahid nodded, impressed. So did Beverly. But for a split second, before her nod, I could’ve sworn there was something else. A sort of look she gave me. A squint. In a word... doubt.

Or, hell, maybe it was just the sun in my eyes.

Whatever it was, it came and went, her attention returning quickly to Brennan. Specifically, the open shotgun nestled over his forearm.

Playfully but with an edge, she asked, “So am I going to shoot that damn thing or not?”

“Hell, yes,” said Brennan, snapping to.

As Abigail stepped back with Shahid still looped on her arm, Brennan proceeded to give Beverly the same tutorial he’d given the men, albeit with considerably more care and attention. The more he talked, the more she hung on his every word like a rapt pupil.

“Like this?” she asked, unsure, propping the butt of the gun high against her shoulder.

“Actually, you want to bring it a little lower, sweetheart,” said Brennan, guiding the stock down a few inches.

“And I aim by looking through...?”

“You want to line up the front and rear sights,” he said, pointing them out.

“So now what happens?” she asked, closing one eye to aim.

“Now you try to shoot one of the clay disks that will be coming out of those little houses to your left and right,” said Brennan.

“Just one?”

He chuckled. So did more than half of the other men in the crowd. “Or two, if you’d like,” said Brennan. “Feel free to shoot them both. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with a little optimism.”

With that, he looked back at Shahid and gave him a wink.

“Okay, I’m ready,” said Beverly.

“Great,” said Brennan. “All that’s left to do is say—”

But Beverly Sands knew exactly what to say. Among other things.

“Pull!” she yelled.

As fast as the pigeons were released from the traps, they shattered even faster. First the low one, then the high one. Two quick blasts and they were blown to pieces... all over Abigail Brennan’s lawn.

Casually, Beverly handed the shotgun back to a stunned Brennan and immediately looked down at her hand.

“What do you know?” she said with a perfect shrug. “I think I broke a nail.”

Chapter 85

I’d been around a lot of good defense attorneys, and the best of them were always lightning quick on their feet while oozing grace under pressure at all times. They also knew a no-win situation when they saw one.

In other words, there was no way Josiah Brennan was taking his turn with that shotgun.

“All right, then,” he said, turning to his guests with the best self-deprecating laugh he could muster. “I think it’s lunchtime.”

The menu back on the patio was an eclectic mix of upscale and down-home. Next to the grilled New Zealand baby lamb chops were baked beans and corn bread. The napkins were linen, the utensils plastic. If the red velvet cake and the trifle were too rich for you, there was a tray of Rice Krispie treats made by the Brennans’ nine-year-old daughter, Rebecca, who looked like a mini-me of her mother.

I figured a half hour to eat and mingle and blend in with the crowd. Then it was time to get lost. As for my permission to wander aimlessly in someone else’s home, that was as easy as three words. “Where’s the bathroom?”

I made sure to pose the question to Mr. Henchman, since he was the only guy whose job it was to make sure I didn’t do what I was about to do. In his mind, at least for a few minutes, I was accounted for inside the house.

“Down the hall, second left,” he told me.

Closing the door behind me in the bathroom, I counted to thirty while staring at an equestrian-patterned wallpaper that even Ann Romney would’ve passed on. In case Mr. Henchman was standing watch, I then flushed the toilet and ran the sink for a few seconds.

But he wasn’t standing watch. I was a guest, after all. That would’ve been weird.

Walking out of the bathroom free and clear, I immediately turned into Monty Hall on speed. What’s behind door number one? And two? And three?

Pay dirt came with door number four. The mahogany bookshelves, the studded leather couch and matching armchairs, the painting over the marble fireplace depicting a mute of hounds in pursuit of a fox — basically, just the overwhelming stench of testosterone — left no doubt that I was in Brennan’s home office.

And sitting atop a huge partners desk the size of a pool table was the whole reason for my being there. Quickly, I reached for my new prepaid cell phone and dialed Owen, who was waiting back at the hotel.

“Okay, I’m standing in front of his computer,” I said. “It’s a laptop, a Toshiba.”

“That’ll work,” Owen said. “You remember what to do?”

I did. First, I had to install the flash drive he’d given me, only it wasn’t a flash drive. It just looked like one. Owen called it a “phantom” because it overrode any and all password requirements — from accessing internal documents to e-mail accounts — and left no trace of the user. It would be as if I had never even been there. A phantom.

“Okay, we’re up,” I said, staring at the desktop page. Thankfully, it booted up quickly. “We’re on his wireless network. Ready on your end?”

“Ready.”

I brought up Internet Explorer, typing in the Web address Owen had given me, which was a series of numbers that meant nothing to me until he explained that it was pi multiplied by pi to the tenth decimal. Yeah, that figured, too...

“Do you see it?” he asked.

“Yep.”

The “it” was a site he’d named Moonshine, because, according to Owen, it was homemade and always did the trick. The kid was like a Vegas magician, the way he had a name for everything. The difference being, his tricks weren’t illusions. They were real.

“Okay, give me about thirty seconds,” he said.

In layman’s terms, Owen was now hijacking Brennan’s hard drive, gaining access to every document he had. In the scheme of things, needing only a half minute to do that was like building Rome in a day. But from where I was standing, it was feeling like forever.

I kept looking at the door, fearing the worst. It would be the next second or the next second after that when someone would turn that handle and walk in on me. Mr. Henchman, or even worse, Brennan himself. Some things you simply can’t talk your way out of.

“C’mon, Owen,” I said to the beat of the tick-tick-tick in my head. “Tell me we’re done.”

“Just a little longer,” he said.

“I’m starting to get a bad feeling.”

“That’s called paranoia.”

“No, it’s called empirical evidence,” I said. “Have you been keeping a diary this week, by any chance?”

“Good one,” he said. “Now do me a favor, will you?”

“What’s that?”

“Go back to the party.”

Click. He was done.

I pocketed my phone, exiting the browser and powering down the laptop as quickly as I could. All the while, I kept glancing at the door, willing it to remain closed.

But it wasn’t the door I should’ve been worried about. It was the desk.

The desk?

Chapter 86

I toppled to the floor so fast there wasn’t even time to break my fall. Instead of throwing out my hands, the best I could do was lead with my shoulder. Better a cracked collarbone than a cracked skull.

What the hell just happened? Did I really just get decked by the desk?

Sort of.

Right there under it, and still gripping my ankles, was the Annie Oakley of skeet shooting herself, Beverly Sands. What on earth she was doing there I was certain we’d get to in a moment. But first, it was pure instinct as I tried to kick myself free. I almost did, too, until she grabbed both my shins.

Uh-oh. My shins.

The second she felt the holster beneath my pant leg, out came a snub-nosed .38 that was strapped to her inner thigh courtesy of a tricked-out leather garter belt. Very La Femme Nikita.

“Who are you?” she demanded. “Why do you have a gun?”

“Right back atcha,” I would’ve said if it hadn’t been for the fact that her gun was aimed right at my head.

Instead, “I’m Trevor Mann,” I answered, trying to catch my breath. “We met when you arrived, remember?”

“Yeah, but you don’t write for the Times.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“You don’t look smug enough,” she said. “You’re also too nervous to be law enforcement.”

“Yeah, well, sorry I can’t be more cool for you with a gun in my face.”

She was losing her patience. “What the hell are you doing in here? Who was that on the phone? And what do you want with Brennan’s computer?”

“Jesus, one at a time, will you? Slow down.”

She motioned over her shoulder toward the door. “We don’t have that luxury.”

“Whatever I tell you, you won’t believe me,” I said.

She was about to respond, her mouth open to form the first word. But she suddenly stopped, pointing at me.

“Trevor Mann,” she said, repeating my name as if running it through her memory. “Why does that ring a bell?”

“The NYPD pension fund?”

She nodded. Bingo. “You’re that lawyer.”

“Yes, I’m that lawyer.”

Her finger was still pointing at me, but fortunately the gun wasn’t. She lowered it. “Honest to a fault,” she said.

“Thank you.”

“That wasn’t a compliment,” she informed me. “But go ahead, I might just believe you now.”

There are times to talk and there are times to shut up. Then there are times when you’re on the floor with a woman wearing a leather garter-belt holster in the private office of a rich and powerful man who’d be less than understanding, to put it mildly, should he walk in on you.

Whatever you tell her, Mann, make it fast...

With that, I gave the quickest possible summation of what I was doing and why. “We think Brennan is involved with something he shouldn’t be.”

“Join the club,” she said. “But who’s we?”

“Me and the guy on the phone.”

“Were you hacking Brennan’s e-mail?”

“Something like that.”

“Was it something more than that?”

The way she asked the question, she sounded — of all things — hopeful.

That was when it clicked, what she was doing underneath the giant desk. I could see the wires running straight down from the top through a grommet-covered hole.

“You were bugging his phone, weren’t you? And I walked in on you,” I said.

“Something like that,” she replied, mimicking me.

“Who are you, then?” I asked.

She thought for a second, weighing the truth versus a possible lie. The truth won out. “My name’s not Beverly Sands, it’s Agent Valerie Jensen,” she said. “I’m with the NSA.”

“Since when do you guys have field agents?”

“We don’t. Just like we also don’t bug phones,” she said, standing. Without the slightest hint of modesty, she hiked up her white sundress, reholstering her .38 along her inner thigh. “C’mon, we’ve got to get back to the party.”

I stood up, falling in line behind her. We were ten feet from the door when she suddenly motioned for me to stop.

The next thing I knew, she was kissing me.

Chapter 87

Before I could figure out what the hell was going on, the door of Brennan’s office opened. The hinges had the distinct sound of a train flying off the tracks.

Immediately, Valerie broke away from me. We’d been caught in the act: our mouths agape, eyes wide with surprise. But between the two of us, I was the only one not acting.

Valerie had heard the footsteps and had seen the turn of the door handle. Talk about thinking fast on your feet. Agent Jensen was even faster with her lips.

“Are you two cheating?” the young girl asked.

Staring at us with her arms crossed, waiting for an answer, was the Brennans’ nine-year-old daughter, Rebecca.

“Cheating?” asked Valerie.

“You know, like, having an affair? You came to the party with a different man,” Rebecca said. “I saw you, don’t lie.”

“No... no, honey,” I said, shifting quickly into denial mode. It was pure reflex. “We were just—”

Valerie cut me off faster than a New York City cabdriver. “Yes, you caught us,” she said. “We’re having an affair.”

I looked at her, stunned. Did you really just say that?

She really did.

Little Rebecca nodded with the kind of self-satisfied grin kids get when a grown-up treats them like a grown-up. She pointed at me.

“You better be careful, then,” she said. “I saw this movie on TV, and when the husband found out, he killed the other guy with a snow globe.”

“Ooh, I’ve seen that movie, too,” said Valerie. She turned to me, raising her hands to act it out. “You get hit right in the head with the snow globe — bam! — and blood starts gushing down your forehead and—”

“I know, I know!” said Rebecca excitedly. She was rocking from her heels to her tiptoes. “Wasn’t it gross?”

“Totally gross,” said Valerie. “Like, gag me with a giant spoon.”

Rebecca giggled. “You’re funny,” she said. “You’re also really pretty.”

“Thank you,” said Valerie. “I think you’re really pretty, too.”

“You think so?”

“Yes, and your mother tells me that you go to the Sidwell Friends School, so I bet you’re really smart, too.”

Rebecca liked every word she was hearing. “Did you know that Sasha and Malia Obama go there?”

“I did know that,” said Valerie. “Have you met them?”

“Yeah, they’re nice, which is cool because they really don’t have to be, I guess.”

I kept doing the smartest thing I could do at that point, and that was keep my big mouth shut. Brilliantly, effortlessly, Valerie was bonding with this girl quicker than Krazy Glue. Sooner rather than later, though, she’d have to ask the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. Can you keep a secret?

But out of nowhere, another question beat us to it. Oh, no...

“Rebecca, what are you doing?” he asked.

Chapter 88

We all froze as Mr. Henchman appeared in the doorway. As he glared at Valerie and me, it was the closest I’d ever come to being able to read another man’s mind.

Two random guests where they absolutely shouldn’t be. Whatever’s going on, it isn’t right.

“You know you’re not supposed to be in here,” he said to Rebecca. There was little doubt, though, that he was talking to all three of us. “You could really get in trouble.”

Valerie and I looked at Rebecca, our collective fate now in the hands of a nine-year-old ginned up on the movie Unfaithful.

I was starting to think we didn’t have a snow globe’s chance in Hell.

Especially when Mr. Henchman applied the full-court press. “Well, Rebecca? What am I supposed to tell your father?”

Then again, some kids you can only press so far.

“Geez, Walt, don’t have a cow!” she bellowed. “I was just giving them a tour of the house.” Both her hands then landed squarely on her hips. “But if you’re so desperate to tell my father something, maybe it should be how you like to drink all his liquor when he’s not home.”

Oh, snap. Out of the mouths of babes...

Never had I seen a guy so big back down so fast. The upper hand now wore pink nail polish with glitter.

And on that note...

“Thank you again for the tour, Rebecca. I think I’ll be getting back to the party now,” said Valerie.

“Yes, I really should be getting back, too,” I added. “But this certainly has been fun.”

I followed Valerie out of Brennan’s office while “Walt” remained behind to chat a little more with Rebecca. If I had to guess, I’d say he was negotiating a keep-silent agreement with her in order to keep his job.

For a few seconds, at least, Valerie and I were alone again.

“Come here,” she said, quickly pulling me over to the wall in the hallway. Next thing I knew, she was moving toward my mouth again.

“What are you doing?”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Counselor,” she said, her thumb removing a smudge of her lipstick from my lower lip. She was cleaning me up, that was all. “Sometimes a kiss is just a kiss.”

She took a step back, making sure she’d gotten it all. A satisfied nod told me she had.

“So now what?” I asked.

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether what you suspect about Brennan is true,” she said.

“And if it is?”

She smiled. “Then you and me? This is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

Chapter 89

One hour later, and from one hot seat into another.

I kept shifting around in my chair, trying to get comfortable, but I knew it wasn’t the chair. It was me. I had that uneasy feeling, the kind you get when you think you’re being watched. Only, in this case, I knew for sure I was being watched.

In the parking lot. In the lobby. In the elevator. In the hallway. And ultimately, in the conference room. There were cameras everywhere. Everything was being recorded.

Welcome to the NSA’s headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland.

“What fun have you brought us now, Valerie?” asked Jeffrey Crespin.

Based on his tone alone, I was fairly certain the word fun in that question bore little resemblance to the actual definition of the word. Suffice it to say, Valerie Jensen had never been awarded Employee of the Month.

No wonder, really. When I’d asked her before the meeting why an agent working undercover would risk drawing so much attention to herself with her skeet shooting exhibition on Brennan’s lawn, she told me she simply couldn’t help it. Quote, “I just hate those penis-measuring contests that men always have.”

Crespin, who was introduced to me as a deputy director of some counterterrorism division I’d never heard of, listened patiently in his suit and tie as Valerie — now in sweatpants, a Northwestern T-shirt, and a ponytail — finished briefing him about her Saturday afternoon at Brennan’s house, which had necessitated her dragging Crespin away from a charity dinner and into the office on a Saturday night.

The long and short of it? Their ongoing investigation to prove Shahid Al Dossari was helping to launder Saudi money that was ending up in the hands of Al Qaeda operatives had suddenly collided with some Columbia Law School professor posing as a writer with the Times and his unseen partner, who were conducting their own little investigation.

“Only it’s not so little,” said Valerie. That was when she turned to me and nodded. It was my turn to talk.

But before I could get two words out of my mouth, Crespin interrupted me. “Where’s this partner, the one you were on the phone with at Brennan’s house?” he asked.

“That’s part of the agreement,” I answered.

Crespin cocked his head at Valerie. He definitely didn’t like the sound of that. “What agreement?”

“Let’s just say the partner has trust issues,” Valerie explained. “The agreement I made with Mr. Mann is that he would come here voluntarily in exchange for being able to come alone.”

“Do you at least know where this person is?” asked Crespin.

“I don’t,” she answered. “But Mr. Mann does.”

He was staring at me again. “And I suppose that’s going to remain your secret, right? Who he is... who he works for?”

“Yes, but I know of a way you could probably get it out of me,” I said, grabbing the segue. “That is, if it didn’t kill me first.”

With that, I took out a flash drive containing the recordings Owen had first shown me, along with the ones from Dr. Wittmer. The stage was mine again. Or, at least, I was making it mine.

Valerie had a laptop booted up and ready to go. This was her second viewing within the hour. I dispensed with any preface and simply clicked Play.

I’d only just met Crespin, but I was hardly surprised to see him stare at the screen stone-faced as he watched. The guy was stoic. Like a doctor. I hardly expected him to recoil at the sight of torture.

But there was something.

It happened at the beginning of one of Wittmer’s recordings — the detainee who was cooperating under the influence of the serum but was still killed by it. The very moment the guy’s face was visible on-screen, Crespin glanced at Valerie. And Valerie glanced back.

“What?” I asked. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” said Valerie.

But I knew the sound of that nothing. It was the same nothing I’d told Detective Lamont and his partner, McGeary, when they were showing me the recording of Claire’s murder on the CrackerJack: the moment when she stuffed her phone behind the seat.

Yeah, that nothing from Valerie?

It was definitely something.

Chapter 90

“How did you get these?” Crespin asked calmly after the last recording was finished.

It was tempting to joke about the irony. Here was the NSA asking me how I’d gotten information I wasn’t supposed to have. Yeah, that’s rich.

How did I get these? “The how isn’t important,” I said. “It’s the who.”

And not just who was responsible, but also who had been killed along the way. Crespin needed to understand the stakes, the price others had paid.

I explained everything Owen and I knew for sure, as well as what we suspected. We’d been following the money, but we still didn’t know whose it was. Brennan, through his law firm, had been moving that money but not supplying it. It had to come from somewhere, though.

As for the serum itself, Dr. Wittmer had implicated Frank Karcher, the National Clandestine Service chief of the CIA, as the man who’d first approached him about transporting — and administering — it overseas.

Finally, there was the photo in Wittmer’s house suggesting that Clay Dobson could be involved.

“Could be,” I stressed.

I wasn’t about to try to sell Crespin on the idea of the White House being involved, as I was hardly sold on the idea myself. For starters, we had nothing that linked Karcher to Dobson.

Funny, though, how the world works sometimes.

When I was done, Crespin flipped open a manila folder in front of him and removed a large, folded-up piece of paper. He slid it in front of me.

“What’s this?” I asked.

Go ahead, said his nod, open it.

I unfolded the paper. It was a copy of the front page of the New York Times. Not today’s, though. Not even tomorrow’s, which would’ve been the Sunday edition.

No, this was Monday’s paper — an editor’s mock-up, complete with margin notes and dummy text for a couple of articles still to be inserted.

Instinctively, I looked at my watch. I knew from Claire that weekday editions of the Times went to print around ten o’clock the night before, with the “first edition A book,” aka the front section, always closing last. We were a full twenty-four hours before that.

It felt a bit like a Twilight Zone episode. Crespin was showing me the future.

I stared down at the paper again. I didn’t ask, but all I could think was How did he get this?

If he wasn’t reading my face, he was definitely reading my mind.

“The how isn’t important,” he said. He then pointed to the first-column story above the fold, the tip of his index finger landing directly next to the name in the headline. “It’s the who.”

Chapter 91

There it was in boldface type.

Quickly, I scanned the first paragraph. My gut told me there’d be no need to read the second.

Frank Karcher was being dubbed the “unexpected choice,” but an “unnamed source within the White House” was certainly bending over backward to describe him as an impeccable candidate.

“It had always been a coin flip between Frank Karcher and Lawrence Bass. Heads or tails, though, it’s our national security that wins.”

Those unnamed sources sure can spin.

Crespin stood up from the table and walked over to the window. He stared outside, saying nothing. Meanwhile, Valerie had grabbed the laptop, her fingers furiously tapping away on the keypad.

I didn’t know what she was doing, but I figured Crespin must be deep in thought, trying to figure out this huge minefield he was suddenly standing in. On a pogo stick, no less.

There was no scenario that didn’t entail collateral damage, from the presidency on down. And that was if the White House wasn’t involved.

And if it was? If the link to Clay Dobson via Frank Karcher proved real?

Then Crespin wouldn’t need the front page of the New York Times in advance to know what the headlines would be. Independent counsels, congressional hearings, the entire administration upended, if not toppled. The Fourth Estate would have the ultimate field day. A feast for the ages.

Now kick in the foreign policy and national security ramifications.

This wasn’t drones or waterboarding or even some extremely ill-advised photos taken by a few guards at Guantánamo Bay. No, this was the coup de grâce, the mother lode.

The single greatest terrorist recruiting tool of all time. Or at least, until the next one came along.

If I’d been Crespin, I would’ve been staring out the window, too. He had to be wondering what his next move was. He was the NSA, not the FBI. At some point, this was a job for law enforcement, and I was assuming that point was now. On second thought...

He was the NSA, not the FBI.

Crespin turned away from the window. “How much do you know about this building, Mr. Mann?”

“You mean, the actual building?” I asked.

“Yes.”

I looked over at Valerie for some help. Is this a trick question? But her head was still buried in the laptop.

“I know nothing about it,” I said.

Crespin nodded. “You’re not alone. And what little the public does know about this building is because we want them to know it. But does that make it true? On Wikipedia, for instance, it says that every wall in this place is wrapped with an ultrathin copper shielding that prevents all electromagnetic signals from getting out.”

Okay, I’ll take the bait. “Is that true?” I asked.

“It must be,” he said. “I read it on the Internet.”

Valerie, still fixated on her laptop, smiled. She was listening the whole time. Note to self: The NSA is always listening.

Crespin took his seat back at the table. I wasn’t sure what exactly he was talking about, although I got the feeling that was by design.

He continued: “You see, people like to say that information is power. But inside these walls — copper shielded or not — we like to say something else. The real power? It’s not information. It’s misinformation.”

As if on cue, Valerie leaned back in her chair. Whatever she’d been doing, she was done.

“Unbelievable,” she muttered.

“What?” I immediately asked. It was simple reflex.

But she wasn’t talking to me. Just Crespin. And as he stared back at her, he did something I’d yet to see him do. He smiled.

“Karcher to Brennan or Brennan to Karcher?” he asked.

“Both,” said Valerie.

I’d had enough of feeling like the odd man out. “Maybe one of you can tell me what’s going on?”

“Sure,” said Crespin. “But first I have to ask you something. How good are you at pretending you’re drunk?”

Chapter 92

“What are you having?” asked the bartender.

“Second thoughts,” I was tempted to say. Instead, “Double Johnnie Black on the rocks,” I told him.

This one drink would be my prop, a big ol’ glass of whiskey in an unsteady hand to suggest that I’d had plenty more where that came from. The fact that I was already looking pretty ragged from raw nerves and lack of sleep would only add to the effect.

What had Brennan said to his guests on the patio, his quote from Will Rogers? You never get a second chance to make a good first impression.

It wasn’t quite as catchy, but Jeffrey Crespin had his own saying for what I was about to do. “You only get one shot at this, Mann, so I’ll ask you a second time. Are you sure you’re up for it?”

“Absolutely,” I lied.

From my end seat at the bar in a place called Shadows in Georgetown, it wasn’t Brennan I was waiting for. As hangouts go, this was hardly his scene. Hip and chic, all right, but not enough power brokers. Law students instead of lawyers, congressional staffers instead of congressmen. Plus, way too many Eurotrash guys with one too many shirt buttons undone.

Maybe that was why Shahid Al Dossari had chosen the place: the international flavor. That, and the de rigueur “dark and sexy” lounge lighting. Shadows was clearly saving the owners a ton of money on their electric bill.

All that mattered, though, was that the choice was Al Dossari’s. He’d picked the location. He might have gotten suspicious had Valerie led him there.

Excuse me, had “Beverly Sands” led him there.

At the twenty-minute mark, I checked the same prepaid cell I’d used at Brennan’s house to see if there was any follow-up from Valerie. Word of a delay or even a change of venue.

Neither, though. No new texts.

Finally, about a half hour after Valerie had first sent me the address, I looked up to see her walking in with him. Right away, I could tell he was really getting off on watching the other men jealously checking out his date. Yeah, that’s right, boys, she’s with me...

Tick-tock. Valerie’d had only an hour after leaving NSA headquarters to get dolled up again as Beverly. This, after initially telling Al Dossari that she had a previous engagement after Brennan’s party. No wonder the guy was smiling like the devil. This surprise nightcap was the next-best thing to a booty call. And undoubtedly, in his eyes, the night was still young.

How was Valerie handling that, I wondered? After all, Al Dossari had to have certain expectations by this point. Would she ever take one for the team, so to speak, like Joan did on Mad Men? No, she’d never. She couldn’t, right?

For Christ’s sake, Mann, let’s keep the focus....

As they passed the bar, I bent down to pick up something I’d pretended to drop. When I straightened up, I glanced over my shoulder to see them grabbing a booth in the back. All according to plan. Give them a little time to settle in with their bottle of champagne — nice and relaxed — and then...

“Hey!” I blurted out, stopping in front of their booth with a double take. “It’s Annie Oakley!” For good measure, I raised my arms as if shooting a shotgun, spilling some of my drink in the process.

I watched as Valerie pretended not to recognize me at first. Al Dossari, on the other hand, wasn’t pretending. All the better.

“Remember?” I said. “We met earlier today at Josiah Brennan’s little soiree. Trevor Mann? The Times?”

“Oh, of course,” said Al Dossari, sliding out of the booth to shake my hand. “Nice to see you again.”

If that were only true. His pained expression was practically screaming, Of all the damn bars in this town, you had to be in this one? Drunk, no less?

Make that very drunk.

I turned back to Valerie. “Hey, really, nice shooting today. Just excellent!” I said. “Wait, what’s your name again?”

“Beverly,” she said. “Beverly Sands.”

“That’s right, of course! And I’m Trevor Mann.”

“Yes, I believe you said that already.” Beverly nodded toward my drink with a patient smile. “Are we celebrating something, Mr. Mann?”

“Ha! More like commiserating, I’m afraid. Problem is, I’m down here in DC by myself, so I have no one to commiserate with.”

“Well, I’m told I’m a good listener,” she said.

God, she’s good at this. She makes it look so effortless.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” I said with a sloppy wave of my hand. “I mean, it’s something, but I really shouldn’t say anything.”

“Yes, that’s probably best,” said Beverly.

With that, I tossed back the rest of my whiskey as if it were liquid courage. No, better yet, a truth serum.

“On second thought, what the hell. It’s going to be in all the headlines soon enough,” I said, before leaning in to whisper, “Can you two keep a secret?”

Chapter 93

It was almost too easy. Like pushing a big button.

Suddenly, Shahid Al Dossari wasn’t so eager for me to get lost. “Can I buy you another round, Mr. Mann?”

And they say women are gossips.

I happily slid into their booth while Al Dossari flagged the cocktail waitress. As I exchanged glances with Valerie, she broke character for a split second to give me a nod. So far, so good. Now bring it home. Or, at least, that’s how I took it.

“What were you drinking?” Al Dossari asked me as the waitress arrived with pep in her step. She knew a good tip when she saw one.

“Double Johnnie Black on the rocks,” I said.

“Not anymore. Make it a double Johnnie Blue, neat,” he said.

I was fairly convinced that his cocksure money-is-no-object upgrade was more for Beverly Sands’s benefit than mine, but I wasn’t about to object. All things considered, if I was pretending to be loaded, it might as well be with top-of-the-line real whiskey.

“So where were we?” asked Valerie.

“Mr. Mann was about to take us into his confidence,” said Al Dossari.

“First of all, Mr. Mann was my father. Call me Trevor,” I said. “Second...” I paused for a moment à la an alcohol-induced memory lapse. “Actually, I can’t remember what number two was, but in any event, here’s why I’m stuck here in DC. Of course, it involves politics. Do you guys follow politics?”

“Sure, a little,” said Al Dossari. And by “a little” it was clear he meant “a lot.”

I let out a deep sigh. “Stop me if this bores you, but apparently the CIA has invented some new interrogation method that makes waterboarding look like a day at the beach. Problem is, it’s killed a bunch of prisoners, hordes of them. Even bigger problem, at least for the president, is that his new CIA director is involved.”

“Wait,” said Valerie as if confused. “Didn’t I see on the news that the new CIA director wasn’t going to take the job? I remember because he was standing with his twin daughters and they were adorable.”

“That’s right, but this is the new new CIA director, the one the president is about to announce,” I said. “That’s on the hush-hush, too. I think his name is Archer.”

It was probably more from wishful thinking than anything else that I paused for Al Dossari to jump in and say “Karcher” to correct me. That would be too easy, though. He remained silent as the waitress returned with my twenty-five-year whiskey.

“Anyway,” I continued, “the Times has the story and I’ve been asked to stay down here to do some interviews on the Hill once it breaks on Monday.” I grabbed the lowball of Johnnie Blue, raising it high. “So, as they say in synchronized swimming... bottoms up!”

Beverly Sands lifted her drink to mine with a laugh. Trevor Mann, the reporter from the Times who very possibly had a drinking problem, was nonetheless entertaining. Right, Shahid?

She turned to him, her look wondering why he wasn’t joining in the cheers. And for the first time, we got a hint of something. He looked distracted. Downright uncomfortable.

“Are you okay?” asked a concerned Beverly Sands. “Shahid?”

“Huh?” He snapped out of it, raising his champagne. “Oh, I’m sorry... cheers.”

We clinked glasses, and I waited for some kind of follow-up question from Al Dossari. Valerie was waiting, too. Maybe he needed a command performance from me to be sure of what he’d heard.

Or maybe this was all for naught. The link was only between Karcher and Brennan, and as for Al Dossari, he was simply the CIA’s patsy. A sort of post-9/11 Lee Harvey Oswald. Only, in this case, for real.

Suddenly, Al Dossari began sliding out of the booth. “Will you two excuse me for a moment?”

Chapter 94

Valerie and I both watched as he walked toward the men’s room in the back of the bar. We were seeing the same thing. I assumed we were thinking it, too.

“He’s not going to the bathroom, is he? He’s calling Brennan,” I said. “Or maybe even Karcher. One of them, right?”

Valerie grimaced, a twinge of guilt. “No, he really is going to the bathroom,” she said. “In fact, he’s going to be in there for a while.”

“How would you know?”

She nodded first at his champagne glass and then at her purse. “When he stood to shake your hand,” she said. “It’s like liquid Ex-Lax, only a hell of a lot stronger and quicker.”

“Why?” I asked. Why would she spike his drink?

“Technically, it’s our third date,” she said. “In Shahid’s mind, it doesn’t end with us playing Boggle. This way, he won’t even want a peck on the cheek.”

“I was wondering about that,” I said. “You know...”

Up shot one of her eyebrows. “Whether I’d ever have sex with a mark?”

“Do you guys really call them marks?”

“Yeah, strange, right? Targets of an undercover sting operation never caught on.”

“So you really haven’t—”

“Is that really only your second whiskey?”

“Sorry, I was just curious.”

“For the record, the answer’s no,” she said. “Not to say he didn’t try on dates one and two. But love of my country only goes so far.”

The cocktail waitress returned to pour some more champagne. Valerie quickly placed her hand over Al Dossari’s glass. “I think he’s done for the night,” she said politely.

I glanced toward the back of the bar as the waitress walked away. “What happens now?” I asked. The plan she and Crespin had concocted only got me to the table.

“What happens now is that you tell me who your silent partner is,” she said.

“I meant—”

“I know what you meant. I also know that whoever this guy is, he’s CIA, or perhaps ex-CIA at this point. There’s no other way you could have those recordings.”

“No other way?”

“Prove me wrong.”

“If you know he’s CIA, what difference does his name make right now?”

Valerie eyed me for a moment. We’d known each other for less than a day, but it was hard to ignore a certain foxhole mentality. Like it or not, we were in this together.

“You want trust? I’ll give you trust,” she said. “Remember when Crespin and I looked at each other during one of your recordings?”

“Yes. You tried to pretend it was nothing—”

“But it was obviously something, you’re right,” she said. “Thing is, it was Karcher who initially tipped us off about our man on the toilet right now, that he was funding a known terrorist. So I became Beverly Sands to cozy up to Shahid Al Dossari, and — lo and behold — we just confirmed it. Shahid’s money has been moving in and out of an Al Qaeda operative’s account as recently as last week. Bingo, right? Except for one problem. According to one of your videos and the date stamped on the bottom of the screen, that operative has been dead for over a year.”

Sometimes you just say the first words that come to your mind no matter how trite. “Holy shit.”

“That’s right, holy shit,” she said. “Pretty goddamn brilliant, too. Developing that truth serum takes big bucks, and it’s not like the CIA can go to Congress for it. So what does Karcher do? He uses the hotshot lawyer, Brennan, to make it look like one of his clients is funding a terrorist with Saudi money. Instead, what Karcher’s really doing is funding himself.”

“But Al Dossari would have to know, right?”

“It would seem that way.”

“That’s the part I don’t get, then,” I said. “Wouldn’t Karcher be throwing Al Dossari under the bus? Without the recordings from the black site, you guys would still have Al Dossari on funding terrorism.”

“Yeah, that’s the brilliant part. All the NSA does is provide the proof. Then we hand everything — including Al Dossari — back over to Karcher,” she said. “The CIA will take it from here, he’ll tell us, and then it’s out of our hands.”

“Then what, though?” I asked. “It’s not like Karcher can’t drop the ball.”

“No, of course not. A few months from now we’d probably hear that Al Dossari has flipped and is now Karcher’s newest mole in the Middle East, or something like that. And we’d believe it, too, because we’d have no reason not to.”

“But now you do.”

“Which brings me back to your friend,” she said. “As much as you need to trust me, I need to trust him. And I can’t do that if I don’t meet him. So tonight, literally... I need you to bring me back to your friend.”

“What about your date?” I asked. “We just can’t leave him.”

“Oh, no?” Already she was halfway out the booth. “When he’s finally able to leave the bathroom, the last thing he’ll want to do is explain what took him so long. Trust me,” she said. “We’re doing him a favor.”

Chapter 95

In two minutes flat, we were in the backseat of a DC cab heading off the Beltway past Dulles Airport and out to Arcola. I really should’ve gotten a to-go cup for that Johnnie Walker Blue.

The driver, whose disposition most closely resembled an ingrown toenail, initially told us that Arcola was out of his territory, especially after midnight. A crisp Ben Franklin later, he suddenly had a brand-new territory. Money is the biggest button of them all.

“Inside or outside doors?” asked Valerie.

I turned to her. “Inside or outside?”

“My mother was afraid to fly when I was a kid, so we drove everywhere for vacation. She had this thing, though. We could never stay in a hotel with doors that faced outside,” she said. “Too dangerous.”

“By any chance, does your mother know what you currently do for a living?” I asked.

“If she were still alive, she wouldn’t like it.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize.”

“Cervical cancer. When I was in high school,” she explained. “And since we’re in the sympathy card aisle, my father then died of lung cancer during my senior year in college.”

“Jesus.”

“Tell me about it. Of course, if they were both still alive, it’s not like I could actually tell them what I do.”

“And what is that, exactly? I mean, of all the NSA secrets that Edward Snowden leaked, I didn’t hear anything about agents like you.”

“Yeah, little Eddie really complicated things, didn’t he?”

I waited for Valerie to keep talking and perhaps answer my question. She did neither.

“You’re not going to tell me, are you?”

She smiled. “We have to keep some mystery between us, don’t we?”

I practically froze. That was exactly what Claire had said to me the night she was killed.

“What?” asked Valerie. “What did I say?”

“Nothing,” I finally answered.

But she, too, knew the sound of that nothing. The look she gave me. Still, she let it go. A touch of woman’s intuition, perhaps.

Regardless, the next few minutes for me were inevitable. Memories of Claire came like clicks on the meter in the taxi, one after another, especially from our last moments together.

It’s often asked, if you knew this was your last night on earth, what would you do? Had that night with Claire been my last night, though, there was nothing I would’ve changed. Well, almost nothing. I would’ve never let Claire go.

“Front or back?” asked the driver.

The question snapped me out of it as I looked up to see him pulling into the Comforter Motel. Staring at the nearly empty parking lot, it was easy to wonder if the NO in the NO VACANCY sign had ever been illuminated.

“The back,” I said.

As he pulled around, I went over the ground rules with Valerie again regarding Owen. We’d gotten pretty good at cutting deals on the fly.

“I go up and explain the situation, tell him you’re here waiting in the taxi,” I said. “Then I wave you up, okay?”

“Whoa, excuse me?” blurted out the driver.

I’d forgotten about the other deal maker among us. He wasn’t liking the way his end was shaking out. “Is there a problem?” I asked.

“You’re only paying me to drive you here,” he said. “That’s the problem.”

I reached into my pocket again for more cash, but Valerie stopped me, reaching into her own pocket. She’d had enough of this guy. Money may talk, but a badge shuts them up every time.

“Let’s try this again,” she said. “Is there a problem?”

She was holding her badge so close to his eyes she was practically slapping his face with it.

With a slow shake of his head, he got with the program. No problem.

“You can park over at the end there,” I said, pointing to an area near a set of stairs.

There was no other sound beyond the engine idling as I stepped out to the back lot and made my way up to the second floor, or the penthouse, as Owen jokingly called it. We had the first room off the stairs, as well as the one next to it with a connecting door. Once again, the two room strategy. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Key card in hand, I eyed the lipstick camera Owen had taped above the sign for the vending machines about twenty feet away.

Then came the last safeguard — the knocking sequence to ensure we were truly alone. I suppose I was fudging that one a bit.

Two knocks followed by one followed by two. The area code of Manhattan. There’s no place like home.

Less than a minute later, though, I was back down at the taxi. From the look on my face alone, Valerie knew we had problem. It was the kind no badge could solve.

“What is it?” she asked.

That was part of the problem.

I wasn’t sure.

Chapter 96

Owen was gone.

That was the only thing I knew for sure. Both our rooms were empty. Empty of him, at least. Gone, too, was his backpack, his bag of tricks.

But my duffel was right where I’d left it in one of the closets, everything still inside. My guns, the extra cash. In fact, everything else in the room looked normal.

“Did they kidnap the maid, too?” asked Valerie, standing in the doorway.

Okay, I said normal, not clean. You put two guys in a hotel on the lam for a few days and it isn’t going to be pretty.

But that was the question, wasn’t it? Had Owen been taken or had he left on his own? There was a Mobil station with a convenience mart a half mile down the road where we’d been picking up some snacks, but the chances of his taking the walk at one o’clock in the morning seemed remote.

“Where are you going?” I asked Valerie. She was headed back out the door, her gun drawn.

“We start with the perimeter,” she said.

I understood. Standard police procedure. Start from the outside — in this case, literally — and work your way in.

“His name’s Owen,” I said.

“What about a last name?”

I must have looked like a stumped contestant on a game show. All this time together and I’d never found out his last name. “Huh” was all I managed.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said, turning again to leave.

“Wait, don’t you want to know what he looks like?”

She stopped just long enough to make me realize that while trust was one thing, the whole truth was another.

“He’s tall, slender, with brown hair, shaggy. Does this with his hands from time to time,” she said, doing a perfect imitation of his dry wash routine. “Oh, and for the record, his last name is Lewis.”

She walked out.

I stood there in shock, wondering how Valerie knew all that, and equally confounding, why she hadn’t just told me in the first place. There were no quick answers. What there was, though, was something in my eye line. Owen’s laptop.

He had it linked to the lipstick camera outside, our makeshift surveillance system. Since the moment he’d first hooked it up, it had been sitting atop the crappy-looking credenza featuring the TV, plastic ice bucket, and the Yellow Pages.

Now the laptop was in the middle of the queen bed closer to the bathroom. I mean, right in the middle. As if the bed were its pedestal. The only thing missing was the neon sign over it that was blinking, Look at me, Trevor!

I walked over and tapped the space bar, waking up the screen. I expected to see the same running image that had been there for days, the walkway outside both our rooms. Only, now there was something in front of it. A picture.

No, make that a message. But only for me.

In a pop-up window was an illustration off Google Images, one of those goofy clip-art signs that read GONE FISHING.

Now I just had to figure out what it was supposed to mean. Fishing for what?

“What are you looking at?” came Valerie’s voice by the door. She was back.

I had a split second to make a decision. Given our track record, telling her it was nothing was off the table. It had to be something. But did it have to be the whole truth?

This trust thing was getting a bit tricky.

“Behind you,” I said. “That’s what I’m looking at.”

I spun the laptop around, but not before clicking the illustration closed. What remained was the feed from the outside camera.

“Clever,” she said, tracing the angle to the sign for the vending machines. “Owen’s doing, I assume?”

“It seems you’d know that even better than me,” I said.

That got me a smirk but nothing more. She was far more concerned with taking one more lap around both rooms to see if there was something she’d missed the first time. There wasn’t.

“All right, grab your stuff,” she said. “Let’s get going.”

“Going?”

“You didn’t still think you’d be staying here, did you?”

Actually, I hadn’t thought anything. But Valerie obviously had.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Someplace with inside doors,” she said.

Chapter 97

“Good morning, Mr. Mann, how did you sleep?” asked Jeffrey Crespin, my human alarm clock. He’d taken it upon himself to shake me awake at six a.m.

How did I sleep? It’s the crack of dawn.

“Sparingly,” I was tempted to answer. But it was too early and I was too tired for glibness. “Fine,” I said instead.

He was sitting on a folding metal chair at the end of my cot, wearing a blue blazer and jeans. I guess the jeans were how he unwound on a Sunday. “Would you like some coffee?” he asked.

I looked over his shoulder to see Valerie in the doorway, taking a sip from a mug, the string from a tea bag hanging over the edge. She was wearing the same Beverly Sands outfit she’d had on four hours ago, which answered the question of where she’d spent the night. It was here.

Wherever the hell that might be.

Not only didn’t I know, I was never supposed to know. Hence the Bruce Wayne and Batcave routine after leaving the motel in Arcola. Valerie’d had the taxi take us to an underground parking garage in Fort Meade, where we got into an unmarked van, but only after she put a sack over my head. For real.

Then again, I guess that’s why they call it a safe house.

“Yeah, some coffee would be good,” I said. “Cream, if you have it. No sugar.”

“I’ll see what they have,” said Valerie before disappearing into the hallway.

Crespin leaned back in his chair, crossing his legs. “I suppose there’s also tea, but I figured you more for coffee,” he said.

“You figured right.”

“Funny thing, though. Do you know who never drinks coffee?”

“I give up.”

“Frank Karcher.”

I immediately liked where this was going, and Crespin could tell. For only the second time, I saw him smile.

“Al Dossari called him?”

“Late last night,” he said. “When he was finally feeling better, I presume.”

“What did he say?”

“Everything you told him at the bar.”

“But as soon as he heard my name...”

“That was the best part. You’d think Karcher would’ve told Al Dossari he’d been played by you, but he didn’t. He just thanked him for the heads-up.”

“It actually makes sense,” I said. “Karcher knows I don’t work for the Times. The paper doesn’t have the story.”

“And speaking of stories that aren’t real...”

Of course. “Al Dossari must have told Karcher how he first met me.”

“Exactly,” he said. “After Karcher hung up from Al Dossari, he immediately woke up Brennan. Naturally, Brennan made sure to call him right back from the secure line in his study.”

Only, thanks to Valerie’s handiwork, the NSA could listen in on that conversation, too.

“I can only imagine Brennan’s reaction,” I said.

“To tell you the truth, I think he was more upset about not actually being interviewed for the Times than he was at the prospect of spending the next ten to fifteen years folding laundry.”

“That’s a lawyer for you,” I said. “Prison is what happens to other people.”

“We’ll see. In the meantime, nice work last night. Valerie tells me you play an excellent drunk.”

“I’ve had some practice.”

“She also told me about Owen, that he’s suddenly gone missing.”

“First things first, if you don’t mind. Why didn’t you guys just tell me you knew who he was?”

Crespin didn’t hesitate. “When gauging an asset, it’s always good to know up front if what he’s telling you is true.”

“I take it I’m the so-called asset in that sentence?”

“It’s just the way we do things.”

“So you can probably guess my next question.”

“Yes,” he said. “But the answer to that one makes things a little trickier.”

Chapter 98

A little trickier? Did he really just say that?

I’d spent the night, what was left of it, sleeping in the NSA’s version of inside doors. I was in a safe house somewhere in DC on the heels of a road trip taken with a boy genius from the CIA who thought he was curing Alzheimer’s, only to discover he was really helping to create what would’ve been the ultimate interrogation tool if it weren’t for the fact that it happened to have a fail rate of forty percent. And by fail, I mean fatally.

Which would explain why the men responsible for all this were going to such extreme lengths to ensure they were never found out. And by extreme, I also mean fatally.

But now, so I was being told, things were about to get... wait for it... a little trickier.

I stared back at Crespin. “No, it’s actually simple,” I said. “You either can or can’t tell me how you know about Owen.”

“I admire that, I really do,” he said, once again without any hesitation. “Despite everything you’ve been through, you’re still capable of seeing the world in black and white.”

“Not everything is gray.”

He cocked his head. “Look around you, Mr. Mann.”

I was surrounded by cinder-block walls and concrete floors. There was the metal chair Crespin was sitting in, as well as my metal cot. Even the blanket I’d been given. All gray.

And Crespin wasn’t even being literal.

“Are you trying to change the subject?” I asked.

“No, I’m only giving it perspective,” he said. “I know about Owen Lewis because of your friend Claire Parker.”

He looked at me as if he’d just thrown a verbal grenade into our conversation. But I wasn’t sure why. After all, “I also know about Owen Lewis because of Claire Parker,” I said.

“Yes, I realize that. So now comes that trickier part I promised you.” He uncrossed his legs, his back straightening. “Claire worked for the NSA.”

Ka-boom.

It was as if all the blood had been suddenly flushed from my head. I felt dizzy, the room spinning. A big, gray blur.

“Excuse me?” I said.

“I don’t think I need to say it again.” No, he didn’t. “To be very clear, Claire was everything you thought she was, a national affairs reporter for the New York Times. She was a gifted journalist who only wrote the truth. But as I’m sure you’re aware, doing that — especially doing it at her level — takes sources.”

“You were one of her sources?”

“No, not me personally. Someone else within the NSA. The division is called Tailored Access Operations, if that means anything.”

“And in return?”

“You mean, what did she do for them?”

“Give something, get something... right?”

“Not exactly,” he said. “At least, not in the way you’re worried about. I think you know that Claire would never burn any of her sources. That’s not what she did for us.”

“Then what exactly did she do?”

Before Crespin could answer, though, we were both looking at Valerie leaning against the doorway again. She was back.

In one hand was a piece of paper, in the other a laptop.

So much for a cup of coffee.

“You need to see something,” she said.

Chapter 99

I assumed she was talking only to Crespin, especially when she walked right past me to hand him the piece of paper. He read it, glanced up at Valerie, and read it again.

Instead of handing it back to her, however, he handed it to me.

The reason was as clear as the e-mail address in the upper left-hand corner. It was mine. I was looking at a printout of an e-mail sent to me by Brennan, except I’d never seen it before.

That was when I noticed the time stamp: 5:34 a.m. Brennan had only sent it a half hour earlier.

“There’s your answer, by the way,” said Crespin.

Answer to what? “What was the question?” I asked.

“What Claire did for us,” he said. “You’re looking at it.”

That hardly cleared up anything, and he knew it. The guy had coy down to a science.

Valerie to the rescue. “Josiah Brennan didn’t send the e-mail,” she explained.

I looked down again at the paper. There was Brennan’s e-mail address underneath mine, the same address he’d been using since first confirming our supposed interview.

“If he didn’t send it, who did?” I asked. But I already knew the answer before the words had even left my mouth. “Karcher?”

“Yes,” said Crespin. “And Brennan has no idea.”

“How do you know?”

“Karcher used a certain spyware virus. As soon as you read an e-mail from him, he can then assume your identity, basically controlling your entire e-mail account. The reason we know this is because we use the same virus.”

“I still don’t get the connection to Claire,” I said.

Valerie looked over at Crespin as if to say Go ahead, boss, you’re the one who brought it up.

Crespin thought for a moment. Finally, “Imagine you’re in London to interview a certain cleric before he’s deported from the UK to Jordan,” he said. “The cleric has little trust in an American journalist — or any American, for that matter — but he’s eager to speak his mind. The international stage can be intoxicating, and no one serves up the limelight better than the New York Times. A neutral location is agreed upon, almost always a hotel, and the cleric has one of his body men search you even though they’re not quite sure what they’re looking for. A recording device? It’s an interview. Of course you have a recorder. And as far as they can tell, it looks exactly like any other recorder they’ve ever seen.”

“But it’s not,” I said.

“No, instead it hacks the hotel’s Internet service and then hacks the cleric’s cell phone. And, here’s the key, it does all of it wirelessly. Which means Claire didn’t really have to do a thing.”

“Except give her consent,” I said, unable to hold back my smirk.

Crespin nodded. “But this wasn’t just any cleric, was it?”

No, it wasn’t. This was a guy who’d been jailed repeatedly in London without ever receiving a trial. Over a bottle of Brunello one night, Claire had argued with me that he deserved one, and I’d argued back that according to the antiterrorism laws passed in Britain after 9/11, he didn’t. This was the night before she flew to London to interview him.

“Here,” said Valerie, giving me the laptop in her other hand. “You need to log on to your e-mail and cancel on Brennan.”

“Cancel?”

“Unless, of course, you’d prefer your last meal to be eggs Benedict. This is Karcher setting you up,” she said.

“Yes, the same Karcher responsible for Claire’s death,” I shot back. Forgive me for sounding a little testy.

“Listen, I get it,” said Valerie. “You want revenge, who wouldn’t? But this isn’t you pretending to be drunk with some jet-set, skirt-chasing international playboy. This is a guy who wants to kill you.”

“Which is exactly why I’ll be at the Mallard Café at eleven o’clock,” I said, as sure as I’d ever been about anything in my life. “Karcher wants to kill me, all right, but he can’t. He won’t. At least, not right away. And that’s an opportunity we can’t pass up.”

I was ready to explain, to argue my case. Yell and scream, if I had to.

But I didn’t have to. Valerie and Crespin both had that look on their faces, the kind I used to see on juries during the closing argument of every case I’d ever won. It was as if I knew exactly what they were thinking.

This guy might actually have a point.

Now all we needed was a plan.

Chapter 100

“Can I get you anything while you’re waiting?” asked the waitress, a quick tilt of her head acknowledging the empty chair across from me. Her name tag read BETSY.

If there had been more time, more options, more everything, this young woman with rolled-up sleeves would’ve been Valerie undercover, and in addition to having her hair tucked into a ponytail, she would’ve had a Beretta tucked behind the white apron with the big green M that all the servers at the Mallard Café wore.

But sometimes you just have to make do.

“I’m good for now,” I said. “Thanks, though.”

This was clearly music to Betsy’s ears. One less thing she had to do. My very real waitress had that harried look of having a few too many tables in her section. As far as I could tell, she was the only one tending to all the outdoor seating that lined the front of the café.

Betsy shuffled off, while I kept waiting, not that I’d expected to be doing anything different. Karcher would absolutely make sure I arrived first. After that, it was anyone’s guess. Including whether it would even be Karcher who showed. The guy had a history of letting others do his dirty work.

“Stop fidgeting,” came a voice in my ear.

I mean, literally in my ear. Crespin had outfitted me with what had to be the world’s tiniest transmitter. Smaller than the head of a tack, it was fully out of sight inside my ear canal.

“Sorry,” I said, only to realize that I’d just broken one of his two rules.

“What did I tell you about talking to me?” came his voice again. “And don’t answer that.”

Rule #1? Don’t talk into the mike, otherwise known as the third button down on my new NSA-brand shirt. Fifty percent cotton/poly blend with a five-hundred-foot range. If Karcher — or whoever he might send — was scouting me, I could ill afford to be seen talking to myself. The wire was so Crespin could hear what I heard.

“It’s going to be fine, Mann,” he was now assuring me. “Everything’s going to be—”

The way his voice suddenly cut out, my first thought was that the transmitter in my ear had failed. But Crespin was just seeing what I couldn’t.

“Don’t turn around, don’t even flinch,” he said. “He’s approaching you from behind at twenty feet... fifteen... ten...”

A voice boomed over my shoulder. “Is this seat taken?”

It was now.

Frank Karcher sat down before I could even look up. Jesus, he had a big head. It was even bigger in person.

I feigned surprise as best I could. I was supposed to be waiting for Brennan, after all.

“Excuse me, I think you have the wrong table,” I said.

Karcher broke into a wide grin. “No, this is definitely the right table. You just picked the wrong fight,” he said, glancing at his watch. “The only question now is how long you’ll pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

Said question hung in the air as I pretended to be thinking it over. But I already knew my answer. So far, we were right on script.

“I know exactly what you’re talking about,” I said finally. “I know who you are and what you’ve done. I also know it’s all about to end.”

Again with the grin. Those had to be veneers. “Interesting choice of words,” he said. “Do me a favor, though, will you, Mr. Mann? Take a good look under the table.”

“I don’t need to,” I said. “You’re not the first person this week to point a gun at me.”

“You’re right,” he said. “But I am the last.”

Chapter 101

It was my turn to smile, forced and short-lived as the smile was. You can only pretend for so long that you don’t have a gun aimed at your crotch.

“If the only thing you wanted was me dead, you would’ve killed me by now,” I said. “We both know that.”

And there it was, the only way I’d been able to convince Valerie and Crespin that I wouldn’t be a complete sitting duck, if you will, at the Mallard Café. Karcher desperately wanted Owen — “the kid” — and I presumably knew where he was.

Fitting irony that I actually didn’t.

Not that Karcher was about to be told that. As long as he thought I knew Owen’s whereabouts, he believed there was the chance he could get it out of me.

That’s the folly of arrogant men, isn’t it? They always overestimate their talents.

“Are you really that much of a hero, Mr. Mann?” he asked. “I don’t know what the kid told you, but it’s not what you think.”

“No, it’s exactly what I think,” I said. “Somewhere along the line, you convinced yourself that you’re above the law, that you get to decide who lives and who dies. But the biggest lie of them all? It’s when you claim you’re simply protecting freedom.”

“Freedom? Just where the hell have you been this century? We should be so damn lucky,” he said. “That’s what you self-righteous pricks have never understood, not ever.”

“Then why don’t you enlighten me?”

“Why don’t you shut the fuck up?”

“Easy now...” came Crespin’s voice in my ear.

Crespin was right. On a risk scale of one to ten, I was already pushing eleven. My letting Karcher lose his temper was upward of just plain dumb. Sure, maybe he’d slip up and admit everything. Or maybe he’d just get pissed off and kill me right there at the table.

I leaned back in my chair, hoping to let a little air out of the moment. Diffuse the tension. But it was too late. Karcher was revved up, and like a pit bull, he wasn’t about to let the point go.

“Do you know what I remember most about that day? It’s not the image of the towers coming down. Not even close. What’s seared into my brain, what will stick forever, are the people on the street watching it happen,” he said. “And do you know what they were all doing as they were looking up in horror? They were all mouthing the same three words. Oh, my God.”

“I was one of those people,” I said. “I was there.”

It was as if he didn’t hear me. “Now, I’m a devout Christian, but I know for a fact that the God they were all invoking that day wasn’t there. And for those who say he was, and that his job is not to intervene, I ask... whose job is it? If God won’t prevent the next time, who will? And trust me, there will be a next time.”

“So that’s it, then?” I said. “You’re now God’s understudy? It doesn’t matter who you kill — a reporter for the Times, a doctor with a guilty conscience, or even other people from your company picnic — because it’s all part of a bigger plan, one that the rest of us couldn’t possibly understand?”

“Every war has casualties, Mr. Mann. But I’m guessing you’ve never fought in one, have you?”

“That makes me lucky, not brain-dead,” I said. “What’s your excuse?”

Damn. Wrong button.

Karcher’s face flushed red in an instant, the veins in his stumplike neck bulging out above his collar.

“You know what? Fuck the kid,” he said. “I don’t care if you know where he is, you can take that to your goddamn grave.”

But all I really heard was Crespin’s panicked voice in my ear. “Quick, tell him you know where Owen is!”

Crespin didn’t need to see the deranged look in Karcher’s eyes. He could hear the craziness in his voice, the way he referred to my grave as if it were imminent.

I needed to stall.

But again, it was too late. With the slightest flinch — small but telling — I’d just broken Crespin’s second rule. Whatever you do, don’t look like you’ve got someone talking in your ear.

“Jesus Christ,” said Karcher. “You’re not alone, are you?”

Chapter 102

“No, he’s definitely not alone,” she said.

I turned to see Valerie pulling up a chair to our table. She couldn’t play the waitress, but her being seated nearby was the next best thing. And with her mirrored sunglasses and jet-black wig, there was no way Karcher would’ve recognized her.

He still didn’t.

The Beretta in her lap, however, he spotted instantly, and it sure as hell wasn’t pointed at me.

Give the prick some credit, though. Karcher barely blinked. “Friend of yours, Mr. Mann?” he asked coolly.

“One of many,” said Valerie. “Which is why you need to wrap your weapon in that napkin and place it slowly on the table.”

Karcher looked down at the napkin in front of him like it was a piece of enriched plutonium. He had no intention of touching it.

“Thank you for the suggestion, young lady, but I think I’ll pass,” he said. “It might be a good idea for you to do it, though.”

Those should’ve been the words of a madman, a last-ditch effort to buy some time in this chess match, using little more than misdirection and a touch of outright confusion. Call it Karcher’s Gambit.

But the tone was more cocky than confused. He was too sure of himself. He knew something we didn’t, and I couldn’t stop the feeling of pure dread that was suddenly spreading from the pit of my stomach.

I looked at Valerie, and for the first time, she took her eyes off Karcher to look back at me, if only for a split second. But that was all the time it took.

“Shit,” she muttered.

Karcher smiled. “Looks like I’ve got some friends, too,” he said.

“Show him,” came Crespin’s voice in my ear, only he wasn’t talking to me. Valerie was wearing the same transmitter. With her eyes locked back on Karcher, she removed her sunglasses so I could see what the hell was going on.

“Shit,” I muttered.

Staring back at me in the mirrored lenses was a new addition to my forehead. The small red dot of a laser sight. I was one squeeze of a trigger away from having my brains blown out, which somehow managed to trump getting shot in the crotch. Either way, it was suddenly a lose-lose.

We were definitely off script now...

“I know you, don’t I?” asked Karcher, staring straight back into Valerie’s naked eyes.

“Maybe,” she answered. “Or maybe not. But I definitely know you.”

“What about Mr. Mann here?” he said. “How much do you really know about him?”

“Enough to be sitting here,” she said.

“Keep stalling him,” came Crespin’s voice in our ears.

“I suppose you know more, though?” Valerie tacked on.

“He shot a federal agent in Manhattan, for starters, and got a detective up there killed as well.”

Karcher looked at me to see if I’d take the bait and try to argue otherwise. All along, he’d been defending himself without admitting to anything. Now he was hoping I’d trip myself up in the heat of the moment so he could build some semblance of reasonable doubt.

But I gave him the best comeback I could. Silence.

Not Valerie, though.

“What about outstanding parking tickets?” she deadpanned. “Does he have any of those as well?”

“No, but he does have a dead guy in his bathtub. I forgot to mention that,” Karcher said, his voice tinged with what could only be described as glee. Extra creepy on a guy his size. “The police searched his apartment yesterday.”

“You know, if there was only some way I knew you were telling the truth, some type of method,” she said. “Wouldn’t that be something? I mean, what wouldn’t we all give for that?”

Karcher deflected her with a chuckle, but it was quickly drowned out by something else I was hearing.

My head was suddenly filled with footsteps, only they were more than steps. They were strides. Crespin was running, his breathing heavy as if he were in a full sprint. I knew Valerie could hear it, too, but she kept right on talking to Karcher. Stalling him.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something that I really, truly wished I hadn’t.

Chapter 103

No! No! No!

I wanted so desperately to signal her somehow, wave my hands and tell her she had to stop. But I was helpless; I knew I couldn’t. It would be like yanking the pin on a grenade.

The waitress. Betsy. Ponytail and rolled-up sleeves. She was heading to our table.

“Huh, looks like we have a party of three,” she said, pulling up between Karcher and Valerie. She was half distracted, clutching her order pad while searching for a pen in the deep pocket of her apron. “If you’d like, I can move you all to another table.”

“No, that’s okay, I was just saying hello to these guys,” said Valerie, flashing a polite smile. “I’ll be getting up in few seconds.”

But from the moment I felt the tap on my foot underneath the table, I realized this wasn’t just a figure of speech. Valerie was giving me a signal. In a few seconds, she really was getting up, and the reason was right in front of me. Literally.

Our waitress, Betsy, was directly in the line of fire.

I stole a peek at Valerie’s sunglasses now folded on the table, the lenses angled up toward my face.

The only question was whether or not Karcher had noticed, too.

Asked and answered.

Karcher’s eyes lit up as he glanced at me. He saw it. Or, rather, he didn’t see it. The red dot on me from the laser sight was gone, blocked by the—

“Now!” yelled Valerie.

She had Karcher in no-man’s-land, his hand swinging. For a fraction of a second, he was undecided where to aim his gun.

A hell of a lot can happen in a fraction of a second.

Valerie lunged for Karcher as I sprang from my chair, the sound of Crespin in my ear, still sprinting, matching the pounding of my heart.

Betsy had no idea what was happening; she immediately jumped back based on nothing but reflex and fear of the unknown. I was heading right for her, no stopping, the M on her apron the target of my dive.

I could feel the wind being knocked out of her as I tackled her to the ground, the crack of a rifle shot from only-God-knows-where splitting the air above us. But nothing more.

Small comfort. Oswald’s first shot in Dealey Plaza missed, too.

I turned my head, looking up to see Valerie still struggling with Karcher, each with a hand on the other’s gun. He outweighed her by nearly a hundred pounds, but she’d gotten to her feet first and had the leverage. For how long, though?

“Stay down!” I barked at Betsy, as if there were a chance in the world she was about to get up.

No, that was my job now.

Palms down, I began to push off the ground, my eyes trained on Karcher. His face and neck were a mishmash of muscle and tendon straining for all the strength he had. Slowly, his gun was moving back toward Valerie. She had about six inches to live.

That was when I saw it. The only thing that could make things worse. And only one word came to mind to warn her.

“Red!” I yelled.

I don’t know what came next, what I heard or what I saw. But Valerie knew what I meant and knew her geometry, and as the second shot echoed in my ears I saw her step back and take Karcher with her, the dot jumping from her back...

To his.

The only red now was blood. Lots and lots of it. Karcher fell to the ground faceup and only inches from Betsy, who shrieked in horror as she caught sight of the gaping hole in his barrel chest from the exit wound.

“Drop it! Drop your weapon right now!”

Valerie and I turned to each other and then up to the rooftop down the street. It was Crespin in our ears. He was done running. I don’t know if God actually knew where the shots were coming from. But now Crespin did. He’d reached Karcher’s sniper.

“I got him... it’s over,” he said, catching his breath. “It’s over.”

Of course, if that were only true...