by R. A. McGee
Clark spent a moment wondering how McHenry could have known he was back in town. He knew Miri hadn’t told; Lucy wouldn’t have told either, if she could help it. Ultimately, it didn’t matter. The Old Man had many tricks, and Clark was sure he hadn’t learned them all. Knowing when he’d crossed the border probably hadn’t been too hard to pull off.
Clark paid the cabbie, who was saying something about cherry blossoms, and stepped out into the parking lot of Blackthorn headquarters.
From the outside, it appeared to be any other office building. It very nearly was. Five stories, brick, with a neatly maintained lawn and topiary setup. Two sets of wide concrete stairs leading up to the lobby.
Clark pulled the glass door and walked into the lobby. The space was cool, with tile running throughout and the sunlight streaming through the open windows giving a false appearance of warmth.
A man in a security guard’s outfit stood at a walk-through metal detector, and another stood at a truncated version of an x-ray machine.
This kind of security was normal for government buildings, and although this building was populated by mostly private entities, they all welcomed a bit of security in the changing times. None of them blinked an eye when they came to see the building before signing a lease and found an x-ray machine.
“Mr. Clark? That you?”
The man at the metal detector stepped forward, extending his hand. He was a white man, a bit north of middle-aged, with a clean-shaven face and a twinkle in his eye.
“Phillip. How’ve you been?”
“Damn good. I haven’t seen you in a while,” the guard said.
“I’ve been really busy. Out of the country for business. Still been keeping up with the Redskins, though.”
“Don’t even get me started,” Phillip said. “Those guys are the ultimate choke artists. They couldn’t win if they bribed the refs.”
“I was just thinking of you watching the game the other day,” Clark lied. “You might think about switching teams at some point. Think of all the heartache you’d save. Might even add a few years to your life. I hear the Giants are always looking for new fans.”
Phillip made an exaggerated spitting motion. “I’d rather castrate myself than root for the G-men. Got a knife on you? I’ll do it right now.”
The man laughed and Clark smiled. “So, Phil, I left my stuff at home. Any chance you can let me up?”
“You? Of course—why would I stop you?” He stepped back and waved Clark through the metal detector. Clark set the alarm off, and pulled out his phones.
“Must be these.”
“I don’t care. I know you. It’s the other weirdos I worry about. None of them could ever get past me with anything. I’m too alert.”
The man at the x-ray machine snorted and Phillip’s head swung toward him. “What’s so funny, Herm? Huh? No one asked you. You just try to stay awake today, okay?”
Clark clapped the man on the shoulder. “I don’t have my swipe card. Can you key me up to the office?”
Phillip nodded and walked the two dozen feet to the elevator, which was sitting open. The two men stepped in and Phillip swiped his card, then keyed the top floor. He stepped off the elevator. “It was great to see you, Mr. Clark, but if you don’t mind, I’m going to forget you even mentioned the Giants to me.”
As the elevator door closed, Clark said, “I’m going to sign you up for their mailing list.”
Phillip began to answer, but the doors clanged shut and the elevator ascended. Past the floors of legitimate businesses—law offices and architecture firms and counseling services. Clark rose past all of them, onto the secure top floor, which belonged entirely to Blackthorn.
Stepping off the elevator, Clark was greeted by a receptionist he’d never met before. A new hire, in the couple of months he’d been away.
The girl had fair skin and red hair. Clark was struck for a moment, looking at the young woman. She reminded him of… a different time.
“Sir?” the receptionist said. She looked at him in confusion. His San Diego Zoo T-shirt was out of place, and Clark could have used a haircut and shave. “Do you have an appointment? Are you on the right floor?”
Clark shook his head and smiled. “Lisa? That your name?” He pointed to the nameplate on her desk.
“Yes. What can I do for you?”
“I need to see McHenry.”
“I’m sorry, there isn’t anyone here by that name,” Lisa said.
“Right, you’re supposed to say that. Listen, McHenry works in that big office in the back. Call Rita and tell her Clark’s here and wants to see him. Go ahead.”
Lisa looked warily at Clark.
“Trust me. It’s okay. You won't get in trouble.”
The pretty redhead picked up the phone and punched a four-digit extension. “Rita? Yes, I have someone up here named Clark. That ring a bell?”
Lisa’s eyes moved back to Clark. “Yes. Beard. Tattoos. Got it. Thanks.” She hung up the phone.
“I’m sorry to do that to you, Mr. Clark. I’m sure you understand.”
“Of course. Physical security is your biggest job.”
“Thanks for understanding. You can go back. Rita says she’s not coming up to get you, she says you know the way.”
Clark smiled as the woman went back to her computer. He lingered for a moment, watching her work. She turned back. “Anything else?”
“No, Lisa. Nothing.”
Clark walked a well-known path, through the maze of cubicles and offices.
An uninformed person would not have been faulted for thinking that the office space belonged to another law office or architecture firm. From the outside, there was nothing to connect the dots that Blackthorn was a clandestine response team.
A handful of employees saw him, all acknowledging him with handshakes or hugs. It was one of the rare times since he’d been gone that Clark missed the organization.
“What the matter, quitting didn’t stick with you?” said a voice with a thick country accent.
Clark recognized the voice immediately, without turning around. “I’m too dumb to stay away.”
“Well, no one ever accused you of being smart.”
Clark turned to face Terry Hakagawa. A well-muscled man, he was a bit shorter than Clark, and a bit lighter, but tough as an overcooked steak.
The grandson of Japanese immigrants who’d moved to the deep south, Terry looked like a samurai and sounded like a country farmer. He’d been in a Marine Force Recon company before quitting to pursue other things.
Hakagawa was a team leader for another Blackthorn team; during Clark’s tenure, they’d had a friendly rivalry for whose team was the most successful at their missions. Clark usually came out on top, but Hakagawa and his team weren’t far behind.
“Good to see you, Terry,” Clark said, giving the man the type of half-handshake, half-hug that men did.
“You too, big man. You back in the game?” Hakagawa’s accent dragged out the ‘a’ in game.
“Negative. Just finishing up some stuff. Then I’m ghost again.”
“Fair enough. If you’re gonna be around, maybe we’ll meet up later.”
“I’d like that,” Clark said, clapping the man on the back and continuing deeper into the office until he came up to a desk.
“Rita,” he said, walking up to the older woman. “You’ve done something with your hair.”
“No, I did something almost a month ago, but you weren’t here to see it. You’re the only one who ever notices when I do something to this mop.” She walked around her desk and reached up to hug Clark. He leaned down, gentle with the receptionist.
“He back there?”
“Ornery as ever. I didn’t tell him you were here, I figured he’d love the surprise.”
“Perfect,” Clark said.
He walked past the desk and down the hallway, passing the private bathroom that was McHenry’s. The white noise generator was on outside McHenry’s door, so Clark knocked twice before openin
g. He should have waited, but he wanted his former boss as off guard as possible.
“McHenry? You in here?” Clark said, opening the door.
McHenry was sitting behind his desk, a flip phone at his ear. “Clark?”
“That’s right.”
McHenry spoke into the phone. “I’ll have to call you back.” He flipped the phone closed and placed it in the already open top drawer of his desk, sliding it shut.
“You got a minute?”
“For you? All the time in the world.”
Thirty-Seven
Clark watched McHenry stiffly stand and offer a hand. He was always surprised at the strength in the Old Man’s grip. He often wondered how much of the doddering, kindly boss routine was an act.
At this point, he was inclined to believe all of it was for show.
“I’m surprised to see you,” McHenry said.
“Thought I’d drop in and see how you were.”
“I thought you were in Brazil.”
“Brazil? Why’d you think that?”
“No reason,” McHenry said. “I’ll take it Miri found you, then?”
“I haven’t seen her since I left,” Clark lied. “No clue where she is.”
“Really? A couple days ago, I sent her down to catch up with you in Mexico. I figured she was the catalyst that brought you back.”
“Nope. Just finished up in Mexico, and figured I needed to come back to the States and tie up a few loose ends. After that, who knows?”
McHenry shifted in his chair. “Loose ends? Anything I can help you with?”
“Maybe you can. The last few months have been a blur for me. Ever since Samantha… has been gone, I’m not sure I have the best memory anymore.”
“That’s pretty common, from what I’ve heard. People who have a trauma tend to shut down and compartmentalize the pieces of them that aren’t comfortable to think about.”
“I’d call my fiancée being blown up and melted in front of my eyes pretty uncomfortable.”
McHenry shifted in his seat. “I don’t mean to sound flippant. I can't even imagine what you went through.”
“Don’t try. It’s not worth the mental pictures,” Clark said, closing his eyes for a moment. “Not worth it at all.”
McHenry leaned back in his chair. “How can I help?”
“You sure you want to?”
“Of course, Clark. You’re part of the family. Hell, this place hasn’t been the same since you’ve been gone. All the other operators look up to you. They know you’re my favorite. It’s not really fair to say that, but it is what it is.”
“Your favorite?”
“I’ll admit that when I first recruited you out of Delta, I wasn’t sure how things would play out. I mean, I knew you had all the tools for the job, but there’s no telling how well personalities will mesh. Now that I’ve known you the past few years, I wouldn’t be wrong in saying you’re the best. This place doesn't run as well without you here.
“And, if I may add a more personal note? I feel like we’ve connected over the years. I’d like to think the way I feel about you is reciprocated. That level of respect and admiration.”
“It was,” Clark said.
McHenry paused for a moment. “When I say I want to help you any way I can, you know I’m telling the truth. Right?”
“‘Truth’ is such a funny word. I always assume everyone is telling me the truth until they give me a reason to distrust them. No one I trust has to convince me they’re being truthful.”
“Good. Then you know where I stand.”
“I think I do,” Clark said. “I finally think I do.”
McHenry looked at Clark and began to speak, but was cut off.
“When Samantha died, we were right to assume it was one of the cartels, right? Payback for me killing Torres. We didn’t miss anything obvious, did we?”
McHenry steepled his fingers. “I’ve thought about the cartels often since then. I don’t think we missed anything.”
“What I didn’t understand was, how did the cartel know who I was? How did they figure out where I lived so quickly? It never made sense to me.”
“Made? Past tense? As in, it makes sense now?”
“It’s starting to,” Clark said. He looked the old man in the eyes, looking for a tell. Looking for any bit of information the man code-named Ulysses could give him.
The elderly spymaster was rock solid, his expression displaying only care.
“I originally thought it was Butterfield. I mean, he got Miri kidnapped, right? If he was leaking information to Petrovsky and the Russians, then he was rotten to the core. He never liked me, anyway. It would have been very easy for him to dime me out to the cartel.
“But then I started to think about Lucy. She’s so damn good at her job. If she sifted through all the information and decided that Butterfield was guilty of giving Miri up, but not me, how could I argue? I don’t second-guess her; the girl’s a genius.”
“Clark, I’m not sure what—”
“You know what I’m starting to believe? That I’ll never figure it out. Despite how much I want to fillet every fucking ounce of flesh off the person who got Samantha killed, I may just have to let it go.”
McHenry nodded. “Sometimes, all the intelligence in the world can’t give us what we need the most.”
As McHenry talked, Clark slipped his hand into his pocket, flipping open the burner phone. Feeling around to find the call button, he paused for a moment.
“If I could find out who did it, they would need to die, right? We agree on that, don’t we? I’ve done plenty of shit that I’m proud of and some things I’m not, so I’m not calibrated like I used to be. But messing with a man’s family is still off-limits, isn’t it?”
“There’s still a code,” McHenry said. “Some people choose not to follow it these days, but the best among us do.”
“A code. Definitely. What’s that thing you always tell me? Succeed…”
“By any means necessary,” McHenry finished. “That’s right. We do what we must to accomplish our goals. In this case, should you ever find out who did this to you, who destroyed your life like this, you should take any and all actions to make things right. Hell, I’d be right there helping you.”
“I’m glad we agree.” Clark pressed the dial button on the phone in his pocket. He never stopped looking at McHenry.
Moments later, there was a vibrating noise in the top drawer of McHenry’s desk. His eyes went to the noise. “Will you excuse me for a second?”
Clark watched as McHenry opened the drawer and retrieved the vibrating telephone. He looked at the number, then slowly up at Clark. The phone kept vibrating the entire time.
Clark closed the phone in his pocket. His face flushed and he felt heat crawling all the way down his neck. His breath caught in his chest and he had to concentrate to keep breathing.
McHenry placed the phone down on the desk in between them. His eyes went from Clark, to the phone, and back to the phone.
It was all Clark could do not to reach over and strangle the old man to death in his very seat. Instead, Clark stood and walked to the door. He opened it slowly and looked back at his friend and mentor, watching the man’s mouth open and close silently, like a fish out of water.
“Goodbye, McHenry,” he said, and closed the door behind him.
Thirty-Eight
Jack McHenry watched the door close behind Clark. Then he hurled the flip phone across the room, sending it flying against a bookshelf. He stood, pain in his hip be damned, and raked his hand across his desk, hurling everything to the floor. He picked up a commemorative putter from the plaque it hung on, and slammed it over and over into the wall, tearing through the drywall and leaving it pockmarked.
He limped over to the sofa in the back of his office and dropped heavily onto the old leather cushion. McHenry pursed his lips and stared at his desk, not focused on anything.
How the hell did he find that phone? Why didn’t that stupid Mexic
an asshole get rid of it when he was done with it?
McHenry adjusted on his sofa and put his hands in his lap. In an almost futile attempt to calm himself, he started replaying everything in his mind.
Things were not going as they should have.
In the course of his career, McHenry had played hundreds of people. In fact, it was that talent that had gotten him his job at the CIA as a young man fresh out of the Vietnam jungle. His ability to understand a person, then make them do what he wanted, and make them think it was their idea, was uncanny.
Long ago, he’d sat for the job that got his foot in the spy door. Sitting in a cold, gray waiting room, wearing a badly fitted suit, McHenry had looked to his left and right at two other applicants for the same analyst job. Each of the men was a little better dressed, a little bigger, and a bit better looking than McHenry.
He was used to it. The son of a single mother, McHenry had grown up in a poor section of Philadelphia, right after the Depression. His father was one of many men who went out in search of an elusive pack of cigarettes and never came home.
McHenry’s mother had been miscast in her life. Her tastes tended toward the academic, and she viewed the pursuit of intelligence as a worthwhile goal. Still, this was difficult for a woman in the forties, especially one who needed to provide for a hungry mouth. Instead, McHenry’s mother spent all her available time cleaning people’s homes and doing their laundry, her pursuit of academia permanently dead in its tracks.
Mrs. McHenry had to settle for naming her only son James Joyce, after her favorite fiction writer.
Though his childhood had been difficult, McHenry had managed to consistently keep his marks high in school, always at the head of the class. While his mother was out at work, young James would come home, lock himself in the small, drafty flat that they shared, and finish up his schoolwork before becoming lost in a world of fiction. As a young boy, McHenry’s favorite was Mark Twain and his amazing literary creations.
His mother was proud, but the rest of the children weren’t impressed with him. A loner for most of his childhood, he’d joined the military and found that he was adept at the life of a soldier, eventually making it through Special Forces selection and being one of the first “military advisors” to South Vietnam.