"Miss, can you tell us what happened?"
She nodded to herself, as though in affirmation of something. Then she looked up and met Arkin's eyes in the rearview mirror. "Mah husban say I was a dirty ho."
"Did you have an argument?"
"He said I was a whore. Pull over here," she said, her speech suddenly clear.
Arkin did as she asked, bringing the truck to a halt at the end of a winding and potholed gravel driveway that disappeared into the forest. "Miss, I think we should get you some help." As he said this, the first hint of realization began to set in. Something had changed in her voice. The pain and fear in it had gone. Even the distorting impediment of her swollen lips seemed to have vanished. Her voice was icy and clear.
She opened the door, jumped out, then walked up to Arkin's open window.
"Yessir. Said I was a whore." Her face had grown dark and hateful. "But I'll tell you one thing I've never heard him say. I never heard him say, while we were laying in bed on a Tuesday night a couple of months ago, 'tomorrow I'm gonna cut that Jew nigger grocery clerk's balls off and push them one-by-one down his throat with my thumb and make him swallow them before I shoot his Jew nigger ass.' No, he definitely never said anything like that." Her eyes bugging out, she burst out laughing, a loud, dry, and sinister heavy smoker's cackle. "No, sir. Never heard him say anything about how we're gonna burn all the Jews and niggers and Arabs and faggots." She laughed again, a laugh of sheer homicidal insanity. "Well," she said, giving Arkin's door a couple of see-you-round taps with her knuckles, "thanks for the ride, George and Hank. Y'all run along home to Washington now. We'll see you again soon, when we march on your city with the armies of the Lord. And there won't be nowhere for you Jew lovers to hide." She turned to walk away.
Arkin jumped from the truck and had her handcuffed, face down in the prone position alongside the truck, in seconds. Keeping one knee pressed into her back with far more pressure than was necessary, he reached over, grabbed a radio from under the driver's seat, and called in the emergency takedown code. "Harpoon One Actual, Harpoon Two. Kayak, kayak, kayak!" He repeated his transmission, still kneeling on her back, the truck still running, parked in the middle of a lonely country road under a cold canopy of stars.
"Harpoon Two, Harpoon One has solid copy on kayak. Over." It was the somber voice of Sheffield's radio operator. Sheffield was still MIA, but it no longer mattered. In a matter of minutes, McGill and all his known co-conspirators, from Maryland to South Carolina, would be in custody.
For a long time afterward, Arkin would wonder whether the whole beating had been an act, premeditated by McGill and his criminally insane wife, to draw out the surveillance they must have suspected. And he would wish, far more than he would care to admit to himself, that he'd taken that shot.
*****
"Why are you telling me this now?" Hannah asked him as he continued to stare out the hospital window.
"I don't know. It just sort of popped into the forefront of my mind."
"You look troubled."
"Dark days."
"And you have a lot on your plate right now."
"Yes."
"Nate?"
"Yes?"
"You're going to be okay."
Arkin turned from the window and met her eyes. Here was his wife, lying in a hospital bed, her body stricken, focused not on her own well-being, but his. She never ceased to amaze him.
*****
As he left the hospital, Arkin called Paul Regan to see if there had been any progress in the arson investigation.
"Hey, I was just about to call you."
"What's up?"
"Well, uh. . . ."
"What?"
"We—we have a little problem."
"What is it?"
"Did you have anybody at your house last night?"
"No. Why?"
"DF&R found a body in your basement."
"A body."
"Face charred beyond recognition. Hands burned so badly we'll never get a usable print. But there was enough of him left to tell he was a Caucasian male, approximately 6-foot-2, 190 to 200 pounds, with a lot of broken bones and a missing left pinkie finger."
Holy shit. "Maybe it was the arsonist."
"That would have been my first thought too, except it looks like he was bound to a chair, gagged, and shot through the liver."
"Shot?" Arkin processed the implications, his first thought being that a shot through the soft part of the body where the liver was would probably mean DPD would find a largely intact bullet to analyze. Whether that was good or bad depended on the thoroughness of whoever was setting him up.
"We recovered a .45 bullet from an exposed pine joist. So I need your gun. Just to eliminate you as a suspect. For the record, Nate, I know this is bullshit. I mean, I know you didn't shoot this guy, and that there is something funny going on here. But I have to follow procedure."
"It's okay. Can I bring it by around lunch time?"
"That would be fine. Do you have another gun you can carry while the lab has your .45?"
"I have my .40, a short barrel Remington 870, and an MP5."
"That ought to hold you."
"I'll be alright. Hey, listen, let the coroner know that he should check for evidence that the bullet wound was post-mortem."
"Sure. But why?"
"If I told you, you wouldn't believe me. Let's call it a gut feeling."
"I'll do it. By the way, they still have to test the swabs, but it looks like you were right. Someone poured kerosene all over the place before lighting your house."
"Well, lucky for me, when you see how worthless my insurance is, you'll know I didn't torch my house for the payout."
*****
As Arkin drove toward his office, he got another call from Scott O'Neil.
"Scott, what's the good news?"
"The news is bad, Nate."
"What's wrong?"
"Seventh floor ordered me to suspend you."
Arkin was half expecting this, but not so soon. "Should I ask why?"
"Your NCIC and other database logs were audited."
"What a coincidence."
"There were a lot of queries under your I.D. that didn't appear to tie to names listed in your assigned cases. You'll have an opportunity to explain. But for now, your access is frozen and you're on administrative leave. You can hang onto your guns."
"Super."
"I warned you about this."
Troubled at the rapidity with which his MWA superiors had learned of his unauthorized activity, Arkin was nevertheless thankful they apparently hadn't yet learned of the subpoena forgery: a far more serious infraction.
*****
"Already?" Morrison said, after Arkin told him of his suspension. "What's it been, maybe 48 hours since you queried NCIC?" They leaned against Morrison's ATF Tahoe, on a rutted dirt road alongside the Animas, watching a lone fly fisherman casting across the trailing edge of a riffle 80 yards upriver. The air smelled of sagebrush and dry grass.
"Presumably," Arkin said, "there is someone either in or somehow affiliated with DCI who has enough clout to make the political appointees at MWA do his bidding."
"Or her bidding."
"Of course, it's possible the Priest group has penetrated MWA as well."
"What about Killick?"
"Nah."
"How well do you know him?"
"We've been friends since Basic Recon. Things got a little awkward after my banishment, but he's a decent enough guy. More importantly, I don't think he has the chops to run something like this. Something this complicated."
"He's DCI's director of operations."
"Morrison, please. Since when was promotion based on merit or ability in the federal law enforcement community?" He smiled weakly. "I'm starting to sound like you."
"You're getting smarter, is what it is. My point is does his rank and his access, not to mention your sharing information with him, make him the logical suspect."
"Hard to b
elieve."
"Harder than anything else about this case?"
Arkin nodded. "You have a point. How would you test your theory?"
"Let me set up a perfect static post somewhere fairly remote, with only one access road. Then you call him on his encrypted line. Use your new burner. Tell him you've got the name of the Canadian company, and then tell him where you are."
"If Killick's the mole, and if I don't come out and give him the name of the company, he'll smell a rat."
"Then just tell him where you are. If he's the mole, then at the very least, he'll dispatch a team to keep an eye on you."
"Where are we going to do this?"
"How about Sundial Ranch, on Road 243, up above Lemon Reservoir? They have a long access road that curves up through the woods, and you can't see the parking lot for their cabins until you get way the hell up there. It's perfect. Plus, it's low season for tourism, and hunting season is closed, so there aren't too many people who will have a good reason to be up there on that access road. Should make a tail easy to spot."
"That works."
"You don't even have to be there. Just make the call. I'll be up above the road, with eyes on."
"When are we going to do this?"
"How about first thing in the morning?"
*****
"Nate, it's Paul Regan again."
"Regan. Don't tell me my .45 is the murder weapon. That'll ruin my whole evening."
"No, but someone red-flagged it. Next thing we knew, some fed came and took it right out of our inventory as Dominique was boxing it up for the state lab."
"A fed? But it's a state case."
"I know. I don't know what they told Ops, but they let them take it."
"A fed with what agency?"
"I don't know. I wasn't there. But there's more."
"More?"
"Feds brought a dog. They're saying it keyed on your car."
"Keyed for what? Cocaine?"
"Kerosene."
Arkin digested this. "This is getting downright spooky, Paul."
"Yes, it is."
"Did you review my insurance?"
"I did."
"So you know I have nothing to gain by burning my own house down."
"Look, Nate, I know you're being set up here. Some crazy fed conspiracy like in the movies. I just know it. But you gotta come in for questioning. I gotta cover my ass, even if this is total bullshit"
"I know."
"I don't like this."
"I don't either."
"I have a bad feeling the feds are going to toss us an arrest warrant." Regan sighed. "Go spend time with your wife. Don't come in until tomorrow."
"Thanks, Paul. Thanks for the heads-up."
*****
That evening, Hannah looked worse. The skin of her face was colorless and sagging. She looked like she'd aged twenty years in a week. She wasn't eating, and strange bruises had appeared along both of her forearms. Arkin had brought her a large bouquet of brightly colored flowers from City Market, but it did little to cheer her.
"We've got to get you out of here. To the city. To somewhere where they have more treatment options." She just gazed at him from her bed with a weak smile on her face. It was obvious that the altered chemo regimen was breaking her down. But he wasn't about to say that. Nor did he have any intention of troubling her with his situation at work. It would only add to her anxiety. And she'd be upset with him for taking such stupid risks. Anyway, his medical insurance was still active, despite his suspension. For the moment, that was all that mattered.
TWENTY-FOUR
Sometime that night, Arkin had a dream involving himself, Sheffield, and Killick. In it, Arkin recalled part of a real conversation they had many years earlier—when he and Killick were still colleagues and Sheffield was their boss. The three of them sat in the U.S. Department of Justice cafeteria, at the headquarters building off Constitution Avenue. Arkin had been awarded the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal in an elaborate ceremony that morning. As he woke from the dream, he relived the rest of the conversation.
"Magnificent work," Sheffield had told him. "I'm sincerely proud of you, Nathaniel."
"So proud that we're celebrating by having lunch in the DOJ cafeteria."
"Don't be a mope," Killick said.
"A mope? They just handed me the law enforcement equivalent of the CMH. I should be at the head of a tickertape parade."
"Glad to see it hasn't gone to your head," Killick said.
"Hey, at the very least, you two should be buying me hundred-year-old scotches at the Capital Grille right now. It smells like my grandmother's nursing home in here."
Sheffield smiled at him. "In due time, old boy. In due time. I have to meet with the notorious inter-agency steering committee in an hour. Can't be floating in there smelling of single malt and cigars. How about tonight? And you can bring your lovely wife."
"That sounds wonderful."
"In the meantime, how about a green JELL-O cup?" Killick asked. "They're fresh."
"Really though, Nate, excellent, excellent work," Sheffield said.
Arkin poked at a lump of gluey Department of Justice mashed potatoes with his fork. "Thanks."
Sheffield and Killick glanced at each other.
"You don't sound all that enthusiastic," Killick said.
"No, I am."
"You are?"
"Sure. Yes. I guess I just find it a bit incongruous that they gave me this medal, at least in part, for the Appomattox operation."
"Why?"
"Because technically, the operation was blown. McGill smoked us out. He baited us with his savagery, and we fell for it."
"You saved hundreds of lives."
"We got lucky. We were lucky in that we'd already been watching him long enough to know how to disrupt the immediate conspiracy. We were lucky he didn't smoke us out earlier. But. . . ." Arkin stopped himself.
"Go ahead," Sheffield said. "Get it off your chest."
Arkin looked up. "It's along the lines of what I told you at the debriefing in Lynchburg. Bottom line, McGill's tactics beat our tactics."
"Like hell," Killick said. "McGill's in prison. His plot was foiled."
"But he flushed us out. The operation wasn't over yet. Things happened on his schedule, not ours."
"You're splitting hairs."
"Some of McGill's co-conspirators may still be out there, regrouping. People we hadn't picked up on before he flushed us, out there re-plotting the bombing. It may not be a serious possibility. But my point is that the McGills of the world are going to beat us more often than they should. Why? Because you and I are hamstrung by morality. Because people like McGill have no remorse for their actions, so there's nothing they won't do. It's hard to beat someone who doesn't have to play by the same rules you do. Worse, people like McGill inspire others to their own acts of evil. Things they wouldn't have otherwise done."
Arkin looked up from his potatoes to see Killick staring at him with an accusatory glare, as if to say, That's exactly what I told you. So why didn't you shoot McGill when you had the chance, you spineless Boy Scout?
"You certainly have a point," Sheffield said.
"We can't win. We'll have small victories here and there. But in the big picture, we'll never prevail. Not against the greater dark tide."
"Let's not be melodramatic," Sheffield said.
"I agree that we use inferior tactics," Killick said. "Would it be immoral to match the tactics, match the morality, of our individual adversaries?"
Arkin didn't bother to answer, and nearly rolled his eyes. "Sometimes I just feel as if we're fighting cancer with aspirin here, you know?"
"You don't feel like our work makes a difference?" Sheffield asked.
"I do. It does. In an immediate sort of way, anyway."
"What do you mean by that?" Sheffield asked, with a curiously pleased look on his face.
"I mean sometimes I think we're only dealing with the symptoms."
"As opposed to what?"
"Causes. Sources. The fountainheads of all this evil, to put it more sensationally."
"Ah-ha. And where do you think it comes from?"
Arkin shrugged. "I'm not sure. It's case-by-case. But taking down a Raylan McGill isn't going to keep more Raylan McGills from coming along. It's what creates the Raylan McGills in the first place—that should be our target."
"Yes!" Sheffield half shouted, pounding the table with his fist, startling Arkin, Killick, and a nearby booth of haggard-looking DOJ lawyers. "That should be our target. Absolutely, positively right. You may not know exactly what's doing it—what's creating the Raylan McGills, the Hitlers, the bin Ladens—but you know there's a deeper universal cause, hidden below the surface of things."
"Universal?"
"And you know that it's that cause, and not its hapless, deranged victim-agents, that is the real target in our battle." He clapped a hand onto Arkin's shoulder. "That awareness, my young prodigy, puts you light years ahead of the common man."
"Both of us, or just Arkin?" Killick asked with a grin.
"You aren't like all the 'world-is-flat' cromag knuckle-draggers in this town who are stupid enough to think that by doubling the conventional law enforcement budget, or building walls along our borders, or bombing the Middle East into radioactive glass that we're going to somehow make appreciable progress against the cause."
"He's going deep on us," Killick said to Arkin.
"And pedantic."
Sheffield took a long drink of his iced tea, a thoughtful expression on his face. "Let me ask you a question, Nathaniel," he said.
"Sure."
"Would you have gunned down Hitler or bin Laden?"
"Of course."
"No, I mean before they rose from obscurity."
"Before they'd done anything?"
"Exactly."
"This is an unusually hackneyed question. Even for you."
Sheffield smiled. "Fine. What stayed your hand in Appomattox?"
"What do you mean?"
"Why didn't you shoot McGill?"
Now it was Arkin's turn to smirk. "Oh, I get it. So now McGill is a future Hitler or bin Laden. Okay. The oracle at Delphi told you that, did she?"
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