When he returned in a few days’ time, he’d review the DVR footage until he spotted who he was looking for.
Muscley One.
A man with half-skull tattoos wrapping his forearms would be hard to miss.
Evan thumbed the elevator call button and rode the car down to the parking garage. He was running late for his flight, which he’d booked out of Las Vegas to obscure his trail. He’d stopped at a safe house earlier to switch out his Ford pickup with a backup vehicle. A fresh passport and supporting documents waited in the glove box.
As he pulled out of the shopping mall, he shot up Sepulveda and arced around onto the freeway, seating the pedal as low to the floor as he dared.
He had a plane to catch.
24
Worthy of Trust and Confidence
Naomi Templeton reached the building at H Street and 9th at 5:57 A.M. There was no signage anywhere, no logos or plaques, nothing to indicate what the building in fact was. But if you looked closely, you might notice the sleek security cameras peeking out from the tan brick overhang near the front door. You might notice that there were no trash cans on the sidewalk outside, no USPS mailboxes or newspaper vending racks that might hide an IED.
She paused to consider the awesome task that had been lowered onto her shoulders at the start of the week. It was worth approaching this building and this day with an added measure of respect.
Entering the nine-story rise, she passed through the metal detector, taking a moment before the words written across the wall in silver letters: WORTHY OF TRUST AND CONFIDENCE.
She drifted through the central atrium in a kind of focused haze, ordering her mind for the briefing to come, the orders she’d give, the arms she’d have to twist. She moved beneath the catwalks, the beehive of glass-walled offices, so many agents bent to a common cause.
A succession of somber photographs in the hall commemorated those killed in the line of duty. This morning she didn’t look at the clean-cut men and women with their stalwart eyes and proudly squared shoulders.
Instead she’d looked at the blank stretch of wall beyond the last slain agent’s portrait, the space allotted for future memorials.
If she didn’t do her job, there would be more faces on this wall.
One of them might be her own.
Upstairs in the nerve center on the top floor, she presided over the Joint Operations Center. A string of agents was plugged into monitors, overseeing the movements of protectees as code names and coordinates blipped around in real time. The current location of POTUS was front and center on a large screen dominating the south wall, a clear and present illustration of what the Service’s single top priority was.
A football team’s worth of Protective Intelligence and Assessment agents rimmed the immense oval table, mostly men, mostly white. If it weren’t for the shitty suits, it would’ve looked like a holiday lunch at a country club.
“… and I want full satellite monitoring on a continuous basis in a two-point-five-kilometer radius around the White House,” Naomi continued, her voice taking on a hoarse edge from all the talking. “The same Unblinking Eye surveillance that McChrystal used in Iraq when they were hunting Zarqawi.”
“Uh, two point five klicks? Isn’t that a touch arbitrary?” Agent Demme asked, snapping his gum.
“The longest sniper shot in history is two point forty-eight kilometers,” Naomi said. “I’m not eager to have any records broken on my watch.”
“But our guy’s not a dedicated sniper—”
“We don’t know what he isn’t,” she said. “We don’t know what he is. All we know is that one of our highest trained assets is hell-bent on getting Bennett in the crosshairs.”
She steepled her fingertips on the dossier sitting on the polished surface before her. Ridiculously, the tab was redacted, the rectangle of ink blotting out the code name beneath: ORPHAN X.
This paper-thin file that Doug Wetzel had grudgingly released contained a minimum of information, either because that’s all the agencies had or because that’s all they were willing to give up. Evidently the Program was double-blind at every link of the chain, explicitly designed to maximize deniability up and down the command. With the various political messes President Bennett was mired in at the moment, it was clear that his office wasn’t eager to lift the veil any further than was absolutely necessary.
Naomi didn’t trust or like Wetzel. For her to do her job, she’d need more than the names of a few dead associates, a list of possible sightings, some vague details about suspected operations, and a shitty composite sketch generated from the memories of the D.C. cops who’d found themselves overmatched by matcha tea and a handful of salt. She vowed to catch the deputy chief of staff out of the White House on neutral ground and reach an in-person understanding on what she’d require to stop Orphan X.
But for now she needed to work with what she had. As Dad used to say, You get to airtight one brick at a time.
“If this guy has the training they say he does, he’ll know to disguise himself from birds,” someone else chimed in.
“Right,” Naomi said. “That’s why we’re covering all CCTV in Ward 2—key alphabet streets, the Mall, monuments, everything. Priya’s running that team”—a nod to the sole woman of color at the table—“and Willemon’s monitoring all flights, car rentals, train stations, tollbooths, bus stops, correct?”
Bob Willemon gave a wan smile. “Down to every last tour bus.”
Naomi swiveled to the right flank of the table. “Ted, I want facial recognition run on all posted data from all phones in the District—Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat, the whole social-media landscape. You never know who we’ll pick up passing through the background of a shot. Reach out to NSA—they’re ahead of us on this with computational power.”
Demme’s square jaw sawed sideways as he went at the gum, building up momentum and confidence. The promotion to SAC had come down to her or Demme, and she’d been better, pure and simple. Seeing her elevated further by presidential decree couldn’t have been easy on his ego. In response he’d started growing out his sideburns and exceeding expectations on the job, one of which was working out nicely.
“So that’s D.C. covered,” Demme said. “What about the rest of the world?”
“I’m working up new advance-team procedures for transport and travel. I’d like your help with that, Demme. I saw your initiatives, and they’re excellent.”
At this he let his palm rasp across his cheek, a flicker behind his eyes showing he felt conflicted about accepting the olive branch. She gave him her most serious stare, the one Dad used to reserve for broken curfews and prospective boyfriends.
Her stare said, I mean what I say. I have no time for charity.
“Happy to,” Demme said.
Naomi flipped open the woefully scant file. No name, no photographs, no fingerprints. “I’ve also ordered sat footage on sites of importance to Orphan X.”
She scanned the partially redacted top page. There was a farmhouse in Arlington where Orphan X had supposedly spent some childhood years. The foster home he was taken from in Baltimore had been demolished last year. Perhaps he’d done some training at Fort Meade. There were a few more proper nouns, also unpromising.
She cleared her throat and added, “Sites of ostensible importance. We don’t have much, but you get to airtight one brick at a time. Orphan X’s primary advantage is that he only has to get it right once. Our reliability is a precondition for his success. Which means we have to be unpredictable. So let’s get to work on it. I’m putting the president’s schedule in motion—”
“No shit.” Director Gonzalez leaned into the room, one hand gripping the doorframe, broad shoulders on tilt. “I heard all about it from Wetzel, that weasel-faced fuck. All the schedule jostling’s raising questions in the press. Rumors of internal problems with the cabinet, Bennett’s not gonna want to see his approval ratings go any lower before midterms, blah-blah-blah. I told him you were trying to keep Bennett alive
for the midterms, and that shut him up in a hurry. So keep at it, Templeton. Ruffle feathers, rattle cages, kick doors. The president’s given you the power, and I have your back.”
The pouches under his eyes shifted. Sometimes they conveyed more emotion than his actual eyes. She dreaded the question before Gonzalez asked it.
“How’s the old man holding up?”
Dad had mentored Gonzalez up through the ranks. Their relationship had evolved over the years, but their mutual affection had remained steady. For a good stretch after Dad retired and before Gonzalez ascended to the highest rank, they’d found a balance as peers, drinking and golfing together, swapping war stories.
And now Gonzalez had unwittingly undercut her authority with a single well-intentioned inquiry. There was an intimacy in the question he would not have presumed to pose at a round table were she a man.
“Doing great, thanks,” she said crisply.
He read her expression, those pouches bunching anew, registering regret. She caught up to herself, seeing through her anger that his motive was concern—concern and heartache—and felt a wash of regret herself.
Gonzalez knocked the door twice in closure and withdrew.
Naomi turned back to the dozen or so inquisitive faces, finding herself, for the first time in three hours, speechless. The mention of her father now, in this building, in this moment, had cut through her like a katana. Here she was projecting his strength while he languished in a facility, deteriorating by the minute, a puddle of flannel pajamas and English Leather. She locked down her face, felt her core tighten.
Demme broke the spell. Rocking forward in his chair, he found his feet, signaling the meeting’s end. “You heard the special agent in charge,” he said. “Let’s get to work.”
As the agents broke up, she rose to head to the Director’s Crisis Center next door, where she was due to dry-run a few emergency-operation scenarios. When she looked up, Demme caught her eye across the long oval table.
She nodded her thanks and got on with her day.
25
Kick Like a Girl
Vera loved the silks, loved the feeling of climbing and twining, the combination of elegance and power required by tissu. She’d proven adept at aerial, graduating quickly to medium-stretch fabrics, the better to suspend herself gracefully above the gymnastic mats.
Her cover was equally graceful in its simplicity. She was a recently orphaned trust-funder, legally independent at eighteen years of age, here in the mountains of Switzerland to finish her schooling under the caring auspices of a fine English-speaking private academy.
In reality she was sixteen years old.
An Orphan Program runaway.
And a world-class hacker.
Like Evan, she had been pulled out of a foster home by the Mystery Man, a recruiter who had lingered outside the front yard and watched the kids play. She’d noted him there at the periphery with his wrinkled face and the Ray-Bans he wore all the time, even at night, as though they were nailed to his face. He seemed like something out of a fairy tale or a nightmare, a mystical figure come to carry kids away. When he’d chosen her, she’d been glad to get out, clutching at the opportunity as if it were a lifeline thrown to fish her out of stormy seas. He wore a loose gold watch and smoked cigarettes one after the other, conveying her into a new life on a magic-carpet stream of secondhand smoke.
It had not been the life she’d hoped for.
Here at the school, no one knew her name, her capabilities, her software superpowers. She toed the line and played the part. Her death had been ordered by no less than the president of the United States, and a thing like that tended to make a girl wary.
Evan had helped her and tucked her away here, hidden safely from the prying tentacles of the three-letter agencies. Joey Morales, the real her, was presumed dead, and she and Evan preferred to keep it that way.
But sometimes, even here, Joey still came out to play.
Across the gym a trio of rich Florentine boys practiced kickboxing on a heavy bag. They’d torn the sleeves off their workout T-shirts to show off their triceps, and they were talking too loudly, making sure everyone noticed.
Hanging upside down from the silks fifteen feet above the floor, Joey took a moment to assess their back kicks. Their form was for shit—poor body mechanics on the spin, sloppy counterbalancing, no foot-to-hip alignment on the heel strike—but they egged one another on. Lots of chest bumps and high fives.
Matteo, the ringleader, chinned at the girl on the other set of silks and muttered something to his compatriots, who grinned like jackals.
The other girl was Sara, Joey’s lovely Dutch roommate.
At a secret-society party last month, Sara had drunk herself into oblivion, a stupid choice.
Still, a seventeen-year-old from a farming town in the northwest of Holland—or any girl from anywhere else—should be allowed to make stupid choices.
Suspended from the silks, Sara was practicing the midair splits, her eyes averted from the boys, her cheeks touched with color.
Joey braced herself, gathering the wraps around her legs, scaling higher yet and whipping herself upright twenty feet above the floor. She wound up in a foot lock, her back arched, gripping the bunched silks behind her, a Viking goddess commanding the prow of a ship. She felt a slight pull, the scar tissue in her thigh asserting itself, but that just made her feel more alive.
Below, inquisitive parents drifted through the gym, gazing up at the championship banners in the rafters with touristy wonderment. A presentation in the auditorium this evening would officially commence the year-end parents’ weekend. Joey knew the drill: cheese plates and Viennese tortes, a PowerPoint augmented with endless blathering, the dads pretending not to be bored, the moms pretending not to radiate vicarious intensity. A gagworthy father-daughter dance capped the evening. It would be full of parental pride and familial warmth, all the shit a foster kid like her had learned to steer clear of.
She’d already set up her mission directives: feign menstrual cramps, hang out in her room, and stream Veronica Mars on her laptop.
After the last of the parents exited the gym, Matteo squared to Joey’s roommate, still working hard on the silks. “Nice spread, Sara. Heard you got in some extra practice last month.”
The trio laughed.
Beside Joey, Sara contracted in midair like a pill bug coiling in on itself, a visceral shame reaction.
Joey flipped her way down to the mat, unwinding from the silks in a controlled fall.
She had to get out of here or she was gonna kill somebody, and killing somebody would blow her cover for sure.
As she stepped off the blue rubber mat and walked past the crew of boys, Matteo leaned against the heavy bag and gave her a long-lashed gaze, flirty and handsome, sweat dripping from his dark brow. “Wanna try?” he asked in lightly accented English. “Let’s see what those legs can do.”
Joey paused a few feet from the heavy bag, the muscles in her neck tightening.
She felt the eyes of the boys on her as if they were perusing something in a shop window. Her back was damp with perspiration. She could sense her heartbeat in the side of her neck.
She lifted the ball of her lead foot a few millimeters off the polished floorboards and pivoted it, locking into a side stance. She turned away, raised her knee up high, and threw herself into a spinning back kick, generating power through her base. She let her eyes lead the target.
Her foot hammered into the heavy bag, and Matteo flew back and slammed into the wall loudly enough to rattle the bleachers twenty feet away.
The wind left him in an explosive bark, and he fell to all fours, his mouth clutching for air, one hand pressed to his stomach.
“Sorry,” Joey said, continuing for the door. “I kick like a girl.”
* * *
Joey pushed through the door into her dorm room, red-faced, her clavicles glistening with workout sweat. When she saw who was standing there, she came up short, her mouth slightly ajar. Her
eyes welled.
Catching Joey speechless was something Evan relished.
It didn’t last long.
“Fuck a duck,” she said.
He lifted a finger. “Language.”
She swallowed hard, blinked harder, regaining her composure. On the floor beside her nightstand was an Original S.W.A.T. shoe box stuffed with letters. She stepped inside, sweeping it quickly out of sight beneath the bed.
Then she stared at him awkwardly. “So are we supposed to hug or what?”
“I don’t know,” Evan said.
The ninety-kilometer drive from Milan to Lugano had been gorgeous, snow flurrying with postcard perfection, the sun bronzing Lake Lugano with a dreamy haze. He’d forgotten how clean Swiss air tasted, ice and whiteness finished with a hint of pine.
He paused a moment to take her in. It had been six months since he’d seen her, and she looked healthy. Her skin tone was darker than tan; her last name indicated that she was part Hispanic, but she probably didn’t know the full details of her ethnic background any more than he knew his.
She also looked a touch older, her features transforming into those of a young woman, the fullness of her face diminished ever so slightly. He was surprised at the glimmer of melancholy that brought forth in him. Did he expect her not to grow up? What an odd sentiment.
Before he could contemplate the matter, she said, “Why are you here? I thought, you know, we weren’t supposed to…”
“I need your help,” he said.
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
“I hacked into the phone of a Secret Service agent.”
“Well, whoop-dee-do,” Joey said. “I bet you can also program your DVR.”
She bit down a grin. He was glad to see her, too.
“Nice haircut,” he said.
She used to keep it shaved on the right side, but now she looked schoolgirl-proper.
“Hey. You’re the one who put me here. The Third Commandment: Master your surroundings. Well, this is me mastering some shit. Plus, look.” She pulled up her tumbling black-brown locks to reveal the thinnest strip of shaved hair just above her ear. “I’m still in here, bitches.”
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