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  “I never charge so much that it would be easier to kill me than to pay me.”

  “But what is difficult for one man may be easy for another.”

  “That’s why I don’t base my fee on the complexity of the job,” the Israeli says. “That’s my secret. I base it on careful evaluation of the client.”

  “What kinds of things do you evaluate?”

  “Everything. Net worth. Disposition. Presentation. You think inviting someone into my home is a liability. I see it as an asset.”

  “What’s your evaluation of me?”

  The Israeli’s chair twists as he looks the tall man over.

  “It would be cheaper for you to pay me than to wash my blood out of that suit.”

  “But that assumes I’m rational,” the tall man says.

  “I’m not counting on you to act rationally,” the Israeli says. “I’m counting on you to act out of self-interest.”

  “Do you believe everyone acts out of self-interest?”

  “Of course they do. If they didn’t, the world would be complete chaos.”

  “You don’t believe the world is chaotic?”

  “I believe the world is a complex and interconnected machine, and that the people who can’t see how the pieces fit together dismiss its elegance for chaos. But I can see them. That’s how I do what I do. That’s why you retained my services instead of someone else’s, and that’s how I know you won’t kill me.”

  “But what if I know something that you don’t?” the tall man asks. “What if I can see pieces that you can’t?”

  The Israeli looks doubtful. “What pieces?”

  “The kind of pieces that change the rules. The kind that make the machine run backwards. The kind that might result in people making grave miscalculations.”

  The Israeli sits up in his chair. He is no longer composed, and his tone grows conciliatory. “Look, man, if you don’t want to pay me, that’s fine. We can call it even. I mostly do this shit for fun anyway.”

  A moment passes between them, and then the Israeli’s eyes drop to the tall man’s hands. The tall man reaches into his jacket and removes a smooth, lithe handset. He authenticates, navigates, and then consummates the remainder of a sizable transaction.

  The Israeli watches his client nod, turn, and leave. And it is not until he can no longer hear the hollow knock of the tall man’s shoes along the hallway that he remembers to breathe.

  2

  THE BUBBLE

  DEPUTY DIRECTOR VANESSA Townes feels ridiculous addressing 470 seats when only 17 of them are occupied—a testament to how anemic her team has grown over the last five years as resources have been consistently siphoned off for other assignments. In an admirable effort to fill as much of the space as possible, her task force has distributed itself liberally among the first three rows of theater seating, but it is still the venue equivalent of a seven-year-old girl trying on her mother’s wedding dress.

  The main auditorium of the George Bush Center for Intelligence is colloquially known as “The Bubble.” It’s a seven-thousand-square-foot independent structure that, from the air, looks like a giant golf ball chipped into the rough. You weren’t supposed to use The Bubble for meetings, but there were no other rooms available in Van’s part of the building. And as the Deputy Director of Clandestine Services, she was pretty sure she could keep the whole thing on the DL.

  It is to be a short meeting, anyway. The assortment of analysts, officers, middle managers, and assistants already know why they are here, but as their boss, Townes feels obligated to bring closure to the assignment they put the last five years of their lives into. And, if at all semantically feasible, to try to put a positive spin on it.

  She raises the lid on her laptop, executes a key combination, and her screen begins projecting behind her. Her peers like to tease her for still lugging around a ruggedized clamshell, but the shattered Dell she displays on a shelf in her office allegedly got that way by stopping a Kalashnikov round when she was stationed in the Democratic Republic of Congo, forever serving as all the validation Van would ever need that the surface area of a handset is simply way too small.

  “I know we’re getting close to lunchtime,” the deputy director begins, partially as a way to test the acoustics, and partially as a way to get everyone settled. Turns out projecting all of three rows without a mic won’t be a problem. “So I’ll go ahead and get started.”

  The newest version of PowerPoint is smart enough to listen to the presenter, determine context, and not just auto-advance slides but, when in “stream-of-consciousness mode,” reorder a presentation to keep pace with even the most desultory of ramblings. Although the CIA is perpetually a minimum of three versions behind on any given piece of software, Townes knows precisely whose palms to grease in IT to get the good stuff.

  “It’s no secret that today is the last operational day for the Nuclear Terrorism Nonproliferation Task Force. It’s also no secret that, since the attack on Seoul almost six years ago, no plots have been uncovered, no arrests made, and no fissile material secured. So let’s just get that out of the way.”

  Although Van is not telling them anything they don’t already know, it is clear from all the furrowed brows and roving eyeballs that her team is expecting a little less candor and perhaps a tad more compassion from their leader.

  “Now, some people have suggested that the Nuclear Terrorism Nonproliferation Task Force is a failure. We’ve all heard the accusations. The recriminations. The rumors. You all know how many reports I’ve had to stay up all night writing. How many meetings I’ve been called into to get skewered in front of the director himself. How many times I’ve had to testify in front of Congress.”

  Van pauses while she looks—hard—at an even distribution of uneasy faces.

  “But you know what looks a hell of a lot more like failure? Not assembling a task force after the deadliest terrorist attack in history. Not responding to clear and present danger. Not being able to verify, beyond any modicum of doubt, that what happened in Seoul never happens anywhere on this planet ever again. Not doing exactly what every single one of us swore an oath to do.”

  She is seeing some nods now.

  “The reality is that this is what success looks like, people. This is what it looks like to keep the United States and her allies—hell, even her enemies—safe from weapons of mass destruction. Success isn’t torturing a suspect until you extract a location, racing against a digital countdown timer strapped to the side of a device in the back of a van, and then waiting until the last second to decide which wire to cut.”

  A few grins. She can see that they are with her.

  “That’s a movie. And not even a very good one. That’s not what heroes are. You know that. You know that better than anyone. Heroes are people who run down every possible lead, no matter how implausible. Track every dollar, every euro, every fraction of every cryptocurrency. Who spend all day, every day, and even nights and weekends, writing queries every bit as elegant as anything composed by Beethoven and running them across thousands of indices. Heroes are people who don’t just hope, or assume, or who are ‘pretty sure.’ They verify. And then they verify again. And then they get someone else to verify that verification. And if they don’t get anywhere, they throw it all out and start all over again because any unexplored path, no matter how seemingly insignificant, could mean thousands of lives.”

  Everyone is nodding now—everyone but the man who has just entered from the back with two cups of coffee in a cardboard tray. He props up a wall with his shoulder and waits for Van to continue.

  “Heroes don’t just work for six months, or a year, or two years on a problem. They work for as long as it takes. They work for five years, nine months, and three weeks. They work until someone makes them stop, if that’s what it takes to absolutely goddamn guarantee that there isn’t another sociopath out there about t
o erase Washington, D.C., or New York City, or Paris, or London.”

  She pauses to check her slides. Sure enough, there’s the Capitol, One World Trade Center, the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben.

  “This task force wasn’t assembled in response to Seoul. It was assembled in response to a historic mandate. Probably the most important resolution the United Nations has ever passed, and perhaps ever will pass: the denuclearization of the entire planet. And I don’t care what any pencil-neck bureaucrat says; supporting that mandate, in any capacity whatsoever, is an honor.”

  There is even some verbal assent now.

  “When the UN does an audit and finds that thirty-seven percent of the world’s enriched nuclear material is missing, you take that seriously. You assemble a task force of the finest officers and analysts and support staff on the planet, and you don’t disband it until enough time has passed that you know—absolutely know—that every single milligram of fissile material is no longer weapons-grade. That whoever bought it or stole it or otherwise came into possession of it and tried to figure out how to make a dirty bomb out of it has either been killed by Mossad, betrayed by their partners, or reduced to piles of protoplasm in some abandoned warehouse somewhere because they didn’t know how to handle it.”

  Van keeps an eye on the guy in the back and some of her staff follow her gaze, turning in their seats. It is Alessandro Moretti. Technically, he’s her boss, but these days they function more or less as peers. Moretti’s been in and out of the office for over two years—mostly out—working on something highly classified that not even Van knows anything about, so she’s been covering for him. Two cups of coffee means he wants something.

  “And that’s precisely what you did. You did exactly what the agency asked of you. What your country asked of you. What the world needed from you. And you did it willingly, thoroughly, and with grace.”

  She watches her team for a moment as she tees up her next line.

  “You did it perfectly, people. And you know what? I’d do it all over again. Every lead, every meeting, every report”—applause now—“every interview, every query, every simulation, every model, every dead end, and every single last algorithm. All of it!”

  She waits for the applause to subside and notices that a few glistening eyes must be covertly attended to before hands are returned to laps.

  “The world owes you its gratitude. Of course, that doesn’t mean you’re going to get it. That’s the nature of what we do. You all know that. You all know what you signed up for. There’s not much I can do about that, but I can express gratitude on behalf of the CIA. And most sincerely, I can express my gratitude. So, thank you. Thank you for showing up every single day. Thank you for not just doing your jobs, but for dedicating your careers and your lives to making the world a safer place. Thank you for sacrificing time with your families. Time you won’t get back. Time with your children.”

  Van’s eyes do exactly what she explicitly wills them not to do: land squarely on Senior Analyst Quinn Mitchell. Instantly she regrets what she perceives as calling Quinn out in front of the entire team, but her top analyst gives her a sad, appreciative smile, which Van returns before moving on.

  “You are all—every single one of you—my personal heroes.”

  This one gets a standing ovation, and it is suddenly painfully obvious to Deputy Director Townes how she should have been doing this all along—how badly her team needed to hear that what they’ve been doing for the last five years matters. Van still finds it hard to believe that she has the power to instill purpose in others, and she is as afraid of that power today as she was the day she was first promoted to manager. That’s called humility, her mother used to tell her. That’s just Jesus whispering in your ear, keeping you on your toes. That’s a good thing, Sunshine. Don’t ever lose that.

  When it’s clear that their boss still has more to say, one by one her team sits back down. Van silently vows that she will never let so much time pass again without telling the people around her how she feels, then moves on to the final phase.

  “Some of you have already been reassigned, and some of you are still waiting to hear what’s next for you. Some of you will remain with me, and some of you will be blessed with a much kinder boss, and to them, I say congratulations.”

  She gets the kind of laughter you hear toward the end of a eulogy when someone makes a tension-breaking joke.

  “But wherever you go,” Van continues, “never forget that working with all of you has been the greatest honor of my career.”

  There’s the final ovation. Van accepts it as long as she can—smiling, nodding, waving to individuals—until she starts feeling like an egomaniacal politician and takes refuge in packing up her laptop. The applause subsides, transitioning into murmurs and shuffles, but when she picks up her bag and turns, she finds that a queue has formed. A departing line, as it were. The women are ready to wrap her up in long, warm, rocking hugs, and the men awkwardly wait for Townes to initiate physical contact. Quinn Mitchell’s hug is especially affectionate. What Van feared could have been construed as crass or distasteful—the look she inadvertently gave Quinn at the mention of children—turned out to be exactly what her star analyst needed. Maybe, Van thinks, our refusal to acknowledge tragedy beyond the cursory is not so much decorum as it is a way to avoid our own discomfort. Maybe we end up prolonging others’ pain so that we can remain comfortable inside our own little bubbles. But when tragedy inevitably finds us, and when others treat us with the same perceived civility that we showed them, we too will feel unbearably alone.

  Maybe Jesus has once again just whispered in Van’s ear.

  * * *

  —

  Moretti kept a respectable distance during the ritual, but now that the last of Van’s team has dispersed, he closes in. He offers her his free hand—the one without the two caffeine grenades—as Townes descends the stairs at the edge of the stage, and she graciously accepts.

  “What a gentleman,” Van observes.

  “At your service,” Moretti replies. He plucks the larger of the two cups from the origami coffee trap and begins enumerating. “Triple. Venti. Half-sweet. Nonfat…” It’s coming to him…“Caramel macchiato. I practiced all the way over.”

  “How the hell do you know my coffee order?”

  “Come on. This is the CIA, not the FBI. Give me some credit.”

  “Ouch. You know my son’s at Quantico, right?”

  “I remember writing the recommendation. Let me know when he wants to join the winning team.”

  They are strolling up the aisle toward the back of the auditorium, moving together much more slowly than either would alone.

  “I’ll be sure to pass that along.”

  “Beautiful speech, by the way,” Moretti says.

  “Shut up.”

  “No, I’m serious. All bullshit aside. When they recruit you, it’s all about the action, the adventure, the travel. Nobody tells you that when everyone’s doing their jobs the way they’re supposed to—when you’re being proactive—things are usually pretty quiet. There’s plenty of criticism when something goes wrong, but not enough praise when everything goes right.”

  “Amen to that.”

  Moretti bodychecks the bar and cracks the door open in a burst of sunshine. Townes walks out beneath the awning into the midday warmth. Although it sounds as though they are surrounded by the trills and warbles of dozens of species of birds, Van knows that most of what they hear is dynamically composed by the avian surveillance drones that are in constant rotation throughout campus, recharging themselves and exchanging data with a covert forest of next-gen signal intercept towers disguised as overly symmetrical evergreens. The synthetic sounds of a CIA summer.

  “You still haven’t told me what you want,” Van says.

  Moretti appears wounded. “What makes you think I want something?”

  “The c
offee. The flattery. The fact that you never come around anymore unless there’s something you need.”

  “I know,” Moretti says. “And I’m sorry about that. This thing I’m working on—it’s killing me. But it shouldn’t be much longer. And I will bring you in on it. I promise.”

  “Like you brought me in on the whole LHC thing?”

  “Believe me, I did you a favor with that,” Moretti says. “The Epoch Index has been a pain in my ass from the second it landed on my desk. But this new thing’s completely different. You’ll see. In the meantime, I’m actually here to do you a favor.”

  Townes sees Quinn Mitchell seated on a nearby bench forking something into her mouth from semi-opaque Tupperware. Her only companion is a can of Diet Coke, centered on the one slat flat enough that it won’t tip over.

  “And what might that be?”

  “I’m here to take an analyst off your hands.”

  “Ahhh,” Townes intones. “Now it all makes sense. Vultures circling to pick at the remains.”

  Moretti pulls a dubious face. “These are hardly remains,” he says. “From what I can tell, you somehow managed to keep the best of your team intact.”

  “Who do you want?”

  “Her.”

  Van wasn’t even aware of Moretti having noticed Quinn. Fucking spooks. With anyone else, Townes would have probably sealed the deal right then and there—maybe negotiated a little extra budget or some newer hardware if she was feeling especially shrewd. But Quinn was different.

  “What do you want with Mitchell?”

  “What do you think I want? I want the best.”

  “I get that,” Van says. “But why?”

  “You heard of the Elite Assassin?”

  It takes Townes a moment to recalibrate. If her memory of recent daily briefings serves, the topic of conversation has casually meandered from internal resource reallocation to bizarre and exotic international serial killers.