The God's Eye View (18 page)

When it was done, she lowered her leg to the floor and sagged against him, and he put his arms around her and held her. His touch was gentle but she could feel his strength, and she sensed how conscious he was of it, how careful to hold it back. Except when he couldn’t. And that was such a nice thought.

She looked up and realized what Dash was going to see if he woke to use the bathroom. The thought of him brought it all back, the craziness, the disbelief, the fear, and suddenly she was crying, crying hard. Marvin signed,
What is it?
But she just shook her head and pulled him close, needing to feel him holding her, needing to get it out.

After a minute, she had it under control again. She nodded toward Dash’s room and signed
, We should get dressed
.

Marvin just looked at her.
Did I hurt you?

The concern in the question, and in his expression, was lovely. She signed,
No. The opposite.

Then what?

Let’s get dressed first.

They pulled on their clothes and each used the bathroom. In the kitchen, she asked,
Can I get you something to drink?

Just water. Thanks.

She poured them each a glass and they sat at the table.

He looked at her for a moment, then signed,
Is everything okay?

She didn’t even know what to say. Probably it was better to say nothing. But even in the midst of whatever she was dealing with, she didn’t want him to think she was crazy. Or so weak that she cried at just anything. Or a sad fuck. Or whatever.

It’s
. . . a work thing. Hard to explain.

You can’t talk because it’s secret?

Right.

But it’s bad?

I . . . saw something I don’t think I was supposed to see. And I’m afraid of what they’re going to do about it.

What could they do?

That’s what I’m worried about.

Fire you?

She had to laugh at that
. Yes, you could put it that way.

He furrowed his brow.
What, then?

She shook her head.
I don’t know. I’m just scared. I don’t know what to do. Who to talk to.

You can talk to me.

She looked at him, and realized she almost could have. But what could he do? He was from another world.
Thank you. I just need to think things through.

Is there someone at work you could talk to?

In theory. But . . . it’s complicated.

He nodded.
Okay, I’m sorry for pressing.

No, it’s okay. It feels good to talk about it just a little. I’m sorry I can’t say more.

I’m sorry I can’t help more.

You helped me by coming over tonight. A lot.

He smiled.
You helped me, too.

They sat wordlessly for a few minutes. Then she signed,
I want to ask you to stay. And Dash really likes you, but I think that would be too much right now.

I understand. Are you going to be okay?

I’ll figure it out.
She hoped the way she signed it showed more conviction than she felt.

She walked him to the door. He kissed her, the kiss oddly tentative after the passion of just a short while earlier. Then he signed,
I’m glad you texted me, Evie.

She smiled.
I think that’s the first time you’ve said my name, Marvin.

I like your name.

She looked at his handsome face, the strange sadness she sensed behind his eyes, the reluctance, and realized she could almost jump him again. But no. It would be too easy to have him stay over. And she wasn’t ready to explain all that to Dash.

I’m glad. I could get used to you saying it.

There was a pause, then he signed,
Good night, Evie.

CHAPTER
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
26

A
fter he was gone, she fell into bed and surprised herself by passing out almost instantly. But she woke in a panic a short while later, the comfort and distraction of Marvin’s visit gone, the reality of what she was facing fully upon her again.

But she’d told the director she’d seen nothing, hadn’t she? And she’d tested him, but she hadn’t pressed. She’d been subtle. She’d been clever. She’d figured out he
wanted
her to see nothing, and she’d told him what he wanted to hear.

Yeah? How sure are you that he didn’t
know
you were testing him? That he doesn’t suspect the guy with the cigarette you showed him was a distraction? That your question about bringing in more manpower for a manual review of the footage was a feint? Given what he’s already done, given the stakes he’s playing for, how much can you count on his assuming you didn’t see anything, you don’t suspect, you don’t fucking
know
?

She focused on breathing again, trying to slow her staccato heartbeat.

Stop it. This is crazy. The director isn’t going to kill you. There are no conspiracies.
The Parallax View
was a movie. This is real life.

She imagined Stiles, and Perkins, and Hamilton, all telling themselves the same thing. Downplaying the threat, embracing denial, believing the world was what they wanted it to be, refusing to see it for what it really was.

And then dying. Because they didn’t know what the director knew. Couldn’t see what he saw. And so couldn’t anticipate the fate he decided for them.

No. She wasn’t going to let that happen to her. She wasn’t going to let it happen to Dash. How was sticking her head in the sand supposed to protect him?

But what could she do? Go to the inspector general? Congress? The media?

The first two, she knew, would be worse than useless. Everyone understood what happened to whistleblowers who tried to work through the system. All you had to do was ask Bill Binney, or Thomas Drake, or Chelsea Manning, or Diane Roark, or Coleen Rowley, or Jeffrey Sterling, or Thomas Tamm, or Russell Tice, or Kirk Wiebe. And look what they’d done to John Kiriakou—for exposing torture, for God’s sake. Not to mention Snowden, whose concerns had been suppressed until he took them public. And Jesselyn Radack, the whistleblower lawyer who represented probably half of them.

Which left the media, maybe, but the thought of being prosecuted under the Espionage Act terrified her. How could she afford to fight something like that? Even if she didn’t wind up in prison for life, they’d ruin her. And who would take care of Dash while she was being held incommunicado as some kind of enemy combatant? How would he cope with something like that?

And besides, even if she were prepared to go to the media, what did she have? She could document a meeting between Hamilton and Perkins, but so what? The rest could be dismissed as coincidence. She could reveal the existence of the camera networks and the facial recognition and biometrics system, but if none of the programs Snowden had leaked had been egregious enough to protect him, hers would be no better. And if she showed her footage of the suspicious man she had discovered in connection with that morning’s attack, it would probably
bolster
support for her camera initiative, not undercut it. Beyond which, she would be crucified for revealing sources and methods related to an ongoing terrorism investigation, the terrorism in question being extremely fresh in people’s minds. They’d bay for her blood.

God. She had nothing. And no one to take it to, either. The bombing was an inside job, the attack in response was a lie, and she was the only one who knew it. And if the director knew she knew . . .

She thought of the letter Hamilton had mailed from Istanbul. She’d been so freaked out at her own temerity in not telling the director about it that she’d half decided to just pretend it didn’t exist, that she’d never seen the footage of Hamilton mailing it.

But she
had
seen it. And presumably it was sitting in that mail drop in Rockville right now. What was in it? Something that would give her some answers, some ammunition, some leverage?

Whatever was in that envelope, it scared the director so much he had killed to keep it secret. Which meant it was something explosive.
Really
explosive. Something connected with Hamilton. Whatever it was, if it were revealed, the director would no longer have any reason to come after her. His secret would be out.

But what if he knows it was you? You might just go from one motive—ensuring silence—to another—revenge.

Well, that was a chance worth taking. She had once seen a cartoon—a hawk swooping down on a mouse. The mouse was completely outmatched, obviously helpless, doomed. So it did the only thing it could: it extended its arm and gave the hawk the finger. A final expression of dignity and defiance.

Maybe she was that mouse. Up against something she could never hope to defeat. But she wouldn’t just lay down. She would fight.

And besides, if she handled things right, how would the director, how would anyone, know it had been her? She couldn’t use email, she knew—NSA monitored the accounts of every journalist it considered a threat, which meant every journalist worth contacting. But Hamilton’s organization, the
Intercept
, used SecureDrop, an encrypted system NSA hadn’t yet found a way to crack. She could upload details directly using Tails and Tor, an operating system and a browser NSA had so far found similarly impenetrable. No emails, no phone calls, no secret meetings, nothing. Whatever was in that envelope, Hamilton had sent it. Yes, presumably whatever Hamilton had learned from Perkins in their face-to-face meetings was intended to inform his reporting, and that benefit was now gone. But the information alone could still protect her. She would just be . . . forwarding it. Anonymously.

But what if, whatever it was, Hamilton had encrypted it?

One thing at a time, supersleuth.

Right. Okay. She was going to get that letter. Decrypt whatever Hamilton had sent, somehow, if she needed to. And get it to the
Intercept
anonymously after that.

Or at least try. She couldn’t control those other things. But she wasn’t going to live in denial. Or die in it.

She glanced at the clock on the nightstand. It was two in the morning, but she was way too wired to sleep. And besides, she had a lot of planning to do. She was about to become an insider threat, up against the world’s best-funded and most paranoid intelligence organization. An organization that had destroyed the life of every whistleblower who had ever challenged it.

Except for Snowden.

Yes, Snowden. She’d long suspected plenty of people inside the organization admired what he’d done, and the courage he’d shown in doing it, though of course no one would ever acknowledge something like that out loud. And what was that expression of his, the one that made the brass crazy?
Courage is contagious
. She’d always thought it was a bit silly, but sitting alone in her bed in the wee hours of the morning, facing what was ahead of her, she realized it was true.

And thank God, too. Because at that moment, her own courage didn’t feel like nearly enough.

CHAPTER
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
27

M
anus drove east toward Baltimore/Washington International Airport, severely disturbed. He couldn’t understand what had just happened. The director had told him to stop seeing Evie because she had checked out, she wasn’t a problem, there was nothing to worry about. Okay, fine. But none of it was true. The woman was obviously distraught, terrified, oppositional—all the things the director had tasked him with discovering. So why had the director pulled him off? What was going on?

He parked the truck in a motel complex near the airport and got out, needing to walk, to get some fresh air, to think. The periphery of a motel parking lot was a good place to leave a car at night—numerous transient vehicles, no registration, people coming and going at odd hours after arriving from or departing for a flight. He had a pair of stolen plates no one was going to report hidden in the truck’s toolbox—you never knew when you might need a little privacy—but judged that kind of precaution unnecessary at the moment. No one was going to notice one more vehicle here, much less remember it, much less report it. Not that it mattered anyway—he was here for a walk, not on an op—but he liked to keep good habits, especially when he was feeling anxious.

There were some woods behind the parking lot and he headed into them, wanting the dark, the feeling of being enclosed and enveloped. The oppressive heat of the day had dissipated, and the air in the woods was cool and soothing, city smells momentarily eclipsed by leaves and bark and earth. He made his way by the diffused light of the nearby highway and office parks until he came to a thick stump. He sat on it, breathed deeply in and out, and tried to figure out what the hell was going on.

Why would he pull me off? It was going well. Better than he could
have expected. The meeting at the baseball game, the invitation to
her apartment . . . he should have wanted me to keep going. What
happened?

All right, true, he hadn’t told the director everything. The way the woman made him feel when he looked at her. The way her relationship with the boy somehow conjured a forgotten part of his own life. And what had happened that night after the boy had gone to sleep . . . no, he hadn’t told the director any of that. But how could it have been relevant? If anything, it was all a way of getting closer, of finding out what the director wanted to know.

But it didn’t feel that way to you.

No. The truth was, none of it felt like what he was supposed to be doing for the director. In fact, the director had told him to steer clear of the woman, and yet Manus had gone to see her anyway. He hadn’t meant to. He’d thought about little other than contacting her since getting back from Turkey, but he didn’t because he knew the director didn’t want him to. But then, when she’d sent him that text, and asked him if he still couldn’t stop thinking about it, he just . . . he couldn’t help himself.

He closed his eyes, and remembered the way she’d looked at him just a couple of hours earlier, like she’d been . . . craving him, or something. The way she’d pushed him back against the door and kissed him. The way he’d kissed her back. The taste of her skin. How it had excited her when he’d touched her. The way he could feel her moaning into his mouth while he was moving inside her.

He was getting hard from the memory and shook the images away. It didn’t matter what had happened. Because how would the director know any of it? After all, it wasn’t as though he could have seen—

It hit him then. Hit him so hard that for a moment, he couldn’t breathe.

The director had black-bagged her apartment. Sound, low-light video, everything. Of course he had. What had he said?
I don’t want to leave anything out.
What did that mean? Was it even
conceivable
the director would be as concerned as he obviously was—so concerned he wanted Manus to spend time with the woman and personally assess her—and at the same time not make sure he knew every single thing that happened inside her apartment?

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

For one moment, the notion—the image—of the director watching what had happened between him and the woman filled him with rage. The director had no right. It wasn’t his business.

He breathed deeply in and out, willing it away. Of course he had a right. He knew things Manus didn’t. And wasn’t the director the one who told Manus to watch the woman as part of an operation? What was the director supposed to do, look away if Manus forgot himself, forgot why he was with the woman, let his own stupidity jeopardize an operation Manus didn’t even understand?

He realized the director would have watched everything tonight, too. All of it, from the moment Manus walked through the door. Again, the rage gripped him.

Calm down, calm down, calm down.

The woman. Why hadn’t she just left him alone? He was only supposed to watch her. He wasn’t going to hurt her. Or her son. But she had asked him to come over, and to stay for dinner, and he’d tried not to, but it would have looked strange, and he was supposed to get close to her anyway, wasn’t he? And then she’d given him wine, and asked him why he wouldn’t look at her, and she’d unbuttoned her shirt, and—

Why do you think I wouldn’t look at you? Because of this! This! Look what you caused!

He was suddenly frightened. What was he going to do? The director knew he’d been dishonest. First, in not telling everything that had happened. And second, in disobeying, disobeying that very evening.

Could he know about Hamilton? That you saw him and didn’t tell?

His heart started hammering in growing panic.

Calm down, calm down, calm down, CALM DOWN.

He took a deep breath and blew it slowly out. Again. And again.

Why did he pull you off?

Yes, that was the question. The heart of it.

Because he knew you were dishonest. He knew he couldn’t trust you anymore.

He stood and started pacing. What had happened? When had he started lying to the director? When he’d seen Hamilton in the van, that was when. It had been a mistake. The man was so messed up, it would have been merciful to kill him. It would have been good for everyone. He imagined himself closing the van door, placing the muzzle firmly against the base of Hamilton’s skull, pressing the trigger, the man’s head jerking forward from the shot . . . and he groaned aloud at the terrible mistake he’d made, the opportunity he’d lost.

He’d fucked up. He’d let Hamilton live. And he’d never told the director. That was a lie. And one lie had led to another. And now he was just . . . he didn’t know. Ashamed. Angry. Alone. Afraid. And he didn’t know how to make things better.

He continued along through the woods and emerged into another parking lot, this one behind a 7-Eleven. A white pickup was parked in the far corner, its engine idling, tobacco smoke drifting from the open windows. Manus knew his presence here was completely random and he wasn’t unduly concerned. Still, he glanced over as he crossed the parking lot and saw two men sitting inside. They both had long hair and were wearing baseball caps. They eyed him as he passed. He didn’t like them.

Halfway across the lot, he glanced back at the truck. The men had gotten out. Tee shirts, jeans, heavy work boots. Truckers or day laborers, he guessed. They were coming toward him. Their hands were empty. One of them was saying something—
Hey, buddy
, maybe? The light was too dim for Manus to be sure.

Manus checked his surroundings. There was no one else around. He stopped and watched them. They didn’t look like pros. More like opportunists. Just idling here in the 7-Eleven parking lot because the bars were closed, they had no money for girls, they needed more cigarettes. They were broke, they were bored, they saw an opportunity for quick cash or at least a little entertainment. Or both.

He watched them, waiting. Mostly, people left him alone because of his size, his demeanor. But sometimes he would run into someone who was too drunk, or too desperate, or too stupid to know better. And sometimes he would run into someone for whom a big man was a challenge, as though size itself was a personal insult that could be neither overlooked nor forgiven. Most of these people, when they came in for a closer look, he could warn off with a smile. People didn’t like his smile. These men looked like that type. He felt himself wanting to smile, and decided not to.

They weren’t even spreading out to make it more difficult to drop them. Probably they found nearness comforting, even two against one. He took note of the metal clip he saw in each of their right front pockets. Folding knives, and each man right-handed. Of course he was carrying the Espada himself, but thought he’d prefer the Force Pro tonight. He’d left it in the truck when he’d gone to see Evie, but he was carrying it now. He stepped back with his right leg, bladed his body, and rested his right fist against his hip, inches from the grip of the gun. They didn’t even notice the move, or understand what it might mean.

They stopped a few feet away from him. “Hey, man,” the one to Manus’s left said. His tee shirt had a big smiley face on it. “Why don’t you answer when we call out to you?”

Manus looked at him, then at the other, whose tee shirt bore a large, faded print of an American flag, then back to Smiley. “I didn’t hear you.”

Smiley looked at Flag, then back to Manus. “What are you, deaf?”

One of Manus’s instructors at the CIA’s Military Operations Training Course had taught him there were five rules for avoiding impending street violence:
Don’t challenge him, don’t insult him, don’t threaten him, don’t deny it’s happening, give him a face-saving exit
. Manus had learned the rules the hard way in the institutions he’d grown up in, but being more conscious of them helped him commit fewer violations. And only when he wanted to.

The way he did right now.

He looked Smiley up and down and said, “You must be the brains of the operation.”

Smiley glanced at Flag again. Flag nodded. The nod said,
Yeah. Good to go.

Their hands went to their pockets. Manus brought out the Force Pro, quick as a magic trick, simultaneously stepping offline to his right to line up the men more neatly while creating extra distance between their right hands and himself. He pointed the muzzle at Flag’s face and said, “Anything comes out of those pockets and you’re dead right there.”

The men froze and stared at him. Their hands drifted away from their sides, the fingers splayed. From the way they complied, Manus had the sense they’d been rousted by cops before and knew the drill.

Smiley glanced at Flag, then back to Manus. “Hey, man, we were just—”

“You’re under arrest. Use your left hands to take those knives out. I’d do it very slowly if I were you. Just ease them out and drop them.”

“Under arrest?” Flag said. “Come on, man, we were just—”

“You can either comply,” Manus said, “or I will shoot you.”

Of course the situation was odd. A deaf cop? Alone, on foot, not calling for backup? And not producing a badge? But there were always anomalies. The trick was to maintain the pressure, to keep things moving too fast for someone’s brain to catch up to his gut.

Smiley looked at Flag. When Flag reached across with his left hand, eased the knife out, and dropped it, Smiley did the same.

“Now step backward. Two long steps.”

The men complied. Manus kicked the knives away.

“Now on your knees, hands laced behind your necks.”

Flag laced his fingers together and got on his knees, and Smiley followed suit. Smiley was obviously the beta. Without Flag to show him the way, he’d hesitate, maybe even freeze. That suggested the proper order of operations.

Manus moved counterclockwise, going behind them. He switched the Force Pro to his left hand, and with his right removed a flashlight from his pocket—a SureFire Defender Ultra, close to six inches of mil-spec hard-anodized aluminum, with a sharp, crenelated bezel and tailcap. A great tool.

“Knees wide. Wider. Lace those fingers tight.”

To men of their apparent experience, it would feel like the familiar dance steps of being handcuffed. So Flag was probably surprised, or would have been, anyway, when Manus stepped in, brought the Defender high, and hammer-fisted the crenelated bezel into the top of the man’s head, caving his skull into his brain.

Flag pitched forward without a sound. Smiley turned his head and watched, his face aghast, trying to process what had just happened. Manus didn’t give him time. He put his boot heel into the back of Smiley’s laced fingers and stepped through hard, blasting Smiley’s face into the pavement. Smiley gave a muffled cry and managed to unlace his hands. He got them on the ground to push himself up, but before he could, Manus stomped the back of his neck again, crushing it.

He looked around. The area was still deserted. He glanced down at the two men. Neither was moving, not even a twitch. He clicked the Defender’s tail cap and the light came on. But there was tissue and hair around the lens. He’d have to replace it.

He would have liked to walk more, but obviously now he needed to leave. And besides, though his heart rate was up from adrenaline, his mind felt clearer. He was glad the men had wanted to hurt him. It was what he needed. He walked back across the parking lot and into the dark of the woods, where he wiped down and buried the Defender.

Back in his truck, he headed northwest toward his apartment in Ellicott City. Even at that hour, there were plenty of other cars on I-95, and there was nothing about his pickup or his driving that anyone would find memorable. He kept to the speed limit, just a workman getting an early start, on the way to a job in Baltimore or Frederick or Hagerstown. He saw no one and no one saw him.

He tried to think things through again. And realized there was only one chance. One hope. He had to do now what he should have done the first time. Go to the director, and tell him everything. Everything that had happened, everything he had done.