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It dawns on him that this shell holds a fingerprint, that it is to be left behind to direct blame elsewhere for what Evan will be instructed to do. He thanks the man and moves to rise, but the man reaches across the table, wraps his brown fingers around Evan’s wrist. “What you hold in your hands is dangerous beyond what you can imagine. Be careful, my friend. It is an unsafe world.”
Evan’s code name, Orphan X, was dismissed as a figure of myth or an
urban legend.
Evan had been the most effective operator on Bennett’s watch, killing enough declared enemies of the state to fill a graveyard. Evan knew where the bodies were buried; he’d put them in the ground. Years later, when Bennett had become president, he’d set about erasing any record of the constitutionally questionable program he’d overseen.
On that cold fatal morning, what mysteries had lingered outside the periphery of Evan’s scope? In pulling the trigger, had he toppled a domino, sparking a chain reaction with momentous consequences?
the phalanx of vehicles rolled into sight, tailing down the circular drive as they departed the West Wing. The motorcade was the so-called informal package, eight Secret Service G-rides and three indistinguishable presidential limos.
the president of the United States had personally ordered the murder of men and women who as children had been taken from foster homes and trained and indoctrinated to spend their existence serving their country. They had done the best they could with the life that had been imposed on them. And he’d snuffed them out for the sake of his own preservation. Ending Jonathan Bennett was the ultimate Nowhere Man mission.
His snake eyes glittered, flat and impenetrable. He was still sizing her up, determining whether she was an asset or something worth eating.
“You catch a lot of flak being a female agent?” he asked. “My SIG P229 shoots the same regardless of my anatomy.”
Would you take a bullet?” His index finger jabbed into his chest, left side, slightly off the midline. “For me?” “That’s not my job,” she said. “My job is to keep that bullet from ever being fired. If it comes down to me having to play target dummy, I’ve already failed”—she caught herself—“Mr. President.”
“I thought…” She cleared her throat. “I thought that program was apocryphal. Conspiracy-theory stuff.” Bennett said, “No.”
“Ever notice how when they talk about dreams in movies they always make perfect sense?” she said, keeping her face against his chest. “No one ever says, ‘I was ten years old at my childhood house, but it wasn’t my childhood house, it was a school, and my whole fifth-grade class was there, but they weren’t my classmates, they were all the criminals I’ve put away and they were gonna get me, but then I was an adult all of a sudden, and you came in and you were you but you were also my dear departed husband, and you took me by the hand and we walked outside, but outside was inside and we were in a
...more
Before him was a young man in desperate need of help. Evan was getting useful information. And some not-so-useful information. But then again he couldn’t yet know what would prove useful and what would not, so he cleared his mind and opened it wide. The First Commandment: Assume nothing.
“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.”
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.
Surely Jack was to blame. In cultivating not just Evan’s lethality but his humanity, Jack had embedded a vulnerability in him as sure as every air-gapped system had a leak. What had Joey called it? A touch to the outside.
The world flowered in order to be picked by the daring. It was a privilege, yes. And the entitlement of the mighty.
For the first time, he truly entertained the notion that Orphan X could succeed.
The security guard hefted his pants, the belt orbiting his pronounced waist like a line drawn around an egg. He wore a mustache that he thought enhanced his masculinity but in reality made him resemble a third Mario brother.
Evan knew he should approach more cautiously than he was, but a weariness at the center of him made him uncharacteristically rash. He was tired of the foreign minister and the trim Estonian and the strung-out girl and the round man with the loose-fitting clothes. He was tired of the Russell Gaddses and the Jonathan Bennetts, men of immense means and power who took their pounds of flesh from those who could not defend themselves.
“That’s the point of black programs,” he said. “No one can see them.”
How you do anything is how you do everything.
the image of Jack’s sentinel form on the stool, unbudging and proficient, had stayed with Evan. It said, This is how we protect what is dear to us.
Evan pressed his palms on the thighs of his cargo pants once more to blot the blood from his cuts. Then he gripped the steering wheel with one hand and with the other lifted his ARES 1911. The contour of the grip, the high-profile straight-eight sights, the matte-black finish that gave off neither glint nor gleam—it felt like home. He’d loaded it with 230-grain Speer Gold Dot hollow points, because why fuck around?
Their rap sheets had been helpfully listed on the DEA chart, Evan pairing an identity with each shot he fired. Richard Brewer, a dime in Lompoc for second-degree murder—center mass. Hector DeJean, good-behaviored out for kidnapping and assault with a deadly weapon—bridge of the nose. Esau Corona, convicted and released serial rapist—left clavicle entry, dinner-plate-size chunk of shoulder blade blown out the other side. Eight men down. Eight left.
