Killfile (20 page)

I walked away after
Bagram. I'm sure there are some people who would have quit the moment they saw that body bag being hauled out of the room. Or at any time before that, when they knew for a fact that they were being used, when their conscience couldn't take it anymore.

I'm not quite that stupid. You don't tell the commander of a black-ops unit to take his job and shove it inside a secret prison seven thousand miles away from the right to due process.

I didn't wait long, though. I made the call to Cantrell from the airport as soon as I got back to D.C.

“I'm done,” I told him.

He was less than thrilled. “You seriously think you can quit?”

“Pretty sure I just did.”

He sighed, and I could tell he was thinking of the right way to phrase what he wanted to say, given that we were on an unsecured line.

“I told you to get your head on straight. Get back to me when you've had a little more sleep.”

“I'm wide awake now. I don't need any more time. You need to believe me on this: I have had enough.”

He made a noise. Almost like gagging. “Oh stop it. You going to tell me you're getting misty over that little stain we left on the floor? Bullshit.”

“Too many stains. Too much blood on my—”

Cantrell cut me off before I could finish the sentence.

“No. You don't get to make that speech. You want out? Then go with God. You've done your time, and I've had damn few complaints about you, which is more than I can say for most of your fucked-up brethren. But don't use this as an excuse. You've seen worse. Hell, you've done worse.”

“Not when the other guy was in handcuffs.”

“You want a fair fight now? Be honest. You haven't been in a fair fight in your life.”

He had a point. But he wasn't about to change my mind.

“Tell me something,” I asked him. “You think what we did in that room was right?”

“Fuck yes, I do. No, he wasn't Osama bin Laden or a Taliban warlord. Yes, he was weak and young and pathetic and stupid. But he was still the enemy. He had chosen to take up arms against the force and power of the United States military and he was absolutely going to die for it. He was born to be a corpse. Now, personally, I'd rather watch him die strapped to a table than have him out in the desert waiting to put a bullet in my skull. Maybe you'd feel better if a Predator dropped a Hellfire missile on his ass from twenty thousand feet. But the result is the same. There's no such thing as a fair fight, John. There's just us and them. Today there's one less shithead for the enemy to throw at us. Bottom line, I can live with whatever road we took to get there.”

I knew that if we were face-to-face, I would get absolute certainty from him. I couldn't read him over the phone, but I knew. There was no question in his mind.

And there were too many questions in mine. Maybe it was selfish. But I was done being Cantrell's weapon.

“I can't,” I said.

There was a long pause on the line. For a moment, I wondered if he'd hung up. And then Cantrell's voice came back. His southern accent had thinned, which was how I knew he was deeply angry.

“You've been the beneficiary of a lot of investment. We've put a great deal of time and training into you. And we've trusted you with a lot of—well, let's call them trade secrets. Now, you can understand why we'd be reluctant to allow you to leave, given all that you've got in your head.”

“You don't want to send people after me.”

I heard a fat, happy chuckle over the phone. “Do I hear an ‘or else' at the end of that sentence? You think it's gonna be like
Rambo
? Lot of body bags, is that it?”

“I was thinking more like
Night of the Living Dead
. Only a lot less living, a lot more dead.”

He laughed at that. His way of buying time. Then he made his decision.

“You've seen too many movies, John. We try to do right by our people. You did your bit. Uncle Sam's got no more legal claim to you. You want to walk away now, I promise, there's no need to look over your shoulder.”

“I never need to look over my shoulder. Remember?”

“Don't lecture me, son. I know everything you're capable of, better than you do.”

“Then we're done?”

“What do you want, a going-away party and a cake? We're done.”

I believed him, even if I couldn't read him over the phone line. I suddenly wasn't sure what to say. He filled in the gap for me.

“Just remember this: you've had us clearing the way for a long time. You might not like it out there on your own.”

That sounded like a threat again. I didn't like it.

“Hey, Terry,” I said, using his real first name, the one he didn't ever tell anyone. “I've always wondered, why the hell do you use that accent? You're from New Jersey.”

That made him laugh out loud. “Shit, John,” he said, accent thick as molasses again. “Shut up before you make me miss you.”

He hung up.

B
Y THE TIME
I got back to our apartment, Whitney was gone. Her closets were empty, and her side of the bathroom was so clean it looked sterile. At some point while I was out of town, she'd made the decision to move on with her usual ruthless efficiency. For her, there was never any sense in hanging around after she'd planned her exit strategy. There wasn't even a note.

I never saw it coming.

She didn't vanish from the face of the earth. I admit, I've run her name on Google late at night. She's the director of a think tank and the wife of an up-and-coming congressman who swept into office as part of the backlash against Obama.

But I've always wondered about the timing. Did she leave because she knew me so well? Did she realize before I did that I'd reached my expiration date?

Or did she leave because someone told her what happened at Bagram, and it was time for her to get out? Was she always a minder from the Agency, or someone else? Did they decide I wasn't worth her time if I wasn't with Cantrell's group anymore?

I don't know. That's the kind of useless paranoia that crawls around in your head when you've been in the community for any length of time. You tend to ask yourself a lot of questions that will never have a good answer.

Either way, it didn't really matter. She was gone.

And just like that, I was alone, out in the world, for the first time in my life.

I
CONSIDERED MY
options. I could have gone back to being a soldier, only for a private corporation like Blackwater. I could have used my talent for blackmail or gambling, like so many people have suggested. I could have found a normal job, stuck behind a desk or a counter somewhere, dealing with all the mouth-breathing, slow-witted people like you, every day of my life, until I finally put a gun in my mouth.

But I knew what I really wanted. I wanted to be alone. And I wanted to have enough money to do it in style.

There are a lot of other guys with my military training. I'd met some of them. They rented their skills and their lives to the very rich, solving problems that the One Percent didn't want to trust with the proper authorities. That is the point of having money, after all: you get to hire someone to deal with the inconvenient things. Rich people don't have to scrub their own toilets.

I had the same skills as those other guys, plus one definite market advantage. So I went to work for myself.

I moved to Los Angeles because I was sick of bad weather. In a short time, I got clients. Word gets around among the very rich. I bought some good suits and a decent place to live. I even put a little cash away for the day when I'd finally retreat completely from the world.

It all seemed to be working out pretty well.

Until now, anyway.

But I'm not dead yet. And as smart as Preston is, even with the CIA and the government and a billion dollars on his side, he's still only human.

I'm not.

It's time for me to remind him just what that means.

Kelsey's hand is clenched
around my forearm tight enough to hurt.

“This is never going to work,” she whispers at me.

We are both in the best suits we could buy at Ross Dress for Less. We showered and changed at a Motel 6, and we've got two cheap wheeled suitcases behind us as we walk from long-term parking to the entrance of Philadelphia International Airport. We look like a couple of ordinary professionals on their way to a conference or a sales meeting.

We get all the way to the doors of the terminal before Kelsey freezes up.

“Just relax,” I tell her. “Just breathe.”

She sucks in a deep lungful of jet-fuel-scented air, but she still gives me a look.

“Maybe we need to reconsider this.”

“This is where you start to question me? After everything you've seen me do?”

“This isn't some backwoods meth head, or a bunch of guys with guns. I know you can handle that,” she says. “This is an airport, for Christ's sake. They don't even let you bring a water bottle on the plane.”

“You're right,” I tell her. And she is. This should be absolutely impossible.

Everyone is supposed to be on full alert these days, if not for terrorists, then for the random lunatics who decide that the airport is the place to work out their issues against the government and the IRS.

But in reality, 9/11 was a long time ago, and human beings are wired to think short term. Passengers care more about getting to their flight than they do about terrorism. The security guards, in turn, just want to get everyone through the line with a minimum of pissing and moaning and threats of litigation. So everyone in the airport is already distracted, preoccupied. They want routine. They want order. They want everything to go as expected. And their brains will work overtime to make sure that illusion becomes a reality.

They're going to do most of the work for me. I'll only have to give them the smallest push.

Preston's machines—and through him, the CIA—are the real problem. He's got his software looking for me and Kelsey in every digital form possible. His programs know our purchasing patterns, our travel history, our seat preferences. Even if we use new credit cards, his algorithms will identify us by matching us to habits we don't even realize we have. If we try to avoid credit cards and use cash, we'll automatically be flagged as drug dealers, and that will raise our profile as well. If we use fake photo IDs, our pictures will still be on them, and the facial-recognition software will pick us out of the crowd better than most humans.

So I decided to bypass all that. We're not going to show any ID. We're not even going to buy tickets.

We're going to just walk past the TSA and get on the plane. I'm even going to bring my gun with me. And nobody will say a word or stop me.

At least, that's the plan.

W
E'RE BLOCKING THE
doors. Other travelers move around us with barely restrained sighs and curses. We're being noticed. That's not what I want. I gently lever my arm out of Kelsey's grip: we're not playing husband and wife here. “Let's go,” I say.

I pick up my carry-on and start walking confidently toward the security checkpoint.

At least I'm confident. This is where Kelsey is closest to freaking out. She's almost humming with anxiety, like a high-tension wire. She hesitates and then crosses the threshold into the airport, like she's just stepped onto a minefield.

I think she was less worried when people were actually shooting at us. But she was raised in a polite family. Her respect for the rules goes deep. To her, this is like stealing, cutting in line, and cheating on a test, all rolled into one.

It's understandable. Completely annoying, but understandable.

I send to her as we walk.

She has to relax. If she doesn't, she'll draw additional attention to us, and that could be a problem.

“I'm fine.”

“Yes, it will,” I whisper.

We stop for a moment so I can scan everyone in uniform. Quickly, I sift through all their thoughts. I don't want the good agents. I don't want the alert and conscientious employees, the ones who take their jobs seriously. I want the guy at the end of his shift, the one who drank too much coffee on his last break and now really has to go to the bathroom.

And there he is. I steer Kelsey over to the line that's the longest. When we reach the TSA agent checking boarding passes, he looks up at us.

He's irritable and tired. He fought with his son this morning, and his mind is still back there.

Then he sees Kelsey.

I didn't need to worry about her. When the moment hits, she's perfect. Her anxiety vanishes. She's calm and confident. She gives him a heart-stopping smile.

The agent straightens up a little, wonders if she notices his receding hairline.

I hand over two perfectly blank pieces of paper to the agent. At the same time, I push a message into his head, as hard as I can. I actually picture myself taking it in one hand and hurling it at his brain like a fastball at the strike zone.

He looks hard at the paper, then looks at me, his face suddenly grave.

For a long instant, I worry I'm losing my touch.

Then he nods, scribbles something on the blank paper, and immediately stands up and gestures for us to follow him. “Right this way,” he says.

He whispers something to the other agents on duty. They're so busy checking for water bottles and shoes that they don't see us. Not really.

He escorts us past the X-ray machine with a respectful nod. And then he goes back to his post, counting down the last fifteen minutes until he's off the clock, back to worrying about his kid and his bank account and everything else. He won't even remember us.

From the playbook of Wolf Messing, ladies and gentlemen. This is
how you deal with the mind of someone in authority: you give them a higher authority to obey.

We go to the gate. I selected the flight by checking passenger loads on the Net. It's underbooked, one of a dozen planes that travel daily to Los Angeles. Plenty of open seats, which is bad for business, but like a vacation to the gate crew. They're relaxed, easygoing, and easily distracted. They open the flight to all seats, all rows for boarding, and then go back to gossiping and laughing behind the counter.

We walk up to the employee taking boarding passes. I hand over my blank sheets of paper and send a new message.

We get seated in an exit row and free drinks from the flight attendants.

I think Kelsey might be more impressed by that than anything else I've done.

W
E ARRIVE AT
LAX, even though Preston has wiped out my savings and stolen my home.

I'm not so arrogant as to think I can hide from Preston's machines. Believe me, I'm convinced by his demonstrations so far. Anything we do can be traced as long as it goes through the Internet somewhere.

I'm certain that any time I show up in the electronic ether, a siren and flashing lights will go off at OmniVore headquarters, followed shortly by a hit squad heading out the door.

So, whenever possible, I've stayed out of the digital age. That means Kelsey and I have had to dig up phone books and use maps instead of letting our phones give us information and directions. I've been surprised how hard it is to work without the net. It turns out my map-reading skills were mainly good for figuring out how many
klicks between checkpoints. We got lost a lot driving to the Philadelphia airport. I have no idea how the Amish survive.

Now we need a car again, and I can't use my license or a credit card. The Internet ride services, like Uber or Lyft, would be even worse; I might as well call Preston and tell him where to find us. No taxicab will drive us all over town for cash, no matter how much we offer. And while other airports have off-the-books drivers hanging out around the terminals, LAX was never a good market for those guys. Everyone here owns a car.

Except me, thanks to Preston. The moment I try to buy anything, I'm screwed. Preston's smart little programs have cracked the code of my life. They can predict where I'll go by looking at what I've done in the time I've lived here. It's like Preston has a watcher at my favorite hotels in the city, my usual restaurants, the places where I shop.

If I was trying to hide, this should be the last place I would show up. There are a hundred other places where I could go and vanish, simply disappear into the mass of humanity. I hear Omaha is nice.

But I'm not hiding. This is my city. It's as close to home as any place I've ever known, and I have resources here that don't show up on any Internet search.

For starters, I have a line of credit in the favor bank with a lot of people. Low tech, but untraceable.

Time to make a few withdrawals.

I
NEED TO
make a call, but not on my gas-station smartphone. I want a landline, something that still uses cords and copper wires.

It takes me ten minutes to find a working pay phone in the terminal at LAX. It takes Armin Sadeghi only twenty to arrive with a freshly washed, almost-new Audi.

I asked him for an inconspicuous ride. For Sadeghi, I guess this qualifies.

One of his many businesses is a small chain of car lots. And my rescue of his daughter is still fresh enough that he doesn't ask questions when I tell him I need untraceable transportation.

He shows up himself, along with a couple of his security people riding along in his car, an honest-to-God Rolls-Royce. He's spent most of his life here, but he's still very Persian in this: he takes the payment of debts seriously. It's meant to be done face-to-face.

He greets both me and Kelsey with a brief embrace. Then he puts the keys into my hand and closes my fingers around them.

“Thank you,” I tell him. “I'll try to get it back to you in one piece.”

He waves this away. “As long as you need it. Anything else, you only have to ask.”

“How is Kira?”

I see it in his head: a fairly epic tantrum, right before she was sent to Passages in Malibu to get clean.

“She will be fine. Thanks to you.”

He excuses himself quickly. He's a busy man. He plans to say the Audi was totaled on a test drive, then write it off as a business loss at the end of the year. He honestly never expects to see me again.

I hope he's wrong.

A
ILON
T
IDHAR SMILES
when he sees us, even though I show up unannounced.

He lives in a small, Spanish-style two-bedroom in Beverly Hills. It was built in the 1920s. I've been here before. He's very proud of the stucco archways. “They don't even know how to make these anymore,” he told me the first time I visited. In any other city, they
would have torn this house down years ago. In L.A., it's worth nearly $2 million.

Tidhar himself is a big guy with only a little gray in his hair, even though he's got to be in his sixties by now. Depending on how he wants you to think of him, he either speaks English flawlessly, with an almost British reserve, or with a thick layer of Hebrew over every word. He could be like any Israeli immigrant in his neighborhood; a businessman, an investor, a restaurateur. And sure, he dabbles in all of that.

He just happens to be a spy as well.

We met after some unpleasant business involving his son. Ailon is deep-cover in the U.S. these days. He might even be retired, for all I know. I'm reluctant to get him involved in this. But he's far enough back in my history that I don't think Preston's algorithms are going to be able to track him.

And he is a spy, after all. He's going to have what I need.

H
E FEEDS US
and gets us drinks, moving his bulk around the tiny yellow kitchen. His wife isn't here—she's out with the grandkids, helping out their daughter-in-law. I'm grateful. I still don't think she will ever forgive me for the last time I showed up.

He's telling Kelsey about the original tile on the countertops. “Covered in dirt an inch thick when we bought the place,” he says. “Now look at that. Looks brand-new. Have you ever seen that shade of green before?”

Eventually, when he's done playing host, I tell him why we're here. I give him as much information as I think he needs. Hopefully not enough to compromise him too much if Preston—or worse, the Agency—does track us here.

He's silent for a moment when I finish. I worry that I've asked for too much. I begin apologizing.

“I'm sorry to come here, to you, but we need help. If you can't—”

He turns, and I see that he's been considering how to respond. He's a little annoyed. I shouldn't have rushed him.

“John,” he says. “Please. Who do you think you're talking to here?”

H
E DRIVES HIS
own car and we follow. He takes us to a small collection of storage units not far off the 10. It's not one of the big national chains, and it's half-hidden by an off-ramp and an overpass.

He has a key and an electronic token that gets him past the gates and the doors.

“You own this place?” Kelsey asks.

Tidhar and I both give her a look.

“Sorry,” she says. “Just making conversation.”

Tidhar takes us down a series of corridors. The air is hot and stale. Then he finds the unit he's looking for. He inserts the key into a hole on the wall, and the door rolls up with a mechanical noise, but smoothly, easily.