Alex Berenson - The Midnight House

Wells could have forced Duto to accept him as an equal. With his successes the last few years, he could have become deputy director of operations. He could have quit the agency entirely, moved over to the White House and the National Security Council. He could even have taken a job teaching, someplace like Georgetown, while he figured out his next move. But he knew he’d be bored out of his mind wearing a suit to work every day, running meetings. He belonged outside. But because he wouldn’t accept more authority, Duto and Shafer didn’t respect him.

Wells’s pulse crept higher. He forced himself to smile, not to give Shafer the satisfaction of seeing the sting of his words. “You like the FDR? ” Wells said aloud.

“Not so much. Too politically correct, don’t you think? The Democrats wanted it, and then the Republicans stuck it in the back of beyond. And all this self-conscious inspiration. We should have kept to Lincoln and Jefferson and Washington.”

“Where’s Exley?” Wells said, apropos of nothing. And saying Exley’s name made him think of Anne. He imagined he could smell her on his hands, feel her skin on his. Thinking about her made his mouth go dry. Yet, equally, he wanted to confess what he’d done to Exley. To apologize to her. And to make her jealous. Remind her of what they’d had. “How is she? ”

“Ask her yourself. You know how to find her. I’m not involved. You’re going to get back together, one of you needs to break already. Otherwise you’ll just make each other miserable.”

Suddenly a class of elementary-school kids, third or fourth grade, swarmed the memorial. Their teacher was barely old enough to shave, a hipster in black glasses, a well-meaning Teach for America refugee halfway between the Ivy League and law school. He was trying, but he could barely keep the kids in line. They bounced off one another, shifting foot to foot. Two boys ran off, chased each other around one of the marble benches at the edge of the memorial, playing at a gunfight. “You dead. Pump this shotgun on your head.” The other boy ducked behind a bench, then raised an invisible rifle in both hands. “Shotgun ain’t nothing. You the one is dead.”

“Let’s go,” Wells said.

“Depressing.”

“I hate watching it.”

“I mean, the waste of ammo. These kids can’t hit the side of a barn. And somebody needs to reload.”

“Nice, Ellis.”

“Can’t let everything get to you. You got to be able to smile sometimes, the absurdity of it.”

They left the kids behind, walked around the basin toward the Jefferson Memorial. A faint breeze fluttered off the stagnant water, carrying the muddy, briny smell that Wells would always associate with Washington. The swamp. A city that existed only as a kind of hotel for power. New York or Philadelphia would have been more natural sites for the seat of government, but the South wouldn’t agree, back in the day. So here they were.

Wells supposed the United States had been lucky to have D.C. If the capital had stayed in the North, the South might have seceded a decade earlier, before the Union Army could bring it to heel. And if the South had broken away, at least three countries would have formed in the area now occupied by the United States — a North, a South, and a West. Then the United States wouldn’t have been the dominant world power in the twentieth century. Perhaps World War I or even World War II would have ended differently. On and on the counterfactual history ran.

Kierkegaard was wrong, Wells thought. Life couldn’t be understood backward or forward. In the end, humans depended on faith as armor. But Wells’s own faith had faded. He didn’t know where to look. He’d lived as a Muslim for a decade. But how could he rejoin the umma, the community of believers, after what Omar Khadri had done to him? Yet Wells was even more perplexed by Christianity, the religion he’d been raised in growing up. He found Islam’s precepts easier to accept than Christianity’s, the relationship with God more personal.

The wind picked up and riffled the basin’s brackish water, scudding low waves against its concrete walls. Despite himself, Wells found himself looking for a fish in the pool. A fat, ugly carp or even a toothy pike. Lord, just show me a pike that got lost on its way up the Potomac, and I will never question your existence again.

No fish.

Wells shivered in the breeze. Duto had certainly ruined his mood.

“Cold? ” Shafer said.

“Wondering if I should become a Buddhist.”

“I don’t think it would suit you. You know what you need, John? A mission.”

“That what you think? ”

“I knows you fancies yourself a deep thinker,” Shafer said in a ridiculous southern accent. “But philosophy ain’t your thing, John-boy.”

“You were born an ass, you will forever be an ass, and you will die an ass.”

“At least I’m consistent. You ever see Gandhi eating meat? Barbecue? Pulled pork? A fat T-bone? Sirloin? Broiled in butter and served with a side of bacon? ”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, but you’re making me hungry, Ellis.”

“Follow your destiny,” Shafer said. “Put down the book, grasshopper. Pick up the gun. Can’t kill nobody with a book.”

Wells laughed. “When we get back to the office, I’m going to try. Then I’m gonna put you on a spit.”

“Meantime, get to it.”

“You really want to do this,” Wells said.

“If nothing else, don’t you want to catch whoever killed your friend?”

“You don’t know he’s dead.”

“He’s dead, John. Until proven otherwise. Let’s find out who killed him.”

“Simple,” Wells said. “And if the truth turns out to be complicated?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there. Or burn it. Whatever.”

“All right.”

“So, Duto wants us to play detective, we play detective,” Shafer said. “Spitball. Everything but the obvious, the jihadi connection. Save that for last.”

“You know anything more about 673? Anything Duto didn’t tell us? ” Wells said.

“Only this: we and the army paid the members of the squad their regular salaries. But the expenses were financed by the agency through what’s called a C-one drop. The squad got quarterly disbursements. No accounting of what happened to the money after that. No receipts, no oversight. It’s very rare. Seven-three got close to eight million through these drops.”

“Eight million for a ten-man squad. Not bad.”

“No, it wasn’t. Some went to the Poles who were running the base. Some for charter flights. Some for coms equipment, probably. Satellite gear, et cetera. But that’s another possible motive. Maybe whoever was in charge of the money skimmed a couple million. Now he’s worried the rest of the squad found out, so he’s eliminating them.”

“What I don’t see, why kill the rest of the squad now? You’re just calling attention to yourself. Doesn’t make sense.”

“I can’t disagree,” Shafer said. “Okay. Your turn.”

“What about the woman, Rachel? The doctor. One woman, nine guys. Maybe she was having an affair. Two affairs. A love triangle.”

“Then she gets home and one of the guys kills her? And makes it look like a suicide? Then starts in on the rest of the squad? Why now?”

“Same problem as the money,” Wells said. “The timing doesn’t work.”

“Okay, this is the worst yet,” Shafer said. “Say one of the members is actually a jihadi. Who worked for all these years for the agency. Or the army. Waiting to get put on this squad. And then, lo and behold — no. I can’t even say it. It’s so ridiculous.”

“Try this. Coincidence. The doctor killed herself. Jerry Williams walked out on his wife. Karp got shot in a robbery—”