Andrew Britton: The Operative

“Healing isn’t just about the body,” Allison said. “What she’s been through will help many others.”

Harper excused himself, leaving the others under an old oak tree. Standing there, seeing the play of light, feeling the nearly imperceptible dampness, caused Kealey to flash to the runabout under its limb.

Healing the mind? he thought. They had been one second away from a nuclear holocaust. Kealey didn’t know if his brain would ever process how many lives, how many faces on the news, would have been scratched in his soul had they failed. He had been thinking about that since they left Trask’s mansion, about the words that Jefferson had chosen to conclude the Declaration: “… with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence…”

Maybe. Or maybe it was luck. Whatever it was, Kealey would be thinking about it for the rest of his life.

“I figured you were sleeping late this morning,” Andrews said, “so I didn’t bother to call you. But we got a lot of data off those two phones. It’s going to help us round up the mercs and close the book on Hunt and Trask.”

“What about the drivers?” Kealey asked.

“Bell and Scroggins? Free. They were dupes in this whole thing. So were all the poor students who had volunteered to be subjects and interns with the Xana project. They were selected to foster Islamophobia, like the Muslim terrorist nations were piling on.”

“What’s going to happen to Dr. Gillani?” Allison asked.

Andrews smirked. “Do you really want to know?”

“I don’t know. Do I?”

“I can answer that,” Kealey said. “She’ll end up working for us, just like the Nazi rocket scientists did after World War II.”

“From the first debrief I saw this morning, she’s got a helluva technique, with marbles as controls. Once they were hypnotized, the victims were told to associate the marble with that world. Touching them, looking at them, was good for about an hour. They would act normally, not arousing suspicion until it was time for them to act. A phone call and Dr. Samson’s voice sent them to the marble and then back into a trance. With Yasmin, wearing it kept her under constantly when the demands of the timetable kicked in.”

“That’s pretty incredible,” Allison agreed.

“If we had a snowball’s chance of getting the White House onboard, we could get a lot of intel by setting loose our Guantanamo guests with that kind of cooperation.”

Kealey didn’t disagree, but he also wasn’t in the mood for this. He was done-again. He would go back to the university and pick up where he left off.

Either that or find an atoll somewhere and live off fish and crustaceans for the rest of my life.

“By the way,” Andrews said, “when you’re ready, Ryan, the president wants to see you and Reed. He was real proud of you both.”

“Thanks,” Kealey said. “He made some tough calls there. Backed us.”

“You know you can come back if you want.”

“Thanks, but I’m too old for the field and too restless for a desk,” Kealey said.

“Too old?” Allison said.

“There isn’t a part of me that doesn’t hurt,” he said. “Just the hit I took opening the door of the helicopter. Those shoulder harnesses are unforgiving.”

Andrews laughed. “The offer will always be on the table.”

“I appreciate it, but I’ve been thinking a lot about how close we came to not pulling this out. I’m not a big believer in karma, but I think I’ll quit while the scales are still in my favor.”

The conversation ranged after that from Colin to changes in Company and Bureau policy to watch out for rogues. They returned to their cars, which were alone along the tree-lined street in the cemetery, and headed out-Andrews and Allison to Langley, Kealey to I-95. He did not go south to Washington, but south to parts unknown. He knew he would not find an atoll in that direction, but it was okay. He just wanted a long coastline of open road, away from government, out among the people he had always served.

Just him and ordinary citizens, not the Trasks and Hunts or even the well-meaning bureaucrats, but those whom the rest of Jefferson’s phrase so aptly described: the men and women who “mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

SUKKUR, PAKISTAN

It figured.

Of course.

Sukkur, the Pakistani city in which Reed Bishop found himself, was one of the region’s largest centers for the production of tobacco. He had smiled as the “big green cow with wheels for feet”-as the nickname for the bus was loosely translated-entered the town and he saw the proud billboard of a farmer harvesting plants.

You’re testing me, aren’t you, honey? He laughed. That’s all right. He had stopped smoking, at first, when he was around her. He was around her now, always. He would never smoke again.

Bishop emerged from the rusting, lopsided conveyance that had brought him from Islamabad. He had a bet with another American that the circa 1950 vehicle-with a hole in the floor that allowed them to watch the dirt roads crunch by-the bus would never finish the journey.

Bishop was wrong. They didn’t even get a flat. And they arrived on time.

“There’s a point at which components become so mutually dependent, they become a sort of closed system,” the other American passenger said, collecting Bishop’s five dollars.

The man was a mid-level diplomat. Bishop guessed that if anyone knew how tough it was to stop any force that had been in motion for so long, it was him.

The provincial attache had also given him a tip on how to get what he wanted here.

“Dollars or technology,” he’d said. “Those are your best currency.”

What he wanted was to take the information Cluzot had obtained for him and put a face on it. The driver gave Bishop his two bags off the top of the bus-he was surprised to find them there-after which the American stopped in a local teahouse to clear the dust of travel from his throat, get directions, and steel his resolve. There was danger in what he was planning: personal, psychological, and even political. But it needed to be done.

Happy that the Gold Flake tobacco everyone seemed to be smoking here had an aroma and smoothness that were foreign to him-downright foul if you were too close to it-Bishop walked down the paved main street, past open stalls selling foods and fabrics, to a two-story brick structure adjoining a hospital. He did not read or speak more than phrase-book Urdu, but he recognized the writing on the sign.

SUKKUR SENIOR SCHOOLHOUSE.

He had an appointment with the headmaster-a pleasant fellow in his sixties, who appreciated very much the iPod Bishop had brought him as a gift, loaded with the Sami Yusuf tunes he said he enjoyed. Bishop wondered if he would have to listen to that music.

Of course you will, he thought. Just as he had to listen to Miley Cyrus and Shane Harper for a year or so.

Together, he and the headmaster went to get Kamilah Fazari from her biology class. They stood outside the building, in the shade, waiting for the class to end. The teacher-a woman in a head scarf-brought the thin, tall girl over.

The twelve-year-old was well dressed, well mannered, and looked like her mother. Her expression wasn’t neutral, as it was the first day Bishop had seen her, but she had the same poise, the same strong mouth, the same intense eyes, which were studying Bishop with a blend of interest and suspicion.

She had been crying fairly recently. Bishop recognized the look from his own reflection in the mirror. He knew that she had been informed by Akila Fazari that Yasmin Rassin was killed in an accident, but that was all she knew.

The headmaster explained-pausing to translate for Bishop-that this man was an acquaintance of her mother and wanted to take her to America to live and to study.