David Baldacci: The Innocent

Several times Robie had thought about approaching her. Yet he had left the party without doing so. As he was walking out he’d glanced back at her. She was laughing at a comment made by someone, and never looked his way. It was probably better that way, he’d thought. Because really, what would have been the point?

Robie rose and stared out the window.

It was fall now. The leaves in the park had started to turn. The evenings were chilly. The humidity of summer was sometimes still with them, but its intense edge had measurably eroded. The current weather was not bad for a city that was built on a swamp-and still was a swamp by many people’s estimation, at least the part where the professional politicians nested.

Robie had done his recon in the abbreviated time allotted. The run-throughs, logistically harder in this situation, had still been performed.

And he still didn’t like it.

But it was not his call.

The location would not involve Robie stepping on a plane or train. But the target was different as well. And not in a good way.

Sometimes he went after people intent on global menace, like Rivera or Talal. Or sometimes he simply went after a problem.

You could take your pick of labels, but in the end they all meant the same thing. His employer decided who among the living and breathing would qualify as a target. And then they turned to men like Robie to end the living and breathing part.

It made the world better, was the justification.

Like flinging the planet’s most potent army against a madman in the Middle East. Military victory was ensured from the start. What could not be wholly predicted was what came after victory. Like a morphing chaos you couldn’t escape.

Trapped in a trap of your own making.

The agency Robie worked for had a clear policy on operatives who were caught during a mission. There would be no acknowledgment that Robie even worked for the United States. There would be no steps taken to save him. It was the opposite of the U.S. Marines’ mantra: Everyone in Robie’s world was left behind.

Thus on every mission Robie had employed an exit plan known only to him, in case the operation went awry. He had never needed to employ his personal backup plan, because he had never failed a mission. Yet. Tomorrow was simply another day for something to go wrong.

Shane Connors was the one who had taught Robie this. He had told Robie that he had to use his backup plan once, in Libya, when the operation, through no fault of his, had imploded.

“You’re the only one out there who really has your back, Will,” Connors had told him. That advice had stayed with Robie all these years. He would never forget it.

Robie surveyed his apartment. He’d been here four years, liked it for the most part. There were restaurants within walking distance. The area was interesting, with many unusual shops that were not part of homogeneous national chains. Robie ate out a lot. He liked to sit at tables and watch people go by. He was a student of humanity in a way. That was why he was still alive. He could read people, often after observing them for only a few seconds. It was not a natural talent. It was a skill he had built up over time, as most useful skills were.

In the basement of his building was a gym where he would go to work out, hone his muscles, ratchet up his motor skills, practice techniques that needed practicing. He was the only one who ever used the facility. For training involving weapons and other necessary tools of his trade there were other places he went. Other people he worked with.

At forty years of age it didn’t come any easier.

He toggled his neck back and forth and was rewarded with a satisfying pop.

He heard a door open and close in the hall. He stepped to his peephole and watched the woman walk her bike down the hall. This was the woman from the party, the one who worked at the White House. She sometimes wore jeans on the way to work and then presumably changed into her official duds when she got there. She was always the first to leave the building in the morning, unless Robie had already departed for some reason.

A. Lambert.

That was the name on the mailbox downstairs. He knew the A stood for Anne. His background briefing on her had told him that.

His own mailbox simply said Robie. No first initial. He had no idea if people wondered about that or not. Probably not, though.

She was in her late twenties, tall, long blonde hair, thin. He once had seen her in shorts when she first moved in. She was somewhat knock-kneed, but her face was elegantly structured, with a mole under her right eyebrow. He had heard her during a discussion in the hall with a fellow tenant who did not support the current administration. Her replies had been sharp and informed. Robie had been impressed.

He had started referring to her in his own mind as “A.”

Robie stepped back from the door when she disappeared into the elevator with her bike. He moved back to another window overlooking the street. A minute later she left the building, shouldered her knapsack, swung onto her bike, and was off. He watched her until she turned the corner and the reflector strips on her backpack and helmet disappeared from view.

Next stop: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

It was four-thirty in the morning.

He turned back from the window and surveyed his living space. There was nothing in his apartment that would tell anyone searching it what he did. He had an official position that would be backed up to the fullest in case anyone questioned anything. But still, his apartment was nondescript and contained almost nothing of personal interest. He preferred that to having others invent a past for him, placing photos of people he didn’t even know around his apartment and passing them off as relatives or friends. “Hobbying” a residence with tennis rackets or skis or stamp collection books or a musical instrument was standard procedure. He had turned all such offers down. There was a bed, a few chairs, some books he’d actually read, lamps, tables, a place to eat, a place to shower and use the toilet.

He reached up to the pull-up bar he kept over the doorway leading to his bedroom and did a quick twenty. It was good to feel his muscles in motion, pulling his weight up to the bar with relative ease. He could run most twenty-somethings into the ground. His strength and motor skills were still excellent. Yet he was forty now and clearly not what he once was. He could only hope to counter the inevitable erosion of skills and physicality with increased field experience.

He lay down in the bed but didn’t put any covers over him. He kept the apartment cold. He needed to sleep.

The coming night would be busy.

And different.

Robie was in the basement gymnasium of his building. It was nearly nine p.m., but the place was open twenty-four/seven for the residents. All you needed was your key card. In one respect Robie’s workout routine never varied: He never did the same workout twice in a row. He focused not on strength or stamina or flexibility or balance or coordination or agility. He focused on them all. Every exercise he did required at least two and sometimes all of those elements.

He hung upside down on the pull-up bar. He did stomach crunches and then worked his oblique muscles while holding a medicine ball. The U.S. Army had devised a functional fitness regime that mimicked what soldiers did in the field, the sorts of muscles and skills required on the battlefield.

Robie held to the same concept and worked on things he needed to survive out there. Lunges, thrusts, explosiveness from his calves up. He worked everything in synergy. Upper body and lower body at the same time that he was pushing his core past the breaking point. He was chiseled but never took his shirt off. No one would ever see him strolling along displaying his six-pack unless he needed to as part of a mission.