James Patterson - Truth or Die

“Who is he?” asked Dobson, pausing before a sip of coffee. At nine a.m. the following morning in his West Wing office, he was already on his third cup of the day. At least three additional cups, if not more, would follow before noon. Always black. Just black. No sugar.

“Maybe it’s better if you don’t know,” replied Frank Karcher, sitting on the other side of Dobson’s desk with his thick arms folded. The current National Clandestine Service chief of the CIA never drank coffee. Nor did he smoke or consume alcohol. From time to time, though, he did give orders to have people killed.

This was the first time the two were meeting publicly, as it were, in Dobson’s office. For the past two years, they had met in secret, a routine that had been no small feat given that the beat bloggers working the nation’s capital made Hollywood paparazzi look like agoraphobic slackers. The empty parking garages after midnight, the abandoned warehouse in Ivy City — that part of their plan was over. It would now be expected that Karcher’s name show up on the White House visitors’ log.

Dobson forced a smile, an attempt at patience with his strangest of political bedfellows. “If I didn’t need to know the guy’s name, Frank, you wouldn’t be sitting here,” he said. “Your mess is my mess.”

Karcher couldn’t argue with that, choosing instead to simply scratch the back of his very large head before opening the file in his lap. This one wasn’t empty. “His name is Trevor Mann,” he began, summarizing in bullet-point fashion. “Former Manhattan ADA with an outstanding conviction rate... left to become general counsel for a hedge fund... apparently that didn’t go too well.”

“What happened?” asked Dobson.

“The firm was sued by one of its largest clients, the Police Pension Fund of New York City. This guy, Trevor Mann, discovered during the trial that the hedge fund managers were withholding evidence that should’ve been given to the prosecution. In short, the cops were getting screwed out of profits.”

Karcher was about to continue when he glanced up at Dobson and suddenly stopped. There was something about Dobson’s expression, although Karcher couldn’t quite peg it. “What is it?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Dobson lied. “Go on. Or better yet, let me guess. The lawyer grew a conscience and sold out the hedge fund managers.”

“Something like that,” said Karcher. “He ended up being disbarred. Now he’s teaching at Columbia Law. Ethics, no less. Just finished his second year there.”

Dobson took another sip of coffee, leaning back in his chair. He knew that Karcher, all six foot two and two hundred and forty pounds of him, could be a sick fuck with a short fuse, if provoked.

But Dobson also knew what they had in common, what had initially brought them together.

A complete and thorough understanding of leverage.

“Frank, did you ever take Latin?”

Karcher, a bit wary of the lack of segue from Dobson, slowly shook that large head of his. When he first enlisted in the army over thirty years ago, they had to special-order his helmet. “I’m assuming you did?” he asked.

“Yeah, four years of it at Phillips Exeter Academy,” said Dobson, fully aware of how pretentious that sounded. “And you know what the irony is? The only Latin expression that’s ever had any meaning to me whatsoever in my job is one that most anybody would know without studying the language for a single goddamn day. Quid pro quo. ”

Karcher was well acquainted with the expression. He also knew where Dobson was heading with it. But before he could even open his mouth to mount his defense, Dobson went right on talking.

“Last night, I convinced the president of the United States to make you the next director of the CIA. You , Frank. Not the half dozen or so more qualified men at the top of the intelligence world, but you. I did this because this was our agreement, what you got in return for helping me with my plan. And everything was going well with that plan, wasn’t it?”

Dobson paused. It was a rhetorical question, but he still wanted at least a nod from Karcher, something that would make it all very clear. Not that Karcher agreed with him. Screw that. Rather, that Karcher understood just who exactly had the leverage.

So let’s see it, big boy. Tilt that huge melon of yours up and down like a good soldier.

And there it was, right on cue. It was the slightest of nods but a nod just the same, and for a proud man like Karcher, easily more painful than passing a cactus-sized kidney stone.

Dobson continued. “So now you’re here telling me that not only is the kid still alive up in New York, but there’s also a new guy, the boyfriend of the reporter, who might know everything as well?”

“I’ll take care of it,” said Karcher.

“That sounds awfully familiar.”

“Then what do you want me to say?”

“Nothing. I want you to do ,” said Dobson. “As in, whatever it takes to clean this up. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Quid pro quo, Frank.”

“I got it.”

The hell he did, thought Dobson. “Quid pro quo!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. “I want my fucking quid pro quo!”

Karcher didn’t say another word. Not even good-bye. He stood up from his chair and walked out of Dobson’s office.

Cave quid dicis, quando, et cui.

Paranoia, I was quickly discovering, has a sound all its own. Loud.

“Christ, do you hear that?” I asked as we walked south along Broadway after leaving the Oak Tavern.

Owen turned to me without breaking stride. “Hear what?”

“Everything,” I said.

It was as if someone had grabbed a giant municipal dial with two hands and turned up the volume on the entire city. The clanking of a construction crane overhead, the idling engines of the bumper-to-bumper traffic, the back-and-forth chatter of the people we passed along the sidewalk — I could hear every single noise Manhattan had to offer, louder than ever before. And each one, I was convinced, wanted to kill me.

“It’s actually pretty cool, if you think about it,” said Owen.

That wasn’t exactly the reaction I had in mind. “Cool?”

“Yeah. Three-point-eight billion years of evolution tucked away in your DNA,” he said. “Survival instincts. Hear better, live longer.”

We came to a stop at a DON’T WALK sign at the corner of Fifty-Eighth Street. My neck was craning like Linda Blair’s in The Exorcist . We were out in the open, two sitting ducks. “Are you sure it isn’t hide better, live longer?”

“I know how it must seem,” he said, “but we’re actually fine for a bit.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“The Achilles’ heel of the intelligence community,” he said. “They only act on intelligence.”

“Meaning what, exactly?”

“Our two friends from the park are too busy right now turning your apartment upside down. They want to know what you know. They’ll comb through every hard drive you have; they’ll hack your phone records, bank and credit card accounts, anything and everything. Then they’ll wait and hope.”

“For what?”

“For us to do something foolish,” he said. “That reminds me. Can I borrow your phone for a second?”

“Sure,” I said, handing it to him. “Hey! What the hell?”

The kid promptly took my iPhone and dropped it down the sewer. Plop .

“ Now we’re fine for a bit,” he said.

I got it. GPS. On or off, it’s always on. In which case...