That was good.
Orphan X’s message had been received loud and clear.
Evan adjusted the focus of his tactical binoculars, watching the tires of the three limousines, waiting for the telltale smooth rotation.
There it was.
President Bennett was in the rear limo.
The people in front of Evan rambled off, and he pressed forward, alone for the moment. As he leaned against the frame with an elbow and zoomed in on Cadillac One, he heard a distinctive ringtone sound from one of his pockets.
With its hardened rubber case and Gorilla glass, the RoamZone was a durable piece of gear. It was also impossible to trace. Each incoming or outgoing call was broken into digital packets and shot through the Internet, pinging through a network of encrypted virtual private network tunnels around the world before establishing the connection. Evan kept a filter on as well to screen out background noise that might provide clues to his location.
The phone number—1-855-2-NOWHERE—was established for the pro bono clients he helped as the Nowhere Man, people in desperate need, grasping for a last lifeline before they went under for good.
Evan always answered the phone the same way: Do you need my help?
But as he eyed the caller ID screen now, he felt his pulse quicken in the side of his neck.
It was blank.
A few others—a very few—also had this phone number.
He thumbed the icon to answer, held the RoamZone to his face, said nothing.
A voice came through. “Orphan X.”
Evan said, “Mr. President.”
“I received the message you left for me in Apartment 705. Given that you announced your intentions rather than simply trying to take a shot, I assumed you wanted to establish contact with me.”
Evan said, “Affirmative.”
“You want to negotiate.”
Evan said, “Affirmative.”
He tracked the convoy as it cut across Constitution Avenue NW, passing horizontally before him.
The measurement stadia of the binoculars marked off the precise distance, .5-mil hash marks graduating to .1-mil hash marks toward the edges. Evan didn’t need to measure now. But later, when he had to account for windage, minutes of angle, and the exterior trajectory of the projectile, it would become necessary.
“I can give you an unconditional presidential pardon,” Bennett said. “For this current … situation. And for everything you’ve done before. I know you’re highly trained. If you have a continuing interest in making use of that training, I could offer you a position not unlike the one you used to occupy. Except at the head of the table this time. Or you could walk away with full immunity and start a real life. An ordinary life.”
Evan thought of Mia, the single mother who lived downstairs from him back in Los Angeles. The scent of jasmine on her skin and how the light caught in her curly hair. The loving disarray of the condo she shared with her nine-year-old son.
As he imagined everything that Bennett was ostensibly offering, a smirk touched his lips. Isn’t it pretty to think so?
Bennett let the silence speak for a moment, and then he said, “But permit me to be clear: This is your last chance and final offer.”
“Oh,” Evan said. “You misunderstood me. I established contact to give you a final offer.”
A cough of laugh, transmitted from blocks away and routed through four continents, reached Evan on a slight delay.
“Yeah?” Bennett said. “What’s that?”
“Step away now, resign the office, and I won’t kill you.”
This time there was no laugh.
“You’re joking, right?” Bennett said. “Do you have any idea of the power I’ve got at my disposal?”
“I do,” Evan said. “You’ve used it to kill so many of us already. And you’re going after the rest. To make it as though we never existed.”
Bennett had been clear: He wanted them all dead. Former operators like Evan who had left the Program—who’d retired or fled or simply been used up and spit out. Who were overcome with PTSD and regret, pain and longing. They had known nothing but the inside of a foster home and the Program, but they’d gotten free somehow and fought their way back to a normal life. They were now wives or fathers or lost souls putting themselves together in a homeless shelter, a fragment at a time. As soon as Bennett finished with Evan, he’d resume hunting them.
The convoy detoured once again, heading north on 14th Street before zigzagging back toward the Mall—serpentine progress to keep out of the executioner’s scope.
“Let’s say this fanciful theory of yours is correct,” Bennett said. “How about what you’ve done? Your life’s work? Is that so different?”
It wasn’t. And it was. Either way it was not a conversation Evan was interested in having with Bennett.
“The ends justify the means,” Bennett said. “That’s how you were trained, why you exist as what you are. If you’re really good at it, do you know where you wind up?” The slightest crackle signaled his lips parting in a smile. “The Oval Office.”
A family came up to claim a spot at the window, and Evan withdrew to the rear wall. Still he tracked the president’s limo, threading its way to its destination.
“When it happens,” Evan said, “it’ll be over before you have any idea it’s started. This is your last chance. If I hang up this phone, you will die.”
Bennett’s laugh sounded like the jangle of silver.
Evan’s hand tightened around the Steiner binoculars. Cadillac One hooked around 4th, coasted up Madison Drive to the National Gallery. Agents lined the steps from the limo to the museum entrance.
Evan said, “I’ve killed generals. I’ve killed foreign ministers. I’ve killed captains of industry.”
The voice came back, calm as ever. “But you’ve never killed the president of the United States.”
For a split second, Evan saw the man himself bob into view, just the back of his head and the top of a bespoke suit jacket framing his shoulders. One arm was raised, a phone pressed to his ear.
Evan said, “Not yet,” and he severed the connection.
11
Active Nightlife
On the dashboard of Evan’s rental car, pressed up against the windshield, was a blocky electronic unit that resembled a police scanner. He was parked across the street from a brick building that wouldn’t have been out of place at an Ivy League school. Adams Morgan, a diverse neighborhood in Northwest D.C., was known for its active nightlife. People streamed out of bars and restaurants, providing plenty of movement to get lost in.
Evan had been sitting here unnoticed for the past hour and forty-seven minutes.
Waiting.
The unit on his dashboard was a cellular tower device interceptor, better known as a Stingray. If a targeted mobile device came within its transmission range, it would force the device to affiliate with it rather than with the nearest legitimate cell tower.
Law-enforcement cell phones featured increasingly effective encryption. But they had an Achilles’ heel in the authentication process.
Authentication works in two directions—to and from the cell phone.
One of those directions was rock solid, the network going to extreme lengths to confirm the validity of a phone before allowing it to connect.
But the other direction was essentially unprotected. A phone did virtually nothing to determine that the network it was joining was in fact the network it claimed to be.
The Stingray on the dashboard was, like Evan, presenting itself as something it was not.
He’d lived under false cover for so many years that he wondered if he’d even know what it felt like to be real anymore.
Peals of laughter snapped Evan out of his thoughts. A cluster of college-age kids strolled past, cheeks flushed with alcohol—You know you so want to hook up with him!
They swept right past his car.
The guys sported man-buns of different sizes. The women wore strikingly similar designer jackets cigarettes stubbed up between manicured fingers, their lip gloss uplit by the screens of their iPhones.
Watching them go, Evan had the experience he often did when looking at normal people: that of looking through aquarium glass. They flitted by in happy schools, apart but somehow in concert, their movements choreographed to music that existed at some dog-whistle pitch he couldn’t hear.
He’d been raised outside the mainstream, his childhood hours spent not at movies or the shopping mall but on rifle ranges and in dojos. He didn’t understand the unspoken rules of intimacy, but he knew precisely at which angle to thrust a finger strike to dislodge someone’s eyeball.
Ahead, one of the girls pressed a guy up against a brick wall and kissed him, one foot lifted behind her as the moment demanded. They broke apart a bit breathlessly and ran laughing to catch up to the others and the promise of the night ahead.
For an instant Evan wondered if he’d be willing to trade his knowledge of a well-directed finger strike for the ability to go out into the night—just once—with the sole purpose of enjoying it.