After the cold of the garage, the warmth of the house prickled his skin. The lights in the pantry were off. Through the swinging door that led to the kitchen, Gibson heard Ogden open the refrigerator. The last thing Gibson wanted was to get drawn into a game of cat and mouse on Ogden’s home turf. Better to take him in the pantry and end it quickly. But to do that, he needed to lure Ogden back in this direction. Gibson looked at the garage-door opener still in his hand. Did he dare go to that well one more time? He stepped into the corner behind the kitchen door and pressed the button.
In the kitchen, Ogden swore as the rumble of the garage door opening echoed through the house. Wondering aloud who to call for a faulty garage-door motor, he pushed through the door, which swung back and forth angrily. In the strobing kitchen light, Gibson watched Ogden open the back door and stare accusingly at his disloyal garage. Gibson took two steps and pressed a stun gun to Ogden’s neck. The man’s back arched painfully as his muscles locked up and he cried out before crumpling to the ground.
For a moment, Gibson stood over Ogden, waiting for a sense of victory. Something. He’d imagined this moment so many times in his cell. But instead of triumph, when he looked down at Ogden prostrate at his feet, doubt elbowed its way to the fore. Gibson pushed it away, mistaking it for simple fear. Finish the job, he chided himself—finish what you set out to do. Why should he expect to feel anything? He hadn’t accomplished anything yet.
It occurred to him that the garage door was still open. Stupid. He ducked down, planted a knee on Ogden’s back, and watched the street until the garage door finished closing. Beneath him, Ogden was shaking free. A syringe of ketamine put a stop to that. Gibson knelt on Ogden until the powerful anesthetic took effect. It should knock Ogden out for hours, but Gibson secured his wrists and ankles with zip ties, a hood over his head. No sense taking the chance that he’d gotten the dose wrong.
Gibson searched Ogden, emptying the man’s pockets and removing a watch and a ring. It all went into a ziplock bag except for the cell phone and car keys, which he left on the kitchen counter. The ziplock went upstairs with him to the master bedroom. Gibson found a suitcase in a closet and packed enough clothes for a week. Toiletries. The gun from the bedside table. The passport and cash that he found in a bureau drawer. Ogden’s college diploma came out of its frame and was tucked into the suitcase. Gibson perused the framed pictures on a credenza, picking one of Ogden’s parents. Like the rest of the house, Ogden’s bedroom was a pristine affair, and Gibson left it that way.
Suitcase packed, he carried it down to the kitchen and took a tour of the house. He went room to room, making sure that he hadn’t overlooked anything. If Gibson had expected to come away with a sense of Ogden’s personality, then he’d visited the wrong house. He couldn’t get over the utter banality of Ogden’s home. The generic, Pottery Barn veneer, everything tasteful while having no taste of which to speak. He’d wanted something more from someone with the power to disappear a man from the face of the earth.
The last door he tried opened into an office. Gibson sat at the desk and tapped the spacebar to wake the computer. He’d brought equipment to hack the log-in, but the computer didn’t have one. No doubt Ogden knew better than most that log-ins were a sham.
Gibson used one of Ogden’s credit cards to book train tickets to Fort Lauderdale, New York City, and Chicago. Bus tickets to a half dozen other cities. Hotel reservations. Last, Gibson slid a CD into Ogden’s computer and initiated a complete wipe of the hard drive. It would take hours, and Gibson would be long gone before it finished, but it would give investigators one more misleading question to puzzle over.
Ogden and his suitcase went in the trunk of his own car. Gibson sat on the bumper to catch his breath. Moving Ogden reminded him how much strength he’d lost in the last eighteen months. Either that or Ogden weighed considerably more than the 190 listed on his driver’s license. Gibson checked the time—right on schedule. He borrowed Ogden’s thumb to unlock his cell phone and scrolled through Ogden’s calendar.
On Saturday evening, Ogden was taking his girlfriend and her boys to a Capitals game at the Verizon Center in DC. Sunday, he was watching the NFL playoffs with “the boys.” Other than that, his weekend looked open. Next, Gibson went through Ogden’s texts from the last twelve hours, looking for any last-minute plans that might not have made it to the calendar.
Nothing. So far so good.
He read the threads between the girlfriend and the group texts to his friends, getting a feel for how Ogden wrote to each. He was more formal and reserved with the girlfriend, casual and jocular with the guys. Gibson wrote an apologetic text to the girlfriend on Ogden’s behalf. Something had come up at work, he’d been called back in, and it looked like it could be a working weekend. Cell phones weren’t allowed inside Langley so Gibson wrote that Ogden might be incommunicado if this situation went badly. Ogden was sorry and would make it up to the girlfriend. Gibson relayed the same message to “the boys” but in far coarser terms.
The girlfriend replied to his message, and Gibson spent fifteen minutes going back and forth with her. She wasn’t happy. Clearly, this wasn’t the first time that Ogden’s responsibilities had interfered with their plans. Gibson played the part of the repentant boyfriend stuck between a rock and a hard place.
I have to go in. It’s my job.
I know. I’m just disappointed about tomorrow. The kids were looking forward to it.
So was I. Tell them I’m sorry.
There was a pause. In text, Ogden was reserved and never wrote “I love you” first. Gibson made a point of breaking that rule now:
I love you.
Love you too. Are you ok?
Frustrated. Missing you. Wish it could be another way.
Hopefully the CIA would read something sinister into that text later. But in the short term, Ogden’s uncharacteristic display of emotion had the desired effect.
Oh baby it will be alright. Call me when you can.
I’ll try. Gotta go.
Gibson didn’t reply after that, leaving room for Ogden’s colleagues to invent subtext that suited their narrative. Then he placed a call to the main line at the Chinese embassy. He got an automated message, but that didn’t matter. He left the line open for two minutes before hanging up. That ought to give them something to talk about at Langley.
Satisfied, Gibson connected Ogden’s phone to an external battery. Enough to power the phone for two weeks, not that it would need that long. Next he put the phone and battery in a padded envelope stamped and addressed to Ogden’s parents in San Diego. It went out on the front steps. Until it was picked up on Saturday, cell records would show the phone connected to his “home” cell towers. Then its cross-country journey would provide investigators with one more wild goose to chase down.