Agent Ogden sat back and laughed.
“Lawyer? You live in a fantasy world, white man. Get this through your narrow little head—there are no lawyers. Not anymore. Not for you. This is a national-security issue, which means you are now in the making-Agent-Ogden-happy business. That’s your job. Make me happy. Because if I’m not happy, if I get even the vaguest feeling that you’re getting ready to say something stupid again, I will suspend your civil rights on national-security grounds, I will personally escort you to twenty-three-hour-a-day solitary, and I will see you spend the rest of your natural life there.”
“You can’t do that.”
“See that . . . see that right there?” Agent Ogden pointed a finger in Merrick’s face. “That’s not making me happy. And you’re wrong: I actually can do that. Can and will. What I can’t do is go back to Langley with you doubting what I can and can’t do. You signed an agreement with the government of the United States of America. And more importantly with the Central Intelligence Agency. That deal is unequivocal. And if you jeopardize my operation again, if you interfere with the security interests of this great country, by word or action or even implication, then I will disappear you from the face of the earth.”
The two men sat in silence, but Merrick’s ears rang . . .
Ogden’s operation?
The CIA only had the operation because of Charles Merrick. He’d handed them the veritable keys to the kingdom. If anything, they owed him. A lot more than a stay in a minimum-security prison and the right to keep his own money. They should be building him a monument for what he’d delivered them.
“So what now?” Merrick asked, voice low. He wanted Ogden to think he was afraid of him, and he realized that he was, no act required.
“You have twenty-seven days left before you’re released. Until that time, you will abide by every word of your incredibly generous deal, and then I want you off US soil. We all think that’s for the best.”
“I understand.”
“I assume you’ve made arrangements for your release?”
“I have.”
“Good. Walk me through them.”
Merrick did.
Mostly.
CHAPTER TEN
It was a peculiar thing to feel you knew someone intimately despite never having met. Yet Guo Fa considered himself something of an expert on Charles Merrick, Merrick’s fall from grace being so closely tied to his own. Fa had bought a copy of Finance mostly out of morbid curiosity. Eight years in federal prison had done nothing to dim the arrogance in the man’s eyes in the cover photo, which perhaps explained the audacious madness of the interview. Particularly one specific answer. It had already been a combative interview when the reporter pressed him on how he could be so confident in his investment strategy despite the crash of ’08.
Merrick: Are you familiar with Chinese rings? It’s an ancient puzzle—nine interlocking wire rings on a looped handle. The solution requires hundreds of steps. Before you can hope to complete it, you must understand how the rings interact and affect each other. Not dissimilar to financial markets. When I met my ex-wife, she kept one on her desk. She said she would only go out with me if I solved it.
Finance: And did you?
Merrick: Good lord, no. I took it to an old man in Chinatown and paid him to teach me.
Fa pored over the interview until convinced that he wasn’t simply seeing what he wanted to see. That Merrick had really said it. Well, not said, not explicitly, but it was between the lines—practically a taunt. Of that Fa was certain. He closed the magazine, delicately, as if it were the lid to a box of deadly snakes. A religious man might have prayed for guidance, but Fa sat motionless at his desk, listening to his heart hammer against his chest like a prisoner clawing its way to freedom. He wanted to let out a triumphant yell but stifled the impulse. Chances were, no one would hear. One of the meager benefits of his cramped subbasement-level office was that he could set off fireworks without disturbing anyone. But he was already viewed as an odd duck at the embassy and didn’t dare chance it.
His career hadn’t begun in the subbasement. His descent to this humiliating, windowless tomb had taken years. Each new office less desirable than the last. Each move justified with a reasonable pretext. Fa had accepted each without complaint, as was expected, and could even admire his nemesis’s cruel design.
It could have been worse. Zhi had wanted him transferred to the embassy in Nigeria, but Fa’s family connections had made that politically inexpedient. So Fa had remained in Washington at his plum posting, and Zhi had set to isolating him. Gradually excluding him from meetings, reassigning his workload to others, and moving his office farther and farther to the periphery. At this point, Fa really was, for all intents and purposes, the lowly embassy drone attached to the Ministry of Agriculture that his papers claimed, and not an agent of the Ministry of State Security.
Now thirty-six, Fa saw his younger self with the clarity that only failure brings. Being accepted to the MSS had been the proudest moment of his life, and then, when his first posting had been the embassy in Washington, DC, it had fueled his belief that he was destined for great things. He’d arrived in Washington at twenty-five, a young, idealistic hothead who knew he knew better. Expecting full well to make section head before forty, he’d caught himself mentally redecorating Zhu Zhi’s office.