“Hard to argue with that,” Janice said. Exley couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic. Maybe she wasn’t as ditzy as she seemed. “I have to take my car into the shop, but I guess I can spare a minute.” Janice opened the door and waved Exley inside.
“Do you do those?” Exley indicated the flower bed. “They’re so beautiful.”
“My babies.” She patted the retriever’s head. “Lenny tries to eat them, but I don’t let him. My name’s Janice. Come in.”
Janice led Exley through the dark house to the kitchen, where more flowers awaited, fresh-cut this time. A ceiling fan mopped the air. Exley couldn’t remember the last time she’d been in a room so stifling. Probably twenty years ago, some airless fraternity basement in college, getting drunk and looking for what she thought was a good time.
“I don’t like air-conditioning,” Janice said. “It breeds colds.” Lenny plopped down heavily, his tongue flopping out. Even with the flowers and dog, the house seemed sterile to Exley. The darkness. The television blaring. The bottles lined up by the sink. If this were a movie, a serial killer would be hiding in the basement. Or Janice would have her grandmother chained to a bed upstairs.
“Would you like a glass of water? You seem peaked.”
“That’d be great,” Exley said.
“Maybe some wine. I find a glass in the afternoon keeps away the colds.”
“Just water, thanks.” Exley worried she seemed snappish. “I’d love a drink, but I have to get back to the office.”
“Of course.” Janice poured a glass of water from a pitcher in the refrigerator and set it on the table. Exley had a brief paranoid fantasy that the water was laced with something. She’d take a sip. The world would go black. When she came to, she’d be locked in the basement next to a fat guy in a leather mask. No. That was
Pulp Fiction.
She ought to stop this nonsense. She, not Janice, was the one in here under false pretenses. She did feel light-headed, though. She dabbed a few drops of water on her face. Janice sipped from her wine.
“Your place is nice,” Exley said.
“So you wanted to hear about the neighborhood? It’s all right, I guess.”
“Have you lived here awhile?”
Janice paused. “Seven years or so, I guess. We’re thinking about moving.”
“Oh.”
“But it’s nothing to do with the neighbors. My husband might be getting moved overseas. It’s something we’ve wanted to do for a while.”
Keith Robinson was in line for an overseas assignment ? Exley hadn’t seen that possibility in his file. But then, he wouldn’t be the first man to fib to his wife about his job prospects.
“Seems like a real nice place, though.”
“The neighbors are friendly enough. We kind of keep to ourselves.” She indicated a flyer stuck to the refrigerator. “There’s a block barbecue next week.”
“How about the schools? We’ve got two little ones.”
Janice flinched and Exley saw that she’d touched the source of the strange melancholy in the house.
“Can’t help you there. We don’t have kids.”
“Oh.” Exley never knew how to respond when a woman said she was childless, especially in the tone that Janice had used, equal parts anger and disbelief. “Sorry?” “There’s always adoption?” “They’re overrated?” Every answer sounded patronizing and futile. “My mistake,” she finally said.
Janice ostentatiously looked at her watch. “Sorry to rush you, but I have to get to the dealership. I’m probably not the right person to talk to anyway. What with having no kids.” She pulled back her lips in an ugly smile, like a viper about to unleash a mouthful of venom.
“No problem. Thanks for your time.” Exley sipped her water and stood.
“By the way, what did you say you did, Jill?”
“Joanne. I’m a consultant. Market research. Guess that’s why I’m always trying to find out about neighborhoods and stuff.”
“Do you have a card?”
“Sure.” Exley poked into her purse for a card as Janice finished off her wine.
“Never understood what you consultants do anyway.” Janice looked at Exley’s card fishily.
Exley hadn’t felt so disliked in a long time. “Thanks for all your help, Mrs.—”
“Robinson.”
“Robinson. I’m embarrassed to ask, but can I use your toilet?” Exley was hoping for an excuse to get a quick look around the first floor.
“Right through the living room. I’ll show you.”
The bathroom and the living room were unexceptional, though both hinted at hidden wealth—an expensive Persian rug in the living room and fancy granite fixtures in the bath. In five minutes, Exley was back in her car. Maybe Keith Robinson wasn’t the mole, but he was
something,
Exley thought, as she put the Caravan in gear and drove off, mopping sweat from her forehead. His house stank of secrets.
EXLEY WENT BACK TO THE OFFICE
in Tysons Corner and spent the rest of the afternoon poring over Robinson’s work history. She already knew that his biographical details fit what Wen Shubai had given them. She was looking for smaller, subtler signs. Sure enough, she found one. Beginning eight years earlier—the time when the mole had approached the Chinese, according to Wen—Robinson’s performance evaluations had steadily improved. After being lazy and unmotivated for years, he’d shown new interest in his work, his bosses said. As a result, he’d wound up with new responsibilities—and new access to information.
When she was sure she’d seen every scrap of information they had on Robinson, she poked her head into Shafer’s office. He’d spent the last several days casting a wide net, asking vague questions about possible suspects to officers in and around the East Asia Division. Exley thought he was being too cautious. Legwork wasn’t his strong suit; he was much better thinking through threads that other people had gathered. All his jujitsu wasted time, and time was suddenly in short supply.
Since Shubai’s defection five days earlier, Langley’s top two agents in the People’s Republic had gone dark. One spy, the logistics chief at the giant naval base at Lushun, had simply disappeared. He’d requested an urgent meeting with his case officer, then hadn’t shown up. Now his cell phone was turned off and his e-mail shut down.
The other agent, a deputy mayor in Beijing, was the highest-ranking political source the agency had inside Zhongnanhai. At least he had been until Tuesday, when he’d been arrested on what China’s official news agency referred to as “corruption charges.”
Of course, the arrest and disappearance might have been coincidences. But no one at Langley believed that. The odds were higher that Osama bin Laden would quit al Qaeda to become a pro surfer. Chinese counterintelligence officers had surely tracked both men for years, allowing them to remain free to provide false information to the CIA. Effectively, the men had been tripled up—used by China against the United States, even as the United States believed that it had doubled them back against China.
But Wen’s defection had ended that game, and so the spymasters in Beijing had arrested the men. And now the United States was flying blind at the worst possible time. Did the PRC want open war with Taiwan and the United States, or was it bluffing? Was its leadership unified, or was its belligerence the product of an invisible power struggle inside Zhongnanhai? The president, the Pentagon, and the National Security Council were desperate for answers. Too bad the CIA had none to give.
“I think I have something.” She recounted her meeting with Janice Robinson, as well as Keith Robinson’s strange personnel evaluations. When she was done, Shafer looked down at his notes.
“She didn’t specifically mention children, then?”
“I’m telling you the whole house was
off.”
“Jennifer. I don’t doubt it. I’m only trying to figure out where to go next. Remember, Robinson’s only on the list because he failed a poly. He doesn’t meet Shubai’s criteria for a personal problem. He hasn’t had a heart attack, gotten divorced, sued, anything like that—”
And then Exley knew. “We should have figured it from the beginning, Ellis. What’s the worst personal crisis you can have? Not getting sick, not an accident—”
“You think he lost a kid.”
Exley nodded.
“Well, that we can find out. If you’re right, it’ll be time to tell Tyson.”
THE MOLE WAS SURPRISED
by the silence that greeted him when he opened his front door. Janice always left the downstairs television on while she made dinner. And where was Lenny? “Janice? Jan?”
No answer. Then he heard her in the kitchen, crying softly.
She sat at the kitchen table, fat tears rolling down her cheeks. Lenny lay at her feet, looking up hopelessly. An empty pan sat on the stove. A shrink-wrapped plastic tray of chicken breasts sat unopened in the sink, alongside uncut tomatoes and peppers.
Janice looked up as he walked into the dark room. For a moment she didn’t seem to know who he was. Then she covered her face in her hands and offered a high-pitched moan,
Oooooooooooo,
a soft dirge that sounded like a distant tornado. He went to her and rubbed her neck. More than anything, he wanted the moan to stop.
“I’m a failure, Eddie.” The words emerged in a damp, stuttery blubber. “Such a failure.”
The mole—Keith Edward Robinson, known as Eddie only to his wife—pulled up a chair. “Sweetie. Did something happen?”
“This woman, she and her husband are looking at the Healy place, on the corner, and she asked me about the neighborhood and the schools and I just, I just snapped—”
The cabinet where the mole kept his whiskey was within arm’s reach. He grabbed a bottle of Dewar’s and took a long slug, not bothering with a glass.
“Woman? What woman?”
“She came by the house. She wanted to know about the schools, Eddie. Look at us. What’s happened to us?”
The mole put the bottle on the table. No more whiskey. He needed to think clearly now, and quickly. The strange part was that he really did want to comfort Janice. But first he had to figure how close they were. “This woman, honey, who did she say she was?”
Janice lowered her hands. She seemed perplexed at the turn the conversation had taken. “Said her name was Joanne.” She pulled a crumpled business card out of a dish on the table and handed it to him. “Said she was a consultant.”
The mole examined it as though it were a tarot card holding the secret to his future. Which in a way it was. Ender Consulting, a Professional Corporation. Joanne Ender, MBA. Beneath the name a phone number and an e-mail address. The mole wanted to call, but whether or not Ender Consulting was real, the number would go to a professional-sounding voicemail. And if it was a trap, they’d have a pen register on the line and they’d know he called. He tucked the card into his shirt pocket. He’d check later. “Did she ask anything about me, Jan?”
“What? No.”
“Please. I know it seems like a strange question, but think on it.”
Janice twisted her hands. “I told you we didn’t talk long. She mentioned her kids and I started to get upset, so I made her go.”
“Did she look around the house? The basement?”
“Of course not. Why?”
“Did you ask the Healys about her? If she actually went to their house?”
“She was just some lady asking about the neighborhood. What are you so worried about? Is she your girlfriend?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m not stupid, Eddie. Don’t make things worse than they already are.”
“Sweetie. I promise I’m not having an affair with this woman.”
“Swear.”
“I swear on Mark’s grave.” He’d never said anything like that before.
“Do you love me?”
“Do I love you? What kind of question is that? Yes. Of course I do.” The mole surprised himself with the words. But as he said them, he knew they were true. For too long he’d forgotten that Janice was a real person. “Do you love me?”
As an answer, she put her arms around him and sobbed into his shoulder. “Can we just start again, Eddie? Can’t we?”
Strange to hear the question asked so baldly, the mole thought. Like they could dunk themselves in a river and wash away not just their sins but their whole messy lives. Stranger still that the answer was yes. He had the means and the motive to leave all this behind. Because maybe he was panicking, but he didn’t think so.
The polygraph. Wen’s defection. George not showing up this morning. Now this woman visiting. Too many coincidences too soon. Nothing definitive, but if he waited for definitive he’d wind up in a cell or a wooden box. Both Ames and Hanssen had known the walls were closing in. They just hadn’t had the guts to run. Now they were spending their lives in prison.
“Jan. What if I said yes? What if we could start again?”
“I think I’d like that.”
“We’d have to change our names. Leave the country.” He couldn’t believe what he was saying.