“Oh, we have to put this kid to work,” one evaluator said. And Book’s career began.
After infiltrating the militia movement and white supremacist groups in the early ’90s, Book was sent to Seattle, where he joined up with anarchist protesters and antiglobalization groups. Some of the other members of the groups disappeared not long after the WTO riots. They were always surprised to find Book on the other side of the table from them in the interrogation rooms. He knew them inside and out. He broke them into pieces; some of them went back out into the world, filled with nothing but the desire to fulfill the agenda of the Company.
Book didn’t seem to take a lot of pleasure in this. He was a hollow man, nothing but surfaces. He existed only in his impact on the world around him.
He moved back to Florida in time for the 2000 elections. Then he was abruptly transferred to snip some loose ends related to 9/11. After that, Book was sent to Archer/Andrews to work with Graves.
He thought again about what Candle had said about Bell. Maybe she was running a game of her own. Anything was possible. That was the problem with being so deep inside like this. You never knew who was playing whom; if the person you thought was working with you was actually watching you for your boss, or for the other team, or maybe both.
Graves was the one who’d brought Bell into this. Which didn’t mean anything. Maybe it was just cover, a way to throw any observers off the track. Or maybe she really was one of them.
But if she wasn’t, then she’d have to be handled. And that sort of thing usually fell to Book, because he was good at it. You don’t keep LeBron James on the team without letting him play.
A darkness coalesced and pooled in the passenger seat. In a moment, Reynolds sat there uncomfortably, shifting as if his skin was too tight.
He waited for Book to start the engine. “So, we going back to the office or what?” he grumbled.
But Book was far away, wet fantasies dancing behind his eyes, thinking about what he’d get to do to Bell if she turned out to be on the wrong team after all.
FOURTEEN
We were waiting in the hallway outside the rally when I got The Fear. I thought it was the speed coming up on top of the ether, but my molars weren’t grinding the way they usually do. Something was different. I saw one of Nixon’s flunkies nearby, a young guy in a cheap suit, giving me the eye. I’ll rack any lawyer with a quick shot to the nuts if I think it’s necessary, but this one was different. Just a kid, but with that Hitlerian air of certainty so many of the Nixon youth carry. The way he looked at me made me think he was genuinely dangerous. It could have been the drugs, but I swear the bad mojo rose off this guy like smoke. I turned away to wipe the sweat out of my eyes, and when I looked back, he was gone. Maybe he’d never been there at all.
Jesus. I needed whiskey. I went in search of the bar.
—Hunter S. Thompson,
Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72
(redacted in later editions)
B
ell looked embarrassed, but she was getting her color back.
“Sorry,” she said, smiling weakly. “I’m really not such a girl most of the time. Would you believe I was top of my class at the Farm?”
They were at a bar located near the closest Metro station. Zach offered to get her a coffee when they left the morgue. She said she needed something a little stronger.
They both sat, Bell with a half-empty glass of Scotch, Zach with a beer.
“It’s normal to be freaked out by this stuff. Believe me,” he said. “The day it stops being weird, then you start to worry.”
“You seem to handle it pretty well.”
“Hey, the first time I met Cade I peed my pants,” Zach said, then immediately wished he hadn’t.
“You know, I was a little surprised to see you with Cade,” she said.
“Me?” Zach was mildly offended, even if he wasn’t sure why. “Why would you be surprised?”
“You’re not as secret as you think. There are all kinds of rumors. Cade is sort of a scary story in the intel world. Like an urban legend. Or a joke. You know, ‘Better watch out or the vampire will get you.’ Then you showed up with him. I knew Cade had a human . . .”
Please don’t say sidekick, Zach thought.
“. . . handler. But I expected some kind of thick-skulled FBI burnout, some guy who’s more afraid of retirement than death.”
“That was the old guy,” Zach said.
“What?”
“Nothing. So I didn’t look like what you expected.”
“Yeah. I thought someone like you would have something to live for.”
He wasn’t sure what to say to that. “What about you? You said you were CIA before you were an Arch—before you joined Archer/Andrews?”
She grimaced at him. “I’ve heard the nickname. Don’t worry. I don’t mind. Don’t repeat that to Hewitt or Reynolds, though.”
“Really? They seemed as cuddly as a room full of kittens.”
She rolled her eyes. “You know what we do for a living, right? Love and kindness aren’t high on the job requirements.”
“Then why did you get into this?” He was genuinely curious.
“Oh, I probably started with the usual ideals,” she said. “Patriotism. Nine-eleven. Saving the world from the forces of evil. That’s why I joined the CIA. My talents pointed in that direction, so I thought it was the best way to serve.”
“But you quit and joined Archer/Andrews.”
“It’s not that complicated, really. Every morning they tell you you’re saving the world. But there are only so many nights you can come home to a cheap apartment on the corner of Crackwhore and Homicide, deciding which bills to pay this month, before you say, screw it. Sometimes saving the world isn’t enough.”
She saw the look on his face. “You disapprove, I take it.”
“Not my place,” he said carefully. “I was shanghaied into this. If I had the chance, I’d probably bolt, too.”
“Would you really?”
“No,” he admitted. “If saving the world’s not enough, then nothing else is, either.”
“Don’t judge me,” she warned. “I’m just doing what I can to survive. A/A is a necessary evil. You worked in politics. You of all people should know there are shades of gray.”
“Not for me,” Zach said. “Not anymore. Trust me. Those are human ideas. But good and evil—they’re not just human. They don’t belong solely to us. They’re real. They’re solid. And sometimes, they’ve got teeth.”
“And you’re going to stand on the ramparts and hold the line,” she said, smiling at him in a strange way. “I never would have pegged you for a crusader, Zach.”
Zach was suddenly uncomfortable. He’d shared national secrets with Bell, but this felt like actually revealing something. “Yeah, well. You take enough blows to the head, anything can happen.”
She gave him a what-the-hell smile. Her glass was empty. There was no trace of nausea or fear now. She was nothing but the competent operative again.
“I can’t afford to get too philosophical,” she said. “I’m one of the only women in a company full of spooks and soldiers. Worse, I’m in a command position. Ninety percent of the guys think I’ve fucked my way into my job, and the other ten percent think I’m a dyke. Who’s fucked her way into her job. I cannot let my guard down for a second. Because I can’t have any of these men seeing me as a target. I have to remain totally untouchable. Or I become a victim, waiting to happen.”
Zach felt like he’d skipped a page somehow. She looked right at him.
“So I don’t get much of a chance to date, if you understand what I’m saying.”
Zach didn’t. But he said, “I think so.”
She stood up. Zach looked puzzled. She rolled her eyes at him again.
“Let’s go.”
Zach finally caught on.
“This might not be a good idea,” he said.
She laughed. “No shit. It’s a terrible idea. I know there’s a time and place, but. You’re a pretty decent guy. So. Well. Tomorrow we may die and all that.”
She waited.
“Probably lots of reasons why we shouldn’t do this.”
“Dozens,” she said.
For some reason, Zach couldn’t think of a single one.
He got up and followed her out the door.
IT HAD BEEN A WHILE. Inside his apartment, it took all his control to keep from mauling Bell as he tore off her shirt. His fingers fumbled as he tried to work the buttons on her pants.
She shoved him off, smiling. Barefoot, she pulled down her pants and underwear, shimmying her hips a little.
Zach stared at her.
There was always something unreal, something impossibly compelling, about seeing a woman naked. Zach figured it must be coded into the straight male’s DNA. It didn’t matter who the man was, if a woman bent over, revealing a flash of cleavage, the cup of a bra—he’d look. Greedily searching with his eyes, reduced to a kid in junior high again. Just needing to see that little bit of flesh, that uncharted, unknown expanse of skin.
Bell’s eyes laughed at him. But she didn’t move. She watched him watching her.
Her skin was gorgeous. Flawless. Like something out of the description of a heroine in a Victorian novel. Her breasts moved slightly as her breath came faster. His eyes traveled up and down her body.
She stood there, very still, giving him a better look. He knew he shouldn’t stare; it was juvenile, it was stupid and unimpressive. And yet he kept looking.
Bell stepped over to him and peeled off his shirt, one button at a time. She traced the line of his jaw, his neck, with one finger, drawing it down his chest, her eyes locked to his the entire time.
Zach was so hard it hurt. He couldn’t take it anymore. He grabbed Bell and fell with her onto the bed.
His pants were down, and he was stumbling over them, trying to get them off over his shoes.
She began laughing openly at him then, pure and happy. He didn’t care.
He slid into her like they’d been designed for each other. He was barely hanging on. He rose up above her—
Shit. Condom? Fuck it.
—and looked again into her eyes. They were wild, the grin on her face something animal now.
He found control he didn’t think existed inside himself. She pumped her hips, pulling him deeper, locking her ankles at the small of his back.
Before he knew it, they were both slick with sweat. His mouth found hers. He felt her teeth against his own, his tongue and hers, tangled and darting back and forth.
He could not possibly hold back any longer. His body was pushing on its own now, his mind only on her skin, on the feel of her, on her taste.
Their bodies clapped together like applause, faster and faster.
He came first. It felt like his spine snapped clean, his mind emptied and he felt some great tide lifting him.
She wasn’t done. She didn’t unlock her legs, and she slammed into him, as if ordering him to stay hard. He still felt stiff as a board. He went along for the ride.
She tipped her head back, sucked in a deep breath, then opened her mouth, showing those lovely white teeth again, and laughed as she came.
Or maybe she was laughing the whole time.
FIFTEEN
Summer 1981—Boston, Massachusetts, and elsewhere—A wave of sightings of clowns who terrorize children and attempt to kidnap them reported in several cities and states. Sightings continue to the present day.
—BRIEFING BOOK: CODE NAME: NIGHTMARE PET
C
orpsman Trevor Noonan was in way over his head, and he knew it. The Marine on the stretcher was dying. They were still a good hundred miles from the aircraft carrier with doctors who could save him. And Noonan didn’t have the first damned clue what was wrong with him.
It was supposed to be a simple gunshot wound. That’s why they didn’t waste a doctor on the trip. He could keep the Marine stable.
He wasn’t really sure why they’d decided to send an armed guard with him, but he gathered it had something to do with the terrorist attack the night before. He was lucky. He’d been off-base on a twenty-four-hour pass. He came back to the blood and the bodies, and nobody would talk to him. Partly out of guilt, partly out of shame, he volunteered to babysit the Marine when the Archer/Andrews guy offered a ride.
The guard was getting even more worried than Noonan. The Marine thrashed in his stretcher, and his skin looked shiny and tight.
“Can’t you do something?” he demanded.
Noonan shook his head. He was scraping the limit of his knowledge.
He went to the cockpit, to ask the pilot to hurry again. Maybe it was just because he was an Archie—he was probably earning more in a month than Noonan saw all year—but the pilot didn’t seem particularly sympathetic. Noonan picked up the passenger headphones so he could talk.