The Revisionists (42 page)

“That briefcase isn’t me, Tasha. You have to believe that.”

“Oh, you saw the light when you were fucking me, that’s your story? What about the health-care-consultant bit, you remember that one? You getting confused from all the different lies you’ve been telling?”

“I think everyone’s confused right now.” His calmness only made her want to hit him more. This was so cerebral to them, so analytical. They didn’t understand how
personal
this was, and that’s how they were able to play games like this, manipulate people. She had thought he was one of the few who understood this when in fact he was the opposite. “I know this is a difficult time for you,” he said, “but you need to understand that—”

“Stop it! You can stop acting now,
Troy,
or whoever you are. Jesus Christ, that story about your wife and kid wasn’t even true, was it? Just part of your con?”

“I wish it weren’t true.”

“And your brother?”

He didn’t answer.

“I cannot believe this. I can’t believe anyone would be so low.” Her voice broke, goddamn it. Her anger had initially overpowered the hurt, but the hurt always won eventually. “You are fucking scum. Get out of my house.”

He watched her for a final moment, and the look in his eyes again was so unexpected, a look of sadness, of empathy even, as if he wanted to come forward and wipe the tears from her eyes, as if he had that right. He didn’t seem capable of acknowledging the fact that his game was over. She hardened her face, willed the hurt away, made herself a wall.

Finally he walked past her, toward the door. She looked out the window.

“You shouldn’t tell anyone what you saw in here,” he said from behind her.

She spun around. “Don’t you
dare
tell me what to do!”

“Tasha. For your own good: Don’t tell anyone about this. Don’t tell anyone about me.” That could have sounded like a threat, but he said it differently. Sadly. Like he was trying to explain the concept of death to a child with a sick parent.

“I wish I could tell you why,” he said, “but…”

Without further explanation, he opened the door. She let him go, just stood there at the window and watched Troy Jones walk south until the diagonal line of row houses on Potomac stole him from view.

A good while later, after she had taken some time to compose herself, she called Leo. He’d given her his number, telling her she should call only in an emergency. She reached a generic voice-mail box, and a computer recited the number she’d reached and advised her to leave a message. Did she ever.

He called back in less than five minutes. The caller ID was blank, just like the time she’d received a ring from the suspicious voice that had roped her into this.

“You have some goddamn nerve,” she said as soon as she picked it up.

“What’s wrong?”

“We’re through, Leo, or whoever you really are.
You
blew our deal. If you ever call me again, I’m going media crazy with this story. I’m calling every reporter on the East Coast with the scoop of a lifetime about domestic surveillance and—”

“What are you talking about? Calm down. What happened?”

“Your little lover boy blew his assignment. He got a little sloppy with his briefcase. I don’t like what I’ve been doing for you, but I thought that at least we had an understanding. I didn’t think you’d have a partner following me. And I didn’t think your observations would extend to the bedroom, you sick fuck.”

Silence for a few beats. “I don’t have a partner in this. And I don’t know what you mean by a lover boy. I know this kind of work can make a person a little overly on guard, but—”

“You people are unbelievable. I read his files, Leo! I know what you’re doing, who you really work for.”

He exhaled. “Maybe I’m the one who’s confused. Tell me who you’re talking about. Please.”

“Troy Jones.”

“I don’t know a Troy Jones. He said he works with me?”

“Of course not. But he fell into my life right around when you did, and now I find that he’s in the same line of work.”

“Describe him for me.”

She did, though a lot less flatteringly than she might have a few hours earlier. Leo was quiet for so long she thought he’d hung up. “Leo?”

“I think I know who you mean.”

“What a shock.”

“He and I do not work together.”

“You know what? I don’t really care. Whether he’s your partner or your rival or some other spy from another agency or country or company, I do not fucking care. I am tired of being played by boys who think that treating people like pawns makes them kings. No, Leo, it makes you a fucking child playing with toys. Go unleash your imagination on someone else, because we’re through. You even think of using what you had on me, I will visit it back on you tenfold, I promise you that.”

“Do you still have his briefcase?”

 “I gave it back to him. I don’t want that kind of poison on my hands.”

“What did you see in the files? What made you think this guy works with me?”

“He told me he worked in health care and instead he has a briefcase full of memos about spy technology and telecom contracts and computer codes. And detailed bios of journalists and activists, including
myself—
scary shit, thank you very much. I might not have understood it all, but I’m bright enough.”

“Did it have the name of his company? A letterhead or anything?”

He really didn’t seem to know Troy after all. But he was awfully interested.

“Enhanced Awareness. Somewhere in Maryland.”

“You have his phone number?”

She gave it to him, pausing a few seconds for him to write it down before adding, right before hanging up, “Oh, and Leo? Get a real job.”

25.

L
eo’s cell phone had woken him at seven. He’d left the device in his apartment the previous night so it couldn’t be used to track his movements with Sari. As he reached across the bed for it, his first thought was that it was her calling, that she was disobeying his instructions already. But it wasn’t her—it was his boss.

He took a sip of water before answering, said his name three times to clear out his throat. “Good morning,” he said into the phone, hoping he didn’t sound as if he’d just woken up.

“We need to talk, at the office, immediately.”

“Sure. What about?”

“Your little side project.”

“I don’t have a side project.” Not in a smart-ass tone but flatly stated.
You told me it was over last night, so it is. Sir.

“Just come to the office, immediately.”

He showered quickly, wishing he could draw it out so he could think more. But he’d thought plenty last night and hadn’t had any epiphanies then either.

Who the hell were Sang Hee and Hyun Ki?
That’s what it kept coming back to. His agent had successfully loaded a couple of flash drives from each of their home computers, and the information had turned up nothing (if Leo believed what Bale had told him). Then why had Leo twice been warned away from them by people who refused to identify themselves? People who acted like intelligence officers and dropped just enough signifiers to imply this, but who backed away from anything concrete. Why were they so worried about Leo tailing the couple?

He’d barely slept. He put some drops in his red eyes to disguise the fact that he’d been running all over the D.C. metro area last night with a fugitive. He took some coffee in a travel mug and zipped along on his reverse commute to the antiseptic Virginia suburbs. Targeted Executive Solutions’ office was barely a mile from the hideous motel at which he had stashed Sari. The motel was also fewer than twenty blocks from the Pentagon, and a short drive from the Agency. Chances were, countless case officers and even military personnel used the motel to stash a variety of agents, witnesses, felons, spies, and prisoners. It had seemed like a good place at the time—he’d needed something fast, something without cameras or credit card scanners, something he could walk the last few blocks to so that no taxi driver would recall bringing him there—but now he was worried. For all he knew, she’d been picked up already.

The offices were as abandoned as always when he walked in. He proceeded straight to his boss’s door, knocked, and was told to come the hell in already.

“Anything you’d like to tell me?” Bale asked when Leo sat in the uncomfortable chair.

Life at the Agency had given Leo an aversion to open-ended questions. “I’m sorry?”

Bale watched him an extra second. It occurred to Leo that he knew precious little about his boss. Bale acted as if he had Agency experience, but did he really? And if so, what exactly had he done? Analysis, fieldwork, administration? What parts of the world had he worked in, and for how long? Who else worked here?

“Your little agent snapped,” Bale said. “She attacked Hyun Ki and his wife with a knife last night, sending them both to the hospital. The wife has lacerations on her hands and a few bruises, but he has numerous stab wounds in his chest and back, as well as defensive wounds all up his arms. He called 911 at nine twenty-seven, they were taken to Sibley’s ER, and he was in surgery for two hours. He’ll live, but he isn’t saying anything now. The wife was stitched up and immediately picked up by staff from their embassy. What little info we’re getting from them is that their maid grabbed a steak knife and went samurai.”

Leo decided not to tell Bale he was mixing up his Asian cultures.

“I was afraid this might happen.” Leo tried to appear analytical and calm. “She seemed meek enough to me, but they were pushing her awfully hard.”

“Where is she?”

Leo looked confused, then surprised. He tried to remember every nonverbal tip-off that showed someone was lying so he could avoid all of them. “Wait, you mean she wasn’t arrested?”

“
Where is she,
Leo?”

“I never contacted her again after your call. Jesus, this was probably happening at the same moment you and I were on the phone.”

He knew that someone eventually would find the cell phone stashed in her bed and see his number in it—D.C. police, or maybe the CIA; hopefully not the South Korean embassy or some other spy group, but all were possibilities. And there was a strong chance that someone on the American side would look at Leo’s phone records and see the surprising fact that just minutes after Hyun Ki called 911, Leo received a call from his neighborhood Latino grocer. He supposed he could claim the call was to tell him that the empanadas he’d ordered were ready to be picked up, but someone would no doubt interview the Latin American staff, who, after being threatened with deportation or health-code violations, would be happy to talk about the frantic, wounded young Asian woman who’d used their phone that night.

He had very little time. Waiting until morning like this to see what tack the diplomat and Sang Hee would take had been a mistake.

“Where do you think she would go?” Bale asked. Leo couldn’t tell if his boss believed what he’d said so far.

“The only place she ever went was Whole Foods, as far as I know. She doesn’t know anyone in the country and only speaks Bahasa and some Korean.” He shrugged. “How hard could it be to find her?”

“If the cops or someone else finds her, is there anything that connects her to us? Does she know your real name?”

“Yes.” When he saw Bale’s expression, he said, “Look, when I met her she was just a pretty girl in a grocery store. I didn’t realize she was going to turn into an asset. When harmless strangers ask me my name, I tell them.”

“One of your many mistakes. Look, I don’t need to tell you that if the Koreans piece together the fact that you were spying on their diplomat, you are in serious trouble. We had no authority to do anything, and my friends at State will suddenly forget they ever knew me. My company will be eviscerated. I will not allow that to happen. You need to find this girl, immediately, and silence her.”

Leo crossed his legs. He hated how easily he showed physical signs of discomfort, but he hadn’t been expecting Bale’s implication. “That’s very far above my pay grade.”

“Are you
listening
to me? You could go to jail; I could go to jail. I’m not going to let a fuck-up by a new hire who can’t even successfully tail a bunch of peace activists ruin
my
career too.”

Leo was very still. Then he asked, “What are your other operations and relationships, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“I do mind.” Bale stared him down for a moment. “It goes without saying, Leo, that you’ll be fired when this is over. But if you want to have any chance of doing even remotely similar work ever again, you will get this taken care of. Immediately.”

It wasn’t difficult for Leo to figure out he was being followed. He’d noticed the silver Jetta behind him on the Rock Creek Parkway that morning on the way to work, and again ten minutes later as he navigated the tangled highways of Northern Virginia. And there it was again when he drove back into the city a couple of hours after his meeting with Bale.

The Jetta followed him into the city, finally fading when it became clear that Leo was driving back to his apartment. Which he was until he got the voice mail from a raving Tasha. He pulled into a space on 16th, called her back. She knew the guy, the strange guy with the gun. Had slept with him, apparently. Jesus Christ. Leo tried to calm her down as he worked through what she was telling him. Troy Jones. Enhanced Awareness.

Where had he heard of Enhanced Awareness before? He opened his shoulder bag, removed the files he’d taken from Hyun Ki’s briefcase. He had skimmed the contents the previous night before collapsing into bed. Mixed in with a number of diplomatic cables and forms that were very illegal for him to possess but nonetheless seemed uninteresting was a memo addressed to Hyun Ki from a James Harrows, director of business development at Enhanced Awareness LLC, based in Laurel. Leo reread it: Harrows was following up on a meeting they’d recently had and was excited about demonstrating some of his company’s new products. Leo wasn’t sure if the vague business-speak was hiding some code or if it really was that boring. No mention was made of the government of South Korea; no proper names at all were given. Harrows looked forward to hearing from Mr. Shim and further discussing how his company could meet his and his colleagues’ needs.