The Revisionists (43 page)

Finally a connection, though Leo still didn’t understand it. Troy Jones worked for a company that was trying to do business with Shim, and therefore with the government of South Korea. At least, it looked that way. It was very possible that Enhanced Awareness was just a front, that Jones and this Harrows person worked for some government agency (which agency, and which government?) that was trying to ensnare Shim in something. But if they were trying to recruit him as an agent to spy on South Korea, they wouldn’t put anything in writing.

Leo pulled back onto the road and headed east, trying to make sense of this. The Jetta reappeared somewhere around Foggy Bottom. Two men were inside, both of them white, but he couldn’t see much else. No hats or striking hairdos.

They were two cars back as he drove down the M Street corridor of clothing chain stores and tourist restaurants. Then he wound his way through Georgetown’s brick row houses, so tiny and tidy they seemed like stratospherically expensive dollhouses for particularly powerful dolls. He found street parking, tried not to look over his shoulder for the Jetta again. Carrying his shoulder bag, he jogged up the tall stone steps to the library at Georgetown University.

This is what he’d been reduced to: doing intelligence research at a college library. He knew he had better resources at the office, but he didn’t trust Bale anymore. Any Web site he visited or call he made would be monitored, and he still wasn’t sure why or by whom. When he’d returned to America he’d bought himself a guest card for the Georgetown library for emergencies like this. He found an unoccupied computer and surfed the Web, then checked Nexis for articles on Troy Jones and his employer.

The annoyingly common name led to numerous stories on professional and college athletes, drug dealers, a city councilman in Seattle, and an author of sexually explicit novels for black ladies. Nothing on a Troy Jones who might have been involved in intelligence work. Leo had expected that result, but he’d still needed to check.

Enhanced Awareness did not have a Web site. He did find a few newspaper articles mentioning the company; it was described as an intelligence contractor in a long and amorphous story about the recent privatization of government work. Then Leo noticed a byline; one of the stories had been written by Karthik Chaudhry. The young journalist who’d gone missing a few days ago.

He detoured his search, looked up more information on Chaudhry.

He was confident that his shadows were not in the library—everyone there looked like either a typical wildly privileged college student or a harried professor. He asked one of the librarians, a cute brunette born when Leo was a college student, if there was a pay phone, and she pointed him to the third floor. Once at the phone, he dialed the number on the otherwise blank card that the men in the SUV had given him yesterday.

“Yes?”

Leo recognized the voice.

“Hello,” he said, raising his voice an octave, “I’m trying to reach James Harrows.”

“To whom am I speaking?”

“I represent a client interested in doing business with Enhanced Awareness.”

“I don’t really handle sales, but if you’d like to talk to—”

Leo hung up, having gotten the confirmation he was looking for. The men in that car weren’t with the Agency after all but with Enhanced Awareness, meaning they were Troy Jones’s colleagues. Or maybe ex-colleagues. Unless, again, the company was a front for the Agency.

Outside, crossing the quad, he couldn’t see his tails, though he knew they were out there. Using his cell this time, he called Gail. Her voice was decidedly neutral. Yes, she was still in D.C. He asked if she could do him a favor, quickly.

“Not if it’s the kind of favor I think you mean.”

“I just need you to look up information on a company, and one of its employees.” He assured her he wasn’t trying to use her to get classified information (though he was hoping that that might happen). He just needed the basics, and he wasn’t in a position to find them. Could they get a drink tonight to discuss it?

Gail didn’t sound enthusiastic, but she didn’t say no.

Leo walked down to M Street and into a sporting goods store, bought some gym socks and running shoes that he didn’t bother trying on. The salesperson, a young guy with a thick Indian accent, seemed personally insulted about this, insisting that Leo try them on first to make sure they fit well, but Leo said he was in a rush. Finally the clerk took his cash—which he viewed warily, as if a customer who didn’t use plastic for an eighty-three-dollar purchase merited suspicion—and rang him up.

Three doors down, Leo bought a new wardrobe at a Gap. Jeans, a long-sleeved waffle shirt, a lightweight nylon jacket, boxers, socks, and a blue baseball cap with a capital
G.
The shadow had not followed him into the last store, and Leo didn’t think he was being watched here either—they were most likely outside—but still, he couldn’t risk being seen buying clothes for Sari. She no doubt could use new underwear, but she’d have to put up with that a while longer.

He paid cash (for a nearly two-hundred-dollar purchase, again earning a surprised look from a clerk) and took the overlarge bag from the young lady at the register. As he walked he carefully kept the bag from brushing against his body.

Across the street was one of the locations of the Washington Sports Club. It was the kind of overly sleek place that made him feel uncool for not scoring dates at the elliptical machine—dozens of flat-screen monitors pleaded for attention, house music played so loud that bringing one’s own iPod was redundant, and the staff at the front desk were as stylish as the hostesses at the restaurants lining the street. He waved his membership card and headed to the locker room.

He wasn’t sure if any of his clothes or possessions were bugged, but now seemed an appropriate time for extreme countermeasures. In the empty locker room, he carefully stripped naked and placed all of his clothes in his messenger bag. Then he put on his new, bug-free wardrobe. He smelled like a shopping mall. The shoes were a little too springy, but they fit—he’d asked for a half a size too big, just to guard against getting a blister, as a limp would have been noticeable.

He placed his wallet and his cell phone, turned off, into the locker and spun the lock’s dial.

The locker room was at the end of a long hallway in the back of the club. Across the hall was a fire exit, which he opened, guessing it wouldn’t trigger the alarm that its large sign warned people it would. He was right. Then he was outside, in an alley. He jogged to the end, then walked naturally through a parking lot and down to K Street, which in this part of town ran in the shadows beneath the Whitehurst Freeway. No one was watching him. He flagged down a taxi and took a ride across the river.

* * *

After quick stops to buy the cheapest digital camera he could find—nearly depleting his supply of cash—and some groceries, he walked twenty minutes to the USA Motel. He gave his coded knock, holding his breath.

“Yes?” she asked in Bahasa.

“It’s me. Open, quick.”

The latches turned and she let him in. He closed the door behind him swiftly, even though he was confident no one had tailed him since he’d shed his outer skin.

They were alone in a motel room. He hated himself for thinking it, but she looked great. She had showered recently, and her hair was pulled back more tightly than before. The room felt warm to him, but she wore her track coat on top of the rest of the outfit he’d bought her last night. They both looked so ridiculously sporty in their new duds, a yuppie couple ready for their morning jog along the Potomac before they headed out for brunch or maybe just read the
Post
all afternoon.

Speaking of which, he wished he had something she could read or entertain herself with, but he didn’t have any books in a language she’d understand, and it wasn’t worth scouring the city for anything. The boredom and stress must be driving her crazy.

He had been exhausted and crashing from his adrenaline high when he’d kissed her the night before. At least, it was easy to blame it on those things. After what she’d just been through, romance obviously had been far from her mind. Why didn’t his mind work that way too? He wasn’t sure if this was a male/female difference, an East/West thing, a spy/agent power discrepancy, or something else.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“I’m fine.” Standing rather far away from him, as if the room weren’t big enough for both.

“How’s your arm?”

“Okay. I put a new bandage on. Did you bring anything to eat that isn’t a candy bar?”

He laughed at that—he’d brought energy and sports bars the night before, but of course they were basically the same as Snickers to someone who hadn’t been tricked by the marketing campaigns. So he handed her the grocery bag, and her eyes lit up at the pile of fruit. She started peeling an orange immediately; the citrus tang hit his nose through the motel funk.

“Are people looking for me?”

“I think so. I had to be very careful getting here.” He took the camera out of its package. The salesclerk had promised it didn’t need to be hooked up to a computer first and would work immediately. “I need to take your picture. For a driver’s license—an ID card.”

She thought about this for a moment while she ate. She was just dropping the peels on the floor, as if her weeks as a slave maid had made her swear off basic cleanliness from then on. “You don’t have friends in Immigration, do you?”

“I’m going to get you out of here. I can get you to a safe place, where—”

“Safe like
this?
” She gestured to the room.

“No, something better. I can get you to a place in America where other Indonesians live, where you can find people who speak your language and can help you get by. Tell you where to work, where to get an apartment, that sort of thing. And I can get you some money to start out. But you’ll need an ID.”

When he saw that the walls were painted tan—he’d forgotten about that—he checked the bathroom; they were white. She stood beside the toilet and he leaned against the opposite wall, trying to fit her in the frame.

“Don’t smile for it,” he told her. “No one ever does.”

She hardly needed to be told that.

Back in the main room, he told her his plan—at least, the part of it he had figured out thus far. When he got to the fact that they would never see each other again, she barely blinked. He felt a shiver in the bottom of his gut, a physical sadness. Maybe she was only trying to appear strong, not reacting because of the professional, matter-of-fact way in which he explained everything. He wasn’t sure if she was a great agent or just terribly unromantic.

He found himself remembering that ridiculous date he’d described for her the other night, wishing it could come true. He was keeping careful track of how long he’d been gone from the gym, knowing a point would come when the shadow outside would start wondering how the hell long a workout Leo could endure. He’d hurried over here, had checked for shadows, but hadn’t taken quite as circuitous a route as he should have, half hoping he could buy himself time to make more traditional use of this motel room. He was an idiot, led by things he should be suppressing.

She had flirted with him before, though, hadn’t she? She had used her beauty to draw him to her. She didn’t need to, of course—she was valuable for other reasons, but she hadn’t known this. Now, though, when sex was at least plausible, she was acting more distant. He wondered if it was shock from the Shims attacking her or if it was from some of the things he’d said last night. Perhaps she’d seen him as some heroic American figure, calm and in charge, until his admission that he didn’t have a ready escape plan—and his confession of his mistakes in Jakarta—had dispelled the illusion.

That was the other thing he’d always loved about the job, he realized. The ability to portray himself as better than he truly was. Now, sadly, he was just himself.

Her arms were folded, the injured one on top. She wasn’t looking him in the eye any more than necessary. Maybe that kiss in Rock Creek Park had been offered only as a bribe, a plea for help, and she didn’t feel like begging anymore. Maybe she’d been using him as much as he’d been using her.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“You just… told me my future. I’m still taking it in.”

It wasn’t a very good future, was what she meant. He tried to reassure her, explained that what he was giving her was possibility. That anything could happen for her in the future. What he didn’t say was that this was the best he could do, given the fact that she was wanted for attempted murder, and possibly espionage, by at least two countries.

“Just… think it over,” he said. “It will sound better. Everything’s going to be fine, really.”

She nodded, but her eyes didn’t seem to agree. Those eyes, and his watch, told him it was time to leave.

Z.

T
he dense trees along both sides of the Baltimore-Washington Parkway have lost enough of their leaves to reveal the houses and apartment buildings behind them, like a badly covered secret coming to light. People everywhere, even when you think you’re free of them.

Now I understand why Wills’s and my own intel deviated about Tasha. She wasn’t historically important originally, but my own actions changed that. I selfishly got involved with her, and now that she’s perused my files and come to the conclusion that I’m some government spy following her around, her anger at the world will only grow hotter. I’ve inadvertently pushed her deeper into T.J.’s ring of believers, and that’s why she’ll be with him at the final Event.

I could rationalize that this doesn’t matter; according to my records, she was going to die not long from now anyway. All I’ve cost her is a bit of time. But even that much is unforgivable; what have I deprived her of? What joys might she have had, what discoveries and successes? When I spent time with her, I liked to think I was doing it partly for her, that I was easing away some of her pain in this difficult time, but really it was all for myself. More than anyone, I should realize how motives can become so confused, how actors can fail to know themselves. I’ve darkened her life, and shortened it.