The Revisionists (47 page)

She wondered this as she paid her cab fare, looked up and down her reassuringly van-free neighborhood, and turned the key in the door of her ransacked house.

Pillaged house, destroyed house, trashed house. Inside-out house. Un-house.

The twelve-hundred-dollar sofa she’d bought from a boutique in Old Town had been gashed and disemboweled. Her shelves were bare, and her books lay on top of one another on the floor, open and upside down like victims of genocide spreading their arms to protect their children from the firing squad. Her refrigerator had been moved several inches away from the wall, her dishes thrown on the unforgiving tile floor. A couple spots in the dining room and living room where floorboards had been worn down and replaced by a previous owner were now torn out entirely; the vandals had apparently suspected those were trick doors. They had torn her fucking floor open.

She made it to the bathroom in time for the toilet to catch her vomit.

After she stopped, when she made it back into the totaled dining room—the table upside down, the upholstery of the chairs spewing out—she felt a burning on her cheeks. Like she was being watched. How long had they been in here? How many of them? It was like they were still here, would always be here, no matter how she cleaned and replaced and scrubbed. She would always feel their eyes on her, feel their arms around her waist lifting her away.

Then she realized that the jarring whiteness of her walls meant that all the decorations had been removed from them. That black rectangle on the floor, sitting in a bed of shattered glass, was Marshall’s army photo, turned backward and broken open. She rushed over to it, picked it up. The print was torn in half, Marshall decapitated.

She didn’t even want to see the second floor. The torn-out carpeting on the steps told her it would only be more of the same.

It was worse. Her desk drawers were pulled out and thrown down, attacked by poltergeists; erasers and pens and Post-its spread across the floor. Her computer was gone. Please, not the computer. And where were her notebooks? She looked under the mattress, which was far from its usual spot. She nearly threw out her back moving her bureau into place, hoping the notebooks and files would be revealed, but no. They’d stolen her computer and her disks and her CD-ROMs and her backup hard drive and all of her notebooks and files. In their search for whatever deep, dark secret they feared Troy had left behind, they’d taken every record she had of Marshall. All those e-mails she had painstakingly gathered, and the printouts and scans she’d made of his blog posts. The names and numbers and addresses of the men and women with whom he’d served. She tried to breathe, tried to remember if she had the information anywhere else. Some of it was online, but most of it wasn’t. Marshall was gone, again.

29.

L
eo had made it back to his house, not noticing any more shadows but assuming they were there. Inside his apartment, all seemed as he had left it, and the knob turned with the key the way it always did. He realized how paranoid he was becoming, to question every little thing like this.

He tried to stop running through the various bits of information he’d learned in the last twenty-four hours and focus instead on what he needed to do next. He would get an ID for Sari—he’d already placed a call to start that process and would meet with his source in less than two hours. He had researched Amtrak schedules, printing one out from the Georgetown library, just in case his home Internet usage was being monitored, and had stopped at the bank on the way back from his surreptitious visit to Sari and withdrawn thousands of his own hard-earned dollars. He’d handled that much cash before—more, in fact—but never had it been his own money. It made him feel even more vulnerable.

He was microwaving some leftover Indian takeout and brewing coffee when his phone buzzed with an unfamiliar D.C. number.

“Leo Hastings?” A man’s voice. Possibly a few years younger than Leo.

“Speaking. Who’s this?”

“My name is Special Agent Hale Michaels with the FBI. My partner and I would very much like to speak to you about Enhanced Awareness.”

“They’re a popular conversational topic lately.”

“They’ve been popular with me for quite a while.”

“Look, if this is some turf argument, we can just have it over the phone, because I—”

“We’re calling because we can help you, Mr. Hastings. You’ve been talking to some people I’ve been watching very carefully, and they’re the type of people you want to steer clear of.”

“When do you want to meet?”

“How about in five minutes, at your place?” Michaels didn’t even pause to let Leo process this. “We’re just outside.”

Leo said, “Sure,” like he wasn’t bothered by the fact that the FBI was watching his apartment. Then he speedily ate his leftovers, trying to predict what they were going to tell him. Less than five minutes later, the doorman buzzed him.

“Some guests, Mr. Hastings. They say you’re expecting them?”

At least they hadn’t flashed their badges. Leo okayed them, straightening his tiny living room, organizing magazines on the coffee table as if about to entertain in-laws or something. Why was he nervous? He checked himself in the mirror, wondered how obvious it was that he’d barely slept the night before and had been strung out all day.

They knocked, and Leo opened the door to the two special agents, the second of whom was introduced as Kent Islington. Leo wasn’t sure if he should be relieved or alarmed to see that these were not the men who’d been tailing him earlier that day.

Michaels looked even younger than he’d sounded. He was handsome, with brown hair that seemed just shaggy enough to earn comments from his bosses; the red tie of his otherwise standard FBI dark suit was slanted, the top button of his shirt undone, as if he were getting ready for an
Esquire
photo shoot. He did the talking; Islington, who was in his late forties at least and had thinning gray hair and a slouch, seemed resigned to the fact that he was being displaced by a younger, cooler generation. He nodded a hello but remained silent. Michaels flashed his credentials; his mild embarrassment at the formality showed that he knew Leo was former Agency and wouldn’t be wowed by a federal badge. Islington kept his hands in his pockets.

“Smells good,” Michaels said, presumably meaning the coffee. “Planning a late night?”

“Just a caffeine junkie.”

“Well, as addictions go, that one’s not so bad.”

Leo offered them some but they declined. He invited them to sit on his couch, and he took the one chair, sitting opposite them. Neither was carrying a briefcase, and they both glanced around the room and down the hall, as if wondering whether Leo had any other guests. He told them he didn’t.

“I’m going to start things off as agreeably as possible,” Michaels said. “You’re ex-Agency, which means we’re supposed to hate you and you’re supposed to hate us and all that. But I’m one of the rare feds who hasn’t yet been screwed by the Agency and therefore holds no grudge against you guys—”

“Though it’ll probably happen eventually,” Islington interrupted in a flat tone.

“—and as far as I know, I’ve never pissed off anyone at Langley. So hopefully you can hear us out without any premature judgments.”

“Like I tried to say before, I couldn’t care less about that sort of thing.”

“Excellent.” Michaels seemed legitimately thrilled to hear this. “We came here so quickly because we’ve been following the good people of Enhanced Awareness for quite some time.” Though, judging from his unlined face, how long could that have been? “And we’ve been listening to Terry Sentrick’s calls, so we heard your conversation with him this afternoon.”

 “That
was
quick.”

“Which should show you how seriously we take this. As you probably noticed, Sentrick and his friends are desperately trying to find Troy Jones, and they were hoping you’d do that for them. Sounds like they met with you earlier and tried to con you into thinking they were with the Agency, and that you should tell them if Jones approached you?”

Leo tried to remember what he’d told Sentrick and figured that yes, a savvy listener would have been able to divine that much. He didn’t nod, but he didn’t contradict them either.

“Well, I was glad to hear you tell Sentrick that you’d call the
police
if you saw Jones. Which is exactly what you should do. Specifically, us.” On cue, Islington reached forward and handed Leo two cards, the FBI crest emblazoned on each. “We believe that Jones, though erratic and possibly crazy, as Sentrick suggested, is indeed trying to sabotage their company, and that he ran off with information that could prove rather painful to them. Information that would help us nail down our case. I don’t know why he doesn’t come directly to us—we’ve tried to reach him ever since he went AWOL from the company, and we even approached him beforehand, thinking he might play ball—but, again, the man is erratic.”

“Tell me about your case.”

There was a two-second pause, during which the feds exchanged a glance. Michaels said, “We’ve been working on this for a very long time. The political mood has not always been conducive to our pursuing this company. As Sentrick mentioned to you, he has powerful connections. But I think Jones has evidence that’s too large for anyone to overlook.”

Leo hated how vague they were being. “Why do you think Jones will approach me?”

“Honestly, I have no idea what the man will do. But we’re covering our bases, and we wanted to make sure we spoke to you right away, just in case. I could tell from your tone in that call that you don’t like Sentrick, that you think maybe he’s involved in something dirty. I wanted to let you know that your hunch is correct.”

“You told Sentrick that Jones pulled a gun on you,” Islington said. “Tell us about it.”

Leo did, omitting a few details but giving away most of it. Despite the animosity that Agency people had for the Bureau, he believed the two feds. He didn’t like the fact that they wouldn’t tell him everything, but he understood their perspective, and frankly he was flattered that they’d come by to tell him this much.

“What do you know about this Korean diplomat?” Leo asked them. “I was near his house when Jones approached me and told me to keep away from them.”

“We don’t know much,” Michaels said, “but I imagine the government of South Korea is one of Enhanced Awareness’s clients, or potential clients. Why Jones warned you away, again, I don’t know.”

“You know about Jones’s family?”

“We do. Honestly, that’s why we thought we could turn him. Figured he was getting disgruntled with the work, would be happy to pass us some information. But he was with NSA for years, so maybe it’s an honor thing—they don’t like us any more than the CIA does.”

Leo wanted to ask them much more, for details on Troy’s family, to fill the holes in Gail’s story. Who had Mrs. Jones’s uncle really been, and had he indeed been rendered, and was he rotting in some Egyptian prison somewhere? Had the uncle—or even Jones’s wife—been in any way connected to some Islamist extremist group, justifying his placement on those lists? Justifying all that would come later? And did the feds know something about Hyun Ki Shim that they weren’t saying? Did they know he was in the hospital right now? And what about Sari? Had her residence in that house gotten her involved in something that would trail her for the rest of her life?

But he didn’t want to insult his own intelligence by asking questions he knew they’d ignore. So he told them what they wanted to hear. “I honestly hope I never see Troy Jones again. But if I do, I will let you know immediately.”

Handshakes all around, and the two feds left. Leo poured himself some coffee and tried to imagine what it would feel like to be Troy Jones.

30.

It did not take long for Sari to conclude that being trapped alone in a motel room was only a minor improvement over being trapped in a maniacal household with screaming infants.

Leo’s sudden visit that afternoon, to deliver food, take her photograph, and tell her his plan, was the only time she had spoken in hours. After he’d brought her there the previous night, she’d spent a long time trying to sleep before finally turning on the light, plugging in the television, and staring uncomprehendingly at grainy police dramas before sleep rescued her from their nonsense. She awoke to smiling newscasters telling her important snippets about the previous night and the upcoming day, which again she could not understand but which apparently had a lot to do with fatal shootings, a fire, predawn traffic congestion, and the possibility of rain.

She turned the TV off as well as the lights (it was still dark out) and tried to fall back to sleep, but all she could see was Sang Hee, her mouth agape with rage—those tiny yellow teeth and the undulating tongue—and her knife raised. She remembered again the sound of Sang Hee stabbing her husband, just a quiet
ppp, ppp,
like a fist against a pillow. Knives are muted. It had been so horrifying when she’d understood what was happening, so confusing and wrong, as if the knife didn’t realize it was supposed to be
loud,
was supposed to announce itself. She closed her eyes and suffered through waking dreams of silent violence before making herself get up and shower.

For so many days she hadn’t been afforded any time to put on makeup, and now she had plenty of time but no cosmetics to work with. The motel didn’t even have a bar of soap, just a dispenser of pink slime that she had to pump many times before some spooged through the clump that had agglutinated around the spout. She re-donned the track clothes Leo had bought her and which she’d slept in, and had no choice but to put on yesterday’s underwear.

She made herself watch more television because it was better than staring at the ceiling and thinking about the
ppp, ppp.
More morning news, then talk shows: chipper women with their legs crossed so tightly and their lips pursed so emphatically that they appeared perpetually on the verge of exploding. Whatever they were talking about seemed extremely interesting to them. She turned the TV off.