Evan had put Katrin through the paces — changing the location, a bus ride, leaving her car behind, switching her chair at the table. A pattern of movement designed to keep her off balance and himself safe. But one that clearly had aroused the interest of the sniper or the men behind him.
Any meeting that carefully orchestrated obviously went against their wishes and directives.
Katrin’s words returned with a sting: Me calling you? That could’ve killed my father.
A pulse beat in Evan’s temple. The walls of the Vault retained a bit of dampness, enough that he could feel moisture in his lungs on the inhale. Through the vent he could smell tar from the roof. For a time he sat there, that picture of Katrin’s father staring back at him. He thought of the false-bottomed drawer in his bureau and what it contained.
Never make it personal.
Just make it right.
Tomorrow he’d call Sam’s captors. He’d give everyone a night’s sleep to settle down, then engage under the light of a new day. In one fashion or another, he would engage.
Exiting through the shower and walking back to the big room, he sat to meditate, setting his pistol on the area rug beside him. Crossing his legs, he relaxed into his flesh, felt the tug of his bones, the weight of himself against the floor. His eyelids half closed, and beyond the blinds the city lights streaked into comets of yellow and orange.
He inventoried the minor aches from the day, starting with his feet and moving up his body. A slice on his calf carved by a shard from the blown-out window. A bruise on his left hip. Some joint tenderness around the shoulder.
The pain flickered in these spots, warm, pulsing. He focused on the hot points, breathed into them, smoothing them out with each exhalation as if beneath a rolling pin. And then they were gone, everything gone but the rise and fall of his chest, the coolness at his nostrils.
The breath was his anchor.
There was nothing else but his body and the chill air moving through it, feeding the blood in his veins, centering him here in this instant, his life measured one breath at a time. For a while he drifted across a blank slate, mindful and aware and yet without thought.
And then, as if stumbling, he lost the thread of the present, spinning back twenty-five years.
16
The Two Wolves
On the drive home from the dark Virginia barn, Jack lays out some facts, serving them to Evan like a well-earned meal. “You are part of what is called the Orphan Program. You are exceptionally well adjusted and even-tempered in the face of the unknown, selected for the program precisely for these qualities. There are others like you. You will never meet them.” His blocky hands command the steering wheel, the vehicle, the road. “You will be trained impeccably for your profession.”
“What’s my profession?”
“Weapon,” Jack says.
The truck thrums across some railroad tracks. The vinyl seat has grown hot beneath Evan’s legs. His head goes swimmy, like he’s in a dream. But it’s not a bad dream.
Finally Evan asks, “A weapon for what?”
“For solo, offline covert operations.”
Jack seems to forget that Evan is a kid. Or perhaps he speaks to him that way, the vocabulary just out of reach, making Evan stretch, stretch. Evan thinks for a time, piecing together what that might mean.
“Like a spy?”
Jack’s chin dips, his version of a nod. “Like a spy. But you’ll be different from other assaulters.”
Assaulters. Evan likes the word.
“You’ll be a cutout man,” Jack continues. “Fully expendable. You’ll know only your silo. Nothing damaging. If you’re caught, you’re on your own. They will torture you to pieces, and you can give up all the information you have, because none of it is useful. You will go places you are not allowed to go and do things you are not allowed to do. Everyone at every level will deny any knowledge of you, and this will not be entirely false. Your very existence is illegal.”
“An Orphan,” Evan says.
“That’s right. This is your last chance to pull the ripcord, so consider carefully. If you die, you will die alone and no one will know of your sacrifice. No one but me. There will be no greater glory, no parades, no name on a monument wall. That is the choice before you.”
Evan thinks about where he came from — secondhand shoes, food out of cans, low ceilings and cramped walls. Jack Johns seems like a portal to a vast, wide-open world, a world Evan had always imagined existed somewhere beyond reach. Now maybe there could be a place out there even for someone like him.
Evan pokes at the cut in his palm bestowed by the hooked blade. “Sounds good,” he says.
Jack looks over at him. Back at the road. “There is only me. I’m your handler. I am the only person who will ever know who you are. I will protect you. No matter what.” The trees scroll by behind that rough-hewn profile. “You and I are all we have. Do you understand?”
Evan watches the foliage whip by. “I think so.”
“Equivocal answers aren’t answers, Evan.”
“Yes. I understand.” Evan looks down at his arms, dotted with puncture marks. “So I’m gonna do more training? With that guy?”
“Him and others. Under no circumstance are you to reveal to them your name. They will know you only as ‘Orphan X.’”
“X as in the letter or the number ten?”
Jack appears pleased with this question. “Alphabet.”
“So there were twenty-three Orphans before me?”
“Yes.”
“What happens when you run out of letters?”
Jack laughs. It is the first time Evan has heard him do so. It’s a rich laugh, aged in his chest. “Then I suppose they’ll go to numbers.” He veers around a wood-paneled station wagon, a family out for a Sunday drive. “I will only interject one instructor at a time into your life. At the beginning of your training, you will never be alone with an instructor. I will always be there. Like today.”
“Yeah, but I’ll never be as good at handling pain as that guy.”
Jack pulls a thoughtful frown. Then he says, “You don’t have to. You just have to do better than you did last time.” Jack looks across at him. “You know the two best words in the English language?” he asks.
Evan is at a loss.
“‘Next time,’” Jack says.
Evan feels unconvinced.
Jack says, “You’ve read the Odyssey, right?”
“No.”
“We’ll change that soon enough.” Jack takes a moment to look displeased. Then: “Odysseus is not as skilled a fighter as Achilles. Not as great an archer as Apollo. Not as fast as Hermes. In fact, he’s not the best at anything. And yet overall? He is unrivaled. ‘Man of many wiles.’” Jack’s eyes move from the rearview to one side mirror, then the other. “Your job is to learn a little bit about everything from people who know everything about something.”
Evan’s next years are spent doing precisely that.