Evan nods and heads upstairs.
Several years later on a bleak gray morning, Evan finds himself riding shotgun east on Route 267, a carry-on bag across his thighs. In his back pocket is a real passport with real stamps and a false name. Jack’s hands grip the wheel in the ten-and-two, and he gazes straight ahead as signs for Dulles International float overhead.
“I am the only person who knows who you are,” Jack says. “What you do. The only person inside the government or out. The only person in the world.”
This is not news. Evan wonders what is motivating Jack to break character this dreary East Coast morning by repeating the obvious.
“I am your only connection to anything,” Jack continues. “Anyone else contacts you, says I told them, do not believe him. I am it.”
“Okay,” Evan says.
“I will always be there. The voice on the other end of the phone.”
Evan realizes he is witnessing something he has never seen before: Jack is anxious.
“Jack? I’m ready.”
The airport cop flicks a gloved hand, and Jack coasts up to Departures. At the curb ahead of them against the backdrop of a minivan, a teary mother and a stoic father hug their son. The teenager wears a college shirt with intersecting lacrosse sticks. He looks impatient.
Evan reaches for the door handle. “See you when it’s clear.” He starts to get out, but Jack’s hand grips his forearm firmly, stilling him in the passenger seat.
“Remember, the hard part isn’t killing,” he says, not for the first time, or the fiftieth. “The hard part is staying human.”
A microexpression flickers across Jack’s features so fast that Evan might have missed it if he didn’t know him the way he does.
Fear.
Evan feels his throat constrict ever so slightly. Neither of them is accustomed to expressing emotion. Not trusting his voice, Evan nods.
The vise grip on his arm relents. Jack waves a hand at the waiting terminal. “Go on, then,” he says, slightly bothered, as though Evan has been holding him up.
Evan climbs out, the chill whipping around his neck, cooling the flush that has crept up into his face. He blends into the thickening crowd entering the international terminal, walking neither too fast nor too slow, a face among faces, invisible in plain sight. The boarding pass rustles in his hand. When he reaches the printed destination, there will be additional orders from Jack, directing him to a man he will kill.
He is nineteen years old and as ready as he’ll ever be.
He gives a last glance back through the big glass doors at Jack, his only connection to legitimacy.
He is also Evan’s only connection to humanity.
14
Rambo in a Bespoke Shirt
This time when Evan arced up from the depths and broke the surface of consciousness, he sensed a difference in the consistency of the air.
A draft.
Rolling his head to the side, he noticed that the bedroom door was ajar.
He rose, wobbling a bit on his feet. Then made his way toward the door. When he stepped through, he picked up movement far down the hall on either side of him. First he looked left, where Manny waited, shotgun leveled. To Evan’s right was another narco—one of the guards he’d spotted earlier from his window — with his weapon also at the ready. Evan took a step toward Manny, and both men moved with him, maintaining the twenty-foot buffer.
They had learned.
Manny jerked the end of the shotgun at the other man. “Dígale, Nando.”
Santa Muerte, tattooed on the side of Nando’s neck, looked like she was melting. He swiped sweat from the ink quickly, his hand slapping back onto the shotgun’s barrel. “Mr. René say he invite you to take some air. He say perhaps you can find some perspective.”
René’s arch tone, replicated through poor diction and a strong Mexican accent, made Evan smirk.
Nando flicked his head, making clear that the request wasn’t really a request.
Evan started down the high-ceilinged hall, Manny backpedaling and Nando bringing up the rear, the three men moving of a piece. The chalet smelled of dust and sweet rot, all the scents of a time-honored place. The space opened up around Evan, such a contrast to the locked and barred room.
They reached a landing. “Hold up,” Manny said. He shot a quick glance behind him, finding the top step with his boot, then looked back and ran his tongue across the caps. “Okay. Slow as shit, ése, or you be wearing a round in your face. Then you need golds like me.” He bared his teeth in something resembling a smile. “¿Comprendes?”
“Comprendo.”
The three men moved awkwardly down a few broad flights of stairs, Manny sliding his hip along the polished wooden banister for balance so he could move backward while keeping the shotgun raised. They reached the ground floor, stepping into the embrace of an expansive parlor. The lush Persian carpet yielded softly underfoot. Evan took in the intricate woodwork, the scattering of billiard tables, the excessively stocked bar. René certainly didn’t skimp, particularly when it came to luxury. Two foot soldiers sat on leather couches sipping scotch, Kalashnikovs resting on the cushions at their sides. They barely took notice of the bizarre procession moving past them.
A hostage being moved at double gunpoint didn’t warrant a second glance. Business as usual. Evan wondered how many times René had played through this scheme. How much blood had the walls of this chalet seen?
Evan paused, adding the men to the tally—two dogs, eight guards, Dex—before Nando prompted him to keep heading down a wide corridor. They passed a library, a sunroom, an empty ballroom with a listing grand piano and a past-its-prime air right out of a Victorian novel.
The grand entrance rose two stories, crowned by a glittering chandelier the size of a Buick. Evan leaned back on his heels, looking up, a country rube visiting Kuala Lumpur. Chalet windows filtered in the burnt orange of the setting sun. Manny halted by a curved Hollywood staircase and gestured for Evan to continue outside.
Evan placed his hand on the doorknob. The metal felt like ice. “I can just leave?”
Manny smiled. “You can try.”
And then Evan understood.
His thin tailored shirt and jeans would provide scant protection from the cold. René wanted to show him just how unforgiving the terrain was, to dissuade any thoughts of escape.
But he didn’t need to escape. Not yet. He needed to recon, gather intel, get the lay of the land. And René was providing him with a perfect opportunity to do just that.
Evan stepped outside, the breeze sweeping straight through him, biting at his ankles, his neck, his wrists. Clenching his fists, he drove them into his pockets. A light snow fell, so fragile that the flakes dissipated the instant they hit his clothes. For a moment he stood on the vast stone porch, giving his body a chance to acclimate.
René was right to show off the brutal landscape. SERE training aside, without a clear plan Evan would die of exposure. He appreciated the pageantry. Now he had to bear down and gather as much information as he could.