“Did Reza capture you, Mr. Taylor?”
Not even Carcetti had asked the question so bluntly. “I assure you, Senator, that Reza and I were in no way friends. I always felt uncomfortable at our meetings, to be honest.”
“But there’s an even simpler form of source capture, yes?”
Stretch the at bat… “I’m not trying to be difficult, Senator, but I don’t understand the question.”
“Then I’ll explain.” Frommer didn’t smile. “If an asset is providing uniquely valuable information, he will have a uniquely valuable effect on the career of the officer who’s handling him, yes?”
“Possibly.”
“You, for example. I’m sure you recognized Reza’s importance to your career.”
Taylor’s cheeks reddened like Frommer had slapped him. She’s the boss, Carcetti had said. Don’t fight her. But Taylor couldn’t help himself. He had joined the agency after 9-11, for the right reasons, to defend his country—
“Question my judgment, Senator, I can live with that. But don’t question my integrity. Don’t call me a careerist. Believe it or not, I know my place. I’m a small cog in a very big machine. I don’t have any plans to be DCI. Or even a station chief. I’ve never told anyone this before, but I figured on retiring after this posting. If I’ve been fooled, if I’m wrong, I expect to be disciplined. Or terminated. This isn’t about me—”
“Mr. Taylor—”
Never cut her off. Taylor raised a hand. “With respect, you brought this up. I’d like the opportunity to finish—”
“Mr. Taylor—”
“This isn’t about me. It’s about what’s best for the country. Making sure that a nuclear weapon never explodes on American soil. I can only tell you what I saw. And I saw a man who repeatedly gave us accurate and actionable intelligence. A man who led us to 1.3 kilograms of weapons-grade uranium. As I’m sure you know, that ingot is by far the biggest piece of nuclear material that anyone has ever found. If we prove it didn’t come from Iran, so be it. If the Iranians let us talk to their scientists, inspect their plants so we can be sure they aren’t enriching in secret, great. But until then, my money’s on Reza.”
Taylor folded his hands on the table, waited for Frommer to rip him a new one. Instead, a smile creased her filler-plumped lips. He’d turned her around. Not just her. Senators from both parties were nodding and smiling. Each of the fifteen faces above him looked down with new respect.
He’d won.
“Mr. Taylor. I am surprised. It’s rare to have a CIA officer speak so bluntly to us. I appreciate your candor.”
“Thank you, Senator.”
“I know my fellow senators have questions. As is customary, members will speak in order of seniority. I remind you, you have six minutes each. Not that any of you would ever go over.” Faint laughter. “The floor is yours, Mr. Vice Chairman.”
A cakewalk followed. Three senators urged Taylor to reconsider his plans to retire. He was done and dismissed within an hour. Hebley and Carcetti, who had watched from the row behind him, met him and Hunt in an empty conference room down the hall.
“Had me worried,” Hebley said. “But that was a complete one-eighty.”
“Thank you, sir.”
They shook his hand and then they were gone.
But the real verdict came from Hunt, as they settled into the black car that would take them to Langley for a full debrief. For the second time that day, she brought her lips to his right ear. “Well done, Brian. Play your cards right, you might get laid tonight.”
His response was immediate. And would have been embarrassing if anyone besides Hunt had been there to see it.
“Hey ho,” she said, looking at his crotch.
“Ho hey.” Taylor had never felt better, not even on the day he’d found the uranium itself. He had not just survived the Lion’s Den. He had made the lions eat out of his hand. Now he was due for his reward.
If only he hadn’t been so very, very wrong.
5
No one had ever accused Vinny Duto of being a patient man.
Today he had no choice. For his flight to Israel, he had borrowed a jet from his friends at Boeing, who were still good for a favor or two. Nonetheless, he brought along a pair of bug zappers to make sure that the conversation he was going to have couldn’t be recorded. He trusted the guys who’d lent him the plane. But not that much.
The jet itself was nothing fancy, just an old 757 that would need to refuel in Rome on its way to Tel Aviv. Duto didn’t plan to touch Israeli soil, though. He would have a drink with Rudi in the cabin while his pilots stretched their legs, or whatever it was pilots did after a five-thousand-mile flight, and then go home. He wanted no Israeli immigration records of this trip.
But when they landed at Fiumicino, a message from Rudi waited on his Samsung. Not tonight. Chemo wiped me out. Duto cursed to himself. He was not a sentimental man, and he didn’t fear death. It came for everyone, and it would come for him, too. Meantime, he had choices to make, chits to cash, problems to solve. A preoccupation with mortality was an indulgence, a weakness.
Still. Lung cancer. He called Jerusalem.
“Vinny.” A whisper.
“I hoped I’d get to see you tonight.”
“My doctors have other ideas.”
“I have a present for you.” Duto nudged the box with his toe. A radio-controlled Hummer, almost two feet long, one-twelfth scale. RC cars were Rudi’s only known indulgence.
“Unless it’s a new lung, you can keep it.”
“Better than a new lung.”
A faint sound that Duto recognized as a laugh.
“What if I come to you tonight? In Jerusalem?” Though he hated to leave a trail.
“Vinny.”
“Tomorrow?”
Another laugh. “I hope I live long enough to watch it happen to you, Vinny.”
“Rudi.”
“It’s good. Everybody else treats me like I’m dying. You’re the same prick as ever. You landed already at Ben Gurion?”
“Rome.”
“All right, stay there tonight. I feel better in the morning, I’ll call you.”
“Thank you—”
Rudi hung up.
Duto splurged, booked himself a room at the Artemide. He hadn’t been to Rome in thirty years. By the time he checked in, the sun had set, but he had time at least to take a cab to St. Peter’s, see the great dome, cross his chest and pretend to pray. Instead, he made the mistake of logging in to his email.
He spent the next six hours taking advantage of the time difference to keep his D.C. staffers busy. So be it. The Vatican wasn’t going anywhere. And when he woke in the morning, he found a text from Rudi. BG 4 p.m. So he’d lose two full days to this chase. He hoped the conversation would go well, though he had reason to believe it wouldn’t.
The man at the base of the 757’s stairway looked only vaguely like the Mossad chief whom Duto remembered. He was a crumpled copy fished out of the trash. The old Rudi was lean and strong, with the ropy muscles of middle age and a shock of dark curly hair. The new Rudi was bald, even his eyebrows gone. His neck and shoulders had sunk into themselves, like a careless surgeon had taken them out and lost a bone or two before putting them back.