“I’m looking.”
“See anything out of place? Unmarked vans, anything like that?”
“Everything looks okay. What’s going on, Ellis?” He’d learned in Africa a generation ago that she didn’t scare easy. She didn’t sound scared now. Not for herself, anyway.
“I’ll tell you when I get home. As much as I can.”
As a rule, she didn’t ask him about work, but in this case she deserved to know.
“If I see anything, I’ll call you.”
“And the police. And the neighbors.” Shafer thought of the pistol he kept in the basement, but the suggestion would only make her laugh.
“That bad?”
“Better safe than sorry. Love you.”
“Likely story.”
He drove on, eyeing the van in his mirror, trying to push down his fury, keep his mind clear. They wanted to come at him, fine. But not his wife. Real spy agencies didn’t play these games. They were too easy, and too easy to escalate. Shafer decided to let them tail him for now. He’d find out at the Metro station if they were serious about following him.
The East Falls Church lot was already almost half full when he arrived. D.C.’s rush hour started early. Shafer drove slowly through the lot, waiting for the van to follow. But it stopped outside the entrance, as if the men inside weren’t sure what to do. After a few seconds, it rumbled off. Shafer suspected its disappearance meant that the driver didn’t want him to see its rear license plate and run a trace. More proof they were private investigators. FBI or CIA operatives wouldn’t have cared. Shafer wondered if he ought to follow them, but they had a decent lead and he wasn’t in the mood for a high-speed chase through suburban Virginia. Anyway, they’d be back.
The morning’s countersurveillance run on the Metro gave Shafer plenty of time to consider why Duberman and the woman who worked for him had sent the van. The move seemed unnecessarily provocative. They knew the agency and White House had bought their scheme. But for whatever reason, they still felt the need to pressure Shafer. Maybe he and Wells were closer than they imagined.
Shafer walked out of the red line Bethesda Metro stop at 7:45. As far as he could tell, he hadn’t been followed. It was always possible that the agency or the FBI was running a twenty-agent team on him, but those were basically impossible to spot, and Shafer didn’t know why they would bother.
Duffy arrived at eight, exactly on time. Shafer didn’t recognize him, didn’t think they had ever spoken, but Duffy was as cordial as he’d been the day before. Duffy was a common agency type, tall and lanky, with blue eyes that seemed friendly at first and then less so. The CIA contained a surprising number of Midwesterners and Mormons. Shafer didn’t know why. Maybe they saw espionage as a way to channel their murderous ids into the noble task of protecting the homeland. They unsettled Shafer. He knew he was being unfair, but he had no trouble imagining them setting railroad schedules for trains to Auschwitz in 1944.
“You live close by?” Shafer said, as the waiter walked away.
“Chevy Chase. We were lucky enough to buy a house twenty years ago and sublet it all these years I was in Asia.”
“And business is good?”
“Fantastic.”
Shafer was sure Duffy would have given that answer even if he was on the verge of bankruptcy. “You don’t mind my asking, who do you work for?”
“Everyone from pharmaceutical companies trying to keep counterfeit Chinese drugs out of the supply chain to movie studios dealing with DVD knockoffs. Software, auto parts, it doesn’t matter, if the Chinese can copy it, they will. Hedge funds hire us to help with investments gone wrong. Ask us to figure out if hiring some minister’s son will cause more problems than it’s worth. Western companies are only just realizing now how complex doing business in China is. Only problem is that I wind up spending half my time on planes to Hong Kong.”
“And I guess they’re willing to pay.”
“I’m not afraid to tell you, Ellis. I charge a thousand-fifty an hour. And flying counts, too. Just to put me on a plane to HK costs twenty grand. But then, if you have seven hundred million dollars sunk into some truck plant there, twenty grand doesn’t sound so bad.”
Duffy didn’t bother to hide his pleasure. His cynicism was so deep that it had molted into something like optimism. Why shouldn’t I get rich? Everyone else is.
And he was right, more or less. Duffy had put in twenty-four years at the agency, retired at fifty-one. If he wanted to make a few bucks now, have all the egg-white omelets he can eat, Shafer understood.
Sometimes he wondered if he should have taken that path himself. Though it had never really been open to him. Years before, Duto had told Shafer that he was the ultimate agency loyalist, that as much as he claimed to stand apart, he couldn’t exist without the CIA. Shafer had wanted to disagree, but in his heart he knew that Duto spoke true. In his twisted way, Duto was a keen judge of character.
“How about you, Ellis? How are you?”
“Getting by. Day at a time.” Waiting for the blade to drop. “I have to ask, Ian. We ever work together?”
Duffy shook his head.
“Then why did you agree to meet me on such short notice?”
Duffy grinned. “I figured it’d be interesting, that’s all. And I thought maybe you wanted to come work for me. It’s not too late.”
“I don’t know anything about China.”
“You wouldn’t have to. The companies I work for do business all over.”
“Not why I called. Though I appreciate the thought.”
The waiter returned, bearing their breakfast, and they sat in silence until he left.
“You remember Glenn Mason?”
“Sure. Weirdest episode I had in all my years.”
“You know what happened to him?”
“After we got rid of him, you mean? He flaked. Disappeared.”
“You never heard that he drowned in Thailand?”
“When?” Duffy sounded genuinely surprised.
“A few months after you fired him. Rented a boat near Phuket and fell overboard.”
Duffy busied himself cutting a piece of omelet. “And it was never reported to us?”
“So it seems. Best I can tell, no one cared enough to bother. His parents were dead, he never married, no kids. And I’m guessing he didn’t have anyone in Hong Kong.”
“Not at the station, anyway. I’d like to tell you I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about him, but I haven’t. Maybe once a year.”
“You don’t sound too cut-up.”
“I hardly knew him. He had a breakdown in Baghdad, and for some reason he decided he wanted Hong Kong, and personnel figured they owed him one. Which they did. But he was burned out even before he started. Didn’t come in half the time and was drunk when he did. He didn’t recruit a single agent.”
“You knew he lost all that money gambling.”
“Of course. He didn’t try to hide it. Part of me thought he was proud of it.”
“At that casino called 88 Gamma? Aaron Duberman’s place?”
“Yeah. Which, coincidentally enough, I started working for a couple months ago.”
Bile filled Shafer’s throat. Think. Was this Duffy’s wink-and-a-nod way of telling Shafer that he knew what Duberman had done? Doubtful. Shafer couldn’t imagine that Duffy would risk being charged with treason.
Much more likely that the woman running the plot for Duberman had hired Duffy and other ex — CIA officers as an early warning system. This way she would hear if Shafer or anyone else went fishing for information about 88 Gamma. And no one would wonder why a casino company was hiring guys like Duffy. Casinos were a rough business, lots of political interference and cash sloshing around.