SEBASTIÁN VIVAS insisted on paying for Kevin’s flight out, but there was a catch: The Spanish government would only pay to return him to where he’d come from. Namely, London. So by Sunday he was back in Mattie’s spare room, having bought a ticket to JFK for Monday morning. That evening, he drank beer with her and Elijah, the TV muted in the background. He listened to Mattie’s stories about life in the islands before she married and moved to England. “There was no time there, you see? Morning, day, night was all we knew. The food—it came off the trees. Here? Every little second, they measure it. Your food comes from boxes. And always: money, money.”
He’d written up a bare-bones Hushmail report for Rachel, giving her an account of Vivas’s eye-opening yet unhelpful story of a secret CIA department, since disbanded, that had among its employees one Milo Weaver. Now working for the United Nations, Weaver had been in Bilbao when Martin Bishop appeared, still in shock from Berlin. “This Milo Weaver—he’s also known as James Sullivan?”
“Just so.” Vivas was amiable enough, once Kevin had agreed to leave.
“And why was he funding Bishop?”
A shrug. “That, my friend, you will have to ask him.”
“I’d like to. Where can I meet him?”
Vivas laughed, patted Kevin on the shoulder, and pointed him to his gate.
On Monday morning, as he waited for Elijah to drive him to the airport, Kevin drank hot tea with Mattie in the living room. The television was on mute, but he noticed BBC News’s bright red BREAKING NEWS chyron, and the words: FBI SCANDAL and OFFICIAL IMPLICATED. He set down his tea. “You mind if I turn that up, Mattie?”
What he heard stunned him. Sam Schumer, a right-wing commentator he’d never paid much attention to, had broken their story last night. BBC admitted that it was a long, detailed piece—as yet uncorroborated—but the essential details were that an FBI official named Owen Jakes was responsible for multiple outrages: the 2009 Berlin explosion blamed on the Kommando Rosa Luxemburg, the assassinations of three members of Congress and attempted murder of a fourth, and the murders of Martin Bishop and Benjamin Mittag. As if that weren’t enough, there was an angle Kevin hadn’t even considered: that Owen Jakes had been running Mittag as his own agent. The FBI, as yet, had released no statement. “As we said before, this story is developing and has not been confirmed, but it is causing enormous uproar in the United States at the moment.”
Mattie saw the look on his face. “You all right, baby?”
On the drive to Heathrow, Elijah talked constantly, but Kevin heard little of it. He was trying to put together the knowns and unknowns. By then he’d watched Schumer’s segment and read the accompanying article on his site, which went on and on, with some notable omissions. Milo Weaver wasn’t mentioned; nor was Alexandra Primakov. Kevin wasn’t named either. The story answered so much while leaving other questions entirely unasked. Though it was out now, he felt increasingly uneasy. This couldn’t be the end of it. It was too explosive to be over.
The unease stuck with him the whole flight, and when the woman in the neighboring window seat struck up a conversation he was ready for a diversion. Her name was Linda, she told him, and she was an investment banker coming back from a business trip. He was grateful that she didn’t ask his line of business. She talked about the ways in which London had changed over the years, and he found himself drawn into her observations until, about an hour into the flight, she said, “How about the news, huh?”
“What?”
“The FBI. Christ.”
It turned out she’d also watched Schumer’s report, and she was working on theories to find the connective tissue between the disparate facts. “Owen Jakes must have thought he had it all. He’d gotten Ben Mittag right next to Bishop as the Massive Brigade grew.”
Kevin agreed. Mittag had been Jakes’s Kevin, his inside man. Jakes had been able to keep an eye on Bishop from the early days, but how was he supposed to know, back in 2009, what the Massive Brigade would become? “Eventually,” he told Linda, “the Brigade had become so big that no one could get rid of it.”
As if this question had just come to her, Linda said, “But why didn’t Jakes get rid of Bishop earlier? That would’ve taken care of everything.”
“Maybe he was afraid Bishop would reveal what he’d done in Berlin. Maybe that was Bishop’s protection.”
“I mean kill him,” Linda said. “He did it last summer. Why not eight years ago?”
She seemed very interested in how he might answer that, but to answer that he would have to delve into the mystery of Bishop’s guardian angel, Milo Weaver, who had not been part of any of the reporting so far. So he shrugged. “I suppose they’ll have to put that question to Owen Jakes.”
Linda looked back at him, eyes narrowed, and nodded.
When she left for the bathroom, he closed his eyes and remembered Mittag’s wild anger after Bishop had been shot by that sharpshooter in that wheat field. Though he’d certainly reported Bishop’s location back to Jakes, it seemed clear to Kevin that Ben hadn’t expected it to end in murder. It didn’t matter that he’d always worked at cross-purposes to Bishop; they’d spent years together. So what did Ben’s next conversation with Jakes sound like? I’m going to blow this wide open. Yes, that’s how Benjamin Mittag would have reacted in the heat of his anger. Hours later, a SWAT team had shot him dead.
“Excuse me,” Linda said.
Kevin got up, and as she moved back into her seat he noticed the phone sticking out of her purse. “Is that a satellite phone?” he asked.
She looked confused at first, then realized what he was talking about. A cynical smile. “Bankers aren’t allowed eight hours off the grid.”
Linda laid off the Massive Brigade talk, and in fact seemed to sink into a quiet sort of depression. He wasn’t sure if he’d said the wrong thing, but at least he could catch a couple of hours’ sleep.
When he woke, they were breaking through the cloud cover above Long Island, and Linda had returned to her cheery self. She asked where he was heading, and he realized he didn’t know. He was going to have to find Rachel, but now that the story had broken he no longer felt he was in a rush. “Hotel,” he said.
“Need a ride into town?”
He considered it, but he didn’t know how things would go for him after landing. Would the Bureau be waiting? A confrontation at passport control? He didn’t want to drag her into it. “I’ve got a car already,” he lied.
They touched down, and once they’d taxied to the gate he made space for Linda to exit first. He watched as she navigated the narrow space between the seats. The flight attendants gave them forced smiles as they passed, and he thanked them for … for what, exactly, he didn’t know. There was a lot he didn’t know, but that was nothing new. He remembered looking down Benjamin Mittag’s gun barrel in that dilapidated farmhouse, Mittag accusing him of working for the Feds, and having no idea what would come next. Sometimes there was virtue in ignorance.
As he walked up the jet bridge, he saw Linda hurry past other passengers and take a right toward immigration control. She glanced back to meet his eye before disappearing, but instead of a smile of farewell she gave him a cold look, as if … what? Making sure he was still there? Then she was gone, and his scalp tingled. A moment of imprecise terror.
He slowed. An old woman grazed his arm as she passed, and he stepped to the side to let the other passengers move on. He looked back toward the plane, the exhausted faces of passengers heading toward him, oblivious. No, he couldn’t go back there. So he again joined the stream of travelers, turned the corner, and found, on the right side, Linda standing with a sad smile on her face. Behind her, two broad-chested men—one white, one black—stood at attention. “Kevin,” Linda said. “Let’s not make a scene, okay?”
“Sure.” As he followed her, the men walked on either side of him, their shoulders brushing against his.
There was a door with no handle in the white wall, and as the rest of the passengers passed, some glancing curiously at him, Linda knocked on the door and someone on the other side opened it. They entered a dim corridor that brightened at the next turn, then walked him into a windowless cell—table, chair.
“Pockets, please,” said Linda.
On the table, he laid his wallet, house keys, passport, cigarettes, and phone.
“Freddy,” she said, and the black Fed proceeded to pat him down.
“What’s the deal?” Kevin asked her.
“Just want to have a conversation.”
“I thought we did that already.”
“I’ve got questions.”
Freddy finished up and stepped back. When Linda nodded, Kevin sat in the chair, hands on the table. “Is it you asking these questions, or is it Owen Jakes?”
She blinked at the mention of that name. Even Freddy looked concerned. Something was up.
Linda said, “Last night, Owen Jakes made himself a nice hot bath in his apartment, then slit his own wrists.” Kevin’s emotions must have been apparent in his face, because she leaned closer, elbows against the table, and said, “It’s all over the news.”
“I’ve been on a plane the last eight hours,” he said, then remembered the satellite phone she’d had with her in the bathroom. He cocked his head and looked right back into her eyes. “No wonder you went quiet, Linda. You must have been pretty freaked out.”