Heeler was one of Alan’s recruits, a thirtysomething Indian-American who had worked for the FBI’s SWAT team until July 2017, when she’d taken part in the well-publicized attack on a Massive Brigade safe house in Watertown, South Dakota—an attack that had gone pear-shaped quickly, resulting in the deaths of nine young people. She’d watched all this with growing disgust, blaming herself for taking part in the raid, and after six sessions with a Bureau therapist decided to resign.
Alan had gotten her name while at dinner with an old colleague who had entered the Bureau with the new administration. He was a weathered Army veteran who had brought up Heeler in the most scathing terms. “What’s this new breed? Who do they think they are? In my day, you put your nose down and you marched. These days—if I give them orders they’ll have to clear it with their shrinks first!”
Unlike his old colleague, Alan had a more complex view of the Watertown raid, and the idea that someone had made the hard choice to leave her chosen career was a sign of rare independence in a section devoted to unblinking compliance. So he tracked her down at a job fair in St. Paul, Minnesota, where they spoke for an hour. He probed her psychological and ideological framework, slipping in the interview questions Alexandra had developed years before. Satisfied, he’d given her a phone number to call. “Wait,” she’d said. “I don’t know who you are. Who do you work for?”
“Everyone,” he’d said, using the reply that he’d grown fond of even if it was wildly inaccurate. “I work for everyone.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means that if you’re interested, you’ll call that number.”
A week later, she had, and she now moved fluidly across the continent, taking care of the intricacies of working for everyone.
Alan was last-minute shopping for a new jacket to wear that night to the Met when, around two, Heeler called. “Big lunch at Sardi’s, private room in the back,” she told him.
“How big?”
“Five including her. I sent in photos.”
“Do we know names yet?”
“Other than Almeida, I recognized Katarina Heinold and Gilbert Powell.”
Portugal, Germany, and Nexus Technologies? “Did Katarina look like she’d been convinced of anything?”
“No idea. But there was a lot of hand-shaking.”
“I don’t like this,” Alan said.
“You don’t have to. I’m staying with Almeida.”
Alan sent a request for Noah to forward Heeler’s photos to him once everyone had been identified, and by the time he had paid for his new blazer and found a taxi on Fifth, his phone pinged with the photos of the sidewalk outside Sardi’s. There was Beatriz Almeida chatting with Gilbert Powell, then Katarina Heinold alongside a woman in a faux-fur coat and glasses, who Noah had ID’d as Grace Foster, a former CIA administrator. With them was a well-dressed and tough-looking man in sunglasses who was “unidentified”—a bodyguard, maybe, or even a Tourist.
Alan called Milo, and as he talked through the photos, Milo pulled them up in the Milan safe house. “Look, I’m going to see Gilbert Powell at Pen’s event tonight.”
“He’ll be there?”
“Signed on last minute. I don’t know if he just happened to be in town, or if it has to do with me. I suppose I’ll see.”
“Careful,” Milo said, then: “Oh.”
“What?” When Milo didn’t answer, Alan said, “Everything all right? Keller okay?”
“Yeah,” Milo said, his voice oddly subdued. “It’s not that.”
“Well?”
“This photo,” Milo told him. “Grace Foster.”
“What about her?”
“That’s Jane, the woman who poisoned me. Or Joan, who tried to recruit Leticia for Tourism.”
Alan felt a cold tingle cross his scalp. He wasn’t sure what to say.
“Really, Alan,” he finally said. “Be careful tonight. Keep Heeler around you.”
“Yeah,” Alan said. “Good idea.”