Page 4 of The Code

A rare compliment.

Evan braces himself. He tilts the envelope. Out slide three bundles of hundred-dollar bills, a Spanish passport, and a credit card in the name of GUILLERMO RODE ESCANDON.

Jack’s disembodied voice orders, “Come back tomorrow as a Northern Spaniard.”

Exhausted and disheveled, Evan drags himself off the airplane at Dulles International. He is tired of playing someone else, of being on constant alert, of speaking Spanish with a lisp.

Also? He is just plain fucking tired.

As he exits the gate, a slender-shouldered man awaits him, Mr. E.S. scrawled on the sign he displays like a mugshot placard. The guy’s about forty, sandy-blond mustache, looks like a TV salesman for an electronics superstore. Despite his ramrod posture, he can’t be taller than five foot five.

Did Jack actually send someone to pick Evan up, a brief post-mission reprieve? Evan imagines sinking into the soft leather of a backseat, tilting his head to the window, and slumbering.

He approaches warily, speaks the code he has been taught: “Thanks for waiting on the X.”

“That’s the mission, sir.” Protocol confirmed. The man’s name tag reads BOB, another nod to his everyman-ness. “This way.”

There is no bag for the man to take. Evan follows him through the crowded terminal, doing his best not to limp.

They find themselves alone in an elevator heading to Parking Level 3.

“I’m sorry, son,” Bob says, dropping the pretense of formality the instant the doors slide shut. “Jack’s had a heart attack. He’s in the ICU. And it…”—a faint quaver of the voice and Evan wonders how this man knows Jack or if he knows him at all—“… it doesn’t look good.”

A wave of heat washes through Evan, setting his nerves tingling. It cannot be true. It simply cannot be true.

He mouths the words his training has placed at the ready: “Who’s Jack?”

“Jack Johns,” the man says. “I know there are comms directives. I know you are likely feeling denial. But this is real, son. It is serious. And we need to discuss what comes next for you.”

Evan’s vision grows glassy. But he will not cry. Not right now. Not in an elevator with Bob.

He tries not to think about flannel shirts and the smell of single-barrel scotch. Or about Jack’s study with its mallard-green walls. Or about the way Jack smirks when he is amused, that square baseball-catcher head bobbing slightly.

He tries not to think about what Jack means to him. And what it will mean to be in the world without him.

Now the elevator doors part.

Now he is following Bob on numb legs across the parking garage. A family passes them, kids quarreling, parents pack-mule burdened with bags, tugging rolling suitcases on either side of them.

Once they’ve passed, Bob says quietly, “You will be assigned another handler. Your training will continue uninterrupted.”

“Can…?” Evan’s throat closes off. He was going to say Can I see him? but he knows to never confirm anything about his relationship with Jack. He wonders when and how this next phase can be initiated if he cannot communicate about what is happening. He wonders how he will ever continue on his trajectory to become Orphan X without Jack at his back looking out for him.

They cut between two SUVs, sliding alongside a white cleaning van.

Bob stops, facing Evan, hands resting on his shoulders, turning him slightly. “What?” he says, his tone mercifully kind. “What would you like to ask?”

Evan’s lower jaw is trembling ever so slightly. He clenches. He does not trust his throat or his voice.

A faint purring sounds behind him.

A spit hood slams over his head.

He is ripped violently backward into the van.

Slammed on his stomach. A hefty knee crushes into the space between his shoulder blades. Powerful hands zip-tie his wrists behind his back. A needle slips into his neck and he feels the press of warmth into his bloodstream, spreading through shoulder and pectoral and then drawing across the rest of his torso like a funeral shroud.

Has he just been killed?