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“Go to hell,” he says.
“Perhaps someday, but not tonight,” Noa says. “You had unauthorized contacts with a Russian agent and an Iranian agent, supposedly random meetings at a bar in Athens and a trade show in Vienna. Following those meetings, networks we were running in both cities faded away, just at the same time your bank accounts were getting fatter, you got your teeth capped, and you purchased a new Jaguar.”
“That’s all explained in the reports,” he says. “My wife and I … we had a lot of gold and jewelry that we decided to sell. It was just gathering dust. We sold it, got cash, and that was that.”
“Yes, your third wife,” she says. “Supposedly she handled this all on her own, finding the jewelry stores to buy the jewelry, receiving the cash, and losing the receipts and forgetting the names of the stores in the process. Extremely convenient.”
Mooreland says, “Now. Get out. Right now.”
Noa shakes her head. “Not going to happen.”
“Bullshit.”
“Nope, not at all,” she says. “This is how the next hour or so is going to proceed, Joshua. There’s a legal pad on your desk. Find a pen. Start writing down the illegal contacts you made with foreign representatives, what and when you passed on to them, and how much you were paid. Refresh your befuddled mind to the best of your ability and sign and date each page. Begin now.”
He tries to regain his voice. “Or what? What can you possibly do to me?”
Noa glances at an old grandfather clock gently ticking in the corner. “Start writing now, Joshua, and when you’re finished, you’ll resign tomorrow and go find a small town out West somewhere to disappear. You’ll receive your full pension and benefits. But it’s now … eleven-seventeen p.m. If you refuse to start writing, for every minute that passes, you lose five percent of your pension.”
There seems to be a lot going on behind that old man’s tired eyes.
Noa says, “Approaching minute one, Joshua.”
He waits.
Waits.
Curses and picks up the pen, starts scribbling on the yellow legal pad.
Nearly two hours later, Noa takes the folded legal pages, puts them into her bag, and stands up.
“Your resignation sometime today, Joshua.”
He’s slumped in his chair, staring out at the office with the plaques, certificates, and collected artwork.
“I need to know something.”
“I’ll try.”
“Suppose I hadn’t cooperated, had stood hard, even with my pension zeroing out,” he says. “What would you have done?”
Noa smiles, puts her pistol away in the bag as well. “Simple,” she says. “I would have blown off your damn head, and claimed self-defense, and I would have been believed.”
CHAPTER 27
WASHINGTON, DC
LIAM GREY IS drinking his fourth Sam Adams of the night at Bullfeathers on 410 First Street SE, listening intently as the young woman sitting across from him—Molly Tafer—is telling him about the challenges of selling advertising for theWashington Postduring this increasingly digital age. He met Molly a half hour ago after dropping in here following a late-night briefing with President Barrett and Noa Himel at the White House, and with the events of the past few weeks, he needs to unwind.
Molly is bright, open, with shoulder-length blond hair and wearing a black, knee-length skirt, and a simple light-pink blouse. She’s still working on her first vodka martini.
Over the noise of the bar—packed with lobbyists, staffers, and politicians from both sides of the aisle—Molly says, “My grandfather Jack worked at thePost,also in ad sales. He told me that he could make his quota by noon, then have a three-martini lunch and snooze the rest of the day away. Can you believe that? Me, I have to scramble to place pop-up ads that drive both revenue and website clicks.”
Liam shakes his head in sympathy, and then she says, “Tell me again what you do at the State Department. Is there a lot of travel?”
“Nah, not as much as you’d think,” he says. “In fact—”
A hand is on his shoulder, and a woman behind him says, “Don’t believe him, Molly. He travels a lot, and never tells you where he’s going, how long he’s going to be away, and when he comes back, he keeps his mouth shut.”
