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“You don’t thinkyou’rebad?”
“If I did,” Evan said, “imagine what that would do to my self-esteem.”
Naomi turned from them both, feigned a cough to cover her mouth.
“Templeton?” the president said briskly. “Why don’t we get to it?”
“Yes, Madam President.”
Donahue-Carr regarded Evan with her best steely gaze. “Orphan X,” she said. “We need your help.”
Evan laughed.
She looked puzzled. “I wasn’t anticipating that would be amusing.”
“Inside joke,” Evan said.
“I’ll leave you two to it, then,” Donahue-Carr announced crisply. She leaned forward to touch an off-screen button or mouse, hesitated just long enough to undermine her curt exit, and then the screen went black once more.
Naomi sighed. “What do you think?” she said.
Evan said, “The presentation needs some work.”
“She did go a little boomer with the tech there at the end.”
“Now you give me the full sales pitch, right? Time share in the Poconos?”
“Nothing so glam,” Naomi said. “Another mission.”
“Which, if I complete, restores my informal pardon.”
“More or less.”
“Let me be clear,” Evan said. “I will never operate for the government again.”
“Don’t you want to meet the target?” Naomi turned the screen back on with a tap of the miniaturized remote.
“Do I have a choice?”
“You could always close your eyes.”
A dossier came up, complete with surveillance photos of a puckish man in his forties. Slender of chest and waist, sharply intelligent eyes, thin matte-blond hair that rose to a stylishly mussed tuft at the crown. He had a pronounced widow’s peak, the faintest monk’s tonsure starting to show through at the back of his head.
“Luke Devine,” Naomi said.
“Who is he?”
“Kind of a minigarch, I suppose. Someone who’s learned to trade power for more power.”
Evan studied the pictures of Devine. Even in the still photos he seemed ethereal, like Ziggy Stardust with that strong dancer’s torso and the spectral gaze. “Isn’t that how the game’s played?”
“Yes,” Naomi said. “But he’s really good at it.”
“And that makes him problematic for you.”
“We believe he represents a clear and present danger to national security.”
“That’s what you say about me.”
