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“Grow up, kid,” said Benson to Paige. “CIA isn’t in the justice business. We use whatever we can, whoever we can, however we can. Nothing is off limits when it serves the bigger picture.”
Kaiser rumbled out a breath. “Not sure if we’re both seeing the same bigger picture these days, John.” He stroked his chin, glanced at Paige, then shrugged. “But he is mostly right. NOC operators don’t get diplomatic immunity, are immediately disavowed if they get caught. They’re paid well, but nobody takes that job for the money. Not with that level of risk. You’d have to be insane to volunteer, and a psychopath to succeed. The whole job is about manipulation and murder. There’s no room for normal human emotions, and so we look for people hardwired to operate outside that range.” He glanced at Benson, then nodded with grim acknowledgment. “What John did is a bit extreme, but not that far from standard operating procedure when it comes to the NOC world. Rhett is a cold-blooded killer, a psychopath who takes delight in manipulating people and then destroying them. But he spent twenty-three years in the NOC program before signing on as official CIA. Bill Morris was his handler on several NOC jobs, says the guy’s done things that saved American lives, no question about it. Same with Scarlet, and every NOC asset that made it through more than one job.” He exhaled softly. “And nobody will ever know exactly what they did. There’s no record of those jobs outside the memories of those operators and their handlers. These are the real ghosts in the machine, the real spirits behind the scenes.” He chuckled, flashed a look in Benson’s direction. “The only kind of ghosts I believe in.”
Benson grinned impishly but said nothing.
Paige forced a sad smile. “Well, if ghosts do exist, I hope that innocent child who was nothing but collateral damage comes back to haunt her wicked parents.” She shook her head and sighed. “Poor thing. Did she even live long enough to be named before Rhett killed her?”
Benson rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, I wanted to name her Bonnie—you know, Rhett and Scarlet’s doomed daughter fromGone with the Wind.” He shrugged. “But it didn’t fit. After all, Bonnie dies in the novel.” He sighed exaggeratedly, his eyes twinkling. “So I named her India instead. Side character’s name, but who would have thought little unloved unwanted Indy O’Donnell would grow up to play a starring role in this story.”
25
Both Kaiser and Paige stopped breathing at the same time.
Benson closed his eyes and counted, wondering which member of his captive audience would come around first.
Kaiser was silent as death. Benson considered checking his pulse, but then Paige’s chair moved on the wooden floorboards. She’d stood up, had taken three steps to the center of the room, then stopped. Benson opened one eye to see if she was breathing or if she’d died of shock standing up.
“OK, wait,” she said, disbelief washing all the color from her cheeks, the badly applied makeup revealing ghostly white patches beneath the gaudy pinkish red rouge. She shot a panicked glance at Kaiser, like she was desperately hoping this was some kind of prank, a tag-team interrogation to get her all turned around. “Wait,” she said again, now grinning like a plastic-faced doll who’d just been animated and was confused about her place in this shifting reality. “What are you saying? I don’t follow. Rhett killed that child. It’s on the video. You said you didn’t get there in time to stop it. You said the video wasn’t streaming, so you couldn’t have seen it in time, couldn’t have gotten there until at least thirty minutes after the child had stopped breathing. So how . . .”
Benson glanced at Kaiser, who was paler than Paige but at least was breathing again. Then Benson crossed one leg over the other knee, frowned when he noticed what looked like the very same piece of white lint that he could have sworn he’d plucked off earlier, like maybe time had twisted around and was replaying itself, looping around just like Benson’s choices had looped around across thirty years, forming a noose that had drawn in all the players, was tightening now as the endgame approached.
“You know why I remember the child’s strange reverse-sigh so well after all these years?” Benson glanced up dreamily, relaxing his vision so his perspective broadened, zooming out like he was somehow above himself, outside himself, looking down at the three blurry figures in the room like perhaps Indy’s trickster soul had done all those years ago as it debated whether to re-enter that little girl’s body. “It’s because I heard that soundtwice. Felt that heavinesstwice. Sensed something enter that lifeless little bodytwice.” Benson smiled, shook his head. “Yes, I got there late again—but somehow just in time again. Rhett hadn’t called 911 yet. I broke down his door. My gun was drawn, I pointed it at his face, wassodamn close to pulling the trigger for what he’d done, for whatI’ddone by being dumb enough to give that cold-hearted snake a chance, give him a choice.” He trembled out a breath. “But then I looked at that tiny lifeless body on the table and something pushed me to get her out of there, get her back to that medical center, just in case . . . in case I hadn’t been imagining it the first time after her mother smothered her, hadn’t been hearing things with that strange reverse-sigh, hadn’t been hallucinating when I sensed something enter that child, something return to that child after leaving it.” Benson’s head was buzzing now. “And I was right,” he whispered. “While I was driving I heard that reverse-sigh again, and I swear I felt somethingswishpast me in the car, something that jolted the child to life like an electric current surging through its little body wrapped in my jacket on the passenger seat beside me. That childinsistedon being born, on having this experience, on coming back again and again as if there was an invisible thread that couldn’t be broken, business that could not stay unfinished.”
“You’re delusional,” said Kaiser, his voice rasping and low, his eyes bloodshot from rubbing them. “You were delusional then and you’re sure as hell delusional now.”
“Am I?” Benson stood, narrowing his gaze at Kaiser, then glancing at Paige, who was muttering under her breath, shaking her head in tiny little jerks. “Well, you know what? It doesn’t matter what you believe—what either of you believe.”
“But . . . but Rhett didn’t know about Scarlet when we activated her today.” Paige’s voice wavered. “And hedefinitelydidn’t know about Indy O’Donnell when he had me plant the evidence on her phone.” She frowned in Benson’s direction. “Did you . . . did you set this up to bring them all together?”
Benson held her gaze, held his smile, held that question as long as he could, feeling Kaiser’s stare burning a hole in the side of his head.
“Tell her, Martin,” whispered Benson, keeping that dreamy gaze fixed on Paige’s stricken face. “Tell her that you were the one who called me in for the O’Donnell thing. Tell her that I didn’t even know Rhett Rodgers had been brought in out of the shadows by Bill Morris. It happened after I’d left the Agency.” He smiled lazily at Paige. “And although I’d guessed you’d activated Scarlet, I didn’t know for sure until you confirmed it.” He shook his head. “I hadn’t thought about any of this stuff until Kaiser called me with Indy O’Donnell’s name. Rhett and Scarlet were just two recruits out of dozens of shady characters I put into the NOC program in my forty years of service.”
Paige shook her head again with those tiny little shakes that Benson hoped weren’t mini-seizures. She glanced at Kaiser, blinking rapidly, that plastic-smile still plastered on her lips, like she was desperately hoping this was a trick. “I . . . I don’t understand what’s happening,” she managed to whisper.
Kaiser stayed silent, his brow furrowed so deep the worry-lines looked like an aerial view of the Appalachians. He rubbed his temples, staring at the blotter on his desk, his lips so tight they looked like white strips painted on his blood-drained face.
“Martin understands what’s happening,” Benson said softly. “He’s seen it before. Eight times and counting.” He cracked a grin in Kaiser’s direction. “Of course, it still knocks him on his ass every time. Look at him. He’s trying so damn hard to come up with some explanation for how I set this up, how I arranged the whole thing, how I’m the wizard behind the curtain, the puppet-master pulling the strings.”
“Shut up, John,” growled Kaiser. “There’s no way this could have just . . . happened. No way it’s all just coincidence.” He glanced at Paige. “If Benson didn’t set this up, then it has to be Rhett. He must have found out about O’Donnell. He must have found out about Scarlet. The guy’s a master manipulator with thirty years of practice. Maybe he set this whole thing up to bring down everyone, all of us, everyone on his damn hit list.”
Paige swallowed, blinked rapidly, then shook her head. “No, you don’t understand. I was the one who sent Rhett the O’Donnell position paper. He’d never even heard of O’Donnell before that. And Scarlet . . . well, I guess Rhett could have used her before on some covert operation over the past seven years and found out who she was, could have pretended like he didn’t recognize the codename earlier today. But I made a joke about the names Rhett and Scarlet lining up—got zero reaction from him. At first he suspected it was a trap set by Benson, the name Scarlet just a dummy file, like a fuck-you from Benson. Rhett didn’t know it was . . . it was her. The mother of his child. A child that he didn't know was O'Donnell, absolutely didn't.” Paige shook her head with more firmness. “Besides, if Rhett planned all of it, then why not have me activate Scarlet to begin with? Instead he sent in that subcontracted wet-team on short notice. And he wasdefinitelyblindsided when he learned Director Kaiser had gotten Benson involved. He wasn’t expecting that—it was only when he looked through O’Donnell’s file closely and saw the note that Benson had recruited her . . .” Paige trailed off, cocking her head to the left, narrowing her eyes at Benson in a way that told him she was getting it, getting there, getting close enough for him to pull her in, pull her down, pull her out of the straight world and into Wonderland. “Ohmygod, wait, you recruited Indy O’Donnell too, didn’t you?”
“I did recruit her. Eight years ago, not long before I left the Agency.” Benson shrugged out a smile. “I’d placed her with the O’Donnell family—unbeknownst to them, of course. It was a blind adoption, just the name India being passed on. And yes, I’d checked in on Indy’s progress over the years. But I never made any contact with Indy until she was in college at Yale, studying politics and government, showing an interest in foreign policy.” He shrugged again. “CIA has always recruited from the Ivy League universities. So in her Junior year I reached out to her. Planted the seed that perhaps CIA might be an exciting career choice.” He glanced at Kaiser, then back at Paige. “Look, Martin knows me well enough, so I’ll also admit that when Indy joined CIA, in the back of my mind I wondered if all three of them would cross paths in some way.” He shook his head, his gaze dead serious. “But I did not engineer this. Icouldnot engineer this. And even if I could, why would I put Indy O’Donnell in danger? Seeing that little girl quite literally come back to life in my car—not once buttwice—is burned into my memory like a brand.” He shook his head again. “No, I didn’t engineer this.” He took a breath, swallowed hard. “Shedid. Indy O'Donnell caused this.”
26
Paige frowned. “Indy O’Donnell? Why would she? And how could she? It doesn’t make any sense. I don’t—”
“Of course it doesn’t make sense.” Kaiser interrupted before Benson could respond. “Look, it doesn’t matter. Don’t let Benson drag you into this cosmic coincidence crap. It’s like they say about wrestling with a pig—you both get dirty but the pig likes it.” He stood now, waving away Benson’s piggy grin, keeping his focus on Paige. “We might have enough to take Rhett down. But first things first—Paige, get back into the NOC system and shut Scarlet down. Then send me whatever you’ve got proving O’Donnell was set up. I’ll take it to Senator Robinson to give him a heads-up, then I’ll immediately suspend Rhett Rodgers pending a full investigation. End of story.”
Benson shook his head but stayed silent because Paige was shaking her head too.
“I can’t,” she said, panic briefly flashing behind her eyes.
Kaiser took a breath to calm himself down, then forced a reassuring smile. “I’m not going to burn you along with Rhett. You have my word on that.”
Paige shook her head again. “It’s not that. I mean I literally can’t do anything about Scarlet.” She glanced hurriedly at Benson. “We activated Scarlet by hacking anonymously into the NOC system. That means there’s no handler assigned to Scarlet, which means there’s no connection, no way to contact her, no way to cancel that mission.” She looked back at Kaiser. “Unless you have access to some offline list of all NOC agent identities. Do you?”
