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Benson grunted, shook his head. “He’d have known you calledsomeone. He knew Moses was taking her to that safe-house and that you were sending someone to meet them there. And he could very well have been listening in via Moses’s phone, heard Ice and Moses talk, heard my name being mentioned, figured you’d called in Darkwater.” Benson paused a beat, blinked as something occurred to him. “But he didn’t warn that Indian wet team that they might face resistance. I was listening on Ice’s phone. Those guys thought he was Moses.” His jaw tightened as the answer hit hard. “Shit, the guywantedit to turn into a firefight! This isn’t about O’Donnell, Martin. It’s aboutyou!”
Kaiser blinked twice, exhaled hard, his face darkening but not with surprise. Benson could see that the idea had already occurred to Kaiser. “To make me look incompetent. Like I’ve got a traitor on my watch and I’m trying to cover my ass by taking her out quietly. So he sent that wet-team in precisely to create a mess. He wasn’t expecting me to call you. He must have scrambled to get that wet-team mobilized at the last minute, once he heard Ice say your name to Moses. It got him worried that O’Donnell will get taken out quietly by an off-the-books team.Tooquietly. He didn’t want us to pull off a successful cover-up.”
Benson smiled tightly. “Exactly. He’s improvising now. Calling Darkwater was a wild card and he had to adjust fast. He decided to let it get a bit messy. And sending in a local wet team without warning them about Ice was a good move. It pretty much guaranteed a messy firefight. He didn’t care who got killed in the confusion. He just wanted to make it hard for us to keep this O’Donnell thing too quiet. He wants the whole thing to look like a cluster-fuck. Make you look incompetent. Hell, for all we know, he wants to make it look likeyouordered the wet team to take O’Donnell out before giving her a chance to prove her innocence. We don’t know this guy’s game yet, Martin. And if he’s improvising because he didn’t expect Darkwater to get involved, then he could be even more unpredictable, way more dangerous.”
Kaiser rubbed his eyes again, mouthed a curse, glanced off to the side, his pale eyes burning a hole in the dark blue wall.
Benson watched him silently. He knew how Kaiser’s mind worked. The ruthlessly pragmatic move would be to simply order Ice to put down O’Donnell and get rid of her body ASAP. That would take away the other guy’s moves. It would save Kaiser’s ass, save his reputation, save his job.
But Benson knew there was still a shred of humanity left in his jaded old friend. Besides, Kaiser could have chosen to just put O’Donnell down without ever calling Benson. That alone told Benson everything he needed to know about Kaiser, about how the cold CIA man was slowly coming around to Benson’s view of the world.
You called me because you couldn’t ignore my connection with Indy O’Donnell, Benson thought as a ripple of that familiar excitement moved down his spine. You sensed this was the beginning of a new Darkwater mission, didn’t you, Martin. You’re being pulled into it too, aren’t you, old friend.
Maybe it wasn’t intentional but subconscious, Benson thought as he watched Kaiser’s eyes. Or maybe it was the adoption coming through, Fay’s dead sister’s twins coming into Kaiser’s life, pulling him and his estranged wife Alice back together, pulling them both into their own vortex of that ancient energy, drawing them back into their own unfinished love story.
Drawing them both into Darkwater.
So Benson waited.
Benson watched.
And then Benson was rewarded.
“All right,” said Kaiser quietly, tapping his lower lip and glancing back at Benson. “Let it play out your way, John. The real target is the guy pulling the strings in the shadows. If you getting involved has thrown him off balance, it’s best that you stay involved. Besides, I have a hundred other things to handle right now.” He rubbed his jaw, took a long breath, exhaled hard. “I’ll give you all the access you need.”
Benson nodded curtly. “I’ll need access to CIA personnel files. Starting with all members of Tech Operations in Langley. Our man would have needed expert tech help to pull this off. I’ve already had my CIA tech guy run through the audit logs to see if anything looks off, but he’s come up with nothing—which means our guy is using a top-level hacker.”
Kaiser’s jaw tightened. “You have a CIA tech guy? Dammit, you aren’t CIA anymore, John. All access needs to go through me. You need to be careful here. I’m still the damn Director.”
Benson ignored the warning even though he saw a troubling darkness in Kaiser’s eyes. The man looked on edge, and not just because of the workload. There were always a hundred things going on for the CIA director. This was more than just that.
“What did Robinson call about?” Benson asked quietly, tabling the Ice-and-Indy question, following a hunch to go down this path instead.
Kaiser shifted in his chair. His light blue eyes darted to the desk drawer, then flicked back up. His fingers tapped restlessly on the leather armrests of his swivel chair. “Doesn’t matter.”
Benson cocked his head to the left, raised an eyebrow to the right. “Wait, did you quit smoking?”
Kaiser grunted, then nodded. “The adoption finally came through. The twins are with us at home.”
Benson blinked twice. With Nancy Sullivan gone from Darkwater, he felt disconnected, out of the know, lost in his own world as the real world turned around him. He rubbed his jaw, nodded, let the smile come through.
“Well, shit,” Benson managed to say when he saw a flicker of something warm and human in Kaiser’s cold eyes. “Does Fay know her niece and nephew are now officially part of the Martin and Alice homestead?”
Kaiser smiled, then nodded. “Fay was over last weekend. Fox came with her.” He paused a beat. “Nancy stopped by too.”
Benson stiffened. He didn’t recall an invitation from Kaiser or Alice inviting him to the weekend party.
“It was a spur of the moment thing,” Kaiser said hurriedly. “Fay and Nancy had been tracking the adoption process, and they showed up to help get the twins settled.” He took a breath, sighed it out. “Alice wanted to call you. After all, you put this whole thing into motion after that mess in Iceland with Fay’s family and the Valley. But Nancy asked Alice not to do it. Said it wasn’t your thing anyway, that you wouldn’t show up so why bother.”
Benson forced a grin even though something stabbed at his heart. He hadn’t spoken to Nancy in months. The last time he’d seen her was at Hogan and Hannah’s wedding in New Jersey. They’d spoken briefly, and then Benson had made a toast and taken off before the dancing started. Since then Benson had tried calling, but Nancy never picked up. All he’d get were polite text messages in response. Nancy was keeping her distance, probably worried that Benson might lure her back into Darkwater.
Back into the darkness.
“She’s probably right,” Benson said, faking the nonchalant cheerfulness that usually came easy. “Anyway, I’m happy for you and Alice. And in awe of the commitment the two of you made, giving new lives to infants who had the deck stacked against them even before they were born.”
Kaiser nodded, acknowledging the compliment. He was silent a long moment, like perhaps he wanted to say something more but couldn’t find the words. Kaiser and Benson were close like brothers, but they were hard men who’d done hard things, made decisions with people’s lives at stake, decisions that sometimes turned out bad, choices that would haunt them to their graves and beyond, all in service of some ideal of America they couldn’t affordnotto believe in.
“Ice and Indy,” Kaiser said finally. “I presume they made it past the wet team. Or else I’d be sitting here with a broken nose and you’d be in handcuffs facing assault charges.”
