Then 9/11 brings a tidal-wave surge in activity, Evan conducting more denied-area operations than ever and also moving unseen through Spain, France, Italy, lending a little uninvited help to friends. At some point — though it is not a distinct moment — his alias becomes known by three-initial agencies in certain territories. The ever-powerful databases have identified patterns of activity that are ascribed to him. The Nowhere Man: executioner and terrorist, wanted for a variety of offenses by a variety of nations, including the United States of America. But this doesn’t concern him, as he doesn’t technically exist. No clear photograph of him can be found in any file the world over. As his legend grows within particular shadowy circles, quite a few missions are misattributed to him. Raids are conducted to capture him, often in the wrong hemisphere. At least twice a suitable candidate is killed and the Nowhere Man taken off the rolls until another covert action demonstrates his apparent immortality.
Only Jack knows. He remains Evan’s sole link to legitimacy. To the rest of the world and his own government, Evan is a wanted man. Jack takes his orders from people at the highest level, and there they perch, breathing the rarefied air, enjoying the ultimate protection. Evan is plausible deniability personified. He is an enemy of the very state he protects and serves. Ball bearings within ball bearings.
He nearly forgets that there are others like him until one winter morning in his twenty-ninth year. At a dead drop in Copenhagen, he receives the message.
“I am one of you. Would like to meet. The Ice Bar, Oslo.” A date and time are given.
It is signed “Orphan Y.”
He stands for a time, note in hand. Snowflakes land on the paper but do not melt. He already knows two things — that he will go and that he will not tell Jack.
He arrives well before the appointed hour, surveilling the block, the bar, exits and entrances, stairwells and tables. The bar features a long glass-walled encasement running the length of the north wall, kept as cold as a freezer. Near the door of the encasement, fur coats hang, donned by men and women alike before they enter. Inside, slate ledges display innumerable bottles of vodka and aquavit. A bartender serves each chosen spirit in a shot glass made of ice.
The rest of the bar is stark and modern. Waitresses distribute pickled herring and reindeer satay on wooden paddles. Evan chooses a corner booth within leaping distance of the kitchen’s swinging doors and sets a revolver on the cushioned bench beside him, the length of the barrel pressing into his thigh, aiming out.
He spots the man the moment he enters, the bearing instantly recognizable even seventeen years later.
Same ginger hair, same ruddy complexion.
He winds through the crowd, peels off his winter coat, stands opposite Evan. They stare at each other. Fine hairs bristle on Charles Van Sciver’s arms. Across from them, in the freezer, a group of drunken young people, bearlike in their furs, throw back drinks, hurl their ice shot glasses against the glass wall, and high-five.
“Evan. Holy shit, huh?” Van Sciver says. He slides into a chair, takes in the upscale decor. “We’re a long way from the Pride House Group Home, aren’t we?”
“How did you find that dead drop to contact me?”
“We’re well trained.” A half smile. “I do appreciate your coming.”
“Why Oslo?”
“I’m here for a mission.” He hails the waitress, orders two glasses of aquavit, then returns his attention to Evan. “I wanted to see someone else who doesn’t exist. Nice to have a reminder now and then that we’re really here.”
The drinks arrive, and Van Sciver lifts his in a toast. They clink.
“I heard about you now and then during training,” Van Sciver says. “Passing references. They used your code name, of course, but I knew. Orphan Zero and you, best of the best.”
The notion of Evan’s reputation spreading through the Orphan Program seems to him bizarre. Almost as bizarre as sitting across from someone with shared experiences. And a shared history as well. For most of his life, Evan has operated without a present, let alone a past.
“You had a handler,” Evan asks. “And a house?”
“Oh, yeah, the whole nine. My dad, he was great. Laid out the Edicts, a way of life. He put me in the world.”
Curiosity burns inside Evan, fanned by every tantalizing detail, and he tells himself to dial it back, to remain on guard despite this sudden, unexpected, hard-to-define connection — if not camaraderie, then at least an uneasy rapport. He sips, the Norwegian aquavit smokier than its Danish counterpart.
They talk for a time, being careful but not too careful, nibbling at the edges of things. Mission stories stripped of proper nouns. Training incidents. Operational mishaps.
The glass-walled freezer opposite them fills up, more men and women in fur coats crowding together in the tight space, raucous cheers, shattering ice glasses, but Evan barely registers the annoyance. His and Van Sciver’s dimly lit table seems a haven from the noise and revelry, a quiet place in the world.
Van Sciver gulps his sixth shot, though he seems unaffected by the alcohol. “What I like best?” he says. “The glorious simplicity. There are orders and nothing else.”
A discomfort bubbles up from the base of Evan’s skull, though he can’t put a name to it. “‘Nothing else’?”
Van Sciver shakes his head. “Just getting it done. I was in and out of the Sandbox for a time, playing some offense. This one day I was tucked into the hillside behind a mansion, got a high-value target in the scope through a kitchen window. Tough shot — two hundred and change, wind factor, narrow vantage. But I had it. Problem was his kid, right? Maybe six years old, sitting in his lap. And there are security patrols working the mountain, so I have to roll in and out of the brush at intervals. I couldn’t get the target clean in the scope without that kid. And my window’s closing. Dusk coming on.” He wets his lips. “So I zero in on the kid’s eye socket, right? One less skull wall for refraction. I lined it up. Then I thought about it.” His big hand closes around the delicate cordial glass. He sips.
Evan has been there himself, on his very first mission, hiding in a fetid Eastern Bloc sewer, sniper rifle aimed through a curb drainage grate, his scope zeroed in on the eye of an innocent. He leans forward. “What’d you do?”
“I took the shot.” Van Sciver’s thumb and forefinger twist the stem of the glass back and forth. “Edict Twelve: Any means necessary.”
Evan’s head feels slightly numb from the booze and Van Sciver’s revelation, but through it he also feels a swell of affection for Jack. He wonders just how different Jack’s rules are from those of the other handlers.
He hears himself ask, “Did it work?”
“The round didn’t kill him, but the bone frags did.” Van Sciver picks up his drink, seems to think better of it, puts it back down. “I turned a six-year-old’s skull into a weapon,” he says, with some measure of dark pride. “I had to get it done. And I did. We don’t question. We take our marching orders. And we march.”