Oxygen tanks.
And then he understood.
“I’m his nephew,” Evan said. “Haven’t seen him in years. I heard from my mom, and … well, I flew in from Tallahassee to surprise him and, you know, pay my last respects.”
She nodded solemnly. “I have some errands to run. You can be with him for one hour until I get back?”
“That will be fine.”
“Any problems, my phone number is on the clipboard.”
She walked past him, leaving the door ajar.
Evan entered, eased the door shut behind him, and stood breathing the scented air. The interior was 1990’s idea of modern, marble floors and prints in gleaming black frames. A spray of calla lilies rose from a vase in the foyer, no doubt sent by some well-wisher and arranged by the home-care nurse he’d just met.
How odd to find flowers here. Or vases. Or well-wishers.
A textured bamboo wallpaper darkened the hall, the house growing cooler as Evan moved back toward the lit room.
From the doorway he saw only a pair of feet bumped up beneath a woven blanket.
He eased inside.
The Mystery Man lay in a double-railed hospital bed that took up a good measure of the room. His hair had grown thin and wispy, receded to a severe widow’s peak. An oxygen tube ran beneath his nose, and a wide-bore needle was sunk to the hilt into the back of one thick-veined hand. His clavicles were pronounced, as was the bump of the ulna at his wrist, the gold watch dangling loosely around the bone.
An imposing wooden desk remained at one end of the converted study, flanked by file cabinets, but the rest of the space had been transformed into a makeshift hospice suite. Glass-fronted mini-refrigerators stored bags of saline and various vials. There were IV poles and washcloths, cups holding ice chips, backup sheets crisply folded and stuffed onto bookshelves.
It had been twenty-seven years since Evan had laid eyes on the man.
He had a name, of course, which Joey had unearthed, but the name didn’t match the memory Evan had been living with for all this time.
When Evan was twelve, the Mystery Man had appeared like the boogeyman, running his fingers along the chain-link across the street from the Pride House Group Home, his ever-present cigarette exhaling a thin banner of smoke. From a scared distance, the boys had jockeyed for the right to be taken, to be exploited, to get the fuck out of East Baltimore. None of them could have known that he was a recruiter for the Program. Evan had gotten over the grueling hurdles, one after another, and his prize had been Jack Johns and a two-story farmhouse in the woods outside Arlington. It had been a dormer bedroom, three meals a day, and a sniper rifle. It had been a mission following his nineteenth birthday, the first of countless.
After Evan had gone rogue, the Mystery Man had served the Program’s purposes for many more years, even as it grew increasingly twisted and brutal. He had played a role in corrupting countless foster kids. And in hurting Joey.
Evan had been waiting a long time to kill him.
The Mystery Man’s breathing was irregular, rapid deep inhalations interspersed with shallow panting.
Evan walked over and stood at the foot of the bed.
The Ray-Bans rested on the nightstand. The Mystery Man stared up at Evan. His lazy left eye wandered to the opposite wall, but the other was alert, its intensity undulled.
“I’ve been hoping you’d come,” he said, his voice a dry rasp. He seemed short of breath, as if he couldn’t quite get enough oxygen to relax the muscles of his face. “I never wanted you, you know,” he said.
Evan said, “I know.”
“But you proved me wrong. You were the best. You were always the best.”
Evan said, “There is an advantage to being underestimated.”
“I suppose so.”
Evan circled to the nightstand and opened the drawer. There lay the gleaming handgun he knew all too well, its image having been branded onto his twelve-year-old brain. In the intervening years, he’d been able to retrospectively identify the weapon, a snub-nosed Smith & Wesson .357. He lifted it from its place beside a box of tissues.
The Mystery Man looked up at him, helpless to intervene. His etched skin was crepe-paper thin, mottled with bluish patches, shiny with sweat. A gurgle accompanied his exhalation, rising in volume until Evan was worried that he’d die here and now before giving up any answers.
But he coughed a few times, partially clearing his throat.
“They call it the death rattle,” he said. “Fluid buildup in the lungs.”
“The cigarettes?” Evan asked.
“Yeah. But it was worth it. My one true love.” He smiled weakly. “Now it’s metastasized in my brain. You’re lucky you got here in time to kill me. A week or two later, you’d’ve missed your chance.”
“I’m here for something else, too.”
“I figured as much.” His finger rose a half inch, pointed at the television bracketed to the wall. “I watch the news. It’s about all I do anymore.”
“Bennett came to see you twice. Last October and last month. What about?”
“About 1997.”
Evan hadn’t expected him to arrive so directly on the point, but maybe dying made a man less circuitous. Evan’s relief was quickly undercut by gnawing dread for what was to come. “My first mission.”
“Yes. I was involved. As was Orphan A. Bennett needed to know that we were airtight, every last loose end severed.” His chest rattled up and down, the good eye fixing on Evan pointedly. “Of course, one remains.”
“I killed a lot of people,” Evan said. “Unsanctioned kills, cutout jobs, no U.S. footprint. Each mission is a live grenade, top-level classified. What makes ’97 so threatening?”
“I’ve spent most of the days of my life with information in my head that I can’t unknow. I don’t have anything to care about anymore. Not my life, not protecting the past, certainly not Jonathan Bennett. But I can protect you, especially after I cost you so much.” He gazed up at Evan, and Evan could smell his breath, sour and sickly, the smell of death itself. “You know what you did. But you don’t want to know what you really did.”
“Tell me.”
The Mystery Man lay there, his lips pouched.
Evan hefted the revolver in his palm. “I know you’re in pain. But there can always be more pain.”
“You’re the best there is, X, but you got nothing on cancer.”
The Mystery Man breathed for a time, and Evan let him.
“Okay,” he finally said. “I’ll tell you a story. Once upon a time, there was an undersecretary of defense. He was an ambitious soul with designs on the throne. But he was also greedy. Not for money but for power. He understood that the more of the former he accrued for the right people, the more of the latter he’d inherit.”
“Who are ‘the right people’?” Evan asked.
“Think, boy. I’ve been watching the news. Have you?”
Evan turned his head to the television screen, though it was dark. “The congressional subpoena,” he said. “A multibillion-dollar investigation into Bennett’s relationships with defense contractors.”
“Relationships that date back to his early days at the DoD.”
“I understand,” Evan said. “But so what? We both know that’s how the game’s played. Influence, money, and war have always gone hand in hand. So the administration’s moves a few decades ago benefited the military-industrial complex and vice versa. That kind of quid pro quo can always be covered up and spun, buried beneath half-truths and fake news. Any moves Bennett made would have been conducted behind a haze of full deniability. Illegal and immoral, sure. But why does it constitute a clear and present danger now?”
“What if we’re not talking about illegal and immoral?” the Mystery Man said. “But about treason?”