“Nothing,” he told her. He wondered what he sounded like to her. There’d been a time she respected him, even admired what he’d achieved in the field. Had her esteem for him dropped as she listened to him grow more and more dejected? “Any word from the director? Any new instructions, any hint of reassignment?”
“You know I would call if there was,” she told him. There was something in her voice, a cautious little hesitation. She was waiting to hear why he’d called.
It was too bad he didn’t have a good answer. He couldn’t very well tell her that he’d called because he was lonely. Every time the two of them spoke it cost taxpayer money. Maybe something more than that, too. He knew she worked with other field agents — even Wilkes knew who she was, though he said he’d only worked with her once, and briefly. Maybe right now she’d been in the middle of saving somebody else’s life and he was distracting her. Though he supposed she would have told him so, or just not answered her phone.
“What about that other thing I asked you to look into? Did you turn up anything more on Wilkes?”
“I’m still not sure what you’re hoping to find,” she said.
“I just want a better idea of who I’m working with here. I need to be able to trust this guy when push comes to shove.”
Angel sighed. “You know I can’t tell you much. He’s a Raider, as I’m sure you’ve already figured out.”
Chapel didn’t need any great detective skills to turn up that piece of information. Wilkes had a Marine Corps logo tattooed on his arm and the distinctive haircut of a jarhead. If he was working for Hollingshead’s directorate (the Directorate for Defense Counterintelligence and HUMINT, or DX), that meant he was special ops — specifically the United States Marine Corps Special Operations Command, MARSOC, the Raiders, the newest branch of secret warriors in SOCOM. He would be what the service called a critical skills operator, which meant he would be trained in everything from unarmed combat to language skills to psychological warfare.
All well and good. But there was something about Wilkes that bothered Chapel. The guy was just too self-contained. He never gave anything away, never spoke of himself, never so much as blinked at the wrong time or laughed at a private joke. Chapel had met plenty of vets with PTSD, people who were stuck inside their heads, reliving a bad moment over and over. They acted a little like that, but in Wilkes’s case there was something more. He didn’t seem like he was stuck. Instead he acted like a panther in a cage at the zoo. Watching the world through hooded eyes, giving nothing away. Waiting for something to happen. Maybe he had some dark secret he didn’t want Chapel — or Hollingshead — to know about.
“And you say his record is clean. No red flags anywhere in his file.”
“None,” Angel replied. “He served a bunch of tours with military intelligence in Afghanistan and Iraq. When he got home, about three years ago, he was recruited by Director Hollingshead personally. He checks out — I vetted him myself.”
“And you worked with him, too, on a mission,” Chapel said.
There must have been a certain tone in his voice. “Are you getting jealous?”
Chapel forced a laugh. “Hardly.”
“You know I’m yours, first and last,” Angel said. “You were on mandatory vacation. A mission came up, and he and I were just free at the right time. Don’t worry, Chapel. Nobody’s replacing you in my heart.”
It felt damned good to hear that.
He just wished he was sure Director Hollingshead felt the same way.
Chapel respected and trusted his boss implicitly. He would even admit to loving the man, the way a soldier loves a worthy commanding officer. Hollingshead was fair-minded and he took good care of his people. But he was also a pragmatist.
If he was going to replace Chapel, then Wilkes was a perfect choice. Chapel was rushing toward his midforties, way older than any field agent should be, while Wilkes still had plenty of good years in him. Chapel had been badly wounded in combat, and in Siberia he had screwed up a vital mission by misjudging a foreign asset. Wilkes was tough as nails, smart as a whip, and had no bad marks on his record at all. It would just make sense to put Wilkes on the most vital missions and have Chapel make a more or less graceful descent into, say, an analyst position or have him work as a consultant or, God forbid, run stakeouts for the rest of his career.
If Chapel had been in Hollingshead’s place, he would make the same decision.
It didn’t mean he had to like it.
“Chapel, are you okay?” Angel asked. “You went quiet there.”
He shook himself back to attention. He realized he’d been sitting there ruminating while Angel was on the line. He was so comfortable with her, so utterly at home talking to her that he’d let his brain shut down.
“I’m… fine. I…”
Maybe it was time to lay his cards on the table.
His mouth was suddenly dry. He swallowed thickly and said, “I’m fine, Angel. I just need to know something. You and I have been through so much, I’m hoping I can count on you to tell me something even if you have orders not to.”
Angel didn’t respond. Maybe she was waiting to hear what he said next.
“I need to know — is my career over? Because it’s pretty much all I have left.” He shook his head, even though she couldn’t see him. “When Julia left, when… when Nadia died, I… I guess I started to wonder about what I’m doing. About what kind of life I can have now. I took my time and weighed things and I think, well, I think if I can keep working, if I can keep going on real missions, then it’ll be okay. All the sacrifices I’ve made, everything I’ve had to do, it doesn’t matter. Not if I can still be of some use. But if I’m being put out to pasture, I’m not sure I can keep—”
He stopped because there was a click on the line. A soft mechanical sound that could have meant anything. Maybe somebody else was listening in, or maybe Angel had just changed the frequency of her signal, or—
Three annoying beeps sounded in his ear. The tones that indicated a dropped call.
“Angel?” he said. “Angel, are you there?”
Angel’s equipment was the best in the world. There was no way she could get cut off like that, not just because of a bad cellular link or rain fade or anything like that.
“Angel?” he said again.
There was no reply.
When Wilkes got back, Chapel was still trying to raise Angel. He had a phone number for her, one he’d never written down, only memorized. There was no answer on that line. It didn’t even go to voice mail. It just rang and rang. He tried to get in touch with Director Hollingshead next, calling a number for a pet store in Bethesda that was a front for the Defense Intelligence Agency. The woman on the other end of the line listened to his access code, then told him to hold the line while she connected him.
At least he got an answer this time — the woman came back and told him the director was not available to take his call. Chapel knew better than to ask if he could leave a message. His access code had been logged — Hollingshead would call Chapel back as soon as he could.
Wilkes had returned with a two-liter bottle of soda and with his own phone in his hand. He kept trying to get Chapel’s attention, but Chapel just waved him away. If something had happened to Angel, if she was in trouble, he would move heaven and earth to help her. Nothing else mattered. Even his mission was less important. If Harris Contorni was in the middle of selling backpack nukes to Iran in his motel room three doors down, well, that would just have to wait.
Wilkes finally did get his attention by grabbing Chapel’s phone out of his hand.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Chapel demanded.