Delgado wiped a bead of sweat from his scalp. “The particulars?”
“General Remar will provide you with an encrypted file on your way out. You can read it when you’re airborne.” He paused, then added, “You won’t be able to liaise with the local field office. The problem is the head of that office.”
If Delgado was surprised by that, he didn’t show it. He simply nodded and said, “Well, now I know why you want a car crash. Are you going to stick me with the freak, or do I get to operate alone this time?”
“You’ll be on a plane together. It’s already waiting at Andrews. Manus will be in the region, but on something else.”
As if on cue, there were three soft knocks on the door. Anders waited. If it was someone else, the person would leave. If it was Manus, he wouldn’t hear Anders’s command to enter.
The door opened, the office beyond it briefly blotted out. Then Marvin Manus was inside, the door closed behind him. Delgado turned so that Manus could read his lips and enunciated extra loudly and clearly, “Well, don’t just stand there, genius. Sit.”
Not for the first time, Anders wondered at Delgado’s animus. The smaller man had a mean streak, that much was clear. But did he also have a death wish? Delgado was formidable, yes. But Manus… Manus was something else, something elemental. Anders had rescued him fifteen years earlier, when Manus had just turned eighteen and was about to graduate from the juvenile correctional center in St. Charles, Illinois, to the maximum-security adult facility in Pontiac. It said a lot that Remar was nervous about him. Because Remar, who had fought his way back from wounds and endured pain that would have killed most other men, wasn’t nervous about anyone.
Manus ignored the taunt and looked to Anders for his cue. Anders glanced at Delgado and said, “Go.”
Delgado hesitated, then stood and sauntered past Manus, eyeing the larger man up and down as he moved. He paused so Manus could see his lips, then said loudly, “Glad we’ll be traveling together. I’d miss your scintillating conversation.”
Manus watched him leave, saying not a word. Anders knew how to handle Manus, of course, but even so he sometimes found his stillness… disquieting. Especially when it was in response to something that would have produced some evidence of anger in an ordinary person.
Anders gestured to a chair, then simultaneously signed and said, “Marvin. Thank you for coming.” The courtesy was deliberate. With Manus, it was powerful currency. And though he knew Manus was an excellent lip-reader, whenever he could he still tried to add some of the bits of American Sign Language he had learned, because he knew how much Manus appreciated his efforts.
Manus nodded an acknowledgment and lowered himself onto one of the chairs, gripping the arms gingerly as though concerned he might inadvertently snap them off.
“You’re going to Istanbul,” Anders said. “Same military plane as Delgado, different assignment when you get there. General Remar will give you an encrypted file with all the particulars. This is only a snatch. A journalist, presumably not security conscious, presumably unarmed. It doesn’t matter if he sustains some damage when you take him, as long as he’s alive and basically intact.”
“What do I do with him?” Manus’s voice was low and sonorous, the pronunciation slightly off because he couldn’t hear himself talking. Overall, his tone offered no more clue to the thoughts behind it than did the more customary silence.
“You’re going to turn him over to a group of Turkish middlemen who have contacts on the other side of the Syrian border. General Remar is arranging the logistics now, and I’ll brief you in the air as soon as I have details. Any questions?”
Manus offered a single shake of his head.
Not a surprise. If there were more Manus needed to know, Anders would have told him.
Anders looked at him. “How are things with Delgado?”
There was a pause. “How do you mean?”
The tone was as neutral as a flat-lined heart monitor.
“He’s got a lot of hate,” Anders went on. “But he’s useful to me.”
Manus nodded.
Anders sighed. “I appreciate… what you sometimes put up with.”
Another nod. But Anders sensed the loyalty behind it. The response to what might have been the only kindness this man had ever really known.
“When you’re back,” Anders went on, “I have something else for you. An employee about whom I have some… doubts. I want you to keep an eye on her.”
Manus frowned slightly, perhaps dubious. It wasn’t the type of task for which Anders ordinarily employed him.
“Her little boy is deaf,” Anders said. “It might provide an opening for you, a way in.”
The frown smoothed out. “All right.”
“Of course she’ll be monitored electronically, but she’s smart, she’ll be sensitive to that. I’m looking for something else.”
“What?”
Anders drummed his fingers along the desk. “I’m concerned what’s about to happen in Turkey might upset her. And I want to know… is she satisfied? Settled? Content? Or is her conscience troubling her? Is she a team player? Or is she starting to think of herself as an outsider? We learn a tremendous amount from SIGINT, yes, but there are people who forget the human aspect, the unquantifiable, the ghost in the machine. I don’t want to leave that out. I don’t want to leave anything out. Your firsthand impressions will be useful in that regard.”
For a moment, Manus looked at his huge hands, as though he might find some answer in them. Then he said, “You want to know everything.”
Anders only nodded. Didn’t everyone?
CHAPTER
4
Manus spent the entire flight to Istanbul in silence. Some of the time he slept; some of the time he reviewed the updates the director sent him; all of the time he ignored Delgado. The man’s smell was always unpleasant — a cologne Manus didn’t recognize from anywhere else, a too-strong floral soap, and some kind of hair gel, all combined with an underlying, slightly acrid odor that was uniquely Delgado’s. Delgado had once caught him wrinkling his nose, and asked what his problem was. Manus had told him he didn’t like Delgado’s cologne. Delgado had looked surprised — Manus had been standing almost twenty feet away — and had asked how Manus could smell it from all the way over there. Manus had merely shrugged. He had an unusually keen nose — lose one sense, and the others converge to pick up the slack — and he accepted that Delgado’s stink was one of the downsides.
He knew Delgado hated him, though he didn’t know why. He didn’t know why anyone ever hated him. People just sometimes did. The hate didn’t bother him. It was only a problem if it made someone try to hurt him. That was what he watched for. When he saw it coming, he would hurt the person first. He hoped that wouldn’t happen with Delgado. The director seemed to need Delgado, to value him, and Manus didn’t ever want to do anything bad to the director.
The part of his life that had happened before the director was vague to him now, dreamlike, disjointed. His father had been the first person to hurt him. Usually it happened when his father had been drinking. His father came from nothing in Granite City, Illinois, got a football scholarship to Ohio State, blew out a knee his first season, lost the scholarship, lost everything. Came back to Granite City to a job in the steel mill, knocked up a girl he knew from high school, married her. The baby had been Manus.
His father didn’t like Manus. He was too small. He was too quiet. He was stupid. Well, it was true Manus had been small; his size hadn’t kicked in until he was sixteen. And of course he was quiet. When his father drank, anything could set him off. So Manus learned not just to be quiet but to be still, to be like a table or a rug or a wall, when his father was in a hating mood. It didn’t always work, but he knew it wasn’t stupid. Quiet was smart. Quiet was survival.