“A crazy idea for which there is absolutely no evidence!” banged out Kanter. The others began to speak out of turn as the argument escalated.
Savas shouted them down. “They're right!” The eyes of Intel 1 turned to him in surprise. Savas held his palms up, trying to explain. He lowered his voice. “Larry and Rebecca are right. It's too outlandish. It doesn't feel right.”
“Feel right?” asked Rideout.
“No, it doesn't, J. P. Let's just say these death squads were still around, activated. They might make hits on foreign soil, not here. Even the craziest antiterrorist zealots would think twice about that. For God's sake, we don't have to shoot them here! Why not just pick them up, extraordinary rendition and all that? We do it all the time, whatever you think of it: grab a suspected terrorist, take him someplace far away, interrogate him. Maybe worse. A hit on someone abroad, maybe, but not like this.”
Cohen picked up his thoughts. “And not with this frequency, this thoroughness. Such a group might make a hit here or there, take out a particularly important target. But the list of possible kills John is showing is too long. It's absurdly long. It would begin to call attention to the murders. That's the last thing some covert death squad would want. Bad for the US, bad for them, bad for their long-term goals.”
Savas refused to let go. “I still think these deaths are linked, but it's not governmental. It's something else; something else is driving it forward.”
“John, what the hell are you talking about? Something else what?” asked Kanter. He seemed beyond frustrated. “How do they magically appear in the span of half a year in ten or twenty different places around the world, bringing down the target — often a highly protected target, by the way — without leaving any trace? Are these ninja snipers? Who funds this? What's the unifying motive for your imaginary marksmen with the special bullets?”
Savas was silent. He didn't know if he had the words for this intuition, the connection between his own experience and the pattern he was seeing in these murders. He wasn't even sure it made sense to him. Then the word just came to his lips.
“Vengeance.” As soon as he spoke, Savas felt his stomach drop — he could almost feel the disbelief in the room.
“Vengeance, John? Who?” asked Kanter incredulously.
“I don't know, Larry! But if I struck back for everything they've done to us, it might be something like this. Hell, it might be worse.”
The second the words left his mouth, he knew it was over. Savas knew he had blown it, shot to hell any hope of objectivity, any chance of persuading a group of analysts that he was correct. Their expressions confirmed his fears, the downward glances, no one looking him in the eye. Kanter moved quickly to resolve the issue.
“John, we appreciate that many of us here have had personal experience with international terrorism, and we use that every day to motivate us. But we can't let it cloud our judgment. I don't like to go over this in front of everyone, but too much has been said,” Kanter noted, glancing over the table, “by too many of us here. We've ended up in no man's land of speculation, serious accusations, too much emotion, and too few facts. There's the beginning of a coherent linkage between these murders, but only a beginning. I'm torn about how we proceed. Good detective work is often shot to hell if heads are clouded by emotion.”
Kanter seemed to mull something over in his mind, then he stood up abruptly. “John and Manuel will continue looking into this idea of a link between these murders, at least for the time being. But we'll hear no more of international death squads and the like. I've got to fly to Washington for another one of our interagency summits this weekend, and the last thing I want on my mind is wondering if my agents are out and about trying to prove the CIA or whoever is involved in an international assassination program. Honestly, folks, I'm too young for forced retirement.”
There were nervous smiles around the room, but Savas merely stared forward, unable to focus on Kanter's words. “Let's call this a day. I'm late for a twelve o'clock. Get back to your posts and saving the country.”
Awkwardly, the members of Intel 1 got out of their seats and headed for the door. Lightfoote brushed past Savas and whispered in his ear.
“It's OK, John. I think you're right.” She smiled blissfully at him and danced out of the meeting room. The irony was total — his main support came from the most eccentric member of this team.
He glanced up. The room was empty. Kanter entered and closed the door.
“Is there anything we should talk about?” Kanter began.
“No, Larry. Maybe I am biased on this, but you might consider that I also have an advantage.”
“Which is?”
“If I do happen to be right, I'm the one who would understand the motives better than anyone.”
“Vengeance?”
“Yes, and more. A removal of the threat and obsessive cleansing of the world.” Hunting the monsters. Showing no mercy.
“John, you're essentially telling me that if you are right, you'll be very right. That sort of tautology doesn't really give me much to base things on.”
“I know that, Larry.”
“Besides, even if you are right, I think our hands are tied.”
Savas looked up, his brows furrowed. “Why?”
“Jurisdiction. If this has the scope you think it does, it's way beyond FBI. In addition to the thirty or more US agencies involved broadly in criminal activities outside the country, there are the international ones.”
“Well, we'd have our part to play.”
“Yes, but to break this case, it will require access to and investigation of places and people we can't go to.”
“Well, we pound the beat we know, Larry.”
Kanter nodded. “OK, John. That's all I'm saying. Stay in your boundaries on this one. If there is something to this, you'll dig it up.” Savas watched his boss stand up and leave the room. The message was clear.
Savas felt exhausted. In the span of less than half a workday, he had run a roller coaster of emotions from his own elated certainty to the embarrassed rejection by his peers. He glanced at the presentation on his computer, closed the laptop, and dropped it into his bag. As he left the table and walked to the door, Rebecca Cohen entered. Her eyes told him too clearly what was on her mind.
“Is this a therapy session?” he asked sharply.
“John, please. It's not like that.”
“Isn't it? I saw all your faces. I could hear it perched on their tongues: Mad John. Useful in a pinch, but a little too wacko at times. Wasted on his own grief and anger. Unreliable when it comes to certain topics. Ready to see in others all the things churning inside himself.” He marveled that all this spilled out to her. “Doesn't that about capture it?”
Cohen sighed and looked crestfallen. “Yes, John, it does. But I didn't come here for that.”
“Then what?”
“I came to tell you that whatever they think, whatever doubts anyone might have, we've all come too far with you not to back your play. Take it slow, John, but we're behind you.”
Savas was strangely touched. “And you're speaking for the others?”
“I'm sure I am, but it wasn't put to a vote or anything. I know I speak for me.”
Her earnest eyes burned into him, and, not for the first time, he felt them pierce through so many layers of armor and anger. It was a place that couldn't be touched. Not now. Not anymore. Not after Thanos. He was shaken by it, by the goodness of that touch. It made him recoil all the more.