“You aren’t at all curious who those,” she lowered her voice “directors are?”
“Ever since I joined, our mission has been to protect the country, make the terrorists pay for what they’ve done. I have faith in that.”
“Speaking of faith. Do you know what happened to… it?”
“It’s safe,” he said. Once the nuke was handed off to the other team, his need to know went away. The fact that he hadn’t been called in to find it since then was of some comfort. The nuke was Caius, and he couldn’t have Natalie asking about it further. Time to change the subject.
“You finally took care of Suleiman?”
“It wasn’t intentional,” she said. Natalie recounted the whole ordeal in Beirut for Ritter. Her posture changed as she spoke; her shoulders slouched forward, and her head lowered. “Carlos debriefed me when I got back, and things were quiet — I mean, things were quiet in the office, not for you — until Shannon walks out of the vault and says we’re closing down.” She looked away.
“He was a bad man. He—” Ritter caught himself. Not because Suleiman’s history was classified. The man had forced his daughter, Baida, into marrying a jihadist to curry favor with al-Qaeda. After his daughter died in a drone attack in Pakistan, he’d used her martyr status to build even more clout with the organization’s financiers in Saudi Arabia. Ritter didn’t want to explain his relationship to Baida, his involvement in her death, and the final resolution with her husband, Haider, years later in Iraq.
“I wish I’d been the one to do it,” Ritter said.
“Is it always like this? The killing. The manipulation… The giant pile of gold on your couch,” she said.
“Not always. The gold is definitely an oddity. Do you want to stay on? We can transfer you anywhere you want if this isn’t for you. Even back to the army,” he said.
“Is the world a better place because of what we’ve done?” she asked.
“It may not feel like it, but I think so.” Ritter could believe that, in time. The deaths, suffering, and betrayal were still raw wounds in his mind and on his body.
“I’ll stay on, if Shannon will let me. I think I did nothing but screw up this whole time,” she said.
“You made it work in the end. We’re much more about the ends than the means,” Ritter said.
Natalie chuckled.
“Ends,” she half whispered.
Ritter nodded. Part of him railed against what he was about to do. He could stop her from taking the path into darkness he’d chosen years ago. Stop her from ever becoming like him. But it wasn’t his choice to make.
“I have a word for you, Natalie. A word you must never repeat. The word is Caliban.”