The glitch was that Bickell didn’t know what to make of his old employers anymore. They were barely on speaking terms. Not at all like the mutual trust that prevailed when he joined the Agency, way back in ’68. Arriving in Saigon for his first posting only a month after the Tet offensive, Bickell believed everything the old hands told him down at the Duc Hotel, and the wartime routines suited him. Poker and bourbon after dark, maybe a hooker and a toke at bedtime, then a Bloody Mary with your scrambled eggs. Everyone talked a good game, same as now, but it turned out that none of them knew shit, and he had never forgotten the lesson.
In those days management had been a cabal of aging Ivy Leaguers. Tweeds and weekend duck hunts. Pack-a-day smokers who drank themselves silly at each other’s town houses in Georgetown — not that Bickell was ever invited. Card-carrying liberals, to hear the way they trashed the ghost of Joe McCarthy. Yet whenever they cast their eyes abroad, they, too, saw a commie behind every bush. And why not? Back then, the enemy was everywhere.
Later Bickell was posted to other wars, other countries. His operations often stalled, throttled by Agency lawyers or, later, by congressional busybodies, nobody wanting another Vietnam, or another leak in the press. The bureaucratic death spiral continued right up to 9/11, when suddenly it was back to bags of cash and anything goes, except by then the ideology of the crowd upstairs had shifted rightward. No longer so big on tweeds or Ivies, but the same preponderance as ever of blowhards and careerist know-it-alls.
These were the people Bickell had eventually run afoul of in a far corner of Pakistan, his final posting. He went to help run the Agency’s new Predator program, three of its very own birds parked at the Shamsi airstrip, deep in the desert of Baluchistan, the dark side of a lost planet. At first he enjoyed it. The novelty was appealing. So was the spic-and-span way of killing bogeys without bloodying your hands. Ops that the Soviets would once have called “wet jobs” had turned into something dry and tidy, at least for those watching on a video screen. Gradually he grew uneasy, disillusioned by doubt before he could even say why. Make your living from a technological shortcut and pretty soon other shortcuts looked equally tempting, no matter how reckless. Bickell had spotted their mistakes coming from a mile away. Unfortunately he said so, meaning that once things began to go wrong he was automatically part of the problem, another messy element that needed sweeping aside. So they rewarded him with a medal for distinguished service — pinned in secret, of course, in some windowless room at Langley. Then they cut him loose a year ahead of his scheduled retirement.
Now, judging by this flyboy headed up his driveway, they were still in cleanup mode. Two days ago they had telephoned to prep him, giving him a role, a script, and detailed instructions for afterward. He was ambivalent about the whole business. For one thing, his old employer no longer seemed to be speaking with one voice. Inquiries to his old boss had gone unanswered. When they contacted him, they no longer seemed to use the usual channels. This suggested a rift, an ongoing competition between rival factions, and with Agency rivalries you inevitably got crossfire. Once that started, even outsiders like him needed to take cover. For all Bickell knew, Cole and he might even be on the same side. Or maybe the pilot was yet another bumbler with a gas can and a lighted match and should be left to burn on his own.
The first knock at the door came as Bickell reached the hallway closet where the new equipment was installed. Agency techs had turned up yesterday morning in a Verizon van with forms to sign and promises to keep. Easy to operate, they said. All digital, so pay attention. Like he was some sort of relic who could only work a reel-to-reel. He pressed the button for Record just as Cole knocked again.
“Keep your shirt on,” Bickell called out, watching the needles jump. “I’m coming.”
Act like you know what you’re doing. That was the thought Cole had clung to all morning as Steve Merritt and he crossed into New Hampshire toward Lake Winnipesaukee with the driving directions spread on the seat between them. They drove a new Toyota Corolla, a rental Steve had picked up at Boston Logan the day before Cole’s arrival at the Trailways terminal on Atlantic Avenue. Cole’s journey east had been a nonstop blur of rest stops and fast food joints, filled by a thousand nervous glances out the bus window as big rigs rumbled past on empty stretches of highway. Nothing in the sky but commercial jets, as far as he could tell. He’d nursed a fifth of Jeremiah Weed most of the way, then picked up a new bottle on the last stop before Boston. He’d already cut his consumption to half a bottle a day. Still too much, and he was feeling a little shaky, but it was a start. Strength, patience, vigilance. The watchwords for making good with the journalists. Not that they seemed very disciplined themselves, except about making sure they stayed caffeinated throughout the day.
Steve was proving to be an unexpectedly agreeable traveling companion, generous with his encouragement, not to mention his dollars, and minimally intrusive with questions about Cole’s personal life, and his ordeal of the past fourteen months. He prepped Cole for the Bickell interview by going over a list of possible questions, and offered a few reporter’s tips on how to break the ice. The success or failure of the encounter would come down to a single conversation, perhaps a single turn of phrase, and Cole figured he had better arrive looking confident, even if he didn’t feel that way.
A few miles before reaching their destination they stopped in Moultonborough to pick up a local map. Then they double-checked the directions and plotted their approach. Bickell lived on a small cove on a remote neck, way up a dirt road. As a precaution they parked well short of the driveway to let Cole cover the final stretch on foot, a decision he was grateful for as soon as he spotted the security camera peering down from a tree by the mailbox.
Just like an old spy to guard the perimeter, Cole supposed. It creeped him out the way these intrusive little eyes kept watching him at every step along the way. He had noticed surveillance cameras at virtually every stop along the bus route — at service stations, convenience stores, fast food joints, even inside the men’s room. Grounded little Predators, from sea to shining sea.
He knocked, paused, then knocked again until a voice called out impatiently from inside. When Bickell opened the door, Cole was reminded of why the man had once struck him as a perfect choice for a posting to the Muslim world. Olive skin, brushy mustache, brown eyes. With the right clothes he could have passed for a falafel vendor in a Middle Eastern souk, or a hack in Kabul. Cole cleared his throat and began his pitch.
“Mr. Bickell? I’m Captain Darwin Cole. I’m not sure if you remember me, but—”
“Sure I do. From Creech. You’re a long way from home.”
“I was hoping for a few minutes of your time, and maybe some advice.”
“I didn’t figure you’d come for a cup of sugar. Is this official?”
“No.”
“Well, I’m not either. Not anymore. Come on in, I guess. Coffee? An hour old but still hot.”
“Sure. I’ve been traveling pretty hard.” Then wishing he hadn’t said it, because Bickell seized on it right away.
“You drove the whole way?”
“The last leg, anyway.” He didn’t want to mention Boston, and certainly not Steve.
Bickell nodded, face unreadable. From the threshold Cole saw a sun porch at the back of the house — louvered windows, a panoramic view of the lake, the eaves dripped melting snow. Bickell steered him instead to a darkened living room up front, then motioned him toward a brown couch by a cold and empty hearth. The coffee had yet to materialize, which didn’t bode well.