Castle held out a hand. He didn’t brandish a gun, but everyone knew he still had one. Cole then voiced the conclusion that he figured everyone else was already thinking.
“You killed the guy in the woods the other night, didn’t you, Wade.”
“Had to. He was here to kill me.” Castle hadn’t taken his eyes off Steve. “Hand it over.”
Steve gave in. Who wouldn’t have, considering what they’d just heard?
“Smart man,” Castle said, pocketing the phone. He was about to say more when Steve made a last stand of sorts, a final argument before sentencing.
“IntelPro had a story to tell,” he said. “They thought I’d be interested. They also knew what kind of shape I was in. Financially, I mean. Rent, alimony, credit cards, everything overdue and maxed out. Three different magazines stiffing me on checks. So they told me about this new fellowship, said they’d put in a word for me at the foundation. Yeah, the foundation they’d just set up. I found out that part later. At the time it wasn’t exactly in my interest to ask too many questions. And when you don’t have a rich family, or a place like this to fall back on …” He glanced pointedly at Keira.
“This isn’t about me, Steve,” Keira said.
“I know that. And I know what I’ve done. But the only agreement I ever made was to keep them posted about what you guys were coming up with, and only in the most general terms. They just didn’t want to be blindsided. Otherwise I was fully independent to pursue any angle, and that’s what we were doing. I kept thinking, all the way up to the end, that I could find a way to make it work. For all of us.”
“Like with that worthless source of yours?”
“He wasn’t worthless. He knew shit.”
“Shit that always steered us away from IntelPro. And so did you. No wonder you fought so hard against using the drone. Mr. Ethics, supposedly. You must have felt like their last line of defense.”
“You’re wrong. If I’d wanted to stop it, all I had to do was call them.”
“How do we know you didn’t?” Sharpe asked.
“Stay the fuck out of this. It wasn’t like that at all. I still wanted—want—to get the story.”
“As long as it wasn’t a story with any angle that might make them ask you to give the grant money back,” Barb said.
Steve shook his head, but said nothing more. Barb stared him down, livid, until he lowered his head in apparent shame. Keira just looked sad. Cole felt bad for all of them.
Castle turned toward Cole, ready to move on.
“Riggleman says you got some sort of email from your old wingman the other day with archives galore. Learn anything?”
Now how the hell did he know that? Unless …
“You hacked the account?” he asked Riggleman.
The little captain allowed himself a smile. Victorious again on the cyberfront.
“It’s how he found you,” Castle said. “But that’s old news. The archives. Anything good?”
“First you owe us some answers,” Cole said. “Who’s the dead guy?”
“I’m sure you were already acquainted with him at some level. Harry Walsh.”
“Never heard of him.”
“Code name Lancer.”
That stopped him. He looked over at Sharpe, who stared back, mouth open. They shook their heads.
“Lancer?” Barb said. “The name Bickell mentioned?”
“He turned up on three of those missions on the transcripts. He was there on the ground, poking around for somebody, maybe even running the show.”
“The Tangora raid,” Castle said. “The one that blasted Engineer Haider to smithereens. He led me by the nose. His baby, start to finish.”
“Then why were you the one who showed up?” Barb said.
“Belated attempt at damage control. That’s when I started to realize that my own beacons — the whole Magic Dimes op — were being used against me. Or against competing private interests. IntelPro, sabotaging its competition. So I went on the warpath and off the reservation.”
“Couldn’t have gone too far off it. You were still in business for Sandar Khosh.”
“It’s complicated, and Bickell may have muddled some stuff in translation. You only know half the picture. I’d like to see what Lancer was up to on some of those transcripts.”
“Fine,” Cole said. “We can do that.”
“I’ve got questions, too,” Sharpe said. “About how much technology you Agency guys were sharing. I’ve been told you were giving away the store.”
“Not my doing, but, yeah, they made off with plenty. I just happened to be the most convenient person to blame. And now you’re planning to do what, go in there tomorrow with your own drone and sniff out what they’ve done with all their new toys?”
“Something like that.”
“Good. I’ve got a wish list of my own for some sites over there. But first we should compare notes.”
“Speaking of notes,” Riggleman said, “should we be letting her do that?”
He nodded toward Barb, who was scribbling at the speed of light. Cole couldn’t help but admire her. Even though she probably hadn’t yet added things up, she knew that every stray piece was important and was gathering them up while she had the chance.
“Take all the damn notes you want,” Castle said. “Those fuckers at IntelPro have been smearing my name for months, to the point where even half the Agency believes it. The truth, as the slogan says, will set me free. Scribble away.”
“Give her something decent, then,” Cole said, “starting with Lancer. Who the hell was he?”
“Not Harry Walsh. That was another code name. Kevin Wardlow. A freelance jack-of-all-trades. Ex-Agency, so he still had some friends in our shop, which he knew how to use. In Afghanistan, IntelPro was paying him to be their middleman with all the locals. He’s the guy who fixed it with Mansur to fuck up my beacons op, the whole Magic Dimes thing. Which wasn’t too damn hard for him to do. Mansur meant well, but couldn’t keep track of all the players. To him one American was just like another. So it became a matter of Lancer trying to keep Mansur out of contact with me and run him for his own uses. By any means necessary. That firefight on your recon mission near Charwala?”
“The recon that Zach and I fucked up?”
“Those were Lancer’s boys you were covering for. Your CO and your whole chain of command were in on it. U.S. air support for a gang of privateers.”
“Who’d they kill?”
“My guys. Locals, more privateers, but at least they were actually working for Uncle Sam.”
“And at the house? The one they raided?”
“Some low-value targets. IntelPro trying to make a name for itself. They’d have gone off half cocked after Osama himself, without a word to anybody official, if they’d had half a clue as to where he was hiding. Anything for a few scalps to pump up their value with the right people in Washington.”
Barb was writing so intently now that she was poking her tongue between her lips, as determined as Michael Jordan going in for a slam. Even Steve was paying attention, unable to turn off his journalistic curiosity, or perhaps his growing sense of horror as he realized what he’d been helping to hide and protect. Sharpe, too, was rapt, arms folded. Keira had a notebook out as well. So Cole kept pushing, trying to pry loose everything he could while Castle was in the mood.
“Sandar Khosh, what happened there?”
“I was trying to put an end to everything. Snuff out Mansur and the last of his beacons before he and Lancer did any more damage. I thought I had him when the truck arrived.”
“And the kids?”
“Knew they were his the second I saw them. It only confirmed for me that we had the right place. I didn’t like it that his family was there, but still …”
“Just collateral damage, huh?”