“In exchange for what, exactly?”

“Peace of mind, ultimately.”

Larison laughed harshly. “You’re offering me peace of mind. That’s funny.”

“I know what you planned to do with those tapes after you got the diamonds. Well, you can’t now that Nico’s exposed. But it was the wrong way to go about it anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

“You want people to pay for what happened to you? We’ll make them pay.”

“I want you to pay!”

“I already have, son. I have the same nightmares you do.”

“You weren’t there. You didn’t do it. You don’t live with that fucking sound in your ears.”

“I live with all kinds of things. It’s the others that don’t. Well, I want them to pay, too. And there’s something more.”

“What?”

“You need to be on the inside, son. You can’t cut loose, not after the things you’ve done. You’ve tried nihilism. And it’s been caustic to your soul, I know.”

Larison squeezed his eyes shut. He felt like his head was being crushed in a vise. “I can’t. I can’t take this anymore.”

“We’ll get you help. The best help there is. Between the money and what’s on those tapes, we can change some things that should have been changed a long time ago.”

Larison opened his eyes and breathed through his mouth. He felt sick. He’d been such an idiot, thinking he could get free. An idiot.

“The million is yours no matter what. You earned it. You paid for it. Tell me how to get it to you and it’s done. If you want the rest-the million a year, the protection, the power to set some wrong things right-we need to talk more.”

Idiot. Fucking idiot. You could have killed him. You could have-

“Think it over. Take your time.”

– killed him, you-

His stomach clenched. He clicked off the phone, leaned over, and convulsively threw up onto the curb. He gasped, his back heaving, then gagged and threw up again.

You could have killed him.

He stood there for a moment sucking wind, his hands on his knees, his eyes and nose streaming.

And not just Hort. He could have killed Marcy, too. Why hadn’t he? What stupid, pathetic sentiment had permitted him to be so fatally, disgustingly stupid? He told himself he would never make a mistake like that again, and even as he thought it he knew how meaningless the vow was now, how hollow.

When he felt a little steadier, he looked around. There was a gas station across the street. He walked over and found a guy in blue coveralls in the garage.

“I need to borrow a hammer,” Larison said, his voice ragged.

He could tell the guy wanted to refuse, and was almost glad for it. He looked at the guy, struggling to control his rage, wanting someone to vent it on. The guy figured out refusing would be a bad idea. He leaned over and pulled a large orange dead blow hammer off the floor. He handed it to Larison. “This is all I’ve got,” he said.

Larison hefted it. It weighed about four pounds. He imagined the damage it would do to a man’s skull. He said, “I’ll be right back.”

He walked around to the side of the building, took a diamond out of the bag, and set it on the concrete sidewalk. He put the bag down, lowered his stance, and gripped the hammer. He looked at the diamond for a moment. It was meaningless, inert.

He raised the hammer over his head and smashed it down. The diamond-the plastic-exploded beneath it. Shards flew in a thousand different directions.

He pulled another from the pack and smashed it with the hammer. It exploded exactly like the first. He did it again. And again. He attacked the bag with the hammer, blasting it, savaging it, beating it the way he wanted to beat Hort’s brains.

He realized he was screaming. He stopped and looked up. The gas station guy was looking at him from around the corner, appalled and afraid and frozen to the spot.

Grimacing, his breath snorting through his nose, Larison stalked over to him, the hammer dangling from his hand like a war club. The guy’s eyes widened and his face went pale.

Larison stopped an arm’s length from the guy. He looked at him for a long moment, grinning with hate. He held out the hammer. “Thanks,” he said.

The guy took it without a word or even a nod. Larison went back to the bus stop. He left the bag where he’d dropped it.

Another bus pulled up. The doors opened with a pneumatic hiss. He got on. He didn’t even know where it was going.

It didn’t matter. What mattered was that even through his rage and his nausea, his horror at how close he’d been and at how badly he’d blown it, he understood what he was going to do.

Accept Hort’s offer.

Take the money.

And when he was ready, when he had regrouped and resettled and refocused, get to Hort. He thought the courier, the blond guy from the unit, might be the right place to start. He was good, Larison could see that much. But he saw something else, too: The guy wasn’t happy. He knew he was being manipulated, and was looking for a way out. Maybe Larison could give him one.

He smiled grimly. Because when he found Hort, he would do things to him, do everything to him, until he made the sound Larison could never get out of his ears.

This time, it would be like music.

37. A Drink

Ulrich’s secure line buzzed. He looked at the phone, wondering if it would be better to just not answer. It was never good news. Never.

Still.

“Ulrich.”

“Clements. Okay to talk?”

“Why do you always ask me that? Yes, it’s okay. It’s always okay. This is a fucking secure line, do you not know that?”

There was a pause. “Are you watching CNN?”

“No.”

“There was a shooting in Arlington. Two dead.”

Ulrich clenched his jaw. “Theirs or ours?”

“Ours.”

Ulrich didn’t say anything. He felt numb. The numbness wasn’t unpleasant. At the moment, he much preferred it to whatever sensation it must have been blocking.

“We can still turn this around,” Clements said.

Ulrich laughed. It started slowly and built to a cackle. He thought of these idiots, blundering about, thinking they had a clue, relentlessly ruining his life. It wouldn’t last, he knew, but for now, he relished the humor element in the whole thing.

“You want to know how you can tell when a war is lost?” he said, wiping his eyes. “When people describe it as ‘still winnable.’ Well, that’s what I’ve been doing with myself all along on this. I keep telling myself it’s still winnable. But it’s not. It’s just not. There are too many idiots. I can’t keep fighting them. I can’t keep fighting you.”

He set the phone back in the cradle and put his face in his hands. He laughed again. And then he was crying.

People wouldn’t understand. He’d worked so hard to keep the country safe. Yes, he’d authorized some difficult things, some questionable things. But what looked questionable now didn’t look at all that way after 9/11. Back then, no one was questioning anything. They all just wanted to be safe, never mind how. So what, he was going to be hanged now for refusing to let a bunch of rules and procedures and bureaucracy prevent him from keeping people safe? What was the alternative? Dot his I’s and dash his T’s and just let the next attack happen? That would have been the real crime.

He blew out a long breath. It didn’t matter. He’d known the risks, hadn’t he? He’d never been in the military, but he’d performed his own kind of service. Soldiers risked life and limb defending America. He’d risked his job, his reputation, his own freedom in the same cause. How many people could make that claim? No matter what happened, he had every reason to be proud of what he’d done. And his family did, too. Even if no one else could understand, they would.

He thought about getting a drink. It was a simple thing, really, a man stopping by a bar on the way home from work. He wished he’d done it more often.