Chapter 26:// Judgment

Agent Roy Merritt stood stiffly-eyes straight ahead-one hand resting on his cane for support. Burn scars traced across his neck and chin above his suit collar. More scars were visible on the back of his hand as he straightened his tie. Agent Roy Merritt. No one called him Tripwire anymore. The men who had were long gone. He'd led them to their deaths.

Merritt focused his eyes on a frieze of workers building a glorious tomorrow. The image was set into the wall, done in the 1930s, art deco style-a WPA project. Master craftsmen had built this entire building, dispossessed workers in the throes of the Great Depression. The ornamental ceiling. The paneled walls and the inlaid granite floor. This room was a masterpiece. Their own dreams lay in ruins, and they built this temple to democracy. His forebears were tougher than he ever thought he could be.

Merritt stood before a narrow table, placed in the center of the room. Arrayed in front of him were congressional committee members, sitting high in judgment behind a richly carved oak judges' bench. Microphones jutted up before each of them. They shuffled through papers, reading with their bifocals low on their noses.

The committee chairman looked up and pulled the microphone toward him. "You may be seated, Agent Merritt." The words echoed flatly in the empty gallery. It was a confidential committee hearing. No one but Merritt and the committee members were present.

"Sir." Merritt limped to the chair and sat rigidly.

The chairman regarded him. "Agent Merritt, it is the responsibility of this committee to investigate the tactical failures that led to a record loss of federal officers in October of last year at the estate of the late Matthew Sobol. We have already heard relevant testimony from all bureau personnel and local law enforcement officers who were at the scene, and now that you have sufficiently recovered from your injuries, we would like to close out our investigation with your testimony on this matter."

He paused and lowered his sheaf of papers. "Before we begin, let me state for the record, Mr. Merritt, that this committee is aware of the many personal sacrifices you have made for this country, both here and overseas following September 11th. We have the highest regard for both your personal courage and your patriotism."

Merritt stared at the floor in front of him. He said nothing.

The chairman picked up the papers and turned to the senator on his right. "Senator Tilly, you may proceed."

Tilly was a white-haired, loose-jowled man-like most of the legislators in attendance. He glanced at his notes and then stared at Merritt. He spoke in a Southern drawl that seemed strangely in keeping with the proceedings. "Agent Merritt. We have reviewed both your written repoats — the first dated ten March and the second from three April-and these documents do not shed any light on one crucial question: why did you force entry into Sobol's mansion after being ordered to abort your mission?"

Merritt barely looked up at Tilly. He took a breath. "I have no explanation, Senator."

The senators exchanged looks. The chairman leaned in to his mic.

"Mr. Merritt, it is your duty to provide-"

"My team was dead. Because of me. I was injured and angry, and I wasn't thinking clearly."

Tilly responded immediately. "You weren't thinking clearly? Because of your injuries or because of your anger?"

He looked down at the floor again. "Because of my anger."

"So you were angry. Do you feel this released you from your duty?"

"No, I do not, sir."

"And you were angry at Matthew Sobol?"

Merritt nodded.

The chairman leaned in again. "Agent Merritt, please state your response."

Merritt looked up. "I was angry at Sobol, correct. I wanted to shut him down."

Tilly resumed. "So this was before you learned that the so-called 'Daemon' did not exist?"

"That's correct." He paused. "I know it's my fault the house burned down, Senator."

The chairman motioned for Tilly to hold off, then turned to Merritt. "The committee will judge who's at fault-if fault is to be found. Please just answer the questions."

Tilly pressed on. "To be clear: did you not enter the house to take refuge from the fire on the lawn?"

Were they giving him an out? He thought of the dead faces of his men. Their fatherless children. He wouldn't take the easy way out. "No. I meant to destroy the Daemon."

Tilly glanced at the chairman with some exasperation, then turned back to Merritt. "This was your sole reason for entering the mansion?"

Merritt looked up. "Yes."

Tilly flipped through the pages of Merritt's reports.

There was silence for a moment.

The chairman looked gravely at Merritt. "Agent Merritt, I can only imagine the horror you've been through, but because of your actions the mansion and all the outbuildings burned to the ground-destroying evidence that might have helped to locate and convict Sebeck's accomplices."

Merritt knew this all too well. He thought of little else nowadays.

The chairman looked down his glasses. "Let's bring this fish to the boat, shall we?" He flipped through his papers, then looked up. "You say you have very little recollection of how you survived the fire. You write in your report"-he lifted his glasses and read from the page-"'my tac-suit must have kept me afloat in the water and turned me upright.'" The chairman lowered the page. "And yet, you were found a hundred feet east of the location you indicated as the mouth of the pit. It might be very hard, Mr. Merritt, but can you recall anything-absolutely anything-of the layout or contents of the cellars before you lost consciousness?"

Merritt stared at the floor. Not a night went by that he didn't recall fleeting images of terror from that night. The trapdoor above him engulfed in flames. Flaming wood falling down upon him. The air in his gas mask growing warmer-suffocating him slowly. The sudden explosion. The cinderblock wall blasting apart near him, sending fragments into his leg. A rush of water. Falling as it flowed out into a room of fire. The flood of water roiling around him. Scalding steam. Like a scene of hell itself. Crawling. Then the water sweeping him-converging with another stream and sucking him across the center of the inferno as he struggled for air. The rush of water. Tumbling down steps into the wine cellar and landing in the pool gathered there at the lowest spot in the house.

He didn't regain consciousness until four days later in the burn unit at USC. Months of agony followed. His wife's loving eyes. The faces of his girls. Faces he thought he'd never see again. Faces that gave him the courage to face each agonizing day.

He had no recollection of floor plans or equipment or schematics. It was all just a sea of fire.

He shook his head slowly.

The senators looked at each other. The chairman nodded. "Well, Agent Merritt, I must tell you this is not easy. Six men died under your command, and the entire estate was lost-by your own admission-due to your attempts to penetrate the server room-contrary to orders. This committee has no choice but to recommend to Director Bennett that you be put on a disciplinary suspension, pending final judgment in this matter."

The words fell on Merritt like slabs of rock. It felt like the last ounce of breath had been crushed out of him. He couldn't speak.

The chairman picked up his gavel and rapped it twice with an echoing clack-clack. "This hearing is adjourned."

Merritt limped down the steps of the Capitol, thinking hard on the changes in his life since that October night. But today was a beautiful spring day. The cherry trees blossomed along the Potomac. He gazed across the National Mall at the monuments built by the valiant generations that came before him.