“Dahlgren doesn’t like me,” Gideon stated.

“He’s got nothing against you, personally,” said Nam">>>>div hncy. “He’s just loyal to President Wade.”

Dahlgren was a political animal who specialized in managing up, and he had risen on the same tide that had swept Wade into the nation’s highest office. Because Gideon was no friend of the new administration, Dahlgren would do him no favors.

“If this guy Mixon turns out to be the real deal, it’s all his. Dahlgren can run with it.”

“What makes you think he might be?”

“I told you. He knew his stuff, and the tape sounded authentic. If he turns out to be a phony, no harm done.”

“Except the wasted time.”

“Gives us a chance to catch up.”

Nancy smiled. Her teeth were as white as Chiclets. “So you’re really getting married?” Gideon had avoided the subject, but leave it to Nancy to be direct.

“Yep. Three weeks.”

“Wow. Lucky girl.”

“Lucky me.”

Nancy nodded slowly. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking. When they broke up she hadn’t protested, but she was eager to take his call and quickly agreed to meet Mixon. Maybe it was just her national security concerns, but Gideon suspected there might be something else there.

Nancy looked at her watch again. It was almost seven o’clock, an hour after Mixon had agreed to meet them. “Do you have any way to reach him?”

“No, but I know where he’s staying.”

Gideon called the Word Up Lodge, but not surprisingly they had no record of anyone named Ervin Mixon staying there, and Gideon didn’t want to raise suspicions by asking further questions.

“I don’t have a good feeling about this,” he said.

“We could drive over there,” Nancy suggested.

“Let’s do it.”

They left Gideon’s car at the mall and drove the short distance to Mixon’s hotel. The Word Up Lodge was about as inhospitable as a hovel or a prison. The parking lot was rutted and potholed. The paint peeled off vinyl siding (never a good idea to paint vinyl, Gideon thought). Half the lights were out in the motel’s neon sign. The balcony that ran the length of the second floor looked dangerously unstable and pitched so steeply at one point it looked like the top of a wheelchair ramp.

“There’s his car.” Gideon pointed to the green Impala, which was still parked between the two Dumpsters.

They got out and examined the car, which was unlocked and cold to the touch. “Been here a while,” Nancy noted. She opened the door and poked around inside.

On the ground about six feet from the rear tire Gideon discovered a snap shackle that looked like it had popped off a piece of rubber or canvas, but he recognized it immediately as coming from a sling meant to hold a rifle, probably an AR-15. He fingered it and showed it to Nancy.

“I don’t like this,” he said. “Looks like somebody yanked it off.”

“Let’s check at the front desk,” Nancy suggested.

The motel clerk was a stringy-haired kid with a bad case of acne. When Nancy flashed her ID he immediately stiffened. Gideon described Mixon, and the kid said he had checked in yesterday but he hadn’t seen Mixon since. He gave Nancy the key for Mixon’s room, and she and Gideon went upstairs to inspect it.

Gideon's War and Hard Target

“Not enough time to get a search warrant,” Nancy said.

“Exigent circumstances,” Gideon agreed.

The room, however, was completely empty except for a toothbrush next to the bathroom sink. “Amazing. I wouldn’t peg the guy for caring about oral hygiene,” said Gideon.

“Where do you think he went?”

“He wouldn’t leave if he was expecting a payday.”

Nancy nodded. “Maybe someone else saw him.”

At the other end of the balcony, where it began its dangerous downward plunge, two black men leaned over the edge, smoking cigarettes. Nancy flashed her badge again and asked if they had noticed the guy in room 25.

One of them looked down and didn’t respond, and the other just shook his head and said no.

“You sure?” Nancy pressed.

But this time the second man didn’t even answer, and the other man looked at his shoes. Nancy gave the men her card, but as he headed downstairs Gideon noticed the cards fluttering down from the balcony.

“Those guys aren’t talking,” observed Nancy. “But they know something.”

“Someone scared the shit out of them.”

“Verhoven?”

“Exactly.”

5

ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA

It was nearly ten-thirty by the time Gideon arrived back at his new house in Alexandria, carrying a bottle of Oregon pinot and a bag full of English cheeses and Spanish sausages. Except for a single lamp in the living room, the house was dark.

After leaving the hotel Gideon had followed Nancy to the Bureau in the hope of speaking to Deputy Director Dahlgren, and to access the NCIC database for anything they could find on Mixon. But Dahlgren had left for the day, so they arranged to meet tomorrow. They also discovered that aside from two arrests for drug possession (later dismissed), shoplifting (Radio Shack), and one for forging a check, Mixon was clean. The database noted his connection to Verhoven, although it didn’t make much of it. He was, in short, another lowlife tweaker with a penchant for electronics and petty crime.

He’d called Kate from Nancy’s office and explained that something had come up. She didn’t pry, although she wasn’t happy, and he told her harkkkkn. Bue’d explain when he got home. Then he’d stopped by the supermarket on the way home, thinking that a nice dinner might smooth the waters. Unfortunately, the stop at Whole Foods had taken a little longer than expected. Then there’d been an overturned truck on 66 that snarled traffic. When he called home again, no one answered, and he assumed Kate was punishing him for the delay.

But when he got inside, Kate was asleep on the couch, barefoot, one slim leg pulled up beneath her. She wore a simple black dress and a strand of pearls, her auburn hair pulled back, and though the only makeup she wore was some lipstick, her face glowed. A thick report from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management had slid from her hands, fanned open on her lap.

A special commission had been convened to examine the causes of the Deepwater blowout and to provide recommendations to help prevent, or at least lessen, the impact of future spills. As the only member who had spent any real time on a rig, Kate understood better than the others the nearly impossible task of allowing the government oversight for the complex, highly technical, and deeply risky business of drilling for oil beneath the sea. Trying to balance the competing interests of environmentalists and major energy companies—and the politicians whose campaigns these opposing groups funded—only made the committee’s mandate even more untenable. As much as she aspired to become an honest broker, she expected that whatever recommendations she made would become mired in the political and bureaucratic gridlock that plagued most government committees.

But she had put aside her work that night for him. She’d laid a cloth on the folding table—two place settings, nice china, wineglasses, candles. The candles had burned down so far that wax had run onto the tablecloth.

She murmured something as he entered the room, then slithered down deeper into the couch, her hair tumbling over her face. Rather than waking her, he poured himself a glass of wine, sliced off a big hunk of sausage, and watched her sleep. Kate’s tan had faded over the past few months, since she was no longer out on oil rigs standing in the sun all day, and her naturally fair complexion had reasserted itself. She breathed easily and slowly, her face free of its usual signs of worry and care.

I’m a lucky man, Gideon thought.

And yet.

Something tickled at the back of his brain. He had earned an international reputation successfully mediating crises in various conflict zones around the world. Central to his success was a deep and long-standing conviction that military intervention should be used only as a last resort, after every diplomatic effort was exhausted. But the events of eighteen months ago had prompted him to question his public commitment to nonviolence. He had demonstrated that he was more than simply capable of killing other men when necessary—he was surprisingly good at it. He found himself still haunted by images of the men he’d killed, not because he felt guilty, but because he felt no guilt at all about taking their lives.