The Chaos Kind (John Rain #11)(24)

Got it the first time, you prick.

In fact, she did have a backup plan. Already assembled and ready to go. She almost blurted it out, and then was ashamed of the reflex, recognizing it as a vestige of the past, when she’d been new and Devereaux had taken her under his wing. Well, it was natural for adult children to revert to old patterns in the presence of their parents. But natural wasn’t the same as desirable. Or useful.

And besides. Something was suddenly telling her there would be no advantage to cluing him in about the backup plan. That in fact there could be opportunities lost. And other potential downsides.

“I’m putting together the facts of what happened,” she said. “It’s complicated by the exceptional compartmentalization. I need to understand how Kanezaki’s sniper contractor wound up in the park—he should have had no knowledge of the location, or of what was planned there. And I need to understand who his partner was. And how and why they were talking to Manus when the plan was for the contractor to kill him.”

“How much does Kanezaki know?”

“That’s another thing I’m trying to determine. Why don’t I get back to it, all right? And then I’ll get back to you.”

“For Christ’s sake, Lisa, you better have a hell of a Plan B.”

He hung up. After a moment, she did the same.

She didn’t want to believe it. She could feel herself trying not to. But how could she not have seen it coming? It was almost funny: the plan had been to dispose of Manus after he’d completed his job. And now they were going to throw her under the bus for failing to complete hers.

All those times Devereaux had told her how the intelligence community needed more women. More diversity. A three-hundred-sixty-degree optic, he liked to say. How are a bunch of incestuous old white guys going to achieve that?

And she’d actually believed him. Because she agreed, of course, and because it was so flattering to find herself the vessel by which all women would advance in the ranks of the IC.

God. The things she had done. At the black site in Thailand. To prove she was as tough as any of them. No, tougher. She’d needed sleeping pills ever since.

She replayed the conversation in her mind. Devereaux had been angry, yes. But now . . . What she’d initially thought was only anger felt more like . . . fear. She realized she’d been so hurt and afraid herself that she’d initially misinterpreted it.

Fear of what, though?

Well, the videos, certainly. When she’d asked who was on them, he had said only People we know. Schrader’s been at this for years. The threat, it seemed, wasn’t to any particular individual. It had to be wider than that. How else could it justify the deletion of an assistant US Attorney?

But the fact that the threat was widespread didn’t ipso facto mean—

He’s on those tapes.

The instant the thought blossomed in her mind, it felt right. Even obvious. The insight had the kind of clarity she experienced only when a faulty assumption, suddenly swept away, had been occluding it.

Of course. That’s why he’s so afraid. And trying so hard to conceal it with anger.

How many assets had she known who, hands-over-heart, had protested that they were spying for America only out of political conviction, when in fact it was the money, or the excitement, or the promises of resettlement for them and their families? Or any one of a dozen other personal reasons, including fear of what CIA could do to them if they refused to cooperate?

Devereaux could protest all he wanted about how this was really about protecting the club. And maybe on some level, it even was. But what he was really trying to protect was himself.

She could see now the precariousness of her position. She had understood she was to function as a cutout, yes. In the course of a long career, she’d become accustomed to that. But there was a thin line between cutout . . . and fall guy.

Devious little bastards, she thought.

And then she smiled at the irony. They were trying to exploit a woman to clean up a mess that was caused by, and that by definition was only a threat to, other men.

She remembered something her father, before his untimely heart attack himself a career CIA man, had told her when she was a girl: If you want to get something you never had before, you have to do something you’ve never done before.

She thought about everything Devereaux had told her. About how Schrader had used the videos only once before this, and both times only as a get-out-of-jail-free card.

But if the videos included footage of men like Devereaux . . . if they included footage of Devereaux . . . then for all these years, Schrader was in possession of assets that he was vastly underutilizing.

What a waste, to make so little use of something with so much potential power. It was like keeping a race car forever in the garage.

But race cars weren’t built for garages. They were built for drivers.

She’d been right to refrain from mentioning the backup. Devereaux wanted a Plan B? He had no idea.





chapter

nineteen





LIVIA


Livia was on her way into the morning briefing at headquarters when her cellphone buzzed. She saw it was Diaz and immediately felt uneasy that Alondra would be calling at such an early hour. She peeled off toward the elevators and raised the phone to her ear.

“Hey. Everything okay?”

“I’m okay,” Diaz said. “I’m okay.”