BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
The redbrick town house that served as both home and office to Allison Dearborn, PsyD, EdD, was located in the Bolton Hill section of Baltimore, a short drive from the grand Victorian dome and towers of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, where she had completed her residency in the midnineties, after an earlier internship at Mayo, and now served as an affiliate clinical psychologist. For five years in between, she’d worked in Washington, D.C., as a screening, evaluation, and crisis-intervention counselor for the CIA…although once the Agency recognized her outstanding skills as a therapist, the latter area of specialization had come to occupy most of her time. Inside and outside the office.
When she left her position in 2008, Allison had insisted it was because she was a generalist by inclination and wanted to pursue various areas of academic study. It was a nice, pat reason she’d known would roll smoothly off her tongue and leave her superiors with few openings to urge that she reconsider her choice. Dreams and goals represented the intangible and, precisely for that reason, were hard to poke holes in. If she’d told the truth, namely, that her decision had been based on mental fatigue, there would have been a barrage of suggestions and incentives, which she’d have had to swat off one by one. Take some downtime, ease your caseload, and how about we shift more of the obviously tough and complicated cases over to other therapists till you’ve reenergized your battery? Meanwhile, we can certainly slot you in for more frequent out-of-town conferences. Arrange for you to occasionally travel inside and outside the country. Rome, for example. Have you been to Rome? There’s also Milan. Or our Paris branch. In springtime. Where enchanted music rises from the banks of the Seine and perfume fills every boulevard.
Allison had always appreciated the respect she got from the Agency. She had likewise known it was much deserved. Her success rate was in the upper percentile-meaning she kept most of her patients productive or curbed their dropout rate. Her bosses therefore would have bent over backward to accommodate her if it meant she’d stay on; she was sure of it because they’d done it in the past. But at the time of her resignation she’d been disinclined to keep fouling off their pitches, however well-intentioned they might be.
And so Allison had claimed she needed a change based on personal objectives beyond and distinct from the job, and let it stand at that. She’d been careful to say nothing about the intensity in the eyes of her patients, and what it was like to feel them searing into her own, those looks speaking volumes about the fires burning inside them, communicating hidden rage, guilt, anxiety and, for some, nightmarish horrors beyond what they were able to share in words. Nor had she mentioned the nights she’d spent lying awake in the dark, agonizing over each one of those patients, worrying what might happen if she committed the smallest error in judgment or just had a momentary slip of attention. There were many individuals with aggression issues, deep-rooted guilt, even core identity conflicts, often compounded by drug or alcohol abuse. Some were trying to reacclimate themselves after returning from some foreign hell. Others had been on covert assignments and were trying to maintain some inner balance between their secret lives and honest, open relationships with families and friends.
Shortly before leaving the Agency, Allison had read an air force study that said over half the airmen on foreign deployment who committed suicide had attended regular counseling sessions. She’d had a strong hunch the numbers were similar, or greater, in the CIA. While she had been fortunate enough to have never lost a patient, Allison had spoken with other highly capable mental health professionals within the organization who weren’t quite as lucky and beat themselves up regularly over the ones they had failed to save. And although she’d known better than to make her thoughts known to them, she always wondered, as they doubtless did, what key point in someone’s unraveling had been missed. And why.
The questions had plagued her throughout her tenure at the Agency. Shrinks were as vulnerable to obsessive fears as anyone, and the one that had haunted Allison during her frequent sleepless nights was the possibility that her concentration might blink while someone was baring a dark, pained corner of his soul, just blink as some vital, wounded part of him briefly reared like a fanged undersea serpent from some hidden inner recess, and that she’d wake up the next day to read about him taking a Glock to his head and pulling the trigger, or overdosing on some prescription tranquilizer cocktail, or hanging himself while alone in a cheap roadside motel room. Or maybe taking the wife, kids, and brand-new puppy with him when he drove his car off a cliff.
As a therapist, Allison knew, your humanity was the tether that connected you to your patients; in fact, it could be a lifeline to some of them. But she recognized it was also a potential trip wire for the most volatile personalities. There was very little margin for error when interacting with them, and the danger, in her mind, was that the slightest lapse could have grave ramifications. Was it that you suddenly realized you’d forgotten to mail your loan payment in time to avoid late fees? Locked yourself out of the car? Neglected to open the pet door for the cat that morning? Or maybe to schedule a visit with the dermatologist to remove the suspicious little bump over your eyelid?
At the CIA Allison had frequently dealt with the institutional stigma against admitting to psychological problems. It had worn rather thin at times from the very beginning, but the real strains had sprung from the reality that she was very often playing for mortal stakes.
Now Allison, a tall, willowy blonde in her midthirties with her hair pulled back in a French twist, wearing small, round diamond earrings, a long-sleeved Ralph Lauren stretch polo under a matching gray sweater jacket, gray wool dress pants with flared bottoms, and peep-toe black suede dress heels, entered her second-story office with its window overlooking the poplar trees and cobblestone sidewalks along Murielle Lane. Pausing to pour herself a strong black cup of Italian roast, she went swiftly across the room from the coffee maker, then sat down behind her large oak desk. The antique pendulum wall clock to her right-a made-in-Germany Hermle Black Forest she’d picked up at a yard sale near her niece’s home in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, of all places-said it was a quarter to ten. Jonathan Harper was due for their hastily scheduled powwow in fifteen minutes. But if he held true to form, he would arrive in no more than ten, barring a calamitous traffic jam on the Capital Beltway.
She drank her coffee, settling in for the presumably brief wait. She hadn’t thought about her CIA days for a while. But then it had been quite some time since she’d gotten a call from Harper, though he was still nominally under her care. Looking back on her eight years with the Agency, she considered it sad irony that its intelligence gatherers had assembled comprehensive reports on the major causes of death for every country and region in the world-not to mention almost every profession-but had failed to address its own problems in that regard. If you were interested in what took people’s lives in Belarus, Algeria, or the Indian subcontinent, the information could be instantly plucked from its databases with a scroll and a click. Reach into the intercontinental grab bag for any of that data, and the Agency could-and typically did-generate reams of material on who was dying from childhood leukemia or old age, genetic conditions or environmental contaminants, pandemics, accidents, violent crime…and so on and so forth, including self-inflicted means. Incorporating these analyses into its overall intelligence tapestry, the CIA made recommendations on foreign strategy and policy to diplomats, and the loftiest of generals and heads of state…yet as an organization still had not quite figured out how to look inward. Or as one fellow academic, who wrote a white paper on the subject, had put it to Allison, the Agency was choking on evolutionary exhaust when it came to maintaining the mental health of its employees.
His snooty language aside, it was accurate that the CIA topped the list of government agencies whose human resources too often jumped aboard the Downbound Express into suicide and depression. And it had held that inglorious distinction for quite some time, followed closely by the Feebs, local police departments, all five armed services, and that old bad joke punch line, the rain-or-shine U.S. Postal Service…which, in absolute fairness, technically operated as a private enterprise and fell into a different pot from the others. Over the past decade, in fact, with field operatives increasingly deployed to countries like Iran, Afghanistan, and other war-on-terror hellholes, where poverty, disease, and the atrocities of armed thugs were so widespread as to be virtually atmospheric, the rates of depression and suicide had soared to unprecedented heights. According to the most recent studies, two-thirds as many agents had died by their own hand than had been officially killed in the performance of duty. Officially, because in her mind the line wasn’t nearly that clear-cut. As Benjamin Disraeli was once supposed to have said, “There were lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
Of course, it wasn’t about numbers for Allison, not in the end, besides their underscoring what she already knew from her up close contact with men and women who had returned from the field or were engaged in clandestine ops. It was really pretty basic: stress and trauma were no less destructive than bullets.
The day Allison submitted her resignation, her department head, Edward Rockland, had made a strong, earnest appeal for her to stay on, offering to shift her to an analysis and research job within the Directorate of Intelligence, where she would have a chance for consultancies with senior government policymakers. When she’d declined the offer, he’d asked her to at least do him the favor of speaking with the deputy director of Management and Services, Office of Personnel, to see if there was anything else that might be done to convince her. Rockland was a legitimately decent guy who took good care of his people, and though she’d agreed to it out of respect for him, Allison was convinced he’d viewed that second meeting much as she had-as a requisite formality. Though she had heard him out with all due deference, his reconciled tone had made it evident that he had very little doubt her decision was a firm one.
Allison had brought that same polite yet unassailable demeanor to her sit-down with the DD-MS, although she went into it with an added measure of remove. Psychologically and emotionally, she was already well out the door, and all she could think about while quietly listening to his pitch was that old William Blake poem “The Tiger,” with several lines in particular nearly jumping from her lips: In what distant deeps or skies, burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare seize the fire?
The thing she’d recognized in herself upon deciding to leave the Agency was that she could no longer spend all her days trying to seize the fire in the eyes of its most damaged operatives. The heat was too strong; its overflow into her own daily life too consuming.
But there was a major catch. In the thirty-two years since she’d come kicking, bottom down, into the American heartland via C-section, Allison had learned there was nearly always a catch somewhere. And for her it had been lurking inside her.
What was it she had been thinking about irony? As loath as she was to admit it, it was her constant yet maddening companion through life, a disobedient pooch she walked on a long leash while complaining it was always out of control. Because the inescapable paradox at her core, one she’d first done her best to disregard while formulating her exit strategy from the Central Intelligence Agency, and then closed off from her mind as she gave her spiel not once, but twice, was that she not only took gratification from helping people with dire psychological problems-and had chosen her vocation precisely for that reason-but was fascinated by the prospect of tackling cases others deemed tough or insoluble.
Although she now spent the bulk of her time doing research and lecturing at the university on Charles Street, Allison had found herself missing the rewards of people in need and had gradually begun taking a select number of Agency patients on referral.
Jonathan Harper had been the first of them, and the one that made her realize she could take on others on a limited basis without once again succumbing to the sort of nervous tension that had given her constant, tightly wound insomnia throughout her latter months with the Agency. And the whole thing had been pure serendipity.
It would have sufficiently floored her if someone of Harper’s stature had sought her out on his own, but the wild, wild coincidence was that their connection had come through his wife, Julie, whom Allison had met during her time at Mayo in Rochester, Minnesota, long before she’d ever heard of Jonathan Harper or set foot in Langley. An attractive, slightly plump woman with a warm maternal disposition, Julie had been a head nurse at the clinic and had been considerably older than Allison when they’d gotten to know each other while treating a breast cancer patient who’d opted for in-house counseling. Always the type to take young people under her wing-particularly a green psych intern for whom buying groceries took a backseat to paying off student loans-Julie had invited her over to her place for dinner one evening after a late conference. Besides being pleasant, intelligent company, she had turned out to be quite the gourmet cook, making her company an irresistible draw for a young woman who considered preparing unburned toast a proud accomplishment even when she could afford the luxury of a trip to the supermarket.
At the time, Allison had known Julie’s husband did sensitive work for the federal government and occasionally spent extended periods overseas on what she assumed were diplomatic missions. But neither she nor anyone else at Mayo ever had the slightest inkling that he was CIA…which was, of course, how he wanted things. Or to put it more correctly, how things had to be for the welfare of Harper and his family.
That carefully preserved secrecy about the nature of his work had never changed. Harper remained unknown to the vast majority of Americans. As the Agency’s deputy director, he was the second most powerful person in the organizational hierarchy. Individuals in his position weren’t supposed to be photographed in the newspapers or to appear with policy wonks on televised Sunday morning political shoot-outs. He was among the quiet ones. The ones who did the work of keeping the country safe and secure from behind the scenes. Anonymity was an essential part of his curriculum vitae.
Among the members of the intelligence community, however, Harper was a renowned figure, a man who not only had a close relationship with the president but had also been among those who’d once uncovered a plot to assassinate some of the world’s most powerful leaders. That accomplishment alone would boldface most careers, but his exploits went back to the late eighties, when he had conducted some of the most incredibly daring missions of the Cold War behind the Iron Curtain-including one he had personally told Allison about, which involved his hanging from the skids of a Black Hawk chopper while snapping recon photos of ancient Thracian passes over the Balkans. And that itself had been part of an operation in which he’d smuggled a Communist defector and his family out of Sofia, Bulgaria, negotiating miles of rugged, wooded terrain to eventually rendezvous with a Sturgeon-class submarine in the Black Sea…
Allison smiled a little. If she had heard that story from anyone but Harper, she might have smelled a very ripe fish.
To be sure, she’d learned nothing about his mysterious career from Julie during their time together at Mayo, or after moving on to her residency at Johns Hopkins, though they’d periodically stayed in touch with one another over the years. It was only after she’d been introduced to DCI Jonathan Harper sometime early in her tenure with the Agency that she’d registered the possible connection…and even then, her suspicions weren’t fully confirmed until she attended a dinner symposium in Washington at which both Harpers were guests, arriving at the affair arm in arm.
Still, she would have never imagined the legendary Harper would wind up seeking her out for therapy. Never viewed him as being made of flesh and blood like anyone else. Until the unthinkable occurred about two years ago.
Allison’s smile faded as she recalled the details of the shooting that nearly claimed his life. He’d been right on his doorstep after his morning run, doing some stretching exercises as Julie prepared breakfast inside. Right there on the doorstep of his General’s Row home. Harper did not so much as glimpse his female assailant until the first shot left her gun, clattered around his rib cage, and punctured his right lung. The next two shots had caught him in the arm as he’d reflexively whirled around to face her, and it was lucky he had been turning in that split second, because otherwise those bullets would have struck him square in the chest and inflicted more serious damage than they did. As it was, the fourth. 22-caliber slug to issue from her weapon barely missed his heart-and her intended fifth would have been the fatal shot.
What saved him was the chance proximity of a D.C. Metro police car over on Q Street. The officer inside the cruiser had heard the distinctive pops of gunfire, jolted to a halt, and pushed out his door just as the woman moved in to finish off the stricken Harper. He’d started pulling his gun, momentarily drawing her attention from her intended victim, but she had taken him out with one shot, killing him instantly. Meanwhile, Julie had heard the commotion, had come racing out onto the stoop, and had dragged her unconscious husband into the house.
Harper would later discover that he’d actually lost his vital signs for almost a full minute before the EMT wagon arrived. Were it not for Julie rapidly administering CPR and applying towels and pressure to staunch his hemorrhaging, he’d have died right there in his foyer, bleeding out on the carpet. He would later joke that marrying a nurse with a taste for expensive jewelry and clothes had finally yielded some practical dividends.
Besides Julie’s resuscitative and emergency first aid skills, the commotion on the street would prove a major aid to his survival, the gathering crowd outside the house having forced the gunwoman to run for cover. Unfortunately, it also gave her a perfect chance to blend in amid the morning foot traffic. Despite roadblocks and cordons and airport alerts-and even with a massive deployment of law-enforcement personnel, which the Washington media would liken to the hunt for John Wilkes Booth in terms of its geographic scope and allocation of manpower-she’d managed to go to ground.
It was about a month after Harper was released from the hospital that Julie left Allison a voice mail telling her to expect a call from him in the “next couple of days.” He’d been having bad dreams, night sweats, and sudden onsets of nervous tremors. He had feared for Julie’s safety to an extreme degree, to the point where he grew nervous whenever she left the house, and even more ill at ease when she was home alone. For a while he insisted to Julie that those episodes would pass. But she’d known they wouldn’t, not unless he got some professional help.
As it turned out, a couple of weeks, not days, would pass before Allison actually heard from him. Which came as no surprise. She’d dealt with CIA men for too long…their throwback macho ethos; the illogical shame born of associating trauma with weakness, vulnerability, and even cowardice; the assumption of guilt for everything negative they could not control. It was an embedded part of Agency culture that was difficult, and frequently impossible, to counteract.
Fortunately for Harper, his wife’s stubborn insistence had done the trick. And to give him his fair share of credit as well, he had listened, admitted he had problems, and had the courage to do something about them.
Sighing over her coffee cup, Allison shook off her thoughts and glanced at the pendulum clock again. Ten fifty-one. It was starting to look as if Harper’s compulsive earliness had gone by the wayside, after all…
Her intercom buzzed, prompting a wry smile. She’d always been okay with the notion of a mostly random universe. But throw her a few token constants-nothing to tag her as greedy — and she could nestle into existence with a far greater degree of comfort.
She punched the speaker button. “Tell Mr. Harper to come right in, Martha,” she said, rising from her chair before the receptionist could utter a word.
Harper entered a moment later. His graying hair impeccably trimmed, he looked fit and lean in a conservative gray Brooks Brothers suit, gray and red striped tie, white shirt, and buff cordovan wing tips.
“John, it’s been a long time,” she said, extending her hand.
He set down his briefcase and clasped her hand warmly in both of his. “Much too long,” he said. “Julie sends her regards. She’s been meaning to throw a get-together, invite some of our close friends for cocktails. But you know…”
“We’re all busy folks,” Allison said, thinking they both knew her days of socializing with Julie were over, beyond their yearly exchanges of Christmas cards and occasional breezy hi-how-are-yous over the telephone. For all intents and purposes, their closeness had ended once Allison became her husband’s therapist and was entrusted with confidences he could share with no one else, including, and sometimes especially, Julie herself. For Allison this had been expected; it came with the territory. The instant she’d agreed to assist with Harper’s psychological healing, she had understood that her responsibilities as his doctor would not only override her longtime friendship with his wife but most likely also require its sacrifice.
“Pour you some coffee?” she asked.
Harper declined with a quick shake of his head. “Trying to cut down on the caffeine intake,” he said. “My limit’s six cups before noon.”
She smiled. “That few?”
“Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays excepted,” he said.
“And weekends?”
“Two cups at breakfast, maximum. Scotch and water the rest of the way.”
Allison’s smile grew a bit larger. “I suppose progress is progress,” she said.
Harper was silent. After a moment she motioned him into the wingback leather chair in front of her desk, then went around to sit opposite him.
“So,” she said, “how’ve you been?”
“Personally, fine,” he said, hefting his briefcase onto his lap. “Professionally, troubled.”
She regarded him closely. “I don’t recall you ever having a clear-cut line of control there, John.”
Harper gave a shrug. “You said it yourself,” he said. “I’ve made progress.”
Allison kept studying his features in the sunlight streaming through the window behind her. She could see small, radiating creases at the corners of his eyes and mouth, which hadn’t been immediately apparent as he entered the room.
“When you called yesterday, you told me you needed to ask a favor,” she said. “Which side of this new Harper line does it fall on?”
“The troubled part,” he said. “As I think you might surmise.”
“Does it have anything to do with Sudan?”
He gave her a sharp look. “Pretty astute of you.”
“Not so much,” she said, leaning forward. “I read the papers…follow the stories about Sudan. And right now that’s monopolizing the headlines until you get to the gossip and sports pages.” She paused. “It’s evident that the president’s been under pressure from nearly all sides to retaliate. I assume that whatever’s coming at him publicly is being multiplied exponentially among his advisors. I also assume you’re one of the people who have his ear.”
“That’s debatable,” Harper said with a shrug. “I’ve taken the minority position, Allie.”
“Can you tell me what that means without spilling state secrets?”
“Generally,” Harper said, “it means I’ve urged patience. But after what happened to his niece, David Brenneman hasn’t had much of it with Omar al-Bashir. Or with me.”
“I get the sense your minority element isn’t very large.”
Harper smiled soberly. “He’s six foot three and weighs about a hundred eighty pounds,” he said. “And amiable.”
“Will he admit to having a coffee jones?”
“I think you’d have to ask him in the capacity of his analyst,” Harper said. “Given a choice right now, though, I’m very certain his preference would be to speak to you as a friend.”
Allison sat looking thoughtful for a full thirty seconds. “I’m listening, John,” she said then.
He took a long, deep breath. Allison noted that he had his hands on the hard-shell briefcase on his lap, his fingers spread out atop it, lightly pressing down on its black leather surface.
“You’ve heard of Ryan Kealey,” he said.
“Of course,” she said. “If memory serves, you recruited him, isn’t that right?”
“Memory serves,” Harper said.
Allison was nodding. “I was at Langley for nearly a decade,” she said. “In all that time, I can think of only one operative who managed to become the lead story on the evening news. Although it’s understandable how getting into a shoot-out on the streets of New York City can have that rather exceptional result.”
Harper had to chuckle. “Kealey admittedly had a flair for the dramatic,” he said.
“Past tense?”
“In terms of the Agency, yes,” Harper said.
Allison raised an eyebrow. “I’ve been out of the loop, granted. But somehow I’m surprised to hear that.”
“If you knew him, you wouldn’t be,” Harper said. “Kealey is…I suppose the word would be unorthodox. That’s sometimes brought attention to him. But he’s never gone looking for it. Or frankly even been keen on taking credit.”
“Can you tell me why he pulled out of the game?”
“He’s mostly been a reluctant player from the beginning, “Harper said. “And he’s been through a lot of things. Carries a lot around with him.”
“That isn’t so unusual,” Allison said. “The majority of my time at the Agency was spent trying to lift unnecessary burdens from people’s shoulders. But I suppose that’s true of any clinician.”
Harper sat a moment, crossed his ankle over his knee. “A question, Allie…Why did you pull out?”
“Is it really important?”
“It might be for your understanding.”
“Of Kealey?”
“And the reason I came here to talk to you this morning.”
“Which is presumably tied to Kealey.”
He gave a slow nod, waited, meeting her gaze with his own. After a while Allison shrugged.
“Every mind is a complicated piece of machinery,” she said. “If there’s one that isn’t functioning to optimal performance, and you’re going to muck around inside, you’d damn well better have steady hands. It’s serious business, whether someone comes to you because he or she has intimacy issues, problems with self-worth, or is phobic about crowds, clowns, riding in a car, or chickens.” She linked her fingers together more tightly on the desk. “But I didn’t mean to switch metaphors, John. So getting back to yours…At the Agency every game is high risk. I just felt that I was wearing down. And that’s when people make mistakes.”
Harper watched her in silence for a moment, lightly drumming his fingers on the case. “Did you lose someone?”
“Bad guys get away. Patients die. Loss comes with the job when you’re in the business of saving lives.”
“That doesn’t exactly answer my question.”
Allison gave a fleeting smile. “I guess you’ll have to settle, bub.” She nodded her chin at the briefcase. “So what’s in there that’s got you tapping out finger rolls, and how’s it related to the favor you’ve come to ask?”
Harper snapped his eyes down at his hands, frowning as if they’d been guilty of insubordination. Then he raised them back to her face.
“It goes back to what we were talking about when I walked in here. Sudan, President Brenneman, and your observation that retaliatory action may be imminent,” he said. “I’ve already told you I believe it would be a mistake at this point. I can’t tell you why I believe it, and I can’t tell you what I think is necessary to forestall that course of action…”
“But you’re hoping to find a way do it.”
He sat quietly again, his forehead seamed with concentration, the crow’s-feet Allison had noticed around his eyes spreading and deepening. “I’m going out on a limb telling you this, Allie. But there are things that need to be looked into under certain people’s radar. And I’m convinced Ryan Kealey is the only person capable of pulling off the job.”
“Have you asked him if he’s interested?”
“Not yet. And I can guarantee he won’t be. But I’m going to try to persuade him. It means flying fifteen hours and eight thousand miles, and that’s okay. When I reach him, though, I’m going to have only one crack at it.”
Allison sat there thinking. She was no mathematical whiz. But basic addition wasn’t a problem for her.
“You want me to profile him for you,” she said, pointing her chin at the briefcase. “Based on…what information?”
“His psych workups and personal history. Files going back years before he was Agency. Everything about everything in Ryan Kealey’s life.” He lifted the case off his lap and placed it on the desk. “It’s all in there for you to read and evaluate. And just to be harshly explicit, Allie, I’m requesting more than another psychological profile. What I want to know from you is how to push his buttons. Pull his strings. Manipulate him by any and all means possible. Whatever it takes to get him to come aboard.”
She went bold straight in her chair, eyes widening, boring into him, her shoulders as stiff as wooden pickets.
“My God, John…this is beyond unprincipled. Do you realize how many ethical codes you’re asking me to violate?”
Harper met her stare and didn’t blink. “I’d be breaking a few myself,” he said. “In fact, I’ve blown a few to smithereens just getting hold of his files. And probably more coming here to discuss them with you.”
Silence.
“If I agree to do this,” Allison said, “it would be done without conscience.”
“No, Allie. It wouldn’t. For a couple of reasons. The first is Kealey. It isn’t as if we just lost him at the Agency. He’s lost himself. I don’t know how else to put it. But the course he’s on right now isn’t a good one. Or the kind that lasts long before there’s a major train wreck.”
The Downbound Express. Allison looked at Harper as if he’d prepared for their conversation by wiretapping her earlier thoughts.
“And your second reason?”
“If I’m right in what I’m doing-and successful-you might be helping to prevent a tremendous, unnecessary amount of destruction. Americans’ lives are my primary concern. But we’re talking about people in Africa and elsewhere. And about possible escalation on a level I don’t even want to contemplate.”
She was shaking her head with a mix of incredulity and denial. “John…I wish you could be more specific.”
“I don’t have to be,” Harper said. “Look at the foreign governments with vested interests in Sudan. China. Russia. The old tried-and-true biggies. And then, of course, you have Bashir’s Moslem brethren who are on the cusp of supporting him.” He paused. “You used the word ‘retaliate.’ By definition that means hitting back. But contemplate for a minute what it would mean if the United States picked the wrong target for its vengeance.”
The renewed silence between them surpassed the previous one in its length and weight. Allison could feel it pressing on her like the compounded gravity inside some inescapable black hole. She willed a breath into her lungs, trying to absorb everything Harper had told her, struggling to put it into some sort of order and context.
It seemed forever before she managed to exhale.
“I’m not a world rescuer-not in the sense you are,” she said. “I take it one person at a time, you understand?”
Harper looked at her. “Yes,” he said. “I understand.”
She nodded, willing the immense weight that had borne on her to shift in his direction.
“Good,” she said firmly. “Because if I’m going to make a pact with you, the devil, or both, I mean to be able to live with it. Maybe not easily, and certainly not without lasting regret. But what I’m requiring that you provide in return will allow me to tenuously hang on to my self-respect. And maybe salvage something else besides.”
Harper’s expression showed that he had grasped her meaning at once.
“Kealey,” he said, articulating it with a single word. “You want Kealey.”
“And your commitment that I will have a chance to help him, whenever he’s through saving the world.” Allison said with another nod. “God forgive me if it borders on psychological manipulation. But get him here to me, just get him here, and I’ll prepare you for your meeting with him. And then find a way to live with this bargain.”
Harper was very still for a time, before he leaned forward in his chair, reaching a hand out to her. When Allison took it, there was no double handclasp, and it wasn’t nearly as warm as it had been. No, she thought, not now. And maybe never again.
She could tell Harper had felt the chill as he pulled his arm back across the desk, then rose from the chair.
“We’ll talk soon?” he said.
“As soon as possible.”
Harper nodded, turned, and walked toward the door, halting midway across the office. “One more question for you,” he said with a glance over his shoulder. “If you don’t mind.”
Her gesture fell somewhere between a nod and a shrug.
“What’s the clinical term for a fear of chickens?” he asked.
Allison looked at him, managing a faint smile. “Alektorophobia,” she said.
Harper grunted. “I’ll try to remember it,” he said. “To stump the guests when Julie and I finally get around to throwing that cocktail party.”
Her hands on the briefcase he had left on her desk, Allie had nothing more to say as she watched him leave the room.