“I’m not interested in a conversation,” he said after a moment. “I’m interested in hearing you tell me exactly how you’re going to rectify the most grievous personal fuckup I’ve witnessed in thirty years in intelligence. And I hope you have something compelling to tell me, Lisa. I really do. Because if this thing doesn’t get unfucked, and fast, you are going to be facing a long line of people, all with pay grades even higher than mine, looking to take your scalp.”
Did he not understand she would recognize the framing? They were taught as recruits never to threaten openly. Instead, they were taught to pose as the target’s protector and ally. Even if the target understands the subterfuge, the training went, he’ll still feel respected that you offered a fig leaf rather than a naked display of your power over him.
And then she realized: Of course he understands.
The shock, and hurt, and anger, were all suddenly underscored with fear. Had Devereaux really . . . turned on her like this? So quickly? So decisively?
“Help me,” he went on. “Help me help you. Because I don’t know who else is going to.”
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?