Empire

he had something to hide. And since he did have something to hide, and was about to make it obvious that he did, the last thing he wanted to do was signal them that he was watching out for watchers.

What twisted thinking. Will they guess that I guessed that they’d know I’d assume they were there? But that was part of the training of Special Ops, especially if you were going to be in country on a longterm assignment. You couldn’t take anything at face value. You constantly had to think: How will this action look to them? How will they interpret what I say and do? How should I interpret what their words and actions say about what they believe about me? On and on, never achieving certainty, but getting closer. If you got close enough, you succeeded in your mission. Not so close and you failed. Way not close and you died.

The George Washington Parkway was open again, as were the bridges, and traffic from the District was still flowing out in a much-delayed rush hour. Reuben patiently stayed with the stop-and-go traffic. Getting onto the Beltway southbound took forever, but he stayed with it to the Chain Bridge Road exit, then went around Tysons II till he could get under the toll road overpass and enter the onramp at Spring Hill. There were only two tollbooths there, and sure enough, the human-manned one was being tied up by a guy who had apparently dropped his money and was out of his car looking for it.

Reuben didn’t recognize him, but he didn’t expect to. His team would have their own networks of friends who could be called on to fill assignments they didn’t necessarily understand. “It’s connected with the current national emergency, and it’s a good guy we’re helping.” That would be enough.

He tossed his coins into the basket and moved on through. In his rearview mirror he caught only a glimpse of the driver behind him—who also apparently threw his coins on the ground and had to get out of the car to get them.

The tollbooth operator would have a story to tell tonight. “Two idiots at the same time! It’s a wonder we can even field an Olympic team, when these people can’t hit a two-foot-wide basket that’s a foot from their car.”

Of course, if the guys following him were any good, they already had somebody waiting on the toll road to pick up the tail, but he’d be off by then.

When he got to Reston Town Center he wasn’t sure how to proceed—surely they wouldn’t all be sitting at a big table eating guacamole.

He didn’t get a chance to see the inside of the restaurant. As he pulled up past McCormick and Shmick he spotted Mingo—Domingo Camacho—who crossed the street in front of him, pointing once at the parking garage across the street. Reuben made the left turns to get up into the garage and kept going up to the third level, where Mingo stepped out from the elevator area just in time to stop him. A car pulled out of a parking place as if on cue —because it was on cue—and Reuben pulled his car into the spot.

Mingo put his fingers to his lips and walked to the passenger door. Reuben rolled down the window and through it, Mingo handed him the shopping bag he was carrying. Chino shorts, T-shirt, flip-flops.

Reuben slid past the gearshift and changed clothes in the passenger seat. He thought of keeping his briefs on but decided against it; and that was apparently what Mingo had thought as well, because when he got the clothes out of the bag, there were briefs among them. Everything his size. These guys were good. Thank heaven he hadn’t gained any weight since his Special Ops days. This was where the endless workouts paid off. Reuben was determined never to be one of those sad fat officers who no longer even pretended to live in a battle-ready state.

If he stayed in the service long enough to be a general.

If he stayed alive and out of prison.

With his clothes completely changed, he put the cellphones into his new pockets, put his keys above the visor, and locked the car. It would be easy to open the car later, with the codepad on the door.

He walked with Mingo, still wordless, to a car parked in a handicapped stall. But these guys had been so thorough that a legal-looking handicapped tag was hanging from the rearview mirror. It probably was legal, given how pathetically easy it was to get those tags these days.

Mingo pointed to the rear passenger seat, where Reuben lay down on the floor as Mingo closed the door behind him, then got in front and drove. Reuben didn’t try to look and see where they were going—trust meant you didn’t expose your face in order to second-guess the route.

That didn’t mean Reuben could turn off the part of his brain that automatically counted turns and estimated distances. When he figured they were on Route 7, heading back toward Tyson’s Corner, Reuben finally spoke.

“Am I supposed to stay down here till we get where we’re go-ing?”

Mingo picked up his cellphone from the cup holder in the center console, flipped it open, and only then answered Reuben, so that if someone saw him talking they’d think it was on the phone. “Safer, don’t you think? We go to all this trouble, it’d be pretty dumb to have one of your tails spot your big happy white face just by chance.”

“Destination?”

“Play along, Rube. I want you to guess.”

“Not a restaurant where we have a waiter who can overhear us. But a place where it’s okay for a bunch of guys to gather around and talk in Farsi. So that means something like a Starbucks or a bookstore with a cafe in it. We’re on Route 7 so I’m betting on the Borders across from the Marriott in Tyson’s Corner.”

“Shit,” said Mingo.

“Is that a good shit or a bad shit?”

“Bad.”

“How much you lose?”

“Just a dollar, but you know Benny. ‘Never bet against the Rube.’ ”

“Is that what he says?”

“I wasn’t betting against you” said Mingo. “I was betting that Benny’s plan sucked so you’d think of a better one and assume that’s what we’d do.”

“Good plan so far,” said Reuben. “But I have one more man to bring to the party.” From the floor of the van he called Cole and spoke only a single sentence, in Farsi: “Borders on Route 7 in the Corners now.” Couldn’t say “Tyson’s Corner” because “Tyson” didn’t translate.

Not that the people tailing him wouldn’t already have gotten a Farsi translator after Load’s words to him in the airport. So if Cole had been careless, or somebody had opened DeeNee’s lunch in the break-room fridge, this would bring his tails right back on him, and implicate everybody else in whatever conspiracy they supposed him to be part of. But you had to take some risks, or you might as well pull a Saddam and hide in a hole somewhere till you were arrested and put through a show trial.

They got to the Borders and soon had taken over two tables and eight chairs in the coffee shop.

Speaking quietly in Farsi, Reuben quickly explained how his own plan had been used to kill the President. Cole arrived—in civvies, mercifully—and Reuben introduced him around.

But Cole had to know more than just names. “Were you a team once? I mean, in-country?”

“We’ve all been in the same team with Rube, one time or another,” said Arty Wu. “But that was long ago and far away.”

“We’re his jeesh now,” said Mingo.

Cole knew his Arabic, even when the word was dropped into the midst of Farsi. “His army?”

“His little tiny army,” said Load. “Because he’s our hero.”

“We’re guys who trust each other,” said Reuben.

“And were really good at killing bad guys,” said Drew.

“So we gave our club a scary Arabic name,” said Babe.

“Cole, tell them about the meeting we had outside the White House,” said Reuben.

If Cole wondered why Reuben, who knew more, was having him make the report, he didn’t show it. Cole’s Farsi was okay—good enough, and now and then when he struggled somebody would supply a word. The idea wasn’t to impress them with his language ability. They needed to hear Cole’s voice and see that Reuben trusted him, despite having met each other only today.

“My family is with Aunt Margaret Diklich in West Windsor, N.J.,” said Reuben in Farsi. “Unless I can think of a better plan, I’m driving up there tomorrow, because by now the FBI or whoever’s tailing me knows I have a ticket to La Guardia. I have no plans beyond that, except that I’d like to not be arrested while I’m trying to find out who gave those plans to the terrorists and what their goal really is.”

“You mean you don’t think it stops with killing the President and Vice President?” asked Arty Wu. “That’s kind