The Ghost War

us?”

The mole put the bottle on the table. No more whiskey. He needed to think clearly now, and quickly. The strange part was that he really did want to comfort Janice. But first he had to figure how close they were. “This woman, honey, who did she say she was?”

Janice lowered her hands. She seemed perplexed at the turn the conversation had taken. “Said her name was Joanne.” She pulled a crumpled business card out of a dish on the table and handed it to him. “Said she was a consultant.”

The mole examined it as though it were a tarot card holding the secret to his future. Which in a way it was. Ender Consulting, a Professional Corporation. Joanne Ender, MBA. Beneath the name a phone number and an e- mail address. The mole wanted to call, but whether or not Ender Consulting was real, the number would go to a professional-sounding voicemail. And if it was a trap, they’d have a pen register on the line and they’d know he called. He tucked the card into his shirt pocket. He’d check later. “Did she ask anything about me, Jan?”

“What? No.”

“Please. I know it seems like a strange question, but think on it.”

Janice twisted her hands. “I told you we didn’t talk long. She mentioned her kids and I started to get upset, so I made her go.”

“Did she look around the house? The basement?”

“Of course not. Why?”

“Did you ask the Healys about her? If she actually went to their house?”

“She was just some lady asking about the neighborhood. What are you so worried about? Is she your girlfriend?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m not stupid, Eddie. Don’t make things worse than they already are.”

“Sweetie. I promise I’m not having an affair with this woman.”

“Swear.”

“I swear on Mark’s grave.” He’d never said anything like that before.

“Do you love me?”

“Do I love you? What kind of question is that? Yes. Of course I do.” The mole surprised himself with the words. But as he said them, he knew they were true. For too long he’d forgotten that Janice was a real person. “Do you love me?”

As an answer, she put her arms around him and sobbed into his shoulder. “Can we just start again, Eddie? Can’t we?”

Strange to hear the question asked so baldly, the mole thought. Like they could dunk themselves in a river and wash away not just their sins but their whole messy lives. Stranger still that the answer was yes. He had the means and the motive to leave all this behind. Because maybe he was panicking, but he didn’t think so.

The polygraph. Wen’s defection. George not showing up this morning. Now this woman visiting. Too many coincidences too soon. Nothing definitive, but if he waited for definitive he’d wind up in a cell or a wooden box. Both Ames and Hanssen had known the walls were closing in. They just hadn’t had the guts to run. Now they were spending their lives in prison.

“Jan. What if I said yes? What if we could start again?”

“I think I’d like that.”

“We’d have to change our names. Leave the country.” He couldn’t believe what he was saying.

She didn’t freak out. She giggled.

“I’m not kidding. We’d have to do it now.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Do you want a new life or not?” Sailing around the Caribbean, fishing, hanging out. Maybe buying a cabin somewhere, trying again to have a baby. It would be a long shot, but what wasn’t?

“Yes, but—” She stopped, stood up, looked around the kitchen. “Could we take Lenny? And where would you work? Your job is so important.”

The mole’s visions of beachfront paradise faded. This wouldn’t work, he saw. When she said start over, she meant that they should take a vacation, be sweeter to each other. The things normal people meant. Not dropping everything and moving to Indonesia. Anyway, he didn’t have a fake passport for her, or any way to get one. And what would she think when she saw his face on TV? The FBI has named Keith Edward Robinson, a veteran CIA employee, as a person of interest in an ongoing espionage investigation….Keith Robinson, who disappeared two weeks ago, is suspected of the greatest intelligence breachin more than twenty years….Authorities now say they believe fugitives Keith and Janice Robinson have fled the country….

“Got that right, sweetie.” He made himself laugh. “And we can’t leave Lenny. Guess we’ll make do here.”

That night he lay beside her, listening to the suburban night, sprinklers rattling on and off to keep the lawns green. He was afraid, he couldn’t pretend he wasn‘t, but excited too. His last night in this bed, this house, this life. He supposed he’d known all along that the path he’d taken would end this way.

He’d had sex that night with Janice, not once but twice, the first time in years. Ironic. But not surprising. Part of her knew he wasn’t joking about leaving. Part of her wouldn’t be surprised when she woke up and found him gone.

He rolled out of bed, quietly, sure not to wake her. He padded out of the bedroom, down the stairs, into the basement. And there he unlocked his safe and filled a canvas bag with everything he needed.

26

EAST CHINA SEA, NEAR SHANGHAI

EVERY DAY HENRY WILLIAMS THANKED GOD he’d been given the chance to command the USS Decatur. He knew it sounded like a cliche, but it was true. Nothing was better than controlling a five-hundred-foot-long destroyer armed with enough cruise missiles to level a city, or steaming into Bangkok or Sydney beside a carrier loaded with F-18s. The oceans were the world’s last frontier, and the United States Navy ruled them, full stop.

Plus Williams found life aboard the Decatur satisfying in a way he would never have imagined growing up as a landlubber in Dallas. He didn’t come from a Navy family. He’d chosen Annapolis mainly because the academy’s basketball coach had offered him the chance to start his freshman year. But after twenty-two years in the service, Henry Williams had fallen in love with the ocean — or more precisely, with the ships that plied its waves.

The sea was unpredictable, but the Decatur‘s rhythm was steady as a heartbeat. Its floors were scrubbed each day. Its bells chimed every half-hour. In the ward-room, the tablecloths were spotless, the silverware polished. Williams could no longer accept the chaos of real life, life on land. So his wife, Esther, had told him three years ago, when she filed for divorce. She still loved him, but she no longer understood him, she said. Williams didn’t try to change her mind. In his heart he knew she was right.

Within the Decatur, Williams’s word was law. He could call a general-quarters drill at noon or midnight. Demand that the laundry room be scrubbed until it shined — then scrubbed again for good measure. The 330 sailors and officers aboard the Decatur obeyed his orders without question. Nowhere in the world was the chain of command followed more closely than aboard ship.

And that discipline was vitally important now, with the Decatur in hostile waters, at the forward edge of the Ronald Reagan carrier strike group, almost in sight of the Chinese coast. Even the dimmest of the Decatur’s crew knew that the United States was close to war with China. The tension aboard the ship was palpable from the engine room to the bridge, and nowhere more than among the sonar operators, who had the job of listening to the ship’s SQR-19 towed array. The biggest threat to the Decatur came from the Chinese submarines that lurked in the shallow waters off the coast.