Dead Watch

“He used to be married to Nikki Lange, you know.”

Her eyebrows went up: “You’re kidding me. He’s the guy?”

“He’s the guy. Couldn’t last, of course. Nikki’s too deeply involved with herself.”

“And her money,” Madison said. “Did he get alimony?”

“No. He told the judge that all he was asking for was his life. The judge almost fell on the floor laughing—she knew Nikki, too. Besides, Jake’s pretty well fixed. Inherited a Montana ranch. Sold to a movie star for big bucks.”

“Maybe he rides,” she said.

“I’m sure he does.” Black smiled. “I was watching you two talk—you got sort of engaged.”

She stuck her tongue out at him, then said, “He’s not entirely unattractive.”

Black snorted. “Just . . . take it easy. Jake is a little strong for most people. As I understand it, he pretty much held his own with Nikki.”

“He jumps out of airplanes?”

“Jake was in Afghanistan for years. He killed people—that was his job. So. You can toy with him, but I wouldn’t annoy him.”

“Mmm,” she said again. “Maybe he can do something. Maybe we need somebody who’ll jump out of an airplane.”

Jump out of an airplane.

He dreamed of jumping out of airplanes that night, jumping all mixed up with the face and figure of Madison Bowe; but mostly jumping. Other jumpers talked about their best moment; popping the chute, flying . . . but for Jake, it had always been that instant when he hit the wind, hit the slipstream, the slap and tickle, the moment of commitment.

He’d liked Afghanistan, the fighting, the comradeship, the countryside, the Afghanis. In Washington ex-military circles, the fashion called for a grudging, manly acknowledgment of having been there, of the toughness of it, but nobody was supposed to have actually liked it, to have loved the exhilaration of combat.

But he did. He’d liked the night runs, he’d liked the ambushes, he’d liked the assaults. He hadn’t minded, too much, the occasional pain, right up until the time he took the bad one. He hadn’t even minded that pain, though he hated the disability that came with it.

He didn’t dream of the disability, though: he dreamed of the airplane door, of the helicopter rope, of the night- vision stalks through the rocky ravines . . .

He didn’t wake up smiling, but he didn’t wake up unhappy, either.

In the morning, after his usual four and a half hours of sleep, he cleaned up and went downstairs, ate toast and eggs, then spent an hour with online newspapers, catching up. When he’d finished with the papers, he went out on the government networks, going deeper on Lincoln Bowe and Arlo Goodman. By seven-thirty, he had their biographies down. He made a call to the FBI, then called a cab.

The day would be warm, he thought, as he locked the door. It must have rained sometime overnight, because the gardens and sidewalks were still wet, but now the skies were clearing again, and sun slanted down through the trees along the street. Because of the torn-up sidewalk, and construction equipment in the street, he walked out to the end of the block to wait for the taxi.

The driver was maybe twenty-one, silent, sullen even, wearing an old tweed coat over a T-shirt, and a flat tweed hat.

“Hard night?” Jake asked.

The driver’s eyes went up to the mirror. “They’re all hard, buddy.”

Jake suppressed a smile: the cabbie was living in a movie, delivering movie lines.

The FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover Building was a bland outcrop of bureaucratic rock on Pennsylvania Avenue, halfway between the White House and the Capitol. Jake checked through security, got an elevator. He didn’t need directions.

Mavis Sanders was the FBI’s assistant deputy director for counterterrorism. She met him at the door to her inner office. “Another headache,” she said. She was smiling, but her voice wasn’t.

“How have you been, Mavis?” Jake asked. He kissed her on the cheek.

“My day wasn’t too bad until seven-thirty A.M., when I got the note that said you were coming over,” she said.

“C’mon, we’re old chums.”

“Yeah. Sit down, old chum.” She was a slender fine-boned black woman who’d made her reputation tracking Iranian-based jihadists. She dropped into her chair, looked at a piece of paper, set it aside, knitted her fingers on top of her desk, and asked, “What’s up?”

“The president and the chief of staff have decided that I should find Lincoln Bowe. I need access to your investigative files, and then I need you—somebody, but preferably you—to make this thing a priority and get it settled.”