An Honorable Man (17 page)

Mueller's recollection emerged from its past in that moment on the water. Perhaps it was Altman's offhand comment, which Mueller didn't understand, or the fog, or the sculls, which were like the ones in the boathouse, or the tone of Altman's smug self-confidence,
Well, jolly good for you.

Mueller's oar came out of its saddle and traveled in a long arc that struck the surface and sent a stream of spray Altman's way. Suddenly, a crack. Mueller felt the hard contact of the end of his oar and he saw Altman slump and go underwater. He emerged a moment later, gasping for air, wet hair flat on his forehead. Blood came from an inch-long gash above the eye and the crimson flow washed across his cheek. He clung by one hand to Mueller's scull and drew the other across his forehead and then inspected his palm.

“I'm okay,” he said.

“My fault,” Mueller said. Mueller put out his arm, and Altman clamped on, so the two men's forearms were coupled by their wrists, and Mueller hauled Altman onto his boat, legs dangling over the side. Altman removed his cold, soaked sweatshirt and shivered. Mueller went to strip off his shirt, but stopped when Altman waved off the offer of dry clothing. Instead, Alt
man wiped his hand across his chest and displayed a crimson palm to Mueller.

“This is how I'll die. On the water. Struck by someone I thought was a friend.”

Altman laughed, a short laugh, a self-conscious laugh, then a longer laugh. The two men found themselves laughing, laughing at nothing, looking at each other and laughing more, an infectious laughter fueled by an understood absurdity that neither could put into words. In the midst of the laughter, Altman slipped.

Mueller grabbed his arm and kept him from falling. A touch. Altman's hand took hold of Mueller's chest in his effort to keep his balance. His hand lingered a moment. Eyes met. Altman slipped into the water and in a moment he had climbed into his boat and was pulling hard toward the boathouse.

Mueller started after him, but he let himself fall back and then he found himself alone in the cloaking fog. He yanked on his oars, drifted, pulled again harder, and with each stroke his anger rose. He felt good about striking Altman, and that made him feel uncomfortable.

14

A PERSON OF INTEREST

M
UELLER WASN'T
prepared for what happened next. When he later reconstructed the chain of events, he convinced himself that he could not have foreseen the danger. Even the regular exercise of caution is a poor defense against the diligent working of an intelligent adversary.

It was a quiet week in Washington and he'd made a few short visits to the office, but he kept his time there to a minimum to avoid seeing colleagues and having to answer questions about his time, or lack of time, at the sanitarium. On the fifth evening he passed the post office box on L Street and he saw Vasilenko's double chalk mark. Two lines.
Something is up
. Mueller looked at his watch. He had half an hour to reach the agreed drop point. It wasn't just the time he worried about. There were documents inside his briefcase that he should have left in his office safe, but how was he to know that he'd see Vasilenko's mark on his way
home? He rejected returning to Quarter's Eye, or going home. There wasn't time.

Dense fog laid its false peace over Union Station. The limestone façade was bone-white in evening spotlights, and traffic sped around the fountain on its way to drop off or pick up passengers. Mueller waited for the green-and-white trolley to pass and then quickly crossed the tracks. He gained the sidewalk and entered the loggia, glancing down the hall of pendulous iron lamps chained to the ceiling. Passengers from a late-arriving train hurried through the corridor in bulky overcoats on their way to taxis queued at the end of the portico.

Mueller entered the great hall with its vaulted ceiling rising high above the marble floor. He observed men whose backs were turned, and when he confirmed they weren't Vasilenko, he moved to the next. Mueller saw two Metropolitan police at the far end of the hall strolling among the wood benches. A barbershop was shuttered, and next door the cashier of a newsstand was locking up for the night. The shoeshine stand was empty. A bar that catered to soldiers heading back to base was the only spot where convivial men and women gathered for a drink before boarding their train. A few of these tipsy commuters gawked at one wall where a giant electric locomotive jutted into the hall through a shattered wall, its black brow dusted in white and dented from impact. A month before, brakes on the overnight train from Boston had failed.

Mueller looked up at the mighty clock that dominated one end of the hall. The six-foot arm traveled around the dial, once gilded, now darkened with soot and grime. Trust the plan. How
long would he wait? Maybe the Russian had been held up. There was always a crisis somewhere, or a last-minute request to work late in the embassy. Spies weren't like trains, they didn't operate by the clock. Things happened. Even to trains things happened. He glanced at the huge locomotive that looked like a mechanical mole broken through an underground wall. Mueller had never gotten used to the waiting. You can't train for that. The hardest part was not knowing.

How many times had he stood here? This exact spot. There was something illusionary about time and space, which is why whenever he came home from a trip and paused by the exit under the giant clock he felt like he'd never been gone. Past trips came back to him as he stood there, all existing at the same time in memory. Mueller saw the huge arm jerk forward a notch, slicing off a minute of the future, and come to a quivering halt. 9:05 p.m.

Where was Vasilenko? Mueller's eyes went to people standing behind the police tape, eyes moving from one man to the next, looking for a big man in a floppy fedora.

There! Their eyes met. An acknowledgment. Vasilenko had emerged from the men's bathroom and crossed the great hall to the second exit, avoiding Mueller, but the doors were locked due to the late hour, and he was forced to approach. As he came to the doors he stepped quickly to the side, joining Mueller in the shadow of an overhang.

“This isn't right,” he hissed.

What wasn't right?
“I'm here.”

“You're late.” Vasilenko glanced back and let his eyes search
the faces of people moving along the far wall under the frieze of stone escutcheons displaying iron ties, hammers, and protean workers in symbolic celebration of progress. Passengers from the just-arrived
Silver Meteor
pushed from the gate into the waiting crowd. A name was called out. A cry of excitement, the quick race across the vast floor, the two people stopping in a public embrace.

“We shouldn't be seen together. This isn't good.”

“Is it inside?”

“What do you think?” Vasilenko nodded at Mueller's briefcase. “For me?”

“No, there wasn't time. I only saw the mark an hour ago. I can't get cash that fast.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow. Noon. Inside the vestibule. The usual spot.”

Vasilenko flicked his cigarette to the floor and ground it under his heel. “Don't be late.”

  •  •  •  

Mueller entered the men's bathroom. Harsh fluorescent light aspirated the brightness of the white tile walls and the odor of mint cleaner mentholated the air. Mueller took the precaution to confirm there was no one in a stall. His only company was a middle-aged man in a business suit at the urinal. He leaned back from the wall, hand in crotch, and turned to Mueller, eyes urgent and signaling. Mueller looked away.
Jesuschrist
. A lousy spot for a dead drop. That damn fool Vasilenko picking a public bathroom. What was he thinking?

The man entered a stall.

Mueller removed an envelope wedged in the gap between cast iron radiator and the tile wall. The package didn't fit in his coat pocket, so he folded it in a newspaper he pulled from the trash and tucked it under his arm.

Mueller left the men's room with the brisk stride of a traveler anxious to get home. He repeated the mantra,
Stay calm
, but his legs moved like those of a man who wanted to get away from the spot as quickly as possible. Just beyond the door two men stood shoulder to shoulder, blocking his path. Trench costs, stern faces, and wide-brim hats pulled down on their foreheads. Mueller stepped to the right to avoid them, but they moved as he moved, then confronted him.

“Sir.”

Mueller turned to the man who had spoken, stout, vaguely unpleasant, with wire-rim glasses that had the thickest lenses Mueller had ever seen. “Yes.”

“FBI.” He flashed a wallet with a badge. “Do you mind coming with us?”

Mueller's mind was in revolt.
Think! Think!
His eyes moved in the direction the agent had pointed to gain time.
Think!
“What's the problem?” he asked.

“We have a few questions. Right this way.”

Mueller felt the man's grip on his arm and he allowed himself to be led through the train station. He was hustled outside and then a hand lowered his head and he was shoved into the backseat of a sedan. His briefcase and the envelope had found their way into the hands of one of his escorts. Mueller sat quietly be
tween the two agents, but his mind was a turmoil of dread. What should he say, or not say, and how should he explain himself? The car sped through empty streets. Bright lights from intersection street lamps patterned the driver's face, but Mueller didn't recognize him either. He had nothing to say—not yet. He wouldn't be able to talk himself out of his predicament with these agents. Mueller's worry kept coming back to the sinking feeling that they'd known he would be there.

The next hour was unpleasant. He was made to wait in a windowless cell somewhere in the bowels of a temporary office building erected during the war to meet the needs of a burgeoning bureaucracy and never removed. They had taken everything—envelope, newspaper, briefcase, coins, house keys, wallet. They'd been polite but they didn't answer any of his questions.
What is going on? Why am I here?
He'd resisted the impulse to object—yell, actually. It would make him feel better, but it would not change things. They were following orders or procedures. When they took the briefcase, he said, “You'll have to pay for the lock if you break it.”

Room 8 had two wood chairs and a small, battered table. He tried the doorknob but found it locked. Of course it would be locked, he thought, but sometimes people got sloppy. Vasilenko got sloppy. What else explained the error? The FBI had followed the unsuspecting new guy. It didn't matter how diligent Mueller was if the man on the other end of the bargain was careless.

The door to Room 8 burst open. Mueller had his head in his hands on the table, staring at nothing, and the door startled him. The muscular agent wore a tailored suit oddly formal for the late
hour, and a loose necktie. Young, bright-eyed, slightly apologetic, arms akimbo.

“So you're the CIA guy. I'm Agent Peters. Good to meet you. Agent Walker thinks you're a pretty swell fellow.”

Mueller arched an eyebrow. “He does, does he?” Mueller mumbled something meant to convey modesty. Gratuitous compliments bothered Mueller. Flattery held in its offering the possibility of an unwanted seduction.

“So what were you doing in Union Station?”

Mueller gave a story about the spectacle of the train wreck drawing crowds and he'd gone to see what the commotion was all about. Mueller saw skepticism crisp the agent's face. They both knew this was a game. Agent Peters placed things taken from Mueller on the table like an offering: his wallet, keys, loose change, a handwritten note from Beth, even the ticket stub from her performance at the National Theater that had stayed in his pocket all week.

Mueller looked up. “My briefcase?”

“There's another agent on his way. He'll have questions for you.”

Mueller knew the danger he was in. A trio of missteps had put him in jeopardy. An unauthorized meeting with the other side. His briefcase had held classified cables, now in the hands of people not authorized to read them. It would get him a reprimand—another. Failure to lock his safe at night. Removing documents from the office. He was less concerned about that oversight. The danger lay in Vasilenko's documents. Information that suggested Mueller was doing the FBI's job would sound alarms, excite calls, raise concerns. Mueller didn't know how to evaluate that risk.

  •  •  •  

Midnight. The sound of his name. His leg had gone to sleep. He wished the rest of him would join it. It was excruciating to be awake on a hard chair, wanting the sedation of sleep but being too keyed up to succumb. Mueller opened his eyes. A man in the door. Mueller looked at his watch. An hour. It felt like an eternity.

“George Mueller?”

Who did they think was in the room? Insufferable underlings tested his urge to say something he might regret. “Yes.”

“I'm Agent Colson.”

The bright light revealed the man's ugliness. He was the one from Union Station. He had a fat neck, wire-rim eyeglasses that pressed into the flesh on his temples, thick lenses that made his eyes small and intense, like a bird of prey, and a single black hair sprouted from a discolored mole on his chin.

“Do you have anything to say?”

Mueller focused on the man's eyes to avoid staring at the mole hair. “About?”

“What you were doing in Union Station?”

“When did it become a crime to be in a train station?”

“You're not going to answer?”

“I just did.”

“You can make this easy or you can make this difficult.”

“Let's go with the easy. How's that?”

Agent Colson leaned forward and put his face close enough to Mueller to taste the foul breath of his growled words. “Don't fuck with me.”

Mueller sat back in his chair and took a moment to consider the flash of anger on the agent's face. He knew the drill, the intimidation, the pressure to make a mistake that would be used against him. So Mueller relented to the interrogation. The agent's questions came at a staccato clip, one after the other, questions repeated as if his answer had been forgotten, and when he repeated his answer he got back hostile silence. No, he didn't know what was in the envelope. He had not opened it. No, he didn't read Russian. After an hour of this, Agent Colson walked out.