1 Alexandria, Virginia – May 2017
At Michael Dunne’s sentencing hearing at the federal courthouse in Alexandria, the judge asked if he was sorry for his crimes. She said that Dunne had flagrantly ignored the Central Intelligence Agency’s legal rules, and lied about it, and worst of all, that he had violated the constitutional rights of others by running an intelligence operation against American journalists. Did he understand the seriousness of this offense? The First Amendment was first for a reason. Did he truly regret what he had done?
Dunne had been coached by his lawyer, Mark Walden, to respond with remorse and contrition. The hearing was “in-camera,” and nobody cared what he said, other than the judge, so it should have been a no-brainer. A good man, a public servant, hardened by the world but still almost boyish with his thatch of red hair, a CIA officer who had made a mistake for which he was sorry. And he had planned to make the apology. He knew this was his best chance to recover what was left.
But Dunne couldn’t do it. A ripple of anger had crossed his face as he listened to the judge’s questions. He answered that he had done what he thought was right under the circumstances, on orders; he mumbled it at first, but then said it in a loud, unambiguous voice so there wasn’t any mistaking his meaning.
He wasn’t regretful in the least for his actions, only that he had failed in his mission. He had been assaulted by forces that he didn’t understand. What did he feel? the judge had asked. He felt a throbbing, consuming anger and a determination to someday obtain justice. But no, he wasn’t sorry for what he had done.
The judge applied the most extreme penalty that was available in the sentencing guidelines provided by the government in the plea agreement. She ordered Dunne to serve a one-year prison term on the single felony count of making false statements to the FBI about his violation of agency regulations. The judge glowered at Dunne as he was led out of the courtroom. Arrogant man, her face said. Dunne walked out with his head raised and shoulders back, refusing to slouch away like the beaten, destroyed man she wanted him to be.
Dunne wasn’t any more repentant when his lawyer told him a few minutes later that he had been childish and could have gotten off with community service if he’d followed advice. “Fuck off,” Dunne muttered, and then apologized. It wasn’t Walden’s fault. The fact was, Dunne truly didn’t care. That’s what happens to you when everything that matters has been shattered: You become so angry that you want to hurt people, starting with yourself.
But life changes. Or, as in Dunne’s case, it gets ground up into little pieces that eventually begin to fit back into some kind of order, so that you begin to see things more clearly. Not at first, but after a while. You learn things about how the world works that you couldn’t have imagined, even if you were in the business of stealing secrets, as Dunne had been. You see that the adversaries you have been chasing are allied with the friends you thought you were helping. The world slips and stutters, as you try to find your balance.
You learn a lot about revenge, too, when that becomes your consuming passion. You think at first that it’s about driving toward a target as straight as you can, but you discover that it’s more of an arc that bends back on itself, and you, the closer you get to the truth.
2 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – May 2018
On the morning that Michael Dunne was released from the Federal Correctional Institution at Petersburg, Virginia, the deputy warden offered him a $500 “release gratuity,” which he refused. The deputy wished him well and, when Dunne didn’t answer, he said, “I’m sorry.”
Dunne was solid and contained as a toolbox. He had lost weight and added muscle since he’d gone to prison, so that his body fit like a suit that was a size too small. His striking red hair now enveloped his face, with a russet beard he had grown in prison. His eyes were bright and curious – still, after everything he had lived – but they were masked by the black frames of his sunglasses.
Dunne walked out of the gate feeling the lightness of freedom and the weight of anger. He was fitter than a year before. He had spurned the starchy food they pushed on inmates, and his chief pleasure all those months had been exercising his body. He could do more sit-ups than he ever imagined or wanted to. He had turned forty during that year in prison; he hadn’t told anyone his birthday, but the warden saw it in Dunne’s file and sent him a card.
Traveling home wasn’t easy. Dunne took a bus from Petersburg to Richmond, and then a flight from Richmond to Pittsburgh, via Charlotte. The releasing officer had asked him to identify someone who would be meeting him when he arrived. Dunne had put down his mother’s name, to be cooperative, but she had died four years before. He didn’t want to see anyone yet. He had a new suit of clothes, but they smelled like prison.
* * *
The Pittsburgh horizon was a low, thin gray, the color of cigarette ash, as Dunne’s taxi drove toward the Fort Pitt Tunnel from the airport. Dunne scanned the landscape, trying to remember what it had looked like when he was a boy. He closed his eyes; he hadn’t eaten all day, and he felt light-headed.
And then, suddenly, he was home: When they exited the tunnel, he saw the dazzling flash of color and light at “the Point,” where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers meet to form the Ohio, and between them the dense triangle of office towers of this beaten-down but resilient city.
Dunne whispered, “Wow,” and the cabdriver answered, “Yes, sir.”
Dunne didn’t call anyone the first day, or the second. He thought of phoning his ex-mother-in-law, to ask about his ex-wife, but he knew that would be a mistake. He checked into a hotel downtown and slept for fourteen hours. It was the first time in a year he hadn’t faced a bed count at midnight, three a.m., and five a.m.
When he awoke, he took a taxi to a car dealer south of the city and bought a used Ford Explorer. He paid cash, drawn from an account he had kept open through his incarceration. The salesman shrugged when Dunne listed his previous address as Federal Correctional Complex, Petersburg, Virginia.
“I’m from here, originally,” Dunne said. “Mon Valley.” The salesman nodded. He was from Youngstown, Ohio. He’d been selling cars ever since he lost his job in the mill, thirty years before.
Dunne drove the car off the lot and stopped at a supermarket a block away. He bought a Steelers hat for himself and some roses to leave at his mother’s grave. He had missed her funeral back in 2014. He was on assignment and hadn’t wanted to ask for compassionate leave. And he hadn’t been ready to come home then.
Dunne studied his Steelers cap before he placed it atop his red curls. The colors of the three stars in the logo each used to mean something: yellow for coal; orange for iron ore; and blue for steel scrap. Now the pattern just reminded people of an NFL football team.
He steered his SUV down the twists of the Monongahela toward McKeesport. It was like an X-ray world, where everything that had once been bright had gone dark. The belching blast furnaces and coke ovens and the acres-long rolling mills that had lined the river were nearly all gone. The workers who had lost their jobs but stayed on stubbornly at first were mostly gone now, too; dead, like his mother, or run away to Florida with a new spouse, like his alcoholic father.