A few seconds later, he came in with Lynx.
“No one knew Dr. Charles was leaving?” Deck asked me.
I pointed at Lynx. “His driver took her.”
“Took her where?” Lynx asked.
“To visit her parents.”
“You didn’t know about this?” Decker asked him.
“Of course I didn’t.” Lynx pulled out his phone and placed a call.
“He’s your driver; how did you not know?” I asked.
“Tell me what he looked like.”
“The driver?”
After I’d described him, Lynx placed another call. “I need transport arranged from Boston to Cape Cod.” He ended the call.
“What’s your plan?” Deck asked.
“I’d like to wring her neck before we return.”
“You might not want to bring Emerson back right away.”
Bingo. That was the setup Deck, Cope, and I had discussed. In order to have enough time to plant evidence suggesting I was the mole—or double agent—we needed her to stay away from MIT for several days, at least.
“Why not?”
I watched Decker hand Lynx an envelope, the contents of which I’d already read.
“What’s this?”
“Background on Emerson’s father.”
I was sure Decker shared my hope that learning about Matrix would distract Lynx from asking any more questions about why Emme needed to be kept away from her office.
“Thanks for this,” Lynx said after reading through it.
“I’ll brief you on what else we know as we know it.”
“My transport is waiting,” he said, walking into the main room to say goodbye to the three other men in the apartment, all of whom were on their laptops.
After Lynx said goodbye to Rile, Grinder, and Edge, he walked toward the front door. I followed.
“I hardly need an escort,” he snapped as I continued to follow him to the elevator.
“I’m going with you.”
“You’re doing nothing of the kind.”
“This is the CIA’s mission as much as it is yours.”
“The CIA’s initial mission was to convert Dr. Charles into an asset in the same way MI6 intended to. Given that the mission was aborted upon the disappearance of one of our assets along with one of our agents, you are no longer needed.” The elevator door closed between us.
“How’d it go?” asked Deck when I came back into the bedroom.
I looked over my shoulder to make sure Edge wasn’t paying attention. “As planned.”
Decker and I spent the next two days in my office at MIT, pulling reports designed to make it look as though I was stockpiling information.
Mid-afternoon on the second day, my cell rang with a call from Emme. Decker motioned for me to take it. I put the call on speaker.
“Paxon, I’d like to make arrangements to return to Boston.”
Decker shook his head.
“You can’t,” I said.
“What do you mean I can’t?”
“What did Lynx tell you about the brush pass?”
“Paxon, I am in no mood for games. If there’s something I need to know, just…fucking…tell me!”
“Okay, you don’t have to yell. Saint’s message contained a warning.”
“What…was…the…warning?”
“Essentially, it said to keep you safe.”
“That isn’t a warning.”
“Look, you need to talk to Lynx. If you don’t want to talk to him, talk to your dad.”
“My dad? What the hell does my dad have to do with this?” she shouted. “Are you going to answer me?” she said when I didn’t respond.
“I can’t. Talk to Lynx.” I ended the call when Decker indicated I should.
“Good work,” he said. “The next step is to make Lynx believe we’re running surveillance on you.”
I continued going to my office at MIT for several more days, each time tailed by either Edge, Grinder, or Rile.
“I want you to stick around here today,” Decker said, showing up at my apartment as I was getting ready to leave for Cambridge.
“What’s going on?”
“Matrix is in the city, and I’ve asked him to get Lynx and Dr. Charles back here.”
“This is it, then.” The plan was that once Emme returned from the Cape, Decker would set the stage for her to stumble on the evidence suggesting I was selling secrets to the Chinese.
“I’m also hearing chatter coming out of Beijing.”
“What kind of chatter?”
“My sources say an announcement is going to be made today regarding Saint and Dr. Benjamin.”
“Do you think they’re alive?”
“I haven’t heard otherwise.” He took a small earpiece out of his laptop bag and handed it to me.
“What’s this?”
“Ears.”
“What do you mean?”
He sighed in the same way he often did when I asked a question about something he thought I should already know or understand. “I’ll signal you when we’re ready to set up the arrest. In the meantime, you’ll be able to follow along.”
I listened over the course of the next few hours as several things happened.
First, Decker sent me a message saying he’d been successful in replacing the reports Emme had taken with her to the Cape with the ones that held the code that would “prove” I was the mole. With that done, all that was left was furthering the setup of my arrest with Lynx, Emme, and her father.
“We have reason to believe Paxon Warrick has been gathering intelligence that he is selling to the Chinese,” I heard him say a few minutes later through the earpiece.
“He’s a double agent?” Emme asked.
“We believe so,” Decker answered.
“Lynx said this involves me somehow.”
“We need to be certain,” a voice that sounded like her father said. “In order for that to happen, we need you to return to your office.”
“To feed him specific information?” she asked.
This was news to me, and I didn’t like it. There was no reason Emme needed to be anywhere near MIT when my arrest took place.
“That’s right,” said the voice I assumed was her father. “Emme, you should know Lynx is not in favor of this.”
“Why not?”
“In order for this to work, the two of you will need to be alone,” I heard Lynx’s voice for the first time.
“We worked alone for weeks.”
The next thing I heard were several alerts going off on cell phones, including my own.
I walked over and turned on the television when I heard Decker say there was a press conference taking place.
The ticker on the bottom of the screen said, “Breaking News/Special Report,” and the headline at the top of the screen read, “Two Americans and two Brits arrested in China, sentenced to death on drug-trafficking charges.” There, on the dais to the side of the podium where a Chinese official stood, were Dr. Adam Benjamin and Niven St. Thomas. Next to them stood two other men—both I recognized as CIA agents I’d worked with on past missions.