My dad was all about perfection. At least the outward appearance of it. I was anything but perfect. I hated the jeans and western shirts he bought for me. I might as well be his fifth son, the way I looked in them. And my hair? I kept it tied back in a ponytail all day and night. When he thought it was too long, he’d just cut part of it off.
“Whatcha doin’?” I heard my brother Buck ask.
“Nothing,” I said, barely turning my face from the pillow I’d been crying into.
“You know if there was any way I could take you to college with me, I would, Flynn.”
I dried my tears on the pillowcase and looked up at him, relieved he thought I was crying over him rather than feeling sorry for myself.
3
Irish
Hong Kong
Nine Years Ago
The mission we were assigned was standard reconnaissance. As the person with the least seniority, I was given the worst shifts and shittiest jobs. I didn’t mind. I knew one day there would be someone else below me. Fair was fair.
My three partners for tonight’s duty were Peter “Dingo” Samuels, Albert “337” Baker, and Eric “Julius” Berg. The three had a lot more seniority than me, but since they were looking to leave the mission early, they’d volunteered for the “swing” shift.
The man we were watching, a Chinese-born Canadian national, was the suspected kingpin of a vast drug network that was raking in upwards of fifty million dollars annually.
He wasn’t on our watch list because the CIA wanted to bring him in. Our mission was to determine who his main points of contact were in Hong Kong and who was laundering his money.
As danger went, it was relatively low risk, given we had no authority whatsoever to act, only to report information.
The streets were empty but for a few vagrants as we waited for our relief team. Two men, though, caught my eye as they rounded a corner and stood there, looking in our direction long enough that it raised my concern.
“Dingo—” I’d no more said his name than a vehicle sped past, taking out all three of the agents I was on duty with. Samuels fell face-first into the alley from which we’d been conducting our stakeout. The other two were farther away, but there was no question they were dead. All that prevented me from meeting the same fate was that I’d been standing in the shadows, hidden by the corner of the building.
“Agents down,” I hissed into my mic. “Repeat. Agents down.”
What happened over the course of the next three days left my head spinning. No one asked me for an account of what I saw or heard. The entire mission was scrubbed, then burned.
And Dingo, 337, and Julius? I never heard their names mentioned again.
My mother used to say every person dies three deaths. The first is when the body ceases to function. The second is when that body is put in the grave. The third is when your name is spoken for the last time. Seemed to me that all three happened on the same day for the three men I’d been working with.
When I returned Stateside, I asked Cope to meet me away from the office.
“It came way too close, man,” I told him. “It was a low-risk mission.”
“What I don’t understand is why it was burned at all, let alone so fast.”
“I agree.”
Cope said he’d dig around and see if he could find any other information, but I could tell he was as skeptical about his success as I was.
4
Irish
Washington, DC
Seven Years Ago
Exactly when I’d started keeping track of agents’, operatives’, and assets’ deaths, I couldn’t remember. As I added names to my ongoing tally, I added more details. Soon, I began adding photos along with as much information as I could about how and where they had been assassinated.
That’s what I called it. These men and women didn’t “die in the line of duty,” as was sometimes reported, and then only within the company. The general public never knew a thing about those who had given their all to protect our collective freedom. I did, though.
The spare bedroom of my condo became a cross between a shrine and a war room. The walls were covered with notes, and whenever I filled a whiteboard, I added at least two more.
I divided the room’s four walls into where the agents were originally from. Most were either from the States, the UK, and either France or Germany, which I lumped together. The fourth wall became “everyone else.” It wasn’t necessary for me to sort them by where they’d died. With few exceptions, it was either in Hong Kong or mainland China.
Was I obsessed? Sure. Especially after another instance—in Beijing—where agents I was working with were gunned down and the entire mission burned.
Each person whose likeness hung on my walls could’ve been me. Particularly given I’d come so close on not one but two occasions.
It was what had made me start paying attention. The deaths I’d witnessed had nothing to do with our mission, as far as I could tell. It seemed almost random, but everything else about it, including the agency’s reaction, didn’t.
There had to be a connection, and before I faced the same fate as so many others, I had to find out what it was.
Tonight wouldn’t be the first time Cope stopped by my place for a beer. We didn’t make a habit of it; there were weeks we couldn’t stand the sight of each other. I didn’t have any siblings, and neither did he, so I couldn’t say I felt the same way about him as I would a brother. But maybe.
He held up a six-pack when I opened the door and waved him in.
“Thanks for stopping by.”
Cope pulled one bottle out of the carrier and was about to open it, but set it on the table. “What’s going on?”
I walked over, opened the beer, and handed it to him. “Have a drink.”
He took a swig. “This isn’t going to be a ‘shoot the shit and avoid talking about anything to do with the job’ night, is it?”
I chugged the beer I’d poured into a glass and shook my head. “There’s something I need to show you.”
“I don’t like the sound of this.”
“You’re going to like it even less when you see it.”
He sighed in that asshole-y, condescending way he did that pissed me the fuck off. “Irish—”
“Shut up, Cope. Whatever you’re about to say, I guarantee you’ll regret it. In fact, I’d advise you to just keep your mouth zipped until I explain.”
As Cope had said that fateful day when he was assigned to me—or vice versa—the thing about a handler and one of his agents is that it’s all about trust. As much as Cope could make me crazy, at the end of every single day, I trusted him and he trusted me.
I opened another beer for myself, and he did the same. “Come with me.” I turned the handle on the door that always remained closed and took a deep breath.
“Irish? What the fuck—”
“Sit down.”