6. “A Name on the Desk”
“A NAME ON THE DESK”
Iwas at the office when Foster called.
Foster’s voice came through the phone like gravel.
“I have a name,” he said. “Not the chain. Not the proof. A name. It is a starting point. I am not handing it to you cleanly yet. I want you to understand that going in.”
“Tell me.”
“Marcus Ellery. Forty-three. Lives in Hartford. Independent consultant. Used to be one of Whitlock’s interns in the Connecticut office.
Left in 2020. Clean on the surface. Underneath he has been meeting with people who do not show up on his calendar.
One of them is a senior staffer in Senator Vivienne Ardent’s operation.
Whether he is the source of the leak or whether he is one piece of a longer chain, I do not yet know.
I will know more by next week. I do not yet know enough to give it to the FBI. ”
I set down my coffee.
The cup made a small sound on the desk.
“What do you want me to do with the name.”
“I want you to bring it to Chip. Tonight. In the library. With me in the room. I want him to know who we are looking at. I do not want him to know more than that. The senator is going to want to act. I am asking you in advance to keep him from acting until I have the full chain.”
“He is not going to like that.”
“No. He is not. You are going to ask him to let me work it. You are going to remind him that he has trusted me on harder cases than this. You are going to keep him in his chair.”
“All right.”
“Atlas.”
“Yes.”
“And Atlas.”
“Foster.”
“He is going to want to ask you about his daughter. Be ready.”
The phone went silent. Then Foster said, “That is what we do, Cain,” and hung up.
I sat in the dark of my office and I let the small sour relief move through me the way it moved through men who had been told the floor was not, in fact, going to give way today, only that the floor had a name on it now and the name had not yet been handled.
Then I called Chip.
He picked up on the first ring. Of course he did. He’d been waiting.
“We have a name,” I said. “Foster will brief you tonight at the compound. He has not yet given it to me on paper. He wants to give it to us together.”
“How close to a chain.”
“Not close yet. He wants room to work it.”
“Atlas.”
“Sir.”
“Whatever else is happening, we focus on the leak first. We focus on who used my daughter. We do that before anything else.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Be here at six.”
He hung up.
I sat in the dark and I thought about Foster’s face on the back porch last night. The way he’d looked at my mouth and then stubbed out his cigarette and said: Atlas, we have a bigger problem than the leak.
The bigger problem being: I’d kissed Eden in a boathouse and her father was almost certainly going to figure it out before we had the leak handled.
A man who had spent forty-six years keeping secrets had managed to expose himself in the span of a single evening.
I drove to the compound at 4:30.
It was a Saturday afternoon in October and the 95 was moving the way it always moved — too many people from the city trying to get out, too many people from the country trying to get in. I kept my hands on the wheel and my eyes on the road and I did not think about Eden.
I thought about her the entire way.
By the time I pulled into the driveway at 6:14, I had reconstructed every moment of the boathouse. The way she’d looked standing against the window. The way she’d said yes. The way she’d held me after like I was something worth holding.
Chip was on the porch.
He was alone, which meant he’d sent Eden away deliberately. He was wearing his cardigan and he had a bourbon in his hand that he hadn’t started on yet.
“Atlas.”
I came up the steps.
“Chip.”
We didn’t shake hands. We’d known each other for twenty-five years. We stood on his porch like two men who were about to have a conversation neither of them wanted to have on a porch.
“Foster is in the kitchen,” he said. “He has the name. He has a piece of the chain. He does not have the rest. He wants to take his time. I am going to let him take his time.”
I nodded.
“Dinner is at eight,” he continued. “The boys will be here. We’ll eat.
After dinner, we sit in the library. You and me and Foster.
We hear what Foster has. We make a plan that lets Foster work.
Then I am going to ask you a question, Atlas.
I am going to ask it once. I want you to think about your answer between now and then. ”
“All right.”
“Don’t lie to me. Whatever the answer is. Don’t lie to me.”
I thought about the boathouse. I thought about my hands on her face. I thought about the fact that I’d spent twenty-six years pretending not to want something I’d been wanting since before she could legally have a drink.
“I won’t lie to you, Chip.”
He nodded.
He went back inside.
Foster was indeed in the kitchen. He had his laptop open and he had Foster’s particular expression on his face, which was the expression of a man who had pulled on one thread and was beginning to suspect the sweater was bigger than he had thought.
“Marcus Ellery,” he said, by way of greeting.
“Forty-three. Hartford. Three meetings I can document with one of Ardent’s senior staff in the last six weeks.
Two payments through a vendor account that does not pass a smell test. I do not yet have his email server.
I do not yet have wire receipts. I do not yet have the conversation.
I have the outline. I am asking the senator for two weeks. ”
“He will give you one.”
“One is fine if I push.”
I poured a bottle of bourbon from the cabinet and poured two glasses.
“What about the rest of it,” I said.
“What rest.”
“Whether Ellery is a courier or a principal.”
“My read is courier. He is small. He is in a position to access the schedule and the press contacts but not the substantive files. Somebody bigger is feeding him from inside the operation. I do not yet know which side of the operation. I am working on it.”
“Inside the senator’s office.”
“That is the question.”
“Foster.”
“Yes.”
“Tell me you do not think it is Sara.”
He did not answer right away.
He took the bourbon.
“I do not have a name yet. I have access patterns. The patterns are consistent with three different people. One of them is Sara. I am ruling them in or out. I am not ready to say.”
“How long.”
“Two weeks. Three at most.”
“All right.”
He looked at me over the rim of the glass.
“Did the senator say anything when you told him about Eden.”
“He did not have to say anything,” Foster said.
“I watched his face when I came up the back porch last night and I understood that I had just become the third person in the world who knew his daughter was in love with a man who has spent twenty-eight years not looking at her. He did not seem surprised by her part. He seemed unsurprised by yours, which is worse.”
“I was careful.”
“You were not careful. You were just smart enough to get away with it for a long time. Now you are going to have to be a different thing than careful. You are going to have to be honest. The senator is not going to ask you to be honest tonight. He is going to ask you the question and he is going to leave you room to answer it the way you want to answer it. I am telling you in advance: do not give him the lawyer’s answer. ”
“I will not.”
“Good. Then let’s go through the briefing one more time and let’s go tell Chip what we have.”
I set down the bourbon.
“He didn’t say anything else about her.”
“He said one thing. He said: I have known for six months, Foster. I am not going to pretend I have not. I am going to wait for him to say it. If he says it, we have something to work with. If he does not say it, we have a different problem. Tell him that, before you bring him into the library. Tell him I would rather he say it now.”
I sat with that for a minute.
Foster watched me sit with it.
“All right,” I said. “I will tell him.”
Dinner was chicken and thyme and the particular silence that comes when seven men sit around a table knowing something has shifted underneath the floor.
Eden didn’t come down. Chip had apparently told her to stay away, which meant she was somewhere in the house suffering through not knowing what was being decided about her.
I understood the impulse.
I wanted to go find her.
I stayed at the table.
After dinner, the boys left one by one. Hawk first. Sterling second. Knox third. Cole fourth. He squeezed my shoulder on his way out, which was Cole’s particular way of saying: I see you, and we are going to have a conversation about it eventually, but not tonight.
Then it was just me and Foster and Chip in the library.
Chip sat at the head of the long table.
I took a seat to his right.
Foster opened his laptop.
He showed Chip what he had. Marcus Ellery’s calendar.
The three documented meetings. The two payments.
The pattern of access. The outline of a chain that did not yet have a body.
He did not show Chip Sara’s name. He told Chip there were three possible inside sources and that he was working through them. He asked for two weeks.
Chip listened.
He did not interrupt.
When Foster finished, Chip put his hand flat on the table.
“You are asking me to sit on this for two weeks.”
“I am asking you to let me work it for two weeks. If we move on Ellery now, the chain breaks and we do not get the principal. The principal is the person we want.”
“And the principal is Senator Ardent.”
“Almost certainly. I do not yet have it on paper.”
“And you want it on paper before we move.”
“I want it federal-actionable before we move. That is a different threshold.”
Chip was quiet for a long minute.
Then he said: “Fine. Two weeks. You report to me every Sunday until the chain is closed. You do not make a move without telling me. You do not bring in the Bureau without telling me. You bring this in clean or we do not bring it in at all. Are we clear.”
“We are clear.”
“Atlas.”
“Sir.”
“Are we clear.”
“We are clear.”
“Good.”