The Last Orphan
Chapter 10

A Low-Rent Prometheus

A former constitutional lawyer, President Victoria Donahue-Carr dressed the part of Intrepid World Leader. A midnight-blue pantsuit, the blazer enhancing the lines of her shoulders. Her posture was erect but slightly forward-leaning, hands clasped on the blotter of the Resolute desk. Flags standing sentinel at either side, Old Glory and the presidential coat of arms against a backdrop the same color as her suit. Heavy maroon curtains encroached on the trio of tall windows facing the South Lawn. Nothing else within the scope of the camera recording her.

Bound in his restraint chair like a low-rent Prometheus, Evan returned the gaze she’d launched from the monitor. Now he understood even better the heavy-duty cable, the encryption code.

“Orphan X,” she said. “How are you doing?”

“Is that rhetorical?” he asked. Just a little light banter between himself and the leader of the free world.

Donahue-Carr pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Yes.”

“In that case,” Evan said, “fine, thank you.”

Safely out of view of the monitor’s camera, Naomi suppressed a grin.

“You’ve violated the terms of your informal pardon,” the president said.

Evan said, “Okay.”

Her face made clear she’d been expecting something less succinct. “We’ve hunted you down as promised. And now we have you in custody.”

He felt the bite of the choke chain once more against his throat. “That’s apparent.”

She blinked twice with discomfort, her second nonverbal tell. “We need to decide what to do with you next.”

“Okay.”

“Your conduct is not just beyond the purview of American and international law, it’s also treasonous beyond any reasonable doubt.”

“Okay.”

“My predecessor would certainly agree.”

“Were he around,” Evan added.

This gave Donahue-Carr the briefest pause. “As such, your actions are punishable by death.”

“Okay.”

“Unless …”

The used-car-salesman routine seemed beneath the commander in chief, but who was Evan to judge?

The president looked flustered by his no-response response. “Agent Templeton. You there?”

Naomi stepped into view of the camera. “Yes, Madam President.”

“Can we trust him?”

“Yes,” Naomi said, with an immediacy and a conviction that did not surprise Evan at all.

The president’s focus shifted back to Evan. “Can we trust you?”

“I can’t imagine any circumstances under which I’d care less to answer your question.”

“Well,” she said, “there’s that.” Another sidebar with Naomi. “You sure about this, Agent Templeton?”

“As sure as I can be about something this insane, Madam President.”

Donahue-Carr parted her hands, noticed she’d done so, laced her fingers once more. “You’re it,” she told Evan. “You’re the last Orphan.”

“Not quite,” Evan said. “There are still bad ones out there.”

“You don’t think you’re bad?”

“If I did,” Evan said, “imagine what that would do to my self-esteem.”

Naomi turned from them both, feigned a cough to cover her mouth.

“Templeton?” the president said briskly. “Why don’t we get to it?”

“Yes, Madam President.”

Donahue-Carr regarded Evan with her best steely gaze. “Orphan X,” she said. “We need your help.”

Evan laughed.

She looked puzzled. “I wasn’t anticipating that would be amusing.”

“Inside joke,” Evan said.

“I’ll leave you two to it, then,” Donahue-Carr announced crisply. She leaned forward to touch an off-screen button or mouse, hesitated just long enough to undermine her curt exit, and then the screen went black once more.

Naomi sighed. “What do you think?” she said.

Evan said, “The presentation needs some work.”

“She did go a little boomer with the tech there at the end.”

“Now you give me the full sales pitch, right? Time share in the Poconos?”

“Nothing so glam,” Naomi said. “Another mission.”

“Which, if I complete, restores my informal pardon.”

“More or less.”

“Let me be clear,” Evan said. “I will never operate for the government again.”

“Don’t you want to meet the target?” Naomi turned the screen back on with a tap of the miniaturized remote.

“Do I have a choice?”

“You could always close your eyes.”

A dossier came up, complete with surveillance photos of a puckish man in his forties. Slender of chest and waist, sharply intelligent eyes, thin matte-blond hair that rose to a stylishly mussed tuft at the crown. He had a pronounced widow’s peak, the faintest monk’s tonsure starting to show through at the back of his head.

“Luke Devine,” Naomi said.

“Who is he?”

“Kind of a minigarch, I suppose. Someone who’s learned to trade power for more power.”

Evan studied the pictures of Devine. Even in the still photos he seemed ethereal, like Ziggy Stardust with that strong dancer’s torso and the spectral gaze. “Isn’t that how the game’s played?”

“Yes,” Naomi said. “But he’s really good at it.”

“And that makes him problematic for you.”

“We believe he represents a clear and present danger to national security.”

“That’s what you say about me.”

“Yes. But he’s really dangerous. He came out of private banking.”

“Fetch the smelling salts,” Evan said.

“A few dozen wholly owned corporate entities and limited-liability companies, private island near Saint Croix, penthouses in London, Moscow, Beijing, and Zurich, an estate in the Hamptons, a superyacht—you get the drift. But what’s he’s really good at, what makes him really dangerous? His talent for manipulating people. I don’t go in for cult of personality, but it seems he’s got a gift to make anyone do pretty much anything he wants them to.”

“Which keeps him above the fray.”

“With clean hands. He was your typical power player on the rise, but about a year ago he seemed to go into hyperdrive. And now he’s gotten so far ahead the laws can’t catch up to him.”

Evan was familiar with the trajectory of men like Devine. They accrued a certain amount of influence and then began to sense a new frontier beyond the fringes of their endeavors. A place where boundaries dissolved between financial institutions, political leverage, and international law. Uncharted waters where the old precedents and regulations hadn’t caught up. Where the stakes were higher. Where a different kind of power was forged and wielded.

“Would you mind loosening my choke chain?”

Naomi turned from the images populating the screen. Removed her holstered pistol and set it on the table. She closed the space warily, circling him. He could smell her shampoo more clearly now. Though she was out of sight, he heard her breaths, slightly rushed with adrenaline. Then he felt the backs of her knuckles brush his neck. Cool, smooth skin.

A bit of pressure, a snap, and the chain fell away.

Her footsteps again as she came back around. She stood closer to him now. She was well built, her clavicles pronounced, a strong swimmer’s taper to her lats. “I’m sorry about this.”

He said, “I know.”

Walking back to the table, she twisted her hair up into that short stick of a ponytail, snapping into place a rubber band that she took from around her wrist. “Devine remains unattached. Single child, parents passed from COVID within days of each other, no living relatives. Known associates and past relationships are compiled here.” A gesture at the screen. “These days? He throws parties. Huge, decadent, hedonistic parties. And guess who wants to come? Plenty of fetching young men and women. And? Everyone who’s anyone. Political figures, celebs, financiers, foreign ambassadors, scions of industry, academicians, billionaires, royalty, CEOs, prominent scientists—”

“All fine people to bribe for whatever they happen to do at a party with fetching young men and women.”

“Bribery carries too much liability. So instead? Why not demand a giant allocation for a hedge fund?”

“I know the drill,” Evan said. “Get full power of attorney over the investments, park the fund in a nonreporting country, slam the money into the S&P, take your two and twenty on the management fee, and you’ve got a legal cash cow for life. So what?”

“What if it’s not about the cash at all? What if it’s about leverage?”

“For the usual? Arms dealing, money laundering, drug trade—”

Naomi said, “Bigger.”

Evan rolled his neck, the joints crackling. “Intelligence?”

“Warmer,” Naomi said. “Someone with enough leverage on enough powerful people can become … Let’s say he could become his own nation-state. He would be in a position to shape policy. Financial, legal, political. Have direct dealings with foreign governments. He doesn’t just want to play the game. He wants to run the game.”

“Ah,” Evan said. “I’d imagine someone like that would be fairly inconvenient if you were the president of the United States.”

“Someone interfering with the democratic process? It’s not inconvenient. It’s untenable.”

“Everyone who can afford a lobbyist interferes with the democratic process,” Evan said. “Why’s Devine a threat to the president? Specifically.”

“What makes you think there’s a specific?”

“My few brushes with realpolitik taught me that vague civil concerns don’t call for interventions of the type that require my services.”

Naomi blinked at him, her lower jaw shifting forward so her teeth met in a tense line. Finally she eased out a breath. “Devine’s black book includes two key moderate senators who can put a vote over the top. Or not put it over the top. Whatever he has on them means they take their cues from him on certain votes.”

“Such as?”

“Such as the trillion-dollar environmental bill that President Donahue-Carr is trying to push through.”

“The one that her reelection hinges on?”

“That is how politics work,” Templeton said. “You get shit done if you want to be reelected. The president can play all the usual power games with these senators, trade horses, all that. But she cannot be beholden to Luke Devine to save the planet.”

“Sounds pleasingly clear-cut.”

“He’s a bad guy, Orphan X.”

“Like me.”

“No,” she said. “Not like you at all.”

“So our head of state, a onetime constitutional attorney, is willing to act ‘outside the purview of American and international law’ in order to rid herself of this inconvenience.”

Naomi drew in a breath, held it for a moment. “Devine has accrued almost unimaginable influence. He is willing to use it however he pleases. We don’t really understand what he wants, what motivates him. And none of his machinations are technically illegal.”

“That’s why you need someone you can deny any knowledge of to neutralize him. Someone you can wash your hands of. Someone expendable.”

“Yes.” Naomi looked pained. “Look,” she said. “This is some DoD secret-handshake shit. I’m not comfortable with it either. I’m not a handler. This isn’t my bailiwick.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Because the president trusts me. And I’m the only one who knows you. As much as anyone can know you.”

“So my job is to infiltrate his superyacht while strapped to this restraint chair and garrote him with my ankle bar?”

Naomi seemed at a loss.

“Yes,” she said. She even said it with a straight face, but he could see the skin tighten around her eyes. He showed mercy and grinned first.

“We both know that at some point you have to end the security theater and unlock me, right?” Evan said. “Let’s just save time and do it now. Consider me sufficiently cowed into acquiescence. Or do you need me to lie to you first, maybe shed a few tears, tell you I’ll do anything you want?”

“After all our effort, that might be rewarding.”

He held her gaze. After a moment she crossed to him. Looked down. He was close enough to see the flecks of gold in her eyes. She reached out a hand to the strap at his chest. Her fingers were trembling slightly. Her knee brushed his knuckles.

He kept his stare locked on hers. Pressure released at his chest. He exhaled fully for the first time in hours. He kept his hands motionless in their cuffs, not wanting to startle her.

She exhaled. Her breath smelled clean—like tea and mint. “That’ll do for now,” she said, easing back a few steps.

“Did you document me in any way while I was unconscious?” he asked. “Photographs, biometrics—anything?”

“No.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not. I won’t.”

He looked at her. Believed her. “Here are my terms,” he said.

“You’re hardly in a position to—”

“You will not document me in any way. If you do, I will not help you. I want out of this chair. I want out of this building. I’m not staying in a government facility.”

She coughed out a note of disbelief. “Where do you think you’ll stay?”

“The Beverly Hills Hotel will do for now. If you want to use me as an asset, you’ll have to let me go be an asset. And I want my clothes. I want my phone.”

“We’re processing your phone.”

“Don’t waste your time. You’ll never hack it. It’s got three dozen autowipe features. Give it to me.”

“Why?”

“You want me to complete a mission for you. It’s one of the tools I require for that mission.”

“So you’ll help us?”

“I won’t do anything for you. But I will make a good-faith effort to see if your mission aligns with something I consider worth doing.”

The Sixth Commandment, one he’d not had occasion to recall in years: Question orders.

“That’s not good enough,” Naomi said.

“You told me you won’t lie to me. I won’t lie to you either. So let me be clear: That’s the only agreement you’re gonna get from me. Ever. Call your boss. Call the director of the Service. Call the president. Tell them to meet my terms. Or throw me in prison. Or kill me.”

She leaned against the table once more and studied him. He could hear boots in the corridor outside, the steady hum of the air conditioner overhead. Naomi might have blinked, but he missed it.

“A covert multiagency ops team is being assembled, flying in tomorrow,” she finally said. “They will join you for briefing and transport. If your conditions are met—and that’s a big-a*s if—they will be with you all the time.”

“We’ll see about that,” Evan said.

“You’ll have access to all our databases, weapons, and matériel, fly on private transport. You’re not gonna do better than that.”

Evan flared his hands, letting the cuffs slough from his wrists, along with the stainless-steel rod connecting them. The pen he’d liberated from Naomi’s pocket clattered to the floor next, but he kept the slender silver clip he’d snapped off. It would fit the ankle cuffs just as nicely in case the bozos in the hall took too long with the master key. He rubbed one wrist and then the other, noticed Naomi looking at him.

Her mouth was slightly ajar, but she looked less alarmed than resigned. Her last claim still hung in the air: You’re not gonna do better than that.

He gave her a cordial nod. “You’d be surprised.”