“How bad is he?”
“Bad enough, but he’s out of danger. His shoulder wound reopened, he had hypothermia, and the blood loss was pretty severe. He’s stable now, but it was close.” I leaned against the wall of the booth. I knew how close he’d come to dying, but saying it out loud somehow made it even more real. My legs threatened to buckle right there in the phone booth. “He had to slog through the river. I don’t know how long he spent in freezing water before Bisch found him.”
“Jesus Christ.” Manakin was quiet for a moment. “I already know about the attacks. The French have assets in place who reported everything in real time. My counterpart in Paris kept me on the horn to listen. Please tell me you two didn’t get into another firefight on foreign soil.”
The shift to mission talk steadied me.
“No, sir. Even Condor followed orders and just observed. We managed to capture seventy-two exposures from the warehouse, plus everything the other team got from the secondary sites. The Baroness’s man delivered them to a journalist at theNeue Zürcher Zeitung. The story should be hitting newsstands right about now.”
“Should be?”
“We’re in a farmhouse outside of Bern. We won’t know if it worked until—”
“It worked.” Manakin’s voice was grim. “I just got word from our station in Bern. The paper ran a fullfront-page exposé. Your Baroness also made headlines in Paris, New York, Washington, and a dozen other major cities. The papers printed names, photographs, bank records . . . the whole thing. The Federal Council will convene any minute now.”
My heart lurched. “And?”
“We’ll know soon. The President is monitoring everything from the White House. The Director woke him up an hour ago.”
“Shit,” was all I could think to say. Then my mind left the White House and drifted back to our mission. “Condor did it, sir,” I said. “He’s the one who got the warehouse photographs. He’s the one who nearly died for them.”
“I know.” Manakin’s voice softened slightly—as close to gentle as he ever got. “I know what it cost. And I know you’re angry.”
“I’m not angry.”
“Bullshit.” There was no heat in it, just recognition. “You’re furious. At me, at the situation, at the whole goddamn system that put him in that position. And you have every right to be.”
I didn’t say anything. What was Manakin saying? What was he admitting?
“For once in your goddamned lives, you followed orders,” Manakin continued. “And Condor still nearly got killed.” A pause. “I’m sorry for that, but that’s the job, Emu. It doesn’t matter how carefulyou are, how good you are, how perfectly you follow the rules, sometimes people die anyway.”
“That might be the weirdest thing anyone has ever said to comfort me.”
Manakin actually snorted into the phone. “I’m not your priest with soothing words. I’m trying to make you understand.” His voice hardened. “You think I don’t know what it’s like? You think I haven’t watched good men die following my orders? That I haven’t sent people into situations I knew they might not come back from?” He laughed—a bitter, humorless sound. “I’ve been doing this for more years than you two have been alive. I’ve buried more friends than I can count—and every single time, I’ve asked myself the same question you’re asking now: Was it worth it?”
“Was it?” I swallowed. Manakin had never opened up about his past or experience or anything, really, but his words resonated with truths I couldn’t deny. “Was it worth it?”
“I don’t know.” For the second time on that call, I nearly lost my balance at Manakin’s honest admission. “Sometimes I think so. Other times, I think we’re all just playing games while the world burns around us. Then something like this happens, and I think maybe, just maybe, we’re making a difference.”
“Nothing’s been stopped yet, sir.”
“No, but we’ve done our part. Thanks to my two most frustrating, stubborn operatives, we’ve given Switzerland a chance to survive.”
I let my head rest against the wall of the booth, and tried to feel some pride in what we’d done. Win or lose, Manakin was right. We’d done what we could. We hadn’t sat idly by while the world fell to pieces. We’d stepped into the breach, where other men might’ve stood frozen.
Then I thought about Thomas, about the way he’d held on to me like I was the only thing keeping him anchored to the earth, the only thing keeping him alive.
“He almost died,” I said quietly, my voice cracking despite my best effort to remain strong. “Following orders. Doing exactly what you told us to do.”
“I know, son.”
“If Bisch had been five minutes later—”
“I know.” Manakin’s voice was heavy. “And . . . for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”
“Thank you, sir,” came out of my mouth without conscious thought. All I could see was Thomas’s broken body lying on the bed, his blood soaking sheets and blankets and—
“I want you two out of Switzerland tonight,” Manakin said. “The President wants the Swiss to take the credit for this. He thinks it will strengthen the remaining councilors.”
