EXFIL by Anthony Patton (best book reader txt) 📕

a diner near her parents’ house, where she and the children were staying.

To manage the inevitable scene, I waited for Donna in the parking lot as Johnson waited inside. She immediately sensed that something was wrong and cried for what seemed like an eternity before we entered the diner.

Johnson stood respectfully and offered condolences as he gestured for Donna to sit on the other side of the booth as I sat next to him.

Donna had bleached-blonde hair and brown eyes, a small-town girl and devoted mother with a finely tuned radar for detecting bullshit. With her first sip of coffee, the tears were ending, which suggested this news might not have come as a complete surprise.

She might have found out about Tom’s indiscretion with the go-go dancer in Bangkok, and the ensuing fight might have pushed him over the edge.

“You saw him?” she asked.

I nodded and stirred my coffee.

Her eyes shifted between us, keeping her cards close. “Why would he do this?”

“We were hoping you might have an idea,” I said, followed by a tense silence. I sensed that Johnson didn’t approve.

“He didn’t leave a note,” Johnson said and sipped his coffee. “I understand that you recently traveled here from Thailand. Was it for work or personal?”

“He said it was for work,” she said, “so the kids and I are spending time with my parents.”

“What kind of work?” I asked. Given how recently I had left Bangkok, I felt sure I would have known about any planned work travel.

Johnson looked at me and turned to Donna. “Was Captain Howard acting differently lately?”

She looked at Johnson. “He dropped us off at my parents’ house after we landed at the airport.”  She turned to me. “Did Tom seem different to you?”

I leaned back and shrugged as my heart raced.

“Not at all. We had a big success together before I left.”

“Nothing comes to mind?” Johnson asked.

I felt the weight of their stares, shook my head innocently, and finished my coffee.

Johnson handed her a business card. “If you remember anything or need anything, call me.”

Donna set the card in her purse. Johnson set six dollars on the table for the coffees and led the way to the front door. He offered professional handshakes, sensed that we needed a moment alone, and excused himself.

I hugged Donna as Johnson drove away. “We’re going to find out what happened.”

She wiped her tears, nodded, and walked to her car.

I walked to the bathroom, splashed some water on my face, and looked in the mirror, then slammed my fist into the wall, leaving a dent. I walked out, noticed the shocked faces looking my way, and set $100 on the cash register.

ELEVEN

At three in the morning, I was pacing around my hotel room sipping a Scotch on the rocks and watching the empty streets below. No matter how I attempted to divert my mind, I just couldn’t get over the image of Tom laid out in the body bag.

I had lost soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, but there was something honorable about dying in battle that made it easier to bear with taps, a 21-gun salute, and an American flag draped over the casket. On the other hand, there was no explanation for this waste of a good life—completely out of character and totally at odds with the man I knew.

It’s human nature to accept too much guilt or to deny all responsibility, so I focused on not dwelling on his night in Bangkok with the go-go dancer. There was no way a cocksure Puerto Rican like Tom would take his life over that. And if he had, I felt angry with him for doing so.

As I mulled my own culpability in his death, an easy out was the fact that Tom had been a junior officer who’d worked for me. Although we had developed a friendship and a personal bond, there were also many things about our lives that we hadn’t discussed.

For all I knew, he was having personal problems and chose not to share them.

We sometimes have to accept that people are a mystery. I also knew that the military life, combined with the stress of moving from place to place, often took its toll.

As much as I needed time to grieve, the show had to go on, and I had to get ready for my meeting with Li. I drifted off to sleep for an hour or two and was ready to launch again after coffee and a hot shower.

The FBI dedicated a surveillance team to monitoring Li’s every move, with the goals of identifying pattern-of-life information to build a profile on him or catch him in the act of meeting a source. In the latter case, we could present him with evidence of espionage on American soil and attempt to “flip” him. With this in mind, Brett and Nguyen invited me to the FBI Washington Field Office to read the latest reports. In the conference room, I filled an FBI mug with black coffee, ready to get down to business as they flipped through their files in silence.

I sipped my coffee and drummed my fingers on the table, perhaps one too many times.

Nguyen cleared his throat, set his file on the table, and looked up. “Colonel Reed, we heard the devastating news about Captain Howard. We’re both very sorry for your loss. You know we have to ask—do you think his suicide had anything to do with the China operation?”

“I doubt it,” I said instinctively, defensively, with limited confidence. I struggled to come up with more, but nothing came to mind.

That they knew about Tom’s death shouldn’t have been a surprise.

Up until that point, I had dismissed their suggestion that Tom might have been working for the Chinese. Sure, it would explain things, but it didn’t make it any more likely. Occam’s razor often didn’t apply in the wilderness of mirrors of espionage.

On the contrary, avoiding the trap of a quick solution was one of the biggest challenges.

“But you can’t rule