As he nodded, her eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Wait a minute. You knew I was going to get canned the minute I walked through the doors to HQ."
"Everyone knew, Soraya, except you."
"Good Lord." She jumped up and began to stalk around the room, running her fingertips over the tops of the books on the shelves, the contours of bronze elephants, the textures of the heavy drapes without even being aware of it. Peter had the good sense to say nothing. Finally, she turned to him from across the room and said, "Give me one good reason why I should join you - and please don't state the obvious."
"Okay, putting aside the fact that you need a job, step back and think for a minute. When Willard makes good on his promise, when Halliday is gone, how long d'you think Danziger will last at CI?" He stood up. "I don't know about you, but I want the old CI back, the one the Old Man ran for decades, the one I can be proud of."
"You mean the one that used Jason over and over again whenever it suited its purpose."
He laughed, deflecting her blade of cynicism. "Isn't that one of the things intelligence organizations do best?" He came toward her. "Come on, tell me that you don't want the old CI back."
"I want to be running Typhon again."
"Yeah, well, you don't want to know how Danziger's going to fuck up the Typhon networks you built up."
"To tell you the truth, Typhon's future is all I've been thinking about since I walked out of HQ this afternoon."
"Then join me."
"What if Willard fails?"
"He won't," Marks said.
"Nothing in life is assured, Peter, you of all people should know that."
"Okay, fair enough. If he fails, then we all fail. But at least we'll feel that we've done whatever we could to bring back CI, that we haven't simply knuckled under to Halliday and an NSA run rampant."
Soraya sighed, picked her way across the carpet to join Marks. "Where the hell did Willard get the funding to resurrect Treadstone?"
Just by asking the question she saw she had agreed to his offer. She knew she was hooked. But while weighing this understanding, she almost missed the pained look on Peter's face. "I'm not going to like it, am I?"
"I didn't like it, either, but..." He shrugged. "Does the name Oliver Liss mean anything to you?"
"One of the principals of Black River?" She goggled at him. Then she burst out laughing. "You're kidding, right? Jason and I were instrumental in discrediting Black River. I thought the three of them were all indicted."
"Liss's partners were, but he severed all ties to Black River months before the shit you and Bourne threw hit the fan. No one could find a trace of his participation in the illegal activity."
"He knew?"
Peter shrugged. "Possibly he was simply lucky."
She gave him a penetrating look. "I don't believe that and neither do you."
Marks nodded.
"You're damn right I don't like it. What does that say about Willard's sense of ethics?"
Marks took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Halliday plays as dirty as anyone I've ever known. Whatever it takes to defeat him, bring it on, I say."
"Even making a deal with the devil."
"Perhaps it takes one devil to destroy another devil."
"Whatever the truth of what you say, this is a treacherous slope, Peter."
Marks grinned. "Why d'you think I want you on board? At some point I'm going to need someone to pull me out of the shit before it closes over my head. And I can't think of a better person to do that than you."
Moira Trevor, Lady Hawk pistol strapped into her thigh holster, stood looking at the empty offices of her new but compromised company, Heartland Risk Management, LLC. The space had so quickly become toxic that she wasn't sad to leave it, only dismayed because she had been in business for less than a year. There was nothing here now but dust, not even memories she could take with her.
She turned to leave and saw a man filling the open doorway to the outside hall. He was dressed in an expensively cut three-piece suit, spit-shined English brogues, and despite the clear weather he carried a neatly rolled umbrella with a hardwood handle.
"Ms. Trevor, I presume?"
She stared hard at him. He had hair like steel bristles, black eyes, and an accent she couldn't quite place. He was holding a plain brown paper bag, which she eyed with suspicion. "And you are?"