Free Hostile Intent by Michael Walsh Page A

including all the major European languages, the Slavic tongues, Hindi, Arabic, Pashtun, Urdu, Japanese, and several dialects of Chinese, including Mandarin and Cantonese. Years later, when a woman asked him how he knew Italian, he replied, “One afternoon it was raining, so I learned Italian.” There was no point in exaggerating.
    Instead of formal schooling, he studied at the feet of his new father. Boxing and martial arts. Weapons training. He could fight equally well left-handed and right-handed; he could fire two different caliber handguns, one in each hand, and put the bullets in the same spot in the target, whether it was made of paper or, later, flesh and blood. The boy had a head for puzzles, a body for fighting, and a soul for solitude. Not for nothing was his favorite author the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, and he consulted the Meditations regularly, always finding inner strength in the pensées of the second-century Roman monarch and philosopher.
    I do that which it is my duty to do. Nothing else distracts me; for it will be either something that is inanimate and irrational, or somebody who is misled and ignorant of the way.
    Other than Marcus, his only boon companion was the movies, which his stepfather took him to as often as possible.
    And all of this because his parents had decided to take a Roman holiday. To create the finest intelligence officer in the service of the United States of America. The “Branch 4” prototype. Creation by expiation of a man without a name, without a country, without a native language, without so much as a social security number. A man who, in short, did not officially exist.
    The fellow officer’s name was Armond Seelye.
    The boy’s name is Devlin.

Chapter Twelve
    F ALLS C HURCH /W ASHINGTON , D.C.
    At last, the phone rang.
    Not the black phone. A nonexistent phone, in fact, one that registered in his consciousness as the sound of chimes, gently clanking in the wind. Except, of course, it wasn’t chimes at all, but a distinguishing ring tone that was signaled to him in one of his many compartmentalized capacities and incarnations. He spoke into a Blu-Ray mouthpiece as he answered:
    “Mr. Grant’s office,” he said. Whenever he took a call on this line, his voice was altered to sound like a British woman’s—the status symbol of executive assistants in Los Angeles.
    Another woman was on the line. “Hello, Helen,” she said, “it’s Marjorie Takei, just calling to remind Mr. Grant that he’s due to speak at RAND the day after tomorrow.”
    He pretended to consult something on the computer. Click-clack, click-clack. “Yes,” he replied, “I have the appointment in the book. ‘Assessing the Threat: The Legal, Practical, and Moral Challenges.’ He’s very much looking forward to it.”
    “Good,” replied the caller. Her tone changed. “It’s terrible, what’s going on in St. Louis, isn’t it?” “Helen” was silent. “Well, I suppose that makes Mr. Grant’s remarks all the more topical, doesn’t it?”
    “There’s a silver lining in everything, I suppose,” said Helen, ringing off. British secretaries were nothing if not curt, and nobody, especially in LA, thought them rude.
    “Archibald Grant” was one of his favorite identities, yet probably his most dangerous. He was not just an off-the-shelf disposable cover, but an ongoing creation with his own richly imagined life, invented past and borrowed memories. Unlike Devlin’s other shades and apparitions, Grant had a continuing existence as one of the RAND Corporation’s most important consultants, whose expert exigeses on international terrorism and counterterrorism were delivered at the highest levels of the Santa Monica–based think tank, and under the strictest security guidelines. Not just “Chatham House” rules of nonattribution, but practically pain of death. In fact, over the years he’d had to eliminate one or two loose lips; there was nothing like a watermarked top-security briefing to