Free The Revisionists by Thomas Mullen Page B

activities and learn their recruiting strategies, study the ways in which they conned impressionable young people into joining in their dissent. It felt light-years away from the counterterrorism work he’d been doing in Jakarta, but his new boss had argued that there were many parallels indeed, and that Leo’s experience infiltrating groups of youthful malcontents was invaluable.
    Two months earlier, after readjusting to life in America, he’d started the assignment by showing up at a multiorganizational meeting to discuss an upcoming antiwar rally, and he had barely gotten comfortable in the hard plastic chair when an aging hippie with a bad case of the touchy-feelies had started blathering to him about the importance of what they were doing (“I just want to get involved, you know, have an effect on something,” she’d explained in a quick but monotone voice, a prophet crossed with a zombie). He’d already known what was in store: unbelievably long meetings, torturous portions of which would be dedicated to deciding arcane matters of nomenclature and semantics; motions in favor of or against items whose importance he could not fathom; spirited debates between people whose opinions were so closely aligned that their minute philosophical differences would drive them into apoplexies of conscience. He had been sure to have a strong cup of coffee beforehand. And there he had sat, fidgeting from caffeine and boredom, hoping he might stumble upon some information that could possibly interest his client. He entertained himself by mentally composing sections of his report. How many d  ’s were in pedantic ? Did pathetically have a hidden a in the penultimate syllable? If he made the report as boring as possible, would that be a sly way of spurring his boss into granting him a new assignment, or would institutional inertia maroon him on this desert island?
    He’d had enough in the bank that he could have taken time off, traveled, maybe tried to write some political essays or even a spy novel. Yet still he felt the calling, so he’d put out feelers for any kind of opening. Which had brought him to Targeted Executive Solutions, but he saw immediately that the job was beneath him: it could have been handled by any rent-a-spook who looked young enough to fit in with a roomful of angry twentysomethings.
    He filed his reports with his boss, Mr. Bale, who passed them on to the unknown client. Leo was unclear if this extra layer of insulation was at the client’s request or if it was TES’s way of controlling how the company’s image was presented to its cash-laden government handlers.
    He knocked on his boss’s door at ten exactly.
    “Morning,” Bale said as Leo sat down. Bale pretended to smile, and Leo tried too. On the wall behind the desk were four framed nature photographs Bale had supposedly taken while hunting in Michigan, images of a wolverine devouring a deer carcass.
    Bale had some follow-up questions from Leo’s report from the previous week: what meetings Leo had attended, what Web sites he’d trolled, what contacts he’d made.
    “Still no closer to the source of those stories?” Bale asked.
    “I get pushback from certain people whenever I try to get too close, which tells me something. But I’m worried I’m making myself too present—this overeager guy who shows up at every meeting of every group in the city? I’m making myself too visible.”
    “I suppose.” Bale always spoke in bland tones, whether he was talking about the Hoya game or ethnic cleansing. He was like a minor character actor whose name you never learned even though you’d seen him in twenty films. Bale could be an accountant, a market researcher, a soccer dad, an Internet porn addict, a failed novelist, a quiet neighbor, just another suddenly middle-aged guy who’d been left behind. Which made him good at what he did. Leo feared that in another ten or fifteen years, he’d look just like Bale. At least Leo was taller. “What are