Free Even by Andrew Grant Page A

the three piles of cards, “maybe they’re still connected some other way. What do you think?”
    I didn’t answer.
    “Let’s talk about this guy on the trains,” Rosser said. “He’s some kind of maverick entrepreneur. He’s rich. More than rich. Loaded. Would he be the kind of guy to, say, wash his own shirts?”
    “I doubt it,” I said.
    “Do his own ironing?”
    “No.”
    “Drive his own limousine?”
    “Unlikely.”
    “So, would he be the type of guy to go up against a federal agent on his own?”
    “You think he killed five other people.”
    “They were spaced-out vets. That’s a whole different ballgame. Plus, they were a hobby. This is business.”
    “So?”
    “He’d approach it the same way he approaches everything else. He has the money, the contacts, the established pattern of behavior. He’d hire someone to do it for him.”
    “Maybe.”
    “No. Definitely. Now the question is, if you were hiring someone for a job like this, what kind of person would you choose?”
    “No idea. Never had a problem I couldn’t solve on my own.”
    “But if you did, what would you think of this as a résumé?”
    Rosser pulled a sheaf of papers from under Raab’s file and tossed it across the table toward me. I scrabbled it up from the shiny surface and looked at the top sheet. It was the printout of an e-mail.
     
The following information is for research and analysis purposes only. It should not be used as the basis for overt or covert action against Lieutenant Commander Trevellyan or any other Legation Resource Unit personnel.
     
    So Headquarters wouldn’t help me, but they were quick enough to roll over for the FBI—weasel words or not.
    “Legation Resource Unit,” Rosser said. “Used to be plain old Royal Navy Intelligence. Am I right?”
    I didn’t answer.
    “Which section?” he said. “C?”
    I shrugged.
    “Corporate rebranding meets diplomatic security,” he said. “Wow. Do the men in bow ties feel any safer?”
    I stayed silent.
    “You’re really a sailor, then?” he said.
    “Of course I am,” I said. “A world record holder, me.”
    “What for?”
    “Solo global circumnavigation. In the dark. Backward.”
    “Really?”
    “No.”
    “No, thought not. Bet you can’t even swim.”
    “Amazing. No one’s ever said that to me before. Royal Navy. Water jokes. You made that jump pretty fast. But if you’re going to ask me where I left my battleship, you know what? Don’t bother.”
    “OK. I won’t. Smart move, by the way, giving the NYPD an unlisted consulate phone number. First thing we checked, when they gave us your file. Your bosses in London were real impressed. Shows a lot of strategic awareness, for a guy who’s supposed to be covertly guarding the place.”
    “That’s not relevant,” I said, turning back to the wad of papers. “The contact was unscheduled. I followed standard procedure. They know that.”
    The first part of the report was a summary of my service record. It started with my initial assignment to Hong Kong and carried on with an entry for most of the places I’d been sent to since then. I scanned the next seven pages and saw Washington, Canberra, Moscow, Paris, Lagos, St. Petersburg, Berlin, Tel Aviv, La Paz, Vienna, and half a dozen others. It covered the last fourteen years of my life, going all the way up to the mission I’d just completed here in New York. Nine weeks’ work, four people’s lives, and twelve stitches in the back of my head, all boiled down to fifty sterile words.
    “Here we are,” I said, pointing to the paragraph as well as the handcuffs would allow. “This proves it. I couldn’t have been involved with this train thing.”
    “We know that now,” Rosser said. “But keep going. It gets more interesting.”
    The next section listed some of the training the navy had put me through. I skipped that part. Too many memories of freezing, wet nights on the Welsh mountains. And also because I was hoping the final few pages