The End Game

One thing for certain, no one was getting shot today. Not Gennaro. Not Nate. Not me. But that didn’t make any of this good news. If Jarhead knew me, he knew a lot more, too. That he wasn’t acting on this knowledge told me that I was staring at someone who knew my file, someone who knew the truth, someone who knew that I was Michael Westen, and that Michael Westen was not someone he really wanted to engage in front of school children, women and one very large land mammal.

It meant that no matter who I pretended to be, whatever ruse I perpetrated, I had to offer some nugget of truth that would keep the situation in my favor, so that Jarhead would understand that this game belonged to me, even if I wasn’t entirely clear what we were playing.

Or whom.

9

The careful art of subversion involves turning people against their own leaders. During a long campaign, this entails intricate-and intimate-psychological warfare mixed with a fair amount of propaganda. This means everything from arming opposition leaders to facilitating the escape of political prisoners to simply attending to the core needs of the people you wish to convert.

You give them money and prescription drugs.

You pave their roads.

You give children candy and toys.

And then you tell the people that their government is corrupt and controlled by a puppet master in the west, the east, the north, the south.

And if none of that works? You capture them, torture them, tell them they have two choices: Join your militia or die.

Most people will opt to live.

Sometimes, this all works our perfectly… And most everyone dies, regardless.

Guatemala.

Cuba.

Iraq.

Iraq again.

That knowledge gave me pause.

Telling someone that you know they are lying-and lying to their leader-and yet refusing to act is one of the basest forms of subversion. You do it to build trust while creating a false sense of reciprocal empathy between a rank-and-file soldier just doing his job and the person they are charged with guarding.

But if Jarhead knew who I was, that meant he was aware of one of the most profound truths concerning intelligence: You can’t bullshit a bullshitter.

So as Jarhead directed us through the house, I broke him down from the available information, which was only what I could see, what Sam had told me, and what I had to assume.

He was:

A Marine. Probably Force Recon, which meant he’d spent the last several years in combat situations requiring far more mental acuity than walking uninvited guests to a sitting room.

A trained killer. The difference between a trained killer and a psychopath is usually distance. A trained killer shoots at objects at the end of a scope and can marginalize them into “kills” without considering that human element. The targets are impediments to freedom, or the crossing of a bridge or the clearing of a hot zone. Force Recon Marines, however, tend to recruit men not morally opposed to close fighting-whites-of-their-eyes moments-if the need arises. But there’s not a lot of close fighting when you have Apaches and Black Hawks on your team, too.

Psychopaths prefer to cut you into bite-sized pieces using their nail clippers.

An American. This was important, particularly since he was an American working for an Italian crime boss. You commit a crime in America involving a gun and, provided you are apprehended and convicted, you’re looking at between five and twenty years of prison time, but the truth is that if you have a decent lawyer and a relatively clean record and are a war hero, you’re probably on the street in six months.

Commit a crime with a gun in the service of a foreign national involved in criminal enterprise on American soil, and you’re looking at federal time. Do it as an American soldier and there’s a good chance they’ll try you for treason.

All of this worked in our theoretical favor.

There was also a pretty good chance that Jarhead had already played out these issues in his own mind, too, and didn’t care.

Nihilism is always a wild card.

Jarhead stopped before the open doors of a sitting room that overlooked the water. The walls were covered in bookshelves and surrounded two couches that faced each other in the center of the room. A mahogany coffee table was placed between the couches, and as we entered the room a woman was placing a tray of ice water and lemonade onto it, along with several glasses and a plate of cookies.

Nate started to move toward the food-it might have just been reflex on his part-but I grabbed his arm and pulled him back.

It’s important to appear courteous and hospitable when dealing with your enemies. It’s more important to make sure they eat first, not just out of custom, but to ensure the food isn’t poisoned.