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been distant, taciturn, not exactly cold but unemotional. Unflappable. A surgeon, in the best and worst ways. Wells had followed his example, packed away his emotions. Even as a teenager, playing football, a sport where passion was not just tolerated but encouraged, he had resisted showing off. When he scored, he handed the ball to the referee without a word. As his high-school coach liked to say, quoting Bear Bryant: “When you get to the end zone, act like you’ve been there before.”
    Now Wells reached down, patted Shafer’s shoulders before disengaging himself. He tapped Tonka’s flank. “Come on, now. Over there.” He pointed to Shafer’s couch. The dog reluctantly complied.
    “It’s good to see you,” Shafer said. “Even if you look like a survivalist. With the beard and the flannel. And this ridiculous dog.”
    I am a survivalist, Wells didn’t say. Survival’s my specialty. Though the people around me aren’t always so lucky. Shafer’s desk was covered with army interrogation manuals, some classified, some not, as well as what looked like a report from the CIA inspector general. Wells decided not to ask. He’d find out soon enough.
    “Actually, you look about ready to head back to Afghanistan,” Shafer said.
    “That what this is about? ”
    “Closer to home. I got the outlines this morning, but I don’t have details. Duto wants to fill us in himself.” Duto, the CIA director, Wells’s ultimate boss.
    “Vincent Duto? What a pleasant surprise.”
    Wells and Duto didn’t get along. To Wells, Duto was a martinet who saw agents as interchangeable parts, pawns in a game that was being played for his glory. And Wells knew that Duto saw him as valuable but uncontrollable, a Thoroughbred with Derby-winning speed and an ego to match. Duto had said as much, leaving out the second half of the analogy: We’ll ride you until you break a leg, John.
    “Then off to the glue factory,” Wells said aloud.
    “What?”
    “Wondering why Duto wants to brief me, instead of letting you do it.”
    “He misses you.”
    “Do you trust him, Ellis? ”
    Shafer’s only response was a grunt. The question didn’t merit an answer.
    “Really,” Wells said, not sure why he was pressing the issue. “Do you? ”
    Shafer sat on his desk—and knocked over a bottle of Diet Coke. He hopped up like he’d been scalded. Wells grabbed the bottle while it was still mostly full and set it on the coffee table.
    “Still have your reflexes,” Shafer said.
    “I try.” Wells didn’t mention the endless games of Halo he’d played in New Hampshire, trying to stem the inevitable decline in hand speed that came with age. He didn’t know if the games would do him any good in a gunfight, but he was an impressive killing machine on planet Reach.
    “You can’t say you trust Duto or don’t,” Shafer said. “His value system doesn’t include trust. Your interests overlap, he’s your friend. He may even tell you the truth. Once he stops needing you, that’s that. It’s like, I read about this Hollywood producer, he wrote two memos every time he made a movie. One about how great the movie was, the other about how bad. When the movie came out and he saw how it did, he decided which memo to keep. It wasn’t that one was right and the other was wrong. They were both true, until they weren’t. Get it? ”
    “I get it was a stupid question.”
    Shafer’s phone rang. He listened, grunted, hung up. “Let’s go,” he said.
    They walked out of Shafer’s office, Tonka trotting after them. “Can I make one request? Can we leave the dog here? ”
    “Not a chance.”
     
     
    DUTO MET THEM in the executive quarters on the seventh floor of the New Headquarters Building, a conference room down the hallway from his suite. Wells guessed Duto had been warned about Tonka and didn’t want the dog in his office.
    Duto had upgraded his wardrobe in the year Wells had been gone. He wore a blue suit that fit like it was hand-tailored, a white