Edge

office building on the other side of the tollway, only two hundred yards away.
    “That’s convenient,” I said. “You have a hood?”
    The agent produced one.
    “No, no!” Zagaev blustered. “You can’t do that. I’m a citizen.”
    I pulled the hood over his head and guided him to the backseat of Freddy’s car, mindful of his head. Another agent slipped in beside him and asked, “Can you breathe?”
    “You fucker!” he shouted. “Motherfucker. You can’t do this. I will see my lawyer now.”
    I turned to Freddy. “He can breathe.”
    A half hour later I was through security at the building that Freddy had indicated. It was, as it turned out, one of the more public federal organizations. Because of which, the FBI agents explained, Zagaev had been taken through the back.
    I went downstairs and met a slim woman of around forty, short dark hair. Sharp eyes. She was wearing a black suit and had a heavy bag slung over her shoulder. She worked for our organization and helped us out in what I’d call unusual situations, like this one. Her name was Roberta Santoro, though she was known around the office simply as Bert.
    I greeted her. She was characteristically silent. I asked, “Ready?”
    A nod.
    We went into a conference room and foundAslan Zagaev sitting in a chair, wrists shackled behind him. A video camera on a tripod was focused on him. The red light glowed. He looked up at us indignantly. “You could have killed me!”
    “It was a pumpkin,” I pointed out. “It wouldn’t’ve killed you.”
    “Yes, it could have. It could have come through the windshield and killed me.” He snapped, “Why do I not have a lawyer?”
    Bert walked to the end of the table and sat. Her hands rested in her lap and her face was passive. I didn’t say anything about her to Zagaev, nor did she proffer any ID. He looked at her once then back to me. Snuck a glance again and told me, “You have no right to do this. I know how those guns got there. You planted them.”
    In game theory your opponent’s personality is irrelevant. There’s even a type of game in which it’s understood you can substitute any human being for the other player. But for me, when playing a board game, seeing the person sitting across from me is everything. Sometimes on my lunch hours or after work I’ll go to my gaming club in Old Town, and if I’m not in top form I’ll just sit and watch others play. I study mannerisms, their eyes, how they hold their cards or roll the die or move their markers or chess pieces. I’m not trying to spot tells—those are either obvious, in unskilled players, or nonexistent, among the talented—but I watch to see how players act and react, what they enjoy and what they dislike.
    I watch for responses to victory and to defeat.
    I watch for trembling hands.
    Now, I regarded my opponent carefully, as if wewere sitting across from each other over a chessboard. Zagaev had a round head, a double chin that his beard obscured pretty well and bristly hair that couldn’t decide to be gray or less gray. His age, duBois had reported, was only forty-three. His head was large, his pallor anemic. He nervously gripped and ungripped his hands every few seconds. I knew this only because I heard the tinkle of cuffs behind his back. He wore a thick gold chain around his neck and an amulet on which was an unlikely icon. I was pretty sure it was Tsar Alexander II, who I knew from my studies was a moderate reformer—by absolute-ruler standards—in mid-nineteenth-century Russia. Still, it was curious that a Chechnyan would choose this particular image.
    Zagaev’s clothes were expensive, more than I could afford, more than I wanted to. His suit was cut from vibrant blue silk, the color of the sky in a child’s fantasy book. His snakeskin shoes glittered in the jarring overhead light. His sweat was repulsive; I could smell body odor and onions from across the table.
    I leaned forward. I am not large, that’s true. But I’ve learned something interesting in my years as a shepherd. People tend to fear you more if you’re not physically imposing. Perhaps they’re thinking that the damage I can do to their lives is worse than that of somebody with a lead pipe. Zagaev, who outweighed me by fifty pounds, now eased back.
    “I need to know who you’re working with.”
    “I’m not a bad person.” Zagaev looked up at me with imploring eyes. Claims of ethical purity area common strategy in games like this. But they’re paper,