Gone Tomorrow

is going to end with a minimum of one and a maximum of fifteen homicides on the streets of New York City. We can’t be a part of that. We can’t be within a million miles of it.”
    “Because of politics?”
    “Because of a lot of reasons.”
    “I’m not asking for help.”
    “You’re a maniac.”
    “They’re going to think so.”
    “You got a schedule in mind?”
    “Soon. No sense in waiting.”
    “The minimum one homicide would be you, of course. In which case I wouldn’t know where to look for my photograph.”
    “So keep your fingers crossed for me.”
    “The responsible thing would be for you to tell me now.”
    “No, the responsible thing would be for me to get a job as a school bus driver.”
    “Can I trust you?”
    “To survive?”
    “To keep your word.”
    “What did you learn in Officer Candidate School?”
    “That brother officers are to be trusted. Especially brother officers of equal rank.”
    “There you go, then.”
    “But we weren’t really brothers. We were in very different branches of the service.”
    “You got that right. I was working hard while you were flying all over the world kissing terrorist ass. You didn’t even get a Purple Heart.”
    He didn’t answer.
    “Just kidding,” I said. “But you better hope I’m not the first homicide, or you might be hearing that kind of thing all the time.”
    “So tell me now.”
    “I need you watching my back.”
    He said, “I read your record.”
    “You told me that.”
    “You got your Purple Heart for being blown up by that truck bomb in Beirut. The Marine barracks.”
    “I remember it well.”
    “You got a disfiguring scar.”
    “Want to see it?”
    “No. But you need to remember, that wasn’t the Hoths.”
    “What are you, my therapist?”
    “No. But that doesn’t make my statement any the less true.”
    “I don’t know who it was in Beirut. Nobody does, for sure. But whoever, they were the Hoths’ brother officers.”
    “You’re motivated by revenge. And you still feel guilty about Susan Mark.”
    “So?”
    “So you might not be operating at peak efficiency.”
    “Worried about me?”
    “About myself, mainly. I want my photograph back.”
    “You’ll get it.”
    “At least give me a clue where it is.”
    “You know what I know. I figured it out. So you’ll figure it out.”
    “You were a cop. Different skill set.”
    “So you’ll be slower. But it ain’t rocket science.”
    “So what kind of science is it?”
    “Think like a regular person for once. Not like a soldier or a politician.”
    He tried. He failed. He said, “At least tell me why I shouldn’t destroy it.”
    “You know what I know.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “Or maybe you don’t know what I know. Because you’re too close to yourself. Me, I’m just a member of the public.”
    “So?”
    “I’m sure you’re a hell of a guy, Sansom. I’m sure you’d be a great senator. But at the end of the day any senator is just one out of a hundred. They’re all fairly interchangeable. Can you give me a name? Of one individual senator who truly made a difference to anything?”
    Sansom didn’t answer.
    “Can you tell me how you personally are going to screw Al Qaeda?”
    He started to talk about the Armed Services Committee, and Foreign Relations, and Intelligence, and budgets, and oversight. Like a boilerplate speech. Like he was out on the stump. I asked him, “What part of all that wouldn’t be done by whoever else might get the job, assuming you don’t?”
    He didn’t answer. I asked him, “Imagine a cave in the north west of Pakistan. Imagine the Al Qaeda brass sitting there, right now. Are they tearing their hair out and saying, holy shit, we better not let John Sansom make it to the U.S. Senate? Are you top of their agenda?”
    He said, “Probably not.”
    “So why do they want the photograph?”
    “Small victories,” he said. “Better than nothing.”
    “It’s a lot of work for a small victory, don’t you think? Two agents plus nineteen men plus three months?”
    “The United States would be embarrassed.”
    “But not very. Look at the Rumsfeld photograph. Nobody cared. Times change, things move on. People understand that, if they even notice at all. Americans are either very mature and sensible, or very oblivious. I’m never quite sure which. But either way, that picture would be a damp squib. It might destroy you personally, but destroying one American at a time isn’t how Al Qaeda