Inside Outt

what they would have made of their son now.
    He walked along the Mall, past oblivious joggers and robotic early commuters, past pigeons and a lost-looking dog, past the sallow-eyed homeless who watched this scene, surrounded by monuments and marble, every morning and every night. He stared at the hollow dome of the Capitol.
    Paula had told him she lived in Fairfax. Maybe she drove to work, but he doubted it. Traffic on I-66 had to be a bitch. Why bother, when it was a straight shot on the Orange Line from Fairfax to Federal Triangle Station, and from there just a short walk to the Bureau?
    He set up in a coffee shop at the intersection of Twelfth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. Unless she was in the habit of varying her routes and times, and he’d seen zero evidence of that, he didn’t expect he’d miss her.
    He didn’t. He’d been waiting less than an hour when he saw her coming up Twelfth Street. He watched as she turned right onto Pennsylvania Avenue, eight lanes of traffic leading to and from the Capitol, then fell in behind her, squinting into the sun, cars and buses chugging past.
    “Paula.”
    She jumped and turned around. “What are you doing here?”
    She looked scared. He’d expected her to be surprised, but not scared.
    “What’s wrong?”
    She looked around, then back at him. “Did you kill him?”
    “Who?”
    “You know who. Ulrich.”
    “No. Although I gather certain people might want to make it look that way.”
    “How are they going to do that?”
    “I saw him right before he died.”
    She didn’t answer.
    “I know you worked for him, Paula. You sent him my picture. You kept him apprised. That was me they were going to take out in Costa Rica, right? No wonder you were so shaken up. Two guys who are supposed to take me out clean, and I dropped both of them right in front of you. Right on you, actually.”
    She looked away. “I didn’t know. Didn’t know that was going to happen.”
    “They tried again yesterday, did you know that? Followed me from the airport.”
    She pursed her lips. “Those two in Arlington?”
    “So you knew about them.”
    “It was on the news.”
    He looked at her. “Why? I just want to know why.”
    “I don’t know anymore,” she said, shaking her head slowly.
    “Well, try. Try to explain.”
    She sighed. “There are people who know what’s going on, and people who don’t. People who can get things done, and people who can’t.”
    “That’s it? That’s why?”
    “Look, I joined the FBI right after 9/11 because I wanted to make a difference. It took me about a year to figure out I couldn’t. That no one can make a difference. The system’s too big. The only thing you can make is a stand. And making a stand without making a difference is quixotic at best. More likely, it’s suicide, like some Buddhist monk setting himself on fire to protest something that’s never going to change anyway. So I went from idealist… to realist.”
    “How’s that working out for you?”
    “At least I see what’s going on. Look at you, stumbling around in the dark, not even knowing why.”
    “This is what you meant by ‘No one sees me coming.’ And when you told me you know how to work a cover… your whole life is a cover. And all that bullshit about how you’d rather just be yourself… you think having natural hair is all it takes? Do you even know who you are?”
    She frowned. “I know who I am.”
    “Bugged you when I asked, though, didn’t it?”
    “Oh, are you going to analyze me now?”
    He looked at her. “Why’d you sleep with me?”
    She shrugged. “You’re a good-looking guy. Is that so hard to understand?”
    “That was it? You had an itch to scratch?”
    “What, you think I fell in love with you? Please.”
    “I think you felt something, yeah. If you hadn’t, you wouldn’t have been so fastidious about my kissing you or seeing where you live. You let me into your body but not into your apartment? What’s that?”
    “It’s what I had to do.”
    “To get me to trust you. Drop my guard.”
    “Something like that.”
    “Something like that. So you found out I was the courier, and told Ulrich, and they set another team on me.”
    “I told you, I didn’t know what they were going to do.”
    “And I’m the one who’s stumbling around in the dark?”
    She didn’t answer.
    “Look me in the eye, Paula. Prove to me you’re not human, because I don’t believe it. Tell me you didn’t feel anything.”
    “What if I did? We