The Detachment

said he wanted them to go in. But overall, the whole thing was dispiriting. We watched until we couldn’t take it anymore. Then we all passed out.
    When we woke, we turned on the television again, and it seemed the narrative had indeed changed. Now there was talk about a group of secret commandos who had killed the jihadists and foiled the plot and evacuated the children. I wondered what was next.
    Kanezaki uploaded his material to Wikileaks. Without more, it might get dismissed as fringe conspiracy theory stuff. Some anonymous spokesman would explain how Gillmor had been operating the drone to take out the terrorists; that the terrorists had learned of his position and gunned him down in cold blood, causing the drone to crash; but that his resourceful men had still managed to eliminate the terrorist threat, even as their brave leader lay dying.
    I found I didn’t care all that much. We’d done what we could. And we’d done it well. Now all I had to do was find a way to slip out of the country and enjoy my twenty-five million.
    Kanezaki’s sat phone buzzed. It was Horton. Kanezaki handed the phone to me.
    “Thank you,” he said. “I do not deserve to be the beneficiary of your acts, but I am.”
    “How so?”
    “I’m certain that very soon, I will be sent to hell, one way or the other. But in the meantime, you have given me the tools I need to redirect this thing as I always hoped, and to turn it into a force for good.”
    “All the people who were killed in those attacks,” I said. “I’m glad it’ll have been for the greater good.”
    I felt vaguely hypocritical saying it. On the other hand, I’d never bombed a bunch of innocents.
    “It would have been worse if it had been for nothing,” he said. “Or for less than nothing.”
    “Well, then, you got what you wanted.” I thought, but didn’t say, you’re still going to die. But I supposed he knew that. He’d already acknowledged as much.
    “There are two things I want you to know,” he said.
    “All right.”
    “First, I have introduced into proper channels the notion that you four men were inadvertently placed on the president’s kill list. That your presence there was due to an intelligence failure that itself was the result of your intrepid penetration of the organization sponsoring these attacks. That in fact it was you, all of you, who ignored the danger of a mistaken nationwide manhunt to continue your mission and save the children at that school. You will face no further hostilities from any American military, intelligence, or law enforcement personnel, or otherwise.”
    I wished I could believe him. “I thought you said you didn’t have that kind of juice since you resigned.”
    “Given my background and since my speech, I am not without influence. And my influence is set to grow.”
    “You knew that at the time. When we had your daughter. But you didn’t say anything.”
    “You wouldn’t have believed me. And besides, you needed to give me something to work with. Which you have. The wreckage of that drone is currently in the custody of local Lincoln law enforcement. The federal government will have a hard time taking it away from them and disappearing it, given the magnitude of what just happened in their community.”
    “There’s more evidence on the way,” I said.
    “Such as?”
    “Photos and videos of Gillmor. All uploaded to Wikileaks. You couldn’t stop it now if you wanted to.”
    “Stop it? I welcome it. In fact, I have uploaded my own judicious trove of information to the good people of Wikileaks, who will see to its proper dissemination more faithfully than the New York Times or Washington Post ever would.”
    “What information?”
    “Hard evidence of who was really behind this coup. Along with some unrelated but probably even more damning evidence of the sexual and financial improprieties of the individuals identified. With more such evidence to come.”
    I thought back to what he had told me about Finch, about how he was an information broker. Had Horton somehow acquired…?
    And then it hit me. “You,” I said. “You’re the information broker. Not Finch.”
    “That is correct.”
    I wasn’t connecting the dots. “Explain.”
    “The best way to tell a lie is to conceal it in a lot of truth. Which is why throughout this thing, nearly everything I told you has been true.”
    “Then why did you have us kill Shorrock and Finch?”
    “Because they were trying to stop the coup, of course.”
    I