“You mean we’re not bringing him back for interrogation at the Fortress of Solitude?” He was referring to the USA safe house facility, as it was known internally, deep in the forests of rural Virginia.

“I mean you’re not to take him anywhere near the Fortress and its inquisitors. You’ll take him to the Well.”

“The Well?” Whitman had echoed, his voice tinged with a special anxiety. “No one’s been to the Well in years.”

“All the better. And you know the Well better than anyone, don’t you, Gregory? I mean, that’s what Luther St. Vincent told me.”

“St. Vincent should keep his trap shut.”

“He and I have a … special business relationship, but that’s not relevant to this conversation.”

“The hell it isn’t.”

Cutler, intuiting the storm clouds gathering in Whitman, said, “Listen, he’s the one who recommended I hire you.”

“So you could keep an eye on me.”

“Don’t be paranoid.”

“You pay me to be paranoid.”

“Do you think I hired you simply on St. Vincent’s say-so? You’re special, Gregory. You know it; I know it. So go and do that voodoo that you do so well. This is one case where nothing short of your magic will work.” Cutler’s shark-like smile put Whitman’s teeth on edge. “You’re going to pry open el-Habib’s mind yourself. That’s how completely off the grid this op is.”

Whatever magic Whitman possessed was dark magic. He didn’t like to dwell on it; in fact, he resented Cutler every time his boss brought it up, as if it was a terrible secret he chose to hang over Whitman’s head. Which was precisely what it was. On the other hand, Whitman knew he had no business blaming anyone but himself for the mistakes he had made in the Well. But were they really mistakes? The members of the Alchemists, his former cadre, had believed fervently in what they were doing, so St. Vincent had said. His Rubicon moment had arrived in nightmarish fashion in the Well, when he was faced with the truth about the Alchemists. In that moment of revelation, what he had done at their bidding came rushing back to haunt him like the undead. How could he have been so naïve as to think their aims were really altruistic? How could he have believed St. Vincent’s honeyed lies. It would be far too easy to blame St. Vincent, Monroe, and the others, so instead he blamed only himself. The blood was on his hands, not theirs. He had refused to cross the Rubicon, to enter the Alchemists’ Rome, but, considering what had transpired in the preceding days, hadn’t stopped himself in time. This was what haunted him in those cobwebbed moments before, at the end of his rope, an exhausted sleep toppled into his grasp.

“Outlaws at your ten o’clock,” Sandofur said in his ear.

Whitman froze, and the others with him. Whitman turned his head, as an owl will, without moving his body. “I got trees. You have eyes on, Sandy?”