“Well, a few years ago,” he said, treading carefully, like his words were walking over a rope bridge made of rotting wood, “Nils and I collaborated on an exposé detailing the existence of a number of CIA black sites throughout Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, including allegations of torture and other such shenanigans. This exposed the identities of several CIA operatives, Sol Kaplan among them.”

“I see.”

“So now that I’ve told you who I am,” he said, “do you think maybe you could tell me . . . what the fuck?”

She laughed hollowly. What to tell him? She did not know this man, a man with direct connections to Nils, a man who had run right to Nils the last time he’d gotten his hands on material related to her. What was to stop him from doing that again, but this time with something way, way more damning? What he’d seen with Enola was, to make a modest understatement, really fucking huge. But on top of that, she’d helped kidnap this man and then held him hostage for several hours. That was a class-A, grade-A, A+ felony. That could mean jail time. That could mean decades of jail time.

But looking at him right now, he didn’t look like the narc type or the vengeful type. His terror now ameliorated, he looked like the journalist type who probably wouldn’t let some light kidnapping get between friends if there was something in it for him. And what would a journalist want more than information as privileged and valuable as this? He wouldn’t have gotten to where he was working for a publication as prestigious as The New Yorker if he didn’t know how to keep a secret. He could probably sit on this until the Obelus issue was squared away, and ideally until after they skipped the country. Her only hope for this not to backfire spectacularly was to get on his good side, so the smart thing to do would be to give him a little, let him see her as a source, and maybe he’d do as she asked on the promise that he might get more.

“This is Enola,” she said, gesturing to the mess in the center of the chamber. “Which I am calling him for lack of a better name, but you can probably guess why I call him that.”

“Wow,” he said. “And the white one?”

“Ampersand.”

“As in . . .”

“Yeah. It won’t be his legal name, though. They haven’t settled on that yet.”

“And he communicates with you through . . . like . . .” He gestured to his temple.

“No, no. It’s just an earbud.”

“Oh,” said Kaveh, seeming a little disappointed. They always expect it to be telepathy. “And where has Ampersand . . . gone?”

“He . . . went to take care of something.”

His lips pursed. “‘Something.’”

“Alien things.”