The Travelers by Chris Pavone

why.
    But why is not Raji’s concern. Raji’s concern is that he’s hungry, and it’s 6:08. The Chinese place last night was, no question about it, horrible. Tonight he should beat a safe retreat to the greasy, salty, fast, cheap dependability of Applebee’s. Tomorrow night, maybe, he’ll try something new.
    “Listen, Raj-man, I just received new marching orders for you, from our mystery client.”
    As far as Raji is concerned, all the clients are mysteries. There are hundreds of them, all identified solely by codes, which he assumes represent operations within the CIA, or possibly in other governmental agencies. Raji sends his alerts and his reports via a closed network to numerical accounts that aren’t associated with any names, any locations, any clue who’s on the other end of his communications.
    One client is even more mysterious than others, outside the standard protocols. All the resulting intel is eyes-only, with no VDA management in the loop. Even in the context of VDA’s hush-hush standards, this is notably secretive. And yet more mysterious is that Raji himself was specifically requested by the client, a circumstance that prompted Brock to ask, “Who did you have to blow?” When this client put in the request six months ago, Raji had no idea why. He still has no idea.
    “Your watch list has been narrowed down to a dozen, Raj-man. Much smaller list, obviously, but intensely expanded coverage.”
    Raji clicks his keyboard and reexamines the screen. Most of the people on this shortened list work for a magazine in New York City; some of the others are their spouses. A couple are foreign citizens, living abroad. This is a strange combination of people to monitor.
    “The client wants absolutely everything on these subjects—every card swipe, ATM withdrawal, phone call, text message, E-ZPass scan, online order. Anything whatsoever, anytime, anywhere.”
    NEW YORK CITY
    Will kisses his wife, long and lithe and impeccable, high heels and a hip-hugging skirt and a scoop neck with a pendant necklace that makes it impossible to ignore her breasts. There’s something cold in Chloe’s response, perfunctory. Is this a fresh fight they’re in? Or just the remnants of an old one? It’s sometimes hard to tell where one ends and another begins, and Chloe has a tendency to hold on to them tenaciously, all of them.
    Will knows that of course he
should
be in the doghouse. But how can Chloe know? She can’t. Maybe she senses something coming off him, some aura of wrongdoing. He certainly feels it.
    For a few days after Elle, Will had been elated, traveling in beautiful places, with a fresh wonderful memory, and the immense sense of well-being from knowing that he was desired by the one person in the world he most desired. What’s better?
    But the thrill wore off, and his eventual flight back to New York was a tortured exercise in sappy self-loathing. He opened his computer and worked badly, then he opened a book and read distractedly, then he watched a mediocre movie halfheartedly. The flight seemed to go on forever.
    He arrived home tired and sad, and not at all sure what the point had been, in the end, of saying no to Elle. He had lost something there in France: he’d lost his rightness, and his certainty. And he can’t see what he’d gained.
    And now here he is, standing beside his wife, listening to Dean asking, “So, Will, how’s life on the road?”
    Will puts his arm around Chloe’s waist. “Not bad; you know they make it easy for me. Safe places, like Argentina tomorrow. But
you
! Everything good?”
    The spy accusation leveled against Will is a popular idea of a joke, or at least Will thinks it is. But against Dean, it’s not. Dean has spent large chunks of his career as an international journalist in dangerous places, always accompanied by the conjecture that he’s chummier than necessary with Langley’s operatives.
    “Never better.”
    “Dean doesn’t think our house project looks quite