"It's weird to think that everyone on this street, everyone in this city," "Who is Ezra Kleinfelter?" "What kind of man puts his country's secrets out there for anybody to read?" "Buddy?" "We're here." " Sorry." "Got distracted." "Uh-huh." "Sorry, sir." "Your card is being declined." "My God." "They froze my accounts." "They know." "You got another card?" "Cash?" "Hey." "Hey, hey, get over here." "Hey!" "Hey, over here!" "Over here!" "He went that way!" "Devon." "Devon, give that ball back." "That's not your ball." "Okay." " That's good running." " Ha-ha-ha." "I don't know why you volunteer to come here." "It's like Lord of the Flies." "All right, let me just make sure everything is cool." "Jewel heist?" "Mad bomber on the loose?" "No, there's no crime." "Sherlock quizzes me sometimes." " It's part of the work." " Quizzes you about what?" "Dollhouse." " Cute." " Yeah, Sherlock built it." "Is that doll supposed to be dead?" "Heh." "It's a way to practice flash analysis of crime scenes." "Suicide by prescription meds?" "Huh." "Who knew?" "So are you getting any real-world time?" "Uh, this is..." "This is pretty much it." "You know, as cool as it is, you spend your time chasing thieves and murderers." "You live with your business partner." "It might be a good idea to carve out some time for, you know, regular stuff." "Keep your options open." "Wow, that's a whole family of dead dolls." "Yeah." "It's ghastly." ""No foul play." Uh..." "Keep my options open?" "What is that, what, about dating?" "Okay, no, put that down." "I know it's not your birthday for a while, but happy birthday." "What is this?" " TrueRomantix." " What?" "It's a horrible name." "It's a great site, from what I hear." "Got you a six-month membership." " Oh, my God." " I even filled out the profile for you." "Use it, don't use it, up to you." "But, you know, use it." "I meet people, you know." "My life is not that weird." "Oh, my God." "Staged suicide, obviously." "No one sticks their head in the oven anymore." "Shut up." "Please." "If you're gonna interrupt my coffee time, you could at least make the questions more challenging." "You must tell me how he became so skilled." "Do you train with him?" "Train?" "I didn't even realize we had a backgammon board." "One can't bend the dice to one's will." "Ah, good." "Watson." "I see you've met Mr. Mueller of Brussels." "Sort of." "Mr. Mueller arrived shortly after you left and has refused to state his business until all parties were present." "So... state your business." "You're no doubt aware that four days ago a civil contractor by the name of Ezra Kleinfelter leaked a dossier of national secrets to the media." "It is believed that he is sitting on more such information." "Yes, I vaguely recall the incessant media coverage." "I represent a consortium of like-minded citizens, and we are concerned about Mr. Kleinfelter's safety." "We think that certain of the parties that are pursuing him have something other than a fair trial in mind." "You're worried someone's gonna kill him?" "Your work comes highly recommended by the Damery Corporation." " Hmm." " We would like you to join in the pursuit of Mr. Kleinfelter." "If and when you find him, we would like you to deliver him to us, and we will in turn bring him to an embassy that has promised to provide safe haven until trial." "Now, I understand that Mr. Kleinfelter's actions are controversial." "So if you'd like a small window of time to research the group that I represent..." "No, that won't be necessary." "We'll take the case." "If you'll excuse us, Mr. Mueller." "My associate, she gets rather grumpy if she doesn't take her midmorning nap." "Heh." "We will be in touch when we have secured Mr. Kleinfelter." " Thank you both very much." " Thank you." "Yes?" "Really?" "Sounds like aiding and abetting a fugitive." "Mm." "Excellent." "I took that while you distracted him." "Good enough likeness, don't you think?" "What are you gonna do with that?" "I once helped a Lebanese agoraphobe retain copyright on a piece of facial-recognition software." "I'm not saying the young lady owes me billions, but I do think she can analyze my portrait for me." "I took the case because I want to put Mr. Mueller, or whatever his name is, at ease." "We are going to follow him and divine his nefarious plans, so we don't want his hackles up." "Mueller's not his real name?" "No Belgian is that bad at backgammon." "Of course Mueller has nefarious plans for Kleinfelter." "Why else the ruse?" "I'm not arguing that he's a good guy." "Can you just stop saying "nefarious"?" "That's like 15 times in the last ten minutes." "My agoraphobe responds." "Yep, there are no recent photos of anyone matching our man on public record." "But the orbital ridge doesn't lie." "I give you Elliot Honeycutt, as he looked when he entered Officers' Candidate School in 1975." "He entered the Q course for Special Forces training right after he graduated." "He was discharged in '88 and went to work as a systems analyst for Everwood Communications." "Since exposed by the Sentinel as a CIA front." "Currently VP of Corporate Counterintelligence at..." "Redding Enterprises." "Same contractor that until recently employed Ezra Kleinfelter." "How did you know that?" "Redding." "That man is not looking to bring Ezra Kleinfelter to justice." "He's looking to eliminate him." ""Kleinfeltarianism." Catchy name." "Turns out that most of Ezra's thoughts on a broken world have to do with how he can't get a date with his neighbor." "That and a bunch of Ayn Rand quotes." "Philosopher in chief to the intellectually bankrupt." "Hey, we never talked about what we're gonna do with him." "We are going to gather data on him, and we're going to use that data to extrapolate his whereabouts." "No, I'm talking about after that." "I mean, Ezra exposed some pretty terrible stuff." "Some people think he's a hero." "Yet some would like to see him hung from the nearest yardarm." "You're asking where I stand?" "I'm fairly certain that he doesn't deserve to be stalked and possibly executed by his former employers." "It's funny." "Most leakers, they tend to release their information to multiple sources at the same time." "It's the best way to ensure that it is disseminated." "But Kleinfelter dealt exclusively with one journalist," "Celia Carroll of the Dispatch." "I wonder why." "Oh." "Well, she looks like that." "Could have something to do with it." "I've already talked to everybody in this city who carries a badge." " Who are you guys again?" " Sherlock Holmes." "Joan Watson." "We are consultants with the N.Y.P.D., although our interest in this matter is private." "Okay." "Well, I'll tell you what I told everyone else." "But I'm doing an on-camera soon, so this has to be quick." "I haven't heard from Ezra." "I've no idea where he is." "Before your story came out, did he tell you what his plans were?" "Well, sure, he planned to leave the country before I published, but that got scotched when Redding figured out he'd been downloading classified material." "Everything got pushed up." "Ezra had to go into hiding." "Do you think he has a romantic interest in you?" "Judging by his writings, you're exactly his type." "You're bespectacled, you're lean and yet possessed of an alluring curve of flank." "Possessed of...?" "Look, you know what?" "Never mind." "The couple of times we met face-to-face, it never came up." "So you no longer consider him your source?" "You have no reason to believe he'll get in touch with you?" "I already told you, I don't know where he is." "I'm not looking to help anybody find Ezra, but even if I were, I'd be the last person he'd get in touch with." "You'd think someone that ambitious would be a better liar." "Hmm." "You made sure to ask her where Ezra is a second time." "She leaned back, crossed her arms." "When someone who's not used to lying is forced to repeat it, they resort to defensive posture." "Miss Carroll has been in touch with Kleinfelter, but she's done it in a way which has eluded the attention of those observing her." "We're going to have to analyze her movements." "Determine how they're communicating." "We're about to sit around for a very long time, aren't we?" "Miss Carroll will give an interview to anyone with a camera." "This is her fifth one today." "No sign of fatigue." "Do you think we're cut off from the world?" "You know, neither of us dates." "Neither of us really goes out much." "At all, actually." "We're not cut off from the world." "We're engaged in creating one that's actually worth living in." "One that addresses our needs entirely and eliminates everything extraneous." "Well, my friend signed me up for this dating website, and I think I'm gonna put my profile up." "You know, so be nice if I bring anyone around, okay?" "Won't be an issue." "Oh." "Our journalist tears herself away from her adoring public." "Why won't it be an issue?" "Because you won't actually bring anyone around." "I've lived most of my life with the firm conviction that romantic love is a delusion." "It's a futile hedge against the existential terror that is our own singularity." "Then I met someone who calls herself Irene Adler, and that forced me to reexamine those convictions." "She, of course, turned out to be a criminal." "Never really discussed how that made you feel." "I feel liberated." "I am, now and forever, post-love." "And, as such, I'm free to pursue a life of meaning." "Oh, how very droll." "So the security guard is her conduit to Ezra." "We need to learn how he's connected." "A look through his phone should do the trick." "Yeah, think he's just gonna give us his phone?" "No, of course not." "I'm gonna pickpocket it." "Of course, because you know how to pick pockets." "It's a fascinating art." "It's all to do with establishing trust and eye contact." "Oh, I'll just have to take your word for it." "Good." "And you'll need this back." "You just stole that phone." "Why are you nuking it?" "Because it couldn't be more dangerous if it was fashioned from liquid Ebola." "Hector, the security guard, it seems, is a man of hidden enthusiasms." "In his spare time, he frequents a website called Jamaica Quay." "It's a gathering place for identity thieves, intellectual-property pirates, other cyber-highwaymen." "And judging by his posts and his private messages," "Hector is affiliated with the collective that calls itself "Everyone."" "Oh, yeah, the hackers from the news." "They prefer to describe themselves as cyber activists, but yes." "It seems that Hector and his associates have taken up the banner of Mr. Kleinfelter." "They're committed to getting him to safety." "Hector has received a number of communiqués from someone who calls himself "Defenestrator."" "They're speaking in code, but I'm quite certain that Defenestrator is harboring Ezra Kleinfelter." "Hmm." "So, what are we supposed to do?" "Just look up "Defenestrator" in the phone book and we're good to go?" "Well, you are closer to a productive thought than you realize." "Jamaica Quay is anonymous." "So you can't simply trace the user name Defenestrator to an actual person." "You need to wait for them to reveal themselves." "In other words, you plan on arguing" " on the Internet all night?" " Yes." "I think I'm just gonna take this upstairs." "I put Clyde in your bed in an effort to be a more considerate flatmate." "I've decided not to wake you at dawn unless absolutely necessary." "So you used your pet turtle as an alarm clock?" "And circumstances have dictated that I violate the spirit of my resolution." "It's been an eventful night." "Defenestrator has proved to be a canny piece of quarry." "During the course of the debate, she revealed that she lives within a three-block radius of the building that used to house Ruben's Delicatessen." " She?" " That was around 2 a.m." "I spent the rest of the night coaxing an employee of Saturnware Computers into trying to reveal who within that radius recently purchased high-end equipment suitable enough for hacking." "Vanessa Hiskie." "That's who's hiding Ezra Kleinfelter." "Vanessa?" "Vanessa Hiskie?" "Before you throw the last tumbler, you might want to pause to consider the beauty of this moment." "We're about to succeed where the combined wits of a dozen or so federal agencies have failed." "Remind me again what cloistered, shriveled things our lives are." "Ezra Kleinfelter?" "Sherlock." "There are skin fragments beneath her fingernails." "I'm confident those will yield the attacker's DNA." "So argument gone bad." "And according to you, Ezra Kleinfelter's been hiding out here?" "We haven't found any concrete evidence that she had a guest, but yes." "Considering this place wasn't broken into, it would have to make him a suspect." "I mean, I don't get it." "The whole world's looking for this guy, she's willing to put him up, and he kills her?" "He didn't set out to kill her." "No, something went wrong between them." "Most likely a spurned romantic overture, yes." "Kleinfelter grew insistent, Miss Hiskie resisted..." "We needn't have a Socratic dialogue, because we have DNA." "Well, actually, we don't." "Kleinfelter doesn't have any priors." "I just double-checked with ViCAP." "He was fingerprinted for his security clearance, but he doesn't have a DNA sample on file." "So in the messages that she passed on to that reporter, Vanessa Hiskie, did she never refer to Kleinfelter by name?" "Excuse me." "Did you find that book in this box?" "Yeah." "It was in the closet." "Why?" "Ezra Kleinfelter's favorite author." "Half the college kids in the country have that book." "Yes, but Vanessa's bookshelf is in her bedroom." "Why would she leave this one book out in this box along with, uh," "a map of New York, a travel guide to Venezuela, a compass and an unopened box of crackers?" "Ezra didn't hook up with Everyone until a couple of days after he was on the run, so he had to be hiding somewhere during that time." "I think he brought this box with him when he came here." "Let's get the word out that Kleinfelter is a person of interest in a homicide." "Please." "I need a moment free from the Internet." "I'm trying to drag myself away, but the people I'm in conflict with are too infuriating to ignore." " Oh, you're still fighting with people?" " I've been monitoring Jamaica Quay." "It's frequented by members of Everyone, so there's a chance one of them knows where Ezra is hiding." "But I have, of course, been drawn into a debate as to whether Mr. Kleinfelter, murder suspect, is the victim of a government frame-up." "Are governments capable of evil?" "Yes, of course they are." "All institutions are." "But they're more capable of incompetence." "That's good." "I should post that." "What are you doing?" "I'm looking at profiles of guys who winked at me on TrueRomantix." "I weep for the whole desperate lot of you." "Hello." "Hi." "I'm calling about your Web ad." " I think you have the wrong number." " You don't have a model train set?" "What?" "Heh, no." "Well, I happen to think that Jeff Heinz of Washington Heights is cute." "I'm gonna wink back." "How's that for post-love?" "Hello." "Hey, I can be there in 20 minutes." " Are the trains set up?" " Excuse me?" "Um, what is this thing about the trains?" "Oh, you said we can take our clothes off and play with the trains together?" " What?" " I can..." "What is happening with my computer?" "Hey." "Got your pies." " Uh, we didn't order pizza." " Um, yeah, you did." "I..." "I got like 20 more larges with pineapple in my trunk." "I'm afraid you've been duped." "This is for your trouble." "Please see those pizzas find a good home." "Thank you." "What is happening?" "Hmm." "They most likely traced the phone here before the microwave destroyed it." "Who traced the phone here?" "Hector the security guard realized his phone had been stolen and then tracked it to this address before I realized he was a member and destroyed it." "He and his compatriots have reasoned that the enemies of Ezra Kleinfelter reside here, and now they plan to subject us to a life-ruin." "Have you changed your online banking password recently?" "In the last couple of weeks." "Why?" "They can just get into our computers like that?" "Amongst other places, but you should be all right." "Your e-mail, social media sites, those passwords are not derived from the names of family members, are they?" "Why?" "I don't think there's any need to panic." "Heartfelt apology still works miracles, I've found." "What am I apologizing for?" "Where are you going?" "We're not gonna get any work done here." "All right, thanks." "Hey, did you guys know your phones are disconnected?" "Yes." "Any word on the box we found in Vanessa Hiskie's apartment?" "We pulled some partial prints, but nothing matches Kleinfelter." "I need to examine the contents of that box." " I told you, it was a bust." " Forensically, yes." "But Ezra Kleinfelter's on the front page of every newspaper." "He doesn't have the run of the city." "He had to go somewhere after he murdered Vanessa Hiskie." "He couldn't reach out to Everyone, not after murdering one of their own." "We also know that he wasn't under their protection until two days after he became a fugitive." "You think he went back to the first place he was hiding." "Okay." "So..." "Looks like he's somewhere in New York or Venezuela." "And doesn't have anything to spread his cheese on." "This paper's..." "It's brittle." "It's ready to crack." "They went stale a long time ago." "So why would Kleinfelter carry around a bunch of old crackers?" ""O.C.D."" "The Office of Civil Defense." "It's a Cold War-era bureaucracy." "Amongst other things, they maintained emergency bunkers for officials to use in case of nuclear holocaust." "They were stocked with supplies, food." "Ezra's hiding in one of those bunkers." "He took that box with him when he went to Vanessa's." "So how many of these bunkers were there?" "Dozens." "Maybe hundreds." "Difficult to say." "Office of Civil Defense closed years ago." " You can use the desk line." " Hmm." "He hardly ever answers the phone anyway." "Going to have to pay him a visit." "You're telling me that one guy lives in this building." "Milton Van Kirk inherited the estate from his parents." "The man has spent his entire adult life writing a biography of Robert Moses," "The builder who shaped much of this city." "Van Kirk just turned 75, and he has yet to finish the manuscript." "He's been writing the same thing his whole life?" "His research has made him the world's foremost expert in the geography of New York City." "We've had a delightful correspondence about the Delaware Aqueduct." "I have, however, learned not to ask him about the progress of his book." "I recommend you do the same." "The Office of Civil Defense maintained..." "Let's see." " 41 emergency bunkers in New York City during the Cold War." "But they were all decommissioned by the time Clinton took office." "I don't know how your man got hold of a box with a O.C.D. Stencil." "But those bunkers just aren't there anymore." " Can I...?" "Can I look at those?" " Yeah." "Thanks." "Milton." "Look." "Two lists." "Commissions, decommissions." "The list of commissions is 41 entries long." "The list of decommissions, 40." "There is one bunker situated in a caisson in the Brooklyn Bridge which was built but never decommissioned." "They must have just simply lost track of it." "Ezra had access to government records for his job." "Maybe he noticed the same thing that you did." "Thank you, Milton." "Wait." "Can you help me?" "How did I end up agreeing to reading a 5,000-page manuscript?" "You won't be wasting as much time on the Internet now, will you?" "So you're gonna need something to fill up the hours you've spent selling yourself to strangers." "Excuse me, might I borrow your phone?" " It's police business." "I'm just..." " As soon as we pick up Kleinfelter, we're gonna figure out how to get these people off our backs, okay?" "Excuse me." "My name is Sherlock Holmes." "I have to get a message to Captain Gregson in Major Cases." "Kleinfelter hiding." "Brooklyn Bridge, east caisson." "On the way, all right?" "It's of paramount importance." "Okay." "You might consider this something of a lesson." "If you keep a discreet digital footprint, as I do, you're less vulnerable to the harassment which is Everyone's stock-in-trade." "Hey, can you pop the trunk?" "U.S. Secret Service!" "Hands in the air!" "What's this about?" "You seriously think we can't trace a blog back to an IP address?" ""44MustDie." "Com." Sound familiar?" "It should, because you posted it yesterday." "And it's got the details of four different plans to assassinate the president of this country." "That's a class-D felony." "Please, he didn't put that up." "We're being harassed." "Once again, I have no designs on the life of your president." "I have no designs on the life of any president." "I suppose if I lived in the age of Millard Fillmore," "I might consider drastic action." "We're talking about the leader of the free world." "This isn't a joke." "Isn't it?" "Because while we sit here and engage in beef-witted debate, my pursuit of an actual enemy of your state lies dormant." "I've told you, call Captain Thomas Gregson of the N.Y.P.D." " We'll get to that." " You're in pursuit of the author of a series of hate pamphlets who calls himself "Skrewdriver," are you not?" "I saw your bulletin board while you had me waiting." "You want to know if he's a threat." "If you make the call, I will tell you his identity." "You couldn't know that." "Couldn't I?" "I know that you, Agent Polk, are in the latest stages of a divorce and have started shaving your chest in anticipation of dating again." "And if you won't find alternative sources of protein, then you really need to resume eating meat." "Veganism is not a choice to be made flippantly." "I just spent three hours answering questions on whether or not I plan to assassinate the president." "I just heard from Captain Gregson." "By the time the police got to the bunker, it was empty." "This was all they found." "Everyone is helping Kleinfelter again." "They were monitoring the police band." "Told him when the officers were on the way." "How'd you get your phone to start working again?" "Oh, it's not mine." "I liberated it from Agent Polk." " Uh, hi." " Hi." "You're Joan?" "You're Joan Watson?" "Yes, and you are?" "Oh, Jeff Heinz." "Um..." "The guy from TrueRomantix." "Okay." "It's just that, you know, we exchanged some nice messages." "And then I got some really weird stuff from you." "Oh, no." "They all had your home address, which I thought was a little weird." "It's on your profile now too, along with some interesting thoughts on same-sex marriage." "Oh, my God, you know what?" "I know those things are on my profile," " but I did not write any of those things." " Yeah, I kind of figured that." "I'm no computer expert, but it seems like somebody's messing with you pretty badly." "So, um, I just wanted to make sure you're okay." "Oh." "Oh, hey, I hope that's not too strange." "No, it's nice." "Right, hack this!" "Oh, God, that is my roommate." "He's kind of a long story." "You know what?" "I would love to explain all of this to you." "Could I just have a couple of days to sort some things out" " and get things under control?" " Yeah." "But, you know, big picture, I am fine." "Seriously." "Thank you so much for checking in on me." "Yeah, of course." "I hope to see you soon." "Yeah." " Good night." " Good night." "Everyone may have had our power turned off, but they can't hack our generator." "The generator powers the laptop, which is connected to the neighbor's wireless." "I've opened a chat on Jamaica Quay so I can appeal directly to Everyone." "I've written them a heartfelt plea for them to end their campaign against us." "Oh, because they're known for compassion." "Well, I'm expecting nothing but mockery." "But if I can engage them at all, it might prove fruitful." "At least some of them are working with Kleinfelter." "Perhaps I can goad them into revealing something of their plans." "Um, I asked you about Irene yesterday." "Her name is Moriarty." "Sure, Moriarty." "What she put you through was cruel." "And I don't think you've really dealt with it yet." "I submitted to one recovery at your behest." " There won't be a second." " I..." ""Shoe on head."" "They want me to upload a photograph of myself with a shoe on my head as it is a ritual of humiliation for the tribe." "Fine." "Oh." "Very well." "Um..." "Heh." "No." "I remind you we are investigating a murder." "No." "They all just left." "Everyone is a collective." "They don't take orders." "Why would they just fall silent just because "Jormungandr" says to?" "It's 9:00." "You didn't wake me." "I didn't need to." "We're quite free until 4:22 this afternoon." "I thought a leisurely breakfast might be nice." "Hmm." "And what is happening at 4:22?" "Well, after you went to bed last night," "I spent some time reviewing Ezra Kleinfelter's options." "He could try to survive as a fugitive here in the States." "That's a difficult life." "It's highly risky." "He could present himself to a sympathetic embassy." "His best option, by far, is the third." "Make his way to foreign soil, gain asylum, live out his days." "Wait, first of all, there's only a handful of places that will take him right now." "I mean, everyone in the country's looking for him." "Public travel's out of the question, I agree." "Yeah." "But private air travel is far less regulated." " The security measures are minimal." " So he needs his own private plane?" "No, he needs an ally with a plane." "And a few days to make the necessary arrangements." "Jormungandr." "The name of the member of Everyone who got his compatriots to toe the line." "The name, of course, refers to the third child of Loki and Angrboda in Norse mythology." "Oh, of course, because everyone knows that." "He was a serpent who grew so large he could encircle the Earth and swallow his own tail." "It's quite a striking image." "And it led me to the man behind the alias." "Fifteen years ago, an Irishman named Darragh O'Connor sold a nifty bit of software that he'd written himself." "It was his first and only foray into the business world, but it netted him nearly a billion dollars." "Since then, he's spent his time primarily as an advocate for freedom of information." "That's Everyone's pet cause." "Ouroboros." "A snake eating his own tail." "So Darragh O'Connor is Jormungandr." "Well, according to the FAA, his private plane is scheduled to touch down here in New York later this afternoon and take off for Venezuela shortly thereafter." "I'll wager he'll be taking on a passenger." "4:22 on the nose." "The driver." "Kleinfelter's the driver." "We want the driver." "Move in." "Ezra Kleinfelter, you're under arrest." "You're facing federal charges, and you're a person of suspicion in the murder of Vanessa Hiskie." "You are persistent, I'll give you that." "But I'm still getting on this plane, and I'm flying to Caracas." "Heh." "I can tell you two things wrong with that sentence." "Arrest me, and 14 innocent men and women will lose their lives." "One of you, reach into my bag there." "There's an envelope." "It's a dossier concerning a man named Farouq Hassad." "Yeah?" "What about him?" "He's an intelligence asset of ours in Morocco." "Call that number on the Post-it." "See how fast the section chief asks how you knew that." "That's just one to prove that I'm not bluffing." "There are 13 more, and if you arrest me, their names go public." "Now, some of them might get to protection in time." "But most of them?" "Well, there's a reason why they call it "deep cover."" "We gotta let him go." "Let him go." "It doesn't matter where you go." "We know you killed Vanessa Hiskie." "We'll prove it." "If there's evidence that ties Ezra to the murder, do you think that Venezuela will still grant him asylum?" "Why?" "Um..." "Well, I stole his watch." "You..." "That's why you grabbed him?" "We didn't cover sleight of hand yet." "Well, I dug into it on my own." "You were right." "I mean, all it is is eye contact and controlling the point of focus." "Our power's out, so, what else am I gonna do but read?" "Well, if we can scrape together enough skin cells to get a viable epithelial DNA sample, and we get creative about how we came into possession of the watch, then we could prove he killed Vanessa Hiskie." "Okay, but even if we do get Kleinfelter back, isn't he just gonna release those names?" "Oh, undoubtedly." "But we just have to try and make sure that all 14 of those people are safe before he does." "Yeah, but we don't know who they are." "Not yet." "But it's a nine-hour flight to Caracas." "I need a backgammon board." "Time to give our client a status update." "Good evening, Elliot Honeycutt." "Holmes." "How did you get in here?" "Have a seat." "We can sharpen your backgammon skills while we talk." "Things are going rather poorly, I'm afraid." "Ezra Kleinfelter, as we speak, is on his way to Venezuela." "It seems he will escape justice and whatever fate you had in mind for him." "We can tie him to the murder of Vanessa Hiskie, but if we do, he will release the contents of several stolen files." "They contain the names of 14 clandestine operatives." "That's not really surprising to you, though, is it?" "Did you tell your employers that he has the names of more than a dozen key assets?" "No." "The board decided to pursue a strategy of containment." "Didn't work, though, did it?" "But now you have a choice." "Release those names to the government, and they can get those people to safety before Kleinfelter posts their identities." "That's suicide for the company." "The board will never agree." "I'm not talking about the board." "Can you access the stolen files?" "I can access anything at this company." "You're a former operative yourself." "Does it sit well with you?" "Your board playing fast and loose with the lives of people in service?" "I have no intention of letting Ezra Kleinfelter get away with murder." "You've done your research on me." "You know I get my man." "Even if it means letting those operatives die?" "I don't believe it will mean that." "Because when I leave here, you're going to release those names to the government, regardless of what it means to this company." "Why would I do that?" "Because you know what it means to serve." "You won't leave those men and women to their fates." "You're bluffing." "Well, I've told you what needs to happen." "Those souls won't be on my conscience." "Your turn, Mr. Honeycutt." "This was the scene at Miami International Airport as federal agents took Ezra Kleinfelter into custody early this morning." "Federal sources say that Kleinfelter confessed to the murder of Vanessa Hiskie in exchange for a guarantee that he won't face capital punishment for espionage." " The former assistant..." " The power's on." "So you got confirmation that the agents are all okay?" "After Honeycutt turned over the names, they were in safe houses within the hour, apparently." "Kleinfelter's confession has dampened Everyone's enthusiasm for him." "They've moved on to other pursuits." "I might have sent them a photograph of myself with a shoe on my head to hasten the reconciliation." "Oh." "My phone's back on." "We are free to resume our lives." "You might wanna check your voice mails." "The landline as well." "Potential clients may have reached out." "No more detective work for me today." "I need to figure out how many people Everyone managed to offend when they hacked into my accounts." "Have you considered letting the matter lie?" "Might be a chance to pare back on unnecessary social entanglements." "And I'm going out tonight." "I need a little real-world time." "For a long while now," "I've suspected that connection with another person, real connection, simply isn't possible." "I'm curious if you disagree, although I suspect you feel as I do in this, as you do in so many other things." "Oh, hey." "I'm assuming the evening went well, or you wouldn't have ended it with a good-night kiss." "It wasn't bad." "I mean, I don't know if there were any sparks." "It was fun." "I think it's sad that you've given up." "I think you have a lot to share, if you cared to." "I shouldn't be the only one who knows you." "So tell me, is it possible to truly know another person?" "Is it even a worthwhile pursuit?" "Yours is the only opinion I'll trust, the only point of view" "That holds even the faintest interest." "I find my diversions, as I always do, but the days are long in this gray place." "I dearly hope you'll write soon." "Ever yours, Jamie Moriarty."