22: Chapter 22: After thirty-two years of forbearance, I can't take it anymore.

Washington, Department of Homeland Security Building, three days later.

After having that meal with Edward on Chestnut Street, Eli Walsh's life seemingly showed no signs of change on the surface.

Every morning, he arrived at his office at exactly 7:15, nearly an hour earlier than most people in the department.

The coffee his secretary prepared for him every day still followed the same recipe: no sugar, no milk, a medium Americano, with the temperature precisely around one hundred and sixty degrees Fahrenheit.

In every intelligence summary he reviewed, he would still write down concise and restrained comments in the margin with a black fountain pen.

At every interagency coordination meeting he attended, his remarks remained as flawless and impenetrable as ever.

No one noticed anything unusual.

Not his deputy.

Not his secretary.

Not the division chiefs who had morning meetings with him every day.

Even the veteran security guard who had worked with him the longest saw not a trace of difference on his face when swiping him through the seventh-floor elevator doors every morning.

But only Walsh himself knew.

Over these past three days and nights, a voice deep within his mind had not stopped for a single moment.

The voice was neither loud nor rushed; it did not sound like a command, but more like an echo seeping out from the marrow of his bones.

Whenever he paused, closed a file, put down his pen, and leaned back in his chair, his gaze inadvertently drifting across the Potomac River to the gray silhouette of The Pentagon on the opposite bank, that voice would surface.

Like bubbles rising from beneath the sand after the tide recedes, one after another, slow and stubborn.

Is it worth it?

Is it a good deal?

Thirty-two years ago, he was still a Naval Academy midshipman in his early twenties. Dressed in a crisply ironed white uniform, he had gotten into a fight with a few Marine Corps guys behind the gym.

The cause was trivial; the other side had insulted the West Coast clique, and he couldn't hold back and got physical.

As a result, his back molar was knocked out, and blood poured down his chin, staining his uniform collar more glaringly red than the warning lights on a warship.

During morning drills the next day, the instructor asked him what happened to his face, and he said he had fallen.

No complaints, no reports, no follow-up whatsoever.

The Marine Corps colonel's son who had knocked his tooth out never knew that the only reason he wasn't expelled was because the guy whose tooth he broke had taken all the blame.

Why?

Because the father of the person who knocked out his tooth was a colonel in the Marine Corps.

If he had reported it, his future in the Navy would have been over.

Not a single destroyer would have taken him.

So he swallowed his broken tooth along with the blood.

Even now, thirty-two years later, Walsh still believed that it was a wise choice.

That wise choice had made him who he was today—

From a Navy intelligence officer to the CIA, and from the CIA to the Director of the Office of Intelligence and Analysis at the Department of Homeland Security, the third-highest-ranking figure in the department.

Every step of the way was paved by a shattered molar swallowed down into his stomach.

The teeth he had swallowed in his life were far more than just that one.

But what about the Hoover Dam?

Is it worth it? Is it a good deal?

Walsh sat in his office chair, holding a cup of Americano that had already gone completely cold. His gaze passed over the stacks of documents on his desk, color-coded with various security classification labels, and landed on the gray, overcast sky outside the window.

Washington in May was always like this—not cold, but gloomy, with low-hanging clouds that filtered all the light into a lifeless silver-gray.

Of course, he knew that the Hoover Dam was not to be investigated.

Three years ago, on the day he retired, the former director, Lawrence Geller, had locked the door and handed him a thin slip of paper.

On that slip of paper, seven or eight lines of text were printed, one of which read: "Hoover Dam (Hydroelectric)."

Geller said nothing, but saying nothing was precisely the gravest warning.

In the power structure of the Lighthouse Country, some things did not belong to any public registry, nor did they exist in any legal statutes.

They could not be archived, nor could they be copied. They could only exist in the cerebral cortex of successive Directors of the Office of Intelligence and Analysis, and on a slip of paper passed down by word of mouth.

But that was under the assumption that nothing had happened.

In a situation where that paper was just a paper, and those names were just names.

It was different now.

Edward had already come.

Edward was already investigating the Hoover Dam.

And whether Walsh was willing or not, whether he participated or not, whether he knew the details or not—the Deep State wouldn't care about any of that.

They only looked at one thing: whether you had any connection to the matter.

If you did, you became a target that had to be eliminated as quickly as possible.

He had seen too many such things in Washington, in the Lighthouse Country.

So many that he could recite the standard operating procedure with his eyes closed—

Someone begins to investigate something; someone's brakes suddenly fail on the way home late at night; someone slips in their own bathroom and hits the back of their head. The police conclusion is always an accident, and the media reports are always silent.

Then, as if it had never happened, all traces of the matter are smoothed away by time.

And now, it was his turn.

He wasn't afraid.

He had worked in the intelligence system for half his life and had seen every way to die.

But he needed to know if it was worth it.

Should he blame Edward?

He leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and rolled the name around in his mind.

For Edward to come and investigate the Hoover Dam, something must have happened in Nevada.

Something must have occurred that was shocking enough to prompt the head of a century-old political family to fly across the entire country just to feel out his old friend.

And with Walsh sitting in the seat of the Director of the Office of Intelligence and Analysis—the nerve center that received reports of suspicious incidents from every state in the nation—

since something capable of shaking the Deep State had happened in Nevada, whoever followed up on the investigation—whether it was Edward or someone else—would eventually trace it through the layers of the intelligence system right to Eli Walsh's desk.

It was as natural as water flowing downward.

There was no escaping it.

From the very beginning, this matter had left him no way out.

Whether Edward came or not, he was already a player in the game.

Walsh opened his eyes, averted his gaze from the window, and muttered to himself in a low voice.

"That incident that shook the Deep State... what on earth was it?"

No one answered him.

There was only the faint hum of the office heating system and the low echo of a door opening and closing in the distant corridor.

He stood up.

He didn't know why he stood up, only feeling that something was stifling his chest, and he needed to change his posture to loosen it.

He walked over to the full-length mirror set into the office wall.

It was an old-fashioned full-length mirror with a dark walnut frame. The craftsmanship was exquisite but the style was outdated—one of the few things Geller had left behind when he retired.

Reflected in the mirror was a fifty-seven-year-old man.

His hair was graying and cropped short, his hairline significantly higher than in his youth.

The flesh on his face was looser than during his Navy days, and the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and on his forehead looked as if they had been carved in with a knife, each one corresponding to a year spent in the intelligence system over the last half of his life.

His eyes were still the same gray-blue, but the light within them was gone,

worn away,

worn away by calculation, caution, and decades of "never saying what shouldn't be said," leaving only a cold, measured scrutiny that was neither humble nor arrogant.

Walsh stared blankly at the man in the mirror.

He looked at that aging face, at those wrinkles and white hair, and at those eyes that were no longer bright.

Then, he suddenly saw something else.

Deep within the mirror, behind those wrinkles and white hair, a figure was slowly emerging.

The figure was very blurry, as if seen through a layer of mist.

But he recognized the silhouette—a crisp, white Navy uniform, a youthful face, and skin tanned to a wheat-gold by the blazing sun.

It was a twenty-two-year-old young man with bright eyes, a straight back, and a slight upward curve at the corner of his mouth, carrying a confidence and wildness that suggested the world was vast, yet he could roam it at will.

It was Edward, standing beside him at the Naval Academy graduation ceremony.

And it was himself, standing beside Edward.

The sun was blazing.

The formation was perfectly aligned.

When the superintendent called his name, the young man turned his head to glance at him.

That glance was like a sword drawn from its sheath, flashing with the cold light of confidence, harboring a burning ambition, and carrying a youth's casual disregard for the entire world.

They had thought the storms of the Persian Gulf were already the most dangerous challenges in this world.

They had thought their life's journey would be the oceans and warships, achievements and glory.

"When did you... start becoming like this?"

Walsh stared at the old, cautious, and lifeless face in the mirror, his lips trembling slightly.

He remembered three days ago at the entrance of 117 Chestnut Street, when Edward shook his hand before getting into the car.

At the moment of the handshake, he had seen something in Edward's eyes,

something he had thought had long vanished from himself.

A sharp, youthful edge that declared the world was vast, but he would never look back.

Edward was the same age as him.

Edward's hair was also white.

Edward had also drifted in politics for decades, calculated against, betrayed, swept away by undercurrents of power, and swimming back.

Yet in Edward's eyes, that spark of light was still there.

But the light in the eyes of the man in the mirror—when did it go out?

Walsh's throat moved slightly.

"Is it worth it? Is it a good deal?"

Facing the man in the mirror, he hoarsely repeated those two questions.

Then, he suddenly smiled,

a smile that was not of joy, but a desolate, self-deprecating laugh squeezed from the depths of his chest.

"Heh... why am I even thinking about this question?"

His voice echoed in the empty office,

as if interrogating the old politician in the mirror,

and also as if interrogating the young man from thirty-two years ago, standing behind the Naval Academy gym with a chin covered in blood.

"Back then, when I thought about this question, it was when my tooth was knocked out, when I bled, and when I gritted my teeth and swallowed the truth into my stomach.

"Now I stand here, not a single hair lost, not a single drop of blood shed, and I'm thinking about whether it's worth it? Whether it's a good deal?"

"What the hell am I even thinking?"

His tone didn't rise, nor did he roar, but every word seemed squeezed out from between his teeth.

That sudden, uncontrolled anger after being suppressed for too long was directed not at others, but at himself.

"What is there to calculate? What is there to think about?"

"Calculating this and that, isn't it just calculating how much of a future I have left? How much dignity? How much certainty of living safely until retirement?"

"Thirty-two years ago, you swallowed a tooth to trade for the chair you sit in now. Thirty-two years later, what else do you want to swallow?"

"What else do you want to trade just to buy some worthless, peaceful days?"

He took a deep breath.

The old politician in the mirror was still gray-haired and weather-beaten.

But at this moment, deep in those gray-blue eyes, and in his straight spine preserved since his Navy days, there was an extra sharp light.

A sharp edge belonging to a twenty-two-year-old, declaring that though the world was vast, he would press forward without looking back.

To hell with some uninvestigatable slip of paper!

What warning from the former director, Lawrence Geller!

What secret list hidden in a safe!

Fuck it all!!