Running for Her Life

The “other woman” gets a starring role in Stephen Carter’s new spy novel about a mentally ill CIA director. READ AN EXCERPT from the bestselling author and Yale law professor.

On the Sunday before the terror began, Rebecca DeForde pointed the rental car into the sullen darkness of her distant past. The interstate was behind her. So was the chilly rain that had slowed her progress. The county road wound through thick Colorado forest, now snuggling along mountain peaks, now twisting among glowering trees. Here and there a distant flicker marked a farmhouse, then was gone. Fog enclosed her like sudden blankness. There was no moon. There were no stars. Street lamps had overlooked this corner of America, and so had the programmers of the car’s GPS. The road was curvy and unkempt and, in mid-April, icy in places. Still, Rebecca drove very fast, the way she always did. She did not know whether she was running away or running toward. She was 34 years old and for most of her life had felt as if she were running sideways, a cheerleader watching others play the game. She had grown accustomed to her role, and hated to be dragged onto the field. She had not wanted to make the journey, but she had no choice. Jericho Ainsley was dying, and although hardly anybody remembered nowadays exactly what Rebecca and Jericho had been to each other, everybody agreed that they had once been something.

Beck herself had trouble recalling the precise details of their 18 months together, even though, once upon a time, she had given interviews about it.

Beck herself had trouble recalling the precise details of their 18 months together, even though, once upon a time, she had given interviews about it.

“Come on,” she urged the poky car as it struggled up the slope.

Like many lonely people, Beck was on terms of easy conversational familiarity with the objects around her, and, often, with herself. “Come on, you can do this, don’t quit on me.”

The car seemed to grumble back at her.

“It’s OK.” Patting the dashboard as its screens glowed sullen rebuke. “It’s OK. You can do this.”

Jericho’s Fall. By Stephen Carter. 368 pages. $25.95. Knopf. The car finally upshifted, and picked up the pace. Rebecca smiled, although another part of her would happily have missed the trip entirely.

Jericho was not supposed to die. Not yet. He and Beck were supposed to—what? Reconcile? Apologize? Have an ordinary human conversation?

There was some ceremony left, anyway, and they were supposed to have all the time in the world to perform it. “Guess not,” she muttered.

Beck had learned of Jericho’s condition not from his family but from an enterprising reporter, who had tracked her down in Boston. The reporter called not the BlackBerry she used for business but her personal cell, a number known to perhaps a dozen people. It was Saturday. She liked weekends, because the stores were crowded, and you could observe the flow of customers, looking for bottlenecks and underused spaces.