by David Archer
“Sergeant Foster,” she said excitedly. “I’ve been trying to get word to you for two weeks now that I got myself transferred back to the states. I’m actually in Missouri, at Fort Leonard Wood, but since I’m still officially assigned to your case I can come to visit you anytime you need me to. Sit down, sit down!”
She hurried around to her side of the table and took her chair, while Noah sat down in his own.
“So, how are you doing?” Mathers asked. “Anybody mistreating you in here? Any threats, beatings, anything like that?”
Noah shook his head. “No, nothing at all,” he said. “I’m doing well. I get to read, work out, rest when I want to. This whole death row thing isn’t all that bad, to be honest. Well, except for the fact that it comes to an unhappy ending.”
Mathers rolled her eyes. “Do you ever take anything seriously? Listen, I’ve been working on the appeal, and I finally managed to get hold of your psychological records. The problem is that they don’t show you having any serious troubling issues. This histrionic blunted affect disorder that it talks about, that’s considered a high-functioning mental condition that doesn’t prevent you from acting rationally, and even makes rational decision-making easier, because you naturally think in logical sequences.”
Noah shrugged and grinned. “Sure, as long as I’ve got somebody to copy. Rational? I wonder if there’s an accurate definition for that word. My real concern is that maybe I’m too rational, rather than irrational. To me, seeing what I saw when I got to the lieutenant and the platoon that day, I took what I considered to be rational action. I put a stop to the situation. Seems to me it’s the rest of the world acting irrationally, by trying to eliminate me from the gene pool.”
Mathers sighed, and shook her head. “I know, and I agree completely, but that doesn’t help our appeal. If the judge would actually read what this says about you, he’d know that it’s almost impossible for you to act in any manner other than rationally. That should be enough, at least, to commute your sentence to life.”
They talked it over for a couple of hours, but every idea that Lieutenant Mathers put forth was shot down by Noah’s logic. There simply didn’t seem to be a feasible way to convince the court that Noah deserved to live, after he’d already been sentenced to death. Noah did his best to comfort his attorney, who was taking it all a lot harder than he was.
“Aren’t you scared?” Mathers asked him. “Aren’t you worried about the fact that they want to take you into that room, strap you down and inject chemicals in you that will make you go to sleep forever?”
Noah’s eyebrows went up. “Why should that scare me? You know, my grandfather is a minister, and many years ago he led me through the process of becoming a Christian. If my grandfather is right, then death is only going to be a doorway from this world into Heaven. And if he’s wrong, then it’s simply going to be the end of my consciousness. I won’t feel anything, I won’t know that I’m dead, I will just come to an end. There won’t be any pain, there won’t be any sensations at all, because there won’t be any me. So you tell me, what is there to fear in death?”
The lieutenant’s eyes were wide. “What is there to fear? Maybe nothing, for you, but what about the people you leave behind? What about the people who will hurt and grieve because you’re gone? Aren’t there people out there who depend on you?”
“No, not really,” Noah said. “I have very few friends, and my grandparents are the only family I have left. They claim to be happy to hear from me now and then, but they don’t want to be close because I scare them. Being a minister, my grandfather simply can’t understand someone who doesn’t have the capacity to love inside him, so to him, I must seem like some sort of demon. Whatever the case, I’m pretty much alone in this world, and while those few friends might think it’s sad that I’m gone, we’re not so close that it would bother them for more than a couple of hours.”
Mathers shook her head. “Sergeant Foster,” she said, “it will bother me. I know, down deep inside my heart, I know that you are innocent of the things you were convicted of doing. I know that, while some people might think your psychological issues make you a problem, the truth is that you are probably one of the finest men I’ve ever met, so if these monsters manage to do what they want to do, and take you down the hall and execute you, then you can be certain that there will be at least one person out here who will mourn your passing.” Mathers wiped furiously at her eyes, at the tears that were leaking out of them. She began gathering her notes. “Anyway—I’ll be back in about two weeks, and hopefully I’ll have some more ideas. If it’s possible at all, I’m going to find a way to keep you alive.”
Noah looked at her, and smiled. “Something I need you to understand,” he said. “Just because I don’t fear death, I don’t want you to think that I welcome it. I still have a survival instinct, so if you come up with something that will work, then trust me, I’m all for it. Good luck, Lieutenant Mathers, for both our sakes.”
Noah knocked on the door, and the guard escorted him back to his room. When he got there, he sat down and thought about Lieutenant Mathers and her determination to stop his execution. While a part of him hoped she would succeed, another part was fairly sure that she would not, and he realized that when that final day arrived and he took that last walk down the hall, it would be she who truly suffered, rather than himself.
Some people might have thought that he was being compassionate, concerned for her feelings. The truth, though, was that his mental programming, the logical progression of thoughts that he had forced upon himself since he was seven years old, required him to consider the best interests of the people he dealt with. In Iraq, that had led him to become an extremely efficient soldier, so that his enemies did not suffer unnecessarily. In this case, it meant that he felt he should lessen her grief as much as he could.
Noah decided to end his appeals. By doing so, he would clear the way for his own execution, which would relieve Lieutenant Mathers of her duties as his attorney and allow her to begin the grieving process while he was still alive, which he had read could sometimes make it easier to bear.
He sat down at his table and began composing a letter, telling her of his decision. He didn’t explain that he was doing it primarily to make things easier for her, because he knew that would make her more resistant to his choice. Instead, he told her that he was beginning to feel a depression set in, and that since he had been without emotions for so many years, the sudden onslaught was just more than he could handle. He pointed out that there was no hope, not really, of any success in preventing his execution, so he would prefer to simply let it happen as soon as possible.
And then, he encouraged her in her plan to write his story. Perhaps, he said, his name might one day be cleared by her efforts, and he hoped that the attempt to tell his story truthfully would help to bring her peace.
Since the letter was to his attorney, he didn’t have to leave it open for inspection. Noah sealed the envelope and added the address that she had given him during her visit, affixed a stamp, and pushed it through the slot.
Two days had passed since Lieutenant Mathers had come to visit, and Noah was back to his usual schedule, working out for an hour and a half in the morning before sitting down to read until lunchtime. After lunch, he would get his hour of rec time, running laps around the yard, and then would come back and read until dinner, after which he would work out again for an additional hour and a half. It was morning, and he had just finished his morning workout routine, before climbing into the shower to wash off the sweat.
He heard the keys over the sound of the water, reached up to turn it off quickly, and then peeked around the curtain. Lieutenant Spencer stood there, grinning at him.
“Foster,” he said, “you got a visitor, a light colonel from the JAG Office. Better hustle it up, she doesn’t look like one who wants to be kept waiting.”
Noah’s eyebrows shot up. “Yes, Sir, be right out.” He hurriedly rinsed himself off, dried as quickly as h
e could, and climbed back into his brown jumpsuit. As soon as he was dressed, he knocked on the door, and he wasn’t surprised when it opened immediately. Lieutenant Spencer was still there, and personally escorted him down the hall to the interview room.
The lieutenant opened the door and let him step inside, to find a thin, graying woman he’d never seen before sitting at the table. As Spencer had said, she wore the insignia of a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army. She looked up at him and smiled, motioning for him to take the seat across from her.
“Sergeant Foster,” she said, “I am Lieutenant Colonel Janice Hogan, from the Judge Advocate General’s Office. I’ve been sent here to interview you prior to your execution.”
Noah sat there and looked at the woman for a moment. “Wow, you guys don’t waste any time, do you?”
The woman smiled. “Well, I try not to. On the other hand, contrary to what you might think at this moment, my purpose is not to hasten your execution. My interview is on another matter entirely, but since it wouldn’t do me any good to try to interview you afterward, well, I thought it best to come on down and see you now.”
Noah’s eyebrows raised, and he cocked his head a little to one side in confusion. “I’ll grant you it wouldn’t do a whole lot of good to try to interview me after my date with the needles, but if you’re not here as part of the process for getting ready for the execution, then can I ask what this is about?”
“It may well be about keeping you alive, Sergeant Foster,” she said. “Assuming, of course, that’s something that still interests you at all. Does it?”
Noah sat there for a moment and thought through what she had just said. “It does,” he said, “depending on what it’s going to cost me. Since I know what kind of pressure has been applied to make sure I keep that date, then I can only assume that you’re not who you claim to be, and this meeting isn’t anything like what you logged when you signed in here today. That tells me that there’s a catch, and until I know what it is, I’m not going to make any agreements.”
Hogan’s eyebrows were the ones to go up this time. “Impressive,” she said. “No one else has ever figured me out so fast. What tipped you off?”
Noah shrugged. “It’s like I said,” he said. “Congressman Gibson wants me dead, because I killed his son and because he doesn’t want the reason his son died to ever come out publicly. Since he’s on the fast track to the Republican nomination for president, and stands a decent chance of winning in the next election, I don’t think there’s anybody in the Army who is going to go up against him. That tells me you’re not Army, so you must be with one of those alphabet soup groups that we hear all the legends about. Normally, I’d guess CIA, but Gibson is on their oversight committee. FBI doesn’t have the kind of power it would take to get you in here like this, nor does DEA. If I had to gamble on it, I probably bet you have something to do with Homeland Security, am I right?”
Hogan smiled. “No, but you’re closer than I would’ve thought you could get. That’s some incredible deductive reasoning. I’ve seen reports about you and your ability to extrapolate facts from minor details, but I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it myself.” She reached up and slipped both of her thumbs under what appeared to be her hairline, and lifted the gray wig to let Noah see the blonde hair underneath. “As you can see, you’re very close to being right. I’m not who I claim to be, but this disguise makes it possible for me to move about in circles that I couldn’t normally get into. Now, shall we continue this conversation?”
“Sure, we can continue,” Noah said. “At least up until the point where I find out what the catch is.”
Hogan smiled and inclined her head, a tacit admission that there was indeed a catch. “And if it’s something you can live with?”
“Then I suppose we’ll keep on talking,” he said. “What’s the chance we can just cut to the chase and you tell me what it is right now?”
The woman across the table from him laughed, and he realized that she wasn’t nearly as old as she appeared to be. “A very good chance, actually,” she said. “I’ll just come right out and say it. You’re one of the most capable and efficient killers that the Army has ever seen. You lack any semblance of human emotion, and appear to be completely without conscience or morals, other than those you impose upon yourself. That makes you an absolutely ideal candidate for an opening in my organization. If you accept the job, then I make all of these troubles go away, set you up with a different identity, and train you to defend your country in ways you never dreamed of before. Your duties would be to act in the best interests of the United States, including the elimination of specific human targets when necessary.”
“I’d be an assassin? Is that what you’re saying?”
“That would be one of your job descriptions,” she said with a grin. “You’ve seen all the superspy movies, the ones that make it seem like American agents are somehow beyond the normal human?”
Noah chuckled. “Yeah,” he said, “but I could never suspend disbelief long enough to convince myself that Tom Cruise could be one of them. Are you trying to say that such agents actually exist?”
The grin got wider. “I’m trying to say that they will as soon as you agree to sign on.” She leaned forward. “Sergeant Foster, there’s no doubt in my mind that you were telling the truth in your court-martial, about what really happened out there. Now, you can sit here and await your execution, or you can accept my proposition and become even more important to the peace and security of this nation than you ever were as a soldier.”
“And all I’ve gotta do is kill the people you tell me to kill, right? Well, let me ask a fairly serious question. Who decides who those targets might be?”
She smiled. “I do,” she said, “but not arbitrarily. Other agencies submit a request for elimination, naming a target that they feel should be removed. Along with that request must be a complete and detailed file outlining the reasons behind the request. I was appointed by the president as an autonomous director of the organization I run, which is called E & E, and before you ask, that is short for Elimination and Eradication. I review the file, and if I can honestly tell myself that I agree that this person should be removed, then I will approve it and send the elimination order down to one of the teams that I run.”
Noah tilted his head to the left. “Teams?”
She nodded. “Yes,” she said. “I currently have seven agents, men and women who, for various reasons, came onto my radar as having the potential to be beneficial to my mission, just like you. Each of those agents has a support team, consisting of a transportation specialist, an intelligence specialist, and a capable thug, for when a little extra muscle is needed. If you come on board, you will have such a team, yourself. You’ll be trained in a number of skills and disciplines, and when you go into the field, your team will answer to you and only you. You, in turn, will answer only to me.”
Noah looked into her eyes for several seconds, and concluded that she was being completely honest with him. “Well, so far, the only problem I got with this whole plan is the idea that you get to decide who lives and who dies. Who decided that you are the one who gets to play God?”
“Our commander-in-chief,” she said. “Up until I got this assignment, I was an intelligence analyst with another of those groups that you mentioned earlier. The president was intrigued by the fact that I would occasionally suggest that assassination might be an appropriate measure to take, and a few years ago he called me in for a private conversation. He told me that he had convinced the Joint Chiefs of Staff that it was time to create an organization along these lines, and that he had a candidate for its management, namely me. He offered me the job, and assured me that I would be completely autonomous and could never be ordered to sanction an assassination, so I took it.”
“Just out of curiosity, do you have any trouble sleeping at night?” Noah asked.
“Not a bit,” she said. “You’ll find, if you accept my offer, that I never sanction an assassinat
ion lightly. I have to be absolutely certain that it’s justified and warranted, or I’ll disapprove the request. My decision is always final, and there’s nobody above me to complain to. I can guarantee you, if you come aboard, you will never wonder whether your target deserves what you do to him. That’s because I will make sure you know exactly why I have sanctioned that death, including giving you access to all of the information that led me to decide it needed to be done.”
Noah sat there in silence for a full three minutes, just looking into the eyes of the woman across the table. He expected her to become impatient with him, to demand an answer, but she just sat there and looked straight back into his. At last, he spoke.
“So how would this work?” Noah asked her.
“Two days from now, you’ll be found dead in your cell, hanging from the air vent, an apparent suicide. You’ll be carried out and buried, a death certificate issued to serve as proof to anyone who ever wants to know that Sergeant Noah Foster died in prison by his own hand. Of course, the body that gets buried won’t be yours. You’ll be loaded into an ambulance and driven to a highly secret facility where your training will begin. Among the things you’ll be taught will be your own new life history, and because we like to keep things simple, all we’re going to do is change your last name, and we’ll give you a history that will let you go out into the world as a free man. You’ll also have your appearance slightly altered, not a lot, but just enough so that if you ever ran into someone who knew you before, they would go, ‘Wow, that guy looks a little like someone I used to know, but it’s not him.’ It’s not that we’re really worried about you running into old friends, since we already know you don’t have very many, but as you can imagine, the existence of E & E is something we don’t want to let the world in on. Any other questions?”