by David Archer
She turned and walked over to a car that was parked nearby and drove away. Noah looked at Marco, who was standing beside him. “Ready?” Noah asked, and Marco grinned. Noah walked carefully to the door, still a little shaky, and used the key to open it.
It looked like the kind of room you'd find in one of the better chain motels, with a few added features. There was a queen-sized bed, along with a dresser and what appeared to be a closet, a table with three chairs, and a desk with yet another chair and a laptop computer on top of it. Sitting on top of the dresser was a large, flat-panel TV, and he saw a small refrigerator, a microwave oven and a coffee maker set up on the counter back by the bathroom.
The bathroom itself was large, and he was surprised to see a jacuzzi tub. He glanced at Marco. “Nice place,” he said.
“Yeah, they tend to pamper us just a little bit. Trust me when I tell you that you're going to work for it, and I mean work hard.”
Noah shook his head. “Work don't scare me,” he said. “Have I got time for a shower before breakfast?”
Marco grinned. “Come on, man, you don't smell that bad. Let's go grab some eggs and bacon, then I'm going to get a shower myself, after that. You can get one then.”
Noah nodded, and followed Marco back out of the room, locking it behind him. Marco turned right and went to the end of the row of rooms, then took another right when he reached it. They were on the right leg of the U, and Marco pointed at a brightly lit building just a few hundred yards away.
“That's the restaurant, dude,” he said. “It works just like a regular one, and you can order anything off the menu. The food is good, that much I can tell you.”
They entered the restaurant building, and Noah was surprised when an actual hostess seated them. As soon as she handed them their menus, a waitress appeared and poured coffee for each of them, then waited to take their breakfast orders. Noah chose the eggs and bacon that Marco had mentioned, because they just sounded appealing. Marco followed suit, and the waitress walked away.
Noah added sugar to his coffee, then took a sip. “Now, that is good,” he said. “Trust me, the stuff they give you on death row is probably the cheapest generic crap you can buy anywhere. This is good coffee.”
“I told you, the food here is great. Wait 'til you taste the bacon, I've never been able to find any out in the world that was half as good.”
Noah took another sip of coffee, then set the cup on the table. “So what's on the agenda for me today?”
“Well, this morning you've got to go see Doc Parker. He's the shrink that decides where to place all the new recruits who come in. He'll decide whether you're actually an assassin, or if you belong in a support team. He'll keep you busy until lunchtime, and we'll come back here for that, then you've got two hours of PT. After that, you get a half-hour break so you can grab a shower, then they got you scheduled for weapons class. You'll like that one, it's pretty cool. You learn to use every kind of weapon you can imagine, and probably a thousand things you'd never think of on your own. Our boss lady works on the philosophy that absolutely anything can be used as a weapon, and she likes to make sure we all understand what that means.”
“So, even the support teams go through this training?”
“Well, at least some of it,” Marco said. “Let's face it, there's always the possibility that you and your team could be out on a mission, and something happens to you. That doesn't necessarily mean the mission is over, and there's a good possibility that your support team will be ordered to complete it. They need to know how to use the weapons, too.”
Noah shrugged. “I guess that makes sense,” he said. The waitress brought their plates, and the two men enjoyed their breakfast, chatting about inconsequential things as they ate.
When breakfast was over, they went back to the motel, and Noah stepped into his room. “I'm going to go grab a shower, myself,” Marco said, “and I'll be back over here as soon as I'm done. You're supposed to be at Doc Parker's office by ten, so we got a little over an hour. See you in a bit.”
Noah waved. He started rummaging through the dresser of the closet to find some clean clothes to put on after his shower, then turned on the water. A quick glance around the bathroom showed his own favorite brands of soap, shampoo, shaving cream and even razors, and he had to grin. He thought for a moment about climbing into the jacuzzi, but then decided to just settle for a shower.
Twenty minutes later, he stepped out of the bathroom feeling more refreshed and alive than he could remember feeling in several months. The dresser held clean socks and underwear, and he found jeans and polo shirts in other drawers. There were nicer clothes hanging in the closet, including a couple of business suits, but no one had told him to get dressed up, so he decided to go casual.
He peeked out the door but saw no sign of Marco, so he lay back on the bed and picked up the TV remote. He clicked the TV on, and started flipping through channels, mostly just curious about what kind of programming would be available in a place like this, but then he stumbled across a news program and saw an announcer talking right next to a photograph of his own face. He turned up the volume to listen.
The announcer was talking about how Sergeant Noah Foster, who had recently been convicted of multiple murders in Iraq, had committed suicide in his cell at Leavenworth. Apparently, Sergeant Foster had left behind a suicide note in which he recanted his earlier claims that he had been innocent.
Reporters had interviewed the sergeant's family, who declined to appear on camera, but said that he had always been a troubled young man. His grandfather was quoted as saying that he hoped Noah had made peace with God before he hung himself.
Noah shook his head. He wasn't a bit surprised that his grandparents wanted to distance themselves from him, and a part of him understood and respected their feelings.
The reporter also interviewed his attorney, Lieutenant Mathers. She was shown on camera, loudly insisting that there was something fishy about his death. “Let me tell you something,” she said to the reporter. “We were preparing an appeal, an appeal that had a very good chance of overturning Sergeant Foster's conviction, and there is no way, let me repeat that, there is no way that I will ever believe that man took his own life.”
The reporter went back to talking about the suicide note, and Noah turned off the TV. He wished there were a way he could let Lieutenant Mathers know that things had worked out for him, but there wasn't. He was allowed no contact with anyone from the past, and that would include her. Hopefully, she would figure out that there was no way she could win before it destroyed her completely.
There was a tap on the door, and Noah called out, “Come in.” Marco stuck his head in.
“Ready to go?” Marco asked, and Noah rose from the bed, clicking off the TV as he did so.
“All set,” he said, and stepped outside, locking the door behind him. He followed Marco to a fairly new Ford Mustang, and climbed into the passenger seat as Marco got behind the wheel.
“Okay, we're off to see the wizard, a.k.a. Doc Parker,” Marco said. “When we get there, I'm going to let you go on inside, and I'll just wait out here in the car.” He held up a paperback novel. “Brought my own entertainment with me, so don't worry about trying to hurry things along. I'll be sitting outside when you get done.”
“No problem,” Noah said.
SEVEN
Doc Parker was a small man who appeared to be in his late 70s, maybe even early 80s. He had an office that sat in a little building all by itself, and he had been waiting for Noah when he arrived.
“Come in, come in,” he said. “You're late, young man. You were supposed to be here three minutes ago. One thing you need to learn here, if you learn nothing else, is to be prompt. If you can't keep to a schedule, how can those working with you be sure that you can do your part, when the time comes?”
Noah's eyebrows shot up. “My apologies, Sir,” he said. “I'm new here, just arrived this morning.”
“What's that got to do with anything?
There will be a lot of times, if you live long enough, when you will arrive in the morning at some new destination and have to kill five people before you can even have breakfast. Now, imagine if there are other people depending on you to do your part, so that they can then do theirs—should they have to wait for you to acclimate yourself? Should they have to hope that you show up on time? Bear in mind, if you don't show up on time and do your part, there's a pretty good chance that some of them are going to die. Promptness, my boy, promptness is important, and don't you forget it.”
Noah dipped his head once. “Understood, Sir. It won't happen again.”
“You're damned right it won't, because if it does, it will be the last time.” The old man pointed at a chair. “Put your ass right there,” he said, “and pucker your lips as tightly shut as your asshole is.”
Noah took the seat, and sat there in silence as the old man sat down behind the desk in front of him. He waited for a couple of minutes, as Parker seemed to be looking for something in the papers scattered across the top of the desk.
Suddenly, the old fellow looked him in the eye. “Well, I'll be damned,” he said. “If I didn't know better, I'd think you knew how to follow orders.” He paused and looked at Noah for several seconds, then broke into a huge grin. “That's two tests you passed in as many minutes. Most newbies get tired of waiting for me to stop digging through my papers, and speak up to get my attention, which means they fail. Those who don't fall for that one usually grin and start talking after I act surprised that they didn't, which means they fail. About one in fifty are smart enough sit there and say nothing, like you just did. You wanna tell me who tipped you off?”
Noah grinned, but didn't open his mouth, and the old man burst out laughing. “Oh, my goodness, you're going to be the best one I've had in years, I can feel it already. Listen up, youngster, from here on out, if I ask a question it means you can answer it. You already proved you could keep your mouth shut when you need to, and that's pretty important. Got that?”
“Got it, Sir,” Noah said, and then closed his mouth again.
The old man nodded his head, his smile wide and genuine. “Okay, then,” he said. “My job today is to try to give you an idea of why our organization exists, and why it must exist. Do you have any opinion on that subject, before I get started?”
Noah looked at the old fellow for a moment, then nodded. “I know from personal experience, Sir, that there are people in this world who make it a much more dangerous place for everyone else. Sometimes, they might be enemy combatants of one sort or another, sometimes they may be proponents of organized crime, sometimes they may just be people whose views or purposes create a risk for our country, but whatever the reason, the only solution is to remove them from whatever equation they may be part of. In some cases, it's simply not possible to remove them through the use of normal legal means, so other methods will have to be employed. That means it's necessary for those other methods to exist, and that's where we come in.”
Doc Parker nodded. “Very good,” he said. “And do you approve of those other methods?”
“I do,” Noah said, “because no matter how much we want to believe that our world is just and fair, it isn't. At least in some cases, the only way to have justice is to leave fairness at the door on the way in.”
The old man picked up a file on the desk in front of him and flipped it open. “I see that you have been known to take steps that might be considered leaving fairness at the door, yourself. I've read through your entire file, so I know your story. There's enough glaring truth in it to make me personally think that we should send one of you guys after the officers who sat on your court-martial. They weren't looking for truth or justice; they were trying to find a big enough rug to sweep you under. Of course, that had a lot to do with a certain politician. Had my way, we'd send one of you boys after him, too. Sadly, they don't let me have my way.”
Noah didn't say anything, but the old man saw the look in his eyes. “Speak up, youngster, if you got something to say.”
“The only thing I want to say, Sir, is that the congressman was only acting to protect the memory and name of his son. While I may not approve of how he went about it, he did act within what I consider normal human behavior. I can't really be angry at him for that, so I cannot agree that we should send someone to do him harm.”
“That's because you think too logically,” Parker said. “You don't have access to that part of your brain that allows you to feel and experience and utilize emotions, so your thinking is too clear for most people to even understand. That will be an asset for you around here, but you can't let your understanding of human behavior convince you not to eliminate someone whose normal human behavior creates a danger. Understand?”
“Understood, Sir.”
Parker tossed the file back on his desk. “Noah—you don't mind if I call you Noah, do you?”
“Not at all, Sir.”
“Good. Noah, you did a good job of answering my question about why our organization should exist, but you didn't quite come up with the right answer. You see, E & E is the first organization of its kind in the United States. While there have been organizations in the past that have indulged in assassination at times, they have all been under the direct oversight of one of the intelligence agencies, or the president of the United States. What that means is that there was no one to keep hold of their leash, so when our current president conceived the idea for E & E, he was smart enough—and don't ask me how, when he's been so stupid on everything else—to make sure that the only person who could give the order to use that most efficient tool of diplomacy would be completely unknown to any of those agencies, and not subject to the orders of any of them, including the commander-in-chief. He created this agency, chose an incredibly insightful intelligence analyst to run it, transferred an enormous amount of money that would allow it to remain autonomous for many years, and then created a secure channel through which any agency that wanted to use this tool would have to submit a request. That request is reviewed by our administrator, and then she sends back her determination, whether to approve or deny the request. If it's approved, she simply hands the mission over to one of her people. If it's denied, then the same request cannot be made by the same agency again.”
The old man paused, and Noah nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said. “This has all been explained to me.”
“Who cares? I'm just doing my job, and my job says I have to explain it to you all over again, so sit there and be quiet. Now, where was I? Oh, yeah, well, anyway, not even the president can order our administrator to approve a request. From what I understand, that was the one rule that she asked for, and he agreed to it without argument. What that means is that no one can ever force her to order anyone's death. And, since nobody outside this organization except the president knows who the administrator is, nobody can put pressure on her to do so.” Parker leaned forward and put his elbows on the desk, his hands folded neatly in front of him. “That's the big difference between this agency and any other one that's ever existed, in this country or anywhere else. It's also the reason why this agency has been so successful at making a difference in this world. Now, can you tell me what makes you think you belong in this organization?”
Noah felt a moment's surprise at the question. “I can't say that I think I do belong here,” he said. “I simply defer to the administrator, who apparently does think so.”
“That was an excellent answer,” Parker said. “Then why do you think she chose you?”
“It's been established that I have no normal emotions, and an apparently limited or nonexistent conscience. From what I understand, that gives me a bit of an edge, because I don't have to second-guess myself before I take a shot.”
“Another great answer. You keep this up, and I may have to put your picture up on my wall, something to point at to show other idiots who come through here what they could have been. You were chosen, Noah, because you've proven that you will take action when action must be take
n. You don't agonize over it, you simply decide whether action needs to be taken, and then you act on that decision. That's something we spend incredible amounts of time and money trying to teach to our students, and here you come along with it already hardwired into your Cybernet. If I could figure out what makes you tick, I'd be doing all I could to program the rest of our boys and girls to think just like you. Unfortunately, the root cause of your incredible, unique existence is probably found in the tragedy you suffered as a child, and without a time machine, I can't go back and put any of my other students through similar experiences.”
“Apparently you're not the only one, Sir,” Noah said. “Over the past few years, I've read about a number of experiments that have been conducted, psychological experiments that were designed to turn off emotions in certain people. I've never been able to get access to any of their actual results, but some of the psychology behind the experiments sounded at least somewhat valid.”
Parker nodded, but waved off the suggestions. “I know about some of those experiments, and frankly, I disapprove. They're nothing like what happened to you, in any event. Your emotional shutdown came at a moment when you were probably being assaulted by some of the most painful emotions possible. Your psyche, in order to protect itself, simply flipped a switch and turned those emotions off. This is a defense mechanism, a way in which the subconscious acts to protect the individual. Tell me, have you ever been to see a psychotherapist about this?”
“Yes, a couple of times. My grandparents sent me to one, and during the time I was in the foster care system, I was ordered by a court into psychoanalysis. In both cases, I simply kept up my act and managed to convince both psychiatrists that I was a fairly normal kid who had been through a rough time. If you're asking whether I ever cooperated, then the answer would be no. I don't feel emotion, so I have no concerns over whether there's anything wrong with me. Because of that, I just couldn't see any reason to cooperate with someone who wanted to take away the very thing that, to me, makes me feel comfortable with myself.”