Todd Harris, aka Mr. Grey, turns and looks out the window at the park setting of the hospital grounds. The grounds crew raking the late autumn leaves on a cool afternoon could not see him if they looked because the windows are opaque mirrors of burnt orange on the outside. The crew can’t see how pensively he sits here, behind his desk, considering what his next move should be.
Cetron has ordered his return and he is loath to depart. He knows he will have to distance himself in every way with this failed mission and dissociate himself with anything having to do with Bogdan Cerny. It was twelve hours before he was notified that Bog had managed to get a message off, even though an awful lot of people knew it only minutes after it happened. He could feel angry if he could only get past the fact that his ticket had just been un-punched by the agency. As a result, he expects that Lonnie James will be forced to demote him to night janitor for the duration of his contract.
Christopher looks back at the monitor on his desk. It shows a range of security cameras and he clicks on one. Bog sits on the bed in his room seeming to watch Romanian TV, but there is little sign that he is engaged. Bog’s mind is so scrambled it will take days, if ever, for him to regain his senses. If he ever does come back to the living, he will be lucky to do so. Gray has seen others permanently crippled from less than what Bog has endured.
Somehow, Gray has a sense that these matters will lose some of their significance quickly upon his return. If the security leak of this information from China is even half as devastating to the increasingly unstable world environment as everybody presupposes, much more weighty matters will have to be dealt with, in which case his minor role in the failed effort to stop its transmission to UNK could, possibly, hopefully, end up being overlooked.
He’s counting on it.
Gray turns off the machine and rises, suddenly, and for reasons he doesn’t quite understand, he is in a hurry to leave.
Chapter 87
On Fire Page 86