by P A Duncan
Or so he’d thought.
“Who are you really?” he asked. “I deserve to know that.”
Her steady gaze wavered a second. “Siobhan is still good, Jay.”
“Okay, Siobhan,” he said, jamming as much sarcasm into his words as he could. “You’re not Irish.”
“Enough to have been honest about it.”
“Funny, but you don’t sound Irish.”
“An accident of education.”
“But you aren’t who you pretended to be.”
“That I’m not.”
“It was all some sick, fucking game.”
“No, none of it was a game. I was fucking serious. You know what’s happening now, right?”
“Yeah, I’m a grown man. I figured it out.”
The smirk he got was Siobhan-like.
“I’ll say it anyway. Ask for a lawyer and don’t say a word to any cop or FBI agent until you have one.”
“Why do you care?”
“Be as close-mouthed as you were with me.”
“About what?”
“About where. I knew who and what and when and how and why. I got that out of you, but not the where.”
“You got it out of me? You only pretended to—”
“You’re not the first. Why wouldn’t you tell me that one thing?”
“You know why I’d never tell Siobhan that.” When he got no reaction, he added, “Are you in trouble because of me?”
“No.”
“Because you work for the enemy.”
“No,” she said, emphatic.
“I find that hard to believe.”
“I can see why, but that’s not the case.”
“Why are you here? You already know why I wouldn’t tell you, Siobhan, the whole story. Why the fuck are you here?”
“Keeping my word. I said I’d find you.”
Carroll’s fingers curled and uncurled. “I thought I found you.”
“I wanted you to think that.”
When he spoke again, his voice was hoarse, strained from trying not to cry.
“So you’re what? A spy. You spied on me. For the government.”
“Jay, understand something. You and I think alike on many things, especially what happened at Killeen. Do you remember the first time we met, you told me you were there?”
“Yeah. So?”
“I was there, too.”
He shook his head. “I never saw you.”
“Because I was in the federal compound.”
For the first time in his life, he understood the expression “seeing red.” A crimson curtain fell between them. He wanted her gone, he wanted away from her lies, the lies that had made a fool of him.
“Get out of here,” he said.
“No. You and I locked eyes once. I was in a vehicle behind tinted glass. I saw you, and something about you, about the expression on your face, told me you were someone to watch. So I did.”
He thought his heart might stop; he wanted it to. Prophet had been right about her, and that made him angrier. If he attacked her, a cop would come in and shoot him, and he wouldn’t have to hear any more of this.
“You lied to me,” he said, hoping she couldn’t see his shaking. “You are a government agent.”
“No. All I can say is I’m an independent consultant, but when the government asked for advice on how to end Killeen peacefully, that’s when I stepped in.”
“Hey, that worked out well, didn’t it?”
“If the FBI had taken my advice, we probably wouldn’t be here right now, but I agree with you. I failed at stopping Killeen. You.”
She stared at him, but this time he wasn’t going to look away.
“If I’d fucked you,” she said, “would it have made a difference?”
He laughed, a harsh, grating sound, even to his ears. “That’s all you’re here to find out. How much of what you said to me was a lie?”
“A lot less than you think. Answer me.”
“Why?”
She slammed the chair against the floor. “Because I want to know!” She turned her back to him, still blocking him from the window. When she turned around, he saw Siobhan. “I need to know,” she said, low and soft.
He blinked away tears and tried to reach for her, but the waist belt held his hands back. “I wanted to be with you that way. Siobhan, I made my choice. Maybe you could have stopped me like that. I don’t know. We can’t know now, but don’t think you… It’s not your fault. If you’re my…” He stopped, uncertain what she was to him now. “If you’re my friend, don’t let me go away thinking the one thing I didn’t want to happen did. I never told you the whole thing because I didn’t want any of this shit-storm to touch you.”
“Remember what I told you?”
“About Ireland? Yeah. So? You were authenticating your cover. Don’t look so surprised. I read everything about covert operations and counter-intelligence when I was aiming for special forces. That’s what you were doing, inventing something so your subject would think you had a shared experience.”
She came around the chair and sat, and the strain around her eyes, the dark smudges that looked almost like bruises, spoke her weariness.
“No, Jay, that was real. What you and I were, that was real, too, but not enough for you.”
“I’m not the lying, conniving secret agent here.” He wanted her to deny that, but she didn’t. His stomach roiled in apprehension.
“Enough of that,” she said. “Let’s get to work. Tell me everything you can. Right now.”
He decided she needed to know how it felt to be played. “Everything about what?”
“Ah, lad, don’t pull that shite with me. Give me everyone involved, everyone who helped you, gave you a place to sleep. Give me that, and I use it to your advantage.”
His hope flared for a moment. She was here for him, but her blank expression showed him no pity, no compassion. Then, it dawned.
“You’re recruiting me,” he said. “That’s the term, right?”
“You recruit beforehand. I’m trying to turn you. Turn, and I can make everything about to happen go away.”
“Just like that?”
“National security is a big blanket.”
“Why didn’t you try this earlier?”
Her fleeting, mocking smirk came again. “I was arrogant enough to think I was in control. Ah, you didn’t expect me to be candid.”
“What if I tell the cops you’re a spy and you knew all along I was going to do this?”
“Go ahead,” she said, “give me up, if you think it’ll save your life.”
That told him it would do no good, but he bluffed anyway. “Maybe they’ll believe me.”
“What makes you think they don’t already know? Why did the police stop your car?”
He frowned. “My license plate fell off.”
She smiled, though her eyes were flinty. “Did it now? Maybe it had a wee bit of help.” She’d mocked him in her Irish voice.
“I see. You lied again. You said you’d find me, but you fixed it for the cops to.”
“What else would you expect of a lying, conniving secret agent? If I wasn’t clear before, I’ll be blunt now. Give me the Patriot City network, all of it, and this goes away.”
“What? I get a new identity or something?”
“After an extensive debriefing, yes.”
“A new life somewhere?”
“Yes.”
“With you?”
“No, but don’t let that stop you. I’m offering you your life here and now, one time only. Take it or leave it.”
“Why not with you?”
“That’s not the way it works.”
She leaned toward him, her eyes pleading. He remembered his fantasy. The two of them, living off the land, no need for governments or anyone else. He’d balanced that against his mission. The choice had been hard with Siobhan in the balance.
Now, man or soldier? Hero or coward? Heroes always got the girl. Superman got Lois
Lane. Spiderman got Mary Jane. Jay the Patriot got Siobhan the IRA soldier.
Except Siobhan had never existed.
He shook his head. “No. I’ll see it through.”
“You know what’s going to happen to you, right?”
“Siobhan, I’ve always understood that. Since you’ve confessed who you really are, you understand it, too.”
Her face never changed expression, but her whisper was touched with desperation.
“Something. Give me something. Give me Elijah. I’m here. He’s not. He left you to face the music. Give him to me.”
He couldn’t deny she was here, offering to save him, while Prophet… Carroll had tried contacting Prophet for the two days he was in his cell. No answer. He wasn’t here.
“What about him?” he asked.
“His name.”
“I only knew him as Elijah.” He remembered something Prophet had said once… “He was in Desert Storm. He said he was a POW.”
She nodded and straightened in the chair. He had the impression she was about to leave. Despite everything, he didn’t want that.
“One thing I’ll tell you and no one else,” Carroll said. “I didn’t know about the daycare. If I had, I wouldn’t have…” His voice cracked, and he squeezed his eyes shut against the barrage of images he’d seen on television. When he looked at her again, he saw relief.
“Jay,” she said, her tone the same as how he and Siobhan would talk in person or on the phone—intimate, “because you do mean to me exactly what you meant to Siobhan, I have to try once more, but that’s it. After that, I walk away. Understand?”
He nodded, unable to speak.
“At the least, you’ve lost your freedom forever, and your pathetic revolution isn’t going to happen. It was never going to happen. That was another of Prophet’s lies. You’re going to die for this.”
“I know that.”
“You spoke of choice, Jay, but they weren’t your choices. They were Prophet’s. He called the shots but made you think it was all you. Your life has come down to this.” She nodded toward the door. “Them or me. Give up the Patriot City network to me, and the government will never know.”
She made sense. Of course she did; she was practiced at this. He’d carried this burden for so long, and it would be so easy to tell her. That wasn’t the way it worked. He was a soldier. He’d been captured by the enemy and faced certain death.
He loved her, but he couldn’t betray his mission. Others would come after him because he was the hero, what he’d always wanted to be. This was reality now, and he accepted it, embraced it. Without Siobhan, what was the point of a future?
He shook his head.
When he saw tears in her eyes, he almost relented. Then, her expression hardened even more, turning her back into a stranger, what she’d been all along.
“I should have killed you last December,” she said. “But I couldn’t, not like you. In cold blood.”
She waited for his reaction, but he still didn’t trust himself to speak. Too much had changed. Too much was different.
When she stood, the chair scraped along the floor, loud and grinding in the small room.
“Well, then, lad,” she said, “we’ve nothing more to discuss.” She turned for the door.
This could be the last time he ever saw her. “Siobhan?”
She turned back to him, hope in her eyes.
“I thought I could count on you,” he said. “You let me think we were going to be more than friends, but you’re like everyone else who ignored me, or laughed at me, or left me. No worries. I’m used to it.”
He sat at attention in his chair, eyes focused on the wall across from him.
She came to his side, and he balled his hands into fists so he wouldn’t be tempted to touch her. Her hand cupped his cheek. “No, lad, not like all the others because I will be there, through it all, to the very end. A promise carved in stone.”
His ultimate suicide by cop and she would be there.
Or he could look at her and start talking.
His obdurate expression didn’t alter, even after she left.
Pierce let her out in front of the hospital, and Mai waited until the FBI van disappeared. She walked away from the entrance, brought out her sat phone, and dialed a number.
“Analysis. Lydell,” came the answer.
“Grace, it’s Mai. Before you ask, no change in Alexei’s condition, so let’s dispense with the small talk.”
“I’ll cut you a little slack for the rudeness. What do you need?”
“How many U.S. servicemen were taken prisoner by the Iraqis during Desert Storm?”
“Uh, not too many. Maybe two dozen.”
“Were they all repatriated?”
“I believe so.”
“Track them down. If you can’t find one, that’s Elijah the Prophet.”
“We’ll get on it, but how…?”
“I’m not a total fuck-up, after all. When you get results, call me back.” Mai hung up.
At one o’clock in the morning, Mai’s phone rang, and she stepped into the hallway outside Alexei’s cubicle. “Fisher,” she replied.
“Twenty-one men, two women,” Grace Lydell said. “All tortured, some more than others, all repatriated, and we know the whereabouts of all except one. Specialist Taylor Cox, U.S. Army. We’re bootlegging his DoD file as we speak.”
“Give it all to Nelson, and tell him that’s Elijah. Also, tell him I don’t think that’s something the FBI needs to know. Send me a thumbnail profile once you get his DoD info.”
“Got it. Give Alexei a kiss for me. On the lips.”
Grace hung up on her this time.
54
False Hope
Mai shook herself from dozing in the CCU’s uncomfortable chair. Despite occasional naps, exhaustion crept closer. Another cup of coffee would fend that off. She gave Alexei’s hand a squeeze. His fingers tightened around hers.
Or his muscles picked that moment to twitch. No, he was aware and whole; this was his Russian obstinacy
A nurse came into the room. She’d become accustomed to their interruptions.
“Mrs. Burke, a gentleman’s asking for you. Well, for Miz Fisher, but you put that as your middle name on the hospital forms, so we figured it must be you. Says he’s from the Secret Service.”
As if the FBI coming here for her hadn’t caused enough gossip among the nurses.
“What does he want?” Mai asked.
“He didn’t say. Just he needed to speak with you.”
Mai looked beyond the nurse and saw a tall, prematurely gray man she recognized as part of President Randolph’s regular detail.
“I can sit with Mr. Burke,” the nurse said. “Also, it’s time to change out, you know, the stuff that disturbs you.”
Mai had found the swapping of the urine bags distressing. She wasn’t sure why, other than seeing such a vital man so helpless.
Mai leaned down, murmuring in Alexei’s ear. “The President has summoned me. I hope that makes you jealous enough to wake.”
The agent gave Mai a nice smile. “Ms. Fisher, I’m Hank Munro with the Secret Service. The President would like to see you.”
“There’s no one to stay with my partner,” she said.
“And this is the President. Of the United States.”
And I’m a British subject, she thought. “I can’t leave because he might murmur something classified. The President can come here.”
“Ms. Fisher, if he did and the media caught wind, he’d have to go to every hospital in town. You need to find a way.”
Munro’s tone bordered on demanding, but Mai supposed people didn’t turn down a Presidential request.
“Am I being arrested?” Mai asked.
He smiled at her. “Is that what it would take? Because I can arrange that.”
Well, she thought, people are calling my bluffs with impunity. “Agent Munro, someone will be here in about an hour. We’ll go then.”
“We�
��d arrive in the middle of the event, but let me check.” He walked a few steps away and spoke into his wrist mic. In less than a minute, he was back. “That’ll be fine, Ms. Fisher. I’ll wait.”
Mai turned to go back to the alcove and sensed Munro right behind her. She turned and pointed. “The waiting room is there.”
Munro led Mai to a black SUV idling at the hospital’s main entrance. They climbed into the back seat, and Munro tapped the bullet resistant glass separating them from the driver. The SUV accelerated away.
“Ms. Fisher, I’ll need your weapon,” Munro said.
He smiled at her, a little flirty.
Fine, she thought, let’s play a little.
“Agent Munro, do you have any idea what I could do to someone who tries to disarm me?”
Still smiling, he said, “I’ve heard the talk. You’ll find my ass isn’t easy to kick. Your weapon.”
She had to respect someone who didn’t succumb to her bullshit. “As entertaining a prospect as that might be, Agent Munro, I’ll have to disappoint you. My weapon is locked away in my hotel room. It made the nurses nervous. Unless, of course, you want to frisk me.”
His cheeks flushed. “I’ll, uh, take your word for it.”
Emmet Brasseau could learn a lesson in having a sense of humor from Hank Munro.
Mai relaxed in the seat and hoped the drive didn’t lull her into a sleep where she’d drool.
Mai and Munro went to an anteroom backstage of the sports arena where the memorial and “thank you first responders” event was ongoing. He asked if she wanted something to drink.
“A Diet Coke,” she replied, wanting the caffeine and knowing it would taste better than vending machine coffee.
He went to a table where ice buckets holding a variety of soft drinks were set out. He poured a Diet Coke into a glass of ice and brought it to her. To Mai’s surprise, he snagged a folding chair and put it next to hers.
A nearby muted television played, and the closed captioning flashed on the screen as President Randolph spoke. Mai read: “The entire nation mourns with you. We also share your hope that life has held on amid the destruction.”