After disposing of the pajama remains down the toilet, one less thing to use to trace us, I hefted my bag and we headed out into the pastel dawn light.
Even the soft yellow and pink illumination stabbed at my eyes and I put on a pair of sunglasses the minute I entered the car. The brim of the baseball cap helped as well. After the nearly constant adrenaline rush of last night followed by no sleep, I had what was as bad as any hangover.
“Sleep deprivation can cause a significant decrease in performance and concentration,” Michael said absently as he watched a portly family of five through the passenger side window. Early risers as well, they were unremarkable in all but size, shockingly loud tourist wear, and a large chocolate cruller wrapped in each pudgy hand. And I knew for a fact which of those three had caught Michael’s attention. The kid had a jones for sugar like I’d never seen, and I had no one to blame for that but myself. With an almost wistful sigh, he turned back to me. “You didn’t sleep last night, did you?”
“No, I didn’t.” I liked that he was beginning to ask questions . . . waking up to the new world around him. I also hoped it meant he might be willing to listen to a few questions of my own. “I wanted to keep watch. But I’ll sleep tonight.” I wouldn’t have much of a choice. By tonight I would be too exhausted to fight it. Puzzled, I added an observation. “You’re full of fun little facts, aren’t you? Like the sleep thing. What kind of freaky classes did you have in that place?”
We were on the road again and had gone several miles before Michael finally spoke. “I’ve never talked with anyone outside of the Institute. I don’t know what to say.” It was hard for him to admit, as evident in the strained patches of white beside his mouth. “If this is a test, I’m doing badly. So badly.” He shook his head.
“And if this isn’t a test?” We had to get this misconception out of the way before we could make any progress, but Michael was hanging on to it hard.
“What else could it be?” There was a defeated note to his voice.
I tried for a reassuring smile. I doubt I succeeded. My job hadn’t required that look very often. “Like you said, maybe I’m just some crazy guy who thinks he’s found his brother. Sometimes, kiddo, you just have to go with the flow. So, tell me what they taught you. I think I’m sensing a theme.”
Tracing a finger along the dashboard, he considered as more miles passed and then he began to talk. I listened to every word, hoping to hear the key that I could use to unlock the mystery of my brother. He talked about multiple classes. There were the usual basics such as history, math, chemistry, and others, but they were supplemented with psychology, law—both domestic and international—languages, and acting. There was a theme all right; a very definite one.
“And how are you in acting?” I flashed him a more natural smile as I reached up to adjust the rearview mirror. If he could pull a De Niro, I hadn’t seen any signs of it yet.
“According to the Instructor, the worst he’s ever seen,” he replied without concern. Impressing the Instructor with his Oscar-winning ways apparently didn’t interest Michael whatsoever. Once again I heard a capital letter where normally none would be. If Michael had any idea what the acting instructor’s name actually was, I would be astonished.
“No big deal. There’s more to life than Hollywood.” Not that Hollywood had anything to do with the acting classes he had been taking. Spotting a sign indicating heart-stopping cholesterol at the next exit, I decided to make a stop. “They were training you to be a spy, weren’t they? Espionage.” Maybe Saul had been wrong about this not being a government project. It sounded more like a project better suited to the old Soviet regime of the Cold War, but all ruling parties had their secrets, even here.
“Spy?” He laughed too, but without humor. “No, not a spy.” And with that the subject was closed. Crossing his arms, he closed his eyes to indicate this particular conversation had soured for him.
Having received more from him than I expected, I gave him a break. As I took the exit and hit the first generic fast-food place I saw, I decided against asking him what he wanted. I would hate to get my brother back, only to lose him to terminal dental caries in the first month. A breakfast sandwich, biscuits and gravy, and orange juice should be enough, I thought, before weakening to add pancakes to the order. I personally hated drive-through breakfast crap and ordered nothing but a large coffee for myself. I’d make up for it at lunch.
Back on the interstate, Michael took no prisoners on that bag of grease. The sandwich he tolerated, the gravy he loved, and the pancakes lifted him unto Heaven. They’d been labeled a new addition on the order menu: chocolate chip with a gallon of pseudo maple syrup. As I watched, he devoured every bite and then licked the fork. This kid, grave and educated in damn peculiar ways, was going after every molecule of sugary goodness like a five-year-old with a bowl of icing.
“What the hell did they feed you in that place anyway? Bread and water? Gruel?” I asked.
“Nutritious meals to keep our bodies at the peak of health,” he replied. It sounded like a quote. I could picture it now . . . straight-edged grim words emblazoned on a wall above a pear-shaped cafeteria lady doling out boiled chicken, boiled potatoes, and boiled cabbage.
“All right,” I said with determination. “For supper we have pizza, a liter of Coke, and a shitload of ice cream. Rocky road. So what if our teeth rot out? It’ll be worth it.”
“I know those are all very popular. Do they taste as good as chocolate chip pancakes?” There was definite interest in the question.
“Better,” I promised. I wondered how it worked in that concrete prison. I imagined heads bowed over test papers. Circle A if pizza tastes good. Circle B if it does not taste good. Speaking of not good, that entire picture left a foul taste in my mouth—all those children leading the lives of small prisoners of war. I’d listened to the radio for any news on a police raid on the compound. Nothing. Big surprise. Either the entire police department was in their back pocket, not a very realistic proposition, or the Institute had been evacuated. Either way, the kids were gone.
Since the full stomach seemed to have relaxed Michael some, I decided to try more questions. “Misha, you said you were taught languages. Do you know Russian?”
“ Da, ya govaru pa russki,” he responded absently as he involved himself in returning all trash to the large white bag and carefully folding the top down, once then twice. “Vy gavarite?” So he must have known Misha was short for Michael, not that he’d shared the information.
“A little.” I took the last sip of nearly cold coffee as I steered with one hand. “Probably less than you since you’ve studied it. What I picked up isn’t exactly for use in polite company.” It was a fairly good bet that he knew more proper Russian than I did. I could get my point across, but it would be a hard, ungrammatical road. My fluency was in the language of the job and those were not pretty words. “Our father’s from Russia. Our mom was too.”
“Was?” he repeated neutrally.
“She died.” I crumpled the cup and let it drop from my hand. “A long time ago.”
He considered that with eyes on a distant point; then he shook his head. “Your mother, not mine. I never had a mother or a father.” His gaze moved to fix on me as he went on implacably. “Or a brother.”
Hey, square one . . . How you doing?
It shouldn’t have hit me as hard as it did. Since we’d pulled him out of that place, I’d known it was going to be an uphill battle. I’d known and I still knew, but . . . ah, fuck. “Eyes like yours aren’t a dime a dozen, Misha,” I said quietly. I didn’t know if he was listening to me or not as he sat beside me as still as a stone, but I pushed on as best I could. I was working without a script, flailing in unknown territory. My line of work hadn’t done much to train me in the ways of gentle persuasion. Now I had to learn the hard way, and at a time it had never been more important that I not fail. “They took you when you were seven. We were on a beach riding horses, and this man”—I swallowed against a nightmare that was as fresh now as it had been then—“this goddamn son of a bitch with a gun took you.”