George reminded himself of Caspar Andreotti’s debrief indicating that this kid was anything but cute, and would not only resent being treated like the little kid he was, but would also be likely to hide his intelligence behind a juvenile facade if thus treated. With the result that they could miss some critical data.
Veldtman started to object, but went quietly when Saunders jerked his head towards the door. That was one thing about a disciplined organization. You didn’t tend to get many people who would let sentiment override orders. Orneriness, yes. Sentiment, no. This was Saunders’ show. George was only along for the ride as a second check to make sure nothing of operational value was missed.
After she left, Pinky focused his intent gaze on George. “You’re one of the guys who got us out. Thanks,” he said. “You look kinda like a kid, but you’re not.”
The subtext was subtle as a sledgehammer. The Maise kid was asserting that he, also, was much less a kid than he looked. George didn’t know about that, but he glanced at Saunders and gave a slight shrug. In his limited experience of children, they reacted better to adults who didn’t patronize them.
“You’re welcome,” he said.
“Okay, Maise,” Saunders was a pretty good interrogator, and opened by addressing the kid the way he would an adult in the military subculture. “Andreotti tells us there’s a lot more to you than meets the eye, so I’m gonna treat you just like anybody else. That work for you?”
“Yeah,” Pinky said.
“Okay, tell me about today from the time you got up to the time the team came and got you. Try not to leave anything out, but don’t worry too much. I’ll be asking you a lot of questions after to pull out all the details. Get it? Go,” Saunders gestured to the kid — Maise, George corrected himself — to begin.
“At least five attackers,” Pinkie said, looking into the distance. His eyes tracked back and forth as if he was reseeing the entire incident. “Basement, four. Three male, one female. Weapons: Nine-millimeter semi-automatics. Silenced…”
It was a hell of a thing for a kid to go through. But it slowly crept in on George that they weren’t dealing with a kid. Pinkie was more like a forty-year-old stuck in a five-year-old’s body. One with a surprising memory for detail regarding the assassins, to the point that the Maise assured them he would be able to recognize their voices if he heard them again.
Given the kid’s presence of mind and memory for detail, Schmidt believed him. By the time the five-year-old got through with his account, George found he had almost no questions. “Can you think of anything else?” just sounded… childish.
Nathan O’Reilly raised an eyebrow at Dr. Vitapetroni, the head of the Bane Sidhe psych department, who had joined the organization’s director in his office to watch live holo of the interrogation. “Well?” he asked.
“Don’t put him through the ordeal of hypnosis. I can’t get much, if anything, else out of him than that interrogation did. The child has a remarkably detailed memory. I don’t want him to feel like we’re questioning his sanity, and people often do feel exactly that. I don’t want to risk corrupting his memories with artifacts accidentally induced during the hypnotic process. There’s no upside.” The psychiatrist shrugged.
“All right. Then the next problem is where to put him for the night. I want to limit his outside contact without appearing to do so until we have this situation under much better control. Could he stay with me? Any problem putting him on my couch? Or do you want to put him up? I don’t recommend young Schmidt there. The child is obviously itching to pummel him with questions, and I’d rather not send a five-year-old’s head farther into the ideas of dishing out murder and mayhem than it already is.”
“Given the personality type, the emotional age, and the formative experience, I think that’s a forlorn hope,” Vitapetroni said.
“Probably. But not tonight. So, does he crash on your couch, mine, or do you have some other suggestion of someplace secure to put him up?” O’Reilly stood, taking his mug along by habit. He always put it in the office dishwasher himself, rather than leaving it to some assistant to come in and clean up after him.
“He could go with Cap Andreotti.”
“Andreotti has enough to deal with tonight on his own. I presume you will be seeing him soon in your professional capacity.” The priest paused in the break room, downing a cupful of tap water before dispensing with the mug.
“First thing in the morning,” the doctor assured him.
Chapter Ten
“I’m sorry to isolate you from people your own age tonight, Pinky, but unfortunately I’d like to keep what happened out of general circulation until we’ve had more chance to respond to it,” the priest said.
Pinky figured the guy for a juv. Older looking people deferred to him, and he didn’t have that happy look around the eyes like young-for-real grown-ups. No, happy wasn’t the word. Optimistic. That was one thing Pinky had noticed early about the world. The much older adults were much less enthusiastic about whatever was going to happen next in life than the younger adults. Since the older ones probably had a much better idea of what was really going on, this told him a lot about the world.
He looked around O’Reilly’s living room. Holo tank, a well-stuffed couch that looked comfortable even though the arms were torn up like a cat scratched them a lot. He didn’t smell a litter box, so maybe the couch used to belong to somebody else. Three of the walls were a nice orange-pink, and the fourth was a green lighter than army stuff — a green that wasn’t ugly. There was a sink and microwave, and some shelves with food on them. It was all really clean, everything put away. He obviously didn’t have kids. Probably he was a Catholic priest. Pinky had heard they didn’t get married.
He noticed a little ball with some feathers attached in a corner, barely sticking out from under the couch. Okay, so there was a cat.
“Are you Catholic?” he asked. Then, without pause, “Oh, and thanks. I don’t really want to be around other kids tonight. They ask questions. I don’t wanna talk about it. I mean, except to other spies. I figure you’ll kill the people that did it. Are you a spy? And can you keep that lady off of me? She means well, but she’s bugging me.”
“Wow, that’s a lot of questions.” O’Reilly sat down on the arm of a chair and looked at him seriously. Pinky could sense that this man was not going to talk to him like a little kid.
“First, yes, I’m Catholic. I’m a Jesuit—” He held up a finger as Pinky started to ask what that was. “If Miss Veldtman’s attention is upsetting you, you don’t have to be around her. As for whether I’m a spy or not, it depends on what you mean. Spying is a part of what we do here, but I don’t go out into the field. I run the place.”
“I thought so,” the child said with a nod. “Everybody seems to listen to you, and it’s like you expect them to and never even think that maybe they won’t.”
“I certainly hope they do. I’d be very bad at my job if they didn’t,” O’Reilly said.
“Okay. I’m real tired. Can I go to bed now? I guess I get to sleep on the couch. That’s cool. And it’s okay if your cat sleeps out here some of the time. You don’t have to keep him in your room or something. Cats don’t like being boxed up.”
“Her,” the priest corrected automatically, blinking a couple of times, obviously surprised that Pinky had noticed something so obvious as a cat.
“Okay, her. Sorry. You must keep a really clean litter box, because I can’t smell it at all.”
“It’s automatic.”