As soon as I walk into the interrogation room, Mike sits up and widens his eyes. They must have really built up my visit. The guy looks scared.
“Relax, Mike,” I say. “I’m not going to hurt you. Not right away.”
“Why are you here?” he asks. “This isn’t your job. Since when do Splinter Cells get recruited to interrogate prisoners?”
“They don’t. I’m here of my own free will. I’m here because Carly St. John was a friend of mine. I’m here because your friends the Lucky Dragons tried to kill me. I’m here because I’m patriotic and love my country and you’re a son of a bitch that isn’t worth his weight in excrement.”
The prisoner sighs and nods. He’s resigned to his fate. “I still want a lawyer.”
“You might get one after you confess. I’m not really sure how it works with you special combative types. All I know is that I’m not going to leave this room until you make an official statement and sign it.”
“So, what, are you going to lean on me? You’re going to show how tough you are and beat me up a little bit?”
“I’m hoping you’ll come to your senses and realize that you’ve got no way out of this. You’re caught. Lambert and the FBI have all the evidence they need to convict you. You don’t have to sign anything. You’ll still get the death penalty. We’d like to prevent that. Life is a lot better than death.”
“Depends on what you’re doing with your life, doesn’t it?”
“Perhaps. It’s too bad Carly can’t do anything with hers now.”
Mike looks down. I sense he’s not altogether happy about what he did. Bastard.
“Why, Mike? Why did you have to kill her? You know, Carly once told me what a great worker you were. She said you were the best analyst in the firm and that you’d probably advance quickly.”
“Screw you, Fisher.”
Well, something in me snaps. Maybe I was overtired. Maybe I was trying to grieve for Carly. Or maybe I was fed up with all the shit.
I stand, walk over to Mike, grab him by the lightweight shirt he’s wearing, and I punch him in the nose. He flies backward and falls to the floor. I expect Lambert or someone to come in and bitch at me but nothing happens. After a moment, Mike stands and faces me. His nose is bleeding.
“Hit me again, Fisher.”
“What?”
“I want you to hit me. I want you to rough me up a little. I deserve it.”
“Come on, Mike. Sit down.”
He shouts, “You bastard! Hit me! It’s what you came to do!”
“Sit down, Mike!”
“Screw you, Fisher! Hey, guess what! I blew Carly’s brains out and I enjoyed it. I deliberately walked into her office, pointed a gun at the back of her head, and pulled the trigger. You should have seen it, Fisher. Her brains went all over her goddamned computer!”
That does it. I give the guy what he wants, and hell, it’s what I want, too. To the devil with proper procedure. Besides, the little shit has made me mad. I grab him by the collar and pull him up and over the table. The guy is lightweight, so throwing him across the room and into the wall is nothing. For the next few seconds I totally lose it. I don’t remember whaling on him but I must have hit him two or three times. I think that maybe I kicked him once, too. When I come to my senses, he’s lying on the floor in a mess of blood.
“Thanks,” he says. “You won’t believe this, but I needed that.”
“Like hell,” I mutter. I reach into my pocket, find a handkerchief, and throw it to him. He wipes his face and then slowly crawls back to his chair. Once he’s sitting, he lays his head on his arms on top of the table. After taking a couple of deep breaths he looks up at me. I can almost see the gears working in his head as he tries to come to grips with spilling the beans. After a long pause, he speaks.
“She was about to find out I was the leak out of Third Echelon.”
Finally, he understands the situation. “But killing her didn’t prevent us from finding out,” I say. “It was a stupid, foolish thing to do. Kill her, then run. Real smart, Mike. Of course we’d figure it out when you do something like that.”
“I thought I’d be out of the country before the FBI caught up with me. I was supposed to be in Hong Kong. Things got all fucked up. I guess most of all she was about to uncover the link with the Lucky Dragons. I couldn’t allow that to happen. I panicked. Killing her was a knee-jerk reaction.”
“Keep talking. Everything we say is being recorded. Just let it spill. Then all you’ll have to do is sign your name once we have it typed up.”
Mike continues, “All right. Here it is. Everything you guys know is true. My brother and I are members of the Lucky Dragons. We were recruited in Los Angeles six years ago. The Triad was already in league with the Shop and has been for some time. They arranged for me to change my identity and apply for work in the NSA.”
“How did the Triad manage that?”
“They didn’t. It was the Shop. But they had some help in Washington.”
“What do you mean?”
“Someone high up on the food chain. I don’t know who it is, I swear. The person’s identity is very well protected.”
I rub my chin and ask, “Someone in Congress?”
“I really don’t know, Sam. I swear. Whoever it is has a lot of connections. They were able to whitewash my background, create a new existence for me as Mike Chan, whatever it took. And they initiated the contact with Professor Jeinsen.”
“So you’re saying there’s a traitor high in our government that’s been orchestrating this whole thing with the Triad and the Shop?”
“Yes.”
“How did the relationship between you and Jeinsen work?”
“I never met him. He would deliver electronic files to a drop box in the city. I would pick them up and send them to Jon Ming in Hong Kong. Ming then sold them to the Shop. Or maybe there was a different kind of deal between them. The Lucky Dragons got weapons for the information, or something like that.”
“And there’s one more piece of Jeinsen’s work to be delivered?”
Mike hesitates and then probably figures he’s gone this far so why not spill it all. “Yeah. It’s the guidance system for the MRUUV. Comes in a laptop computer. GyroTechnics designed it to Jeinsen’s specifications with some input from the Shop’s customer. I was supposed to deliver it to Hong Kong along with my defection but Ming suddenly decided not to buy it. He’s had a falling out with the Shop because of some political reason.”
“So is the deal completely dead?”
“No. Earlier on the day I was arrested I made contact with the Shop and offered to sell the thing to them directly. Eddie and I went around the Lucky Dragons.”
I whistle. “Gee, Mike, you’d better be glad you were arrested. The Dragons would have killed you in a most unpleasant way for doing that. Where’s your brother?”
“I don’t know. Hiding, I imagine. The Shop is in contact with him, though. I made sure that if I wasn’t available then they could deal with him. He’s going to sell the guidance system and it’s going to happen any day. It may have already occurred.”
“He’s dealing with Zdrok?”
Mike nods.
I stare at the traitor for a full minute and then stand. “Thanks, Mike. Everything you’ve said will be typed up and you can sign it. You’ve helped yourself today. For the record, though, I still think you’re scum. Sorry about the mess.”