“The Cold War is over,” Upton said without thinking, chagrined that Riggs had jumped from him to Rhodes so quickly with the credit and then getting his ass reamed for his stupid ploy — it was accepting that the show had been stupid he couldn’t get past. On top of the fact he hadn’t wanted to do this in the first place.
The room froze, even Wahid in his drug-induced state picking up the momentary arctic blast from the general and pausing in his monologue of truth.
Riggs, strangely enough, smiled. He walked up to Upton, who surrendered four steps until he bumped against the table, unable to retreat, like Custer upon his final hill.
“The Cold War was never cold,” Riggs said. “Do you know what the life expectancy of a second lieutenant commanding an armored platoon in the Fulda Gap was if World War Three broke out? Eleven seconds. I was there. We didn’t think it was cold at all. When a T-72 tank mirrored your every move with its main gun? When an ‘accidental’ round comes across all the barbed wire and tank traps and blows up a track full of your soldiers and everyone hushes it up because the Cold War is supposed to be cold?”
Behind them, Wahid lifted his hand as much as the restraints would allow and grabbed Rhodes’s forearm. “Help me to be quiet. Please.”
Rhodes shook off the grab, focused on his boss and the general.
Riggs’s face was now within six inches of Upton’s. The general hadn’t raised his voice at all, but the profanity was suddenly gone. There was only the chill of Beacon Hill in December blowing down on the scientist.
Riggs spun away from Upton, just as he’d been taught to about-face as a plebe at West Point sweating through Beast Barracks, drilling on the Plain. He stopped next to the civilian who’d come in with him. “What do you think, Brennan?”
Brennan nodded. “I like it.”
That was good enough for Riggs. “We’re going to use this, gentlemen. I want a complete briefing for myself and Mr. Brennan on how that can be done in twenty-four hours. The treaty is being signed in seventy-two hours and you have given us a superb tool just in time. Well done. Well done.”
And with that Riggs was out the door. Brennan didn’t immediately follow. He went to Upton and shook his hand. “Good job.” Then he turned to Rhodes and shook his hand also. “Congratulations.” Brennan tried to smooth the ruffled and stormy waters left in his boss’s wake, one of the many tasks he did for the general. Then he left.
Johnston just as quickly regained command. “Get him out of here,” he snapped at the two merks. He stabbed a finger at Upton. “You heard the general. A report in eighteen hours.”
“Twelve hours,” Upton told Rhodes as they walked down the sidewalk of the strip mall. “I want the report on my desk in twelve hours.” He paused in front of an ice cream shop in the same strip mall, three doors down from the interrogation center. A more astute person might have sensed some irony in the contrast, but Upton had been in the world of covert research for too long to have any irony left in him.
“Let’s celebrate,” Upton said, swinging open the door to the shop. “We’ll be getting funding out the ass with General Riggs and that brownnose shit Brennan on our side.”
“It did work,” Rhodes marveled as they bellied up to the counter like two gunslingers who’d just taken out all the black hats. “The controlled environment of the lab was one thing. I was worried that we were rushing it and—”
Upton hushed him. “There’s the quick and the nonfunded in our world, son. It’s not like the university labs. We’re in the real world, fighting the real shit. If the boss wanted us to rush it and present it, then we rush it and present it.” He turned to the frowning clerk. “Double serving chocolate, extra nuts and, yes, add the m&m’s.”
“Just a single scoop vanilla,” Rhodes said.
The clerk turned to his task.
Upton lowered his voice. “Six years they were working that guy. And we did it in a minute. If we’d have been done a couple years earlier, we’d have been the ones who got bin Laden, not that CIA bitch. It was like turning on a spigot.” Upton smiled, truly happy, a rarity for him. “He’d totally lost the ability to lie or even withhold the truth. He’d have talked until it wore off.” He looked at his watch. “He’s probably still blabbing away as they haul him back to whatever hole they’re keeping him in here.”
“We need to follow up on that,” Rhodes said. “Make sure the controlled parameters are matched in the field.” He ran his tongue along his upper lip. A slight sheen of sweat covered his forehead.
The clerk handed Upton his heaping cup of ice cream, then went to get Rhodes’s single scoop. Rhodes frowned as Upton shoveled a spoonful of ice cream, nuts, and m&m’s into his mouth.
Rhodes shook his head in disgust. “I’m surprised you ordered the double with nuts and with m&m’s considering your ass is busting out of those pants. You and Riggs. Two big fat pieces of shit.”
“What?” Upton muttered around all the material in his mouth.
“Your. Fat. Ass.” Rhodes emphasized each word. “You’ve gained like what, forty pounds just since I’ve been on the project?”
The second spoonful paused on the way to his mouth. “That’s not funny,” Upton said.
Rhodes snorted. “I bet Linda just hates the thought of fucking you. That’s if you can even get it up around her. She’s a whale, too.”
The clerk was holding out Rhodes’s single serving and Upton slapped it out of his hand as Rhodes reached for it. Upton grabbed a mask out of his coat pocket and slipped it on.
“What the fuck?” Rhodes demanded. “You treat everyone like they’re your servant. I did all the work on Cherry Tree. The general saw that right away. It was my idea. He saw through you right away. Your stupid show. You son of a bitch…”
As Rhodes rattled on, Upton simply muttered “Oh, shit,” as he pulled out his cell phone to call in a contain team.
Twelve blocks away, General Riggs’s armored limo paused outside a Washington restaurant. The general stared at Brennan seated across from him. “Still seeing her?”
“Yes, sir.”
Riggs shook his head. “I don’t trust politicians.”
“She’s not a politician, sir,” Brennan replied, reaching for the door handle. “Her father is the politician.”
Riggs leaned over and grabbed his hand for a moment, halting him. “What we just saw is a game changer, Brennan. You get that, right?”
Brennan settled back in the seat. “What do you mean, sir?”
“Think of the power. The power of the truth. In World War Two, Winston Churchill said that ‘in wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.’”
Brennan was used to the way Riggs worked. Impulsive, prone to overreact, the general had taught himself discipline and surrounded himself with a handful of key people whose job it was to keep him from taking precipitous action. Brennan was one finger on that hand, which was short a couple of fingers to begin with.
“Sir,” Brennan began, skating out onto the thin ice of confronting Riggs’s single-minded vision of the world, “drugging the Russian ambassador with a truth serum might not be a wise course of action. Especially at this delicate time. Could be a Gary Powers sort of moment. The president wants SAD. Congress wants this treaty. Most importantly, the American people want this treaty.”