Mike watches me and remains silent.
It’s a classic interrogation technique. Don’t incriminate the suspect. Let guilt and silence work on him until he incriminates himself.
It’s not going to work on me.
I match Mike’s silence with my own.
I use the time to think through the various scenarios. Is Mike simply carrying out instructions from Mother and Father?
Or does he have his own doubts about me, doubts not shared by Mother and Father?
At the end of my last mission, Mike knew I had balked when it came to killing the mayor’s daughter, Samara. He treated me like a friend, saying he would withhold the information from The Program.
But maybe he lied. Maybe he told them everything, thereby creating a jigsaw puzzle of doubt with me as the center piece.
Mike sighs. Then he stands and starts to pace in the room. He moves in an unconscious pattern when he’s thinking. I’ve seen this before from him. The only sign of weakness I can detect in him.
“Loyalty,” he says, picking up the thread of the conversation, “we’re taught that it’s a fixed thing, a point in space that never changes. But that’s not my experience. To me it’s like a river. It ebbs and flows. If you’re lucky, it continues to flow powerfully from the source. If you’re not, the source gets choked off and the river dries up.”
Mike licks his lips. He watches me.
“What’s it like for you now?” he says. “The river, I mean.”
“It’s not a river for me,” I say.
“I see,” he says, like he doesn’t believe me. “So what is it?”
“Why are you here, Mike?” I say.
“I told you, I’m the messenger.”
“And the message is coming from the top?” I say.
“Where else would it be coming from?”
I look at Mike, trying to determine if he’s telling the truth.
Truth and lies. Loyalty and deception. It’s not easy to determine now. Not after doing what I did to Francisco. Not after the last three days.
“The measure of a soldier is not what you do when you’re being watched,” Mike says. “It’s what you do when no one is looking. When you don’t know where you are and your mission gets cloudy.”
“The mission is everything,” I say.
“The new mission,” he says. “What story do you want to tell when it’s all over? Is this the story of the time you had doubt and proved yourself, or is it a different story—the story of you betraying your country?”
“I know what the story will be,” I say.
“That’s what I like to hear,” Mike says.
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
MIKE WALKS ME DOWNSTAIRS, THEN FOLLOWS ME AS I DRIVE AWAY IN THE TRUCK.
He tails me for miles, following several car lengths back as we head east out of Manchester. I take a left at the Nottingham Road turnoff, and I see Mike wave in my rearview mirror as he continues on in a different direction.
I think about Howard in the adjoining suite while I was talking to Mike. More than fifteen minutes passed while I was with Mike, long enough for Howard to get away.
I imagine him at the train station in Manchester, on his way to someplace far away.
Suddenly a voice in the truck whispers, “Is it safe?”
I jam the brakes, the truck skidding to a stop.
Howard pops up in the backseat.
“What are you doing here? You scared the crap out of me,” I say. I’m breathing hard, surprised to see him.
“You don’t get scared—” Howard starts to say, and then he stops in midsentence, his mouth dropping open. “The chip,” he says. “It works.”
I put my hand on my chest, feel my heart beating too strongly.
I take a breath, attempting to slow my heart rate, but it doesn’t work.
This is why I was sweating with Mike in the room, why I had the strange feelings I was having around him.
“You’re right,” I say.
“I’m sorry I scared you,” Howard says. “I had to find someplace to hide.”
“In my truck?”
“If they thought you were inside, why would they search an empty truck? There was a blanket in the back, so I lay down and covered myself. I didn’t think you’d jump in and drive away with me.”
There’s a certain logic to Howard’s approach. I have to give him credit.
I put the truck in gear and get it back on the road.
“Are we going home?” Howard says.
“I’m not. Not yet. I have an assignment.”
“From that guy?”
“You saw the guy?”
Howard nods.
“Did he see you?”
“No,” Howard says. “I saw him out the window as he passed by. I’m sure he didn’t see me.”
I breathe out, relieved.
I’m trying to think of what I can do with Howard, how I can get him to safety. I can’t leave him by the side of the road. We’re out in the middle of nowhere, and Mike could be watching us remotely.
“For now, stay out of sight back there,” I say.
He lies down across the backseat.
The road only narrows from this point on. I have to make a decision about Howard. Leave him hidden in the back of the truck while I drive into Camp Liberty and hope he’s not discovered, or leave him on the side of the road where I can pick him up later.
“I’m going into Camp Liberty on a mission, and I can’t bring you, Howard. It’s too dangerous.”
“Can I pretend I’m your assistant?”
I smile. “It’s not that kind of a mission.”
We’re half a mile from the encampment now. One more bend in the road, and it will be in sight.
“I’m going to pull to the side of the road,” I say. “I want you to hop out and hide in the woods until I come for you.”
“How long will that be?”
“I’m not sure.”
“I’m not really a woods kind of guy,” he says. “I’ve lived in Manhattan my whole life. I don’t even like Central Park.”
“Do you have a phone with you?”
“I’ve got the iPhone,” he says.
“If you don’t see me by nightfall, walk back down the road until you get a signal. Call the police and tell them you were hiking and you got lost. There’s only one road in and out, so they should be able to find you without a problem.”
“I can do that,” he says, obviously nervous about it.
I pull to the side of the road. I shut off the truck, and I sit there for a moment breathing in the fresh air and pine scent of the woods.
“I’m sorry I got you into this,” I say.
“I volunteered, remember? I wanted to work with you.”
“Still, it was selfish of me, and I regret it.”
Howard reaches over the seat and pats me on the shoulder.
He says, “You said something before you fell asleep last night. I wanted to ask you about it.”
“What did I say?”
“About your father. You said he was alive and you wanted me to help you find him.”
“I said that? I don’t remember.”
“You said someone named Mike told you.”
I exhale slowly. I’ve given Howard a lot of information, more even than I realized.
“The guy you saw walk by the truck earlier. That was Mike. He told me my father might be alive when I saw him in New York last month. But he could be lying.”
“We should find out,” Howard says.
“It will be dangerous,” I say.
“I can take care of myself,” Howard says. “Especially online.”
“What about Goji?” I say. That’s Howard’s girlfriend, the Japanese girl in Osaka with whom he’s been carrying on a long-distance romance.
“She doesn’t know anything about what I do for you,” he says.
“That’s not what I’m worried about,” I say. “I want you two to meet someday. I don’t want you to do anything else for me that might risk your life.”