“Mike? Can he hear me?”
“I’m too hot.” It came out funny.
“I’m real sorry, Mr. Smith, but he’s running a fever. We’ve got him on IV penicillin for the infection, and morphine—”
“Penicillin? Isn’t that old-fashioned; I mean, aren’t most bacteria resistant to it these days?”
“That’s not what the path lab report says about this one, thank Jesus; you’re right, most infections are resistant, but he’s had the good fortune to pick up an old-fashioned one. So, like I was saying, he’s on morphine, his leg’s an almighty mess, and they used a whole lot of Valium on him last night so he wouldn’t pull out his tubes.”
“Mike?”
The voice was familiar, conjuring up images of a whirring hand exerciser, a tense expression. “Boss?”
“Mike? Did you try to say something?”
Lips are dry. He tried to nod.
“Ah, h—heck. Is it the Valium? Or the morphine?”
“He ought to be better in a couple of hours, Mr. Smith.”
“Okay. You hang in there, Mike. I’ll be right back.”
The door closed on discussion, and the sound of footsteps walking away. Mike closed his eyes and tried to gather his thoughts. In the hospital. Doped up. Leg hurts a little. Morphine? Colonel Smith. Got to talk to the colonel…
An indefinite time later, Mike was awakened by the rattle of the door opening.
“Huh—hi, boss.” The cotton wool wrapping seemed to have gone away: he was still tired and a little fuzzy, but thinking didn’t feel like wading through warm mud anymore. He struggled, trying to sit up. “Huh. Water.”
There was a jug of water sitting on the bedside trolley, and a couple of disposable cups. Eric sat down on the side of the bed and filled a cup, then passed it to him carefully. “Can you manage that? Good.”
“’S better.” What’s the colonel wanting? Must be really anxious for news to be here himself… He cleared his throat experimentally. “How…how long?”
“It’s Sunday afternoon. You were dumped on our doorstep on Friday evening, two and a half days past your due date. Do you feel like talking, or do you need a bit more time?”
“More water. I’ll talk. Is…is official debrief?”
“Yes, Mike. Fill me in and I promise to leave you alone to recover.” Eric smiled tightly. “If you need anything, I’ll see what I can sort out. Guess you’re not going to be in the office for a while.” He passed the refilled cup over and Mike drained it, then struggled to sit up.
“Here, let me—gotcha.” The motorized bed whined. Colonel Smith placed a small voice recorder on the bedside table, the tape spool visibly rotating inside it. “That comfortable?”
“Y-yeah. You want to know what happened? Everything was on track until I got into the palace grounds. Then everything went to hell…”
For the next hour Mike described the events of the past week in minute detail, racking his brains for anything remotely relevant. Eric stopped him periodically to flip tape cassettes, then began to supply questions as Mike ran down. Mike held nothing back, his own ambiguous responses to Miriam notwithstanding. Finally, Eric switched the recorder off. “Off the record. Why did you tell her we’d play hardball? Did you think we were going to burn her? How did you think it’s going to sound if we have to go to bat with an oversight committee to keep your ass out of jail?”
Mike reached towards the water again. He swallowed, his throat sore. “You should know: if you want to run HUMINT assets, you can’t treat them like machines. They have to trust you—they absolutely have to trust you. So I gave her the unvarnished truth. If I’d spun her a line of bullshit, do you really think she’d have believed me? She knows me well enough to know when I’m lying.”
Smith nodded. “Go on.”
“Her situation is shitty enough that—hell, her mom said she’s on the run—she’s short on options. If I’d told her we’d welcome her with open arms she’d have smelled a rat, but this way she’s going to carry on thinking about it, and then eventually start sniffing the bait. At which point, we can afford to play her straight, and she’s starting with low expectations. Offer her a deal—she cooperates with us fully, we look after her—and you’ll get her on board willingly. You’ll also get leverage over her mother, who is still in place and in a position to tell us what the leadership is up to. But I think the most important thing is, you’ll have a willing world-walker who will do what we want, and—I figure this is important—try to be helpful. I can’t quantify that, but I figure there’s probably stuff we don’t know that a willing collaborator can call out for us, stuff a coerced subject or a non–world-walker would be useless for. If Doc James gets some crazy idea about turning her into a ghost detainee, we’re not going to be able to do that, so I figured I’d start by lowering her expectations, then raise the temperature at the next contact.”
“Plausible.” Eric nodded again. “It’s a plausible excuse.”
Mike put the cup down. His throat felt sore. “Is this going to go to oversight?”
Eric was watching him guardedly. “Not unless we fuck up.”
“Thought so.” Get your cynical head on, Mike. “How do you meant to handle her, then?”
“We go on as planned.” Eric looked thoughtful. “For what it’s worth I agree with you. I had a run-in with James over how we deal with contacts, and while he’s a whole lot more political than I thought, he’s also a realist. Beckstein isn’t a career criminal, you’re right about that side of things. Not that it’d be a problem to nail her on conspiracy charges, or even treason—the DoJ has a hard-on for anyone it can label as a terrorist, especially if they’re collaborating with enemy governments to make war on the United States—but there’s no need to bring out the big stick if we don’t need it. If you can coax her into coming in willingly, I’ll do my best to persuade James to reactivate one of the old Cold War defector programs. You can tell her that, next time you see her.”
“Cold War defector program?”
“How do you think we used to handle KGB agents who wanted to come over? They’d worked for an enemy power, maybe did us serious damage, but you don’t see many of them doing time in Club Fed, do you? You don’t burn willing defectors, not if you want there to be more defectors in future. There were a couple of Eisenhower-era presidential directives to handle this kind of shit, and I think they’re still in force. It’s just a matter of working on James and figuring out what the correct protocol is.”
“Okay, I think I see what you’re getting at.” Mike eased back against the pillows. “It fits with the timetable. The only problem is, she hasn’t gotten back in touch this week, has she? Are you tapping my home telephone?”
“You know I can’t tell you that.” Eric looked irritated. “I’m not aware of any contact attempts, but I’ll make inquiries. I’d be surprised if nobody was watching your apartment—or mine, for that matter—but that’s not my call to make.”
“Okay. Then can you tell me where I am? Or when I’m going to be let out of this place, or what the hell is happening to my leg in there?” Mike gestured loosely at the bulky plastic brace and the cocoon of dressings. “It’s kind of disturbing…”
“Shit.” Eric glanced away. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I’ll ask one of the medics to tell you. They told me was your leg was broken, got chewed up pretty badly—who the hell expected them to be using mantraps in this day and age?”
“It’s not this day and age over there,” Mike offered dryly.
Eric laughed, a brief bark: “Okay, you got me! Listen, I figure the medics should give you the full rundown. What they told me is that you’ll be off your legs for a few weeks and you won’t be running any marathons for the rest of this year, but you should make a full recovery. They were more worried about the infection you brought home, except it responds well to penicillin, of all things. Something about there being no antibiotic resistance in the sample they cultured…anyway. You’re in a private wing of Northern Westchester. We’ve closed it off to make it look like it’s under maintenance, the folks who’re seeing you are all cleared, there are guards on the front desk, and as soon as you’re ready to move we’re going to send you home. Officially you’re on medical leave for the next month, renewed as long as the doctors think necessary. Unofficially, once I confirm this with Dr. James, you’re going to be on station waiting for Iris Beckstein to get in touch. You can call in backup if you see fit—even a full surveillance team and SWAT backup—but from what you’re telling me, she’s got tradecraft, which would make that a high-risk strategy. Think you’re up to it?”