He turned as the door opened again, expecting Merla Tepp with the coffee refills.
It was Tepp, all right, but she wasn’t alone. She had someone with her, and the someone was Dannerman’s Cousin Pat. “I brought some company for you,” Tepp said brightly, “and I’ve got to leave the two of you here for a bit. But I found something for you to snack on and the coffee’s fresh.”
Cousin Pat, a.k.a. Dr. Patrice Adcock, gave Dannerman a look that was part weary and mostly just hostile. As she took the bench across from him he ventured, “Hello, Pat.”
Pat Adcock didn’t answer. Dannerman hadn’t really expected her to. She hadn’t forgiven him, and in a way he didn’t blame her. Nobody liked having a Bureau spook planted on them, especially when the spook was a cousin they had known since childhood.
He fingered his collar, studying her. It was the first time in many weeks that he had had a good look at his cousin. Apart from looking tired and cranky she looked smaller than usual, in her unornamented Bureau prison gown. Mostly she just looked mad.
He tried again. “So how’ve you been?” he asked sociably.
She gave him an eyes-narrowed look, but this time she answered. “Shitty,” she said.
She didn’t bounce the conversational ball back by asking how he was; she evidently didn’t care. He sighed. “Pat, I know you’re pissed at me, but what was I supposed to do? I work for the Bureau. The Bureau wanted to know what you were up to. If it hadn’t been me, it would’ve been somebody else.”
“Sure, Dan, but I wouldn’t have trusted anybody else as much, would I?” She was silent for a moment, then said thoughtfully, “You just can’t leave that thing alone, can you?”
He hadn’t been aware that he was still fingering his collar. He took his hand away. “At least they didn’t make you wear one.”
“Sure not. Why would they? I’ve been in solitary confinement in this dump.” Moodily she picked up her coffee cup, which reminded Dannerman to inspect the “food” Agent Tepp had brought. It was an opened box of cheese-flavored crackers, but still pretty full.
Pat Adcock watched him chew for a moment, then asked, “Dan? Do you know what’s going on?” He shook his head, his mouth full of stale crackers. “What was the point of that business in the interrogation theater? They just asked the same questions they’ve asked a million times before.”
He shrugged, chewing. Of course they had; it was pure theater, designed for the benefit of whoever was on the other side of that one-way mirror, but for what reason he could not guess.
She fidgeted, unsatisfied. “Listen, do you think the whole thing with the implants could be some kind of trick? Maybe there isn’t really anything in our heads at all?”
He swallowed the crackers. “I wish. No, we’ve got them, all right. I saw the images come up on the screen the first time they examined me.” And most of the other times, too, through all the tests-the X rays and the PET scans, the ionic-resonance tests when they bounced some kind of radiation off the back of his neck and tried to identify the chemical composition of whatever the damn thing was that had somehow, unbelievably, turned up in his skull. “Anyway,” he said, “they’d have to go to a lot of trouble to fake it, and what would be the point?”
“You’re the spook. If you don’t know, who would?”
“Well, I don’t know. I don’t remember it ever being stuck into my head, either.”
“Same here.” She sighed. “They say we’ve all got one, Jimmy Lin and General Delasquez, too. They want me to sign some kind of release so they can take it out. I-I told them I would sign if you did, and if you didn’t I wouldn’t.”
Dannerman blinked at her. That was an indication of some kind of trust, after all, and he hadn’t expected it from her. He didn’t know how to react to it, either.
He didn’t have to, because Pat had decided to be conversational now. “Well, anyway, what’ve you been doing since I saw you last-I mean before they started all this nonsense about implants? How’s that girl of yours?” she asked sociably. “The actress?”
That was a downer, because he’d spent a lot of time wondering the same thing. He confessed, “I don’t know. I haven’t talked to her in a while.”
She nodded, looking at him thoughtfully. “I, uh, I hear you weren’t in real good condition to talk to her. I mean, they say you were drunk most of the time.”
That touched Dannerman where he lived. “Just for the record,” he said stiffly, “they shot me so full of their psychoactive chemicals that I was out of it. For weeks. I don’t even remember what I was doing.”
“I see. You’re blaming somebody else for your behavior.”
“I’m not blaming. I’m telling you what happened.”
She didn’t look convinced, but she didn’t argue the point. He asked, “So, talking about love interest, have you got anybody special?”
“Now, how the hell could I? Anyway, I’ve got other things on my mind. Not just this crap here; I keep wondering what’s happening at the Observatory. The way they came and took me away-God knows what they told the people.”
Dannerman grinned. “They’re very British about that. I imagine they told them you were ‘assisting with inquiries.’ “
“Yeah, well, they’re not stupid there, you know. And I’m worried. You know I was having some money problems. I wish I knew what was going on with my funds-oh, what’s this?”
What it was was Merla Tepp. Her face was as expressionless as she could make it, and what she said was, “Sorry to interrupt, people, but I’ve been ordered to take you for a little ride.”
The ride wasn’t that little. They were the better part of an hour speeding along the Beltway in one of the Bureau’s unmarked electrovans, with two burly noncoms carrying stun-sticks and riot guards sitting alertly behind them. At least they’d left the van windows transparent, so Dan and Pat could look out. He was a little surprised to see that it was dark; they’d spent the whole day stooging around. But the Beltway looked like the Beltway, wherever it was taking you, and Merla Tepp wasn’t answering any questions. “Where are we heading?” No answer. “What’s going on here?” No answer. “Who gave you the orders?” No real answer, but at least a kind of response: “Colonel Morrisey will meet us, and you can ask her when you see her.”
But when the van at last turned into city streets one question answered itself. “Oh, shit,” Dannerman said. “They’re taking us to Walter Reed.”
Pat blinked at him. “The hospital?
“Damn straight it’s the hospital. Listen, Tepp! If you think-“
But he never got to finish, and she didn’t have to answer; one of the noncoms leaned forward and placed a huge hand on Dannerman’s shoulder, while the other casually unlimbered his stunstick. Dannerman saw the light and shut up.
Anyway, they were pulling up to a back entrance, and Dannerman saw Hilda Morrisey moodily waiting in the damp cold. She wasn’t answering any questions, either, or at least not right away. “No talking; iliese people aren’t cleared,” she said, nodding to the noncoms. “Wait till we get you settled.” And then, when they got out of the elevator and were herded into a small room that was a close copy of the Bureau’s cell, she said:
“What about it, Danno? Change your mind yet?”
He didn’t answer that, and she didn’t wait for him to. “All right,” she said, her expression frank and open-the expression she wore when she was being most duplicitous, “I understand your problem. I admit there are certain risks. But have you ever thought of the fact that if one of you volunteered for the operation, we wouldn’t have to ask the other one?”
“Hilda,” he said dangerously, “cut the crap. What’ve you got us here for? Neither one of us signed the consent paper!”
“No,” she agreed, “and that’s too bad, because it would simplify things just to go in and pull one of the gadgets out. But I’ve got good news for both of you. There’s another kind of test, something the lab guys have just figured out.”
Hero Astronaut Returns Home.
Major General Martin Delasquez has unexpectedly returned to Florida after a tour of duty in Kourou, assisting the Eurospace Agency in preparation for a mission to the abandoned Starlab satellite. On arrival, the general scoffed at reports in the Anglo media that his tour was cut short for security reasons. “There is no truth to them,” General Delasquez told reporters. “My task was completed, so I came home. That’s all there is to it.”
El Diario, Miami
“Hilda!”
“Agent Dannerman,” she said frostily, elevating herself to the height of her rank, “don’t give me a hard time. Do you understand me?”