“Hell, if it’s the way to win the war . . .” Drisson left it unfinished.
“Something to bring up with Denham when we convene again tomorrow,” Toddrel pronounced.
* * *?
Cade sat hunched on a coarse mattress covering the single cot, his legs drawn up, arms resting on his knees. The cell was part of a detention facility in the place they had been brought to. It seemed some kind of military base from the glimpses that he’d managed to get. He hadn’t seen anything of Marie since they were taken separate ways on their arrival the previous day. Sounds from outside came intermittently through the barred, glass-slatted window, of vehicles, tramping feet, voices calling orders, and aircraft taking off and landing. Besides the cot, he had a chair, a table, a wooden shelf, a washbasin with a faucet that dribbled brown water, and a toilet. Light was from a bulb, hanging by its cord. It all felt very far from Newport Beach.
They had fastened a metal collar around his neck. When he started protesting and demanded legal representation, a jolt that felt as if it were tearing his head apart knocked him off his feet, impressing the message that he wasn’t in a position to demand anything. It had been a sobering and effective lesson. In movies, people always breezed through such experiences to perform acrobatic escapes or deliver comeuppances with interest on their aggressors. The reality turned out to be very different. His head still throbbed, and his nerves felt shredded. His body seemed to have gone into a protective shock. Worse was the feeling of humiliation and outrage, the disorientation that came with the realization of his utter helplessness. And he’d had plenty of time to reflect that this could be just the mild beginning. Perhaps that was an intended part of the process. He tried not to think about Marie.
Footsteps approached outside. Keys jangled in the door. It opened to reveal two of the guards—dark-skinned and hefty, with mean, indifferent faces. One of them said something in Spanish and motioned for Cade to get up. The other was holding a unit resembling a TV remote, which controlled the collar. Cade’s body had chilled and stiffened, but he wasn’t arguing.
They took him past a row of doors with shuttered grilles, down a flight of metal stairs, and along a corridor of walls painted green up to a brown dividing line and yellow above. Steel lockers stood at intervals along one side, and red fire extinguishers hung on the wall at the end. A soldier in fatigues came out of one of the doors and passed them going the other way. They stopped at a door farther along. The guard who was leading knocked. A voice from inside called, “Sí.” The guard opened the door. The other jabbed Cade in the back to propel him through.
It was a bare room of painted brick walls and a concrete floor. A man in a tan jacket and white, open-neck shirt was sitting at a metal desk, empty except for a file folder, some scattered papers, a lamp, and an open laptop. He had a balding head fringed by dark, oily-looking curls, and a rounded face with brooding eyes that followed Cade curiously as he came in. Another man, leaner, with fair, cropped hair and a mustache, wearing ISS uniform with rank designation that Cade wasn’t sure of—colonel, maybe—was standing, arms folded, with his back to the corner on one side. An upright wooden chair faced the desk. The guard prodded Cade toward it while the other closed the door. He sat down, and they stationed themselves behind.
The interrogator let his eyes flicker over Cade for a few seconds, as if looking for a visual cue as to how to open. “So, the other half of the duo,” he said finally. He was American. “You two have caused a lot of problems.” He didn’t seem to expect any response at that point. “Okay, let’s save us all a lot of time. We know you were at the motel in Chattanooga, how you got there, and that you were brought out through St. Louis by this Hyadean from California, Teera Vrel.” He went on to supply some of the salient details. Maybe the idea was to sound as if he knew more than he did, with the implication that telling untruths could be risky. Cade figured that Rebecca and Julia between them would have supplied everything up to the incident in the motel. With surveillance everywhere and taps into all the computers, who knew how they had traced them to St. Louis? Anything relating to the three days between his and Marie’s fleeing from Chattanooga and their arrival at the St. Louis Hilton was notably absent from the interrogator’s account.