by David Archer
“Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer? That Sun Tzu?”
“Indeed. Your E & E is an organization of our friend in the West, the United States of America. We simply wish to know whether our country has anything to be concerned about with them.”
“That’s a question I couldn’t answer,” Sarah said. “I don’t know anything about politics or policies or how everything is run. All I am is a driver, the girl who has to get my boss to where he’s going, and then get him out again. The closest I ever come to knowing what’s going on is when he tells me where to drop him and when to pick him up.”
“You see?” Chung said with another smile. “That was being cooperative. You have shared with me a truth about the work you do. In return, I shall let you decide what we have for dinner. The kitchen here can prepare almost any kind of meal. Tell me what you would like to have, and that shall be our dinner for tonight.”
Sarah deliberately let her face brighten. “Really? I mean, anything I want?”
“You will find that I am always going to be honest with you. Yes, really. Anything you wish.”
Sarah puckered her lips and narrowed her eyes, comically appearing to be deep in thought. “Hmmm, I gotta think this through. Anything I want…Okay, I’ve got it. How about we have spaghetti and meatballs, with Parmesan cheese? Can your kitchen do that?”
Chung laughed with delight. “Of course,” he said. He leaned toward her as if imparting a secret. “You know, there are those who still believe that spaghetti was originally based on Chinese noodles.”
Sarah rolled her eyes. “There’s also people who believe the American moon landings were a big hoax.” She turned her expression serious. “Mr. Chung,” she said, “what makes me so important? What do you really expect to learn from me?”
Chung’s smile remained bright. “Sarah—may I call you Sarah?” She nodded permission. “Sarah, the truth is that we do not know what we expect to learn. However, my government has spent much of the last decade in trying to curtail American spying in our country, even to the point of eliminating our own countrymen who were suspected of selling secrets to the West. Now we have discovered confirmation of numerous bits of intelligence indicating that the Americans practice political and economic assassination. Your organization was created in the middle of your former president’s first term, and yet it has taken us all this time merely to confirm its existence. Do you find it surprising that we wish to learn everything we can about that organization?”
“No, I guess not,” Sarah said. “But I don’t really think you’re going to learn that much from me. I mean, I’m not gonna roll over and tell you anything I think I shouldn’t, but I’m sure those people you were talking about will get tired of waiting for you to charm it out of me. Sooner or later, you’ll be gone and I’ll face the Inquisition. I’m not stupid enough to think they won’t break me, but even then I don’t know anything important. It’ll all be a waste of time and effort.”
The Chinaman’s smile slowly faded away. “I do not care about wasting time,” he said. “I do not, however, wish to waste the beautiful woman before me.”
Sarah rolled her eyes. “Oh, so now I get the charming side, right? The flirtatious hero, coming to rescue the damsel in distress. I know it might seem like I’m pretty dumb, but even I can see through that one. You’re not here because you want to be, any more than I am. You’re here because it’s your job to try to get answers out of me, so don’t bother paying me compliments and flirting with me. It won’t get you anywhere, and I really would rather not insult you.”
Chung smiled at her. “Sarah,” he said softly. “Do you not believe that a man can find a woman attractive, even if they have opposing political views? There have been many epics written about such ill-fated romances; perhaps you and I might be another one?”
Sarah grinned at him. “Nice to meet an optimist,” she said, “but forget it. Ain’t gonna happen, Chung, not in a million years!”
FIVE
Neil had been awake and dressed by the time Noah got home, so he came walking over as soon as the Corvette pulled in. Noah got out of the car and stood beside it waiting for him, and then the two of them went into the house.
“Have a seat at the table,” Noah said as they entered the kitchen. “I’ll make coffee.”
“No, let me,” Neil said. “You don’t do it the way Sarah does…” The boy’s face suddenly looked crestfallen. “Anyway, you make it too strong.” He picked up the pot from the coffee maker and filled it with water at the sink.
Noah stepped aside and took a seat at the table, watching Neil work. When he turned to pour the water into the machine, Noah saw the tear that was sliding down his cheek, and then decided that what he was seeing was grief, rather than any sign of guilt.
“Neil,” he said, “Sarah is alive.”
Coffee grounds spilled across the counter as Neil dropped the container and spun to face him. “What?” he demanded. “Did they find her? Is she okay? How do you…”
“I knew it before we left Thailand,” Noah said, “but there was no hope of trying to rescue her at that moment. The only possible source of information would have been Pak, and he was too well protected. There was no chance we were going to catch him alone in the near future, so I chose to let him believe that I accepted his story of her death.”
Neil’s eyes were wide as he stared at Noah. “But we’ve got to go,” he said loudly, “we got to go back and find her. Noah, we can’t go out on a new mission when she’s—”
“Neil, she was betrayed. Someone, either one of my team or Jenny’s, or possibly one of the E & E people in Thailand, revealed to someone that Sarah is one of ours. That’s the only logical reason for Pak to try to convince us she was dead. They know exactly what they’ve got, and I’m sure they plan to try to get any information they can out of her.”
“And that makes it even more important we go back,” Neil said. “God, Noah, you know Sarah, she’d never be able to handle being tortured for information.”
“Sarah’s a lot stronger than you think, Neil, but at the moment we have no intel at all. The most logical move at the moment is to figure out who sold her out, and who they talked to. I don’t think it was Pak, I think he was a middleman that was called in to handle getting her to whoever wanted her so badly. Allison’s got CIA working on the people in Thailand to see if one of them has made any improper contact lately, but they don’t think it’s likely. If it was one of them, she might have been betrayed even before she was taken to the prison, but it seems more likely she was sold out after she was taken by the Nay Thas, and it’s more than a possibility that it was one of the people who were with us at the time. That means it was either Marco, Jenny, or one of her team.”
Neil stared at him for a moment, then turned around and continued making the coffee before cleaning up the spill. It wasn’t until he was finished that he turned back to face Noah.
“When we figure it out,” he said, “I want to be the one to kill him.”
One of Noah’s eyebrows lifted slightly. “Him? You’re assuming it’s not Jenny?”
“Huh-uh,” Neil said. “Jenny’s an evil bitch, but not that way. You heard her, she gets her thrills out of killing people. Whoever did this probably did it for money, and Jenny wouldn’t care about that. She wouldn’t risk losing the only possible job that lets her indulge her desire to be a serial killer and covers her back while she does it.”
“Who do you think it was?” Noah asked bluntly.
Neil closed his eyes. “My very first thought would be Marco,” he said, “but I’m smart enough to know that’s because I resent him taking Moose’s place. It could be him, but I can’t point to any kind of evidence that makes me think so. I know it wasn’t you or me, and I’m sure it wasn’t Jenny, but I don’t know her guys well enough to even make a guess about them. I got along okay with all of them, but me and Jim probably hit it off best. We speak the same language, you know?”
Noah nodded his head.
“I agree. I saw nothing that lets me point to one of them as a suspect. This is the reason Allison is sending us out together again, to give me the chance to try to figure out which one of them might have done it, if it was any of them.” He looked Neil in the eye. “Once we know that, I’m going to make certain he tells us everything he knows.”
“I’m just worried about Sarah. Noah, she’s pretty tough in some ways, but I don’t know how long she could hold out under torture.”
“She’ll hold out for a while, if for no other reason than to protect me and you as long as she could; she truly cares about us, Neil. Sooner or later, though, she’s going to break. Allison doesn’t think she knows anything that would be devastating, but we still need to get her back as quickly as possible. Interrogation can do some pretty severe damage to the mind, as well as the body.”
Neil rubbed his hands on his face. “So, we have to go out on a mission with people we can’t trust. Wouldn’t it be easier to just take the whole bunch of them and put a gun to their heads? Talk or die, that sort of thing?”
“The problem with that is that they’re all going to swear they know nothing about it, and there’s no way to know which one of them is lying.”
“Yeah. I bet Jenny could find out, if we could trust her. I’ve never seen anybody get off on torturing people the way she does.”
“Same issue, we can’t be sure of the results. The even bigger problem with torture is that it can make people admit to things they didn’t do, just to stop the pain. That’s why Jenny tortured one man while appealing to the other to save him. In this case, whoever did this probably doesn’t care if somebody else is being skinned alive. Sooner or later, the person she’s torturing will admit to anything she wants just to make it stop.”
“And then the real culprit gets off scot-free. Yeah, I get it.” He turned and looked at the coffee maker, saw that it was more than half-full and pulled the pot away. He poured two cups and set it back on the machine, then carried the steaming mugs to the table.
“You wouldn’t tell me about this if you thought it could have been me,” Neil said as he sat down. “I guess I should thank you for that.”
Noah cocked his head to one side and looked at the kid. “I spent my whole life studying other people’s emotions, so that I could pretend to have some of my own. When you accidentally mentioned Sarah a while ago, you had the same expression of grief that I saw when Moose died. I told Allison earlier that I couldn’t believe you would have done this, but that cinched it for me. That’s when I decided to let you know what’s going on.”
Neil wiped another tear away and busied himself adding sugar to his coffee for a moment. “So,” he said when he finished, “do you know anything about this mission?”
Noah nodded. “We’re going to North Korea. There are four CIA agents who have been captured there, and the Company says they can’t be rescued. We have to kill them so they can’t give up any secrets. And before you ask, Allison says she will not sanction a termination on Sarah. That’s why she mentioned that Sarah doesn’t know enough to do any real harm to the country.”
Neil chewed his bottom lip for a moment. “North Korea? Can Americans even get into that country?”
“I’m pretty sure they have some kind of tourism that Americans take advantage of, probably something that lets them watch every move they make. There have been news stories about American tourists being arrested over there, sometimes for the most ridiculous reasons, so this certainly isn’t going to be an easy one. We’ll find out more about the mission and how we’re supposed to accomplish it at the briefing.”
Neil took a deep breath, as if trying to steady his emotions. “And in the middle of all that, we’re supposed to play a very dangerous game of Clue, figure out who among us is a traitor, right? Damn, I’m sure glad the Dragon Lady isn’t handing us a difficult job.”
“People tend to reveal themselves under stress,” Noah said. “The whole point of sending our two teams on this mission is to put whoever did this under a lot of stress, and then I’ll apply even more to see if we can force him to make a mistake that gives him away. I’ll probably need your help with that.”
Neil’s eyes had been on his coffee cup, but he suddenly looked up at Noah. “Anything you want,” he said. “Anything at all. You figure out who it is and want me to pull the trigger, I’ll do it without even blinking.”
“I know,” Noah said.
The two of them sat and talked, stopping twice to refill their coffee cups. They were going over possible scenarios, ruses they might employ to try to identify the traitor in their midst, when Noah’s phone rang.
“Hello,” he said.
“It’s Allison,” his boss said unnecessarily. “We’ve just spoken with Jenny, and both Donald and I came to the conclusion that she can be trusted. She had deduced the same things that you had, that Sarah is alive and that she had been betrayed by one of our own. Latest report from the CIA says they can find nothing to implicate any of our people over there, so if it’s an inside job, then I’m afraid it’s down to your men or hers.”
“I brought Neil in on this,” Noah said. “I’m convinced he had no part in it, so we're going over ways we might trick the culprit into revealing himself.”
“Very good,” Allison said. “You can use Jenny as you need to, as well. Just make sure no one other than Neil hears anything the two of you talk about.”
“Will do. Briefing still at one?”
“Yes.” The line went dead.
Noah slipped his phone back into his pocket and looked at the kid across from him. “Jenny’s in the clear,” he said. “Once we leave the house, we don’t discuss any of this where anyone else can hear it.”
“Deal,” Neil said.
“Good. Why don’t we go grab some lunch? Unless it’s too early for you to eat.”
“Ow! Stop twisting my arm!” The joke was lost on Noah, so Neil rolled his eyes. “Yeah, let’s go eat.”
Even with the passenger seat in the Corvette slid all the way back, Neil couldn’t quite straighten his legs out, but he didn’t complain as they rode into town. A new restaurant, Colorado Charlie’s, had recently opened only a few blocks from the main offices and the team had tried it before they left for Thailand. The food had been good, so Noah headed toward it.
When Neil realized where they were going, he looked at Noah and said, “Do we gotta? I mean, that’s the last place we ate with…”
Noah glanced over at him, and then made the next right turn. There was an Applebee’s a couple of blocks over, so Noah went there, instead.
They had just gotten inside and were waiting to be seated when Noah’s phone rang. “Hello?”
“It’s Jenny,” he heard. “Allison talk to you yet?”
“Yes. I understand you and I are on the same page.”
“You bet your ass we are. How well do you know your guys? Do you think it could have been one of them?”
“It wasn’t Neil,” Noah said. “He and I have talked it over and I’m certain it wasn’t him. Marco is new with us, a replacement for Moose, so he’s a lesser-known quantity.”
“Yeah, he’s at the top of my list, at the moment. No particular reason other than the fact he’s the new guy, but I’ve had all three of my boys for almost two years, now. I know them, Noah, and I have a real hard time believing any of them could have done this.”
“I understand, but people have been turned in the past, people you’d never believe it could happen to. Listen, Neil and I are about to have lunch at Applebee’s. Would you like to come and join us?”
“Yeah, that sounds good. Applebee’s? I can be there in fifteen. Get me a sweet tea.”
“Okay, we’ll try to get us a table where we can talk a little bit. See you when you get here.” He turned to Neil. “Jenny is going to come and join us.”
Neil shivered. “That’s like sitting down to eat with Death! It’s hard to get the image of what she did to that guy out of my mind, and I don’t even try to imagine
what happened on the island. I’m just glad you left me at the boat.”
“Yes,” Noah said without looking over at him. “I thought you might be.”
SIX
They were early enough that the lunch rush had not yet begun, so Noah asked for the booth that was farthest away from where most people were sitting. The hostess smiled and put on a hip-wiggling display as she led them to it, and a waitress appeared instantly to take their drink orders. Noah told her that a third person was coming, then ordered a beer for himself and Jenny’s sweet tea. Neil asked for lemonade, and the girl hurried away to fetch them.
Jenny arrived just as the drinks did, and slid into the seat beside Noah. “Hey, whiz kid,” she said to Neil. “How you holding up?”
“I was fine 'til you got here,” he said with a smirk, but then he grinned at her. “I’m just kidding. I’m okay, I guess, but I won’t be right until we get Sarah back.”
“Then that’s what we gotta do.” She picked up a menu and began looking it over. “If it was one of my guys,” she said without looking at Noah, “I’d have to say Randy would be the most likely one. I’ve been thinking it over, and I can recall a few times he seemed to go off the reservation. Disappear for a little while, know what I mean?”
Noah raised an eyebrow. “He disappears on the job?”
Jenny nodded. “Every now and then, just for a short time. I’ve always chalked it up to him being the impulsive sort. Give you an example, there’s been a couple of times when he disappeared and it turned out he was in a bookstore. He loves to read, he’s always got a couple of books with him, but if we're out long enough that he finishes them, he’ll go find another one. Another time, while I was still playing up to my target and he was supposed to be watching me from the street, he decided I had everything under control and went two blocks away to grab a sandwich.”
