'Well, you'd better think about it now.'
Buchanan's skull ached more fiercely. 'Why is this being done to me? I didn't screw up. Nothing that happened was my fault. I compensated perfectly. The operation wasn't damaged.'
'Ah, but it could have been.'
'That still would not have been my fault,' Buchanan said.
'We're not discussing fault. We're discussing what did and didn't happen and what almost happened. Maybe you've become unlucky. The bottom line is you're thirty-two. In this game, that makes you a senior citizen. Eight years? Christ, it's amazing you're still alive. It's time to walk away.'
'The fact that I'm still alive proves how good I am. I don't deserve.'
The rain increased, drumming on the car's roof. The windshield wipers flapped harder.
'Did you ever see your file?'
Despite his pain, Buchanan shook his head.
'Would you like to?'
'No.'
'The psychological profile is very revealing.'
'I'm not interested.'
'You've got what's called a "dissociative personality."'
'I told you I'm not interested.'
The man changed lanes again, maintaining speed despite the rain. 'I'm not a psychologist, but the file made sense to me. You don't like yourself. You do everything you can to keep from looking inward. You split away. You identify with people and objects around you. You objectify. You. dissociate.'
Buchanan frowned ahead at the traffic obscured by the rain.
'In average society, that condition would be a liability,' the man continued. 'But your trainers realized what a prize they had when their computer responded to a survey by choosing your profile. In high school, you'd already demonstrated a talent - perhaps a better term is compulsion - for acting. At Benning and Bragg, your Special Ops commanders gave you glowing reports for your combat skills. Considering the unique slant of your personality, all that remained to qualify you was even more specialized training at the Farm.'
'I don't want to hear any more,' Buchanan said.
'You're an ideal undercover operative. It's no wonder you were able to assume multiple identities for eight years, and that your commanders thought you were capable of doing so without breaking down. Hell, yes. You'd already broken down. Working under cover was the way you healed. You hated yourself so much that you'd do anything, you'd suffer anything for the chance not to be yourself.'
Buchanan calmly reached out and grasped the man's right elbow.
'Hey,' the man said.
Buchanan's middle finger found the nerve he wanted.
'Hey,' the man repeated.
Buchanan squeezed.
The man screamed. Jerking from pain, he caused the car to swerve, its rear tires fishtailing on the wet, slick pavement. Behind and in the passing lane, other drivers swerved in startled response and blared their horns.
'Now the way this is going to work,' Buchanan said, 'is either you'll shut up or else you'll feel what it's like to lose control of a car doing fifty-five miles an hour.'
The man's face was the color of concrete. His mouth hung open in agony. Sweat beaded his brow as he struggled to keep control of the car.
He nodded.
'Good,' Buchanan said. 'I knew we could reach an understanding.' Releasing his grip, he sat rigidly straight and looked forward.
The man mumbled something.
'What?' Buchanan asked.
'Nothing,' the man answered.
'That's what I thought.'
But Buchanan knew what the man had said.
Because of your brother.
11
'What's he doing now?' the man who called himself Alan asked as he entered the apartment directly above Buchanan's.
'Nothing,' the muscular man, Major Putnam, said. He sipped from a styrofoam cup of coffee and watched the television monitors. Again he wore civilian clothes.
'Well, he must be doing something.' Alan glanced around the apartment. The colonel and Captain Weller weren't around.
'Nope,' Major Putnam said. 'Nothing. When he came in, I figured he'd pour himself a drink, go to the bathroom, read a magazine, watch television, do exercises, whatever. But all he did was go over to the sofa. There he is. That's what he's been doing since you left him. Nothing.'
Alan approached the row of television monitors. Massaging his right elbow where the nerve that Buchanan had pinched still troubled him, he frowned at a black-and-white image of Buchanan sitting on the sofa. 'Jesus.'
Buchanan sat bolt-straight, motionless, his expression rigid, his intense gaze focused on a chair across from him.
'Jesus,' Alan repeated. 'He's catatonic. Does the colonel know about this?'
'I phoned him.'
'And?'
'I'm supposed to keep watching. What did the two of you talk about? When he came in, he looked.'
'It's what we didn't talk about.'
'I don't understand.'
'His brother.'
'Christ,' the major said, 'you know that's an off-limits subject.'
'I wanted to test him.'
'Well, you certainly got a reaction.'
'Yeah, but it's not the one I wanted.'
12
Buchanan was reminded of an old story about a donkey between two bales of hay. The donkey stood exactly midpoint between the bales. Each bale was the same size and had the same fragrance. With no reason to choose one bale over the other, the donkey starved to death.
The story - which could never happen in the real world because the donkey could never be exactly at midpoint and the bales could never be exactly the same - was a theoretical way to illustrate the problem of free will. The ability to choose, which most people took for granted, depended on certain conditions, and without them, a person could be motiveless, just as Buchanan found that he was now.
His brother.
Buchanan had so thoroughly worked to obliterate the memory that for the past eight years he'd managed not to be conscious of the critical event that controlled his behavior. Not once had he thought about it. On rare occasions of weakness, late at night, weary, he might sense the nightmare lurking in the darkness of his subconscious, crouching, about to spring. Then he would muster all his strength of resolve to thrust up a mental wall of denial, of refusal to accept the unacceptable.
Even now, with his defenses taken from him, with his identity exposed, unshielded, he was repulsed sufficiently that the memory was able to catch him only partially, in principle but not in detail.
His brother. His wonderful brother.
Twelve years old.
Sweet Tommy.
Was dead.
And he had killed him.
Buchanan felt as if he were trapped by ice. He couldn't move. He sat on the sofa, and his legs, his back, his arms were numb, his entire body cold, paralyzed. He kept staring toward the chair in front of him, not seeing it, barely aware of time.