“The sooner I do it, the sooner I’m free. First thing in the morning?” Sienna asked.
Jeb nodded.
As Sienna and Malone stood, moving toward bunks in the stern, Jeb added, “Uh, Chase, I wonder if I could talk to you a minute.”
“Sure.”
“On deck.”
“Sure,” Malone repeated, puzzled. He touched Sienna’s shoulder. “See you later.”
She returned his touch, then disappeared into the shadows of the stern.
Malone followed Jeb up the steps to the murky deck. The canopy of stars was brilliant. He couldn’t recall ever having seen so many. A cool breeze ruffled his hair.
“I need a little clarification,” Jeb said.
“About?”
“I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t my imagination. The way you’re so concerned about her… the way you touched her shoulder just now… Do you and she have something going?”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s not a hard question to understand. Are the two of you emotionally involved?”
“What the hell business is it of yours?”
“Look, as your case officer -”
“Case officer?”
“You haven’t had the psychological training, so let me just tell you it gets messy when an operative becomes emotionally involved with an informant. Among other things, you lose your objectivity. There’s a risk you’ll miss something we need to know.”
“You’re talking as if I work for you,” Malone said.
“Well, isn’t that what we’re doing here?”
“When I went into this, I told you it was personal. It had nothing to do with the Agency.”
“Well, you sure need us now,” Jeb said, “so maybe you’d better rethink your position. She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. It’s understandable you’re attracted to her. But she’s Bellasar’s target more than you are. If you stay with her, you’re doubling the chances he’ll catch up to you.”
“Not if you do your job.”
Jeb looked toward the pitch-black sea, working to calm himself. “I’m just trying to be your friend. You’re making a mistake.”
“The mistake would be to pass up the chance to be with her.”
“Hey, I’m doing my best to be tactful about this,” Jeb said. “This isn’t the first time this kind of situation’s come up. Nine times out of ten, when an operative gets romantically involved with an informant, the romance collapses as soon as the pressure of the assignment passes. Buddy, you’re setting yourself up for a fall.”
“I think, from now on” – Malone’s voice became severe – “you’d better assume I’m not one of your operatives.”
“Whatever you want.”
“That’s right,” Malone said. “Whatever I want.”
8
The debriefing began the next morning. It continued into the next day, until they were transferred to the aircraft carrier. They had a rest while they were flown to the base in Italy, but as soon as a U.S. Air Force C-130 transport plane took off from there, carrying them toward the United States, Jeb resumed the debriefing. One of the armed escorts assisted him, sometimes questioning Malone, sometimes Sienna, always in separate areas where they couldn’t be overheard. Jeb and the escort sometimes changed places; the idea was that the person being debriefed shouldn’t get accustomed to a particular style of questioning and that one debriefer might take a question the other had already asked and rephrase it in a way that opened the memory of the person being questioned.
It wasn’t an interrogation, although the polite but insistent, seemingly inexhaustible sequence of questions had aspects of one. For Sienna, the daunting task was to reconstruct the five years of her marriage. For Malone, there were only five weeks to account for, but the more he was asked to reexamine, a weariness set in that made him sympathize with how exhausted Sienna, with so much more to try to remember, had to be feeling.
From the start of the debriefing, Malone and Sienna were never allowed to meet with each other. The theory was that they might compare what each had said and inadvertently contaminate each other’s memories, making the two versions conform. Jeb and his associate were the only ones allowed to compare, eager to find inconsistencies and use them to ask more refined questions that would perhaps open new memories.
After the transport plane landed at Andrews Air Force Base, the group was flown by helicopter to a clearing in a wooded estate in the Virginia hills. There, to Malone’s displeasure, he and Sienna were kept apart again, driven in separate cars to a low, sprawling modernistic house made of metal and glass. The house was smaller than Bellasar’s. Its materials and design were not at all similar. But he couldn’t suppress the disturbing sense that little had changed, that he was back where he had started. The gardeners who showed no interest in gardening and who seemed out of place in late March reinforced that conviction – they were guards.
Sienna’s car arrived first. As Malone got out of his, three men were already taking her through the double-doored entrance to the house. She had a chance to look back only briefly, her unhappy gaze fixed on him, reminding him of an anxious animal being put in a cage, and then she was gone. Jeb was nowhere to be seen. Without anyone in authority to object to, Malone allowed himself to be taken inside.
The house had slate floors and beamed ceilings. There were corridors to the right, left, and straight ahead. Malone had no way of telling where Sienna had been put, but he himself was taken to the left, to a bedroom at the far end. The room was spacious, with institutional furnishings. But what Malone paid most attention to was the large single window, which couldn’t be opened and which was unusually thick, suggesting it was bullet-resistant. He looked out toward a swimming pool that still had its winter cover on, leafless treed hills beyond it. He saw a tennis court, a stable, and a riding area, all of which looked as if they hadn’t been used in a long time. He doubted that they’d be used while he and Sienna were there, either. He saw a “gardener” peering up at him. Turning, he studied what might have been a hole for a needle-nose camera lens in the opposite top corner of the room.
His legs ached from having been on too many aircraft. His head pounded from jet lag. His eyes burned from lack of sleep. He hadn’t had a chance to talk to Sienna in two days. Where was she? What were they doing to her? He kept feeling he was back on Bellasar’s estate. “This is bullshit,” he said, directing his remark to where he assumed the hidden camera and microphone were.
He walked to the door through which he had entered, tried to open it, and found it locked. A number pad on the right seemed the only way to disengage the lock.
“Hey!” He pounded on the door. “Whoever’s out there, open up.”
No response.
He pounded louder. “Open the damn door!”
Nothing.
“Fine.” He picked up a bedside lamp and hurled it against the window, shattering the lamp but having no effect on the glass. He grabbed the lamp on the other side of the bed and threw it against the mirror above the bureau, protecting his face as chunks of glass flew. He pulled out a dresser drawer and heaved it down through a glass-topped table in a corner. He hurled a second drawer toward an overhead light fixture, disintegrating it. He yanked out a third drawer and was about to head toward the mirror in the bathroom when a metallic sound directed his attention toward the door.
Someone was turning the knob.
The door swung open.
Jeb stepped into view, shaking his head in displeasure. His suit seemed to constrict his large frame. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Where’s Sienna?”
“When we’re finished, you can see her.”
“No, I’ll see her now.” Malone started past him.
Jeb put a restraining hand on his shoulder. “This isn’t the time.”