“Okay, the beginning. So I was a major when I got recalled from the reserves at the beginning of the war. I’d had a couple of jobs with… unappreciative CO’s and been passed over for promotion and retired before the war. But for a staff command, I wasn’t high on the rejuv list and the drugs started running low before they got to me. But I was on the list, dammit.” He squirmed a bit and rubbed his chin against his shirt to scratch an apparent itch.
“Look, do I have to rehash the whole damn thing? You guys know this part. I was pretty high up in the local lodge. I was a Mason, my dad and granddad had been Masons. And they were good guys, and I trusted them and they trusted me, but then you guys from counter intel came down the pike…”
“And bought you.”
“Yeah, well, you guys came around asking about clubs and fraternities and secret societies and all, and I wanted to help out and everything—”
“In exchange for…” she prompted.
“Yeah, all right, I appreciated you guys righting a wrong there by making the efficiency report by that self-righteous asshole disappear, okay? And you guys always wanted to know stupid things, and everybody knows this secret society paranoia about the Masons is so much bullshit. Anyway, then you guys wanted to know, you know, anywhere lodge members from out of town stayed whenever they came through. And I wouldn’t have known, except for a younger lodge member thought I was so high up in the lodge I already knew, and let something slip. And yeah, I guess I was pretty ticked that there was crap going on in my own lodge that nobody had told me about.”
“And what did you think we were going to do with that information?”
“Look, I didn’t speculate, okay, if that’s what you’re thinking. It wasn’t my business. What had the lodge done for me? They sure as hell hadn’t offered me anything like rejuv for me and my wife, and things were getting kinda tough at home, and we were supposed to get it anyway, but I appreciated you guys speeding it up. I knew it wasn’t my place to speculate about your business, okay?” His face wrinkled up in sudden bewilderment for a moment and he stopped talking, blinking a few times.
“Hey, how come you’re carrying a buckley instead of an AID?” he asked.
“The rejuv would be for the same wife you’re cheating on right now?” Her gesture took in the entire apartment.
“Hey, I love my wife,” he protested, “but high-powered, dominant males were never wired for centuries of monogamy. It’s just something about guys that women just aren’t wired to understand, if you know what I mean. Men are what we are, all of us. But I do love my wife. And you still didn’t say why you’re not carrying an AID.” This last was said with the smug expression of someone who has cleverly gotten the upper hand.
“You really are a pathetic schmuck, aren’t you? I’m asking the questions.”
“Look, why get all pissy over it? You guys always showed me ID bef—”
She saw his face freeze as the penny finally dropped, and his lips clamped shut. What an absolute fucking moron. A whole team burned because of this idiot and the other morons who tried to cover up their opsec mistakes by recruiting him.
“I’m not saying another word without ID,” he said.
“Of course you are,” Cally said conversationally, “because whoever the hell I am, I’m still the damned scary bitch who has you tied to a chair under a sound damper.”
“Hey, babe, there are worse things than being tied up by a beautiful woman,” he smirked.
Cally was a blur of motion coming off the couch, her heel impacting his groin with such force that he blacked out.
Unfortunately, as he was coming around, she heard, very faintly through the damping, the doorbell and a voice calling something that sounded like it might have been, “Acropolis Pizza.” She glared at Petane.
“Ow,” he winced, glancing at the doorbell and cringing away from her as much as the chair would allow.
“Fuck. Goddam Murphy really hates my ass today.” She grabbed a couple of bandannas out of the briefcase and gagged him quickly, dragging the chair into the kitchen. She couldn’t tell whether the doorbell had rung again or not by the time she moved the briefcase behind the door, grabbed her wallet, and answered it.
The pizza guy’s eyes darted across her tousled hair and slightly smudged makeup and immediately came to a wrong but convenient conclusion, and his eyes had a knowing twinkle as he checked the amount on the ticket.
“Got a pizza for ‘Charles’ at this address. That’ll be fifty-four ninety seven.”
She peeled off a few bills and traded him for the pizza, giving him her best ditzy sex-flushed smile. “Thanks.”
She watched him bop down the stairs, whistling. The smile didn’t leave her face until after the door was closed and re-locked.
After dropping off the pizza and retrieving Petane from the kitchen, she pulled the gag out and sat back down.
“Okay, asshole. Get back to talking.” She put her face down about six inches from his. “Oh, and by the way, do not ever imply that I would even consider doing anything sexual with you. You really do not want to do that. Understand?”
He nodded rapidly.
“Please don’t kick me again. I… I… And don’t make me talk or kill me either. Please? These guys play for keeps. You can’t be a Mason, and I guess you’re not counter intel, so I don’t know who the hell or what the hell you are but those guys play for keeps. As far as I know, I’m the only one of that lodge or the original counter intel weenies who’s still alive. Please, lady, you can hurt me, but I can’t talk to you or I’m gonna die. Please don’t kill me.” He started to shake.
“I wish to God all this had played out differently, but I can’t change it now. For over thirty years I’ve lived each day just trying to see another one. If you’re going to hurt me, or kill me, I can’t stop you, but please God don’t.”
The sound of her slow clapping broke the silence that had fallen for a moment after he finished.
“You’re about thirty years too late, Colonel. How many people didn’t get another day for thirty years because of you? Do you even know? How the hell did you even get out of basic?” She cut him off before he started, “No, don’t answer, I might puke.” She reached down into the bag and pulled out a zipper pack.
“Look, I’m tired of dicking around with you — and don’t go there.” She rifled through the pack and pulled out a syringe. “Are you immune to sodium pent, Colonel? Let’s find out.”
The look he turned on her reminded her of a scared cocker spaniel, and she sighed as she injected him in the arm.
Three test injections later she found an interrogation drug he wasn’t immune to. It was one of the standard ones Fleet Strike had access to.
“Gee, they never did plan to tell you anything really sensitive, did they? Some vital source.”
It took three hours to debrief him. She normally wouldn’t have eaten while working, but she was going to have to dispose of the pizza somehow since none of it would be in the mistress’s stomach and putting any in his stomach wouldn’t match. The delivery was a loose end, but if it ever turned up, she’d be wearing a different face in a different place, anyway. Sometimes, there was just nothing you could do. God, this day sucks.
Finally, she had gotten as much information out of Petane as he had in his brain. As Robertson had said, none of it was of a magnitude that would justify leaving a traitor alive for thirty years, and if nobody in the Fleet Strike establishment had bothered to immunize him against the higher level interrogation drugs, he never would be trusted with anything sensitive enough to be really useful. He wasn’t alert enough to refuse when she offered him one of the plain wine coolers, and drank thirstily from the glass she had found in a cupboard.