“I’m listening.”
“The nuns thought being left-handed was deviant, so they beat you for two years straight, making you use your right hand for everything. They put your left in a thick mitten. Put your arm in a sling. Even tied it to your side.”
“It didn’t take,” Schermerhorn said. “Soon as I got into public school, I went back to being a lefty.”
“Yes,” Alex said. “But you’d learned to use your right hand just as good as a natural.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
“That’s a refreshing bit of news,” Pete said. “Puts us back to two possibilities.” She made a point of laying her pistol on the table. “George and Roy. Sounds like a comedy act.”
“Not Roy. He was never capable of anything like that. Only I and George were.”
“You told us you looked, but George was not on campus.”
“I told you I looked. Doesn’t mean he isn’t — or wasn’t — here.”
“Then you think he’s gone?”
“I wish it were true. But as long as Roy and I are here, he’ll stick around or, at the very least, come back. He wants us both in order to finish his cover-up.”
“We could move you somewhere else, somewhere safer,” Pete said.
Schermerhorn laughed. “You said he found Larry Coffin in some Greek prison. He’ll find us unless we find him first.”
“For once Roy is right,” Alex said. “Why do think I turned around and came back inside? Maybe between the four of us, we can stop him.”
McGarvey noticed that a small bead of perspiration had formed on her upper lip, and her nostrils flared as if she were trying to catch her breath. She was frightened, and from what he’d learned about her background, and from her performance over the past four years and especially this morning, he was impressed.
“Stop him from doing what?” Schermerhorn asked.
“From killing us, for starts,” she shot back.
“And?”
“What the hell are you talking about? And we’re dead. That’s it. All of Alpha Seven gone.”
“So what? Why should we care? By your own admission, it was only you and George who were capable of chewing people’s necks away so they would bleed to death. Then destroying their faces so they would be unrecognizable even to their wives and children. Do you know Fanni Fabry is still in the hospital? She had a serious heart attack, and on the way in she kept telling the paramedic that she knew something like this would happen someday.”
Alex looked away. She was shivering.
“What wife knows her husband will die in that way?” McGarvey demanded. Katy had been afraid for him from the day she’d learned what he really did for a living. But she once confessed she couldn’t imagine the shock and pain of getting shot. It was beyond her ken. Beyond what normal people experienced or even thought about.
But knowing your husband would have his neck ripped open, his blood drained, and his face mutilated?
“I don’t know what he told her. He was a sweet guy — a good operator — but naive. Never was anything cynical about him. He believed in the best in people.”
“Including you?” McGarvey asked.
She nodded. “Even me until near the end.”
“That was when you and George went on your rampage in the oil fields.”
She’d become a little pale, much of the color gone from her face. She held her hands together in front of her on the table, her eyes downcast, and McGarvey had the feeling she was putting on an act for them. Maybe even for herself.
“George,” he prompted.
“He came swooping down on us early one evening, just around dusk. When he landed, he said he was the avenging angel. And I guess all of us believed him in one way or the other.”
“I didn’t,” Schermerhorn said.
Alex flared. “Bullshit, you all but put him on an altar and kissed his ass, just like the rest of us—”
“Why?” McGarvey interrupted. “This guy swooped down on you — exactly how, and what, did he say to make you not open fire first and check credentials afterward? Your team was in badland. He could have been anyone. Mukhabarat. Spetsnaz, GRU — the Russians had interests over there, still do.”
“He made a HALO jump, but it wasn’t until Carnes spotted his chute about a thousand feet up and maybe a klick or so out that we realized someone was dropping in for a visit. If it had been the Iraqi or Russian Special Forces or intel people, they would have sent in more than one man.”
This was her story and no one interrupted her, not even Schermerhorn, who looked as if he had been transported back to that time. His face was filled with a lot of emotion. Nothing hidden, unless it was another act.
“Besides, by the time he walked into our position, we had him covered. If he had so much as given any of us a bad look, we would have shot him. He just came up the hill and said ‘Hi, I’m your new control officer. You may call me George.’
“Chameleon challenged him, but he just said something to the effect that he knew where we were hiding and what our mission was. Said it was stupid at best and everyone at headquarters knew it, so he had come out to save our asses.”
“Those were his only credentials?” McGarvey prompted after she fell silent for several moments.
“That and he knew all our handles, something only Bertie knew. It was enough for us.”
“Why didn’t Bertie come with you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who was your team lead before George showed up?”
“Larry was.”
“The Chameleon,” McGarvey said.
She nodded. “Anyway, our new orders were to harass the enemy. We weren’t going to confront them in a shootout. ‘This won’t be another O.K. Corral,’ he said. ‘We’re the insurgents. We’ll sneak down at night, take out a handful of soldiers, officers if possible, and then scoot back up into the hills.’”
“The Iraqis must have reacted.”
“At first they sent out patrols on foot, but we just avoided them. It was easy to do in that terrain. When they started sending up helicopters, it got a little tougher, but we managed.”
“Was that when you and George stepped up your attacks?” McGarvey asked. “Picked up the level of savagery?”
Alex glanced at Schermerhorn but then looked away. “He said they deserved whatever we could give them. It wasn’t just about the coming war; it was about a millennium plus of senseless murders in the name of a supposed prophet.”
“Muhammad.”
“He was rabid on the subject. We all thought he was probably a Jew, with his New York Brooklyn accent, or maybe even Upper East Side. Maybe had relatives who’d died in the Holocaust, maybe even people he knew in Israel.”
“Could he have been Mossad?” McGarvey asked. “It would explain his dedicated hatred.”
“Some of the guys thought so, but his English didn’t have the British accent Israelis learn in school.”
“I thought he was Mossad,” Schermerhorn said. “Born in New York but emigrated to Israel.”
“Then why in heaven’s name did you cooperate with him?” Pete asked gently but in genuine amazement. She wanted to hear his side of the story. “Maybe it was the fog of war?”
“I don’t know. But by then I think all of us, including Larry, were willing to follow Alex’s lead. And she seemed to think this guy was something special.”
“He was,” Alex said.
“How soon after he showed up were you sleeping with him?” Pete asked.
“A couple of microseconds. He said he had come bearing a gift — a secret that was going to change everything. And I wanted to find out what it was.”
“And did you?” McGarvey prompted.
“We all did, and believe me, it was nothing we expected.”