“Nothing wrong with colorful speech, Micah. As long as you’re precise. I’ll have Sally send you the intercept voiceprint and whatever matches we can isolate; maybe you can use it to get a line on this Radko. If I ever let you back out in the field.”
“What does that mean?”
“Micah. Think. We’re in Iraq and Afghanistan and we’re looking sideways at Iran. Now you got us at war with Croatia.”
“I doubt Gospic’s gonna send a crew all the way to America.”
“You do, do you? Sometimes I wonder how the hell you got into the Agency in the first place. We should have left you with the DIA — they’re all whack jobs in Army Intel. Gospic’s already got people here, in Detroit, San Bernardino, Trenton. Most of the ports.”
“You’re not really thinking about taking me out of Operations?”
Stallworth said nothing for a time.
“Look. Right now, I need to know how operational you are.”
“You mean with the drug exposure?”
“Yeah. We got the tox report from Hazmat. That’s quite a cocktail you got in the snoot. Salvia, mostly, but also peyote, datura, and psilocybin derivatives. Easily vaporized. Very fine particulate mass, light as spores, totally sprayable. Dispersible as an airborne solvent if you work the matrix right. Outstanding tactical possibilities. One dose in the face and — this is the salvia part — you get this complete psychotic break. Like LSD, only immediate. Instantaneous. It gets right down into the cortex, unlocks the id, Pandora’s box. Whatever you got in there, your personal demons—”
“I know that. But have they got an antidote?”
Stallworth studied Dalton’s face for a while. “Not yet. You still seeing Naumann’s ghost?”
“Not recently,” Dalton said, lying like a Persian carpet.
“But you have? Right? The whole thing? An apparatus?”
“Apparition?”
“Whatever.”
“Yes. Days ago. Maybe.”
“That the truth?”
“May God strike me dead.”
“Is he in here with us right now?” said Stallworth.
“Nope. Nowhere around.”
Stallworth was looking decidedly undecided. “I don’t know, Micah. You’re starting to look like a medical risk out there. There are insurance concerns. Liability.”
“I’m not gonna sue the Agency, Stallworth.”
“No? Others have.” He sat back, his expression neutral, looking at Dalton. “This salvia extract, Micah, the medics say it’s in your limbic system right now, and it could kick out at any time. You admit that you’ve had several hallucinations, the last one only a few days ago.”
Dalton wasn’t going to give that puppy any air. “Stop right there, Jack. You took the SERE counterinterrogation course at Peary. The Biscuits dosed us up with LSD, other drugs, locked us up in cages for days, sleep deprivation. We all saw things. I got a dose and I had some visual things happen. They went away. I’m better. That’s the end of it.”
“We knew what to expect with acid. We don’t know the long-term effects of this drug.”
“I’m as stone-cold clear as a man can get. I give you my word. If I really thought I wasn’t operational, I’d say so. You said it yourself. I’m a solid field guy. I get the job done. Yes, I had a bad time on this last detail. That’s over. Don’t take me out of the field. I mean it. I live there. Everything that makes my life is in this job.”
Stallworth’s face reflected some mixed emotions. The reference to the Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape course at Peary — a nightmarish week filled with sleep deprivation, physical and emotional assaults, and disorienting nightmare mind games, often exacerbated by hallucinogenic drugs — left every course survivor profoundly shaken, almost broken. On the other hand, most of them went on to become superb field operators.
“I get your point. I really do. But your mental—”
“You Section Eight me, Stallworth, and I swear I’ll walk.”
“Ha! As if! You have no other life.”
“That’s my point! Send me to Walter Reed and I’ll never get another field assignment. You know it. It happens all the time. You get looked at cross-eyed by your own guys. Nobody trusts you again. You can’t get selected, because the rest of the team won’t sign off on you, and even if they do they’re always watching you while you sleep. You’re operationally over. You end up down in Housekeeping with the rest of the walking dead, shuffling around in a worn-out bathrobe mumbling, looking under the bed for your pipe and slippers. I’m too young—”
“You’re almost forty.”
Dalton felt his anger rising, and under that his deep-seated fear of being left ashore, of being marooned on a clerical desert island, with nothing in his future but endless days of meaningless work, the loss of everything in his life that gave it its spark, its wild electric flow. “I understand that you’re worried. I don’t blame you. Hell, I’m worried too. But instead of booting me off to Walter Reed so I can go quietly bats, how about you give me some easy time?”
“What? Like a vacation? You just came back from a month off.”
“No. Not a vacation. But something useful. How about it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Jack. Come on…”
“What kind of job are you thinking about?”
Dalton had his answer ready; he’d had it ready since he crossed the Chesapeake.
“Let me do a workup on this Sweetwater guy.”
Stallworth’s expression changed in some indefinable but detectable way. He held Dalton’s gaze but in his eyes there was this… absence. An opaque quality.
“Sweetwater? That’s the guy you like for Naumann?”
“And his family. How about it?”
“Why are you calling him Sweetwater?”
“It was the name he used himself. In Venice.”
“Sweetwater?”
“Yeah.”
Stallworth’s face clouded up. “Man, this stuff is wack.”
Wack?
“Micah. Micah, you coulda kept me better informed, you know.”
“You told me: Nothing written. Person to person only.”
“I did?”
“Yeah. You said it was policy. Straight from the Vicar.”
Stallworth pushed his chair back, set his feet on the desk, templed his fingertips, stared at Dalton over the top of his reading glasses. Dalton thought the look needed a pipe but he kept his mouth shut. After a long while, Stallworth nodded slowly.
“Okay. I’ll give you that. You stay in-country, right? No fucking off in the middle of the night to go to Serbia and start a firefight?”
“Scout’s honor. Can I use the cubicle next to Sally?”
“Yeah. Mickey’s in Gitmo. When do you want to do this?”
“Right now.”
“Forget it. You look like a bucket of bat boogers.”
“Jack, for the love of God…”
“Well, you do look like hell. You got a room?”
“I’ve got a suite reserved at the Regis.”
“Jeez. A suite! At the Saint Regis? We’re paying you too much.”
“Nah. I put it on the Agency.”
“When you wanna come in? Tomorrow?”
“I’ll check in, get a shower, have dinner. How about later tonight?”
“It’s Friday night, Micah.”
“So go home to your greenhouse. I want to get this started.”
“Okay. Your life to piss away. You’ll have the entire section to yourself. What kind of access you think you’ll need?”
“Need? I’ll need everything.”
“You’re not cleared for everything.”