“He trusts me, General. I hired him for the job. If I don’t get anywhere then by all means send in the hounds.”
Brooks glanced over at Higgs, who raised an eyebrow.
“First we’ll need to fill you in on what we know.”
“So I can speak with him?”
“You can,” Brooks replied. “But you’ll have five minutes.”
Following a quick debriefing, John took a deep breath and entered the interrogation room. Inside, Ray Gruber was still in his pajamas, his hands cuffed to the arms of his chair.
The cuffs made a metallic clank as he struggled to raise himself up. “John, there’s been a terrible mistake—”
“Save the theatrics, Ray. I know everything. I’m not here to hear you plead your innocence. We’re already past that point. First thing I wanna know is why.”
Ray’s eyes fell and the seconds ticked away.
“I want a lawyer.”
John laughed. “There aren’t any lawyers anymore. Probably the best thing to come from the social breakdown. It’s just you and me, Ray. You, me and the truth.”
“We aren’t going to win this war, John,” Ray said flatly. “No matter how much I tried to lie to myself, the writing was on the wall. I was just honest enough to plan ahead.”
“For the Communist takeover?”
“You’re what they used to call a survivalist, John. You know, do whatever you must to stay alive. Well, what I did was no different.”
John leaned back in his own chair. “I always took you for a naive optimist, not a pessimist and especially not a traitor.”
“Guess it depends which end of the barrel you’re looking down. I know what goes on in those camps and I sure as hell wasn’t going to be dressed in rags with a number tattooed on my arm.”
“And what about now? You’re a tired old man in a pair of pajamas. How’d that plan work out for you, Ray?” John folded his arms. “What did they promise you?”
Ray stared down at his hands. “The one thing you couldn’t. A comfortable life once this mess was over and done with. I just wanted things to go back to the way they were before, John. Was that so wrong? Right now we’re nothing but a wounded animal that needs to be put out of its misery. It was the only humane thing to do.”
“By selling your country out to the Chinese? Geez, Ray, if you’d told me you did it for a boatload of money or a harem of young girls maybe I could see it in you.”
“It’s about being on the winning side, John. And when they finally roll in here and take everyone you’ve ever loved? What will you have then?”
“My dignity, Ray. I’ll have my dignity and the knowledge that when the going got tough, I still had my faith. It’s easy to give up. Trust me, I know. After Iraq I was three-quarters of the way there, but I didn’t check the odds, I fought back and with everything I had.”
Both men sat staring at one another.
John was the first to break the silence. “They’re gonna kill you, Ray. And it won’t be a quick one either.”
Ray winced.
“I’m not trying to scare you. I’m just shooting straight. Unless you can give me a reason to spare your life, and it better be a darn good reason, even I won’t be able to help you out of this one.”
Ray scanned the room, searching every nook and cranny, perhaps for a way out.
“Do they know?” John asked.
“Who?”
“The Chinese. Do they know you’ve been made?”
Ray shook his head.
“What about other agents?”
“In Oneida? There aren’t any.”
“You sure? What about David?”
“The kid’s innocent,” Ray said with disgust. “His only crime was pulling his pants down in the forest to do his business. People latched onto him so tight, he had me convinced I would never get caught. He was a scapegoat, nothing else.”
Another pause as John let Ray’s new reality sink in a little.
“You got some good men killed. That’s something I’ll never forgive you for. But you’ve got a chance to work for us now, Ray, and maybe, just maybe you can start making amends for what you’ve done.” John stood and walked to the door. “So, Phoenix. What’ll it be? Will you work for us now or should we start measuring the hangman’s rope?”
Ray’s eyes stayed glued to the table and suddenly John could see he was no longer looking at a captured Chinese agent, he was watching an old man who’d sold his soul to the devil, one who wasn’t sure if he would ever get it back.
Ray spoke, his voice barely a whisper. “I’m in.”
Chapter 51
“I think it’s time we set David Newbury free,” John told General Brooks and Colonel Higgs. The three men were in the dark room watching a deflated Ray Gruber through the two-way mirror.
“We’ve already seen to that,” Brooks replied. “But he can’t stay in Oneida, not anymore. In the minds of a lot of folks here, he’s still guilty.”
“We sure did jump to conclusions,” John admitted. “We learned an important lesson here. Knowing there’s a mole in your midst has a nasty habit of making the best of us paranoid. I’m just sorry David had to be the one to suffer for that.”
General Brooks opened a file and tossed it on the table in front of John.
“What’s this?”
“A report from the front lines,” Higgs informed him. “Seems the Chinese have redeployed a sizeable portion of their forces to meet the NATO threat from the north.”
“So Ray already sent it in?”
Brooks flipped the page. “He did, along with info on the planned mission to blow up a trainload of supplies that never existed.”
“I had a feeling,” John said, unable to stop seeing the faces of the three men he’d just lost. “I guess that’s what counter-espionage is all about, right? Lie to your friends and hope the information somehow makes its way back to the enemy.”
Brooks handed John another folder, this one with the words TOP SECRET stamped across the top in red letters. Inside was the outline for an operation called Anvil. It looked like a full-out assault on the Chinese forces camped along the foothills of the Appalachians. Listed among the American and allied forces were ten divisions of NATO troops. But they weren’t coming in from the north, as the Chinese believed. The landing in Halifax had been one of those little fibs John had alluded to earlier. It wasn’t a complete lie, of course. A single division had come ashore and was pushing south. The Chinese had to believe some sort of relief force had arrived. The main landing, however, had come through the port of Norfolk nearly a week ago, and most of the men and materiel were being sent to reinforce the American center in preparation for the main thrust.
John shook his head.
Both General Brooks and Higgs looked on in surprise.
“You finally got your offensive, John.” Brooks paused. “I thought you’d be more pleased.”
“The Chinese are dug in all along the line,” John told them. “There’s too much that can go wrong launching a frontal attack.”
“Yes, but our side’s been stockpiling ammunition and fuel for one giant push,” Brooks countered.
“I’m sure they have, and so did Hitler in the winter of 1944 when he threw everything he had against the Allies. As you surely know, they had limited fuel for their Panzers, which meant that if the Germans didn’t seize fuel depots soon enough, the entire advance would grind to a halt.”
“We don’t need another history lesson, John,” Brooks shot back. “I’m showing you this plan out of courtesy, not to get your okay.”
“I appreciate that, General. I just think there’s a better way.”
Brooks sighed and grabbed the folder back.
“It can’t hurt to hear him out,” Higgs said.
Brooks was seated now, looking like a child who hadn’t gotten his way.