James Knapp - The Silent Army

The third person was a round-faced Asian woman with short, straight hair. Like the two men, she wore a dark suit and even wore a tie that somehow looked right on her. Before the other two could say anything, she stepped forward and offered her hand.

“My name is Alice Hsieh,” she said, as I shook the offered hand briefly. “Agent Wachalowski said you might be joining us. This is Agent Ves—”

“I know who he is.” Heat was coming up from under my collar. I knew my face was totally red. I felt completely humiliated.

“Then if you’ll join us in the—”

“I’ll talk to him alone,” I said. I’d just interrupted her twice, but I didn’t care. Vesco got ready to say something, and I swore—right then I swore—that if he started in on me, I’d make him shut up, no matter who saw.

I didn’t have to, though. The woman, Alice, made him shut up instead.

“That will be fine,” she said.

“Like hell,” Vesco said. Alice didn’t raise her voice, but her eyes turned serious.

“Are you contradicting me?” she asked. The look on Vesco’s face, and his friend’s face, left no question as to who in the room was in charge. He was angry, but he pressed his lips together.

“No, ma’am,” he said. Alice turned back to me.

“You’re on.”

I walked past Vesco, and took some satisfaction in the anger I could sense coming off him. The interrogation room was cold, like they usually kept it, and a man sat in a wheelchair across the table from me, almost shivering. I took out my notebook, and smoothed the paper Nico had given me over the open page, keeping it out of view.

“Who are you?” the man asked. His face was sweaty, in spite of his slight shiver. He had a tube under his nose, and a few more stuck out from inside his robe. According to Nico’s notes, his name was Franco Reese, and he’d been shot in the side not even twenty-four hours earlier.

“Never mind who I am,” I said. “I’m going to ask you some questions.”

“I’m not saying anything without my—”

His voice trailed off as the room brightened around me, and the colors appeared around his head. Over the past two years, I’d gotten better at doing what I did. I didn’t have to get close anymore or tell him to go to sleep. Most people didn’t even need to be totally under for me to get them to tell me what I wanted to know, and it was less obvious that way.

“Just take it easy, Mr. Reese,” I said.

I eased the colors back into a cold, calm blue, and watched his face relax.

“I just have a few questions. Will you cooperate?”

“Sure,” he breathed, settling back into the wheelchair.

I risked a glance back toward the glass panel that separated the rooms. It was a one-way mirror, so I couldn’t actually see the people on the other side, but I could sense them to the point that I knew where they were standing. Vesco and his friend were together, back toward the far wall. The woman, Alice, was standing directly in front of the glass, watching me. Her mind was calm and interested, but not suspicious. I looked back to Nico’s list.

“Did you smuggle in the twelve devices?” I asked. The paper didn’t say what kind of devices they were.

“Yes.”

“Was Holst your original contact?”

“No,” he said, “but the guy who set up the deal and the one who did the pickup were supposed to be two different people. I knew that.”

“So you were expecting Holst?”

“I didn’t know who I was expecting. The guy who set it up supplied a cipher. The pickup man provided the key. They also had the money. Everything was in order.”

“So nothing seemed strange about the deal?”

Reese’s brow twitched. “One thing,” he said.

“Tell me.”

“The buyer wanted the revivors too.The two that came to make the pickup didn’t say anything about that.”

“No?”

“No. That blond bitch, especially. She looked put off by the whole thing. Next thing I know, the goddamn Feds are busting down the doors, so I figured it was a sting; the bitch and her pervert friend were undercover. I go downstairs to take care of her, and she starts shooting.”

“You didn’t see where the case ended up?”

That actually seemed to excite him a little. An electric white began to course under the cool blue that surrounded him.

“I thought you had it,” he said. He didn’t know.

“Did the buyer say what the targets were?” I asked.

“Just that they were big.”

“Big?”

“At least three large-scale urban targets,” he said. It took me a minute to realize what it was that he was saying.

“They’re going to blow something up?” I asked.

“What the hell else do you do with a nu—”

“The nature of the case’s contents is classified,” a voice snapped over the intercom, loud enough to cut the man off, but it was too late. I knew what he was going to say. He had a weird look on his face, a sort of excitement in his eyes, even despite being under. Whatever was going to happen, he wanted it to happen.

The city is going to burn. That’s what the dead woman said. Was this what she meant?

“Okay,” I said weakly. My heart had started to pound. “That’s all.”

“You can’t stop it now,” he said. “Change is coming, and you can’t—”

“Shut up,” I said, and he did.

I looked at the bottom of the paper Nico had given me, and it seemed to be turning in a slow circle in front of me. There were a few more questions he wanted asked that I was not expecting. Normally I think I would have chickened out, but I was still reeling from what I’d heard. I barely thought about it when I called back into the next room.

“Agent Vesco, can you come in here for a second?” I called back. “The rest of you can go if you want. I’m done with him for now.”

The door opened and Vesco came in. He looked at me like I was an idiot.

“He’s lying, Ott,” he said. “If interrogation was that easy, anyone could do it. That case is worth millions; he knows where it is. They would have had a route set up to carry it back underground in the event they got busted.”

“He’s not lying.”

“So you ask him a question, and just accept the first thing that comes out of his mouth? He’s a black market- arms dealer sitting inside the Federal Building; he’ll say whatever he—”

“He’s not lying. Shut up,” I said, and he did. His face went slack, but not too slack. I was careful not to push him too hard.

“Come closer,” I said. “Sit down next to me.” He did, and I leaned closer, to whisper in his ear.

“Did you know Holst and Takanawa would be in the hotel?” I asked. He whispered the answer in my ear.

“Yes.”

“What were you told?”

“Not to process them. To let them leave with the case, and then report that it was never at the site. To keep Wachalowski out of it.”

“Who told you that?” I asked. He paused.

“I don’t remember.”

“Why did you agree to go along with that?”

“I …don’t remember.”

He wasn’t lying. He couldn’t be, not to me.

“That’s all,” I said, and let him go. I folded the paper and stuffed it in my pocket. Vesco blinked and looked confused for a second before he got up and walked out without saying another word.

Jerk, I thought. The door closed behind him. I could sense his presence as he passed by the one-way mirror, and back out into the hall. His friend had already gone, but the other presence, the woman named Alice Hsieh, was still there. She was still standing near the glass, watching me. Her mind was still calm and curious.

Without looking back at the mirror, I focused on her. I was going to make her leave too, before I called the guard back in to take the suspect away. When I concentrated on her, though, and began to push, something gently pushed me back. Around the cool and curious glow of her consciousness, I saw a thin, white halo appear, so faint it was almost invisible.