CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
May 23rd
In many ways I was glad to take the deputy directors job. Taking it from Peterson was certainly a bonus, given that he may well have set in place the train of events that lead me to that American alleyway. Of course it was ultimately the CIA who were responsible, but there was no rule saying I couldn't bear an equal grudge against my predecessor.
Barbara was certainly a lot happier, and I wouldn't do anything to spoil that. I now had more regular hours, a pay increase, better pension, and I no longer had to work weekends or travel very much.
That was all well and good, and I suppose I was the obvious choice to fill the vacancy having joined T14 on day one. Nevertheless, I was still suspicious. Given the stakes involved in our new mission to protect the tech industry and economy from CIA sabotage, it seemed odd to me that Bill didn't want me on board. Surely my enhanced capabilities could be put to vital use in that arena? Yet here I was largely stuck behind a desk. Okay, I was coordinating our traditional domestic terrorism operations, but still it didn't make sense to me.
Maybe I was just being paranoid but I had the distinct impression that there was something important that everybody was keeping from me. What that might be, or how I could find out, I as yet had no idea.
I wasn't completely out of the loop, however, as I discovered when the director walked into my office.
"Arthur, I have some good news, in a manner of speaking."
He filled me in on the details of the operation in the woods.
"He's not saying much but he's clearly CIA We traced the hire car, booked out on an American passport. I thought you might like to sit in on the interrogation."
I tried not to look too happy about it.
"If this man knows anything about how and why they sabotaged you, your presence may unnerve him and make him slip up. So give me a few minutes and then walk in unannounced."
We walked down together to the interrogation block.
"Do you recognise him?" asked White, pointing at a monitor in the next room.
"No."
"Okay, in your own time, Arthur."
As he left, I pondered my recent thoughts.
Was I being paranoid? He certainly could have kept me out of this, but he hadn't. Strictly speaking it wasn't procedure to allow me in on an investigation in which I had such a strong personal bias; nevertheless, Bill was. Surely if there was one person in the world I trusted, beyond Barbara, it was Bill White?
I decided to put these doubts away for now and concentrate on what was before me - potentially, one of the men responsible for trying to ruin my marriage and my life.
I watched for a few minutes as he said very little. He wasn't cocky or confident, just following his training. He was obviously the junior of the trio, probably little more than a driver. Nevertheless, he was CIA so he may well know something about what happened to me - anything would be better than the big fat nothing we currently knew.
I entered without knocking. As he looked up at me he tried very hard not to react but he had clearly at least seen a photo of me. I smiled at him.
"Hello, have we met? I'm afraid I can't remember because somebody scrambled my brain."
He looked unnerved but remained silent.
"You know," said White, "you have no jurisdiction in this country. You are violating all sorts of treaties by even being here, certainly by bringing an arsenal with you. We are entitled to hold you indefinitely under counter-terrorism legislation. Officially, you are not here. We could always take you back to the woods."
He opened a folder and pushed a selection of photos towards the man. They showed the bodies of his two colleagues in the back of the van. He paled visibly and twitched slightly.
"Now," said White, "there are two options. One, you cooperate, tell us your name and everything about your operation and we put you on a plane back home. Two, you fail to cooperate and either spend your life in a British prison or we take you back to the woods and dump your body there as a warning to the CIA not to fuck with us. Which is it to be?"
The man still seemed to be actually hesitating, as if deciding which option to go for.
"I haven't got all day," emphasised White, taking out his handgun and checking the clip. I knew he wouldn't actually shoot the guy on the premises, but our director could be genuinely terrifying when the mood took him.
"Okay, okay, I'll talk," the man said hurriedly.
White put his gun away and reached for his laptop.
"Name?"
"Arnold Jefferson."
"Employer?"
"CIA."
"And your purpose for being in our country?"
"To evaluate your progress in computerised brain implants."
"And then?"
"To... infiltrate your establishments and either sabotage your research or take it for ourselves."
"I assume your president doesn't know about this operation?"
"Of course not."
"So legally you don't have a leg to stand on. And this man here?" he said, pointing to me. "What do you know about him?"
"He has a computer chip in his brain but we don't know exactly what it does. I've only ever seen photos of him, I had nothing to do with the attack on him."
"Who carried out that attack?" said White, his eyes not leaving the laptop.
"The two who were with me, and two other agents."
"Where are the other two agents now?"
"I can't tell you that."
"Can't or won't?"
"I don't know exactly where they are."
"But they are still in this country?"
He hesitated and White looked up.
"You're still nowhere near that plane ticket home, Arnold, I need a lot more than this from you. I need to know exactly what you did to my agent, how and why."
"I don't know the technical details, I swear," he said.
That was almost certainly true, he was clearly no Einstein.
"We wanted to see if we could programme his computer chip and turn him into a double agent."
White looked up at me.
"Looks like you had a lucky escape, they clearly know very little about your implant. The rumours about their tech being way behind ours must be true." He turned back to Arnold. "Okay, I'm more or less satisfied with your answers so far. We'll take a break now, but I need more, understand?"
He nodded gratefully.
White and I left the room and walked back towards my office.
"You've got plenty to be getting on with. I'll give him half an hour to think and then have another go at him."
"He won't be getting on a plane, will he?" I asked.
"Of course not, but I'm gambling on the supposition that he's too stupid to realise that."
I returned to my office thinking that I had almost certainly done Bill a disservice. He could easily have interrogated that agent without my knowing.
I had to admit that the whole brainwashing incident was still affecting me. The only way I could see to ever get back to normal was to find the person who had engineered my meeting with Joyce and have a little one to one violence with him.
White manoeuvred Arthur out of earshot and returned to the interrogation room and dismissed the other agents. He made sure all the recording equipment was turned off.
"My final question is this: I repeat, how many CIA agents are currently in this country."
He hesitated: this was clearly the one piece of information he did not want to divulge.
White looked him in the eye.
"I could have you buried in the woods within the hour. If you put me in an especially bad mood, I might not even bother to kill you first."
"I don't know the exact number, I'm pretty low down in the pecking order, honestly."
White believed the poor wretch. "A round figure will do."
"About fifty."