She felt T move closer and a hand touching her forehead. “Well, no fever, so you’re lucid. What brought that on?”
Helen turned over on her back. She could barely stay awake now. She wondered whether Jed was asleep already. She wondered what it would feel like to curl up next to him, both of them sleeping soundly.
“I want to be at the meeting so I can ask Jed about Stratter’s,” she told T. “What is that place? And who are those people?”
“Okay, you’re definitely no longer making sense to me. Sleep. I’ll take care of everything. I’ll make sure you’re wide awake for the meeting.”
That was all the reassurance Helen needed to hear. She’d intrigued T enough to make sure her operations chief get her there. She drifted off.
“FIVE-ONE, CAN YOU HEARme? If you can’t continue, let me know. We’ll let you rest up, but you have to be honest with me. Can you continue? Our mission is very important and we need all the help we can get.”
The soft persuasion in his monitor’s voice didn’t reassure him. Liar. At least his partner was more honest about their intentions. He understood the veiled threats, even though they weren’t addressed to him.
“Why don’t you just tell him that if he fucks up one more time, we’ll just let his ass rot in a windowless cell instead of here? I don’t even know why you’re so damn nice to him. You weren’t so friendly with the last one we had.”
“This one has more potential. He’s gone further than the others and could have even beaten COMCEN’s remote viewer if not for the physical exercises. Have you checked his file?”
“Not interested. I care only to get our operation done.”
“Then you’d better look after our boy here, don’t you think? Unless you want to go look at the others we have and hope we find another who’s not so into the serum that he’d be lost within a day or two.”
“Fuck. I don’t trust him.”
“I’m sure he doesn’t trust us either, but we have what he wants and he can give us what we want. And you will, won’t you, Five-One?You know it’s important we get to the weapons before they do. The more successful we are, the more of the juice for you. Right? Nod if you understand me, please.”
He nodded. His monitor, bastard that he was, understood how to get his attention. From listening to their conversation, all the other remote viewers they had tried were all hooked on the high that came with the drug. He was too, in a way, but it was different for him. He wasn’t hooked like a junkie; he just wanted to seek out those secret sexual details from the people he encountered. They looked so damn prim and proper, but what walking storages of sexual energy they were indeed. Whatever happened just now was an anomaly. COMCEN was a fucking weird place, anyway. It didn’t feel “natural” to him, not like when he was remote viewing other locations. He remembered how difficult it was for him to focus, as if there was some kind of other energy interrupting his concentration. And then there was that bitch who was enjoying his collection of energy, and making more for herself. There had to be a way to get it back.
If he just stayed strong, just kept in control, the serum would give him what he needed. These CIA handlers mustn’t know what he could do, or they would use it against him. They forgot he was a smart man, and like them, trained in covert activities too. An asset, that was what he was. That was what he needed to remain. To stay an asset, he needed to give them something back.
He nodded again. “All I know is I didn’t go to Macedonia. It had to be COMCEN and that place had certain blockers. I don’t know what they are but they make it hard for remote viewers to stay long there.” He swallowed, trying to stop his body’s shivering. “While I was there, I did record that they weren’t planning on retrieving any more weapons.”
“That’s impossible. They’ve been making a list of all the weapons that have gone missing all these years. I know they’re going to be looking for the bomb trigger next. It’s the next logical part after their success in retrieving the decoder at Munich.”
Jonah finally opened his eyes. Were they actually having a conversation with him? Usually, the insults came first before they started questioning his findings. For once, the fat one stood there without a sneer on his face. Should he show them that he was, at least, able to understand what they were trying to accomplish? Better not.
He cleared his throat. “These weapons are on a list, you said. I think I recorded a list but they don’t know where they are either. Remote viewing for locations takes time. The last mission was a lucky one because they had the Deutsche Internationale logo on everything at that place. If, let’s say, the next bomb device you’re talking about is in Macedonia, and they don’t know it, it’ll take them a lot longer becauseI know that region speaks a mixture of Serbian and Croatian, so to pinpoint the exact location would really take a lot of sleuthing.” He gestured to the globe in the middle of the room. “If you know where it is, we’re ahead of the game already. All you need is to tell me and I’ll verify the location.”
“We want to know for sure who has it,” his handler said, handing him a glass of water. “Our head contact knows it was dropped off in a CIA crate not long ago in KLA territory and that’s controlled by Dragan Dilaver. What we need for you to verify is whether the trigger is in his possession yet. Our sources told us Dragan has been out of the country, so we’re worried he’s already sold the device, which would complicate things.”
Time to show that he knew a thing or two. “From my little time in decoding, I know the CIA has an off-record relationship with Dilaver, that is, we won’t touch his drug activities if he takes care of certain business for us. So why can’t you guys just give him a call? Ask him whether he has the device?”
Jonah noted the way his two handlers exchanged glances. That told him a lot. The CIA’s inside contact to Dilaver must not be with the CIA anymore. Or maybe Dilaver had changed sides and that was why they needed to retrieve this bomb trigger. Or maybe they were no longer friends with Dilaver. One could never tell with the CIA agenda. One minute they were on one side, and the next, they were playing on the other. Political ping-pong, the intricacies of CIA games. He knew, from the start, if he were to go up the CIA ladder, he was to do his assignments without too many questions. But that didn’t stop him from conjecturing.
It excited him that he was actually in the middle of a CIA mission. Most of the time, his work had been mainly at the tail end, working in the dark rooms, decoding stupid data. Signing up for the top-secret experiment had been his one shot to move up. Remote-viewing experiment? Sure, bring it on. And through that, he’d discovered his new unique talent, the special ability that these goons didn’t have. If only he’d won that damn competition, taken out all those other test agents, he’d be living the high life right now. Like that bitch. The thought brought back sensations he didn’t want to recall right now. The ear-splitting white noise. That sense of overwhelming pain. He shuddered. He didn’t want to go back to COMCEN if he could help it.
He took in a deep breath and released it slowly. What he wouldn’t give for a cigarette right now. “I need some downtime,” he said.Give them something so they’d think he was an asset.“Look, I already found out those people aren’t in Macedonia. I can do this. My brain isn’t fried because I know my limits. The juice helps me to withstand thestress after remote viewing, but something happened back there. That place has something—I can’t explain it—that seems to affect me.”
His monitor nodded thoughtfully. “That might explain the other two viewers we had who couldn’t breach their security.” He turned to his partner. “The Russians used a similar system. We’ll just have to add that to our report.”
“That might get us off his shit list for losing the decoder in the last job,” the other man grumbled. “He wouldn’t be surprised that COMCEN has some Russian secrets, though.”
Who was this “he” they were referring to? Jonah lay back in the bed. He was feeling nauseous again. Every time he thought of COMCEN, that pain shocked his psyche like a live current. So much pain. Why did he feel as if the weight of the world was on him? He hadn’t done anything wrong.
“Take a break, Five-One. We have to get this particular weapon ASAP. We’ll be back in a few hours. Do you think that’s enough time?”
“Nothing another dose won’t cure,” Jonah told them quietly.
He winced as he tried to relax. This pain made him want to cry as if he’d lost something very important. It disturbed him. He couldn’t figure out why he was feeling like this. All he did was open all his channels to retrieve what that bitch had stolen from him. But doing that had done something else instead—he’d absorbed something that made him feel so awful, so dirty inside.
