Allender went back to Battle’s office where Melanie was waiting. “Mister Battle’s gone to wrap up the surgical team,” she said. “And get Rebecca—or I guess it’s Mei Ling—to a detention cell.”
“Have we heard from Wallace?”
“Yes, sir, we have. His people have asked us to call a certain number when we have a result.”
“Okay,” Allender said. “Call that number, and tell whomever answers that I want a videoconference with Henry Wallace.”
While Melanie was making the call, Allender went over to a small bookcase in one corner of Battle’s office, pressed the spine of the Holy Bible. Two doors opened to reveal a well-stocked liquor cabinet. He poured himself a small Scotch and then sat down at Battle’s desk. He’d come to the realization while riding the elevator up that this one had been a close-run thing. If Mei Ling had been Japanese she never would have broken, and some of the Chinese operatives he’d worked were that strong, too. The first surgery would have been a fake, of course, but if she’d kept on, he’d have had to tell Chen to actually take a kidney, and, if necessary, the other one. Shit, he thought. I’m getting soft in my old age. Chen, on the other hand, was probably frustrated.
“Sir?” Melanie called from across the room. “Their operator says they don’t have video capability at their current location.”
“Then tell them to get some,” Allender said. “I’m not speaking to Wallace until I can both hear him and see him.”
Wallace himself called back five minutes later. “O ye of little faith,” he began. “Don’t you recognize my voice? I’m told it’s unique back at Langley.”
“And so it is, Mister Wallace,” Allender said. “But since I can’t be sure where you are, I want a little more proof that you are who you’re supposed to be.”
“We’re on a secure Agency voice link right now, are we not?”
“You, me, and who else? Carson perhaps?”
There was a silence on the line for a few seconds. “Okay,” Wallace sighed. “I’ll have to move. Stay right there.”
Battle came back about then, saw Allender sitting at his desk, and asked what was up. Allender told him to get a videoconferencing terminal set up in his conference room.
It took an hour, during which Allender wrote out what had transpired in the interrogation suite and what he’d actually achieved. Obviously Wallace wouldn’t have had Rebecca Lansing picked up if he didn’t already suspect her, but Allender still could not figure out what the game was here.
The phone in the conference room rang, and then the flat wall screen at the end of the table lit up, revealing Henry Wallace in all his annoyed glory. Melanie and Battle took seats alongside Allender.
“Okay,” he began. “Satisfied? And, no, there’s no gun in my back.” He reached a hand up to the camera on his end and swung it around the room, which appeared to be a large conference room. As best Allender could tell, there was no one else in the room with Wallace. “What did you find out?”
“That she is MSS, probably one of their Section 70, dragon-seed creatures. She told me that Carson McGill plans to kill you. And me, apparently.”
“Does she know what he’s up to?”
“She says she does not,” Allender said. “Do you?”
“I have my suspicions,” Wallace said. “But we need to smoke McGill out somehow. I’m hoping that when Greer unloads, that will do it.”
“She hasn’t gone public yet?”
“No, and that’s another little mystery. Perhaps McGill’s made her an offer she can’t refuse.”
“My sense of Chairwoman Greer is that she is not easily intimidated,” Allender said. “Quite the opposite—I think that would make it worse.”
“May not be intimidation,” Wallace said. “Remember, she’s a congressperson. Refresh my memory: Tell me how you got into this goat-grab in the first place?”
“It started with McGill telling me that you had been found dead of unknown causes at your home. He was supposedly keeping that news close-hold, but he told Hingham, who informed Greer. She, of course, didn’t trust Langley to do anything but cover it all up, so she got the Bureau into it. McGill said he wanted me to ‘assist’ as a senior liaison officer between the DDO and the Bureau’s team.”
“‘Assist’? As in lead them astray at every inconspicuous opportunity?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, now walk me through the rest of it, by which I mean your involvement.”
Allender did, ending with what Mei Ling had said.
“How dramatic,” Wallace said with an expression that said he thought it was bullshit.
“What do we do with her?” Allender asked.
“Eventually, we’ll hand her over to the Chinese embassy and formally thank them for her services to the Central Intelligence Agency and the FBI. Tell them that she’s been extremely helpful, but that she probably needs a little vacation back in China just now.”
“What will they do to her?”
“Same thing we’d do: Either give her a medal for her efforts, or, if they think she was turned, close her out. I could give her one last chance to expose her own network in return for the same thing we did for Ms. Sloan, there, but, the moment she was taken, I have to assume that network rolled itself up. Keep her there for now.”
“All right; I’ll have Deacon set that up.”
“In the meantime, you and Ms. Sloan go back to your town house and await further instructions. I’ll have people in place to make sure no more Kung Fu Pandas come calling. I think I know what Carson’s up to, and it involves his endless pursuit of the top slot at Langley.”
“Except for one open question, Mister Wallace,” Allender said.
“What’s that?” Wallace asked, sounding impatient now.
“He had an MSS operative working for him. That can mean one of two things: He knew she was a double, and it pleased him to make her expendable. The second alternative is too awful to contemplate.”
Wallace just stared at him for a long moment. “There are days, Doctor Allender,” he said, finally, “when you scare even me. Don’t leave for Washington until your escort arrives. Once you get there, stay put. I may have one last job for you.”
“I’m a retired interrogator, Mister Wallace,” Allender said. “Not an operator.”
“That’s what you think, sport,” Wallace said with a wolfish grin.
The screen went dark.
One last job, Allender thought. As in, Why don’t you become the goat that gets staked out in the jungle to draw in the tiger. He looked over at Melanie and saw from the expression on her face that she was thinking the same thing.
* * *
Eight o’clock found them in the tower study trying to figure out what would happen next. A Secret Service SUV was parked out front and there were two agents standing out on the sidewalk in front of the house. Allender had seen another vehicle in the alley and two more agents patrolling back there plus a third in the backyard itself. They’d had to cool their heels in the Dungeons for two hours while Wallace got everything set up in Washington. The drive up from Williamsburg had been uneventful, with only a single pit stop for a bathroom break and a greaseburger.
“Uncle Hank must be expecting a full frontal assault of some kind,” Allender said, peering through the front curtains one more time.
“Do we really know who those people are out there?” Melanie asked. “They could be there to keep us in, not someone else out.”
Allender sat back down, took off his protective glasses, rubbed his tired eyes, and looked longingly at the Scotch decanter but decided against it. He’d been turning to a wee dram a bit too often these days. “If that were the case,” he said, stifling a yawn, “it would have been easier just to keep us on the Farm. I’ve set you up in the guest room, by the way.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I’m more than ready.”
“Yeah, me, too. It’s been a long day. An interrogation like that one is always stressful.”
“As in, this will hurt me more than it will you…?”
“Something like that,” he said, distractedly. “Once the sensory illusions have worked their magic, the subjects often get pretty loud.”
“You mean screaming?”
“Up here,” he said, tapping his forehead.
“You can actually hear what they’re thinking?”
“It’s complicated,” he said. “It’s a mixture of hearing, feeling, and subconscious sensing. And mental pressure, just for grins.”
“A blessing or a curse, I wonder,” she said.
“Just like these,” he said with a tired smile, pointing now at his amber eyes. “My classmates in Taipei were apprehensive around me. If I’d been in an American school, I would have been the school freak.”
She tilted her head to one side. “And that’s why you keep your distance from women, isn’t it,” she said.
“Women are dangerous,” he replied. “Let them get close, and they destroy the dragon-eyes mystique. Can’t have that.”
“Let women get close, they can do a lot more than that, Sir Dragon Eyes.”
He shook his head. “I’m going up,” he sighed.
“Chicken,” she said to his back as he went upstairs. He clucked back at her, but smiled as he did. And kept going.
His bedroom, fully restored, took up one entire side of the house, including a part of the tower, which had been made into a sitting alcove. He took one last look out the front windows at the security cordon. Secret Service, he thought. How the hell did the Secret Service get into this mess? Then he remembered where Hank had come from before the CIA.
He got the Judge out of its hole, checked the loads, and put it on the bed beside him. He thought about getting a quick shower, but decided to turn out the lights and then lie down on the bed, still dressed, for just a moment or so. He hadn’t been exaggerating about the mental pressure of the Extrusion Room. Maybe a little in the case of Mei Ling, because once he’d realized he couldn’t read her—that she was blocking—he knew she was what she was. After that, all he had to do was raise the physical threat to the point where she folded or became a whole-body organ donor, but he could distinctly remember a couple of subjects whose mental strength had actually caused him pain.
And now here was Melanie Sloan beginning to circle him, Melanie of the new face but the same banked-coals sexuality. He tried to recall what she’d looked like when he’d forced her to stand naked in front of his desk. He couldn’t quite do it, which, in itself, told him something about himself, that the man in him wanted the chance to paint that picture in his own imagination. Why? Because he wanted her. He opened his eyes at that thought. Was it possible she wanted him as well? If so, she’d be the first woman who’d managed to get past his scary eyes and semi-electric head. What had she said—she liked to ride the edge once in a while. Then he laughed at his capacity for self-delusion and drifted off to sleep.