Fire with Fire(44)

Caine shook his head. “This whole scheme of yours is nuts, you know. I’ve only written about the military and intelligence work—and now you think you can teach me to be a field operative in just a few weeks?”

Downing made sure his nod was relaxed. “We’re simply asking you to collect information, just as if you were researching another book. And don’t think of me as a teacher; think of me as your mentor.”

“Mentor, huh? And that makes me who? Odysseus?”

Downing smiled at the Homeric pun. “If you like.” He leaned back. “We need a code name for you, anyway. Would ‘Odysseus’ suit you?”

Caine shrugged. “Sure: I’m ‘Odysseus.’”

Nolan’s voice startled Downing out of the recollection. “Anything else on Riordan?”

“Just this footnote from the psychologists: this time, his recovery may also be complicated by feelings of guilt.”

Nolan frowned, turned his face back toward the darkening windows. “How so?”

“Over the loss of the Tyne.”

“Has he said anything about feeling guilty?”

“No, but he does seem a bit distracted . . .”

ODYSSEUS

Caine took another sip of water to rinse out the faint fish-and-glycol aftertaste that followed reanimation. It was no good: the foreign tastes and smells kept seeping out of him, making Caine feel alien in his own skin.

Downing laid his dataslate down on the black wire-frame table. “I think that’s enough for today. You’re doing very well.”

What a lovely lie. “Great. So when do I get to ask a few questions?”

Downing shrugged. “You may do so now, if you wish.”

“When am I going to get my short-term memories back?”

“So far as I can tell, your short-term memories from the Tyne are quite complete. In fact—”

“Cut the bullshit: you know what I mean, Richard. I’m talking about the memories from fourteen years ago, on Luna: when am I going to get those one hundred hours back?”

“Difficult to say. The loss may be permanent. The doctors speculate it was the duration of your suspension. Some speculate that the particulars of your deanimation may have played a role, also.”

“What do you mean, ‘the particulars’?”

“In 2105, the Taiwanese were still using a pre-toxification system.”

“You mean where they almost kill you with poisons before they begin the cryo-suspension?”

“Yes.”

“So the toxins retroactively scrambled more of my memories than our slow-freeze method?”

“That’s one hypothesis. Problem is, there simply aren’t any precedent cases: no one has spent thirteen years in suspension after starting with the pre-toxification method.”

“I’d have been happy to skip the honor of being the first. And while we’re on the topic of oversleeping, why the hell didn’t you revive me as soon as you retrieved my lifepod from Junction last December?”

“An unacceptable risk. You had to remain ‘lost, presumed dead’ until we conducted a full debriefing and arranged for a summit at Parthenon. And until that meeting is over, we can’t let you go out on your own. But after that, you’re a free man. And you will have your career back. Better than ever.”

“Yes, but you’ll still have me under your thumb. Because when I agreed to carry out your mission, I became complicit in your schemes. So I can’t indict IRIS without also indicting myself.”

“Well—yes.”

Caine resisted an urge to retch: whether at the returning fish-and-glycol taste or at IRIS’s partial ownership of him, he wasn’t sure. “So my job is to stay alive long enough to speak at the summit.”

“That’s it.”

“Well, if I can’t be allowed out into the world, then I want a little of the world piped in here. You’ve got me cooped up in a room without a window, without a phone, without net access, without hard-copy newspapers.”

Downing nodded back. “Fair enough. I’ll need until morning to arrange your net access. Acceptable?”

But things were not acceptable. Someone was in the room with them. The figure hadn’t suddenly materialized; it was just standing patiently, as though it had been there all along, waiting to be noticed. Caine pushed away from it, back into his chair. His brow was suddenly wet, cold. The figure remained in the shadows, unmoving.

Downing looked up, one eyebrow raised. “Something wrong?”

Caine swallowed to make sure that his voice did not crack when he spoke. “Who’s that behind you?”

Downing turned, gestured into the shadows. “That? Why, that’s Digger Mack.”