“Where’s Novokoff?”
“How should I know?” said Charles, with an exaggerated shrug.
“He works for you.”
“You know yourself that Novokoff has been . . . erratic, of late.”
“He was infected by the fungus you had him steal,” said Morgan.
“So I understand,” said the American. “Although, as it was told to me, that was your fault.”
Morgan backhanded him across the face. “I’m not kidding around here. Where’s Novokoff?”
“You know, the fungus seems to be affecting his brain quite a bit,” the man continued, oblivious to the question. “He has sunk to depths of cruelty that even I would not have imagined. I mean, what he tried to do to your poor sweet Jen—”
Morgan grabbed him by the throat and began to squeeze him hard enough that he might have rendered Charles unconscious. Then he released the hold. Charles showed no emotion.
“I’ll rip your head off if you say her name again.”
“Not an ineffective threat, I must say,” said Charles, spitting blood.
“Maybe you should be working harder to get on my good side.”
“What do you suppose is going to happen here?” asked Charles.
“You’re going to tell me what I want to know, or you will feel pain that you can’t imagine.”
The American laughed airily. “Sadly, no. Let me tell you how it will happen. You will not be allowed to keep me here. They are going to tell you that they have their own facilities, their own interrogators. They are going to take me away and you will never see me again. You may believe them when they tell you that they extracted whatever information it was possible to extract, and then disposed of me. But they will never prove it to you. They don’t care. And you will always have that twinge of doubt. What if they let me go?”
“Why the hell would they let you go?” asked Morgan.
“Because, Mr. Morgan. I have friends in places so high you cannot even see them.”
“Why don’t you tell me about them?” said Morgan.
“Oh please, you don’t actually expect me to—” Morgan punched him in the gut before he could finish. Edmund Charles retched.
“No,” said Morgan. “I mostly just wanted to distract you before I did that.”
“Very droll,” said Charles. “But I do have one more thing I have to offer you. An offer you may not want to reject.”
“What is it?” asked Morgan.
“I can tell you who you’re working for. I can tell you what Aegis is. I can see I caught your attention. You’ve been wondering about that, haven’t you, Morgan? Tell me, does it keep you up at night? I can take all that doubt away. Let me go, Morgan, and I’ll tell you what Aegis is.”
If anything did keep him up at night, it was this. Who was he working for? Whose interests was he serving? And here he was, someone willing to tell him. To give him all the answers.
“You don’t know anything.”
“No, Morgan. You don’t know anything. You play your little spy games as if you had some choice about the future, about what happened and how things turned out. Newsflash. You’re just a pawn. An expendable piece on the frontline. And behind your actions aren’t kings. They are players. And until you realize that, you’ll never be a player yourself. You’re going to continue to be played until someone decides that you’re a reasonable sacrifice to make to save a truly important piece.”
Morgan backhanded Charles across the face again.
“You’ve got nothing,” Morgan said. “Nothing but bullshit.”
Morgan heard a car pulling up outside, the wheels crunching the gravel and coming to a stop.
“Oh?” said Charles expectantly. “What’s that I hear? I do believe it’s the chariot that’s going to take me out of here.”
Morgan pulled out his gun and held it against Charles’s head, his hand trembling with rage. Charles laughed.
“What are you going to do, Cobra? Kill me?”
“It would certainly put an end to all this,” said Morgan.
“Will it now? Novokoff’s still out there.”
The front door opened with a long creak and Diana Bloch and Mr. Smith walked into the room.
“What exactly are you doing, Morgan?” demanded Bloch.
“Interrogating the prisoner,” he said.
“You were not to do anything before we arrived,” said Bloch.
“Oh, don’t worry, Mr. Morgan has been treating me very well,” Charles said blithely. “He’s been introducing me to the back of his hand. I can say that we’re pretty well acquainted by now.”
“Let’s get him back to Zeta,” said Bloch. “Morgan, would you escort him to the car?”