Termination Orders(71)

She didn’t hold back her laughter. Morgan knew that she was in control, and so did she.

“Why don’t we get started, then?” she said.

“Please, go ahead,” he said, nonchalantly. “Here, I was starting to think you had decided to bore me into talking—”

The back of her hand hit him across the face before he saw it coming, stinging his cheek. The impact made his head and his injured nose ring with pain.

“Where is the memory card?” she demanded. He stared ahead. She hit him harder.

“Who else knows?” Another smack jangled his senses, followed by another and another.

He touched his tongue to where his teeth had cut into his stinging cheek and tasted blood. He looked into her eyes and gave her a mocking, red-toothed smile to mask his anger. He wasn’t going to give her any satisfaction. “You hit like a girl.”

“You really think you can annoy your way out of this situation?”

He shrugged. “Worked once in Nicaragua.”

T laughed uproariously. “You amuse me, Cobra, even now. You really haven’t changed. Still the same posturing fool you were before. Tell me, do you still believe that all you did was justified by a noble cause? Do you still believe you are an honorable man?”

“I don’t believe it, T,” he said, with a serious tone in his voice. “I know it.”

“Ah, so certain, so pure,” she said sarcastically. “A killer with a pristine soul.”

“I know I’m not like you,” he said. “I’m not a mercenary. I’m not a traitor.” This last word had a sharp edge to it. It was meant to cut deep.

She laughed again, this time bitterly. “You are exactly like me in every way except that you will not admit it. Instead, you play house with your wife and daughter. You pretend to be a normal person in your suburban home with your white picket fence and your dog and two-point-five automobiles. But you know what you are inside. You’re a killer. A willing puppet of the CIA, an agency you knew was corrupt and decadent and weak. An executioner who dresses your murderous instinct in the ideals of nationalism. But beneath it all, Cobra, you’re a killer and nothing more.”

“Believe what you like,” he said. “I know what I know.”

“Do you want to know something else?” she continued. “I was like you once. A believer. Do you think I defected to America because I found it convenient, or because the CIA offered me more money or a more comfortable life? You know different. I didn’t care for those things. It hurt me deeply to leave my homeland. But I had grown to abhor the history of my country, and the crimes that persisted even after the Soviet union   fell. All the while I grew to believe in American ideals. In freedom. I truly wanted to be an American. I was willing to risk my life for it, and to continue to risk my life in the service of the country I chose.

“And then,” she continued, her voice rising to a fever pitch, “I found out you murdered my brother. What hypocrites—this government, the Agency, and you, with your own double standard. You, Cobra, who’s supposedly so full of honor, so loyal! But I finally found out the truth. There is no honor, no higher calling or true cause. Only petty men lusting for power and money. The truth, the truth that you know deep down inside, Cobra, is that the lying scumbags are right. Power is the only currency of the world. It is the only thing that matters in the end. I know you know this, because I learned it from you.”

“That’s a pretty neat story . . . very deep stuff,” he said acerbically. “Except it’s all bullshit.”

“Liar!” she cried, suddenly livid. “Is it bullshit that my brother is dead? Is it bullshit that you killed him, murdered him in Prague when you were supposed to help him escape—when his survival was the only condition, the only thing I asked for in return for my defection? No! The bullshit, the lie, is what was fed to me after that, told to me by the people I had trusted, by the very government that I had sworn my allegiance to at great personal peril. You told me Andrei was killed by Russian Intelligence in Prague, isn’t that right? Isn’t that the official story? Isn’t that what was told to me to cover up the fact that you killed him?”

He sighed, looking down. “You weren’t supposed to know.”

“So do you admit it, then? From your own lips? You admit you killed Andrei?”

“Yes, Natasha,” he said, looking her in the eye and keeping a steady voice. “I killed your brother. I don’t deny it. But I did not betray you; he did. He was giving you up to his superiors. It was going to be a big feather in his cap—an agent so loyal, he turned in his own sister.”