8
A WINTER SPENT WITH CHEEK against stone. I kept insisting on my innocence into February. Every day, every aspect of my life was questioned, dissected, dissolved. Every day, I was doubted.
Do you know what that is like? To not be believed? To not be believed by the people who are your peers, your friends, your sole support, when your family has gone missing? To have your colleagues sure that you are capable of treason and murder?
You cannot build a crueler jail.
March came. Howell was gone; there was no more waterboarding. Four different interrogators asked the same questions and listened to my litany of innocence. One morning two thick-necked ex-Marines came in and held me down and slid a needle into my skin and part of me hoped: this is it, the forever dark, the end. Now they’re done with me.
I woke up back in America.
The television mounted in the corner played Comedy Central. I jerked around to look at the walls. No window. Just white walls, the hospital bed, a chair, the television with a standup comic roaming the stage, screaming into a microphone, making fun of newlywed guys for being lame and uncool. Restraints bound my arms to the bed. The room smelled of disinfectant and lavender air freshener. I was washed and clean, for the first time in weeks. Cold against my butt I felt a bedpan, and poking into my flesh I felt a catheter; in my arm was an IV drip.
I stayed very still but all I heard was the soft, dreamy hum of hospital equipment and air-conditioning. I didn’t call out for the nurse. I was clean and in a bed and not in a dank, forgotten cell and no one was kicking me.
The comedian on the TV bitched about his wife. He poked fun at the insane demands of his kids. I wanted to strangle him for his blind ingratitude. He didn’t know how lucky he was. Then I just closed my eyes and I slept again, clean and comfortable, on sheets instead of stone.
When I woke, my mouth tasted sour with sleep. Still bound. Bedpan and catheter. A nurse entered the room and inspected me. She didn’t let her eyes meet my gaze.
“Hello,” I said.
She didn’t answer.
“Where am I?” I croaked.
She still didn’t answer. She checked my vitals and made her notes and then she left. I tested the strength of the restraints. I wouldn’t be breaking loose… On the table now, pushed to the side, stood a green bottle of Boylan Bottleworks Ginger Ale, my all-time favorite soda. It’s made in New Jersey and you can’t get it everywhere. And a bottle of Heineken, although since I’d taken up parkour I didn’t drink very often. Both bottles glistened with beads of cold. Stacked next to it were books by my favorite authors. Pecan pralines, my favorite candy. A Hubig’s fried pie from New Orleans, a childhood treat from one of the few times when my folks lived in the States when I was a kid. A prickle of sweat formed on my back. This was some new torture.
Then a man stepped into my room. Broad-shouldered, dressed in a neat, bland gray suit, gray tie, blue shirt, his hair cut down to a burr, slices of gray in the goatee. Howell.
“Hello, Sam. How are you today? You’ve slept quite a bit, which is just what you need to get back on your feet.” His voice sounded kind, like he really cared how I was. Soft, quiet, and immediately I hated him again. The past months had taught me that I had no friends and no patience with those who pretended to be my friend.
He saw the fire in my eyes and for a moment he glanced away.
“Where am I?” I said.
“You’re in New York City. I will be your liaison.”
“You’re being released.” He flinched a smile at me.
I didn’t believe it. It must be a trick. I made myself breathe. “You found my wife?”
“No.”
“Then why…”
“Your innocence has been established.” Now Howell’s voice stiffened, and the words felt a shade rehearsed. “We regret the inconvenience.”
I could neither laugh nor howl at the four small words, their pitiful sentiment, their complete inadequacy to the hell I had endured. When I found my voice, it sounded cracked. “Established how?”
“It doesn’t matter, Sam. We know you’re innocent.”
I closed my eyes. “Then you’re lying to me. You must have found Lucy.”
“No,” he said. “I swear to you, we do not know where she is.”
The silence between us, broken by the comic’s rantings in the background. I reached for the remote and my fingers fumbled for a grip. Howell picked it up and turned off the television.
“I don’t believe you now.”
“This is no trick, Sam,” Howell said. “We know you’re innocent. Just be grateful for your freedom.”
Grateful. Freedom. The words sanded against each other in my brain. “You people tortured me. You held me prisoner, without a lawyer, without cause.”
“It didn’t happen, Sam.” Slowly, Howell unbuckled the straps binding my legs to the bed. He moved with caution, like he was removing the top of a basket holding a cobra. He looked up to catch my stare and swallowed, as though realizing he should not show fear. “You will be integrated back into civilian life, Sam. Think of me as a parole officer.”
“Innocent people aren’t on parole.”
“The Company asked me to serve in this role. I’m the only one who believed you, do you remember? I said I thought you were innocent. I was your only advocate, Sam.”
“You were a piss-poor one.”
Howell gave a long, low sigh and sat on the side of the bed. “I told the directors I thought you were telling the truth. Finally they believed me when…”
“When what?” I leaned forward.
“I can’t discuss it.”
“You owe me.”
“No, we don’t owe you a thing,” Howell said. “You were too blind to see what was in front of you.”
“You know Lucy is guilty? Tell me.” Oh, God, confirmation of the impossible, that my wife was a traitor.
“Do you want your freedom back, Sam?”
“Yes.”
“Then shut up. Swallow down every question and don’t ask me about Lucy.” He cleared his throat. “We need to talk about your immediate future, though.”
I sat up slowly. “My future is I’m going to find my wife. And my child.”
“You are not. She remains a national security matter. As do you. You will do as you’re told.”
And I would, until I did what I wanted. I could play the game. I swallowed my questions. “My parents—”
“Your parents think you want nothing to do with them, Sam. Let’s keep it that way.”
I was silent. This was my shame. Normal people had normal relations with their parents. Mine weren’t quite normal, at least where I was concerned.
“Of course your parents were thoroughly investigated. They are a bit… unconventional.”
“Stay away from them.”
“Oh, that would be a loss for me. I find them charming; we like to sit in the garden and drink tea. I’ve visited with them several times. Special Projects Branch at the Company bought the house next to theirs in New Orleans; I’m their manufacturing-representative neighbor who travels a great deal. We’ve had their house bugged for months, tapped their phones, watched them. Just in case their pregnant daughter-in-law contacted them or they attempted to make inquiries about you. But only silence. Since they didn’t hear from you at Christmas, they are a bit worried that the gulf between you cannot be bridged.” He shrugged. “Don’t take it hard. We sometimes don’t like the people we love.” He told me this like he was handing me a gift.
“My parents—just leave them alone.”
“Then do as I say and the surveillance, the investigation of them, will end.” He raised his hands, palms toward me. “I don’t want to involve your parents. They’re fine people, Sam.”
I was being bribed. Fine. I would protect my parents. “Deal.” I cleared my throat.
“It’s your lucky day. You were never technically fired. You are still under Company command. You have been assigned to my group. I am your boss.”
I wanted to say I resign, but: “Then let me help you look for her.”
Howell raised an eyebrow. “Do you really want your job with us, Sam?”
“Yes.” It was the first rational lie I’d told in months. I didn’t count any lies I had screamed during the waterboarding. Apparently none of my false information worked out for the Company.
“Then here are your orders. You stay put here in New York. There is an account at a bank that has been opened in your name, with a sizeable initial deposit. Enough to live on, although I suggest you find work. If only to keep your mind and hands occupied.”
“Work. But you said—”
“You remain on our payroll. But your clearances are gone, Sam. So find a job to keep you busy. One that requires no travel and is not demanding.”
“I can’t sit still. Not with my family in trouble.”
Howell rode right over that speed bump. “You want to help find Lucy? Then do what you’re told. Sit tight. Get a job. A simple one.”
“I’ve only ever worked for the Company. I started straight out of college.”
“You tended bar in college, though. Pour beers, mix martinis. The jobs are easy to find.” He shrugged. As though all my training, all my field experience in Company work meant nothing.
I steadied my voice. I was caught between rage and knowing that if I throttled Howell I’d be back in the cell. Slowly, unbound now, I got off the bed. Howell steadied me. I felt woozy from the drugs, from inactivity. “I cannot put this more plainly. I am going to find my wife. My child.”
“You are going to follow orders, or you will regret it, Mr. Capra.”
“You can’t keep me—”
“If you break parole you will be back in prison, facing charges ranging from money laundering to treason. Any proof of your innocence will be eliminated and you will be prosecuted.” It was a nasty bit of leverage. Anger colored his voice and I shut up so I could hear the deal.
The rest of my life hinged on what he offered.
“You hunker down, you don’t let yourself get bored, and you don’t go to the press, you don’t go to your friends in the Company—not that you have any left. Not everyone knows that your name has been cleared. You let us look for Lucy and you don’t get in our way.”
“So what am I now? Worthless?”
For the first time I saw in that horrible flinch in his eyes what I had never seen in the past months: pity. “How are you worth anything to us, Sam? You either knew she was a traitor, and did nothing, which makes you pure evil in the Company’s eyes; or you didn’t know she was a traitor. And that makes you a pure fool.”
I looked at him and then I looked at the spotless tile floor. We were back to his original question to me. After all my pain.
“You’ll recuperate here, gain your strength before we send you out into the world. You lost a bit too much weight,” Howell said. “Let’s go see what clothes we have to fit you. Then I’ll take you downstairs.” He got up and opened the cold beer for me. He handed me the icy bottle. “We’ve made all your favorites. Spicy corn soup, salad with blue cheese, roast beef with horseradish, mashed potatoes, asparagus, key lime pie, coffee. Doesn’t that dinner sound good?”
My mouth watered, to my shame. I hoped the food would taste like ashes. “It sounds like a last supper.”
Now Howell risked another very slight smile. “Just do as we ask.”
“And forgive the months you made me suffer?”
“Let’s all just pretend it didn’t happen.”
“It didn’t happen? God.”
They needed me out in the world. Why?
“There are clothes for you in the closet. I’ll ask the nurse to get you all disconnected, if you like, and I’ll let you get dressed.”
I started to pull off the medical sensor glued to my chest.
“I do have one question for you, Sam,” he said.
I left the sensors alone. “What?”
“Novem Soles.” He said the words so softly I wasn’t sure I heard.
“What?”
“Have you heard that term before?”
“Novem Soles? Sounds Latin. Novem is ‘nine,’ what is Soles?”
“Suns. Nine suns. Did Lucy ever use those words with you, ever mention them?”
This wasn’t a casual question. I stopped and I considered. He watched me. “No. What does it mean?” It sounded silly. But the Company gave computer-selected codes to every job, operation, or project, and this sounded like one of those code names. Nine suns? It meant nothing to me.
He studied me, and I wondered if the sensors on my chest were being monitored to see if I was lying. Howell smiled. “It means let’s go eat that good dinner.”
He went to the door and the nurse came in. She removed the catheter and the sensors and put the IV on a trolley. She helped me into a robe. I was weak and now starving, and I shuddered at the thought of accepting these bastards’ kindnesses. Food on a plate. Edible food, not the slop they’d given me. I’d eat it. I needed my strength.
I stood up from the bed. Howell offered a steadying arm and I shook it away. Fine, I would take their food and their clothes and their false solicitude and I would get back on my feet. But I had no illusions. I was not Howell’s friend, or someone that he wanted to help, who might ever get his life or his job back. His words it didn’t happen rankled in my ear.
They hadn’t found Lucy in these long months, or the man with the question-mark scar. So they still needed me. Howell and his superiors had found something called Novem Soles, whatever that was, and they thought putting me back out in the real world might lead them to it.
I knew the truth: I was bait. Bait for whoever set up me and Lucy.