The Book of Truths

Chapter 6

The scientist held the case containing the hypodermic needle with the same care believers would hold a chalice containing the blood of their Lord. Of course, it was all an act, setting the stage for the big “reveal.” He waited with the impatience of knowledge watching ignorance in action as the contractor poured water into the towel draped over the detainee’s face.

Enhanced interrogation.

The CIA contract thugs had no idea what enhanced was.

The scientist knew they’d been doing this to the subject for six years. What was another few minutes to them? Cavemen. That was what they were. The two doing the work were not government, because even though various judges and the Department of Justice had tacitly, and not so tacitly, approved enhanced interrogation, no one with a federal pension wanted to get their hands dirty. So much easier to pay the contract muscle to do the grunt work.

In fact, the two doing the work weren’t even American. They muttered in low voices to each other as they worked, something that sounded Eastern European. They wore black balaclavas to hide their faces.

The detainee gagged and spit as the wet towel was pulled off his face, retching, nothing more than tainted water coming up as he’d long since emptied his stomach of anything of substance. He had not done the same with information. Not during the six years he’d been held in Guantanamo. And not now.

He wasn’t in Cuba anymore. He was in a strip mall in Springfield, Virginia. In a room with two merks, two scientists, and one soldier. It had once been a lingerie shop, but the front glass was presently covered with sheeting that looked like plywood to the outside — another small business victim of the economy — hiding metal plating covered with thick soundproofing on the inside. All the walls were lined with the same material, except one, which had a twelve-foot-long plate of dark glass from floor to ceiling. On the other side of that glass were twenty-four chairs, stadium seating, to view the room. The viewing room had once housed an adult bookstore.

The scientist looked at Colonel Johnston and raised an eyebrow.

Colonel Sidney Albert Johnston was a distant relative by blood and the years between, but he was close in spirit to the general of the same name who took a bullet behind the knee at the Battle of Shiloh and bled to death because he’d sent his surgeon to care for some “damn Yankee” wounded prisoners. Johnston glanced at the pane of dark glass. According to the memorandum, on the other side were staffers for the congressmen and senators on the committees who voted money to who the hell knew what or wanted to know; high-level Pentagon aides who would go back and brief their bosses; and some suits from the alphabet soups: CIA, NSA, FBI, NRO, and a few that had no initials because they thought they were even cooler that way. They all wanted to be one pane of glass removed from the indictment that might come someday if the bureaucrats and politicians suddenly grew a conscience and remembered America was founded on principles that didn’t include torture. Not likely in Johnston’s opinion or experience with bureaucrats and politicians.

Colonel Johnston raised a hand and the two merks stopped, one with the towel hovering over the detainee’s face, the other with a bucket in hand.

“It’s Doctor Upton’s turn.”

Johnston had a rough, gravelly voice that went with his imposing stature. Every inch of him emanated warrior, and his leathery face was lined with the creases of worry a good commander bore from years of leading men into battle. He had a square jaw and his hair was gray barbed wire, trimmed short every week. With a wave of the same hand, Johnston invited the scientist and his assistant to the prisoner, as if allowing them to enter the foyer of a grand mansion.

Upton turned to the black glass. “I am the head of Project Cherry Tree. This”—he held up the syringe case—“is the result of five difficult years of research and development.” His first lie, but the truth would not serve here. Upton nodded over his shoulder at the detainee. “Which is less time consumed by the other methods used on that man, and he has not once ever given up any useful information. He has been waterboarded”—Upton paused—“what is it, Colonel? One hundred and sixty or so times?”

Colonel Johnston’s jaw remained square. “One hundred and eighty-seven.”

“I stand corrected. One hundred and eighty-seven times. And never said a word. Truly remarkable.” Upton turned from the glass and walked over to a small table. The detainee was strapped to a heavy wood chair with an adjustable back. Right now it was almost horizontal to the floor to allow the water-soaked towel to press against the man’s mouth and nose to simulate drowning. Upton gestured and the two merks put down their towel and bucket and roughly pulled the chair upright, locking it in place. The detainee was blinking, eyes on Upton, waiting for the next chapter in the tragedy his life had become. His forearms were strapped to the arms of the chair, his ankles to the front legs, and a thick leather strap wound about the chair and his chest.

The scientist reached into his pocket for a pair of gloves, and his assistant, a young man named Rhodes, also put on a pair. Rhodes went to the detainee’s left arm and efficiently strapped yellow tubing around it. Then he walked around and waited on the other side.

Upton opened the case. The syringe glittered against black velvet. It was the smallest gauge, 32, and the best metal, designed to have deep penetration and minimal drag force. At least that’s what the ad said. Almost a work of art.

“This is the first clinical trial of Cherry Tree on a human.” Another lie, but it sounded more dramatic for this to be the first.

Only an idiot would walk in here not having tested it, and Upton was many things but not an idiot.

Upton lifted the needle up, higher than needed, so that the audience could see. “We’ve tested it for toxicity and other side effects on rats, but rats can’t tell the truth, can they?” He laughed, alone, at what he thought was a joke. There was no way to tell if those on the other side of the glass got it. He didn’t realize he’d just made a serious logic flaw, underestimating his audience.

Upton lowered the needle, eye level to the suspect whose head was pivoted left, focused on the glittering spike of steel.

Thus he didn’t see as Rhodes pricked him with a small needle in the right forearm, the same used for TB tests, a short 27 gauge, right under the skin.

He reacted though, body jerking away. He spit at Rhodes and glared about, his last refuge of defiance.

“My assistant,” Upton said, “has just injected point-one milliliters of Cherry Tree intradermally into the subject’s forearm.” He waved the fancy syringe. “This was just a distraction.” He put it back in the case and snapped it shut. Then he made a show of looking at his watch. “Cherry Tree is quick acting. Less than one minute.” He stepped back. “All yours, Colonel.”

Johnston came forward, stopping out of spitting distance. “Wahid.”

The prisoner’s eyelids were fluttering as if trying to pull a curtain call on the softening glare.

“Wahid,” Johnston repeated.

The glare was gone. “Osama,” the detainee said with the rasp of a voice that had not spoken in a long time. “He’s in Pakistan. They always, always ask, so there is the answer.”

Johnston straightened in surprise.

“Water,” Upton said with a sharp nod at Rhodes. The assistant peeled off his gloves and went to a table in the corner of the room, grabbing a plastic bottle. He brought it over to Wahid. The prisoner arced his head back and Rhodes dribbled some into his open mouth.

Wahid swallowed. He started nodding, as if memories were flooding his brain. “Osama moved there”—he paused, at a loss for how long he’d been a prisoner—“in 2006. Abbottabad. A compound. I can show you. Pigsty.” Wahid shook his head in disgust. “It’s not even wired to explode. My house was wired. You were lucky to catch me away from it. Very lucky for you. Very unlucky for me. Such is Allah’s will. I cannot fight the will of God. No man can. But why does he curse me so? Why is not all his will and not luck? Good or bad?” Wahid looked at Johnston as if he expected an answer to the question.

Johnston took a step back and glanced over at the glass. “Wahid. We know about Osama. Tell us—”

But Wahid wasn’t listening. His eyes were blinking fast, tears forming. “Please take me back to my cell. My home cell. Not the one here. I miss him. I miss him so much.”

“Miss who?” Johnston asked, but it was like a pebble thrown into a waterfall of words.

“The Jell-O. The lime Jell-O. They must stop serving it. It is disgusting. Not fit for a man or even a beast. I do like the pizza. They serve it every Thursday and that is how I know a week has passed. I should not eat it as it is food for capitalists, but I like it. Not the mushrooms though. I think that is part of the torture. But I eat them to show that you cannot break me. But I am speaking now. Why am I speaking now?” Wahid’s entire body shook as if it were fighting the words pouring out of his mouth.

He shifted into Arabic, the words flowing, the tape recorders capturing every one. Johnston gave up for the moment, stepping farther back, letting the man who had never spoken, speak, with the recorders catching it all. The moment went to minutes. Three times Rhodes had to come forward and give Wahid some water, a dark twist considering the waterboarding. Minutes passed into an hour and then a second hour.

There was no doubt somewhere in that flow was information that was going to lead to a Predator drone or two, letting loose Hellfire somewhere in the world.

By now, even the ones in the interrogation room could sense the impatience of those in the viewing room. Wahid might be giving up every element of Al Qaeda, but they had places to be and things to do. Cherry Tree worked. That was obvious.

Then Wahid shifted into English once more. “He watches me.”

Johnston jumped into the slight pause. “Who does?”

“The man in the next cell.” Tears began to stream down Wahid’s face. “He watches me all the time. I cannot stop him. I cannot stop myself. He watches me in the shower. He watches me when I please myself, late at night, between the guards coming through. I cannot stop myself.”

The watching-room audience, which had first listened with rapt attention, then some impatience during the Arabic, shifted with unease.

“But I do not really mind,” Wahid continued. “I watch him too. He is beautiful.”

Johnston looked at Upton. The truth was good, but perhaps too much was too much? Everyone fears unadulterated truth, the cutting edge of it ripping into a man’s soul, his darkness and his despair, and worse, his longings.

Wahid slipped back into Arabic, his voice rattling to a rough whisper.

Johnston definitely knew enough was enough. He turned to the glass, stepping between the muttering prisoner and the observers. Upton stood by his side.

“Gentlemen, do you have any questions for Doctor Upton?”

A disembodied voice came out of the speaker. “How long does the effect last?”

“Four hours,” Upton said. “Give or take a deviance of two percent, which is very precise overall.”

“Aftereffects?” a different voice asked.

Upton shrugged. “None that we’ve seen but we’ll be monitoring the subject at a max security facility.”

“Outstanding,” a third voice echoed out of the speaker, startling even Johnston with its easily recognizable Boston accent. General George “Lightning Bolt” Riggs, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was the number-two ranking military officer in the country and the man who did the dirty work for the chairman. He had not been noted on the attendance list in the memorandum for the experiment.

That’s the way Riggs worked. Be where no one expected him to be, keep his finger on the pulse of the darkest of secrets, looking for opportunity and also for danger.

The door next to the glass opened and Riggs stepped into the room with a man in civilian clothes next to him — the Joint Chiefs of Staff scientific adviser, Brennan. No one else who’d been behind the glass mattered now.

Colonel Johnston took an involuntary step back, perhaps some genetic memory of his ancestors facing Riggs’s “damn Yankee” ancestors on battlefields during the War of Northern Aggression. Perhaps just a normal reaction to Riggs’s imposing presence. Angry with himself, Johnston reclaimed the lost step.

“Good morning, General.”

Riggs walked over to Wahid, who was muttering in Arabic. “Broke the son of a bitch and didn’t have to touch a hair on his head. Outstanding,” he repeated. “The bleeding-heart cowards who wail about rights won’t have dick to say about this. A little prick of the skin to get the prick talking.” His coarse language betrayed his Beacon Hill accent, a strange combination. The result was something Riggs had practiced since his upper-class years at West Point upon realizing it kept others off balance, not sure who or what they were dealing with.

Riggs snapped his attention from Wahid to Upton. “I assume you have more of this… what did you call it?”

“Cherry Tree, sir.”

Riggs smiled. “Cute, very cute. We have more trees to chop down. Do you have to inject it?”

Upton blinked. “Well, we’ve, uh, always injected, but it could probably pass through the stomach lining and have an effect. Perhaps even be absorbed through the skin. It doesn’t take much in the bloodstream, as long as it gets to the mind.”

“Can you put it in a drink?” Riggs asked. “Drop some in a glass of water?”

Upton’s eyes shifted to Rhodes and Riggs didn’t miss it, turning his imperious gaze to the younger scientist. “You were the grunt on this, weren’t you, son? You did all the dirty work?” He didn’t wait for an answer, indicating he believed his suspicion was correct, and whether it was or not in reality, it now was in this room.

“I did the lab work, sir,” Rhodes managed to get out.

“So can we?” Riggs pressed.

“I don’t know, sir.”

Riggs frowned. “Okay, listen to me.” He glared at Upton and then Rhodes. “Don’t bullshit a bullshitter. You’ve used this on a human before. You had to, because as you pointed out with your dipshit, not-funny joke, rats can’t tell the truth. All you could tell by injecting them was whether they’d fucking die or grow a second head, right?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “How many times have you tested it on humans before this and how?”

Upton swallowed. “Three times under tight lab protocol.”

“On who?”

“Subjects supplied by the Agency.”

“Subjects supplied by the Agency’s merks from Deep Six you mean,” Riggs corrected. “Which means people that were snatched somewhere and are never going to see the light of day again and we don’t think hold any useful information.”

“I guess, sir,” Upton said.

“You didn’t ask?”

“No, sir.”

“Did that right at least,” Riggs said. “I don’t do dog and pony shows. So if you know it fucking works coming in, tell me it fucking works, then show me it fucking working, but don’t fucking lie to me, understand?”

Upton nodded, but a small flicker of defiance still flared up. “We weren’t ready, sir. We anticipated more trials and at least six months of analysis before field deployment.”

“Then maybe you should have waited,” Brennan said in a calm voice, trying to smooth the storm-tossed waters in the room.

“I was ordered by directive to do this,” Upton argued. He belatedly added: “Sir.”

“By who?” Brennan asked.

Upton spread his hands in surrender. “A directive from the head of DORKA. I tried getting clarification. I sent a memo telling him we weren’t ready. I was told to do this anyway.”

Riggs had already moved on, ignoring Upton’s excuses. “We need to take this to the next level ASAP. Slip it to the Russian ambassador. If it doesn’t go through the stomach, then we jab him with a fucking umbrella like the Russkies used to do to assassinate people.

“We need to find out if they’re as full of shit as I suspect they are about the nuke treaty. Pulling a fast one on us to make up for their crappy-ass military. Couldn’t beat us fair, so no doubt the sons of bitches will cheat like they’ve been doing ever since Truman wouldn’t let George S. loose on them.” He used Patton’s first name, as if they had an intimate relationship, which he actually believed, given Patton had also felt he’d served in other armies at other times.

“The Cold War is over,” Upton said without thinking, chagrined that Riggs had jumped from him to Rhodes so quickly with the credit and then getting his ass reamed for his stupid ploy — it was accepting that the show had been stupid he couldn’t get past. On top of the fact he hadn’t wanted to do this in the first place.

The room froze, even Wahid in his drug-induced state picking up the momentary arctic blast from the general and pausing in his monologue of truth.

Riggs, strangely enough, smiled. He walked up to Upton, who surrendered four steps until he bumped against the table, unable to retreat, like Custer upon his final hill.

“The Cold War was never cold,” Riggs said. “Do you know what the life expectancy of a second lieutenant commanding an armored platoon in the Fulda Gap was if World War Three broke out? Eleven seconds. I was there. We didn’t think it was cold at all. When a T-72 tank mirrored your every move with its main gun? When an ‘accidental’ round comes across all the barbed wire and tank traps and blows up a track full of your soldiers and everyone hushes it up because the Cold War is supposed to be cold?”

Behind them, Wahid lifted his hand as much as the restraints would allow and grabbed Rhodes’s forearm. “Help me to be quiet. Please.”

Rhodes shook off the grab, focused on his boss and the general.

Riggs’s face was now within six inches of Upton’s. The general hadn’t raised his voice at all, but the profanity was suddenly gone. There was only the chill of Beacon Hill in December blowing down on the scientist.

Riggs spun away from Upton, just as he’d been taught to about-face as a plebe at West Point sweating through Beast Barracks, drilling on the Plain. He stopped next to the civilian who’d come in with him. “What do you think, Brennan?”

Brennan nodded. “I like it.”

That was good enough for Riggs. “We’re going to use this, gentlemen. I want a complete briefing for myself and Mr. Brennan on how that can be done in twenty-four hours. The treaty is being signed in seventy-two hours and you have given us a superb tool just in time. Well done. Well done.”

And with that Riggs was out the door. Brennan didn’t immediately follow. He went to Upton and shook his hand. “Good job.” Then he turned to Rhodes and shook his hand also. “Congratulations.” Brennan tried to smooth the ruffled and stormy waters left in his boss’s wake, one of the many tasks he did for the general. Then he left.

Johnston just as quickly regained command. “Get him out of here,” he snapped at the two merks. He stabbed a finger at Upton. “You heard the general. A report in eighteen hours.”

“Twelve hours,” Upton told Rhodes as they walked down the sidewalk of the strip mall. “I want the report on my desk in twelve hours.” He paused in front of an ice cream shop in the same strip mall, three doors down from the interrogation center. A more astute person might have sensed some irony in the contrast, but Upton had been in the world of covert research for too long to have any irony left in him.

“Let’s celebrate,” Upton said, swinging open the door to the shop. “We’ll be getting funding out the ass with General Riggs and that brownnose shit Brennan on our side.”

“It did work,” Rhodes marveled as they bellied up to the counter like two gunslingers who’d just taken out all the black hats. “The controlled environment of the lab was one thing. I was worried that we were rushing it and—”

Upton hushed him. “There’s the quick and the nonfunded in our world, son. It’s not like the university labs. We’re in the real world, fighting the real shit. If the boss wanted us to rush it and present it, then we rush it and present it.” He turned to the frowning clerk. “Double serving chocolate, extra nuts and, yes, add the m&m’s.”

“Just a single scoop vanilla,” Rhodes said.

The clerk turned to his task.

Upton lowered his voice. “Six years they were working that guy. And we did it in a minute. If we’d have been done a couple years earlier, we’d have been the ones who got bin Laden, not that CIA bitch. It was like turning on a spigot.” Upton smiled, truly happy, a rarity for him. “He’d totally lost the ability to lie or even withhold the truth. He’d have talked until it wore off.” He looked at his watch. “He’s probably still blabbing away as they haul him back to whatever hole they’re keeping him in here.”

“We need to follow up on that,” Rhodes said. “Make sure the controlled parameters are matched in the field.” He ran his tongue along his upper lip. A slight sheen of sweat covered his forehead.

The clerk handed Upton his heaping cup of ice cream, then went to get Rhodes’s single scoop. Rhodes frowned as Upton shoveled a spoonful of ice cream, nuts, and m&m’s into his mouth.

Rhodes shook his head in disgust. “I’m surprised you ordered the double with nuts and with m&m’s considering your ass is busting out of those pants. You and Riggs. Two big fat pieces of shit.”

“What?” Upton muttered around all the material in his mouth.

“Your. Fat. Ass.” Rhodes emphasized each word. “You’ve gained like what, forty pounds just since I’ve been on the project?”

The second spoonful paused on the way to his mouth. “That’s not funny,” Upton said.

Rhodes snorted. “I bet Linda just hates the thought of fucking you. That’s if you can even get it up around her. She’s a whale, too.”

The clerk was holding out Rhodes’s single serving and Upton slapped it out of his hand as Rhodes reached for it. Upton grabbed a mask out of his coat pocket and slipped it on.

“What the fuck?” Rhodes demanded. “You treat everyone like they’re your servant. I did all the work on Cherry Tree. The general saw that right away. It was my idea. He saw through you right away. Your stupid show. You son of a bitch…”

As Rhodes rattled on, Upton simply muttered “Oh, shit,” as he pulled out his cell phone to call in a contain team.

Twelve blocks away, General Riggs’s armored limo paused outside a Washington restaurant. The general stared at Brennan seated across from him. “Still seeing her?”

“Yes, sir.”

Riggs shook his head. “I don’t trust politicians.”

“She’s not a politician, sir,” Brennan replied, reaching for the door handle. “Her father is the politician.”

Riggs leaned over and grabbed his hand for a moment, halting him. “What we just saw is a game changer, Brennan. You get that, right?”

Brennan settled back in the seat. “What do you mean, sir?”

“Think of the power. The power of the truth. In World War Two, Winston Churchill said that ‘in wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.’”

Brennan was used to the way Riggs worked. Impulsive, prone to overreact, the general had taught himself discipline and surrounded himself with a handful of key people whose job it was to keep him from taking precipitous action. Brennan was one finger on that hand, which was short a couple of fingers to begin with.

“Sir,” Brennan began, skating out onto the thin ice of confronting Riggs’s single-minded vision of the world, “drugging the Russian ambassador with a truth serum might not be a wise course of action. Especially at this delicate time. Could be a Gary Powers sort of moment. The president wants SAD. Congress wants this treaty. Most importantly, the American people want this treaty.”

“You might like his daughter,” Riggs said, “but the president is deluded and the American people are naive. We have the upper hand on the Russians, the Chinese, and everyone else who has a nuke. Why level the playing field with this treaty? It flies in the face of our national strategy and interest. We’ve been sucking hind-tit for decades on this, when we’re the lead fucking horse.”

“SAD greatly reduces the risk of nuclear accident,” Brennan said, “and of terrorists getting their hands on one. Plus, we can’t keep telling other countries not to develop nuclear weapons when we have more than the rest of the world combined. And we’re the only country that’s ever actually used them.”

“That’s exactly why we can tell them not to develop them,” Riggs said. “I’ve been a soldier for a long time, Brennan. Let me tell you something. If I were a Russian general, I would have a gun to my president’s head, telling him to get us to sign the treaty even as we continued to build our own arsenal while the Americans reduced theirs.”

“That’s a bit paranoid, General.” For a moment, Brennan was afraid he’d crossed a line, but Riggs, surprisingly, laughed.

“You aren’t paranoid if they are indeed out to get you, son. And believe me, those Russian and Chinese bastards are out to get us. That Upton might be a pompous shit with his little show with the needle, but Cherry Tree is special. I can feel it in my bones.

“We have a way to strip away our enemies’ bodyguard of lies. Are we just going to use it on pieces of dirt like that man in the chair and get information that’s six years out of date? Or are we really going to use it? We’ve sat on our nukes for over sixty years and what good has it done us? We could have taken out Russia early in the Cold War with minimal casualties. LeMay knew the numbers. He begged presidents to act and they all ignored him. None of the rest — Vietnam, the Gulf, Afghanistan — would have happened if we’d done what he wanted.”

Brennan frowned at the leap of illogic into the cesspool of paranoia, but knew the ice after his brief rebuttal was too thin to challenge the general anymore. “Sir, even if the treaty gets signed, it will take years to implement.”

“We don’t have years,” Riggs said with surprising anger. “I swore an oath to defend this country with my life and by God”—his fist slammed into the leather seat—“I am going to do just that. Your father understood. He worked with LeMay on Pinnacle. Time is running out on that and time is running out for me.”

“Time is running out on Pinnacle,” Brennan said. “The missile in Nebraska was a close call. We were lucky Masterson’s Nightstalkers were on top of it.”

“Bullshit,” Riggs said. “The damn thing was a dud. No maintenance on it in decades. What the hell is to be expected?”

“We’re maintaining the stockpile as best we can. Outlier weapons…” Brennan shrugged. “We don’t even know where some of those are. We didn’t know about this one in Nebraska. That got lost somewhere along the line because of the secrecy.”

“The problem,” Riggs said, “is Masterson’s people are trying to get on top of Pinnacle now. Some idiot left the name in the LCC there.”

“It’s inevitable that word will get out about it,” Brennan said. “It’s a program that’s outlived its usefulness. Masterson has tried to penetrate Pinnacle before and failed. But our luck won’t hold. Maybe we should just abandon it.”

“Pinnacle is a program we need now more than ever, with the treaty coming up. Nebraska was an oversight.” Riggs shifted his bulk on the seat. “There’s something the president is leaving out of all of this and the public doesn’t know. The Rifts. We don’t know what the hell is on the other side of those things. Everyone is so focused on the Russians and the Chinese and Iran, the few who are in the know are forgetting about that. In the beginning, we formed Pinnacle inside the military to prepare for that threat.”

“But LeMay co-opted that,” Brennan pointed out.

“LeMay was a hero!” Riggs snapped. Just as quickly, like a summer thunderstorm passing, Riggs smiled, showing shiny white teeth above his square jaw. “Go join your fiancée, Brennan. Give her my best.”

“Sir, I can’t help you if you don’t fill me in on what’s really going on.”

Riggs fixed Brennan with his Beacon Hill stare. “The Russians aren’t the real threat. Don’t get me wrong, I know the treaty has to be derailed and we can use Cherry Tree for that. But when I saw the DORKA blurb about Cherry Tree in the daily intel summary last week, I knew there was potential.”

Brennan’s eyes widened. “You made them do that demonstration.”

Riggs nodded. “Squeezed the balls on the idiot who runs DORKA. You should see the file my people have on him.”

“But why?” Brennan knew the answer. “The treaty.”

“Yes.” He leaned forward. “There are people other than the Russians I need to get the truth out of. We’re in the eye of the storm, Brennan. People are asking questions about Pinnacle. We can’t have that made public. And at the same time, we can’t lose it. The best way to fight having a secret revealed is to learn other people’s secrets.” He laughed. “Mutually assured destruction by truth.

“Pinnacle and the treaty are tied together. And we can’t lose the first and have the second. Too many good men over too many years put everything on the line to defend this country and keep it safe. Not just our country, but our world, from whatever is on the other side of those Rifts. I’m not going to see that undone. Do you understand?”

Brennan knew when to retreat. “Yes, sir.”

“Good, good.” Riggs smiled. “Give your fiancée a kiss for me. Go now.”

Brennan blinked at the abrupt about-face. “Yes, sir.” He fumbled for the door and opened it. As soon as he was out, the armored limo was pulling away, the door slamming shut with a solid thud.

Brennan paused outside the restaurant and took a couple of deep breaths. He was getting sick and tired of the general. In fact, he was getting sick and tired of a lot of things he had to put up with. He opened the door and entered the pub. Debbie liked to eat at what she called “common folk” places, although he knew her true motivation was to stick out like a sore middle finger and get the admiring glances and muted whispers of admiration that she had graced the common folk with her presence.

Brennan frowned, surprised at the thought, because it had never occurred to him before. They’d always eaten at places like this, ever since first dating sophomore year in high school. Brennan spotted the Secret Service agents before he spotted Debbie and, already simmering over Riggs’s diatribe and off-kilter by his own thoughts, his attitude took another sharp turn in the wrong direction.

Debbie was staring at her phone, oblivious to the world around her. She had the agents to take care of that for her, Brennan thought as he sat down across from her. She didn’t look up for four seconds.

He knew because he counted, just like when they used to play touch football as a kid after the ball was “hiked” and before you could rush the passer — one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four Miss — Well, okay, just under four seconds, but that was three too long.

“Hey,” she said with less enthusiasm than Brennan desired. “You’re late.”

“I was with the general.”

Debbie rolled her eyes, which he really hated. “How is the old Lightning Bolt?”

“We just had a most interesting experience, very positive,” Brennan said, forcing some cheer into his voice. “Let’s order champagne to celebrate.”

She raised her eyebrows. “In the middle of the day? How daring of you!” she added with a laugh. “That’s my old Bren. You’ve been much too serious lately.” She reached across the table and placed her hand over his. “What was so interesting and positive?”

Her touch sucked the anger right out of him and he actually relaxed. “Big breakthrough on the DORKA front.”

“Ah, the geeks. What have they invented now?”

“It’s a secret.”

She pulled her hand back. “I’m not fond of celebrating something that I don’t know.”

“If I told you, I’d have to kill you, cut your head off, and stuff it in a safe.” He said it with a smile on his face and an edge in his voice.

Debbie, in turn, pointed at the two Secret Service agents. “I don’t think they’d take that as a joke.” She picked up her fork as a waiter deposited a salad in front of Brennan. “I know you don’t mind. I ordered when you weren’t here on time. Last time you never showed and I never ate. I’m learning boundaries. At least my shrink says I am.”

Brennan got the waiter’s attention. “Champagne. Your best.”

The waiter scurried off, probably trying to figure out if they even had champagne in this dump, Brennan thought.

Debbie put the fork down. “I’m sorry, Bren. I’ve had a difficult morning and I don’t mean to take it out on you. My mother is all atwitter about their last Christmas in the House. She wants it to be extra special so people remember it. Like, who’s going to remember? And the secret thing bothers me because that’s the way my dad is all the time. Drives my mother crazy too. It’s hard to be understanding when you don’t have the information to understand, if you follow?”

Brennan nodded, but he noticed that one of the Secret Service agents was looking at his cell phone. Wasn’t he supposed to be watching the area?

Debbie’s phone next to the breadbasket vibrated.

“Who’s that?” Brennan asked before even the second vibrate.

“I don’t know.” Debbie hit Ignore without even looking at the screen.

“No. Who was it?”

Debbie sighed. “You have got to stop this jealous thing, Bren. It’s getting old.”

He snatched the phone off the table. “Who the hell is Daniel? And why does he have your number?”

“Daniel? I don’t know a Daniel.”

He looked closer and grimaced. “Okay. Danielle. Who’s that?”

“She’s in my spinning class. What is wrong with you? You’re acting crazier than usual.”

“How usual crazy am I? What did Danielle want?” he asked, trying to pretend he wasn’t being a complete fool.

She grabbed the phone from him and read the text. “She says Daniel is going to be on a bike in front of me tomorrow morning and he has buns of steel and what a lucky girl I am.”

“Very funny,” Brennan muttered.

“I try.” She reached across the table once more. “I do try.”

Brennan noticed that one of the Secret Service agents was smirking and Brennan felt a surge of anger that the man was listening and judging him.

“That agent seems too involved in your life,” Brennan said in a low, taut voice. “Shouldn’t they be standing near the door and pretending to be statues or something?”

Debbie laughed. “Oh, he’s just acting weird because I blew him in the car on the way over. Happy?” She waited for him to laugh, but when he didn’t, she shook her head with more than a hint of disgust. “I’m going to the ladies’ room. Here, knock yourself out.” She handed him her phone.

He didn’t even wait until she was out of sight. He scrolled through her call record, thinking she was acting way too open, just like someone with something to hide. Then he noticed that the one Secret Service guy (and did they ever think about the fact that their initials were SS?) was staring at him with an odd look on his face.

Yes, there was something in that stare.

Riggs might be paranoid about the Russians and the Chinese, Brennan thought, but he knew the real danger was people. Couldn’t trust ’em. Especially women. His mother had gone out of the house when he was eight, not for the proverbial pack of cigarettes, but for tampons at the PX. Or so she said, and never came back.

Debbie was cheating on him. He was certain of it. They had finally settled on a date, the first weekend in April, when the cherry trees should be blossoming in DC, and with that thought, he giggled, sensing the irony.

They had a history and it wasn’t all written in large, beautiful scrolling letters. There were some dark chapters. Maybe she was getting in some last bangs before the big day. It was a thought that had occurred to him more than once. He checked her text messages.

The waiter, a bit out of breath, came up with a bottle of not-too-bad champagne. It never occurred to Brennan that the man had run down the street to a liquor store and bought it.

Exasperated, Brennan tossed her phone back onto the table next to her glass of bubbly.

Debbie came back and saw the full glass and mustered a smile. “Bren, you’ve known me forever. Why do you think I’m doing something? Don’t you trust me?”

“I trusted you,” Brennan said, “but how can I trust you in this new reality?”

“What new reality?”

“You don’t get it, do you?” Brennan didn’t wait for an answer. “It’s all going to end. Do you have any idea what’s really going on? Not just the treaty. But the experiments. The things those scientists are working on? And how just plain fucking-ass stupid some of them are? The Rifts? The Fireflies!”

“What Rifts?” Debbie asked. “Fireflies?”

He didn’t hear her. “The clock is ticking. It’s just a matter of time before it’s all over. And then there’s the general. Fucking Pinnacle. Stupid idea that should have gone away a long time ago. If he had his way, we’d all be blown back into the Stone Age, speaking of blowing.”

Debbie picked up her glass. “I think the only clock that’s ticking is the one until April and you’re having cold feet.”

He snorted. “Just because you’re the president’s daughter doesn’t mean you get to know everything. In fact, what you don’t know is far outweighed by what I do know.” He stared at the Secret Service agent, uncertain if the man was staring back because of those damn sunglasses they always wore.

Debbie followed his gaze and put her flute of champagne down. “Not that again. We’ve been engaged for three years and dating since high school. Why do you make a big deal out of nothing?”

“How do I know it’s nothing? Five years ago your father wasn’t president and you didn’t have all this.”

“You think because Daddy got elected my love for you went out the window? And remember, your father was always so much more important for all those years and I never thought anything different about you.”

“He was in your hotel room in Chicago.”

Debbie blinked. “What? Who?”

“That agent. I remember him. I came in and you just had a towel wrapped around you and he was in the room.”

“Fully dressed. I told you, I was taking a shower and something fell and he was checking.”

“Right. Nice story. Very convenient.”

Debbie rolled her eyes once more. “This is like the quarterback in high school, isn’t it? The one who wouldn’t give me the time of day except when he asked to cheat off me on the algebra final and you were convinced that cheating meant cheating. I don’t even remember his name.”

“You remember he was the quarterback.”

“We ended up not going to the prom because of that. You only get one prom, Bren. And you caused us to miss it.”

“Oh geez. Not the prom thing again. You bring that up every time we fight.”

“I bring it up,” Debbie said, “every time you get jealous for no reason. Don’t blame me. You trigger it. I don’t cheat and I don’t lie, Bren. Accept that.” She pointed at the agent. “You planted that seed, not me.”

Brennan blinked, because thinking of planting reminded him of Cherry Tree.

“What is wrong with you?”

“You’re right,” Brennan said, with a tremor in his voice, the anger gone. “I know you didn’t do the quarterback.”

“How do you know that?” Debbie demanded.

Brennan started to cry, startling her. She’d never seen him cry. “I made it up and pushed it onto you because I’d been with Mary McCarthy. She told me I couldn’t go to the prom with you if I wasn’t going with her.”

Debbie stared at him. “What do you mean ‘been with Mary McCarthy’? The girl with the braces in senior year?”

Brennan glumly nodded. Between sniffles: “She gave me a blowjob in the chem lab after school one day when we were making up an extra-credit project.”

“At least someone got a blowjob,” Debbie said. “Surprised she didn’t rip your dick off with those braces. In fact, I’m kind of wishing she had.”

“It was the best blowjob I’ve ever gotten.” With that Brennan grabbed the tablecloth in panic, knocking over both flutes and stuffing his napkin in his mouth to shut himself up. He started giggling insanely, having no idea why he was saying these things to her.

Debbie’s jaw dropped, then a flush of anger over years of accusations and missing the prom flooded her face. And the projection of betrayal, which hit deepest of all.

“I hope you got the extra credit in chem!” she said as she threw her napkin down and jumped to her feet.

And at that moment, Brennan’s cell phone chimed, the tone that meant the text was Top Secret, no bullshit, check it the fuck now.

Brennan spit out the napkin as he read it. “Oh no, no, no!” Brennan cried out as he accepted he had just admitted his darkest secrets.

A couple of them at least.

Give him some more time and the rest would come, but luckily for him, time was up. The Secret Service agents had begun moving when the flutes went over and now they were hustling Debbie toward the limo, screeching to the curb. Like Brennan was some nutcase standing outside the Washington Hilton. All he’d done was knock over some glasses.

And tell the truth.

Brennan was stunned for a moment too long, enough to let Debbie get halfway to her waiting Secret Service car before he bolted out of the seat and ran after her. “Stop! I can explain!”

The agent — the smirky one — who slammed him to the ground seemed to take a bit too much relish in doing so. The other agent grabbed Debbie over her protests and pushed her into the limo.

The car door thudded shut and Debbie was whisked off to the White House while Brennan was whisked off to wherever it is the Secret Service whisk people off to.