Cat In A Sapphire Slipper

Garden of Lies

and Spies

The air outside his window was crisp, fragrant. Wonderful.

He inhaled deeply as Garry Randolph wheeled him around the terraced gardens in the clear mountain sunlight.

The man wasn’t a matinee idol, but he had a silver tongue. He’d convinced the dubious nurse that the patient could use some fresh air.

No one else wandered these high mountain meadow paths. The views at great heights above and depths below were breathtaking. He knew this must be alien terrain for him because it enchanted him so much. But Randolph would have told him the hills were alive with the sound of listening devices.

Once they were behind a sheltering stand of pines, Randolph quickly knelt and examined the wheelchair to the rims. Then he’d pantomimed a request for “Mike” to pat himself down, though the loose hospital gown didn’t allow for concealment.

Then Randolph had inspected his casts, thoroughly enough to cause pain, and felt the gown tie-strings.

“Why would my room and I be bugged?” he asked when Randolph nodded the okay for speaking.

“You’re here because someone tried to kill you.”

“Not on a mountain.”

“God, no. You’d never waste your time risking your neck just for the heck of it.”

“But I have risked my life.”

Randolph nodded. “You’ve always worked without a net, but never without an escape plan. Listen, until you’re able to get around on your own, I don’t want you knowing too much about yourself. If someone should get ahold of you and start asking questions, I want you to retain a certain amount of honest ignorance. That can’t be faked. Not even by you.”

“What am I? Who?”

Randolph shook his head. “Can’t say yet. I can say someone meant to kill you, and you survived. As soon as you can walk, we’re out of here.”

“For where?”

Randolph lowered his voice. “I’ve got some very interesting leads in Ireland.”

“That where I live?”

The man shook his head. “I’ve been your handler for seventeen years. Trust me. I know best.”

“ ‘Handler.’ I’m some kind of . . . pet? A spy?”

Randolph chuckled and patted his shoulder. “Much more interesting than that, dear boy. No, your job here is to get better and hold the foxes at bay. The longer you appear to be the victim of total amnesia, the safer you’ll be.”

“I am the victim of total amnesia!” In frustration, he launched the wheelchair forward when his legs wouldn’t do the job. The mechanism was slick. The chair shot toward the walkway’s edge.

Randolph followed and stopped it with a speed and agility that surprised him, even as his stomach twisted to feel the chair teetering on the edge of a sharp fall into the deep green valley below.

“Don’t be impetuous,” Randolph said. “You never were. I understand your frustration, but you can’t afford theatrics here. Slow and steady win the race. The longer you can play the medical staff along, the better off we’ll both be. I can get you out of here PDQ, if I have to.”

“Can the staff be trusted?”

“No. Anyone can infiltrate any medical facility, and has.”

He frowned. Maybe he wasn’t a mountain climber, but he must have taken some heavy risks to be this valuable—or dangerous—to someone.

“What do you remember?” the man asked.

“About me, my life, my friends, my family, where I lived, went to school? Nothing.”

Randolph’s expressive face puckered with distress. Personal distress.

He felt obliged to console the old fellow.

“I do know a lot of things about the larger world. I guessed where I was. I seem to be . . . highly observant. I don’t like to be helpless. I don’t trust. I’ve been building my upper body strength to compensate for the casts on my legs. I’ve started moving them from the hip, though it hurts like hell. I’m not taking my knockout meds like a good little boy.”

Randolph was nodding sagely. “Your instincts are inbred. That’s what saved you in the . . . accident.”

“How?”

“You saw the brutal impact coming. You did what few people can manage in a crisis. You let your body go limp so it didn’t fight the blow. You also bowed your head into your arms, avoiding brain injury.”

“I seem to have scraped my pellucid skin pretty damn hard.”

“And your vocabulary doesn’t seem to have suffered.”

Old man Randolph grinned. He felt his scabbed cheek stretching painfully to grin back. Still, it felt good.

“So I knew what I was doing. I wasn’t an incompetent ass.”

“Never.”

“What was I doing? Where did I fall?”

“I don’t want to give you specifics, although you’ve trained to resist truth serums. You intended to ‘drop out’ from your current life, your current role, because some very nasty people were after you. You arranged your own accidental exit. Then someone else lent you an unsuspected helping hand. Only your lightning reflexes, superb physical condition, and raw nerve saved you from instant annihilation.”

“Lightning reflexes and raw nerve. You think I still have them? The superb physical condition is shot.”

“Indubitably. Trust your survival instincts. You’ll recover the rest with time. But trust no one, except me. I’ve brought you a world away from the scene of the attempted murder, but we’re dealing with an international . . . force here. I want you out of here as soon as you can limp away. Meanwhile, play the slowly recuperating invalid. Especially in the area of your memory. The more you remember, the more you endanger yourself.”

He nodded. The advice was useful . . . if he was really James Bond. See. He remembered all the petty, pop culture stuff, the learned-in-school stuff, just nothing about himself.

He considered further, then nodded. “They’ve sicced a psychiatrist on me to work on my memory.”

Randolph sighed. “The formidably brilliant and attractive Doctor Schneider.”

“You think she’s an enemy?”

“She is if she teases your personal memory back too soon. Do you think you can keep her dangling without learning anything?”

He thought. “A challenge. She’s very good at what she does.

I’m not quite sure what exactly that is yet. I’ll enjoy finding out.” He glanced at the older man. “Apparently I’m heterosexual?”

The hazel eyes twinkled. “Seriously.”

He smiled. Max whoever-the-hell-he-was smiled. Even though it hurt.

“Let the games begin.”