Inside Out

74

Winter had no way to keep track of time but, for what seemed like several hours, he had been the captive of a drugged state unlike anything he had ever experienced. While he was shrouded completely in a blanket of catatonia-unable to move a single muscle or open his eyes-his heart was beating and he had no trouble breathing. He was completely aware of everything going on around him-could hear everything perfectly. He could smell, even feel changes in the air temperature. The men who had kidnapped him didn't speak to him or talk at all from the time the driver had given him the shot until the jet landed sometime later. Winter spent the entire flight thinking about his situation and decided that, if he faked the state after it had worn off, maybe he could somehow escape.

He knew that at some point his mother would call Hank looking for him. When Winter failed to show up at the time he had told her he would, she would begin to worry. The trouble was, he couldn't count the times he had told his mother that he would be back at a certain time, and later, when he became involved in something and forgot the time, was made a liar. Lydia knew that he didn't like to wake her unless it was necessary. He worried that she might decide this was one of those times and wait to call too late. Hell, it was already too late the second he got into the Chrysler.

During the time he was under, he had squirreled away his impressions. After the plane landed, he had been carried from the Lear and laid on a gurney, which had been put into an ambulance. He knew it was an ambulance because the man with the syringe had lifted his right eyelid to check his pupil. As they went, Winter heard cars and trucks on either side of them and other sounds indicating they were in a large city.

When the ambulance finally stopped, his escorts rolled the gurney into a building and straight into an elevator. After a short ride up, the elevator door opened and Winter had smelled coffee and heard a television set. The men rolled him a short distance down a hallway, turned into a room, lifted him from the gurney, and dropped him onto a bed, causing the springs to squeak. All he could do was lie there and wait for what would happen next.

Winter kept time by listening to the television.

He heard people walking outside his door, caught hushed conversations that he knew were not voices on the television.

Somebody came into the room.

He felt someone give him another shot.

“Don't worry,” a voice said. “That was just to counteract the effects of the drug. It impedes the ability to move but allows the heart to keep beating.” The voice was peculiar and totally unfamiliar. Within seconds Winter could move his fingers and his feet.

“Let me stress that you are not to try anything stupid,” the voice instructed. “You are inside a fortress with no way out, unless I release you. There are armed men on the floors below us and above us. I know you are familiar with the nature of the men I refer to. The elevator is the only way out and it is controlled by my people. There is no reason for you to try to escape, because no harm will come to you unless you do something idiotic.”

What the man said had the ring of truth.

Winter felt the muscles in his face coming back under his control, and he lifted his eyelids. Slowly, he turned his head to see the man who sat on the bed next to his. What he saw startled him. Deep burn scars covered the left side of the man's face and neck like they'd been applied by someone with a blowtorch and a plan. The crimson wig on his head could have been modeled by a child out of straw. He was dressed in what appeared to Winter to be a velour sweat suit.

The disfigured man stared at Winter through eyes so pale they looked as though they had never been fully colored in.

Using a gloved hand, the man carefully put a cigarette between his lips and lit it with a Zippo. He exhaled languorously. “You will be able to stand up in a minute and will suffer no adverse effects,” he said companionably.

“I understand,” Winter said.

“My name is Fifteen. I know everything about you. I know about your long-suffering mother, Lydia, your dead wife, your blind son, Hank Trammel, and just about everybody left on this earth you care for.”

Winter had known truly lethal men. He knew their smell, the acid they stirred up in his stomach, and the foul taste of copper they put in his mouth. And he knew instinctively that this man was a creature of the pit. He was a man who told people to kill, liked doing it, might sometimes do it himself. Maybe this creature was an interrogator.

“This building belongs to a man named Herman Hoffman. I believe you would know him as the old general that the boy George Williams mentioned to you.”

“Is he your boss?”

“No.”

“Are you CIA?”

“No, not specifically. That shouldn't concern you. Let me say that we service specific needs they and other agencies have, and the relationship is mutually beneficial.

“I have examined your conversation with Fletcher Reed about Ward Field and the cutouts. I have acquired Reed's evidence. He mailed a copy to your director and had a duplicate cleverly hidden in his office. All record of his computer incursion has been obliterated. Reed's misguided efforts went for nothing.”

“What did you do to him?” Winter asked, resigned to the inevitable now.

“He thought some of my men wished him harm and he hit a tree in his panicked attempt to evade them, shortly after you last spoke to him.”

Fifteen ground his cigarette out in a metal box and snapped it shut. “All that remains is for the Bureau to release the preliminary findings from their investigation. You are familiar with some of it, I understand. The evidence in the hands of the FBI is fact-incontrovertible proof. Believe me, not even Greg Nations himself could prove his innocence now.”

“The evidence is all lies.”

“What difference does it make?”

“Why are you helping Manelli?”

“As far as Manelli's participation in this”-he shrugged-“that's between Hoffman and Mr. Manelli. Only what concerns me is of interest to me.”

“Why did he bring me here?”

“He didn't. I brought you here to reason with you to accept the inevitable. I want you to understand that by pursuing this you are only a threat to yourself. Hoffman's operation with Manelli was a rogue carried out by his group, which you managed to cut in half. I had no advance warning before Ward Field and Rook Island, and I've had teams rushing all over the country just to stay even with the mess the old man made. I can't tell you the resources that have gone into cleaning this up in order to protect other interests that matter far more than this does. Herman used his power shamelessly, his men irresponsibly, and lost four extremely valuable individuals to your gun. This was very disturbing to me, to all of us.”

“Think how disturbing it is to all the people they killed.”

“Whoever runs the country does so because we make that possible by removing obstacles, keeping the path free of threats to our country's security. For fifty years a few of us have been fighting a very necessary war. Every instinct I have tells me to let my men bury you, but I believe enough innocent people are dead. I would rather persuade you how futile any attempt to oppose us is and let you go on with your life.”

The man who had been at Winter's front door stood in the hallway, holding the silenced SIG Sauer casually at his side, its barrel down.

“I am going to tell you how Herman obtained the intelligence it took to pull off the assaults.”

“To illustrate to me how powerless I actually am.”

“Exactly,” Fifteen said.

Winter sat slowly up and put his feet on the floor. He felt light-headed from being incapacitated for so long but no other ill effects from the drugging.

“If you make any heroic moves, you will be killed. If you grab me, my people will shoot through me to kill you. Even if you managed to get out, my people would visit your mother and son before you could hail a cab.”

Winter felt a surge of rage. “Can you tell me where I am?”

“I'll show you.”