Minotaur

45

It was weeks later when Chapel was finally debriefed. He’d spent the intervening time in a hospital, recovering from his injuries and wounds and head trauma and mostly just sleeping. He was still just glad to be back on his feet when a car came to take him to the Pentagon.

Director Hollingshead met him in a subbasement full of filing cabinets, a tiny room with thick concrete walls that had been swept for listening devices less than an hour before. What they had to talk about was not for general consumption.

“You did well, son,” the director said, patting Chapel on his artificial shoulder. “You did superbly well.”

“Thank you, sir. I’m just glad it turned out to just be a police matter. That we don’t need to go to war.”

“I think we’re all grateful for that,” Hollingshead said. His merry face wrinkled with a warm smile. “We would have tried a diplomatic solution, of course. But I don’t know exactly what the State Department could do to smooth over a foreign power arming a fifth column inside our borders. There’s only so much foolishness one can swallow before one needs to stand up to a bully. And I don’t need to tell you just how many men on both sides would have died in even a tiny little conflict between such large countries.”

“Sir,” Chapel said.

“As it is, we have a fair bill of work to complete—tracking down the suppliers of all those guns, tracing the route by which they came into the country. Plugging holes and bailing water. But you needn’t concern yourself with that. The ATF will take charge of what remains. You can relax for a while. Heal properly. Until we need you again, of course.”

“Of course, sir,” Chapel said.

Hollingshead coughed discretely. He frowned for a moment, then took off his glasses and polished them with a silk handkerchief.

“Sir, if I may be candid, I sense there’s something else you want to tell me.”

Hollingshead nodded. Still he didn’t speak for a while. “It’s just a bit of information. I don’t want you to read too much into this. After all, prison is a violent place.”

Chapel looked down at the floor. “Favorov?”

“I’m afraid he’s dead,” Hollingshead said. “We had nothing to do with that, of course. Just some fool with a sharpened bed spring, in the lockup.”

“Sir,” Chapel said. “May I ask about Fiona?”

“The wife?” Hollingshead frowned as if he hadn’t expected such a question. “Why, I’ve heard nothing about her. I couldn’t even tell you where she is now, her or her boys. It’s like someone helped her just… vanish.”

Chapel said nothing to that. Instead he stood up and came to attention, expecting to be dismissed.

Hollingshead had never stood on ceremony. He nodded and waved one hand to tell Chapel he was free to go.

Before he went, though, he had to ask one last question. “Sir,” he said. “We’re taking a lot on faith, here.”

“I’m sorry, son?”

“We’re assuming Favorov told me the truth. Now we’ll never know if he just told me what we wanted to hear.”

Hollingshead took off his glasses and polished them with a silk handkerchief as he considered that. “If he was lying, it’s war,” he said. “I think perhaps, just this one time, a little faith might do us good.”

“Sir,” Chapel said, and headed out the door.