Scarecrow Returns

OUTER BALTIMORE

24 SEPTEMBER, 1650 HOURS (FIVE MONTHS LATER)

SHANE SCHOFIELD sat in the basement office of a little townhouse in the suburbs of Baltimore.

Oddly, he wore his full dress uniform: white peaked cap, fitted blue coat with medals, gold belt buckle and pale-blue trousers with red piping. His attire looked far too formal for the little basement office, but then when he was done here, he was going to the White House.

Across from him, behind her desk, sat Brooke Ulacco, his plain-looking, plain-spoken, sixty-bucks-an-hour suburban psychologist.

It was nearing the end of the day, and Schofield had just spent the afternoon recounting his experiences at Dragon Island, including his torture at the hands of Marius Calderon.

Until that day, he hadn’t been allowed to talk to Ulacco about his mission to Dragon—as it involved CIA matters, he’d been informed by his superiors that her existing TS/SCI clearance was not high enough. He’d insisted that they get her the appropriate clearance, so he could tell her everything. It had taken a few months and even more background checks but Ulacco had passed and a SAP—or Special Access Program—addendum was attached to her existing Top Secret clearance. For Schofield it was well worth the wait to be able to tell her everything.

When he had finished recounting his story, Ulacco nodded slowly.

“So, how’d you do it?” she asked.

“What?”

“How did you keep your head together? This Calderon guy tortured you both physically and mentally. He taunted you about your father and about Gant’s death and then, so far as you knew, he killed your closest friend, Mother, in front of you with rats in a goddamn box. As your therapist, I would have serious problems with someone doing this to you. So. How did you do it?”

Schofield leaned back in his chair.

He knew exactly how he’d done it.

“I did what you taught me,” he said.

“What I taught you?” Ulacco was rarely surprised. Her calm, cock-sure, seen-it-all facial expression was not often broken. But now it was. “What did I teach you?”

“You taught me to compartmentalize my mind,” Schofield said. “In a memory location. Or in my case, a, ahem, memory submarine.”

Ulacco eyed him closely. “I’ve often wondered about this, Shane. You chose a submarine as a memory locale because it is a perfectly sealable structure, but one with a purging option—one from which you can jettison memories. Did you jettison your memories of Libby Gant?”

Ulacco asked that question without expression, poker-faced. And even though she actually hung on the answer, she added, “There’s no right or wrong answer to this question, by the way.”

Schofield paused for a full minute, thinking long and hard.

Ulacco watched him, waiting.

Then he spoke.

“No. I didn’t. I could never jettison my memories of Libby. She was an incredible woman and I loved her and to remove all the wonderful memories of her would be to remove something that makes me whole, makes me who I am, makes me me. During my torture—and especially when I thought Mother had been killed—I just shoved all those good memories into a compartment deep within the submarine of my mind, shut the steel door and spun the flywheel till it was sealed tight. After that, Calderon couldn’t touch Gant. Nothing he could say or do to me would reach those memories, all those great memories. And I was okay.”

“You were okay? You died.”

“Only for a little while.”

Ulacco cracked a wry half-smile. “So you’re telling me that a memory technique that I taught you here in my crappy basement in Baltimore kept you sane while you were being tortured by one of the world’s foremost experts in breaking the human mind?”

Schofield nodded. “Yep.”

Ulacco turned away for a second, and despite herself, actually looked a little proud. It only lasted a second, but Schofield saw it. Then her usual self kicked back in.

“And then you sorta saved the northern hemisphere from annihilation?” she said.

“Yes.”

“So you could say that by saving you, I actually saved the world?” she said cheekily.

Schofield returned her smile. “I think you could say that.” And they laughed, for the first time in any of their meetings.

Ulacco stood. “Your time’s up, Captain. And you have an appointment with the President to keep.”

Schofield stood and nodded seriously. “Thanks, Doc. Thank you for all your help. Oh, there’s just one more thing.”