The Tower

Chapter 60

The room was dark, as always. Once again, Travers sat in the gloom, across the desk from Wotan. She held a thick folder in her lap.

She inhaled deeply and continued. "Well, sir, that just about covers it."

"Very well," Wotan said softly.

"We've placed Marlow's money in an account that he can claim when he gets out of the hospital." Travers cleared her throat. "Although we're not really sure when he'll get out, sir. I put in an order to cover his full medical expenses."

"Very well."

"He did…" Travers tilted her head back a little, biting her bottom lip. "He did a good job, sir."

Wotan nodded once, running his fingertips over the dry socket of his eye. "Put the file to rest," he said, turning his attention back to some papers on his desk. A long silence ensued as Travers watched him work.

"I didn't understand it before, sir. Your faith in him. Marlow. How did you know?"

The room was quiet for so long that she began to wonder if Wotan was going to respond. Just as she was rising to leave, he looked up from his desk. He picked the bullet slug from the ashtray and held it up in the dim light.

"Do you know what this is, Agent Travers?"

She shook her head.

"It's a slug. Early in my marriage, when my wife was still alive, my girl was kidnapped. She was my… our only child. Four years old. She had just learned to ride a bicycle with training wheels alone to the end of the street." He spoke with no emotion at all, as if reciting a memorized passage.

"Marlow was a young agent at the time, fresh out of Quantico. It was his first kidnapping case. He pursued her kidnapper with such determination and vengeance that I could have sworn the burden was his instead of mine."

Travers listened tensely. "And he saved her, sir?"

"When he found her kidnapper, my child had already been raped and killed." Wotan stared directly into Travers's eyes, refusing to flinch.

Travers finally looked away.

"When they meet the devil, they always bring something back," Wotan said. "Marlow brought this back to me." He held the slug between his thumb and forefinger and then gripped it tightly in his fist. He looked back down at the papers on his desk. "Do you think we'll be seeing him again, Agent Travers?"

Travers looked down at her hands, in her lap. "I hope so, sir. I hope so," she said, then stood and walked to the back wall. She twirled the combination lock through a series of numbers, then used a key that she'd removed from her pocket. She swung the metal door open and rolled out a tray with raised edges. It protruded into the room like a small morgue slab. Laying the file carefully inside, she tapped it once with an open hand and then slid the vault shut, slamming the door.

She walked across the room to turn the large metal wheel of the exit door, and left without saying a word.

Wotan sat alone, the darkness settling around him like a cloak. In the dark, he cracked the knuckles of his right hand with his thumb. They snapped loudly, the sound echoing off the hard walls. He made a fist with his thumb inside and tightened it, cracking the joint. He repeated the same ritual with his left hand. Then he stood and walked to the door.

The light cast from the small fixtures in the room did not touch him. He did not maneuver to miss the light, but it seemed the shadows came to meet him, laying themselves over his body and across his path. He turned the wheel and the lock disengaged with a click.

He stepped out into the corridor, and just before the thick metal door closed behind him, his hand crept back through the small gap into the empty room. It groped on the wall for a moment, then found what it was looking for. He flicked the wall switch and the room was flooded with light.