The Passage - By Justin Cronin Page 0,54

a right to be steamed. Garbage bins, for Christsakes. The sentries were supposed to inspect everything coming in or out, but they were just kids, really, ordinary enlisted. They acted like they were still in high school because that’s pretty much all they knew. You had to keep riding them, and Richards had let things slide.

“I’ve spoken to the OD. It’s not a conversation he’s going to forget.”

“You wouldn’t by any chance want to tell me what happened to those guys?”

Richards had nothing to say about that. Sykes needed him, but there was no way he’d ever bring himself to like him or, for that matter, approve of him.

Sykes stood and stepped past Richards to the monitors. He adjusted the gain and zoomed in on the one showing Zero.

“They used to be friends, you know,” he said. “Lear and Fanning.”

Richards nodded. “So I’ve heard.”

“Yeah. Well.” Sykes took in a deep breath, his eyes still locked on Zero. “Hell of a way to treat your friends.”

Sykes turned to point his eyes at Richards, still sitting at his terminal. Sykes looked like he hadn’t shaved in a couple of days, and his eyes, squinting in the fluorescent light, were cloudy. He appeared, for a moment, like a man who had forgotten where he was.

“What about us?” he asked Richards. “Are we friends?”

Now, that was a new one on Richards. Sykes’s dreams had to be worse than he’d thought. Friends! Who cared?

“Sure,” Richards said, and allowed himself a smile. “We’re friends.”

Sykes regarded him for another moment. “On second thought,” he said, “maybe that’s not such a hot idea.” He waved the idea away. “Thanks anyway.”

Richards knew what was bothering Sykes: the girl. Sykes had a couple kids of his own—two grown boys, both West Point like the old man, one at the Pentagon doing something with intelligence, another with a desert tank unit stationed in Saud—and Richards thought maybe there were grandkids somewhere in the mix, too; Sykes had probably mentioned this in passing, but it wasn’t the sort of thing they usually talked about. Either way, this thing with the girl wasn’t going to sit well with him. Truthfully, Richards didn’t really give a damn what Lear wanted, one way or the other.

“You really should get some shut-eye,” Richards said. “We’ve got intake in”—he checked his watch—“three hours.”

“Might as well just stay up.” Sykes moved to the door, where he turned and gave his weary gaze to Richards again. “Just between us, and if you don’t mind my asking, how’d you get him here so fast?”

“It wasn’t hard.” Richards shrugged. “I got him on a troop transport out of Waco. Bunch of reservists, but it counts as a federal corridor. They landed in Denver a little after midnight.”

Sykes furrowed his brow. “Federal corridor or not, it’s too quick. Any idea what the rush is all about?”

Richards couldn’t say for sure; the order had come from the liason at Special Weapons. But if he had to guess, he would have bet it had something to do with the sweaty cot and soup-encrusted hot plate and a year without sunshine or fresh air, with the bad dreams and the Red Roof and all the rest of it. Hell, if you looked at the situation carefully—something he’d long since stopped bothering to do—it probably all went back to the bookishly pretty Elizabeth Macomb Lear, long battle with cancer, et cetera, et cetera.

“I called in a favor and had the purge done from Langley. Systemwide, soup to nuts. From a big-box perspective, Carter is already nobody. He couldn’t buy a pack of gum.”

Sykes frowned. “Nobody’s nobody. There’s always someone who’s interested.”

“Maybe so. But this guy comes close.”

Sykes lingered another moment at the doorway, saying nothing, both of them knowing what the silence was about. “Well,” he concluded, “I still don’t like it. We have a protocol for a reason. Three prisons, thirty days, then we bring him in.”

“Is that an order?” A joke; Sykes couldn’t give him an order, not really. That he could was a pretense Richards only indulged.

“No, forget it,” Sykes said, and yawned into the back of his hand. “What would we do, return him?” He rapped the side of the door with his hand. “Call me when the van gets here. I’ll be upstairs, not sleeping.”

Funny thing: when Sykes was gone, Richards found himself wishing he’d hung around. Maybe they were friends, in a sense. Richards had been on bad jobs before; he knew there was a moment when the tone changed,