The Persona Protocol - By Andy McDermott Page 0,131

us. When you flew in and scared off those Russian planes—’

‘That was absolutely awesome, brah!’ Kyle exclaimed. ‘Seriously, an unarmed seaplane taking on two Flankers? You are . . .’ He was briefly lost for words, settling for raising his right hand in a fist and making a bumping motion with it towards Adam’s chest. ‘The man!’

‘What he said. Only less Jersey Shore,’ Holly Jo added, peeved at being interrupted. ‘But that really was amazing. And you kept us from a diet of prison borscht and cabbage, so thanks!’

‘Anything you need, brah,’ said Kyle. ‘Any time.’

‘Thanks,’ said Adam. ‘But I was just doing my job.’

‘Speaking of jobs . . .’ said the amused Tony.

‘Yes, I guess we’d better get back to the Bullpen,’ Holly Jo said. ‘But I just wanted to say—’

‘We just wanted to say,’ Kyle cut in.

‘All right, God! We just wanted to tell you how we felt. Thank you.’ The pair headed down the corridor. ‘You are such a child,’ she snapped at Kyle.

‘What? What’d I do?’ he replied, bemused.

‘Looks like you’ve got a fan club,’ Bianca told Adam with a smile.

‘It’s better than the opposite, I suppose.’ He watched Holly Jo and Kyle go, then turned back towards the lab. ‘Okay. Let’s get this over with.’

‘Bianca.’ The word drifted in through a languid fog. ‘Bianca?’

Bianca jerked awake as something touched her arm. She looked round in startled confusion before awareness fully coalesced, finding herself on a couch in one of STS’s soundproofed debriefing rooms. Tony stood over her, a cardboard cup in each hand. ‘Oh! Tony, hi. What . . . how long was I asleep?’

‘I’m not sure – I dozed off for a while myself,’ he admitted with a smile. ‘Here.’

He passed her a cup of coffee. Bianca looked at her watch. It was approaching six in the morning. ‘Where’s Adam?’

‘In the Cube. Asleep.’

‘I’m not surprised after all that.’ She waved a hand at the battery of recording equipment. The interrogation had gone on for over fourteen hours before its participants finally succumbed to exhaustion.

‘You sat through most of it with him. You didn’t have to – I said you could have gone back to your hotel as soon as the transfer was complete. Hell, Kiddrick left the second he’d packed up the PERSONA gear.’

‘I wanted to make sure Adam was okay.’ She sipped the coffee.

‘Not good?’ Tony asked, seeing her grimace.

‘It’s vending machine coffee – is it ever?’ They both grinned. ‘Thanks, though. I needed it, whatever it tastes like. God, I can’t believe I actually fell asleep while you were questioning Adam.’

‘You were very tired,’ he pointed out. ‘You’ve been through a lot in the past couple of days, so I can’t blame you for taking a nap. I just hope that when they play back the tapes, they can filter out your snoring.’

‘I don’t snore,’ she protested, before realising that he was teasing.

Another grin. ‘You do drool, though.’

‘I do not!’ she cried, putting a hand to the side of her mouth – and finding it damp. ‘Oh. Apparently I do. Ugh.’

He chuckled, then sipped his coffee. ‘It’s kind of cute, so don’t worry about it. Anyway, I wanted to say thank you.’

‘For what?’

‘For everything you’ve done. However the mission turned out, the fact remains that we did stop al-Qaeda from getting hold of nuclear materials. And we still got a lot of actionable intel from al-Rais’s persona.’

‘You didn’t get the man himself, though.’

‘We will. Next time.’

‘If there is a next time. The way Harper was carrying on, it sounded like he wanted everyone at STS court-martialled, or whatever it is you do.’

‘We’ll see. But you . . . you’ve got absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. You should be proud, in fact. We asked you to do things that were way beyond what you expected – what we expected – and you came through amazingly.’

She blushed, even as she basked in the compliment. ‘Thanks. Although I really would have preferred not to be shot at.’ Her mood dampened as she remembered that others in the team had also been fired upon – and not all had escaped unharmed. ‘God. We could all have been killed. We nearly were.’

Tony crouched in front of her, putting a hand on her arm. ‘Hey. The main thing is that it’s over. And you . . . you did great.’

‘Thank you,’ she said quietly.

They were both silent for a long moment, looking into each other’s eyes. Tony was the first to break the spell. ‘So. You should