“A shame. I’ll replace what I can, but it will take me weeks to make a full set for you.”
I gave him a pat on the back, ready to find a temp office and catch up on my sleep. Instead, the overhead intercom cut in. “Brynner Carson, please report to Medical.”
I swore. “I don’t have time for this.”
Lavel laughed. “Heard that from field operatives more times than I can count. How long has it been since your last med eval?” “Longer than my last refit.”
“Med’s on the fourth floor. You’ll get a lollipop and a Band-Aid.” As I left, he chuckled to himself.
I found my way through the halls up to Medical. An Indian nurse there met me at the door, her hair tucked back in a headband, her accent faintly English. “Mr. Carson, my name is Saiay Sanjay. I’ll be performing your tests this morning. Right this way.” “I don’t need this. I had an X-ray just the other day. Ouch—” She pinned my arm down, drawing blood from it without so much as a warning. “Well, we’ll take our own, just be sure.
And we’ll check white blood count, cholesterol”—she eyed me with a knowing look—“diseases.”
“I’m clean.”
“I’m sure all the ladies in the city will rest easier when the test results come back.” She drew out the needle and stuck a bandage, yellow with hearts on it, on my arm.
From there I suffered the usual indignities. X-rays. Dental checkup, blood pressure, which was definitely higher than normal. After three hours, she finally came back in. “I have good news, Mr. Carson. All your tests that should be positive are positive. All of the others are negative.”
“So I can go?”
“After your appointment, yes.”
I quashed the annoyance, turning it into desire, or as close to it as I could come. “What do you say you interview me? We could go grab some food. I’d be happy to answer any question you have. I bet you work long hours. What do you say we go give each other a checkup?”
She giggled. “You are so funny. They don’t say that about you. Dashing, yes. Charm, well, I can tell that’s no exaggeration.
But your sense of humor. Dr. Nagashindra will see you now.”
She pointed down the hall.
I walked past the rows of exam rooms, to a large office. The nameplate read “Chandresh Nagishindra.” Below it, the words “Doctor of Psychiatry.”
And I was done. I spun on my heel . . . to find the hallway blocked. Sanjay stood there, hands on her hips.
Behind me, a deep voice boomed in an Indian accent, “Mr.
Carson, this is the right office.”
From the dimly lit room emerged a short Indian man, with wispy black hair where he wasn’t bald. He offered a firm hand and nearly dragged me into his lair. Four hours of sleep I could have had, four hours.
He started with easy questions, meant to make me smile.
Make me relax. What was my last assignment? What about the one before? What about Athena? What about Irena? It didn’t matter what I said, he must have written several pages for every answer.
I could have said “Orange” and he’d have turned it into War and Peace. Worse yet, I couldn’t sense a pattern to his questions.
A driving desire, or goal. Dad always said to ask, so I did. “What exactly are we doing here? When did the third degree become standard operating procedure?” I didn’t mean to let the hostility inside creep so far into my voice.
After scrawling another phone book, he clicked his pen closed. “Two years ago. Three years after your last mandatory yearly interview.”
“So you haul every field op in here once a year and drag them through this? No truth serum? No waterboarding?” He switched to a fresh pad and wasted another tree. “No. I’m concerned about you, Brynner. The Greek embassy mentioned demands for absolute silence in your hotel rooms. Your vital monitor reports that you haven’t been sleeping more than fortyfive minutes at a time. You are showing classic signs of severe burnout, mental and physical exhaustion, and possible posttraumatic stress disorder.”
I willed my fingers to stop running along the blade sheaths on my belt. “I do a damn good job.”
“You are more than a piece of equipment, a machine with a function. Mr. Carson, how are you?”
“Fine.” I offered my only answer. Ever.
He scribbled again, surprisingly short. “And if you could not answer ‘fine’? If your ability to continue this work rested on delivering an honest, complete