the fact was he needed them to perform this mission. He had to send the best. And they were the best. By a wide margin.
He put his face in his hands. His stomach was full of cold dread. His skin was wet with sweat. He felt nauseated. He felt…dead.
Am I suicidal? Has it come to this? Am I really losing it?
The DCI needed to be at the top of his game. Right this very minute.
He rocked back and forth with his head bracketed by his hands.
And then with a spark of clarity, his reason cleared. He lifted his face from his hands.
He had his answer. In fact, it had been staring him in the face the whole time.
Andrew Viola drove to a private airport to hop on agency wings on the way back to the Burner.
But he made one stop along the way. He had a phone call that he needed to make. And he didn’t trust his secure mobile phone to make it without someone listening in.
He stopped at a twenty-four-hour convenience store and stepped out of his car.
He didn’t go inside. He went to the single pay phone that was affixed to the exterior wall. He didn’t even know if it would work.
He dropped in his change and got a dial tone.
He punched in the number and the phone rang three times before it was answered.
Blue Man said, “Hello?”
Andrew Viola said in a low voice, “You need to hear something, but you didn’t hear it from me.”
“Is this about Robie and Reel?” asked Blue Man.
“Yes, it is,” replied Viola.
Viola said his piece and then took some questions from Blue Man, whose real name was Roger Walton. He was very high up at the agency, though not as high up as Amanda Marks and Evan Tucker.
He was also a friend and ally of Will Robie’s. And of Jessica Reel’s.
When Viola finished he hung up the pay phone and got back into his car.
Ironically, the old-fashioned pay phone might be the safest form of communication there was these days. NSA tended to focus more on mobile phone traffic and texts and emails. There were so few coin phones left that no one really bothered to monitor them anymore.
He started the engine and headed off. He would be back at the Burner in a few hours.
And maybe he had just realized that the world was not simply black and white, no matter how much he wanted it to be.
Chapter
19
SPITZER AND BITTERMAN WERE PLAYING tag team.
Seated across from them were Robie and Reel.
“Long time no see,” began Reel. “Lost the love?”
The two psychologists glanced at one another, looking a bit uneasy.
Spitzer said, “We don’t make our own appointments.”
Robie said, “I know, you follow orders like everybody else.”
“So why the double team today?” said Reel. She gave an anxious sideways glance at Robie. “I thought these sessions were supposed to be one-on-one.”
“They usually are,” replied Bitterman. “But not today. Does this make you uncomfortable?”
“No,” said Reel. “I love revealing my innermost thoughts on a public stage.”
Spitzer smiled. “It’s not the preferred way, Agent Reel, but it might actually be beneficial to you, and to Agent Robie.”
“I can’t possibly see how, but I’m not a shrink.” Reel sat back against the chair, her eyes half closed. “And at least while we’re in here no one is trying to kill us.”
Bitterman said, “You mean kill you when you’re in the field?”
Robie said, “No, she meant kill us as in while we’re here at the Burner.”
“It’s definitely not a walk in the park here,” noted Spitzer, as she doodled with her pen on the pad she held.
Reel said, “Oh, the training part we can handle. It’s the waterboarding in the middle of the night that gets me a little uptight. I like a full six hours of sleep uninterrupted by torture just like the next person.”
Spitzer and Bitterman both gazed at her openmouthed.
Bitterman said, “Are you saying that you were tortured? Here?”
“Don’t get your boxers in a wad, Doc,” said Reel. “It wasn’t the first time and I doubt it will be the last. It’s just usually not our own people that do it to us.”
Spitzer said, “But that’s illegal.”
“Yes, it is,” replied Robie. “But please don’t think of filing any paperwork on it.”
“Why?” asked Bitterman.
Robie stared at him. “You’re a bright guy. I think you can see the endgame on that one.”
Bitterman paled and glanced nervously at Spitzer, who kept her gaze squarely on Reel. Bitterman said, “Well, perhaps we should go ahead with our