Scatter, p.27
Scatter, page 27
“Then it’s pretty fucking secret and not being done in any of the psych labs I’ve seen, okay?” Jude jumped up with his phone but kept it in front of his face. He was sweating heavily and going almost purple. “And for you to… It’s like you’re accusing me of… Like, why did you even call me?”
I watched him, concerned. He was almost panting now, his chest heaving, and I worried that he was about to have a heart attack. “Jude,” I said calmly. “I’m the one with anxiety and panic attacks. You’re the chill one. So chill, okay. You’re scaring me.”
He blinked and wiped something from his mouth. “I’m scaring you.” He suddenly saw the humor in it and his mouth cracked a smile. In a few seconds, he was laughing so hard that tears were streaming down his cheeks.
When he finished, I said, “I wondered if it maybe was started by the CIA, then split off, but Poussaint went after me. When I wouldn’t tell him how I knew about SCATTER, he threatened to take me to the basement of your workplace and interrogate me there.”
Jude looked thoroughly confused. “When? During your interview here? He come in a secret back way or something because—”
“Must have walked right by you when you were waiting,” I said, because it was true. Sort of. “I don’t know what you were doing. I think the fact I managed to just leave pissed him off. I think he ordered some of his people to toss my apartment and workplace. They stole all my computers. Did you know that?”
“Oh shit, dude.” Jude looked honestly stricken. My gut and years of knowing him told me he honestly knew nothing about Poussaint’s association with SCATTER, ergo Jude knew nothing about SCATTER, or at least not enough to know who was leading it and what they were doing.
It was all I needed to know.
“I need your help,” I said.
“Okay.” Jude’s attention snapped back to me. “Name it. You got it.”
“In a few days, I think I’m going to be coming to Langley or someplace close to it to meet someone from SCATTER and negotiate the release of Kenny and Kansas. But I don’t trust they’re going to negotiate in good faith. And if they just take me, like they took Kenny and Kansas…”
I couldn’t even finish that thought. Because the more I’d learned about SCATTER, the more it seemed to represent the worst fear of where my time travel power could take me. If SCATTER controlled me, they wouldn’t just want to traumatize me over and over and over to make me jump. No, they’d be doing it a thousand different ways and using the results to kill people and reshape the world order.
Hurt me and pervert me.
I’d always thought of myself as stronger than Kenny, but now I knew that, for all his drug use and mental illness, the way he’d survived Cutter and SCATTER enough to tap me Wenling’s name? He was the strong one.
As was Kansas, I was sure.
I was the weak link in the Traine line. If SCATTER got me, I’d lose my mind.
Jude interrupted my mental spiral with, “You want me to provide backup? I know a few serious badass operatives here who’ve come to me for counseling the last few years.”
“No! I don’t know who you can trust in the CIA and I don’t want to tip anyone off. But just having you nearby to pick me up if I come running… Something like that.”
I saw Jude swallow. Being a getaway driver wasn’t exactly something he was born to do. Which made his determined nod all the more heartwarming. It was good to have at least one person outside of my siblings I knew I could count on when the chips were down. You just needed people like that on your side. Necessary allies.
“Thank you,” I told him. “I’ll call again when I know more.”
With that, I hung up.
Colonel Jian was staring at me. “I am a better driver.”
I nodded. “But you’ll be taking care of Zhou Wenling, won’t you? What I’m going to ask of you is just some help separating from her if I need to. Even if she doesn’t want me to.”
He considered this and finally gave a grave nod. Then said, “You think you know what she wants. You do not. You think you know what you want. You do not. Without those, how can you know what you are willing or able to do?”
I stared at him with my brow furrowed. “Does that mean you’re going to help me or not?”
He nodded toward the plate in front of me. “Eat. Tell me what you think.”
I did. Best damn Egg Foo Yung I’d ever tasted.
29
We can’t lose you
Wenling invited me to join her for dinner when I got back, and when I hesitated, she promised to tell me the plan she’d just worked out with her group if I sat and ate.
The meal, a simple braised tilapia with a sweet ginger-soy sauce on a bed of jasmine rice with lightly steamed cauliflower on the side, was good, but the discussion of our upcoming penetration of the enemy’s ranks, was…disappointing.
“You are to be used as a threat,” she said. “Which means we keep you in reserve, safe and out of sight.”
“The enemy you don’t see coming?”
“The knife you should never need to use. It is most powerful in its sheath, where your enemy can only imagine how sharply it cuts.”
“You get that from Colonel Jian?” I knew it sure as hell wasn’t from The Art of War.
Wenling shook her head. “I take these from my own experience.”
“Literally?”
“After I began spreading stories of my knives castrating rapists while they slept, the men I spent time with treated me more carefully. The principle works in business as well.”
“Hunh.” I let that sit for a moment, then pressed for more. “Does that mean I won’t be coming with you at all, then? I’ll be staying here?”
Wenling rolled her eyes. “One must be ready to show the knife. Safely.”
I thought of Andre Poussaint, his buzz-cut blond bodyguard Kevin, and even the two CIA Human Resources & Talent Acquisition team of Wilson and Dadashev. All four were killers. “Exactly how do you plan to do that?”
“It will depend on the setting, the people, the timing.”
“So, I may not have to actually be in the room.”
“Do you want to rescue your brother and sister?”
“Of course. That doesn’t—”
“Why are you being so afraid? We will do what needs to be done.”
Hurt me and pervert me.
It was starting up again, wasn’t it? If I just rolled along this way, I’d be back to where I was last March, being tortured and jumping back to do it over and over again. Like Xiaobo must have felt when he’d become a prediction machine for his sister, now a tool of SCATTER. Like this gift inevitably made you a tool for someone else.
A powerful tool, though.
One I still had control over.
SCATTER wanted my power to control the world. Wenling wanted it as leverage against SCATTER. I guessed maybe I could use it as not only Wenling’s ace-in-the-hole, but my own.
What do you want?
To…play my game, not theirs?
It would do for now.
“Yes,” I said. “We do what needs to be done.”
That night I begged off sex, pleading anxiety. Which was true since I always had anxiety, but not the true reason for begging off sex. The truth was, I was afraid my feelings for Wenling were clouding my judgement. Sex with her didn’t help.
I took a long shower alone and forced myself to consider Wenling from a clinical perspective.
First, the way she’d survived her childhood had been to accept older men raping her and beating her while she learned to be what they wanted her to be, whether that was submissive or terrifying. It had given her an impressive force of will and a chameleon’s sense of her environment. She could read the room, be the room, do what was needed for the room to go where she wanted it to.
Second, she might have wanted a white knight and love as a child, but what she’d accepted and adopted were glycerin tears. Use as needed.
Third, she’d groomed herself to physical perfection. She’d clearly practiced sex to become good at it, and she used it like a narcissist to engender obsession, devotion, and admiration, or at least cooperation.
Fourth, she showed no true shame, remorse, love, or attachment.
Except toward her brother? Perhaps.
Toward me? Maybe.
Yet even as I went over all the things she’d done to make this man, Jackson Traine, fall in love with her, the only one that looked unscripted was her muttering, I like you, in Chinese, unprompted and never translated or explained.
Except I had managed to translate it. Because I heard it, didn’t forget the sounds, and had access to the internet. Wenling knew about my memory. I’d described in our walk by the river. It had been that night we had sex and she muttered, Wǒ xǐhuan nǐ, the Mandarin of I like you.
Was this reaching? Maybe. But it felt right. Just as it felt right for me not to have seen all of this behavior pattern earlier. My clinical experience with what the DSM V labeled psychopaths was limited, while the feeling of being heard, understood, and incredibly validated, the psychopath’s stock in trade, was intoxicating.
I shut off the shower and began toweling myself off.
What actions did this analysis demand?
We were still heading for a negotiation with SCATTER, which was my best bet to locate and possibly rescue Kenny and Kansas. And Wenling seemed as invested as I was in making it happen. For her own reasons perhaps. Or mixed reasons. A part of me still believed she felt something for me.
If it all went sideways? Well, that’s why I had Jude and Colonel Jian as backup.
I finally just threw the towel in the sink and went to bed with my tired brain turning those thoughts over and over and over, until sleep finally rose and pulled me under.
I jolted awake in pain. Some animal had just bitten my belly!
When my eyes adjusted, I saw it was worse than that.
Sitting on the edge of my bed was a very old man with a large, drooping nose and rheumy looking eyes behind thick glasses. He was staring at my belly where his left, blue-gloved hand held back the pushed-up clump of my tee-shirt so he could examine the “bite” he’d given me just below my belly button. The teeth, I saw as he raised his raised right hand, had been a wicked looking syringe with a needle that looked thick enough to administer a shot of semen up a cow’s behind.
Behind him, an interested Wenling stood watching.
“What did you do?” I said to her, not the man with the syringe. He was only another tool.
“We implanted a transmitter,” she said. “It’s very small and inserted close enough to your intestines that a casual x-ray might assume it’s something you swallowed. It remains in a dormant state nine of every ten hours, during which it’s virtually undetectable. Isn’t that right, doctor?”
The rheumy-eyed man looked up from my belly and back and forth like he was trying to figure out where the voice had come from. He finally saw Wenling and said, “Yes, yes. Won’t set anything off.”
Wenling gave me a reassuring smile. “Safety measures, Jackson. We don’t want to accidentally lose you. This way we cannot.”
I took note of exactly where the transmitter had gone in, so I’d know where to direct whomever I got to dig it out of me. Then I gave both the old man and Wenling a strained smile and said, “I want to sleep.”
The two of them left the room.
30
Seduced into danger
48 hours after her initial call with Arrogant Prick, Wenling made contact again. Without telling me.
She came to me afterward in the room she’d set up as a home gym. I’d gone for a morning run and been alternately lifting weights and kicking the freestanding heavy bag to bring back my feelings of bodily control that I’d had when training with Lead the Way in the hopes it would help me get my anxiety under control. It was working.
Sort of.
I was chambering a roundhouse kick when Wenling appeared in the doorway and the surprise made me hop backward, almost stumbling. We’d been operating like two strangers in the house since last night’s dinner when my therapist self had concluded she showed strong psychopathic traits. The tracer they’d injected into me had confirmed it.
Now she stood in a skintight pink pantsuit with the front zipper pulled down well below her nipple line, her hair pulled back in a curled ponytail, her makeup emphasizing her eyes and lips. She looked elegant and damn hot. My body, all pumped up from working out, responded, and I had to hunch forward to hide my erection. I grabbed my workout towel and wiped my forehead sweat in annoyance.
“The Capitol, Washington, DC,” she said.
“What about it?”
“It’s where we’re meeting SCATTER.”
“In the Capitol building.” I shook my head, now annoyed by both by my erection and by her trolling me.
She persisted. “There’s at least one senator who’s a supporter of the program. We’ll be using his office.”
“I thought you said the Capitol. The senators have offices in three different buildings—the Dirkson, the Hart, and the Russell—all northeast of the Capitol.” I had no idea where I’d read that. Maybe when I’d been researching the CIA.
“Each senator also has a hideaway in the Capitol building where they can go in between votes,” Wenling said, visibly pleased she could provide me with general knowledge that I somehow hadn’t accumulated. “They entertain constituents there. Sometimes lovers.”
“Which category do you fall into?” I was careful to keep my voice dry.
“’We,’” she said. “You will be coming with me.”
That finally doused my erection so thoroughly I had no trouble rearing up fully to look at her in shock. “Doesn’t that…um…?”
“Put you in danger? Yes, it does. But the security protocols inside the Capitol forbid weapons and everyone in or out is carefully tracked. They won’t try to kill or abduct you there.”
“And you think it’s a good idea to let them see my face?”
“They destroyed your office and home after you foolishly visited the CIA Headquarters. They identified you by name on our phone call. Do you think they don’t know what you look like?”
I wrapped my workout towel around my neck like it could protect me. “But they don’t know where I am right now. That was part of why I came out here, wasn’t it?”
“I need you with me. If things go badly, I need an immediate fall back.”
I snorted. “You mean a jump back in time. You’ve seen what’s involved with that. I can’t just—”
“If things go badly,” she cut me off, “you’ll have sufficient motivation.”
I met her look and understood in that instant just how uncertain even Wenling was about this meeting, but also how determined. Whatever her reasons, she was going in, and wanted me there to manage the risk.
Fine. I wanted to confront the Arrogant Prick anyway. He was holding my sibs.
“I’ll wear my body armor,” I said.
“Of course.”
“And my gun.”
“Firearms aren’t permitted in the Capitol.”
“Except by the Capitol Police?”
“We leave tomorrow morning. Early. Private jet.”
“Okay.” I turned from her like I wanted to continue my workout.
“You look good.” Her voice came from right behind me.
“Hunh?” I turned to see I was right. Wenling hadn’t left. She’d moved in closer, less than a foot away.
“Sweaty. Pumped up. I like you like this. Do you want to come up to my room and fuck? It may be the last time…for a while.”
I noted the way she’d paused before the last two words. And whether it was that or the obvious lust in her eyes, and the fact I could now see the bumps of her nipples poking through the pink fabric of her jumpsuit, my erection had sprung painfully back to life in my shorts.
She’d worn that outfit for me, I thought. It was what a psychopath would do. The question I needed to answer was how sane it would be to indulge in her manipulation, pretending it wasn’t going to hurt me in the long run.
“Well?” she said, shifting her hips enough to draw my eyes down there. There was no panty line.
“Let’s save it,” I said.
“Your loss.”
When she turned and walked from the room, the twitch and jiggle she put into her booty almost undid me.
The next morning, both of us dressed casually, we drove out with our suit and overnight bags to a small airstrip just south of Spokane that hosted our rented jet.
It reminded me of the limousine Colonel Jian maintained and drove. Once inside, mask removed, I saw the airplane cabin was much bigger, of course, like a plush living room that could seat ten or twelve people comfortably in the leather armchairs or couches, with tables, fine carpets, food and drink, Wi-Fi, and a large screen at either end of the space for entertainment and information.
I was reassured when Colonel Jian, in his dark chauffeur’s suit, followed us quietly onboard and took a seat at the far end of the cabin, sitting stonily as if determined to blend into the décor. No matter how much I willed it, he would not meet my gaze. It totally flipped my reassurance as I wondered whether he’d told Wenling about my visit with him, my conversation with Jude.
I’d told Jude where our meeting was going to be and he’d agreed to be in DC today. I hoped I hadn’t led him into danger.
Wenling smirked at my discomfiture. “Fang Jian will be driving us when we land in Dulles.”
I’d assumed that much. I looked at her for a sign she knew more. Saw nothing.
That was good, right?
During the four-and-a-half-hour flight, Wenling made me watch Mr. Smith Goes to Washington with her and discuss how closely I thought the old movie echoed the way the US Senate operated today, and whether I thought I would ever have had the courage of Jimmy Stuart’s character if I hadn’t had PTSD and social anxiety.
That and the reheated pasta-chicken we ate for lunch left me vaguely nauseous by the time we landed. The jet taxied directly into a small hangar in a side track off the northeast end of the main runways. We climbed out with our overnight bags and walked maybe twenty steps to stow our bags in the trunk of a waiting limousine. Colonel Jian climbed into the front driver’s seat while Wenling and I climbed into the back.
