How Spy I Am (41 page)

I leaned my forehead
against the steering wheel and forced myself to take slow, deep
breaths.

If I didn’t do this,
Kane could die. Sam could die. Our national security could be
compromised. All of those things were more important than my
squeamishness.

Time to harden my
heart. Robert had lied to me. Betrayed national security. Possibly
tried to blow up Kane, me, or both of us, killing an innocent man
in the process.

I swung out of the
driver’s seat and marched around to the back of the truck.

When I climbed into
the box, the tarp-wrapped legs pistoned out, narrowly missing my
ankle and making me smash my head painfully against the inside of
the topper when I dodged.

Ruthless. Be
ruthless.

I dealt him a
not-too-vicious kick. “Cut it out, or I’ll soften you up a bit
first. I just want to talk.”

Duct-tape-muffled
mumbling emanated from the tarp, but I ignored it.

Kane had once said
effective torture was mostly psychological.

I dragged my toolbox
over, deliberately letting it rattle over the uneven bed of the
truck box.

I laid out my stage,
letting the tools clank ominously against the steel floor. Pliers.
Bolt cutters. A hacksaw. My trembling hands amplified the
clatter.

Finally, I knelt for a
few minutes in silence. Let him wonder. And please, God, let me be
able to breathe. I sucked a shallow breath into my constricted
lungs, trying to be quiet about it. Then another, my rigid muscles
responding reluctantly.

Come on, stop shaking.
Don’t let him see how scared you are.

I took as deep a
breath as I could manage and flipped the tarp away from his
face.

I froze, completely
unprepared for the rage in the duct-taped face. Hell, completely
unprepared for the face.

I toppled back onto my
butt and sat staring at him.

At last, my voice
emerged as a faint croak. “What the fuck?”

Kasper mumbled
furiously, his face reddening behind the tape.

How the hell…? I
hadn’t even smelled him. In fact…

My mind reeled as I
inhaled cautiously. I still couldn’t smell him. No, wait, I could.
A hint of spicy cologne. And his hair and clothes were clean.

After another moment
of stupefaction, I leaned over and ripped the tape off.

“OW! You idiot! You
stupid, incompetent, blundering… moron! What the hell were you
thinking, you… you…”

My hand flashed out in
adrenaline-driven reaction before I even thought. The force of the
slap rocked his head back, and my voice was a harsh growl. “Shut
up!”

Contrition squeezed my
gut an instant later, but I hid it as best I could. “What the hell
were you doing in the park?”

Kasper’s tongue
flicked against the small bleeding gash that had opened in his lip.
“Waiting for Robert, stupid, what do you think?”

“He contacted
you?”

“Yes, of course. Untie
me.”

“I… uh…”

I slowly gathered my
wits. Okay, maybe this wasn’t a total loss. In fact, this might
even be better than capturing Robert. Kasper didn’t know me nearly
as well as Robert did.

“Um. Not right away.
Let’s talk.”

“We can
talk
when I’m untied,” he said with exaggerated patience. “Let me
go.”

“No, I don’t think
so.” I tried not to let his outraged expression faze me. “I want to
make sure I get all the answers I need this time.”

“I’m not telling you
anything more.” He shot a contemptuous glance at my shaking hands.
“Untie me. Try not to be even more pathetically stupid than you
already are.”

Hot anger restored my
strength and I jerked forward, my fingers clenching around his face
to grind into his cheeks. “You’re going to tell me everything,” I
snarled. “Or you’re going to be very, very sorry.”

Kasper jerked back out
of my grip, his sneer wavering into uncertainty. “You won’t do
anything to me.”

“You don’t want to bet
on that.” I brandished the pliers close to his face. “You have no
idea how desperate I am.”

His usual disdainful
expression reappeared. “You can skip the melodrama. We’re on the
same side here. What do you want to know?”

I wished I could
remember his exact words in Blue Eddy’s. Had he mentioned the
Knights or not? I decided to take a chance.

“Who are the Knights
of Sirius?”

He eyed me in silence,
the flashlight casting long shadows around us. The wind rattled the
latch of the box topper and I suppressed a nervous twitch.

“Remember, we’re on
the same side here,” I prompted.

“You said Robert
briefed you. You should already know,” he said finally.

“I want your
version.”

“He didn’t tell you,
did he?” Kasper’s face settled into stubbornness. “If he wants you
to know, he’ll tell you.”

“I don’t give a shit
what he wants! Talk!”

Kasper pressed his
lips into a thin line, and the last of my frayed patience
unravelled.

Two innocent people
dead. Betty lying still and silent in the hospital. Kane injured
and nearly killed. Some homicidal nutcase still trying to blow me
up. And Kasper wasn’t going to tell me what he knew. The rage
swelled into a white-hot mushroom cloud.

I lunged, slamming him
onto his back to crush a knee into his chest, yanking his head back
by his hair. Pliers poised a half-inch from his mouth, I gave his
hair a jerk for emphasis. “Now. Everything. Or I start playing
dentist.” My voice boiled from my throat, and he went rigid under
me.

I glared into his
eyes. “And when I’m finished playing dentist, I’m going to start
playing mechanic. And then surgeon.”

“You’re bluffing.” His
hoarse whisper didn’t sound convinced. “You won’t torture me.”

He flinched when I
rocked forward to grind my knee harder into his chest, and I spoke
very softly. “Trust me, I’ll do whatever I have to do.”

His eyes darted
sideways. “If I tell you, I’m as good as dead.”

“If you don’t tell me,
you’ll be praying you were dead.”

Oh God, I can’t do
this.

I hid my wave of
nausea in a snarl. “Fuck this. I’m done playing nice.” I yanked his
head back and leaned in, clenching my shaking fist on the
pliers.

“All right!” His yelp
nearly made me melt with relief.

I got off him and
propped myself against the side of the truck box before he could
feel my trembling. “Give.”

“They don’t know I
know about them.”

“And if you cooperate,
they won’t hear it from me.”

His gaze searched my
face for a moment. “There were originally eight Knights and eight
mages. Two pairs are dead.” He paused, then shrugged. “Cartwright
makes three Knights dead.”

“Who are the
rest?”

“Terry Sherman with
Plum Blossom in China. Don Rousseau with Lilac in France.
Martin-”

“Hang on.” I fumbled
in my waist pouch for a pen and paper. My writing was barely
legible, and I tried to still my trembling hand enough to scribble
the names. “Okay.”

“Martin Brewster with
Rose in the U.K. Frank Plissol with Cherry Blossom in Japan.”
Kasper fixed me with an ironic eye. “Sam Kraus with Tiger Lily in
Canada.”

Sudden comprehension
flooded me, and I held my voice steady. “And what flower was
Irina?”

His voice was a
whisper. “Irina was my Sunflower.”

“You were her
Knight?”

Kasper’s face twisted.
“No! Never! Those filthy traitors! Ivan Rimmel was her Knight. That
bastard. I shot him like the dog he was.”

Gulp.

I kept my tone
noncommittal. “Why?”

He glared at me, but
his eyes were looking into the past. “He was driving her. Always
driving her. She was fading away. My beautiful Sunflower. Then the
first symptoms started. At first I thought it was just stress. She
was under so much pressure. She started doing more and more odd
things to escape surveillance. She swore she was being constantly
watched.”

He returned his
attention to me with a bitter smile. “She was, of course. It was
Russia. We all were. So I didn’t understand until she started
telling me about the voices in her head. The strange power that
forced her to do things against her will. Shortly afterward, she
was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He drove her to it. Always
demanding. Always pushing. He drove her to madness and she took her
own life.”

The bottom dropped out
of my stomach. “But it wasn’t schizophrenia, it was the Knights.
The Knights are the ghosts. They take control in the network.”

“I discovered that
later. From Rimmel.” His voice was a venomous hiss.

“But why? What are
they trying to do?”

“They’re traitors,” he
spat. “They get government funding for the brainwave driven virtual
network, and all the while they’re selling out that same government
for the noble cause of world peace. Sharing information, they call
it. So what if they managed to settle the Cuban Missile Crisis
peacefully? So what if they brought about Glasnost? Those things
would have happened eventually anyway. And they destroyed lives in
the process. Two mages dead. One as good as dead. Four more
teetering on the edge of insanity. You…”

He appraised me,
frowning. “You’re different. Maybe it’s because you weren’t under
mind control initially.”

“That would make
sense. If I’d never gone in on my own, I wouldn’t have known there
was anything weird happening when they tried to control me.” I
pondered for a few moments. “But how did they get into China and
Russia and those places to start with? Those countries weren’t
exactly welcoming tourists back then.”

His lips twisted
cynically. “Offer up a bit of cutting-edge technology and just see
how quickly you get welcomed. And while the official purpose for
virtual reality sims is research and development, they also
facilitate, let’s just say…
intensive
interrogation without
leaving behind any physical evidence to embarrass a government or
law-enforcement agency. I’m sure you recall how effective it
is.”

I recalled. My throat
tightened and it took every ounce of my will to prevent my arms
from wrapping protectively around my body.

I changed the subject.
“How does the mind control work? And why are the Knights doing
it?”

“None of the other
governments know about the unique network keys.” Kasper gave me a
baleful look. “And the Canadian government wouldn’t have, either,
if you’d kept your mouth shut.”

I glowered back at
him, and he continued grudgingly. “As far as the governments know,
the mages are only acting as super-users to power the sims.
Meanwhile, the Knights collect and decrypt information by
controlling the mages with the secret keys. The mages don’t even
know what’s happening, though Irina began to recognize it toward
the end.” He swallowed.

“When… How did you
find all this out?”

“I was Irina’s
handler.” His face softened. “But we became more than just
co-workers. We were married for sixteen years. She was the love of
my life.” Hatred distorted his features. “Until they killed
her.”

“I’m sorry,” I
murmured.

His lips drew back in
a snarl. “Not nearly as sorry as Rimmel by the time I finished with
him. I didn’t kill him until I’d extracted every scrap of
information. And acquired Irina’s network key.”

My heart gave a hard
thump. “You have another network key?”

“No. I put Irina’s in
place of yours when I stole yours from Kraus.”

“You knew what was
happening all along.” I controlled my anger with an effort. “When I
thought I was going crazy. When I was about to be arrested and
charged with espionage.”

Kasper shrugged. “Of
course, but what could I do? Robert had gotten me the position at
Sirius. As agreed, I stole your key from Kraus and dropped it in
your back yard when the keep-alive ceased for a week. I believed
Robert had taken you out of the country and was building a new
identity for you. As soon as you were safe, he would return and we
would bring the Knights to justice. Admitting my knowledge would
have put all of us in jeopardy.”

His face hardened. “Do
you have any idea how hard it has been for me to wait? To know the
Knights are still exploiting their mages and their countries?”

“But Irina’s key is
still out there. So somebody else could get it and use it.”

“No.”

I frowned at him, but
he didn’t elaborate. “No, what?” I snapped.

He blew out an
irritable breath through his nose. “No, nobody else can use it. The
keys are completely unique, calibrated to a specific mage. The
brainwave patterns of mages are so unusual, there are… were… only
eight mages in the world.”

“Bullshit. There’s no
way there are only eight people in the world who can use that
key.”

He glared. “You aren’t
listening, stupid. I said only
one
mage in the world can use
the key. Irina’s wouldn’t work for you or anybody else. They’re
completely unique.
Unique
. That means one of a kind.”

I resisted the urge to
slap him again. “Yeah, I got that. What I’m saying is, there’s no
way there are only eight people in the world that share the
characteristics that let the mages use the keys.”

“You’re probably
right,” he admitted grudgingly. “I doubt if they tested every
candidate in the world. There may be one or two others.”

“You
doubt
they
tested the world? Hello, a couple of billion people? More being
born every second?”

Kasper gave me an
irritatingly superior smile. “But only a small segment of the
population was conceived between October 29 and November 2, 1963.
And only a vanishingly small segment of that group is also female,
brown-eyed, and carrying the recessive gene for red hair.”

“Uh…” I eyed him. “And
what’s so special about those traits?”