...and Counting

I stared at the off-white tiles in what seemed like miles of drop ceiling as they wheeled me through one anonymous corridor after another. I tried to keep focused on the number and direction of turns, but, eventually, I lost track, so, when we arrived, I had no idea where I was.


They got my undivided attention when they unlocked the handcuff that had kept me in that bed for what seemed like months.


It took four of them to transfer me into a civilian bed.


I kept waiting for them to restrain me in some other way, but they never did. They just put me into a different bed and then two of them pushed the old bed out of the room while the other two backed slowly out behind them, their eyes locked on me as though they had just seen a skunk and were trying to get out without startling it.


That was so cute; like they thought I could take them. There was a time, but that was a long time ago.


I heard the magnetic door lock behind them and I began counting.


Fifteen minutes should be enough time to break their concentration.
Fifteen times sixty is nine hundred: I could count to nine hundred. I rounded up to one thousand so as not to cheat them out of anything.


One, two, three. . . .


Had to be the room was wired. I was aware that I was no longer hooked to anything—no wires, no tubes, nothing. Only way they'd do that was if they were getting their needs met some other way. If this was the Palace, the pasture where people like me get put out, then absolutely they were covering their bets and protecting their investment.


A box job. They had put me in a box and they would be expecting me to try and get out. They would expect me to come at them head on.


They had my file and they knew what kind of work we did, but nonetheless they would plan for the obvious.


There are only so many thoughtful people and I have never met one working in security. They are probably out there, but I am an odds player. If it's the doors that are locked then it's the doors that they're going to watch. I would have to look for another path.


Thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine.... I kept my eyes closed, or mostly closed, to make them think I was sleeping. I could hear the low hum of the compact florescent bulb in the bedside lamp and I could feel the warmth of sunlight coming through the window on my left.


My box had two holes in it, it was a start.


It didn't sound like any other prison I had been in. It was quiet like resort hotels are quiet during the day. It sounded like all the other guests were out.


Prisons are never quiet.


Nothing else sounds like a prison: part hospital, part frat house, part locker room, part slaughter house. Like a two movement symphony, there's a daytime and a nighttime atonal arrangement, each punctuated by screams on various keys and scented by biology.


There are daytime and nighttime movements, each driven by different mechanical and biological; each accented by an atonal choir of voices.


A couple of times we went into super prisons behind the curtain. We were told they were set up like no-shit monasteries where there was no talking, but, even there, there was a non-stop white noise of misery.


This place was something else and it would take time to figure out what.


One-oh-three, one-oh-four, one-oh-five....


I stretched and rolled over on my left side, so I could take in the other half of the room.


It was like a hotel room—not a fancy hotel room, more of a mid-price, business class kind of thing. I was actually surprised to see the TV, didn't expect that.


There were sheers and curtains on the windows and it seemed like a private bathroom. Never ceases to amaze me what they can get away with in the redacted portion of the budget.


It's funny the spook stories that we tell one another about what happens when we get to the end of our operational lives. After a career of looking over your shoulder, one day there really is somebody back there and they've got a work order with your picture on it. We've all heard some version of that which is invariably followed by some rationale about how that happens to the other guy, someone not nearly as valuable to the organization as we are.


I never expected to be here, at the end of the line. The kind of work we did, I fully expected to end my days in a box, just not one that looks so much like a Hampton Inn.


Lost a lot of people along the way: some taken away, others went away and too many just fell away like autumn leaves. I can see all the faces and remember most of the names..., well some anyway.


Three-ten, three-eleven, three-twelve....


Six minutes in and already I was losing focus.


This was still a box, just as much as the hospital room and I was letting the neutrals and the high thread count sheets distract and misdirect. I was not on vacation.


This was not my home and I could not let it become the rest of my life.


You can't stay frosty all the time, but they count on you trying. The injections to make you talk, the rotating disks with black and white swirls on them and the strobing lights and loud music make great visuals for the movies, but the truth is that prisoners break themselves then the guards ever could.


You take people out of their given circumstances and make it clear what is the price of freedom and they will beg you to let them tell you their secrets.


And the tougher they were, it seemed like the faster they would break.


Sure, some took a little longer than others. They were usually the ones who were accustomed to being on the other side of the table, the ones that thought they knew all the tricks. For those guys, we would just keep them off balance: just when they thought they had the game figured out, we would change the rules.


When they realize that they will never have control, then they want to do anything to get it back, even if that means betraying their country.


And I was one of those people. I was someone who knew all the rules. I knew their secrets.


And they knew mine.


Five-fourteen, five-fifteen, five-sixteen....


Did I see the dog? Jim? Was their a play? Did I imagine all of that?


Oh, they were good. They were very good.


Very important not to over-think this: it was not me against them, it was me and the box. Couldn't lose sight of that: that was the truth, the rest was guesswork and head games.


I stretched again, and rolled over on my back.


Through my half-closed eyes, I could see the smoke detector directly over my head with its unblinking red eye: ideal place for a camera, classic really.


It was probably there for misdirection.


There would be cheese for me to find and cheese I would never find and my minders would be enjoying watching me hunt.


Six-sixty-six, six-sixty-seven, six-sixty-eight....


The secret of getting out is to not think about it. They have to commit all their energy to keeping you in, whereas you just have to be patient and very observant.


I remember hearing somewhere that the cops could always tell who was guilty by who went to sleep in the holding cell. When you're caught, the chase is over and time to rest up for the next round. Innocent people waste their energy whining about how innocent they are.


This was the time to let go of the rope and stop fighting. Not a surrender, just an interval, time to go into my corner and catch my breath before the next round.


Time for a guilty nap.


Nine-ninety-seven, nine-ninety-eight, nine-ninety-nine....

The Space Where Spies and Bookmakers Live

I could feel them watching me.

Nothing specific, you understand, just this sense that I was lying on a glass slide under giant lens.

Nobody was talking to me and yet I was giving up information like skin cells.

There were the wires and tubes, there was the regular sampling of liquids and solids and the twice-per-shift “And how are we feeling?”

You'd expect all of that.

Added to that was the surveillance camera I could see and, undoubtedly, others I could not.

I was being watched.

They wanted to know about Barney and they thought I had information that would help.

It was strangely empowering.

I mean, I have been riding the bench for a long time. They could have come at me at any point.

But they didn't.

They could have grabbed me up and thrown me in a hole.

But they didn't.

They could have convinced themselves that I was wrong and planted me.

But they didn't.

They could have forgotten all about me and Barney and the whole team.

But they didn't.

So, something changed.

In my business, change is good because, in the time it takes for something to go from what it was to what it's going to be, there is a space. In that space, the thing isn't what it was and it isn't what it's going to be and so it can become anything.

It's the space where spies and bookmakers live.

So, now the thing was to figure out what the thing was that had changed: that would determine the next move.

“You okay?”

The voice came from the other bed, from behind the wall of bleating and beeping, gasping and wheezing machines that were keeping my roommate alive.

I had forgotten about him.

I made some non-specific noise.

“I could hear you tossing and turning all night,” he said. “Sounded like you were having a bad dream.”

“What?” I said.

“A bad dream: it sounded like you were having a bad dream.”

“I don't know,” I said. “Could be.... Drugs have got me so fucked up, I can't tell anymore.”

“What'd they get you for?” he said in a conspiratorial stage whisper.

“I don't know,” I said. “They pulled me out of a fire.... Maybe they think I had something to do with it.”

“Did you?”

“Did I what?” I said.

“Start the fire?”

“You're not my priest,” I said in a tone I thought would put an end to the conversation.

“No.... No, I am not.... The last thing someone would say is that I was their priest.... The last thing.... You don't want to tell me, that's okay, I suppose. I mean, you don't know me, I--.”

“No I don't,” I said.

There was a long pause like the kind of aggressive silence that falls over a classroom during finals, or between couples when they try to communicate telepathically.

“Do you know where you are?” he asked at last.

“Would it make a difference if I did?” I asked.

“S'pose not,” he said.

“It's not the Ritz?”

“No. Definitely not the Ritz,” he said. “Not a hospital, either.”

I flinched. I mean, I know I flinched because I remember hearing the plastic mattress cover 'talk' under me.

More pause, more telepathy.

“You knew that, right?” said the disembodied voice of my only slightly more bodied roommate.

I waited until I thought I could ask the next question as neutrally as possible.

“The Palace.” It came out more of a statement than a question because it was the answer too: the question and the answer.

“The Palace,” said the voice.

The Palace....

The fucking Broke-down Palace.

In every sense of the word, this was a spook story that spooks told other spooks. The Broke-down Palace was the place you put assets that were no longer valuable to keep them from becoming of value to anyone else.

In this line of work, people disappear from your life for all kinds of reasons and, most often, you never know why. When the stakes are low and those who disappear are the operators you're playing against, it's not a big deal. It's no problem to chalk it up to the cost of doing business: some days the pawns that go to the edge of the board are black and some days they're white.

But, when the stakes are not low, then you want to understand how they can do that, just disappear like that. Of course, nobody's going to tell you anything and so, you make it up. You have to tell yourself something to explain it away and so you make up a reason. Everybody does it and spooks are no different.

It's like when they told you as a kid that your puppy was now living in the country with a nice family and a big yard: it's the word bandage that covers the painful truth.

The Palace was that to us. Nobody was certain if it existed or not, but everybody knew someone who had worked with someone else who had been taken there.

I'm sure it had a proper, sanitized name to make it easier to fund, but to operators, it was always the Broke-down Palace: the last stop on the merry-go-round and well-away from the brass ring.

But I wasn't an operator.

I hadn't been an operator longer than I was an operator. Why bring me here?

I was, for all intents and purposes, a civilian. It was like I had regained my virginity. Everybody knew that the Palace was no place for virgins.

Virgins were dealt with very differently. There was no negotiation, no interrogation, there was only reaction. Civilians were either conduits, or barriers and all barriers could be removed.

That was a change.

“Can't be,” I said. “It's a fairy tale.”

“So it's a fairy tale,” said my roommate. “So get up and go home, if it's such a fairy tale.... Oh right, you can't, on account of those are real fucking handcuffs on your wrist.”

Again, reflexively, I flinched and we both heard the metal-on-metal scrape as the handcuffs slid along the metal bed rail.

“I'm a civilian,” I said and, as soon as I did, I recognized how pathetic that sounded.

“I was at the Farm, long time before you, but I was there and I remember they told us early on that there's no such thing.”

He was right, of course. Civilians don't call themselves "civilians," only operators call themselves civilians when they are trying to make other operators think they aren't operators.

I was not feeling quite so empowered at that moment.

“So why don't they just come out and tell me what they want?” I asked.

“It's the Palace: doesn't work like that. They'll play you for what they want.”

“How come you know so much?”

This was an important question and, he would know that I knew that. This was the defining moment for his character: a credible legend and I would trust him as my guide through this experience; anything less and he becomes just another Screw.

“Old age,” was his answer. “It's like they say, it brings wisdom.”

“And treachery,” I added.

“And treachery,” he echoed. “I got too many miles on me to hold up under hard driving and not so many that they want to put me in the ground.”

“They want to keep you alive until you tell them what they want to know but they also want to make sure you don't tell anyone else.”

“Exactly,” he said.

“It's good, what you got?” I asked as neutrally as possible.
“Good enough..., apparently. And you?”

“Don't know,” I said.

“Well,” he said, “you'll find out soon enough.”

“What does that mean?”

“They're not very patient. I've seen a lot of people pass through here and, well, if you see me again, the chances are that you have something worth playing for.”

And, as if on cue, that was when the pair of burly orderlies blew into the room and began fussing around my bed.

“What's up?” I asked trying to sound as sickly as possible.

“Don't know,” one of them said. “We got told to move you, so, we're moving you.”

“They going to let me go home?” It was an obvious question.

I caught the two orderlies exchange a quick look before one of them said, “Don't know.”

This too, was a change.

Barney

Barney was dead: that must be understood, or none of the rest of this will make any sense.

I know what you're thinking: I thought Jim was dead and I thought Rollin was dead. How can I be certain about anything?

Fuck you, that's how.

I know about Barney, okay? I'd heard about the others, even that bitch Cinnamon, but I know about Barney.

In that business, you hear things. Nobody knows anything for certain, but you hear a lot of things. It's like the old Ivory soap ads, only with bullshit: “ninety-nine and forty-four-one hundredths percent pure” bullshit.

Somebody disappears from your life and then someone else tells you they've passed, what's the difference?

Even when we were working full-time, when we'd get to the end of a job and everyone would go their separate ways, you had to accept that you might not ever see them again. You had to be ready to write them out of your life.

People got reassigned all the time.

Hell, toward the end there, we had a revolving door of people passing in and out of the team.

There was a period of time toward the end of the fifth year when I didn't work very much. Months at a time there would be nothing. I would convince myself that I had been disavowed, or that the team had been somehow burned. Maybe one of those replacements had been a mole for the “other” side.

They would leave me out there to twist in a derecho of my own paranoia only to call me back.

I'd get the call and be directed to a dead drop. Was it a trap? Were they calling me in just to drop a bag on me? Who exactly was “they”?

I'd always go, just in case. And every time it was on the square, but every single time there was that voice screaming in my ear, telling me that I was walking into a trap.

Sadly, as shitty as the work was, it was my drug of choice and especially after a long dry spell, I would be desperate for a fix, for a chance to get back in the game and work with those people, even if they could be really terrible to me.

I'd get the call and grab my go bag and head to the drop.

They were fond of putting them in places where nobody would ever think of going, like parks and libraries, schools and churches.

Sometimes there would be a monitor watching over the drop and sometimes not. If there was a monitor, they'd give me a line or two of dialogue to drop on them.

I always wondered who came up with these password scenes. They were supposed to seem perfectly innocent: “'Do you happen to have the time?' 'I do, but I wouldn't trust it.' 'Guess not.' 'They sure don't make watches like they used to.' 'They don't make much using the old ways anymore.'”

I don't have any trouble admitting it: I took acting classes. I was pretty good too, but I could not make those lines sound like anything other than what they were.

I mean, it's one thing to remember the words and get them out in the right order, but try and do it when the guy you're talking to is listening for even the slightest hesitation and you are both watching the other for some sign, some non-specific sign, that they can't and shouldn't be trusted. You can't be casual in that moment when you know that your freedom and your life can depend on getting those lines right and delivering them to the right person.

It's really about the only thing they get right on TV. When you see one of those spy shows and they get to the moment when the good spy has to meet an unknown contact and they say things like: “'The...swallows...are...late...this...year.' 'Yes...they...are.' 'Have...you...ever...seen...such...a...wet...spring?' 'Not...since...college.'”

I'd go through all of that every time just to get back to that life.

And, for as much shit as we gave one another, I would go through it just to work with Barney.

Barney made terrible coffee. He talked too much. And he would always wait until he had tested a new whatever-it-was on me before “remembering” to hook up the ground wire. But if it hadn't been for him, I don't think I would have lasted as long as I did. I certainly don't think I would have made it to that fucking sheetcake.

Barney was a fighter and he fought for me.

I think a lot of people forget that he was fleet boxing champ. It's tough to reconcile the image of a guy with the requisite fine motor control needed to work with precision parts and defuse munitions with someone who took repeated shots to the head, but I guess he had more than enough brains and could afford to lose a few.

Barney was an excellent businessman with an eye for talent.

He took his cover job as the owner of electronics company and parlayed that into a small fortune. And he did it at a time when it was not easy for people who looked like him to be successful at much.

He always found a way to get paid. More than once I have wished I had known his secret.

The frustrating part is I can't ask him.

I can't ask him about that, or anything else.

We spent all that time together and I know I learned a lot, but I don't feel like I learned anything. You know?

We'd get called out on a job and, before we left, we'd make lists of what we needed and talk a little bit about how it was going to go once we got to the place to do the thing, but once we were on the ground, he would barely say two words.

He'd shut up and do the thing. Whatever it was, he would put his head down and get to work and it was my responsibility to make sure he had whatever he needed whenever he needed it.

I was always surprised when Phelps would call him up to rope, or be the inside on a job.

I would watch him and it was like he was a different person. He could turn on the charm and spin the legend like he had been doing it everyday for his whole life and then, when that role was over, he would put on his coveralls and we'd get back to it.

I remember once he doubled Rollin on a job behind the Curtain. At a key point, he was to take over and perform a piece from a famous cabaret act. Rollin, the old ham, could do that kind of thing in his sleep, but Barney....

He may have been fast on his feet, but cabaret was a whole different animal.

He went about it like he did everything: he put his head down and he did the work. He put the time in so that he could match Rollin move for move. Barney was relentless, like rust.

It was the cigarettes that got him.

Long before he would have been up for a cake of his own, he started coughing.

I think we all sort of agreed that we wouldn't notice. Barney was a private man and his business was his business, but his coughing got progressively worse.

Rollin was the one who convinced him to see a doctor and by that time all they could do was hang a label on him.

As I said before, Barney was a fighter and so he tried to solve this just like he had addressed all the other impossible challenges that had been set for him. He hit the books and he hired anyone and everyone who even looked like they may have an idea how to beat it.

In the end, all he did was spend a lot of money and waste a lot of time.

Good thing he had a lot and too bad he couldn't leave more of it for his kid.

I'd been on the bench for about a month and was completely caught-up in my usual why-and-what-if spiral when the phone rang.

I was going back to work.

That's what I thought.

I got called to a drop, but, instead of some anonymous monitor, there was Barney sitting on an overturned trash can clutching a paper bag in the shape of a whiskey bottle.

There was an awkward cadence to our conversation as neither one of us knew what to say and had to figure out how to say it in between the wet, hacking, coughs that racked his well-below-fighting-weight frame.

“Helluva diet,” I remember saying.

“Don't recommend it,” I remember him saying.

I tried to tell some stories from before and he pretended that he had forgotten them and pretended that he was grateful for the memories.

He told me a couple of things about the others that I had kind of figured out for myself and one or two that I hadn't.

We talked about doing good things and all the bad stuff that had to be done along the way.

We were swapping the second bottle-shaped bag when he asked me.

I didn't think about it. I didn't have to.

For a lot of years, I had made it my business to make sure he had what he needed when he needed it and this was no different.

He told me some more stuff that he thought I might need to know and a couple of things I was supposed to tell his boy.

He had thought to bring an old canvas tarp—one that had seen a lot of weather—and it made the last bit easier.

I will never forget the look in his eyes.

He was surprised.

I had never seen that look from him before. He was unflappable, super-cool even under fire, but then, in that very specific moment, he was surprised.

No other way to describe it.

I don't think..., I can't think it was because of what was happening, but more because of what was about to happen.

I brought him back to the water because that's what he wanted.

He was sure and certain about that.

The sun was slowly losing altitude and the blood-stained sky was just heart-breakingly beautiful.

He would have loved this.

I spent some time on counter-surveillance before letting him go.

There really was nothing to say. I thought about all those movies about the Navy where it was always the kid from some land-locked state that got killed and had to be buried at sea.

More movie moments flashed before my eyes as I let him go.

I immediately wanted to second-guess myself, to turn back the clock, to make a different choice, but that was...

...impossible.

I walked back to the “borrowed” car that I had used for this last part and as I did, I made a commitment to myself that this was a moment in my life that had no value. It was so important, so valuable that I would never trade it, I would not barter this moment for anything. It was so important as to have no worth and I would never exchange it.

What could anyone give me that compared to the trust that Barney had placed in me?

And now, in this moment, someone was asking about that moment, about something that was not for sale.

Who was asking?

Why were they asking now?

Professional Courtesy

I don't like thinking about Barney, because every time I do, I can remember how he looked at me.

I know where Barney is, what I can't figure out is why they were asking about him.

If they knew about Barney, that had to mean that they knew about me.

If I acknowledged that they knew about me, then this would become a totally different ballgame.

The question to focus on was who were these guys?

I needed information and wasn't sure how to get it.

“Who are you guys?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” asked the Voice.

“You're not doctors....”

“What do you mean?" the Voice repeated.

“Why are you asking me questions about my dog?” Nobody knew the dog's name except me. Time for them to play a little defense.

“You were asking about your dog when they brought you in,” said the Voice.

No I wasn't. I mean, I could have been, but I wasn't.

“No, I wasn't,” I said.

“You were barely conscious,” said the Voice. “You have no idea what you were saying.”

“Well, what did I say,” I said.

“You asked about your dog,” the Voice said.

“Exactly.... What did I say exactly.”

I heard another rustling of papers from somewhere in the dark.

“'Where's Barney?' it's on the intake forms. You kept asking 'Where's Barney?'”

Bullshit.

“Bullshit,” I said.

I shouldn't have said that. They didn't need to know that I had just decided to call the dog Barney in that minute. Now they knew how awake I was, how ready for the game.

“Why do you say that?” the Voice asked with almost believable curiosity. “Why do you say it's 'bullshit'?”

“Dog doesn't have a name,” I said.

“But you just said....”

“That's right,” I said. “I just said....”

“I see...,” the Voice.

“Shall we get down to cases?” I asked.

“I suppose we should,” said the Voice.

Someone who looked like a nurse, or someone we had played against years ago in some part of somewhere, stepped into the lit portion of the room and reached for the I.V. bag that was hanging over my head like a clear thought balloon.

“What's this? What's going on?” I asked.

“We're taking a little break,” said the Voice. “A little pause, before we talk again. We want to make sure you have a chance to rest up.”

“No, wait,” I said as the nurse reached into his pocket and came out with a syringe. “No more drugs. You think I got any kind of answers, then let's have a conversation in the open: no tricks. I'm too old for any more of this shit.”

I was aware that the nurse was looking over his shoulder and into the darkness for some sort of direction. I don't know why I did it, but I just happened to be looking at the moment when his head was at full rotation and that's when I saw it.

It wasn't big, but it definitely was there: the flap.

I can remember Rollin always talking about “the flap.” He was afraid it would show on a hot day and he was afraid he would never be able to find it when he had to make a quick change.

It felt as though the bed I was chained to was falling into the floor.

“What's going--? Who are you people?”

The nurse snapped his head all the way around to look at me.

I guess he must have seen something in my eyes, because his right hand immediately shot up to his neck and tried to wipe away the flap.

“I saw it,” I said. “I saw the flap....”

“Flap?” The Voice took time to ask that with the perfect amount of clinical detachment.

“I saw it.” I tried to be equally detached.

“What are you talking about?” said the Voice.

“What's with the skin job?”

'Skin job' was the companion phrase to 'face lift.' We didn't have a good way of talking about the full-face masquerade masks that Rollin and Paris were so good at. Over the years, we had tried a number of things, but they all sounded like childhood dress-up, or some sort of phrase you would read on a police blotter, or in a novel that would never have been good enough to be released in hardcover.

They weren't going to bluff their way out of this. I'd seen it too many times. Rollin would study the walk and talk of some somebody or other and then Phelps would send me in to take that person down and bring them back to the safe so that Rollin could do a face lift. I knew what a skin job looked like and they were running one on me.

I looked at the nurse and said “Who are you, really?”

The nurse again looked to his left and again I saw the flap.

I could feel the strength of certainty returning.

“Look,” I said, “I may not be the operator I was, but I'm not stupid.”

“Nobody thinks you're stupid,” said the Voice.

“Then why the games? You got a question you think I got the answer to, just ask me.”

Professional courtesy: that's all I wanted, a little professional courtesy.

“Okay,” said the Voice. “Where's Barney?”

Fuck.

Where's Barney?

“Where's Barney?”

I wasn't ready for the question.

“Who?” I said, not even recognizing the sounds coming out of my mouth.

“Barney..., where's Barney?”

While waiting for them to come at me, I had been running interrogation scenarios in my head. If they ask me that does it mean they are interested in my answer, or in my evasion? 

The most important think in any interview is where you get to in your head.  You lose control of that and you're going to break sooner rather than later.  

Listen to the questions and answer with the legend.  Even if that's not the question they are asking.

Keep control of the conversation.  They will do everything in their power to take it from you, throw you off, put ideas in your head.

Must not think about pink elephants....  Oh, fuck.

There's a reason there aren't many old operators.  Lots really, but for interrogation you have to be able to keep your head in the game, be sharp, be fast, and, at my age, I wasn't anymore.  
I did my best to prepare for the questions about about what had happened. I had a legend and I was prepared to stick to it.

Barney was not part of that legend.

Christ, what are they sniffing around that for?

“Did you hear me? Where is Barney?”

I tried forcing my eyes open to look at whoever it was trying to drag meat hooks through my life.
And besides, I was curious which one of the Q-tips was really the brains of the operation.

Opening my eyes was hard work. There was something comforting about the dark world of sleep and I knew once I turned my back on it, I would not easily find my way back.
I could sense that the light in the room was bright, but I would not have any idea how bright until I cracked the seal on my eyes.

Bit by bit, they started to open and each advance was met with a sharp stab of pain as the light hit my retinas like lemon juice finds any break in the skin. Out of the corner of my eyes, I could see the tops of my cheeks come into view as I winced in a futile attempt to keep the light out.

I'm not normally someone who gets migraines, but this was one of those times and this was a migraine for the ages. Like everyone gets a lifetime allotment of migraines and I was taking mine all at once.

What was this shit they were pumping into me?

I tried to use my free hand to find my sorry excuse for a pillow and block out the corrosive light, but it had disappeared.

“Where's Barney?”

I still couldn't see the source of the voice. It didn't sound like any of the voices I had previously heard.

I heard the rustle of what sounded like starched fabric and, like magic, the light went away.

“Is that better?” said the Voice.

“Thank you.” I remember thinking it. I remember being genuinely grateful. I didn't know if I was able to make the words. I remember my body suddenly and happily letting go of a flood of tension.

My mouth opened and the strange voice took what seemed like an hour to say, “Yes.”

Stick to the legend.

“What's going on?” I said after a long effort.

“Were trying to figure that out,” said the Voice. “You've been talking in your sleep and we need to try an make sense of that so we can figure out how to make you better.”

“Barney?” I heard myself say. “Who's that?”

“Now you see our problem,” said the Voice. “Does the name mean nothing to you?”

“I had a dog named Barney,” I said, “but that was years ago.”
“So you weren't being entirely truthful.”
The tone of the Voice changed slightly. It wasn't a question, or an accusation.

They were trying to keep me off balance.

Stick to the legend.

“Why are you asking me about my dog? Look, I've had a pretty rough couple of days and I just want to get out of here and go home.”

I was exhausted from all the talking.

“Interesting.... And where is that?”

“Where's what?” I said.

“Home.... Where is your home?”

Ah....

Walked right into that one.

“I.... I.... Don't know.” It was the best I could do.

“But you do have a home, don't you?”

“Yes,” after a long pause.

“Tell us about it.”

Nice. Really nice. Get me talking. Look for cues that they can come back at me with.

The jagged light snapped on and it was like an equal amount of electricity was send through my body.

I made another noise that didn't sound like a sound I would make.

“Turn that light out!” The Voice had a quality this time that seemed to make the lights go out even if no one was there to flip the switch.

“I'm sorry that happened? Are you okay?”

The best I could manage was a wince-inflected grunt.

“You were telling us about your home....”

There was such an inviting quality to that statement that to not participate seemed rude. I was awake now, as close to alert as I was going to get, and yet powerless in the face of the solicitude.

Barney, he was asking about Barney: I had to remember that.

Barney.

All I could think about was the thousands of hours we spent underground.

“I live in a tunnel,” I said.

I could hear a rustling of papers, as though a light breeze was blowing across the part of the room that was obscured in shadow.

“That's not a home, is it? Were you born in a tunnel?”

There were times when it seemed like it.

“No....”

“How long have you lived in a tunnel?”

Stick to the....

“Some people are looking for me,” I said. I hadn't intended to say that. Not sure how it came out.
“Who? Who's looking for you? Why do you think they are looking for you?”

We had reached the fork in the road.

“I don't know,” I said after a very long time.

“How do you know they are after you?”

I didn't like the way this was going to sound....

“Took a shot at me,” I said.

“Oh, that must have been very frightening for you.”

More of the disarming compassion.

“Have you ever been shot at before?”

“Have you?” I asked, reflexively.

“Yes,” said the Voice.

“Then you know how fucking scary it is.”

“Yes,” said the Voice.

“You live in the tunnel because you're afraid.” Again, not a question.

“Wouldn't you be?” I said.

“Yes,” said the Voice.

“Where did you find a tunnel large enough for you and Barney?”

“Barney isn't with me anymore,” I said.

“Oh, that's too bad.... What happened to Barney?”

I really didn't want to think about that.

Name Your Own Price

“It's important they buy your act,” that's what he said.
 
Why wouldn't they?

I was suddenly very self-conscious.

What had happened, had happened. I mean, I was there and watched it happen, so I know it happened. “Stick to your legend....” It wasn't a story.... Walk the dog, dodge the shooter, hide in the house, smoke out the stalker, get rescued by the fire department: that's what happened.... Was there some reason they wouldn't believe me?

And why would they care?

I scanned the room looking for some indication of the time.

Before they left, one of the Q-tips moved the curtain between me and the window just enough so that I could no longer see outside. I could still tell whether, or not, it was brighter outside than in, but that only helped me tell day from night, not morning from afternoon.

Changing the mark's relationship to time is one of the first steps. Keep them disoriented, off balance.

Phelps and Cinnamon and Rollin: they were in the mix somehow, playing against someone for some reason.

It didn't make any sense. Even if they hadn't been victimized by a premature sheet cake, they would be long past retirement. What were they doing running a mission?

What was so big that they got called back and read in? What was so big that they felt they couldn't read me in?

Had I done something?

Had I not done something?

Maybe I had been disavowed? But why and what for?

The more I thought about it, the more I got lost in the echo chamber of my own thoughts.

I forced myself to think about the false flag operations we had run in the past. I thought about when we would play against a mark to get him to give up some close-hold material. I thought about the things we did and the things we did not do?

Going by that, they would leave me alone for a while to think about my situation. They'd want me to be pretty clear-headed so that I could process the occasional prompts that they would be feeding me. They would want to pump up the anxiety level before getting down to business.
No question about it: the mark is his own worst enemy in the run-up to the Q and A.

Depending on what they had in mind for me, they would probably introduce drugs at a little after the half-way mark. They'd want to keep me up and thinking about what might be about to happen.

When we ran games like this, we would have environmentals that would keep the mark from straying from the path. Screams, moans, shots, simulated electrocutions: Barney would layer that stuff in to keep the mark's focus where we wanted it.

There was always a sob-sister: someone weaker than the mark who would look to him for support and reassurance. Sometimes the sob would have a secret and other times they would be the first to “die,” but always they were the rock against which we would push in order to obtain leverage.

Somewhere along the line, there would be the “happy accident” when the mark would get a piece of information that they weren't "supposed" to have. This was the moment when we would allow them to feel hopeful, that they could outsmart their inquisitors and might even be able to escape.

False hope is more toxic than the real thing and more powerful than any of the so-called truth drugs. You show a mark that their situation is hopeless, then you show them a way out and let them focus all of their energy on that and then you crush that option absolutely. There can be no possibility that any of it is left.

When they see that, when they really understand that there are no other possibilities then they give up.

We played a guy once who had a list of agents who were working in the West.  He was an experienced operator and so we had to convince him that we had something more valuable than his list, something he would be willing to trade for.

So we played a nested false flag against him and had him convinced that he had been in an accident and lost one of his legs. We then put him through the “rehab” process, introducing him to what life would be like without his leg.

We sold him on the idea of a special prosthesis and how it would be his only hope and then we showed him how he had been responsible for the death of the only person who could fit him for this special leg.

After we let him marinate in the permanent loss of his leg, we introduced the option of an “untested” technology that could actually be superior to the lost first option.

To access this last best hope, we set the price at his list.

He went for it.

By the time we were done with him, he had no other choice, no other way to be made whole.

I will never forget the look on his face when he discovered that he had not been injured, that he still had all his factory equipment and that he had just been beaten at his own game.

They were about to do this to me. I knew it and, if they knew anything about me, they knew that I knew it.

But what were they after?

I didn't have a list. They'd more or less seen to it that I didn't have much of anything once they pushed me out.

I only knew where some of the bodies were buried and that was because I had buried them.
If I'd had anything really useful, I would have used it long before now.

I had nothing, I knew nothing and I was about to be interrogated.

I had a pretty good idea about how, but, for the life of me, I could not get a handle on why?

“Stick to the legend;” make sure they “buy the act....” I didn't have any choice.

Until I had more information, I didn't have any choice.

It was the only way I was going to get out of this bed.

Disappearing from My Life

I suddenly found it all a bit overwhelming to be laying there with all of these white coats peering down at me as though I was the three-headed calf at the state fair. 

For those who've never been through it, the process of breaking an operator is much more complex than you have been led to believe.

Sure, torture and sleep deprivation are part of the game: same as they ever were, but you expect it. It's just like on television, when they show you a merchant carefully stacking produce in his open-air stall. You can be sure that before the final commercial somebody is going to drive a car right into it.

It's kind of comforting really.

But, until they break out the rubber hoses, it's like you have come into the middle of a play with no program and no way to figure out what the characters are talking about.

I knew I was being watched. I knew they were looking for triggers, anything they could use against me.

We were working a play in the East once and that bitch Cinnamon let it slip that she was claustrophobic and when she was taken, they pushed that button hard. Even though they were able to trade her out, she never really came back after that.

I had to figure that they—whoever “they” were—had been probing for buttons since I was brought in.

Some, or all, of this was just for my benefit. Hell, the whole thing could be a false flag. Sure seemed like a real hospital, but that's what the mark is supposed to think.

One of the Q-tips crowding my field of vision was the boss, the puppet master. One of the fresh-faced wanna-bees was the lead interrogator.

The doctor? The one all the “students” were staring at? Perhaps he was the boss?

Not likely.... Most probably a stalking horse: the obvious target. He would be someone for me to focus on and direct my rage at.
No, someone else was the real power center. I just had to figure out which one it was.

To his credit, the Horse played his part very well. He was the over-bearing teacher to what were supposed to be his interns and casually dismissive to me.

“And how are we this morning?”

I never understood this question.

I have been in all manner of hospitals all over the world and, without fail, they all ask this same fucked-up question in some form.

It reminds me of the time I got my car fixed. There was a problem with the brakes and I didn't have time to get into it. Barney sent me to a guy he knew and the guy seemed okay. He had just the right amount of tattoos: not so many that you'd take him for a crook and not so few that you thought he'd never been in a garage before.

I'm up against a deadline. I don't know, I think we may have been going out of town on a job. So, I'm in a rush trying to do the prep work to justify disappearing from my life and the guy calls me and tells me to come and pick up my car.

I did not have the time.

I asked him he he had fixed the brakes.

“I don't know, I think so. They seem pretty good to me, but I want to know what you think.”

They were fixed, or they weren't: my input was irrelevant. I was either well, or I wasn't and they were supposed to tell me.

And if you try and take them at their word and interpret their concern as somehow genuine, they they will act all the more indifferent to your answer. It's like they don't care if you answer and don't believe you if you do.

I grunted.

“That's nice,” said the Horse without even looking at me.

Rapport was established.

“Patient was rescued from a fire. Was brought in with no I.D., and thus far has not told us who he is. No one has come looking for him. He presented severely dehydrated. Possibly delusional. Claimed to have started the fire in order to smoke out an unseen attacker. Keeps asking about a dog. Vitals appear normal and patient seems to be responding well to medication. Diagnosis?”

“Amnesia?” came from one of the Q-tips behind my head.

“Scans clear,” said the Horse without even looking up.

“Trauma-induced?” the unseen Q-tip asked.

“No sign of physical trauma.”

“Emotional? He was in a fire....” Her third strike.

“Let's assume the very unlikely scenario where you are right, how would we proceed?”

“Psych?” came the much less confident response.

“Psych?” The Horse had her attention now. “You feel we know enough about our patient to turn him over to those butchers? Have we done everything we can? Because, you know, once they start pumping him full of their shit, he won't ever know his own name and we won't be able to fix what they screw up.”

He looked around the room giving his full attention to each of his interns in turn.

“Have we done everything we can for this patient?” he asked. His gaze invited them in to the conversation and simultaneously bullied them into not answering.

The silence was deafening.

These guys were good. Their set-up was perfect. They had laid it out for me and told me what was at stake.

It was a perfect first act: there were heroes and villains, stakes and choices. Without saying so, they had brought me to the scene before the first act curtain. I had been presented with a proposition and the second act would entirely depend on the choice I made next.

“Where's my dog?” I said.

The horse looked at me for a long moment and then wrote something down in the chart, turned on his heel and left the room.

The Q-tips looked nervously from one to another and then followed after him.

I heard a cough from the other side of the room and then my roommate said, “What an asshole.”

These guys were very good.

I had to get out of this bed.

Simple and Direct

“Pay close attention,” I kept repeating this to myself as I turned over what Phelps had said to me. 

All I had to do was stick to the legend.... 

Which one? 

Why? 

Who was the mark? 

I had been sheetcaked. I was out, no longer a player. 

I remember that very clearly: trading life and limb for a Wal-Mart sheetcake. I remember exactly how that felt. 

And I remember the years spent in the weeds trying to pass as a civilian. How do they do it? 

I still have the bruises from hitting all the steps on the way down. And I remember the cold, sandy taste in my mouth when I hit bottom. 

Was it all a play? 

What did he mean? 

My toasty warm eiderdown was becoming oppressive. 

“Stick to the legend.” 

The legend is the story you tell the mark that makes them back your play. The legend is the map to the Inside Track, the Secret Passage that takes a mark out of their comfort zone and toward the parking spot between the rock and the very hard place. The legend wasn't real, it was never real. When we were working, we sold it like it was real, but it was never real. 

The time between that cake and this moment was real. 

It sure felt real. 

Were they playing me? 

Could they have played me? 

Was this another version of the too-small suit? 

And what was that about Rollin and Cinnamon? 

I had long ago lost track of that bitch and I remember being told that Rollin had died. I remember that. I remember the suit he gave me that day. 

Was it all for show? Was I being roped in? 

Is this what it feels like to get played? 

Holy fuck!

What about the car crash and the fire? Was that part of it? 

Could that have been part of it? 

Christ, I set fire to that house.... And for nothing? 

Didn't seem like nothing, but it could have been for nothing. 

I was beginning to feel sick. Really sick. 

helps always did like the long game, but who could he be playing against that would take this long to set up...? 

And why was I on the outside?  

Was this what it was like to be disavowed? 

The doctors were coming in...: this was the point where he chose to step in, so it had to mean something. Was the play against one of the doctors? 

“Stick to the legend.” Tell the story; make them believe it; make it real. 

But it was real. I had to be careful to make the truth seem like it was real: there's no way to do that and not look like you're lying. 

You're dead in the water the minute you find yourself using phrases like “This is a true story,” or “This really happened.” 

Was it that he wanted them not to believe me? Why didn't he want them to believe my story? 

The doctors were coming and Phelps had set me up so they were going to think I was lying. 

What would my story possibly mean to the doctors? 

I thought about that for a long time. 

It couldn't mean anything to them which meant that the play wasn't for them, but for whoever was responsible for the handcuffs. They'd be interested in why my story sounded like a legend. 

I was thinking too much and that was going to show in my telling of it. 

You can't over-think the legend, or it becomes a shaggy dog: entertaining, perhaps, but something better left with it owner than taken home and adopted. 

Simple and direct: walking the dog, was being followed, sought refuge in the vacant house, person or persons unknown set fire to smoke me out, rescued by the fire department, taken to hospital. 

Simple and direct. 

Simple and direct. 

The harsh overhead lights snapped on and a small company of white coats came into the room. 

They completely ignored the man in the next bed and his family of medical equipment and instead crowded around my bed like visitors to the zoo crowded around the viewing window trying to catch a glimpse of a new-born Panda. 

As far as I could tell, it was only tangentially relevant that I was even there. The white coats were focused on the one of their number who was standing closest to my cuffed hand. He was the expert, the Master of Ceremonies and he was about to introduce me.

Who's a Good Boy...?

My mouth was dry.

That was the first thing I remember.

My mouth was dry in the same way that mud is sticky:  everything from my lips to the back of my throat was stuck together with a kind of vacuum-packed glue that made the parts seem impossible to separate.

It got so bad I gave up on the mouth and started working on the eyes:  had to get them open.

Where was the dog?

I tried to call for him, but I couldn't make my mouth work.  I tried to look for him, but I couldn't make my eyes work.

The washcloth-thick hospital blanket felt like a wonderful eiderdown comforter whose warmth radiated through my body like a cat resting on my belly.

The exposed flesh of my arms and face felt cold by comparison.

It would be safer under the blanket.  I needed to stay under the blanket.

The strain of trying to wake up was making me sleepy.

I could only hope that we had trained each other well enough so that he would be there when I woke up again.

Who's a good boy...?

Another time I tried to wake up was when they brought in a tray.  It might have been food, it might have been surgical instruments, I couldn't tell the difference.

I could see, but I couldn't tell the difference.

I tried again to ask about my dog, but could not pry my lips apart.

"Do you want a popsicle?  I bet you want a popsicle....  What flavor...?  Do you like grape?  I bet you like grape.  Everybody likes grape....  I'll be back in a minute."

You stop me in the street and ask, I'm going to tell you that I fuckin' hate popsicles, but when she came back with that no-name-too-long-in-the-freezer-so-that-the-paper-sticks-to-the-frozen-kool-aid treasure, I was ecstatic.

What was this stuff they were pumping into me?

The popsicle was making me cold and so I had to keep putting it down to pull up my blanket.  I was toasty warm and freezing cold at the same time and the thermal confusion was making me sleepy again.

The last time I woke up I remember it seemed like it was in the middle of the night.  I only knew that because it was a little bit darker and a tiny bit quieter.

I didn't want to open my eyes.  I was savoring the momentary peace in the limbo that comes after sleep and before your feet hit the floor.

Something squirmed on what sounded like a vynil-covered chair.

Was there a chair?  I didn't remember a chair.

"You can cut the shit, I know you can hear me."

If I didn't know better, I could have sworn I knew that voice.

"Willy!"  

There was a stabbing quality to his stage whisper that seemed to obliterate all pretense.  I think I may have even flinched.

"Jee-zuss Christ, Willy, we don't have much time."

It couldn't be Phelps, he was dead.

But I had to look, just to satisfy myself, just so I could go back to sleep.

I forced my eyes open and then, when I saw him, I couldn't stop them from opening.

"Ji--?"

"Shut up," he said.

"Listen," he said.  "We don't have a lot of time.  The docs are going to be here later this morning and it's important they buy-in to your legend."

Legend?  

I was having trouble organizing my thoughts.  What was the play?  Who was the mark?  What was the game?

"Look," said Phelps.  "I know you got questions, but there simply isn't time.  You're the rope on this one.  Cinnamon is the Inside and Rollin is working it from the other end.  All you got to do is make sure they buy your act."

"Act?"

"Just tell them what you saw and what you think you saw and that will be more than enough."

I could tell from his tone that Phelps was getting impatient.  His eyes kept looking past me toward what I assumed was the door.

"Dog?" 

Complex sentences seemed out of my reach.

"Don't worry," said Phelps.  "He's wrapped up and happy.  You just keep your head in the game."

Game?

I didn't have time to ask, because he was out of there like a shot.

Why couldn't I remember the play?

I was awake now.

I had to get out of this bed.