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.