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.
