For the Next Ten Minutes, the Clocks Run Backwards

I must have fallen asleep.

As my world came slowly into focus, I was, for an instant, uncertain about my reality.

I thought I smelled smoke and believed I was back in that burning house. I thought I heard the white noise of the hospital and believed I could still feel the pinch of that handcuff tethering me to the bed. I saw the drop ceiling and was certain I was in that hotel room thinking about ants. I could taste salt in my mouth and thought about walking on the beach with a laser's red dot trained on my chest.

“Where am I?” I thought.

The Melmac coffee mug, green like private label mint ice cream that you get at the grocery store, hit the table like a clap of thunder.

Oh....

Right....

Jim Phelps was sitting across the table from me.

I was still here.

“Took you long enough,” I said.

“I had them make a fresh pot,” he said.

I drew the cup to me and felt the warmth steep into my hands. I hadn't realized until that moment how cold I was.

Pulling the cup to my lips, I took the time to really study Phelps.

Outwardly, at least, it seemed as though the Silver Fox had made few concessions to the march of time. His skin tone was a little less even, his hair was a lot thinner and the veins in his hands stuck out like tree roots trying to find water on a rocky cliff. But, the look was still there. Behind the eyes he still had the look of a man who was used to being many moves ahead.

He looked at me in that superior way that said he'd already had this conversation and knew what I was going to say before I said it.

“At least it's hot,” I said.

“You want Starbucks, maybe we can arrange that after we talk,” he said.

“I don't want to talk about Barney,” I said.

“Why not?”

“It was a long time ago. What was it you always used to say? 'The past will get you killed'”

“I said that?” he asked.

“You were always full of pearls,” I said. “Besides, you guys should know better than me what happened to him. You most of all.”

“Me?” He seemed surprised.

“He was your favorite.”

“Favorites are bad for business,” he said as if reading a fortune cookie message.

“He was the only one you kept. Shit, you promoted him to a principal. And me, I couldn't even get the respect of those Hartford Rep. fuckers.”

The Rep were the day players that we would bring in to fill out a scene. If we were doing a hospital play, or one of those unnamed prisons that we did for a while, then the Rep guys would come in as the background, the guards, the doctors, nurses, or other prisoners; whatever we needed.

Rep guys fell into one of two categories: they were either newbies who didn't quite have what it took to become operators, or they were barn watchers looking to top up their pensions before heading off to pasture.

“That's ridiculous,” said Phelps.

“Fuck you, 'ridiculous.' Those day-playing bastards wouldn't return my calls. I was 'too well-known' in the community to do a walk-on. A fucking walk-on!”

“The mission changes,” said Phelps.

“Bullshit. It was always your call who worked and who didn't and I didn't: that's on you.”

“We all serve at the pleasure of the Secretary,” another fortune cookie.

“Secretary of what?” I asked. “Who do you actually work for?”

“What do you mean? He seemed genuinely thrown by the question.

“Who's the boss?” I continued.

“That's a stupid question,” he said

“No such thing; you taught us that.... And you also taught us that things change. So, I want to know what changed. What is so different that you have to run this elaborate play on me to find out the answer to a question you should already know?”

“Nothing has changed,” he lied.

“I don't know where Barney is,” I lied.

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“Sheet cake,” I said spitting out the words.

“Nothing after that?”

“No. We would have been in big trouble if we'd had any contact. They give you a choice between severing all ties to active and former operators, or Leavenworth. I burned my Christmas card list.”

“Not even when the Company went public?”

This was the question.

THE question.

It's not a thing they can really teach you. It's something you pick up in the room. You get a seat at this table and you know when they are asking the big money question. Sure, they always try to treat it like they couldn't care less about the answer, but you watch closely, you pay attention, and you can tell. The eyes, the voice, the body language: there's always a tell.

“What company?” I asked even though we both knew I knew the answer.

“His company, Collier Electronics.”

“His company?” It was an Agency front, part of his cover. “I didn't know you could take a front company public.”

“It's a brand new day,” said Phelps. “Margins are a lot wider than they used to be.”

“I didn't think anybody still used margins,” I said.

“All means and ends now,” he said. It struck me as the most honest-sounding thing I had ever heard him say.

“What do they make?”

“Who?”

“Collier Electronics, what do they make?”

“Nothing now,” said Phelps. “They used to make tape recorders, but nobody uses those anymore.”

“So, what do they do?”

“It's nothing but a file folder now.”

“Bankrupt? Figures. You guys couldn't turn a profit if they paid you.”

“No. Not bankrupt, suspended,” said Phelps.

“What does that mean?”

“Barney was the company, so when he went missing, his business was suspended.”

This was a hell of an interrogation technique: I was asking all the questions.

“Went public, huh? When was that?”

“Shortly after you left us.”

“After you fired me,” I corrected him.

“Whatever.”

“How did it do, I mean until it was suspended?”

“Cassettes,” he said.

“What?”

“Couldn't license the technology, so all they had was open-reel and nobody wanted that.”

“Trust the government to run a business....”

“You said it,” Phelps agreed.

“Got any more of this stomach acid?” I asked pushing the now-empty mug across the table.

Phelps must have been pleased with the way things were going.

“I'll see,” he said.

He took a deep breath and pushed himself away from the table.

I remember hearing stories about old entertainers who would fall asleep in the wings right before they would go on stage. People telling these stories would always remark about how, in that moment, you could see the decades on their faces of these living legends. At rest, they were just old men and women who had ridden the rails and covered the miles so they could do their ten or twenty minutes a night.

And then the crowd goes silent and then the host does the intro and the crowd explodes into applause and it's better than any alarm clock. The Legend lives again. They pull themselves to their feet and they are transformed. They are twenty years younger. The fire returns to their eyes and the spring to their step and they bound on stage oblivious to the twinges, aches, pops and creaks that are the signs of their bodies settling. For the next ten minutes, the clocks run backwards.

As I watched Phelps pull himself to his feet, I felt as though I was watching the same process in reverse.

It seemed as though his ten minutes were up.

And I noticed something else.

As he slowly turned his head toward the door, I noticed the light as it caught his neck and, for the first time, I could see that he was sweating.

Not everywhere.

Just on his neck.

Just below the flap that ran in a straight line from behind his ear to his shoulder.

Pop

Who is that?

I feel like one of those monkeys at the zoo: constantly stared at. It's enough to make a person want to do something outrageous just so those people—the ones on the other side of the glass—will break their gaze.

Maybe if I throw...? Do you think he'll flinch? Would it be enough to make him flinch?

Flinching would be good: an indication that there was a real person, instead of just a machine staring back at me.

Everytime I look over there, he's staring at me.

I don't know who he is supposed to be, but it seems like I have seen him somewhere before, just can't remember where.

Think.... Think....

My head is killing me.

Maybe that's the plan....Maybe Phelps means to have me in here long enough to think myself to death.

I can feel my pulse in my neck, it beats like heels on a stone floor in a large room. There's the beat and a second, less-pronounced sound, like an echo. Reminds me of the sound they use for sonar in those old World War Two submarine movies, except the pulses are much closer together.

And now, I'm thinking about aneurysms.

My dad had one.

Came out of nowhere.

A small pop, like any one of a thousand gas bubbles in a glass of ginger ale that disappear when they reach the surface, and he was dead.

There was no illness, at least non that he talked about. There was no get-ready, no fast-talk, just the blow-off. Just the “we did everything we could” recorded message before they pushed us to the door with a cardboard box full of dust and a lifetime of unaswered questions.

They said he was under a lot of pressure. He was always under a lot of stress. I remember my mom saying how much taller he would have been if it were not for all the pressure.

I can feel the veins in my neck as they push against my collar: in and out, back and forth.

Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

Like the water falling off the cliffs at Niagara, each beat, each lap through the streets and alley of my circulatory system is wearing the walls a little thinner and the bubbles are getting closer to the surface.

“Round and round the mulberry bush....”

The story of my life reduced to a nursery rhyme.

You get into this work thinking that you're going to do good and you go out knowing full-well there are just as many weasels on your side as on the other; that you are just another in a long line of monkeys.

He's still there, still staring....

Fucker.

Swear to God, I've seen that guy before....

Where...?

A picture, maybe?

Was he a player?

A mark?

And he looks enough like me to wear my face?

There was a guy I used to know...; long time ago. He was good, a legend.

He came up with me but, after the Farm, he disappeared into the tall grass: fuckin' lived there, is what I heard. Anyway, he has an incident.... Don't know the details, it's a real event: big deal and “they”--the guys in the corner pocket--they tell him that he either gets right, or he gets out. They send him to the press room and the squeezers put the squeeze on him—really go after all the juice. It's so bad, I hear that he needs treatment for his treatment. Anyway, he ends up studying Bhudism. Bhudism! And this was before anybody was Bhudist, other than Bhudists.

He'd tell anybody who'd make the mistake of listening to him that meditation made a big difference in his life. Never made sense to me, but he claimed it was the answer to questions he hadn't even thought of asking.

Whatever it was, it was enough to convince the corner guys to let him off the bench. Back to work, back in the tall grass and everything.

And then he gets a skin job and completely loses it.

He spends a couple of months wearing somebody else's face and, all of a sudden, he's talking about spirits trascending their corporeal form, passing through planes of existence, appearing in different forms, different identities.

Shape-shifters.

Fucking lost it.

Everybody was somebody else, pretending to be something they're not.

Somebody told me he about broke a minister's neck looking for the edge of the mask he was certain was there.

By the time he got the hook, he was talking to the greeters at Wal-Mart about black book jobs and throwing out codewords like they were Tic-Tacs.

He would have probably been taller too, if the pressure hadn't gotten to him.

We'd all have been a lot taller.

I can feel that guy's eyes on me....

Wish I could remember where I knew him from.

My heartrate is picking up.

I can feel the blood rushing and my temples pounding. They don't get back here quick, it won't make any difference whether I want to answer their questions, or not.

Pop..., pop..., POP.

Time to Break Down

What is taking so long with the coffee?

I know this isn't the Ritz, or even the fucking Hampton Inn, but come on.

What is he up to?

It's forty years since I had a steady job in the teams and, all of a sudden, it's important to them about Barney?

I don't buy it.

This has nothing to do with Barney.

Couldn't.

It's serious because they're spending important money, but why are they spending it like this?

Doesn't make any sense.

They got super computers and all kinds of high-tech bullshit to look over your shoulder and up your nose that it makes no sense to break out the Geezer Squad on me.

Christ, how old is Jim anyway? He must be pushing ninety, if he's a day.

It's a wonder he can still walk, let alone put together a major play.

Nobody in their right mind would trust anybody his age with the day of the week.

Maybe it's not Jim.

That would make sense: have somebody walk the walk. Christ, look at the operator that took me for a ride this morning.

Cinnamon.

If that even was Cinnamon.

Sure seemed like her though, I mean after the phone said it was.

My head is killing me.

Where's the damn coffee?

What if they're not...?

What if I'm not...?

Nah couldn't be. If our side wouldn't spend this kind of money on me, why would anyone else?

What's he playing at? He's always playing at something, always working an angle.

“Where's Barney?”

Like they even care....

All this time since the sheet cake, I bet nobody ever asked where I was, what my life was like. They show you the door and it doesn't have any knobs on it—either side—only locks. You go through that door and there's no coming back and nobody's coming to look for you. There's no such thing as a retirement home for people like me,only a roach motel.

It makes no sense, does it?

I can't stand looking at that mirror.

I wish they'd bring the damned coffee....

I know there's people watching me, looking for tells and keys to break me down, but all I can see is this old guy looking back at me. He looks kind of familiar—the eyes I think—but like a distant relative.

The eyes are hardest to fake—always were. That's why, when you're under, they have you wear glasses, preferably dark, or with thick lenses: throws people off. Operators don't want to tip they are checking you out by staring. There's ways of doing it, but the glasses slow them down, give you options.

I am ready to go to sleep.

Must be pumping in oxygen, like they do in the casinos. More than once, we made use of that to have our way with folks.

Don't think they do it much anymore. It's supposed to make the players last longer, that was the story anyway.

If that's what they're doing, they won't be able to pump enough to keep my attention. That coffee doesn't show up, I'll be unconscious before long.

I need my coffee.

Need a good story too, a legend to put them off the scent. Barney deserves that.

We had some good people, back when I was working. They could write you a legend that was rock-solid and provide you with the props—the pocket litter—to back it up.

They must have had the world's largest collection of matchbooks because it didn't matter where you needed to be from, they had the right matches. And not just the ones from the hotel bars, but the clubs and dives that couldn't find their way to the beaten path.

We sold a job once on the strength of a book of matches. We were playing an operator who had us cold. His people had walked away with the straight skinny on some pretty important projects—works in progress—and there was no way were getting it back. Phelps worked out a play where we got his network to confirm the intel, but we got him to distrust the confirmation, to turn on his own people.

One of their contacts was left-handed and Phelps arranged it so that the operator would get a book of matches from the contact that were used by a right-handed person. Wrong hand, wrong contact, wrong information.

Heard that the operator threw out the intel, thinking it was phony. Threw out some of his own people too.

Matches can get you killed.

Nobody carries matches anymore. If you can't do it with a fucking smartphone, then people want nothing to do with it.

That guy is still watching me.

That's the one thing they don't prepare you for. You go into this work with a head full of spy movies--hard liquor and harder women--and the reality is hours and hours freezing your nuts off in some uncomfortable van, or run-down warehouse.

Waiting.

You wait for the tools to come in.

You wait for the headliners and the day-players.

You wait for instructions.

You wait for the go.

None of those things run on schedule, but they all, sure as shit, expect you to.

I hate waiting.

Seems to me I waited most of my life away while other people decided what I was going to do next.

This is not a very comfortable chair. The cushion is too thin, the slope of the back is wrong and one of the legs is just short enough that it rocks every time I shift my weight even a little.

It's important to have a comfortable chair. This chair is not comfortable.

Christ, have I really lost that much hair? I mean, I know I am well out of warranty, but, seriously, my head looks like a farmer's field after last harvest.

I never expected to get this old.

You go into this work expecting to get caught and every year you don't the odds only get better—and not in a good way. Right up until the last day, you are looking over your shoulder thinking every person who even looks at you sideways has a file folder with your name on it.

It was more than a few times in those last days I pulled on a civilian thinking that he was about to punch my ticket.

They try and get you ready for that, but there's no way. You may come in thinking you're the biggest, baddest, smoothest operator—and maybe you are, at first—but everybody goes out the same way, like a character in a Jerry Lewis movie whose nerves are so shot he can't even spell smooth.

Where's my damn coffee? This isn't cute anymore.

I can't stand that guy.

Every time I look over there, he's staring at me.

It's my own people putting me through the wringer, that's the part that hurts.

I should be flattered, I suppose, but....

Wait—he moved. The old guy moved.

What the--?

He's at the window now, looking right at me.

This some kind of new technique? One of Phelps' bullshit head games?

I can feel his eyes on me.

I try to look away, but they don't.

Now, I can't look away.

It's chicken and I feel the stakes are very high.

The highest.

He stares at me.

I stare at him.

Nobody blinks.

My head is splitting; where's the fucking coffee?

Can't think about that now; can't let this guy—whoever it is—think he's beat me.

Got to stay focused.

It's like the school yard all over again.

They called it a playground, which made the adults feel better, but it was a prison yard, the anti-matter to the matter of the classroom, the great equalizer.

I was never comfortable around kids my own age; never learned the rules. I was pretty good in class though—not the best—but pretty good. Good enough, at any rate, that I was a target in the yard.

In the classroom I had no trouble walking from my desk to the blackboard, but, in the yard, I suddenly had balance problems—always falling down around those kids who never got asked to go to the blackboard.

Gym class was a nightmare. There was the predictable humiliation of team sports and then the direct and sanctioned persecution of dodgeball and floor hockey. The teachers never seemed to be watching when the physically gifted would go after their weaker and slower brethren all in the name of sport.

Through high school—right up to the point where I injured my knee—I was a target for no other reason than that I did my homework and didn't chase girls.

For some of my classmates, the scariest place at school was the principal's office, for me it was the locker room. There was only so much of that I could stand. I changed into my gym clothes inside my locker for as long as I could and then took to wearing them under my street clothes. It worked great during the fall and winter, but, once the weather got warmer....

The day I went into the service I forced myself to get over that, but now—here--wherever this is, I feel like I'm back in school all over again.

I grit my teeth.

The old guy grits his teeth.

I get out of my chair and walk right up to the window.

He doesn't move.

He doesn't move.

I squint like they do in all those spaghetti westerns....

What's he doing...?

Is he...smiling?

He's got this look on his face like he's just farted in church.

What the fuck...?

His right hand starts to move....

It's like he's scratching under his left ear....

But he's not scratching....

No, he's not, he's pulling at something. I can't see what it is, but then I know what it is.... I can't hear the noise, but I know what it sounds like.... I used to love that noise, because it meant that the show was over and it was time to break down, pack up, and head for the barn.

I don't know what this means.

The more he pulls at his face, the more distorted his features become, like looking in a funhouse mirror.

My head is splitting and my knees are going soft.

Now, I see two faces: one is a dead shell, like something stolen from an open casket; the other I don't recognize.

Is that supposed to be me?

An Installment on a Long-Paid Debt

The last time I saw Jim Phelps, I was cuffed to my hospital bed. Before that, was when he met me for coffee.

His phone message had said that he wanted to get together to talk about the road ahead.

I remember being excited because, near the end, I was only used occasionally. I don't know whether they were trying to cut costs, or what, but I went from being a regular to being more of a day player. I remember thinking that he wanted to talk about the future one-on-one that had to mean something.

It meant something alright.

He wanted to talk about the road ahead because there wasn't going to be one.

We sat down, we shot the shit and then he very awkwardly got to the point: he wanted me to talk to the Separators.

These were the guys who debriefed you prior to parking you on the disabled list.

These were the guys who ordered your sheet cake.

On my good days, I consider myself lucky that he sent me there. The alternative was to wake up one morning staring down the barrels of a dozen assault rifles and ending the day in Federal prison.

In those days it was a coin toss if you were going to get a cake or end up in the F.B.I. Counter-espionage trophy case.

I got the easy way out, the soft landing full of hard rocks.

They went through my cover identities with the finest of fine-toothed combs. If I was coming off the field, then all of the different versions of me had to be shut down as well.

You used to hear about how prisoners would be released back into the world with a new suit, a cardboard suitcase and fifty bucks: that's about what I got.

I got a clean record, a credit history, a passport and a phone number.

It was a do-over, a mulligan, a chance to be a civilian after a career spent being everything else.

I could go anywhere, do anything except have any contact with any of my former lives.

I suppose it made good strategic sense, but it was exactly the same as telling a successful criminal that he was forbidden from engaging in any of the activities that made him successful. And we know how well that works out.

Even before the after-taste of frosting was gone, I was broke, living under a bridge and carrying my clean papers and my few worldlies around in a surplus duffel bag that doubled as my pillow.

I looked for work.

I was always looking for work.

The most I was allowed to say about my work history was that I had been in the army and, in those days, that meant something very different. In those days, it meant I was on the verge of snapping, of going berserk, of killing myself and a whole lot of others.

I couldn't go near my old lives, my old worlds, my old jobs. Whole categories of employment were suddenly off-limits.

“The world is your oyster,” they said to me.

It was true, as far as it went, but I was the grain of sand that was never destined to become a pearl.

For the first ten years, I was mostly getting odd jobs as a mechanic. I was working in shops that couldn't afford all of the right equipment and so they used me to hoist the heavy parts into position and hold them steady until they could be bolted in. Just like working for Phelps, I was the human jack-stand.

It was only when desperate that I was allowed to work on the engines. I was a pretty good mechanic in an ocean of very good mechanics, but, as a jack-stand, I was in a class by myself.

This was not the retirement I had imagined.

The more time I spent cleaning grease out from under my nails, the more I resented living a leftover life. Someone else had decided that the rest of my story was to be written with the few words left un-redacted on my resume.

And now, that someone was sitting across the table from me trying to extract another payment on a long-satisfied debt.

No more cake for me; I'd more than had my fill.

“Haven't we started already?” I said.

The question seemed to catch him off-guard.

“What are you talking about?” he asked.

“Near as I can figure it, you've been playing me right the way along.... Since you put me out to pasture, for all I know.”

“Don't flatter yourself,” he said.

“Don't get me wrong, I am flattered that you got the old crew together on my account.”

“Not quite,” he said. “I mean, we're not all back together, are we?”

“Barney?” I asked.

“Barney,” he said.

“I wondered when he was going to show up. Couldn't figure why you were holding him back.”

“I think you know the answer to that,” he said. “I think you know better than anyone why he's not here.”

“I haven't seen him in years, how's he doing?”

“Nobody has,” he said icily.

“Has what?” I was feeling playful.

“Nobody has seen Barney in years.”

“Nobody? I'd have bet money that he was one asset that you'd have trouble letting go of.”

“When did you last see him?”

“As you know, under the terms of my separation, I am forbidden from interacting with any current or former operators.”

“When did you last see Barney?” he asked again.

“Well, I guess that would have been just before you and I met for coffee to discuss my future.”

“Nothing since then?”

“That would be illegal,” I said.

“But you two were very close, surely you couldn't walk away from that?”

“We weren't close. We were professional.” It was my turn to be icy.

Phelps chose a different tack.

“The both of you did extraordinary work for us.”

“The both of us?”

“Sure, you were a team.”

“Like Mutt & Jeff?”

“Sure,” he said.

“Laurel and Hardy? Abbott and Costello?”

“Can't have one without the other; absolutely.”

“But you kept him,” I said. “You kept him and you let me go.”

“I was following orders; the Secretary.”

“That's bullshit,” I said. “I'm embarrassed for you at such an answer. You only took the orders you made them give you.”

“You don't know--.”

“You would be surprised at what I know,” I cut him off. “Amazing what you can pick up when people treat you like a paperweight.”

“I'm not interested in your self-esteem,” he said. “I am, however, interested in Barney.”

“If you, with all your resources at your disposal, can't find him then there must be a good reason for that. Perhaps he doesn't want to found.”

“Or perhaps he's dead,” he countered.

“Could be, I don't know,” I answered quickly. Too quickly? I couldn't tell and, now I couldn't take it back.

“He couldn't still be operational,” I said. “Surely, he's long-since had his sheet cake and been released into the wild.”

After a long pause, Phelps finally said, “At the time of his disappearance, Barney was still operational.”

“When did you lose track of him?”

Phelps looked at me for a long time.

I had seen that look before.

“Let's take a break,” he said. “Do you want to take a break? Something to eat? I can have something sent in. Whatever you want....”

This meant something.

He was regrouping, getting ready to throw a change-up.

“I'm cool,” I said. “Maybe a coffee?”

I knew the call-back would not be lost on him.

Game of Tourists

Cinnamon Carter: Phelps had said she was working on this, so I shouldn't have been surprised that she showed up, but I was.

I had spent every day, since they pushed me out, trying not to think of her.

Every day.

And here she was, large as life, driving us back to the Palace.

She had a real ability, a talent, for getting under your skin.

I remember hearing my nephew talk about “ear worms”--those songs that get in your head and never leave—well, she was like that.

She wasn't the prettiest girl, but she had a way of looking at you that made everyone else disappear. It's what made her good at her work and, most likely, what had kept her alive all these years. There were a lot of people—on both sides—who wanted her taken out and, until that day, that moment when I looked at the phone, I would have bet money that one of them had.

She always did have a talent for finding people to take care of her.

There was a moment when she thought I could take care of her, but that didn't last long. Someone better came along. Someone better was always coming along.

I spent most of the car trip back wondering why I hadn't recognized her and why she was pretending she didn't recognize me.

Shit like that gets you killed, or worse.

Could she really have forgotten me?

Did I mean that little to her?

Do I mean that little to her?

Was this a strategy?

“Do you and Eldon do much travelling?” I asked.

“We used to,” she said. “Before...he got sick.”

“It must be difficult for you,” I said.

“We wouldn't have come here, except Eldon was very insistent. He wanted to see it one more time.”

“I always wanted to travel,” I said. “We just could never seem to make it work.”

“Kids?” she asked.

“Something like that,” I said. “Did you two ever get to Europe?”

“No,” she lied.

“I always wanted to go,” I lied.

“I hope you don't mind,” I said. “I am aware that I've been staring at you. I hope it doesn't make you uncomfortable, it's just that I've been thinking I've seen you somewhere before.”

“We've been together all day,” she said.

“No, it's not that. It's like I've seen you on TV, or in the movies,” I said.

She laughed and played with her hair the same way I'd seen her do it a thousand times before in a long ago life.

“I did do a little play-acting,” she said. “But it was all live.”

“Ah, the legitimate theatre,” I said.

“Something like that,” she said. “Something like that.”

I looked out the car's rear window and, for the first time, noticed the large black SUV that was following us.

It could have been there all day, for all I knew.

Was this the back-up team? Make-Believe Eldon's sniper friend?

Or something else for me to waste my attention on while “they” got a little closer to whatever it was they were after.

There could have been an aircraft carrier on our tail and I wouldn't have seen it. I was too busy falling for their story, feeling needed, being an operator.

They fed me a line and I bought it.

Thinking I was so smart that I could stay ahead of them, that I knew all the games, I was making myself an easier target.

I was the one needing saved; I was the Mark.

Jim had said to make sure they bought my act, but which “they” was I supposed to be playing to?

“Where's Barney?”

It made no sense; after all these years, it didn't make any sense.

But then, why put the whole band back together, or what's left of it, anyway, to play an outsider? They had younger, smarter, faster operators to play an un-sub, didn't they? You keep the special team on the bench for special operations. Bring in the unknowns to play me and I'm going to be on my guard; bring in friends, especially old friends and, well, that's a different story.

I was doing my best to remember everything about those last hours with Barney.

What could they be looking for?

This was a double-edged sword: the more I tried to figure out, the closer to the surface would be the memories that could work against me if they decided to play hardball. I had to guard against torturing myself for them.

The more I thought about it, the more questions came to mind. Why, after all this time, would Cinnamon put herself at risk for Barney?

She wouldn't.

I was pretty certain she wouldn't.

It's kind of a rule in my business that you only get to walk away if you promise to stay away. Ours is not a game for tourists.

What was happening now that made them interested in Barney after all this time?

Surely, they put it together by now that he wasn't coming back.

If they didn't already have whatever he had, they weren't going to get it.

Not from me.

So, why put me through the ringer for something they weren't going to get?

I began torturing myself all over again.

There, in the back seat of that car, I kept adding to my list of “whys” while becoming increasingly aware of my inability to pay for them.

They brought me back into the Palace through a rear entrance.

All pretense was gone, we were down to cases, about to see how sausages are made.

The corridors of this part of the Palace were designed for function and not harmony.

Thick conduits and water pipes ran along each wall like ruching: carrying God-knows-what to who-knows-where.

There were color-coded lines running in parallel down the center of the corridor. Every so often, a color would branch off and run head-long into a sealed door, or down a branching corridor, only to be replaced by a new color merging on to our expressway.

And the noise was deafening.

As near as I could tell, there was no reason for it. They didn't make anything here. It was not a factory of any kind and yet it sounded like they were running banks of high-capacity dryers full of gravel, just on the other side of these walls.

By the time we finally turned and entered one of the thousands of doors, I had long-since lost track of where we were in the building and how I might find my way out.

There was no going back.

It was a pretty standard interrogation room: metal chairs and a table with a large mirror running along one wall. High up in the corner, there was a surveillance camera mounted in a protective housing.

It was a strange choice to park me here.

This was the kind of room where they trained us in interrogation techniques. I knew this room and how to survive in it so..., what would be the point of trying break me in here?

It had to be some kind of play, but for what?

Why, after four decades, were they suddenly interested in Barney?

This was really starting to bug me.

And then it hit me: they didn't search me.

They...didn't...search...me.

I went through an elaborate ritual of being tired and finally put my head down on the table and pretended to go to sleep. I made sure I had the phone in my hand and could see the screen without moving my head.

I didn't move a muscle for maybe ten minutes before I did another web search.

“COLLIER ELECTRONICS.”

I was surprised, there were hundreds of hits and many of them were recent.

Near as I could tell, the company went out of business about a generation ago. Broke Barney's heart because he had hoped to be able to leave something to his kids.

At the time, I remember thinking what do you expect, it's a cover. What does the government know about running a business?

They had one or two moderately successful products, but not enough to be really viable and definitely not worth being bought out.

Eventually, the Government got interested in other things and, just about the time Barney was getting sick, they just closed it. They fired the token employees and put the whole thing on the shelf.

I heard a rumor that a Congressman whose nose was out of joint because he got booted from the Church Committee. He had threatened to open his files to the Times and that they were supposed to contain information on a variety of off-the-books ventures including Barney's company. Heard he lost the next election in a primary fight.

One of the articles sniffed out by the Internet was a Bloomberg feature on intellectual property.

We always used to make fun of those who left the game for the industrial market. We were saving the world from certain annihilation while they were running around trying to figure out what next year's colors were going to be,

It wasn't so funny when Paris left us near the end and went down to what we referred to as the “Junior League.” He was the only person I even half-way knew over there.

After the Wall, everything changed, tables turned. Suddenly, the Junior League was getting fully funded while we were seeing more and more of our projects shelved.

There was not going to be enough time to read the whole article, not on such a ridiculously small screen. I would have to play the odds, improvise. I scanned what I could, looking for key words and phrases.

One that jumped off the screen was “patent troll.”

My nephew tried explaining the idea to me: something about buying companies for their patents and suing others for real or perceived infringements.

It was a variation on the old protection rackets.

“I see you're using paperclips on your IPO. We hold the patent for using them to hold papers together and would be able to grant you a license, for a small consideration.”

I slowly slipped the phone into my pocket.

I must have drifted off for real, because I was genuinely startled when the door opened and in walked Jim Phelps.

“Let's get started, shall we?” he said.