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.