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.