The Room
For a place where he was supposedly going to be interrogated, the room was well furnished. A bookcase filled with the classics. Busts of historical figures. It even had a fresh carpet smell. A gilded cage, Mike thought.
"When you're being abducted, there are certain tricks to being able to tell where you're going when you have a mask over your head. If you're walking down a corridor, for example, you can usually tell what kind of a building you're in from the surface of the floor. Linoleum or another similar surface usually indicates an office building of the government variety. Pavement usually means you're underground. So, I knew I was somewhere underneath a government building based on the two corridors I was in."
Mike saw a man sitting behind a desk smiling at him. Inwardly he groaned. Outwardly, he said, "Well, fancy meeting you here. So is this the part where I get offered another job or killed?"
The man kept smiling, as he answered, in his smooth voice, "No, Michael. You were warned what would happen if mistakes were made…but I want to think of this as a second and final chance for you. I've always looked after your best interests, Michael."
"Is that why I got set up for Simon's murder?"
"It was a favor for a mutual acquaintance of ours-but we'll get to that. The main thing is, you're still the best at what you do. We just want you to return to doing it for us."
"When you're dealing with former employers who tried to kill you, you have one of two options. Number one is to try to escape to live to fight another day. Judging from where I was, there were at least four ways for me to do that. The second is to play along, and hope they don't catch on, until you can figure out what their real motivation is. Because if your old boss is working for a sanctioned criminal enterprise, chances are that your welfare isn't exactly high on the list of their priorities."
Mike went into "Cool and calm" mode. "Okay," he said. "Let's talk."
To be continued?
THE END