26 Seduction

by Thescarredman

Frank Colby is a man with secrets safeguarding many lives - including his own. But getting people's secrets is Nicole Callahan's job, and she's very, very good at it. She has questions about Director Colby's relationship with the Lynch Mob. She wants answers from Frank. There's something else she wants from him too. Poor guy only thought that he had trouble with women before...

1. Different Methods

June 21 2004
Guantanamo Bay Naval Preserve
Detainee Camp Delta

First Sergeant Brian Wilcox, US Army Military Police Specialist, looked out over the waves breaking on the rocky shore below, thinking that, under other circumstances, the spot he was standing on could be a nice location for a resort.

He was looking south into the not-so-sparkling Caribbean – it was the start of hurricane season, and the day was windy and overcast. There weren't many pretty beaches on this stretch of Cuba's extreme southern shore – it was all low cliffs and surf-pounded rocks, actually – but it was still pretty scenic, so long as you were careful where you looked.

It wasn't as remote as it seemed, either. You couldn't see it from here, but there was a busy naval base just a couple miles to the north on the other side of the ridge. The sea was empty of traffic right now, but often he had seen cruise ships passing by, floating hotels tiny with distance just this side of the horizon. Though doubtless there were tourists aboard who might like a glimpse of the base, the patrol boats and helicopters – and the good sense of their captains - kept them from getting too close. Just out of sight over the horizon, the island of Haiti lay just a hundred miles south or southeast, take your pick. Jamaica was about a hundred and fifty to the southwest. And directly to the east, Castro's Cuba was just a mile away on the other side of the base's perimeter fence.

Guantanamo Naval Preserve was a fenced-off rectangle about nine miles by six, fifty square miles of real estate carved from the island of Cuba. That made Gitmo sound like a huge facility, but the Preserve was at least half water, its borders enclosing the southern half of a big bay, and the land surrounding it was mostly wild and undeveloped even after a century of Navy occupancy. The base and its airfield were situated on a pair of matching spurs of land that reached towards each other across the bay's inlet and nearly closed it off. A big airfield occupied the western spur, and the rest of the base facilities – including the detention center – the eastern spur. Gitmo, while a well-equipped and busy place, was far from being the Navy's biggest base.

Nevertheless, the detention center was isolated. The naval base's shops, docks and housing, though only a couple miles away, were crowded together on the spur's northern half facing into the Bay, and were separated from the camp on the empty southern shore by a chain of rugged hills that ran down the little peninsula's middle like a spine. Only a couple of narrow roads, twisty and little-used – and guarded - connected the two facilities. The detention facility was largely self-contained, with its own headquarters, staff housing and barracks, commissary, supply depot, hospital, and whatever else it needed to conduct its business with a minimum of communication with the rest of the base. To someone stationed there, Camp Delta seemed to be situated in the middle of nowhere.

Both relieving and reinforcing its isolation, the camp also had its own helipad – just a slab of concrete, a wind sock, and some beacons a short drive from the buildings, but very handy. It enabled visitors to arrive from the mainland or ships at sea - without having to land at the main base's airfield, take a boat across the inlet to the main base, then drive to the camp. Enabled them, in fact, to come and go without even being seen by anyone not directly connected with the detention center and its business. Sometimes those visitors had good reason to arrive and leave quietly.

Wilcox was standing near the pad now, waiting for such a visitor, an 'information specialist' – a common euphemism for the interrogators from the CIA and other spook shops who tramped in and out of here. Wilcox had been designated as this particular spook's guard and escort for as long as he was here. It was boring duty at best, teeth-grinding at worst: these characters were never good company. They didn't talk much. Some of them acted like they were too good to talk to you, like they belonged to some kind of elite. They always wore officer's rags and tags, even though the sergeant was sure many of them had never even served: another deliberate barrier to casual conversation.

Wilcox wasn't much impressed with their performance as a group. He had watched them working the detainees, and thought most of them were just bullies and con artists. He was sure that they got dick-all from most of the detainees they questioned, and compensated by getting creative with their reports. The sergeant doubted this character would be any different, even though he seemed to be getting the superstar treatment. Wilcox's written orders had omitted the guy's name and agency, which was routine procedure in this security-obsessed place. But the Captain himself had handed Wilcox the assignment, while delivering firm instructions to fully cooperate with their visitor, as well as a stern warning not to get too curious. All of which was far from routine.

The sound of rotor blades swelled in the air. Out of the clouds to the south, a Seahawk appeared and approached low, raising a tornado of grit once it reached land. Wilcox grabbed his hat and watched the bird touch down with exaggerated care - dropping slowly to within a few feet of the ground, hovering on its flare cushion for a moment, then putting all the wheels to the concrete at the same instant, gentle as a mother's kiss.

Forstner, the soldier waiting with Wilcox, pushed a short flight of rolling stairs to the closed side door. The pilot cut power and, against usual practice, let the sergeant and his driver stand eating dirt from the wash while the rotor spooled completely down and the air cleared before opening up. Immediately, one of the chopper's crew, a Marine in flight gear, jumped down and turned to the open doorway, apparently to make sure the Army pukes had locked the stair wheels and to help their passenger negotiate the three steps to the pavement. VIP indeed, Wilcox thought sourly.

Then a figure appeared in the doorway, and the sergeant's mouth dropped open. "Ho-ly fuck."

…

Wilcox rode back to camp in the shotgun seat, turned sideways to keep an eye on Forstner, who was giving way too much attention to the rear-view mirror for the sergeant's comfort – although he could certainly sympathize. He resolutely tried not to look at the girl in the seat behind him. He imagined he'd done harder things in the line of duty, but none of them came to mind just then. "Just another minute to the center, miss. But would you like to freshen up before they check you through?"

And put on something more appropriate? Not that her civvies were immodest: stretchy white jeans, tank top, wide-brimmed straw hat. But she was going to have trouble enough avoiding attention, no matter what she wore, and her present attire made her look like a tourist. Gitmo wasn't exactly a tourist destination, especially on this side of the ridge. The sooner he had her in some sort of uniform, at least, the more comfortable he would be.

"Oh, thank you," she said. She had the sweetest voice of any female he'd ever known, despite looking barely old enough to vote. "A pit stop would be perfect. The copter ride from Kingston wasn't all that long, but they always shake me up a little."

Against all protocol, he found himself asking, "Kingston? Are you with a social services group or something?"

"No, just had some business there. They didn't tell you why I'm here?"

"I thought there might be a mistake. You're not much like any interrogator I've ever seen."

"Maybe different results require different methods, Sergeant."

He turned to her and smiled, and was immediately trapped by her eyes: beautifully shaped, thickly lashed, and a light clear violet, like gems. "Well, I'd tell you anything you want to know." Surprised at himself, he turned back to face the windshield. Back off, perv. She's young enough to be babysitting your niece. Has it been that long since your last leave? "But these guys have a different attitude about women."

"So I've been told. We'll just have to see if I'm up to the challenge." She leaned forward. "And, when it's just us, no officers or detainees, I'm Nicole, kay?"

He swallowed, his eyes turning back to her despite all resolve. "I'll try to remember that. Old habits die hard." He had absolutely no intention of calling this girl by her first name. Better to maintain some distance, he thought - before he remembered his sour thoughts on that subject just before the chopper had appeared. He finally had met an 'information specialist' who was friendly, outgoing – and damned easy on the eyes – and he felt uncomfortable talking with her. "Usually -"

Forstner stiffened and abruptly braked. The sergeant swung his eyes back to the road ahead, and saw the reason why. The vehicle halted just as the girl asked, "Something wrong?"

"Lizard," Wilcox said. He slid against the side window so she could look out the Hummer's windshield at the giant olive-green iguana stretched across half of the narrow road. "Give it a minute, it'll move on."

She leaned forward, placing a hand on the back of Wilcox's seat. "Is it dangerous?"

It took him a moment to answer. Her hand was smooth and perfect as a mannequin's, the fingers long and slender. Her skin, which was very light, lacked the subsurface markings that pale-skinned people usually have; almost like porcelain, in fact. Her nails, which extended just past the fingertips, were painted a pastel shade somewhere between rose and purple, a color that went well with her eyes and the strange, almost-purple highlights in her shoulder-blade-length black hair.

He finally said, "Well, you don't want to get bit by one. And they're faster than they look. But they're not aggressive, usually." He nodded towards the lizard in the road. "Especially not the females."

"Really." She smiled. "You can tell it's a female from here?"

From the back seat, her smile had been dazzling; with her lips a foot from his face, Wilcox found he had to clear his throat to speak. "The girls are prettier. No, really," he went on. "The males look so different you wouldn't think they're the same species."

"I'll skip the obvious comment. Not trying to tell you your business, but it looks like there's room to drive around."

"Rather not take the chance. The fine for killing one is ten thousand dollars."

He'd expected some incredulous comment; instead, she said, "Why is that?"

"They're on the EPA list, a protected species. Hunted for food all over the island, except for here. They grow twice as big at Gitmo as anywhere else."

She stared out the windshield at the creature, which was looking steadily back at them and showing no inclination to move. "The EPA has authority over military bases?"

He shrugged. "Technically, no. It's just part of the military's good-neighbor policy. Not to Cuba," he added quickly at her raised eyebrow. "But some of the military reservations in the U.S. have been there forever, and most of them have a lot of unused space, wild country. They're like wildlife refuges, and some host plant and animal life that's gone extinct everywhere else." He gave her a little smile. "Sometimes it's a consideration when Congress is weighing base closures."

She continued to stare out the windshield. "Not likely they're going to close this place anytime soon. It has a unique status."

"Unique in what way?" He'd heard all about the Preserve's weird history, of course, and all the legalistic crap, the arguments back and forth about how America's oldest overseas base had long outlived its original purpose - it had been built as a coaling station – and that its existence was a de-facto invasion of a sovereign power, which demanded the base's return at every UN session. He'd even heard it compared to a European microstate – it was bigger than some of them, and a damn sight more independent.

On the other side of the argument was the assertion that the base was situated on territory claimed by a government the U.S. didn't recognize, and that the lease was nevertheless still in force despite the change of regime because, about fifty years ago, somebody in Castro's brand-new government had – out of ignorance, presumably - cashed the base's rent check, constituting an assumption of the agreement, even though they hadn't cashed another in the decades since. He'd heard all about how useful the base was for the government's war on drugs, and as a staging area for relief efforts in the Caribbean. To Wilcox, it just boiled down to the fact that, no matter how unwanted, the U.S. Navy was a tough tenant to evict.

But if this girl had something to say about it, no matter how unoriginal, he'd listen. Hell, he'd listen to her read a phone book.

She turned her head to meet his eyes; their noses were a hand's width apart, and he could feel her warm breath on his face as she spoke. "It's unique, because we don't have to sidestep any rules to do exactly what we want. The rules here are whatever we want them to be." She leaned back into her seat. Wilcox heard the door behind him open.

"Hey!" He reached for his door handle, but she was next to his door now, and he couldn't open it without hitting her. She smiled and shook her head as she passed by on her way to the front of the vehicle. Wilcox opened his door and put a foot out.

"No," she said firmly. "Stay in the car. I'll be right back." She stepped toward the iguana twenty feet away; its attention switched from the vehicle to her as she approached.

"Fuck," the driver said. Wilcox saw it too: a foot-long replica of the monster, skittering out from behind its mama and stopping just past its nose. "No wonder it wouldn't move."

The only times Wilcox had seen a lizard attack a human being were over food or their young, and on both those occasions the beasts had sent their victims to the hospital. He reached for his sidearm and stepped out of the car. "Miss! Get back here, now!"

"Sergeant," she said mildly, "you're scaring her." She stopped three steps from the creature, a distance it could cover in about half a second. "Cover me if you like, but stay with the car."

The iguana hissed. Its tail flicked stiffly. The girl crouched, hands loose between her knees, and stared at the lizard, which stared back. It hissed again. Wilcox pointed his weapon.

"Ten grand fine," Forstner reminded him.

"I'd only gamble with it anyway." But he brought the weapon down with a curse as the girl knelt and moved closer, partly masking his fire. She was close enough to touch the damn thing now, and he wavered, wanting to run up and yank her away but afraid of provoking the monster into harming her. He couldn't imagine how he'd explain bringing his protectee into the clinic with a couple of missing fingers before she'd even reached check-in. His heart leaped up as the girl stretched out a hand.

"Motherfuck," the driver said. Wilcox stared, unbelieving, as Nicole picked up the infant lizard in both hands, just inches from its mother's jaws, and stood. She walked across the road with it into the scrub, the adult following like a dog, and deposited it gently on the ground. Then she turned and walked briskly to the vehicle.

"Baby was just scared to cross," she said as she passed Wilcox and got back in. "No big deal."

"That was incredible." Wilcox got in and slammed his door shut. "And damn gutsy." Insane, more like.

"Not really. It was easy enough to figure what she wanted. I just had to get a little trust from her."

The truck began to roll again. The iguanas ambled off into the brush and disappeared as the vehicle passed by. The sergeant decided that this girl was probably a very good interrogator, if she could keep her soft heart in check; some of the detainees would likely eat her alive otherwise. "Why did you do it?"

"Well, I thought it would be quicker than talking you into running them over," she said. "I really have to pee."

Their first destination after preliminary check-in was the 'quarters' assigned for their visitor's use. Gitmo was America's oldest overseas base, and over the years it had developed into a pretty comfortable place to live. Some of the housing erected for officers looked no different from little subdivisions back home – gated communities even, in the case of senior officers and special guests such as the one Wilcox was escorting. When the car pulled up to a stop in front of the assigned address, the girl got out and stood with her butt against the car door, looking at it: a neat two-bedroom sitting on its own quarter acre of carefully manicured lawn. Wilcox said, "Something wrong?"

The corners of her mouth turned up. "I think it may be the most normal place I could ever call mine, even temporarily. You guys really do like to make yourselves at home here, don't you?"

"Well, base housing doesn't all look like this. This is VIP accommodations."

"Where do you sleep, Brian?"

It suddenly occurred to him that he didn't remember giving her his first name. "About half a mile from here. Some of the noncoms stay in a row of cinderblock rooms, looks like a motel from the Fifties."

"What about you, Max?"

Corporal Forstner stirred, as Wilcox had, at her unexpected mention of his first name. The sergeant had assumed that both their assignments to this 'information specialist' had been random, but maybe not. If not, then why had they been picked? Forstner said, "Barracks, ma'am, like any other base, but it's pretty comfortable. Even got my own room. I probably have as much personal space as the Sergeant. Just not as much privacy."

"Hm." She marched up the walk to the house, followed by Wilcox and the driver, who carried her little off-the-shoulder pack.

At the front door, she paused at the doorknob. "The doors lock?" She said, amused. "Does anybody lock them?"

Wilcox shrugged, grabbed the handle, and pushed it down, opening the door. He pushed it open and stepped back. "The key's probably on the kitchen counter. Whether you use it is up to you."

After 'Nicole' – the name suited her, but Wilcox had no reason to believe it was the one she had been born with – had freshened up and put on an Army undress uniform, complete with lieutenant's bars, he took her on a tour of the facility. As a disguise, the uniform was only partly successful: with her hair up under her cap, she looked okay from a distance, but anyone who got close enough to talk to her would know at a glance that she didn't belong in a lieutenant's uniform, and that she was a stranger here.

Guantanamo Detention Center actually comprised several prisons. Most of the inmates were housed at Camp Delta, the main facility, but were separated into half a dozen sub-camps according to legal status, disposition, or the level of security deemed necessary to contain and process them. Cautiously, Wilcox said, "How many … facilities did you plan to visit?"

"Besides the official ones?" She gave him an amused look. "Is that your way of asking if I work for the CIA, Brian?" Before he could answer, she went on, "I know about the three installations the Agency maintains in the hills north of here. I also know about the off-site camp where the Delta detainees go for 'enhanced interrogation.' I'll probably set up shop in that last one, actually, but the Company's business is none of mine."

The tour of Camps One through Three was quick and cursory – that only made sense, Wilcox thought: whatever Nicole was here for, it wasn't to process or evaluate the common detainees. Camp Four, where the most compliant and trusted detainees were housed, evinced more interest: she went through the dorm-style facility carefully, and made a study of the privileges and comforts that the detainees thought important.

At Camp Five, where the troublemakers were housed and disciplined, her manner changed, cooling. She followed the MPs as they made their rounds, walking down the row of cell doors and pausing to peer into their tiny windows. She looked in as well, the smile gone from her face. At first, Wilcox thought she was repelled by the small hard cells with a squat toilet in the corner, in which the hardcases were held in solitary confinement twenty-three hours a day. Then she said, "So this inspection is regular procedure?"

"Yes, ma'am," he said. "We look in on each detainee about every two or three minutes."

"Day and night?"

"Yes." The lights never dimmed in this place, especially in the cells.

"Do they resent the intrusion, or look forward to it?"

And suddenly he realized her attention was on the men, not their cages, and that was the cause of her change in manner. Nicole had her game face on. "They get used to it. It's all I can really say. We interact with them as little as possible."

"Do you escort them to 'Camp No,' or does someone else do it?"

The MP's eyes flicked over to him. Wilcox said cautiously, "This isn't a discussion we should be having here."

She nodded, seeming to dismiss the question, and produced a gadget resembling a high-end calculator, or possibly a fancy cellphone. She touched a few buttons on it, reading the screen, and said, "I have a list of five people – three hardcases in this wing, a trusty in Camp Four, and one boy in the general population in Camp Six. That list may get longer, depending on how the interviews go."

They reached the end of the row. "Okay. Do you want to see Camp Six next?"

"I'm not going near Camp Six," she said. "Most of the men there will be going free someday. I want as few of them to see me as possible."

"Okay," he said slowly. "So, what next?"

"There's one camp left to see here besides Six." Her eyes met his. "I'm not interviewing anyone there, but I'd like to see it."

...

Camp Delta had a handful of children behind the wire, kids who had been taken with their parents, or with people who had been thought to be. They were housed in a dorm within the compound, but separate from the rest of it, called Camp Iguana. One of its offices had been set up as a one-room school, and a portion of the exercise yard had been separately fenced and provided with playground equipment. Nicole and Wilcox, in the presently-empty main exercise yard, watched through the fence the children climbing the jungle gym and the ladder to the slide. The sergeant said, "I suppose this seems cruel to you."

"I don't know," she replied, eyes shadowed by the bill of her cap and hidden behind her sunglasses. "I can imagine worse ways to spend your childhood. Whatever they've lost being here, they don't seem to miss." She nodded toward the MP standing guard, wearing a holstered sidearm but no rifle, in the corner of the little playground. "They certainly don't have to look over their shoulders for bullies."

He gestured at the green mesh sheeting covering the outer fence, blocking the view of the sea. "It's been a long time since they've seen anything but blank walls. Some of them don't remember anything else."

"They still have the sky," the girl said dismissively. "They have security, and food, and medical care, and one another. There are worse places they could be."

"I suppose," he said doubtfully. "But a prison is no place for a kid to grow up."

"Neither is a refugee camp, or a favela, or a good percentage of the world's orphanages. I'm sure you could find thousands of children who'd gladly trade places with these." She turned away and headed for the building's entrance. "And plenty of adults who would envy their carefree childhood."

...

Nicole smiled across the table at the middle-aged man in the white coveralls that made him look more like a painter than a detainee. "Really, Arash, didn't it occur to you how suspicious it would seem if someone stopped you? A man trying to drive across the border into Iraq, with a gym bag full of US currency in the trunk?"

They were in a small conference room located in Camp Four. Camp Four housed the most co-operative inmates, some of whom, it was widely believed – even by people who supported Gitmo and its policies wholeheartedly - simply didn't belong here. They had been taken into custody under questionable circumstances and brought to Guantanamo by a series of misjudgments, and were now trapped by shifting politics and the convolutions of the haphazard and improvised legal system that processed 'detainees'. There were no internationally recognized courts authorized to try them, and some very vague terminology used to define their status in international agreements. Without a binding acquittal by a recognized system of justice, there was no place for them to go. Even the countries where they held citizenship wouldn't take them. Some of them were even in a state of quasi-asylum, because sending them home would be a death sentence for them, even after finding them innocent of the charges they had been brought here under - a few, precisely because they had been found innocent.

Arash Rostami returned the smile, his eyes drifting briefly from the girl's face to rove over the visible portion of her upper body. "Well, miss-"

"Nicole." The exotic little beauty, wearing a uniform that looked as out of place on her as a burkha, put an elbow on the table and gently touched the backs of her fingers to her cheek, drawing his eye and clouding his concentration. "I'm using your first name, it's only fair you should use mine, don't you think?"

"Nicole. That's lovely." Very Western, probably with some profane Christian meaning, but on her it seemed right.

"Thank you." Her lashes lowered, veiling her gemlike eyes. "I think 'Arash' sounds like a name for an adventurer of some sort." Her voice was sweet and melodic, a pleasure to listen to. The faint scent coming off her was unlike anything he had smelled in this antiseptic place… "An explorer, maybe, or a pirate captain. Or a smuggler, or a revolutionary. The sort of man one might expect to be carrying a bagful of money."

He struggled to regain his focus. "Ah. Well, put that way, it does seem a little naïve. But I really am just a small businessman. I had nothing but the best intentions. I didn't think the men at the checkpoint would be so hard to convince."

"But you weren't stopped at a checkpoint," she said. "You were trying to cross on a goat track of a road just three miles from the highway." Nicole's smile stayed firmly in place, and her voice was light and bantering. "I think you had some idea, Arash."

"No, no. I tried to cross at the highway checkpoint first. But the line was a kilometer long, and I just got impatient, I suppose."

She nodded as if she actually believed him, and he smiled inwardly. Rostami had seen his share of false sympathy from interrogators since his apprehension, but somehow, this girl projected a sort of sincerity that was impossible to disbelieve. "You were born in Iran, but you're a Jordanian citizen, lived there half your life. You had roots in the community and a successful used car business. Why sell out and pull up stakes and move to a strange country, one where the fires of war haven't even been put out?"

It dimly occurred to the man that this lovely young girl hadn't brought a file or any other paperwork to this meeting. Later, he would wonder why his mental alarms hadn't gone off at that observation, but now he just felt a warm flush from the attention. It made him feel, for the first time since he had come here, that the person asking him questions wasn't already certain of the answers. "Well, first, I wanted to help. I've been doing business in Iraq for years, and I have many friends there. I knew there would be countless shortages, and people would be selling luxury items like cars to buy things they needed. I could put cash in their hands and help myself as well, turning a good profit by exporting the cars for resale."

From the corner of the room, Wilcox stood watching the two of them, pretending not to listen. It took everything he had not to roll his eyes as the smarmy little con artist worked the girl. He had seen Detainee Five Eleven interviewed before; the sergeant was sure the guy had been a successful salesman, probably specializing in auction beaters at inflated prices. He hoped Nicole wasn't as taken in as she seemed; Five Eleven might not belong here, but that didn't make him likeable. And being a model prisoner didn't make him trustworthy.

Nicole said, "You're, what, maybe fifty years old?"

He smiled at her. "Fifty-six. Thank you for the compliment."

"You came to Jordan at twenty-five, alone, crossing the border on foot. Why did you leave Iran?"

"Because life there was simply crushing. Everything you said, everything you did, someone was watching you, trying to decide if you should be punished. You could break the law a dozen times just walking to the store and back for a paper."

She nodded. "You must have hated living under clerical law."

"You have no idea. Even if you weren't in trouble with the authorities, all someone had to do was claim that you were impious, and they could get away with doing whatever they wanted with you."

"Would you call yourself pious?"

"Yes, of course. But I'm also an independent thinker." He smiled. "I'm sure that's true of you too, Nicole."

She smiled back. "So you came to Jordan, arranged a loan, and went into business. The person who loaned you the money – a friend of the family, you said?"

"Yes, an old one, another Persian who left the country years before. The regime is driving out talented people by the thousands."

"I've never been to Jordan," she said. "Is it pretty?"

"Parts of it are. Green and fragrant. The cities are clean and peaceful and orderly. People are friendly." He gave her a little smile. "It's also very progressive, quite Western for a Middle Eastern country. The highway signs are even printed in English. When I'm back home, you should visit. I'd be happy to show you around."

"I'm sure you'd make a very good guide." She took a sip of water from a paper cup. "Your English is excellent."

"Thank you."

"Hal tatakalam alearabiat'aydaan?"

"Bikuli takid nem." His smile widened. "Lahjat jamilat."

She held up a hand. "I don't really speak Arabic, just a few phrases."

"I said, you have a lovely accent. Maybe you don't speak it, but I'm sure you could pick it up easily."

"Oh, I doubt you really think that." She was still smiling, but Rostami felt a chill. "You know how Americans are. We expect everyone we deal with to speak our language, embrace our culture and customs, defer to our opinions. We think we run the world."

Wilcox straightened. When the little interrogator spoke, something seemed to happen to the air, as if it was charged in some way. The detainee felt it too: the smile vanished from his face. "Miss," he said, "I didn't mean to offend you, quite the-"

"Do I seem angry?" She was still smiling, but something about her show of teeth made Wilcox take a step closer to the table. "Let's move on, I think we're nearly done. Let's talk about setting up your business. What sort of permitting requirements did you expect to meet in Iraq? What people or agencies might you have had to deal with?"

Thirty minutes later, the sergeant returned the detainee to his dorm and came back for his charge. He found Nicole leaning back in her chair with her ankles crossed on top of the table, arms behind her head. She said, "You don't like him much."

He blinked, chasing away thoughts brought to the surface of his mind by the girl's oddly suggestive position. "Not because I think he's a terrorist, because I think he's an asshole." Something prompted him to break protocol and ask, "You think he belongs here?"

"Not at all." She dropped her feet to the table and stood. "He belongs in Penny Lane. Our cousins at Langley made a big mistake not claiming him."

'Penny Lane' was one of the three small CIA camps in the hills to the north of the main facility. Its purpose was to 'turn' selected enemy combatants and return them to the field as double agents. "Wait, what?"

She rounded the table, headed for the door. "Our friend thinks I'm too pretty to be smart, too young to know history, and too American to care what people do in the rest of the world. He left Iran years ahead of the Revolution. He's SAVAK. Former SAVAK," she amended, as she passed through the door and walked beside him down the corridor. "After the Ayatollah came to power, the government got rid of some of the most prominent members of the Shah's secret police, but they kept on as many as they could, doing pretty much the same job, watching many of the same people even, just for different bosses. I'm pretty sure Arash was sent to Jordan as part of SAVAK's covert program to destabilize Iraq in the Seventies. When the Iranian government changed, I bet he was happy to take the new regime's money for the same work, as well as providing support for the Iran-backed extremists in Lebanon. Jordan really is a nice place to live, far better than living under the mullahs – at least for an 'independent thinker' like our Arash."

They reached the door. Wilcox opened it. The little camp's perimeter fence was ten steps away. A locked gate was set into it, a means of entrance and egress that bypassed the facility's 'official' gate. Just outside, Forstner waited at the wheel of an ancient open Jeep. Wilcox said, "You think they can turn him?"

"Are you kidding?" They walked toward the gate. "He'd sell his mother for a sandwich. Once it's made clear to him that he lost his chance to bluff his way free, he'll work for the Devil to get out of here. The Company will give him another carful of cash and send him across the border, to do the same job he was going to do for Iran. Any business in Iraq where large sums of cash trade hands is going to attract criminals and insurgents. He'll let them 'subvert' him and use his business to launder money and make purchases, probably smuggle goods as well."

They reached the gate. Nicole, waiting for the sergeant to produce a key and open the gate, brushed lightly against him; Wilcox fumbled his key ring and nearly dropped it. "He'll gain their confidence, learn who they are and how they operate – including the Iran-backed groups we know are active there. He'll secretly work against them with influence and misinformation, telling us everything he learns and delivering plausible BS to his former masters in Iran. He'll probably even enjoy it."

They passed through the gate and locked it behind them. She looked at the Jeep's rear seat, as if trying to decide how to get up into the doorless little vehicle.

Feeling a strange excitement – Jesus, Wilcox, is it that long since you touched a woman? He offered her a hand, palm-up. She reached for it; her hand hesitated a finger's width over his before placing it in his grip. He felt an odd shock – not electric, more a sudden rush of sensation. His breath squeezed out in a soft huff as the supple softness of her hand expanded in his mind to a momentary flash of her naked in his arms. Then she stepped up into the vehicle and released him, leaving him feeling a little disoriented and shocky.

If Nicole noticed, she gave no sign. "The next one, I'll need delivered to Camp No," she said. "But first … Is there someplace to eat around here?"