Chapter 67
AGENT PENDERGAST WALKED DOWN the hospital corridor. The room that had previously been guarded now looked like the others, the policeman removed when it was clear that Proctor had been the victim of a kidnapping and not an accomplice.
Pendergast entered the room to find Proctor sitting in a chair dressed in a hospital gown and slippers and reading a paperback.
The color had returned to his skin, and the powerful muscles beneath it rippled faintly as he turned a page.
Although Pendergast had appeared silently at the door, he noted with approval that Proctor seemed to have already known he was coming—his instincts were still sharp.
“Sir!” Proctor said, putting the book aside and preparing to stand.
“Rest easy,” Pendergast said, closing the door behind him.
“In the unclassified world out here, you’re not a sergeant major and I’m not a colonel.
We’re just shades in the memories of Longstreet, Michael Decker, and others who aren’t the kind to reminisce.
” He took a chair beside Proctor. “We’re civilians now—although one of us is still actively working for the government.
” At this, he pulled the FBI badge out of his black suit jacket and showed it to Proctor.
“What? You’re working for those candy-asses?” Proctor said.
“The analogy I’d prefer is that I’m a diner, and they are the restaurant. They offer up many interesting and mysterious sauce piquante dishes, of which I may sample.”
Proctor nodded as Pendergast peered at the book in his hand. “Don’t tell me you’re still reading Trollope.”
“Why not? The books suffice for an extended op. The world they describe is so strange and distant they make hours pass quickly when you’re waiting for a go-sign. And if you lose one somewhere, it’s easy enough to replace.”
This sounded like Proctor’s logic. Pendergast remembered him, crouched behind a Jerusalem thornbush in the Middle East, or a Manchurian fir in a colder climate, reading a battered paperback by Gen 3 night-vision goggles. “I should have thought you’d have finished all his books by now.”
“They’re just as serviceable the second time around.” And Proctor held up the cover of Barchester Towers.
There was a brief silence. “I understand you’re being released tomorrow,” Pendergast asked, in a somewhat different tone. “How good is your memory of my first visit?”
“I told you all I knew about my captor.”
“I assume you were officially debriefed?”
Proctor smiled mirthlessly. “I received a visit from two humorless men in sweatsuits. They took copious notes. But I was left unsatisfied. They didn’t tell me squat about the case—all I know is what I’ve read in the papers.”
“Well, I will certainly fill you in.” And Pendergast began to tell Proctor all about Wickman, the PSI experiments, and his demented search for the proper limb to replace his own evil one; how he died; the roles of Magnus and Telligren; and all the rest of it.
Proctor listened intently and, when it was over, gave a dry chuckle.
“I suppose I owe you thanks for saving my life.”
“Agent Chambers saved your life—not me.”
Proctor looked skeptically at Pendergast. “So that’s the official version?”
“Indeed so.”
“I’ve been wondering what happened with my job, that day I didn’t show up for work—”
“I can enlighten you,” Pendergast said. “The arrangements were shifted to a backup plan, and it went through without a hitch. Foreman was correct, though, about the two workers he suspected of being rogue agents. He found additional confirmation, allowing him time to dispose of their services before they could compromise future operations.”
“How did you learn all that?”
“I knew you’d be curious, so I did a little investigating on the side.”
A pause. “I suppose old Foreman is wondering what the hell happened to me.”
“The whole team is—or rather, what’s left of it. I know they would take you back, if you wished.”
Proctor shook his head. “No,” he said. “Thanks, but no thanks.”
There was another silence—longer this time.
While they’d been speaking, Pendergast had been scrutinizing Proctor.
The Ghost Company had been dissolved suddenly and indecorously during a change in administrations, and Pendergast had seen almost nothing of Proctor since.
In every way that mattered, however, he still seemed to Pendergast like his old steady self, showing no signs of depression, hyperarousal, intrusion, or the other symptoms of PTSD that had plagued other members of the Company.
“Expedited Medical Transport,” he said. “Why?”
“Why not?” Proctor asked in return. “I needed a job.” Proctor shrugged.
“When I was young, I’d always known I would end up in the military.
But I never figured on being tapped for anything like the Ghost Company.
The places we were dropped into, the unsanctioned liquidations, the rogue operations…
” He shook his head. “If you wrote a novel about it, nobody would believe it. And then some politician or bureaucrat decided we were a liability—and boom, we were disbanded.”
“You could have had your pick of postings in the armed forces,” Pendergast said.
Proctor nodded slowly. “Yeah—but no.” Another pause.
“I had had enough of that. Look, I know that some—maybe a lot—of the things we did were… well, dirty. Brutal. But they served a purpose. We didn’t undertake a single op unless our entire chain of command, from Longstreet on down, believed it was right.
We risked our lives to make a difference.
Sometimes, a huge difference.” He toyed idly with the paperback, then tossed it on a nearby table.
“They offered me a posting in the SEALs. But—I don’t know how else to put this, sir—how can you be satisfied with a ground assignment once you’ve made a trip to the moon? ”
This was perhaps the longest, most personal statement Pendergast had ever heard Proctor make.
But he understood only too well what he meant.
Their secretive years in the Ghost Company had been made up of long stretches of a terrible kind of excitement: balanced on a knife’s edge, existing in a strange twilight where death surrounded you and life seemed far away.
Even for the healthiest mind, being dropped back into civilization after that, with those memories, forbidden to speak of it ever, to anyone, made for a disquieting existence.
It was no wonder Proctor had taken up a nomadic life, getting one job after another just to stay busy, moving around, changing cities, never settling down.
Pendergast said, “A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.”
“We are both travelers, sir, are we not? And I guess it’s time for this ‘good traveler’ to get back in his Land Rover, pick a direction… and drive.”
“I must tell you, Proctor, that my ride is a lot smoother than your old Rover.”
“Your ride?”
“A Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith.”
Proctor whistled.
“It seems I am in need of a driver.”
“A driver? You mean… a chauffeur?” The tone of skepticism was unmistakable.
“Have you forgotten your operating brief already? You might wear, from time to time, the outfit of a chauffeur. But there will be more to the job than mere driving—a great deal more. Your very special skills, my friend, will be put to most excellent use: in my employ this time, rather than under my command.”
And, listening, Proctor smiled—if a faint twitch at one corner of the lip could be called a smile.