“What does the drug do?”
“Nothing dangerous. You won’t know what it’s for until later. That’s part of the deal. And the flyer wasn’t bullshitting about losing contact with your kin. You won’t have a phone. You won’t have Internet access or mail service either.”
“What’s the generous pay?”
“Two hundred thousand a year, all of which you can bank, because room and board will be provided for you.”
Cobb whistled and sat back in his chair. He asked if he’d have a stack of nondisclosure forms to sign if he took the job. No, the men told him. When it came to that, the situation was very simple: If he ever shared the details of this job with any outsider, he would be killed, and no one would ever be prosecuted for killing him. Cobb looked into their eyes and saw that it wasn’t a joke. Which made him believe the rest of it, too.
“Let’s have the first pill,” he said.
A funny thing had happened that same night, back at his housing unit on the other side of Ramadi. A messenger came by with a thick three-ring binder, and Cobb laughed, because here was the paperwork after all. Of course. Only it wasn’t paperwork. Inside the folder were detailed profiles of over one hundred women; no names for any of them, just reference codes. All of the women were between the ages of eighteen and twenty, and every last one was a heartbreaker. The profiles included high-res face photos as well as nude shots. Tucked inside the folder’s front flap was a handwritten note: Pick any two, and submit your choices to the hiring office tomorrow at 0800.
Less than twenty-four hours later, Cobb had been in the air aboard a C-17 transport. He’d dozed en route, waking when the plane touched down here at the compound—the place he’d called home ever since. Even now he had no idea where it was located. Somewhere in northern Canada, he guessed. There were mountains, and it was cold as hell year-round, and there were no roads connecting the compound to anything else. Nothing surrounding the place but northern wilderness as far as you could see. The compound itself consisted of the airport, with its array of buildings and hangars, and then a single road looping out into the woods, skirting the rim of the valley and accessing the dozen houses that stood there overlooking the drop-off. Each house was a hundred yards from the next, every one of them screened from its neighbors by the intervening forest.
The wind shifted and partly blew the steam cloud away from the patio. Cobb took in what it revealed, then smiled around his cigarette.
Callie was still at it, her eyes closed, lost in the moment; Cobb couldn’t see her mouth, but he could tell she was smiling. All at once she opened her eyes and looked up at him. She raised one hand from Iola’s thigh and beckoned him with it. Cobb nodded and took another deep drag.
The two girls had arrived here the day after he had. By then he’d all but forgotten having picked them from among the profiles; he’d mostly figured that was just another psych test. That first day here, on his own, he’d simply marveled at the house; he had it all to himself. It was brand-new—you could still smell the carpet and the paint—and it looked like something you’d see on MTV Cribs.
EXCELLENT LIVING CONDITIONS.
No shit. There was the heated pool, with a hot tub at one end; the patio itself was heated by electrical coils under the paver bricks. There was a home theater with 7.1 surround sound. There was a sauna. There was a Sub-Zero fridge in the giant kitchen, and on the granite counter there was a tablet computer dedicated solely to a list of foods and drinks. You could scroll down that list and tap two dozen items—or just one, if you had a craving for it—and the groceries would show up at the door thirty or forty minutes later, no charge. Cobb had been soaking it all up, wondering what in the name of hell he was supposed to do here, when the doorbell rang and he met Callie and Iola for the first time.
Those first few weeks, it remained unclear what exactly the job would be. An older guy named Hager stopped by a few times, early on, to explain some of the ropes. There were two more scheduled dosages of the drug, he said, which would be brought to the house at the necessary times. It was fine if Cobb used the available alcohol and marijuana, within reason; those substances would not conflict with the drug, either now or later on when his work began.