Morrison rose into a stand, towering over me; his bearded face stretched into a smile as I raised my head to look up at him.
“Most of you are,” he answered. “You. Fleischer. Gustavsson; you’re all worth double alive what you’re worth dead.” His smile grew, and he paused, studying me, and said, “But the girl”—he chuckled under his breath—“the price on her head is likely more than any hit you’ve ever carried out, Faust.”
Surprised by his statement, I stared up at him, long and hard and with tremendous curiosity. But before I could inquire further, Morrison shifted gears and threw the topic off course.
“I always knew you couldn’t handle it,” he said, shaking his head. “Attachments. They were your only weakness. They always have been, Faust, from the day you were brought into The Order, to the day you went rogue and left it. Your mother. Your brother. Marina. Artemis. Sarai…” He shook his head once more, a look of shame and disappointment spreading over his rugged features. “I have to give you credit though. You tried more than anyone I know could, to overcome the weakness, or to suppress it at least, but in the end it had more power over you than you would ever have over it. Should’ve been born into The Order; if you had, you’d truly be the unstoppable machine that most believe you are.”
Refusing to give him the satisfaction of a pathetic response—because he was right, and a pathetic response was all I had—I retained eye contact and said, “So then what are you waiting for? Why cuff me to the bar, rather than take me in?”
He smiled a slippery smile.
“I’ll get to that soon,” he said. “But first, I wanted to ask you something.” He shrugged. “You don’t have to answer, of course, but I’m very curious, and it can’t hurt to try. Right?”
I did not respond.
Morrison dropped the handcuff key into his pants pocket, slid his gun still laying on the floor, behind him, and then crouched in front of me again, but out of my reach; he sprang up and down momentarily on the front of his feet.
“Did you ever wonder why no one in The Order knew you and Niklas Fleischer were half-brothers?” He twirled a hand at the wrist. “I mean surely it had to be a question itching in the back of your mind.”
Still, I did not respond.
Morrison’s mouth pinched at one corner, and he looked at me sidelong. “Oh come on, Faust, just be honest and say you thought about it but never could quite figure it out—there’s no shame in the truth.” When he still did not get the response from me he sought, he sighed and pushed himself into a stand. “All of us know—you know—that nothing in The Order is ever as it seems. Of course, you, being higher on Vonnegut’s pedestal than any operative in history, you had every reason to believe that everything you thought you knew was exactly how you knew it to be. But you’re not stupid, Victor; you’re probably the most intelligent man I’ve ever known. And you damn-well know, somewhere inside that methodical head of yours”—he pointed at his own head—“that there was no way you and your brother made it through the most sophisticated spy and assassination organization in the world, flying under the noses of those who built it, without them ever knowing the truth about your relation.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked, though I already knew he would not tell me.
Morrison shrugged.
“It was just a question, like I said.”
“You said yourself that I am not stupid, Morrison, so do not insult my intelligence with cryptic bush-beating.”
He smiled; the yellow-white of his teeth barely visible beneath his lips. But as I expected, he had no plans to alleviate the aching curiosity in me.
“I have a question for you,” I said, turning the tables.
“Ask away.” He motioned his right hand, twirling it at the wrist.
“Just how in love with Marina Torre were you before I choked her to death?”
The smile disappeared from his face, and he stopped blinking.
Victor