Noah looked into her eyes for several seconds, and concluded that she was being completely honest with him. “Well, so far, the only problem I got with this whole plan is the idea that you get to decide who lives and who dies. Who decided that you are the one who gets to play God?”
“Our commander-in-chief,” she said. “Up until I got this assignment, I was an intelligence analyst with another of those groups that you mentioned earlier. The president was intrigued by the fact that I would occasionally suggest that assassination might be an appropriate measure to take, and a few years ago he called me in for a private conversation. He told me that he had convinced the Joint Chiefs of Staff that it was time to create an organization along these lines, and that he had a candidate for its management, namely me. He offered me the job, and assured me that I would be completely autonomous and could never be ordered to sanction an assassination, so I took it.”
“Just out of curiosity, do you have any trouble sleeping at night?” Noah asked.
“Not a bit,” she said. “You’ll find, if you accept my offer, that I never sanction an assassination lightly. I have to be absolutely certain that it’s justified and warranted, or I’ll disapprove the request. My decision is always final, and there’s nobody above me to complain to. I can guarantee you, if you come aboard, you will never wonder whether your target deserves what you do to him. That’s because I will make sure you know exactly why I have sanctioned that death, including giving you access to all of the information that led me to decide it needed to be done.”
Noah sat there in silence for a full three minutes, just looking into the eyes of the woman across the table. He expected her to become impatient with him, to demand an answer, but she just sat there and looked straight back into his. At last, he spoke.
“So how would this work?” Noah asked her.
“Two days from now, you’ll be found dead in your cell, hanging from the air vent, an apparent suicide. You’ll be carried out and buried, a death certificate issued to serve as proof to anyone who ever wants to know that Sergeant Noah Foster died in prison by his own hand. Of course, the body that gets buried won’t be yours. You’ll be loaded into an ambulance and driven to a highly secret facility where your training will begin. Among the things you’ll be taught will be your own new life history, and because we like to keep things simple, all we’re going to do is change your last name, and we’ll give you a history that will let you go out into the world as a free man. You’ll also have your appearance slightly altered, not a lot, but just enough so that if you ever ran into someone who knew you before, they would go, ‘Wow, that guy looks a little like someone I used to know, but it’s not him.’ It’s not that we’re really worried about you running into old friends, since we already know you don’t have very many, but as you can imagine, the existence of E & E is something we don’t want to let the world in on. Any other questions?”
Noah sat there for another minute, watching her eyes. He liked the fact that she didn’t flinch, because most people couldn’t play stare down with him. He suddenly smiled, and leaned forward with his hand extended.
“Noah Whoever-I-am, ready to report for duty. Just tell me what to do next.”
“Well, the first thing I want you to do is to sit down and write as detailed a narrative as you can about your life. What I want is to know how you see yourself, who you believe you are. Just write it out in your own words, and keep it in your cell. We’ll pick it up when we come to get you.”
Noah’s eyebrows went up slightly. “No problem, I can do that,” he said. “Is it going to matter that you’ll find out I’m nothing but a wolf in human clothing?”
FIVE
Noah was asleep when they came for him. His door opened, which woke him instantly, but he stayed on his bunk as if sleeping. A second later, he felt the light sting of a needle, and then he was asleep again.
He came back to consciousness slowly, and could tell that he was lying on something that was moving. He tried to open his eyes but they wouldn’t, and when he tried to move his hands, he found that they were unresponsive as well.
He could hear, though, and the sounds coming through told him that he was in a vehicle. The steady hum beneath him was from tires on the surface of a road, of that he was sure. The purring noise was certainly from a well-tuned engine.
“Ma’am,” he heard a voice say, “I believe he’s awake. It’ll take a few minutes for everything to wear off, but his breathing says he’s conscious.”