I smile faintly and fold my hands together on the top of the table too. “Oh, I’m sure that’s not entirely true, Mr. Connors; I’m not the first ‘hitman’ you have done business with, nor is Gustavsson the first…specialist you’ve been in the same room with without chains on his wrists and ankles.”
“No, you’re not the first,” says Connors, “and you won’t be the last, but it’s still not a common occurrence, so please bear with us.”
“Mr. Gustavsson,” a man named Kenneth Ware cuts in, “I’m just curious about why you do the things you do?” His thick, dark eyebrows stiffen inquisitively in his forehead. “How does one get into the interrogation business?”
Gustavsson chokes on a small laugh—even I almost laughed at that one.
“Did you really just ask me,” Fredrik begins, “you, a man involved in covert government operations, how one gets into the interrogation business?” He shakes his head with surprise and disbelief. “That’s humorous to me, Mr. Ware. Truly it is.”
Kenneth Ware smiles to combat the red in his face. “Well what I mean, Mr. Gustavsson, is why you are…the way you are. There’s a pretty big difference between what you do and what I do.” At least he’s not trying to be argumentative like Dan Barrett who must have been born with that ever-present scowl.
Fredrik sighs and crosses his legs, afterward interlocking his fingers and resting his hands over his midsection. “Why don’t you tell me?” he says with a mock smile. “Is there not enough about me in those files of yours already?”
“Actually no,” Kenneth Ware answers. “I’ve just taken a special interest in you is all, and would like to know more. About your background anyway; I already know what you do, I’m just fascinated by why you do it.”
“Mr. Ware is a fan,” Connors says, suppressing a grin.
“I seem to have quite a few of those.” Fredrik purses his lips. “It’s kind of disturbing, actually.”
“I have to agree,” I say with the shrug of my shoulders.
“Me too,” Dorian Flynn speaks up; his eyes veer when he notices me looking at him.
“Can we get on with this?” Barrett snaps; he chews on the inside of his mouth. “Your files’ll be here momentarily—”
The tiny door to the meeting room opens and in walks a man with a file folder, much thinner than I expected, the folder, not the man.
“Ah, there they are now,” Barrett says.
The man gives the folder to Barrett and Barrett slides it across the table toward me.
“Where’s the rest of it?” I ask, looking down into a stack of about sixty freshly printed sheets of paper. I begin sifting through them, scanning the text in search of keywords—I’ll read it all more thoroughly later.
“That’s all of it,” Dan Barrett insists.
I look up with only my eyes; my hand in pause holding a sheet of paper over the stack.
“He’s telling the truth,” Barry Connors says with a nod. “Mr. Flynn claimed it was difficult for him to get access to any files.” He points at the folder. “Everything we have on your Order is there.” He’s lying, but I’ll let it slide for now.
“But you said you’ve been following me for eight years.”
“Yes,” Connors says, “we have a small file on you from when you worked under Vonnegut, but nothing as extensive as what’s there”—he points at the folder again—“just some of your hits; information on who you worked closely with: your brother Niklas Fleischer, your Safe House contacts, and of course”—he glances at Fredrik—“Mr. Gustavsson.”
I drop the sheet on top of the others.
“I thought the CIA did more…outside work, if you will?” I say. “Why follow me here? I thought chasing killers around the U.S. was more in the interest of the FBI?”
“Yes, but you worked for Vonnegut, and Vonnegut is by every account an outside threat to the United States. You were his highest ranking assassin—we can’t find him, so we go where you go.”
“And besides,” Kenneth Ware says, “we’re not technically CIA—we’re an entirely different division.”
“And what division would that be exactly?” I inquire.
“The Special Special Activities Division,” says Ware, mysteriously.
Interesting. Something as underground as we are, that I’ve never heard of. I know what SAD is, but according to Mr. Ware and his clandestine emphasis on the extra ‘special’, I’m guessing SSAD does not stand for Social Security Advocates for the Disabled.
“We were surprised,” Barrett speaks up, “when Mr. Flynn just happened to end up under your command after you took over the Black Market operation he was planted in—felt like we hit the jackpot when Flynn found out who you were, Mr. Faust.”
I am sure it did.
I continue to scan the papers as they talk. Flynn sits uncomfortably next to me.
“You were a ghost,” Connors says. “Even with some files on you when you were in The Order, we could never find you.”
“How did you get any information on me at all then?” I ask, looking up so I can see their eyes when they answer.
Connors and Barrett look at one another. Then they glance at Kenneth Ware.