I wasn't conscious at the time."
"Nobody's accused you of authorising budgetary variances beyond your
level of authorisation," Andy
says soothingly. He casts a quelling glance at Derek from Accounting,
and then asks: "What I'd like to know is why you went after her,
though. SOP was to leave the area as soon as you were blown. Why did
you stick around?"
"Uh—" My lips are dry because I've been
expecting this one. "I was going to leave. I was in the rental car and
heading for the road out of town back to the airport, just as soon as I
got out of the kill zone. I'd have done it too, except that Mo rang."
I lick my lips again. "I was sent to see if I
could facilitate an extraction. I figured that meant someone thought Mo
was worth extracting. My apologies if that isn't actually the case, but
what I heard on the phone sounded like Mo had been abducted, and in the
wake of the shooting I figured this was an even worse outcome than a
blown mission and withdrawal. So I improvised, went round to her house
and used my locator on her.
"I've been thinking about it a lot since then.
What I should have done, I mean. I could have found where she was being
held then driven back to the motel to find whoever was running that
spy. Or something. Or headed for the airport and phoned from the
departure lounge. All I can say is I was too involved. Some bastard had
just tried to kill me; I mean, ONI was bugging Mo. When I phoned, they
had put a diversion on her line, which is how come I was able to tell
them where to look. But they probably already knew, I mean,
when Mo called me on her pocket mobile that would have tipped them
off."
I empty the glass of water down my throat and
put it back on the table in front of me.
"Look, I figure ONI or some other TLA
outfit—say, the Black Chamber pretending to be ONI investigators—was
watching Mo and picked up on me as soon as we made contact. It was a
stitch-up. Whoever tried to shoot me and snatch her took them by
surprise. That wasn't in the script. I know I should have come home
then, but at that point I think everyone was off
balance. Who the fuck were those loons, anyway? A major
summoning in public—"
"You have no need to know," Derek says snippily. "Drop it!"
"Okay." I lean back in my chair, tipping it on
two legs; my head aches abominably. "I get the picture."
My third interrogator pipes up in a reedy voice: "This isn't the
whole story, is it, Robert?"
I stare at her, annoyed. "Probably not, no."
Bridget is a blonde yuppwardly-mobile executive,
her sights fixed on the dizzying heights of the cabinet office in
seeming ignorance of the bulletproof glass ceiling that hovers over all
of us who work in the Laundry. Her main job description seems to be
making life shitty for everybody farther down the ladder, principally
by way of her number one henchperson, Harriet. She holds forth,
strictly for the record: "I'm unhappy about the way this assignment was
set up. This was supposed to be a straightforward meet-and-pitch
session, barely one rung up from having our local consul pay a social
call. With all due respect, Robert is not a particularly experienced
representative and should not have been sent into such a situation
without mentoring—"
"It's friendly soil!" Andy interrupts.
"As friendly as it gets without a bilateral
arrangement, which is to say, not an active joint-intelligence-sharing, committee-sanctioned, liaison environment.
Foreigners, in other words. Robert was pushed out in the cold without
oversight or adequate support from higher management, and when things
went off the rails he quite naturally did his best, which wasn't quite
good enough." She smiles dazzlingly at Andy. "I'd like to minute that
he needs additional training before being subjected to solo exercises,
and I'd also like to say that I think we need to review the
circumstances leading up to this assignment closely in case they are
symptomatic of a weakness in our planning and accountability loop."
Oh great. Andy
"Nobody's accused you of authorising budgetary variances beyond your
level of authorisation," Andy
says soothingly. He casts a quelling glance at Derek from Accounting,
and then asks: "What I'd like to know is why you went after her,
though. SOP was to leave the area as soon as you were blown. Why did
you stick around?"
"Uh—" My lips are dry because I've been
expecting this one. "I was going to leave. I was in the rental car and
heading for the road out of town back to the airport, just as soon as I
got out of the kill zone. I'd have done it too, except that Mo rang."
I lick my lips again. "I was sent to see if I
could facilitate an extraction. I figured that meant someone thought Mo
was worth extracting. My apologies if that isn't actually the case, but
what I heard on the phone sounded like Mo had been abducted, and in the
wake of the shooting I figured this was an even worse outcome than a
blown mission and withdrawal. So I improvised, went round to her house
and used my locator on her.
"I've been thinking about it a lot since then.
What I should have done, I mean. I could have found where she was being
held then driven back to the motel to find whoever was running that
spy. Or something. Or headed for the airport and phoned from the
departure lounge. All I can say is I was too involved. Some bastard had
just tried to kill me; I mean, ONI was bugging Mo. When I phoned, they
had put a diversion on her line, which is how come I was able to tell
them where to look. But they probably already knew, I mean,
when Mo called me on her pocket mobile that would have tipped them
off."
I empty the glass of water down my throat and
put it back on the table in front of me.
"Look, I figure ONI or some other TLA
outfit—say, the Black Chamber pretending to be ONI investigators—was
watching Mo and picked up on me as soon as we made contact. It was a
stitch-up. Whoever tried to shoot me and snatch her took them by
surprise. That wasn't in the script. I know I should have come home
then, but at that point I think everyone was off
balance. Who the fuck were those loons, anyway? A major
summoning in public—"
"You have no need to know," Derek says snippily. "Drop it!"
"Okay." I lean back in my chair, tipping it on
two legs; my head aches abominably. "I get the picture."
My third interrogator pipes up in a reedy voice: "This isn't the
whole story, is it, Robert?"
I stare at her, annoyed. "Probably not, no."
Bridget is a blonde yuppwardly-mobile executive,
her sights fixed on the dizzying heights of the cabinet office in
seeming ignorance of the bulletproof glass ceiling that hovers over all
of us who work in the Laundry. Her main job description seems to be
making life shitty for everybody farther down the ladder, principally
by way of her number one henchperson, Harriet. She holds forth,
strictly for the record: "I'm unhappy about the way this assignment was
set up. This was supposed to be a straightforward meet-and-pitch
session, barely one rung up from having our local consul pay a social
call. With all due respect, Robert is not a particularly experienced
representative and should not have been sent into such a situation
without mentoring—"
"It's friendly soil!" Andy interrupts.
"As friendly as it gets without a bilateral
arrangement, which is to say, not an active joint-intelligence-sharing, committee-sanctioned, liaison environment.
Foreigners, in other words. Robert was pushed out in the cold without
oversight or adequate support from higher management, and when things
went off the rails he quite naturally did his best, which wasn't quite
good enough." She smiles dazzlingly at Andy. "I'd like to minute that
he needs additional training before being subjected to solo exercises,
and I'd also like to say that I think we need to review the
circumstances leading up to this assignment closely in case they are
symptomatic of a weakness in our planning and accountability loop."
Oh great. Andy
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