Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves (39 page)

‘We were both wounded—him worse than me—so I just dragged him across to that submersible and climbed inside it, to get somewhere dry where I could check his wounds.’

Schofield looked at the still figure of Baba in the bed beside her. He had about six body wounds, including one right in the centre of his chest. Chest wounds were usually fatal unless you had some kind of haemostatic, or blood clotting, agent like Celox gel or a QuikClot sponge—and Schofield knew that Mother and Baba hadn’t had either of those.

‘How on Earth did you patch him up and stop him bleeding out?’

Mother grinned again, and jerked her chin at Zack. ‘It was all thanks to
him
, actually. You may find this hard to believe, boss, but sometimes I do actually pay attention to techno-babble. One day back at camp, before all this started, Zack was telling me about our new MRE ration packs. He said the water filtration pills in them were chitosan-based and that chitosan is the key ingredient of Celox gel. Now, those MREs also have a crap-tasting jelly in them, and jelly is just gelatin. I figured, well, if I mixed the filtration pills with water and the jelly, I might end up with a gooey gel vaguely like Celox. So I pulled out my MRE and did exactly that. It produced a nice thick gel which I applied to his major wound. It formed a decent clot, not a perfect one, but one that was good enough to seal and contain the wound. The submersible had a first-aid kit with some bandages in it and I used them to cover it all up. Not sure how much longer it would’ve lasted, but it kept him alive long enough till we got picked up.’

Schofield shook his head. ‘You made a clotting gel from the ingredients of your ration pack. You sound like—’

‘I know!’ Mother said. ‘I’m fucking MacGyver!’

‘You sure are. Wait a second. How did you get away, then? I tried to call you on the radio.’

Mother said, ‘I heard you on the radio but my microphone got shot off during the shootout on the train and Baba’s musta fallen off at some point, probably when we landed in the water; we did land pretty hard. Anyway, I could hear you but I couldn’t transmit. You said we had to get off the island, pronto, so I figured some kind of serious boomtime was coming. So I fired up that submersible and drove it as deep as possible, to put as much water between us and Dragon as I could. The Mir worked fine but its radio was a half-broken piece of shit. I only managed to attract this sub’s attention by pinging constantly on the active sonar.’

Schofield nodded at Baba. ‘How is he?’

‘He’s still critical. They put him in an induced coma. The doc doesn’t know if he’ll pull through.’

Schofield said, ‘I gotta go to quarantine and get scrubbed. I’ll talk to you later.’

As he said this, Veronique Champion was placed on the bed to Mother’s right.

Schofield said to Champion, ‘I’ll come back to check on you, too.’

Champion nodded. ‘Thank you . . . again.’

Mother saw this exchange and threw a wide suggestive grin at Schofield. She raised her eyebrows. ‘Take your time, Scarecrow. I got some girl talk to do with my new French chickadee here.’

OUTER BALTIMORE 24 SEPTEMBER, 1650 HOURS (FIVE MONTHS LATER)

Shane Schofield sat in the basement office of a little townhouse in the suburbs of Baltimore.

Oddly, he wore his full dress uniform: white peaked cap, fitted blue coat with medals, gold belt buckle and pale-blue trousers with red piping. His attire looked far too formal for the little basement office, but then when he was done here he
was
going to the White House.

Across from him, behind her desk, sat Brooke Ulacco, his plain-looking, plain-spoken, sixty-bucks-an-hour suburban psychologist.

It was nearing the end of the day and Schofield had just spent the afternoon recounting his experiences at Dragon Island, including his torture at the hands of Marius Calderon.

Until that day, he hadn’t been allowed to talk to Ulacco about his mission to Dragon—as it involved CIA matters, he’d been informed by his superiors that her existing TS/SCI clearance was not high enough. He’d insisted that they get her the appropriate clearance, so he could tell her everything. It had taken a few months and even more background checks but Ulacco had passed and a ‘SAP’—or Special Access Program—addendum was attached to her existing Top Secret clearance. For Schofield it was well worth the wait to be able to tell her everything.

When he had finished recounting his story, Ulacco nodded slowly.

‘So, how’d you do it?’ she asked.

‘What?’

‘How did you keep your head together? This Calderon guy tortured you both physically and mentally. He taunted you about your father and about Gant’s death and then, so far as you knew, he killed your closest friend, Mother, in front of you with rats in a goddamn box. As your therapist, I would have serious problems with someone doing this to you. So. How did you do it?’

Schofield leaned back in his chair.

He knew exactly how he’d done it.

‘I did what you taught me,’ he said.

‘What I taught you?’ Ulacco was rarely surprised. Her calm, cocksure, seen-it-all facial expression was not often broken. But now it was. ‘What did I teach you?’

‘You taught me to compartmentalise my mind,’ Schofield said. ‘In a memory location. Or in my case, a, ahem, memory submarine.’

Ulacco eyed him closely. ‘I’ve often wondered about this, Shane. You chose a submarine as a memory locale because it is a perfectly sealable structure, but one with a purging option—one from which you can jettison memories. Did you jettison your memories of Libby Gant?’

Ulacco asked that question without expression, poker-faced. And even though she actually hung on the answer, she added, ‘There’s no right or wrong answer to this question, by the way.’

Schofield paused for a full minute, thinking long and hard.

Ulacco watched him, waiting.

Then he spoke.

‘No. I didn’t. I could never jettison my memories of Libby. She was an incredible woman and I loved her and to remove all the wonderful memories of her would be to remove something that makes me whole, makes me who I am, makes me
me
. During my torture—and especially when I thought Mother had been killed—I just shoved all those good memories into a compartment deep within the submarine of my mind, shut the steel door and spun the flywheel till it was sealed tight. After that, Calderon couldn’t touch Gant. Nothing he could say or do to me would reach those memories, all those great memories. And I was okay.’

‘You were okay? You
died
.’

‘Only for a little while.’

Ulacco cracked a wry half-smile. ‘So you’re telling me that a memory technique that I taught you here in my crappy basement in Baltimore kept you sane while you were being tortured by one of the world’s foremost experts in breaking the human mind?’

Schofield nodded. ‘Yep.’

Ulacco turned away for a second, and despite herself, actually looked a little proud. It only lasted a second, but Schofield saw it. Then her usual self kicked back in.

‘And then you sorta saved the northern hemisphere from annihilation?’ she said.

‘Yes.’

‘So you could say that by saving you,
I
actually saved the world?’ she said cheekily.

Schofield returned her smile. ‘I think you could say that.’ And they laughed, for the first time in any of their meetings.

Ulacco stood. ‘Your time’s up, Captain. And you have an appointment with the President to keep.’

Schofield stood and nodded seriously. ‘Thanks, Doc. Thank you for all your help. Oh, there’s just one more thing.’

THE OVAL OFFICE THE WHITE HOUSE 24 SEPTEMBER, 2000 HOURS

Shane Schofield stood to attention in the Oval Office in his full dress uniform while the President of the United States hung a medal around his neck.

Beside him stood Mother, also in her dress blues and also at attention. Beside her stood four civilians—Dave Fairfax, Marianne Retter, Zack Weinberg and Emma Dawson—and one robot. Standing happily by Zack’s side, his lower body completely rebuilt and his exoskeleton shining, was Bertie.

Watched by the Commandant of the Marine Corps, the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Director of DARPA, they had all received various medals for ‘gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of their lives above and beyond the call of duty’.

Off to one side stood Brooke Ulacco, dressed in her quickly assembled Sunday best, looking a little stunned to be there. When the President stood before her, he had no medal in his hands.

‘Dr Ulacco,’ he said softly. ‘Captain Schofield has nothing but the highest regard for you and your skills as a therapist. Being President is a pretty stressful job and I’ve been looking for someone to talk to about it, a therapist of sorts. Someone who’ll be tough but fair, yet also discreet. And I hear you now have a substantial amount of security clearance; this would only require a few more background checks. You up for it?’

For the first time since he had met her, Schofield saw the unflappable Dr Ulacco go wide-eyed with shock.

Once the medal ceremony was over, the President had the Oval Office cleared of everyone but Schofield.

‘I have someone here to talk with you, Captain,’ the President said. He keyed an intercom. ‘Mary, please send in the ambassador.’

A side door opened and into the Oval Office walked three figures: one of whom Schofield had never seen before and two that he had.

The man he didn’t know was a tall regal-looking fellow with swept-back silver hair, a long aquiline nose and an imperious bearing; he wore an obviously expensive suit.

The other two—also wearing civilian clothes—were Veronique Champion and Baba. Champion looked fit and svelte in a tailored skirt-suit and heels. She wore perfectly applied make-up and her black hair hung down to her shoulders, having been cut for the occasion. For his part, Baba had trimmed his beard a little but he looked very uncomfortable in a suit. He still wore one arm in a sling.

‘Captain Schofield,’ the President said, ‘may I introduce to you the French Ambassador to the United States, Monsieur Philippe de Crespigny.’

Schofield noticed that the President had used the formal method of introduction; only when someone did that, they usually introduced the more senior person
to
the more junior person. For the President to name Schofield first was to suggest that in this room, he ranked higher than the French ambassador. Schofield was sure the ambassador didn’t miss that either.

‘Monsieur.’ The French ambassador bowed as he shook Schofield’s hand. ‘I believe you know Major Champion and Master Sergeant Huguenot.’

Schofield nodded to Champion and Baba. ‘I do. It’s good to see them again and looking so well.’

The President said, ‘The ambassador has a message to deliver to you, Captain, from
his
President.’

The ambassador stood a little taller. ‘Captain Schofield,’ he said stiffly, formally, ‘the Republic of France sends its sincere thanks to you. Major Champion and Master Sergeant Huguenot have informed the President of France that your actions in the field, in addition to saving several other nations, saved France. It is my duty to inform you that the President has thus rescinded the standing bounty on your head. The Republic of France no longer has a grievance with you, Captain Schofield.’

Schofield’s mouth fell open.

Champion smiled at him. Baba grinned.

And the President of the United States, in particular, looked very, very pleased.

A short buffet of cakes and coffee followed in the Roosevelt Room, as usually happened after a presidential audience.

Zack and Emma were showing the President Bertie’s many features while Champion chatted with Brooke Ulacco.

Mother’s husband, Ralph, was also there in his best suit and a truly awful tie, yet Mother looped her arm firmly through his as they chatted amiably with Baba and Schofield.

‘So, Scarecrow,’ Mother said. ‘Did they ever find that CIA asshole, Calderon, the “Lord of Anarchy”?’

Schofield shook his head. ‘No, but I’m guessing that one day I’ll be called into a high-level meeting and at that meeting will be a very senior CIA asshole who will tell me that Marius Calderon has been found, dead.’