weight,” Howell said. “Let’s go see what clothes we have to fit you. Then I’ll take you downstairs.” He got up and opened the cold beer for me. He handed me the icy bottle. “We’ve made all your favorites. Spicy corn soup, salad with blue cheese, roast beef with horseradish, mashed potatoes, asparagus, key lime pie, coffee. Doesn’t that dinner sound good?”
My mouth watered, to my shame. I hoped the food would taste like ashes. “It sounds like a last supper.”
Now Howell risked another very slight smile. “Just do as we ask.”
“And forgive the months you made me suffer?”
“Let’s all just pretend it didn’t happen.”
“It didn’t happen? God.”
They needed me out in the world. Why?
“There are clothes for you in the closet. I’ll ask the nurse to get you all disconnected, if you like, and I’ll let you get dressed.”
I started to pull off the medical sensor glued to my chest.
“I do have one question for you, Sam,” he said.
I left the sensors alone. “What?”
“ Novem Soles.” He said the words so softly I wasn’t sure I heard.
“What?”
“Have you heard that term before?”
“ Novem Soles? Sounds Latin. Novem is ‘nine,’ what is Soles?”
“Suns. Nine suns. Did Lucy ever use those words with you, ever mention them?”
This wasn’t a casual question. I stopped and I considered. He watched me. “No. What does it mean?” It sounded silly. But the Company gave computer-selected codes to every job, operation, or project, and this sounded like one of those code names. Nine suns? It meant nothing to me.
He studied me, and I wondered if the sensors on my chest were being monitored to see if I was lying. Howell smiled. “It means let’s go eat that good dinner.”
He went to the door and the nurse came in. She removed the catheter and the sensors and put the IV on a trolley. She helped me into a robe. I was weak and now starving, and I shuddered at the thought of accepting these bastards’ kindnesses. Food on a plate. Edible food, not the slop they’d given me. I’d eat it. I needed my strength.
I stood up from the bed. Howell offered a steadying arm and I shook it away. Fine, I would take their food and their clothes and their false solicitude and I would get back on my feet. But I had no illusions. I was not Howell’s friend, or someone that he wanted to help, who might ever get his life or his job back. His words it didn’t happen rankled in my ear.
They hadn’t found Lucy in these long months, or the man with the question-mark scar. So they still needed me. Howell and his superiors had found something called Novem Soles, whatever that was, and they thought putting me back out in the real world might lead them to it.
I knew the truth: I was bait. Bait for whoever set up me and Lucy.
9
August Holdwine drained the trace of whisky from the glass in front of him, centered the glass back on the napkin on the oaken bar, and studied me. “I’m not here to spy on you,” he said. “In case I need to state the obvious.”
“I know,” I said. “Howell has people to follow me and make sure I look both ways before I cross the street. They have a van and I think they call their moms three times a day. You want another?”
“No. I have to work tomorrow.” But he didn’t stand up to rise. August was a big guy, about six-six, old college muscle that hadn’t morphed all the way into fat but was considering the option. He had blondish hair and apple cheeks and heavy muscles under the shirt. He said, “Uh, maybe I shouldn’t say anything about work.”
“I’m not bothered that you still have a job and I’m serving drinks,” I said. “Bartending is honorable.”
“I think I would rather be serving drinks. Less stress.”
“Want to trade?”
August and I had gone through training together at the Company, me straight from Harvard, him fresh from the University of Minnesota. He was my opposite: a farm boy who’d spent most of his life in one place, on land that had been in his family for seven generations. I couldn’t imagine such stability. He had a broad, open face, the kind decent people trusted, and a gravelly baritone voice. He worked stateside, in a satellite office in Manhattan. He’d landed me the bartending job at Ollie’s. The Company manufactured a resume for me, as a bartender who’d worked at decent joints in Chicago and New Orleans. I hadn’t lost my bartending skills from working through college, and I liked being back with the glasses and the taps: I could be around people but the bar separated us. I was grateful. None of my other friends in the Company had bothered to call or express condolences. I was tainted. Like Howell said, conventional wisdom dictates the spouse always knows treason is under the roof. So I was beyond hope, as Howell put it, suspect, irreparably damaged goods. Except to August. But that was fine; August was the perfect friend to sit with in a bar. You could talk to him about your darkest secret and know he wouldn’t judge you, or you could be silent with him and just watch sports and never share a thought. Either was cool with August.
I wanted to trust August. But I couldn’t. Either he was under orders to be Howell’s tool or he wasn’t, and if he knew anything he would get in trouble once I put my plan into motion.
“So. Early morning tomorrow,” he said. “I should go.”
“You got cows to milk?” I enjoyed teasing him about his farming past.
He didn’t stand up from the bar.
“Do you want another drink?” I waited.
He looked up at me with his watery blue eyes. “What are you doing, Sam?”
“Pouring beer, mostly.” I glanced down the bar: no other customers. It was a Monday night, always the slowest at Ollie’s. Odd, because Mondays sucked so bad that you’d think most people would want a drink to wash the beginning of the week out of their mouths.
“You’re very quiet.”
“I don’t have a lot to say, August.”
“I don’t know what you were told, but not everyone at the Company believes you turned. Most of your friends are still your friends.”
“Most? That warms the heart.”
He shrugged. He meant well, but I guess he just didn’t know what to say. Thousands upon thousands of people work for the Company; the traitors in its history are very, very few, and rightly unforgiven.
“And yet there’s no crowd here tonight, what with my many friends.” I wiped down the already clean bar.
August picked up his glass and set it down when he remembered it was empty.
“Are you being brave in staying my friend, August, or are you just doing your job?” I’d intended not to push the subject but my patience was thinning.
“I’m not here because anyone told me to be. Howell said you were cleared but you couldn’t go back to work, not yet.”
“I’m a lure to draw out whoever took Lucy. The idea being that I wasn’t supposed to survive the explosion and she messed up that plan.”
August said, “I know all that. Be bait, then. But don’t think you’re alone. You’re not.”
“We stirred up a pot, August, the office in London. On this Money Czar guy, on a bunch of criminal networks. If you could help me… find out if there’s been any new evidence come to light on who was behind the bombing.”
“Sam, I can’t. I don’t have that clearance.”
“But you could access the files…”
He held up a hand. “I cannot. End of discussion. Let them investigate. Be glad they’ve cleared your
