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The door opened, and he looked up to find the Tannehill smiling as he leaned in.
“The General is ready for you now.”
God knows, he’d waited long enough, but right then, Reid wouldn’t have minded a moment or two more to brace himself for whatever was going to come of this. He followed the aid down the hospital corridors. For all that he might not be under arrest, the two guards fell seamlessly into line behind him and were never more than two steps away as he was taken to a nearby consultation room.
There were six men already seated at the table when Tannehill opened the door and motioned him in. Christian recognized them in an instant.
“Cobb,” he said, surprised.
The older man looked up with a wry smile. “Fancy meeting you here.”
“Yeah, fancy.” Feeling even more as if he was walking into a trap, Reid sat down as Tannehill disappeared out the door, and his escort took up their guard positions in the hall. Lowering his voice, he asked, “Anyone know what’s going on?”
“I was about to ask you. Especially since I was told, I was being shipped to Guantanamo tomorrow morning.”
“They told me the same,” another man stated, winning a chorus of nods or grunts from the others.
A few minutes later, the door opened again, and Aliya was wheeled into the room. Clothed like a hospital patient, she sat in a wheelchair with a mostly empty saline bag hanging just behind her, connected to her arm.
“Who’s General Markoff?” she whispered the minute Tannehill retreated, and the door closed again.
“Never mind that,” Reid whispered back. “Who the hell did you call?”
The door opened before she could answer, and General Markoff walked into the room. Briefcase in hand, he walked to the head of the table, leaving his aide to close the door andensure their privacy. Clearing his throat, the older man glanced up long enough to give everyone a smile that did anything but disarm, then he sat down.
“Can I get anyone anything? Coffee, something to eat? No?” When no one said anything, he folded his hands on the table and smiled again. Turning to Aliya, he asked, “How are you feeling? Better now?”
“Yes.” Shooting Reid an uncertain look, she cleared her throat. “Yes, thank you.”
“Good. I’m glad, very glad. I honestly thought once I achieved my current star level, I’d be far and above getting my ass chewed quite the way it happened today. I understand, young lady, I have you to thank for that.”
Reid grabbed her knee under the table, but either she was unfamiliar with that subtle form of requesting her to button up, or the general had just pricked enough of her temper, she ignored it.
“Maybe if you hadn’t hung your own agent out to dry after all he’s done… Ow,ow! Why are you squeezing my leg so hard?”
Markoff’s dark eyebrows shot up to where his graying hairline would have been had it not receded more than a decade before.
“It’s fine,” Christian cut in, more to her than to his old boss. “I knew the risks when I signed on for the job.”
She scoffed, and as much as it annoyed him that she was goading him into having this argument here, in front of everyone, he also knew she was right. He’dthoughthe’d known back when he was recruited, fresh out of college, with an axe to grind and a wrong to right. But no one, regardless of their level of experience, could ever have known what living with a man like Fariq would entail. He’d made his choices, did what he had to, first to blend in, then to advance in Fariq’s mercenary ranks, until at last, he’d reached a position capable of gaining real anduseful information. But positions like that didn’t leave a man with clean hands. So, he created his own tightrope of what was right and wrong, what he would or wouldn’t do, but even then, when it all boiled down and Fariq gave the order, he’d wrapped himself in the marginal comfort of knowing the men he had to kidnap, ruin, hurt, or even kill to maintain his cover weren’t any more innocent of their consequences than Fariq… or himself.
Shifting in his chair, Reid faced her. “Hey.”
She folded her arms across her chest, only reluctantly shifting her glare from Markoff to him. He knew she didn’t want to, but she was listening, which made him smile. For the first time in a long time, he made a decision that actually filled him with relief.
“I made my choices, Princess. I’m ready to take the consequences. Let me do that, okay?”
“They could hang you,” she said, her voice growing hoarse as her throat—indeed, her whole-body—tightened.
“Young lady,” Markoff broke in, “that would involve a trial. Now, I don’t for a second think you had either the audacity or the clout to call the President of the United States, but whoever you did call must have called in one hell of a favor. There will be no trial. Rather than risk revealing that we had an agent in your brother’s empire during the worst crimes he’s committed over the years, and apparently, we never had the balls to simply shoot him, I have been ordered to make this go away. So… you are free to go—with the stipulation I never have to hear about any of you ever again. No mentions in any local newspaper. No police arrests.” He pinned Aliya with another stern look. “No phone calls.”
Reid sat in stunned silence with everyone else at the table.
“We’re free to go?”
“All of us?” Cobb broke in, incredulous.
Picking up his briefcase off the floor, the general laid it on the table, popped the locks, and withdrew a short stack of envelopes. The ones he gave Cobb and his men were standard white mailing envelopes. The two he laid in front of Reid and Aliya were bigger, thicker, and document-sized manila. “Your severance packages. Courtesy of the phone call.”
