Amerikan Eagle

“That’s what I surmised.” He wiped at his bruised eye with a soiled hand. “She didn’t say it so plainly, but yes, I believe that’s what she wanted. So who was that dead man?”

“Not your place to ask questions,” Sam said curtly. “Only to answer them.”

From his coat pocket he took out the papers the medical examiner had given him. “Take a look these, tell me what they mean.”

Walter looked puzzled, but he did as he was told. He unfolded the sheets and examined each one, sometimes holding them close to his undamaged eye. “There are some serious mathematical formulas in here. Even with my teaching background, I’m not sure I can puzzle them out.”

“You better try. I need for you to look at those equations and tell me what they mean.”

“I’m not sure I can do that,” Walter insisted, his voice plaintive.

“Then, dammit, tell me why they’re important. Tell me why someone would be willing to die to protect these pages.”

Walter stared at him a moment. Then he bent again on the pages, pursing his bruised lips. Finally, he gathered the pages together and pushed them back across the table. “Can I ask you where you got these?”

“No.”

“Some research facility? A physics laboratory of some sort?”

“Walter…”

He moved in his chair, winced from something paining him. “A guess, that’s all. An educated guess.”

“I’ll take that. Tell me.”

And Walter told him.

* * *

Sam shoved the papers back in his coat, tired and cold and feeling as if he were climbing the slope of a mountain that kept on getting steeper and steeper. Walter put his hands together and said, “What now?”

Sam said, “I go back to work, and I’m sorry, you go back to your interrogators.”

Walter shivered. “They caught me as I was driving up to Maine, Sam, trying to get to the Canadian border. I suppose a brave man would have raced through the roadblock, but I’m not. And later, when they brought me here, I had illusions of trying to resist, trying to be strong, trying to hold out as long as I could… I held out for five minutes before I started crying and answering every question they asked me. Do you want to know how they did it?”

“No, I don’t,” Sam said.

Walter ignored him. “They put you on a board, tie your hands and feet together, and then tip you back, put a wet cloth across your face, and pour water over you. They laugh as you think you’re drowning. A nice little treat they learned from the Nazis. It worked, but still, the questions keep on coming.” Walter cocked his head. “Is it true, what I’ve heard? That you got to Hale before he got to Long? That you shot Hale, and he blew himself up, but not close enough to hurt Long?”

“True enough,” Sam said.

“You son of a whore. Do you have any idea what you did in preventing that monster’s death?”

Sam got up, thinking of his tattoo and of his nameless camp companions, alive and spread out across the nation, thought about that dead businessman out there, dead on a muddy playing field, all because of him. “Yeah, Walter, I think I do.”

* * *

When he left the tent, a young Legionnaire stood waiting, his red hair closely trimmed, patches of wispy orange hair about his chin.

“Mr. Miller?” the Legionnaire asked. “Somebody needs to see you right away.”

The man took Sam’s left arm, and Sam angrily shook it off. He thought about striding out of the camp, ignoring this young punk, but with all the shotgun-toting Legionnaires and angry-looking FBI agents about, how far could he go?

“All right,” Sam said. “Take me there, but keep your damn hand to yourself.”

The Legionnaire glared at Sam but kept quiet, and Sam kept stride with him as they went to a larger tent. “Right in there, sir,” he said. Sam hesitated, then ducked his head and walked in. This tent had a canvas floor, chairs, a dining room table, a wet bar, and a desk with matching chair and a black metal wastebasket. Lights came from overhead lightbulbs, and a small electric heater in one corner of the tent cut the chill. Sitting in the chair was another Long’s Legionnaire, older, his uniform crisp and clean, the leatherwork shiny, and on the collar tabs, the oak leaves of a major.

Sam took the chair across the desk. The Legionnaire said, “Sam. Good to see you.”

“How long?” Sam said.

Clarence Rolston, the janitor and handyman for the Portsmouth Police Department, picked up a file folder and replied, “Years and years, of course. And damn long years at that. Pretending to be brain-soaked, slow and dense, takes a lot of work. Most Legionnaires are happy to do their work in public. It takes a special talent and commitment to spend years underground.”

“Was Hanson in on it?” Sam had to ask.

Clarence’s smile was thin-lipped. “Sort of defeats the purpose of being undercover if your supposed boss knows what’s going on.”