Free Next Day of the Condor by James Grady

 
    They led him out of the CIA’s secret insane asylum as the sun set over autumn’s forest there in Maine.
    Brian and Doug walked on either side of him, Brian a half-step back on the right, the package’s strong side, because even when there’ll be no problem, it pays to be prepared beyond a government salary you can only collect if you’re still alive.
    Brian and Doug seemed pleasant. Younger,
of course
, with functional yet fashionable short hair. Doug sported stubble that tomorrow could let him blend into Kabul with little more than a
shemagh
head wrap and minor clothing adjustments from the American mall apparel he wore today. Brian and Doug introduced themselves to the package at the Maine castle’s front security desk. He hoped their mission was to take him where they said he was supposed to go and not to some deserted ditch in the woods.
    Two sets of footsteps walked behind him and his escorts, but in what passes for our reality, he could only hear the walker with the clunky shoes. The soundless steps made more powerful cosmic vibrations.
    The clunky shoes belonged to Dr. Quinton, who’d succeeded the murdered Dr. Friedman and mandated Performance Protocols to replace the patient-centric approach of his predecessor, policies that hadn’t gotten that psychiatrist ice picked through his ear, but why not use that tragic opportunity to institute a new approach of accountability?
    After all, you can’t be wrong if you’ve got the right numbers.
    The soundless steps are the scruffy sneakers footfalls of blonde nurse Vicki.
    She wore electric red lipstick.
    And her wedding band linked to her high school sweetheart who like every day for the last eight years lay in a Bangor Veterans Home bed tubed & cabled to beeping machines tracking the flatline of his brain waves and his heart that refused to surrender.
    The beating of that heart haunts the soft steps of she who no one really knows.
    Except for the silver-haired man walking ahead of her from this secret castle.
    And he’s nuts, so…
    The dimming of the day activates sensors in the castle’s walled parking lot where these five public servants emerge. Brian and Doug steer the parade toward a “van camper,” gray metal and tinted black glass side windows, small enough to parallel park, big enough for “road living” behind two cushioned chairs facing the sloped windshield. Utah license plates lied with their implication of
not a government ride
.
    Doug said: “October used to be colder.”
    Brian eyed the package’s scruffy black leather jacket. Seems like a nice enough guy, moves better than his silver hair might make you think.
    Doug slid open the van’s side rear door with a whirring rumble. Lights came on in the rear interior with built-in beds on each side of a narrow aisle.
    Brian said: “How we going to do this?”
    Dr. Quinton took a step—
    Stopped by Nurse Vicki, who thrust one hand at the psychiatrist’s chest and used her other to pluck the purse-like black medical case from his grasp.
    “Protocols dictate—”
    “This is still America,” said Vicki. “No dictators.”
    Dr. Quinton blinked but she was beyond that, standing in front of the package with the cobalt blue eyes, looking straight at him as she said: “Are you ready?”
    “Does that matter?”
    Her ruby smile said
yes
, said
no
.
    He spoke to both her and the two
soft clothes
soldiers: “Where do you want me?”
    “Like she said,” answered Doug, “it’s a free country. Pick either bed.”
    The package chose the slab on the shotgun seat’s side of the van because it was less likely to catch a bullet crashing through the windshield to take out the driver.
    Nurse Vicki entered the van behind him.
    Said: “You need to take your jacket off.”
    “Might be more comfortable to stay that way,” called Brian as he climbed behind the steering wheel and slammed the driver’s door shut.
    The black leather jacket had been his
before
, but
now
the inner pocket over his heart