strike, I'd push the ball or knock
the pins that didn't fall. For about six weeks, this guy was
the best bowler in the world!"
"Did you tell him?" Adrianne leaned over and asked.
"Oh, of course not. He thought it was him. He made
hundreds of thousands of dollars because of me and set a
world record for strikes. Then he started to get big-money
endorsement offers. So you know what he does? The son of
a bitch was sleeping with some trashy bowling groupie behind
my back."
"I hate to ask but ... what did you do?"
"Nothing. I left him and the next year he got kicked off
the tour because he couldn't qualify. No more perfect
games for him, the prick."
Adrianne laughed.
"What about you? Still working for the Army?"
I'm ... retired," Adrianne mulled over the answer. "They
still call me up sometimes when something hot's happening, but usually I'm not up to it. I can still RV without
much problem-it hurts sometimes."
"But you don't OBE at all anymore?"
"I can but I don't, haven't in a long time." She knew that Cathleen knew about the accelerant drugs, and the barbiturates she was addicted to as a result. "It hurts too much afterwards. I knew one man who got a brain tumor because of
it. And there are always the strokes. Occupational hazard."
"The Army hounded me for a long time. I can't imagine
what they wanted me to do."
"Oh, I can. You'd be surprised. Them, and Navy Intelligence. There're these other weird people out there too,
IGA. Stands for Inter-agency Group Activity. They even
scared me. I know a few people who worked for themnever saw them again."
"Creep me out." Cathleen checked her fingernail polish,
then groaned. "I remember reading an editorial in one of
the malts during the Iraq war. The editor said that the government should recruit experients like you and Peggy Falco
to go out-of-body and look for Hussein, and the whole
time I'm thinking I know damn well they've been doing that
since before the war began."
The details of the comment gave Adrianne can to pause,
and in the pause she may have fractured her response into a
giveaway. Cathleen was probably playing her.
"Then I saw in a chat-room one night some 'anonymous' source saying that three times when we almost got
him, it was you who saw him while you were RV-ing Baghdad from some Army base in Maryland." Cathleen blinked
at her. "Is that true?"
Damn it... She was playing her, all right. And it was all
quite true but more than three times. The closest she'd come
to finding him was the empty apartment building on
al-Mu'azzam Square, near Sa'dn Street, downtown. Adrianne had seen Hussein being rushed inside. Then she RV'd
back out, got a description of the building and the street, and
gave the information to her case officer at Fort Meade. Twenty minutes later, several thousand-pound, satellite-guided
bombs brought the building down. But Hussein had left in a
jeep five minutes previous. "Cathleen, you know I can't talk
about anything I may have done or may not have done for
the Army. There're a few little things called the National
Classified Secrets Act and the Federal Secrecy Oath."
Cathleen grinned. "I know. I was just toying with you.
Actually, I'm envious."
The remark shocked Adrianne. "What on earth for?"
"I don't really contribute anything. You do. All I do is
bend spoons and scry crystals. By the way, how is Peggy
Falco? Haven't heard from her in years."
More darkness sifted into Adrianne's mind. "She committed suicide last Christmas. She couldn't walk, had no
sensation on the left side of her body for the last two years."
"Oh, God. I'm sorry."
"She was greedy. She was too into the power trip, and
maxed herself out. But she was the best in the world."
"Now you are."
"Uh-uh. You should see some of the kids they're bringing in now. There's one boy who's only fourteen and he
can... " but Adrianne cut it off there. She knew she was
talking too much.
"Sorry. I shouldn't have pried." She shot the first
Ramsey Campbell, John Everson, Wendy Hammer
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