Skinner Read Online Free PDF Page B

time ago. And you wouldn’t be here now.”
    Cross looks at him.
    “No. Neither of us would be here.”
    He sits, and moves a manila folder to the center of his desk. Anachronistic luxury. He flips it open. A USB drive is taped inside the cover. From his angle, standing on the opposite side of the desk, Terrence can see a heavily redacted document, 70 percent thick black censor lines.
    “What will he want?”
    “Money.”
    “Yes. And?”
    Terrence is trying not to feel how carefully Haven is not looking at him. He tucks the contract away inside his jacket.
    “An asset. That’s all he ever wanted.”
    Cross closes the file.
    “Such a simple man.”
    He looks at the closed file, pushes it across the desk.
    “Details. An op for Jae. Now. And yes.”
    He looks at the clocks yet again, time the enemy.
    “You can have Skinner.”
    Haven rises, a single movement that seems to originate somewhere above his head, a force drawing him smoothly to his feet as his ankles and arms uncross.
    “Are we talking about this?”
    Cross looks at him, places a finger on the keyboard button he pressed minutes before.
    “We have talked about it, Haven.”
    He presses the button; recording resumed.
    “And now we are done talking about it.”
    Haven touches his fresh haircut.
    “Opposed.”
    He raises his voice slightly, speaks to the room.
    “For the record.”
    Cross types something, rapid fire.
    “Events are moving quickly, Terrence. I have to leave for Europe. Constant status reports. American lives are at risk. Let’s do our best to protect them. Patriots.”
    Haven is looking at Terrence now, very much so.
    “ Patriots , Terrence. Remember to tell Skinner.”
     
    Exiting through the killbox atrium, Terrence squeezes the USB drive from the file between his thumb and forefinger, secure in the knowledge that Cross and Haven know he lied. But that they only know the lies he wanted them to know. The other lie, The Lie, they didn’t catch that one, had no hope of catching it, or of catching him.
    They are so smart. Such good liars themselves, they know when they are being lied to.
    But I’m the one who taught them how to lie so well.
    An hour later, in a Georgetown Internet café, he sends an email, calling Skinner back to the world.
    The monster summoned, he starts waiting to die, and is soon on a Lufthansa flight to Cologne, speeding toward that end.

agents of taps
    JAE HAS BEEN parked across the highway from the motel for nearly an hour. She doesn’t want to go in. She’s begun to develop sores from sleeping in the Land Rover, not to mention an intimate sweaty reek that reminds her of day-old undergraduate sex, but she does not want to go in.
    Still, a bed, a shower.
    She should have both before she shows up at Creech.
    It’s one thing to arrive two days late, another to show up reeking of road sweat, filthy from weeks of living in the desert, more than slightly wild-eyed: the residue of an admittedly ill-advised peyote experiment still wringing itself from her brain. The military expects a certain amount of eccentricity from freelance geniuses, but she suspects that she may have pushed somewhat beyond an acceptable level of quirks. Off in the desert, taking solo shamanistic journeys and playing with homemade robots. Over the border into crazy land. One of the many foreign lands where unsanctioned travel can result in one’s security clearances being revoked. A trip that ends with one’s file being moved from the Watchers drawer to the Watched.
    Jae does not want to be watched.
    A bed. A shower.
    She needs the job at Creech. Whatever it is, whatever it is they want her to see and understand for them, she needs the trickle of money it will release into her accounts. Money fuels her on the road. Keeps her off the grid and away from the torrents of media and information that swamp her compulsions, dragging her into an undertow of data that never resolves into the sense her mind insists is just below the surface. She needs to