You could have heard a pin drop in the tiny house on the outskirts of Seattle if it weren’t for the soft stippling of a fledgling bout of rain. The feeling of a sky blanketed over by light gray, no sign of blue as much as there were signs of streets or lawns under fresh snow. It wasn’t something Donnelley was fond of, and he had no understanding of those who romanticized the constant rain, where the sun was muffled and dulled behind clouds. He sighed, managing to fog up the window he was standing and staring out of, completely lost in the cherished quiet moments of a thoughtless few minutes watching the tide of the clouds.

He turned from the window, sighed again, eyes scanning the walls and floor and windows of this place. It was like a memory, or a dream. Like Holly and Tilly leaving, closing the door that one last time had stopped it all, plugged the neck of the hourglass. Donnelley, even, was frozen in place and his return here was like a reverie he regretted. It smelled of dust, and naught else, but the only thing haunting the house was the lonely squeal of the hinges for the first time in years. His footsteps echoing off the wood panel floors and his intermittent sighs. New cigarette butts joining the old in the coffee can just outside the front door. He walked the house like a ghost, but only part of him had died here long ago. He thought this was what limbo had to be like, a quiet mockery of old happy memories with all that made it happy missing. The house was dulled somehow, rendered in washed out hues of what once was, dark despite being broad daylight outside. He blamed the clouds, logically, but… 

From the first steps he took past the threshold into this mausoleum he felt as old and lifeless as the couches and the dishes, the pictures from another life with the eyes of a family that was no more, standing lonely vigil over nothing. Back before he left for Virginia to train at the CIA’s eponymous Farm he had little strength or want to take down the pictures of him and Holly with Tilly. It was all too fresh then, the wounds still yawning open and gushing. But as his fingers traced the frame of a younger Joseph cradling a newborn Tilly, smiling next to his loving wife, those old knives could only blunt themselves on the scar tissue. He grabbed the picture off its hook and set to work. He didn’t want to have to stay here and be watched over by a dark cloud.

One by one, he stuffed the old pictures, frame and all, into a black trash bag. He swept through the house with the effort and urgency of a glacier, but he managed to liberate the walls of the life he once had. By the end of it, he was right back where he started, clutching onto the black bag that had grown heavy and bloated with the past. He stood opposite one picture, the last battle. He couldn’t avert his eyes, for the ones staring back at him  were so much like his own, but so full of the things his were empty of now. There she was, a little red cardigan over her tiny shirt, short legs of her jeans stuffed sloppily into rainboots, pudgy cheeks bunched up and making way for the big smile full of love, her face framed with towheaded curls. There was no one else in the picture with her, and that made the decision that much harder. There was almost no reason to. The longer he stared, he started remembering. He took it, that picture of little Tilly Donnelley. They were playing in the backyard and she’d asked for it because he and Holly were taking their own. Laine’s questions echoed in his head. Whether Holly wanted to know. She tried, but Joseph never let her in. She couldn’t understand. Should not.

He left it. He left it all with a shake of his head, snatching a set of keys off the row of hooks without breaking stride and making his way to the garage. Waiting for him there was the one thing still in the house that Holly let him keep and he was thankful for. A matte black 1951 Indian Warrior 500, all real, and none of that Royal Enfield imposter shit from after 1953. It was the one thing his father left him before he died and the only thing from his old hometown he took with him to Washington. He accepted it, but it only got the older man a handful of half-hearted forgiveness for all the things he’d put him and his mother through. There was an old relic of a Ford Bronco beside it, but he wanted something more dangerous. Something to get his heart beating and his mind occupied. When his fingers brushed the coating of dust off of the seat, it took that line of thinking with the heavy layer, scattering in motes across the stagnant air of the lonely garage. He took the helmet off the handlebar, shook his leather jacket free of any spiders that might’ve been hiding and slipped it on. The old Warrior was true to her name, roaring to life with a little effort, but a roar it was. For the first time since returning home, a smirk crossed his lips with the deep thrum of the engine’s idle, and as soon as the garage door opened he left the coffin of a house for something more…

...///

Life was easier when the only thing he could hear was the roaring engine and the whooping wind. Sending himself down the highways like a bullet, taking turns at dumb speeds and the like, the only consequence thus far were car horns and middle fingers. His journey was fueled by a singular mission, a hunger and a thirst that led him like a hook through his nose. It tugged him in directions he hadn’t been for some time. It had been hours since he’d left and now his boot crunched into the gravel of a parking lot of the first seedy looking bar he’d found by the time the sun was swallowed by the horizon.

He sat there for a moment, taking his helmet off and tucking a cigarette between his lips. Eyes scanning the entirety of the scene before him as he lit the end of it. A line of motorcycles were out front, old pickups at rest on the edges of the lot. The sounds of a few different conversations weaved together in the growing night. Finally, he spotted what he wanted. From one of the lonely semi’s a blonde girl in her twenties emerged and smoothed down her denim skirt, pulling up her tube top as she shimmied. She looked fine enough, a pretty girl with the hands of a hard life set upon her. When he was finally finished, he dropped the cigarette at his feet, grinding it into the protesting gravel as he swung his leg over the bike. He made for the door sometime after the woman disappeared inside. A conversation by a few people a yard from it quieting with his presence to be taken over by the thumping music inside. He locked eyes with one, a big bald slab of man with a brown rug of beard, their gazes suspended and electrified by a quiet current of aggression. Just waiting. Their eyes did not break from each other until the door shut behind Donnelley and it seemed everything around him was sound. Goddamn, he hated crowded in places like this, the distorted guitars and kick drum in the song seeming like saws and hammers taken to his head. He was no longer the youth attracted to noise and violence. The bouncer waved him through without even checking his ID, you didn’t look like Donnelley if you were still young and dumb. No matter how much of those two he was at heart.

Almost as if a sign from above, an empty booth called to him, the light above it shining down. He took the one more dimly lit. A rushed and uninterested waitress sliding a menu his way before going off on her own way again. For the second time, he spotted the woman from the parking lot in the crowd inside, coming from the bathroom. She took a seat at the bar and Donnelley abandoned his menu, taking flight like a carrion bird from a tree branch after scraps. He plopped down on the seat next to her, “What’s your drink?”

“Whatever you’re buying.” She smirked, but her eyes didn’t change, they stayed empty. Marlene’s empty eyes in the photos came to him and he shook them from his head. She continued, “No bitch beer, though.”

“I look like I drink bitch beer?” Donnelley said, half joke, half insulted before he ripped his eyes away from her to look at the barkeep, “Johnny Walker Blue, two glasses, two fingers. Straight.”

The barkeep nodded and set to work, leaving Donnelley and the woman alone again. A bout of silence between them before she flicked her hair over her shoulder, looking at Donnelley, “People usually want something if they buy me a few.” She frowned at him, looking him up and down before meeting Donnelley’s sidelong gaze, “It still costs the same, [i]Johnny Walker Blue.[/i]”

“I’m not looking for pussy. I’m looking to wake up half dead.”

“There’s some pissed off bikers here that’ll give that to you for free. Just need to ask for it right.” She said before tapping her jaw with a fist.

“You know what I mean. I need some uppers, some downers, whatever you got.” Donnelley spoke plain as he grabbed up his glass and then set it back down empty, never breaking his stare on her all the while. “Do that for me?”

She returned the stare and threw back her own glass, setting it down knocking sharp on the bar top, “You police?”

“I look it?”

“Yeah.” She said. Donnelley grimaced. She chuckled, “You piss somebody off, police man?”

Donnelley flinched away from her fingers probing at the scar on his cheek, a smirk playing across his lips despite the knee-jerk anger, “Looking’s the only thing that’s free.”

She snorted, her hand straying away from his face to squeeze his thigh. Truth be told, he wasn’t averse to it. There was a stirring in him for a moment before she asked, “What’s your price?”

“Whatever I get for two-hundred.” Donnelley’s smirk was gone. His patience was wearing thin and if he wanted to flirt with a Prost... well, he just didn’t. “Oxy, heroin, coke. [i]All.[/i] and none of that fentanyl shit.”

“I might know a guy.”

...///

“...Keep in touch.” He hung up the phone, sighing and looking about the tiny motel room. Laine’s voice brought him back there. A wave of guilt for not doing more to keep her safe. He wondered what he would feel like now if she’d died instead of just ran away, screaming. Even so, her helpless, blood-curdling cries echoed in his head...

A handmirror with a leftover line of what could’ve been cocaine or china white for all he could remember sat on a table across the room, beckoning him. Whatever drug it was, he’d play detective and solve the mystery. He groaned to his feet, making his slow, shuffling way to the prize at the other end of the motel room.

He rolled up the dollar bill next to the mirror and ripped the line up a nostril, brushing the excess off of the outside of his nose from whatever he’d snorted last night. “Girlfriend?”

“Fuck!” Donnelley flinched, the dollar bill uncoiling from his fingers and fluttering to the ground. The sudden commotion made his head spin and his mouth filled with saliva, readying itself for the bile rising at the back of his throat. The Prost was still in bed, stretching her arms up with her chest bare. He regained himself, a Herculean task, “You’re still here? Ain’t you missing out on other johns?”

“I can take a day off.” She smirked.

“I won’t be in it.” Donnelley shook his head, slow. He turned back to the table and grabbed the mirror, checking his eyes over. It looked like he hadn’t slept for days. “Thank you, by the way.”

“Well, fuck you too, then.” She scowled, throwing the sheets from her naked lower half and getting dressed, a task that sent her about the room picking clothes from the floor. “I hope she leaves you.” She muttered, acid on her tongue.

“I hope you leave me.” He counted out a hundred from a bundle of twenties, satisfied the rest of the bills hadn’t been pocketed from him in his sleep, “For your troubles.”

He handed it over and the Prost snatched it from his hand, flipping him off as she slammed the door violent enough for the closed blinds to shiver and the cups to rattle. Again, he was alone. At least he wasn’t the poorer for it. He found a baggy of white powder and divvied a couple lines for himself. Before he could snort it up, his phone rang again. He rolled his eyes, looking at his phone’s screen. Smitty. He’d wanted to forget he had other obligations for at least a day longer. He put it to his ear, “Donnelley.”

“Yeah, no shit. Find your way to us. You’re gonna wanna hear all about the shit this kid’s telling us.”

>TURKEY
>SITE 332
>ONE WEEK LATER
>1230HRS...///

The sun was at its precipice, bearing down on the world in all its fury. Even the breezes were hot, and there was no AC in the little Toyota pickup. Thankfully, he’d broken away from the traffic of the city and was able to send the Toyota down the packed dirt roads through the hills however fast he wanted, making the suspension work for the day. When he finally got to the little hut he turned the key back and the engine cut off. Looked around in the rear view and side mirrors. No one. Good.

He took the rear view and pointed it at himself. His eyes still looked like he hadn’t slept for days but at least it wasn’t because of the drugs. Losing his clearance would ruin him. Foster would be pissed. Even then, at that point, he couldn’t even get a contracting job at CACI or Booz-Allen, no matter how many strings Foster had his hands on. He moved the mirror back and opened the door, stepping out of the truck and push checking the Glock 40 cal before stuffing it back in its IWB holster. He swore under his breath at the heat as he pounded his fist on the door until it opened, Smitty’s stubbled, impish little grin on the other side.

“Oh, the prodigal son.” Smitty waved at Donnelley, “You weren’t followed were you?”

“You know how fucking hard it is to be the grey man in the Middle East with [i]red hair?[/i]” He snatched the cap off his head to reveal that he did indeed dye it black to the roots. His beard too. “What do you think?”

“You look like an asshole.” Kingsley said, not looking away from the little tv with the live feed. There was a newer one too, right beside it.

“You’re not even looking.”

“Don’t have to.” Kingsley chuckled, swiveling around in his office chair, “Missed you. So did he.”

Donnelley chuckled, following Kingsley’s thumb thrust over his shoulder to see a feed looking out the rear windshield of a car, scenery a blur moving past. The other television showed the boy at the wheel of his car, looking as natural as ever. Donnelley smirked, an appreciative chuckle, “You got him working for us.”

“Uh huh. And guess who we saw in his backseat.” Smitty held up a printed out screenshot of someone riding in the car. Recognition grew inwards from the dark corners of his mind and he frowned something black.

“This [i]fucking guy.[/i]” Donnelley shook his head slow, “When, going where?”

“Last time we met with the kid he confirmed it. Hamit said it was him. That’s Viktor Ozan, Colonel Anzor Bekzhaev’s shitty little cousin. Little fuck grew up, moved from Chechnya and went to Syria through Turkey. Now he’s doing something with ISIL in the region just like his rat fucking cousin.” Smitty said. 

“My guys are saying he’s being sent to Iraq. His cousin might still be there after Mosul. They don’t know what for or where, but he’s set to leave next week.” Kingsley shrugged, “Folks up top want us to confirm, follow, sick the hounds on him. Sniff him out. We’ll be bunking in Baghdad.”

“Uh huh.” Smitty frowned, “With Iraqi Intelligence and their fists firmly around our balls. Top wants us to make it out like they’re the big boys.”

“Well, we’ll be playing in their yard.” Donnelley shook his head, “Seems appropriate, don’t it?”

“Doesn’t mean I like it.” Kingsley rolled his eyes.

“Don’t have to.” Donnelley plopped himself on a chair and lit a cigarette. “Who’s our babysitter?”

“Kasim Ramaan.” Kingsley said the name like a swear, “Former Intelligence Officer for Saddam’s regime. Iraqi Army before that.”

“Ah.” Donnelley nodded, now more on the side of caution and not-liking-it as the two other men. “Old salt.”

Time passed, the team whiling away the hours with small talk and cigarettes. Hours and hours, boring downtime to Joseph. Until a knock came at the door. Smitty cracked it open. “What’s the password?” He said, squeezing his lips through.

“What? What password, what is this?” Hamit’s voice was heard on the other side, thoroughly confused. Donnelley looked to Kingsley, who was grinning and shaking his head at Smitty’s stupid antics.

The door creaked open and Hamit strolled inside, taking up a seat at the table in the little hut. Everything seemed to stand quiet in an awkward silence as they all stood opposite each other, Hamit and the CIA spooks. The only sound heard was the whirring of that faithful little fan. “So...”

“Yeah.” Smitty reached into a backpack, pulling out the most expensive shampoo, conditioner, and a bottle of French wine Donnelley had ever seen. Hamit too, probably. Smitty set them all on the table and Hamit grasped them up in his arms, a huge smile on his face that threatened to tear his cheeks open like a little boy’s at Christmas.

“Thank you, thank you!” Hamit said, looking at his gifts and nodding vigorously. Things quieted again and Donnelley spoke up.

“Now that we’re all cozy,” he said, looking from Kingsley back to Hamit, “Tell me about Viktor Ozan. You gave him a ride somewhere, right?”

Hamit nodded enthusiastically, “Yes, yes! Someone’s house. I think, um… Anzai, Anzi...”

Smitty sat up in his office chair, “Anzor?”

Hamit pointed at Smitty, smiling and nodding. The three CIA Officers looked at each other. They’d got Anzor too, placed him here in Turkey. But for how long? “Do you know why he was meeting him?”


“They were going to travel. Viktor talks a lot, says he is very important and acts like it. I nod and let him, like you tell me.” Hamit said, glancing back at the bottle of wine. “Thank you again.”

“It’s nothing. So, Viktor said he was traveling? Where?” Donnelley asked.

“Who is this? I have never seen him.” Hamit nodded at Donnelley, voice a whisper to Smitty.

“A friend. Of yours.” Smitty frowned, “Like us. Where was Viktor traveling?”

Hamit nodded, looking over his wine, turning it over in his hands. He shook his head, glancing at the rest of them in the room. His mouth worked at the words, mind working at whether he should spill. Donnelley knew what he was thinking. If he was swimming with the sharks and the only way out was listening to the people telling him to tie chum to his balls, he’d be hesitant too. “It’s alright. Hamit, this is almost over, you tell us where he’s going and we can give you whatever you want.”

“Whatever?” Hamit’s eyes went wide.

Donnelley kept himself from grinning. They had Hamit by his balls, and they had to confirm it was Iraq. Kingsley was good at developing assets, but you always, always had to confirm. Donnelley got up from his chair, taking a seat across from Hamit and sliding him some cash. “Whatever you goddamn like.”

Hamit looked at the cash, looked at Donnelley, the cash…

“His cousin was not at his house. His cousin has many houses in many places. He was going somewhere else from that house. Where his cousin is.” Hamit said, still not liking the prospect of being abducted and very publicly killed for the Internet for talking to infidels. Donnelley’s eyebrows rose as Hamit leaned in closer, the boy’s voice quiet, “[i]Iraq.[/i]”

>BAGHDAD, IRAQ
>THREE DAYS LATER
>1334HRS...///

Another fucking desert.

The car had AC. But the Iraqi fucker driving didn’t need it and it was not up for a vote.

Donnelley took his cap off and wiped his sweaty brow with his sweaty forearm, blew a breath out that puffed his cheeks while checking his watch. He just couldn’t get used to the goddamn desert. The three CIA Officers were being ferried from Erbil to Baghdad. Stopped at the gate and the four of them in the car, the INIS driver included, produced their credentials. State Department for Donnelley and his fellows, INIS for the young guy in the driver seat. They were dumped in a waiting room with nothing to do, the official looking suits they were wearing no longer stifling them. Finally, some damned AC. They’d been sitting in the waiting room making idle conversation before a younger man leaned his head into the room. “Kasim wants to see you.” A young officer told them before going off on his way. “You have a few hours of his time.”

“Alright!” Smitty grinned, “Didn’t even have to wait that fucking long.”

“Shut up and let me and Kingsley do the talking.” Donnelley shook his head at Smitty as he stood.

Donnelley fingered the phone in his pocket. The phone cleared for Delta Green. Of course they knew he’d often be called off for things they weren’t allowed to know. Joseph just didn’t want to constantly remind them there were things he knew that they couldn’t.

They made their way through the headquarters building led by another young employee, white men in a den of foreign spies. Some nodded, some only stared at their passing. It was a little bit until they got to the door of Kasim’s office. They were welcomed in, “How can I help you, sirs?”

“Here to see you about an important development.” Donnelley said, looking Kasim over. He trusted the INIS Officers about as much as he trusted anybody else when he was alone among foreigners in a country that was not his own. Little, that was to say.

Kasim was a man about Donnelley’s height, skin middling between black and white, but paler than most in the region. Clean shaven and slicked back gray hair, he smoothed his black tie down on his chest while in his seat at his desk.

“Ah, come, come.” Kasim said, waving them inside while getting up from his desk to close the door as they all settled themselves. Donnelley and Kingsley taking their seats at his desk while Smitty crossed his arms and watched the door. There were pictures of the former army officer along the walls, shaking hands with a few people, posing with soldiers in others.

Donnelley looked at all of them before his eyes finally went to Kasim’s desk. Knick-knacks. A 5.45 bullet still in the casing, more pictures. Wife and children, judging from the plain clothes the former Iraqi Army Officer was wearing in them. Kasim shifted in his seat before settling, “What is this about?”

“Someone I think you’d like to meet.” Donnelley said, Kingsley rummaging around in his suitcase to pull a picture of Anzor and Viktor to hand them to Donnelley. Donnelley offered the pictures to Kasim, who took them and immediately his eyes went to studying the men in the pictures. “Bekzhaev. Chief of ISIS’s Moral Police in Mosul before the battle. He has a cousin we believe is here in Iraq, or will be soon.”

“Real bad guys.” Kingsley growled.

“[i]Real sick fucks,[/i] yes.” Kasim nodded, expression black as Kingsley’s as he was still studying the pictures, “Anzor went deep in his hole with the rest of the cockroaches that survived the bombs and bullets in Mosul. Unfortunately, we do not know where his cousin is. We will, though. I promise you this, you will be the first to know.”

“Thank you.” Donnelley said, smiling and nodding like he was supposed to. “What about us? Is there anything we can help you with?”

Kasim sat back in his chair, thumb and forefinger rubbing together. He was in thought, Donnelley could see that much, about something that weighed heavy on him. You didn’t sit that long and ruminate on an easy question. Donnelley watched Kasim’s face, trying to suss out whatever was in the other intelligence officer’s mind. Finally, Kasim got up, cracked open his office’s door and told the guards outside of it to shoo. Something dark played across his heavy brow as he sat, eyes on his desk before he lifted them to meet Donnelley’s, “You are a leader of men, yes? You were special forces of America?” Donnelley nodded, the thought of him knowing that bit about him pushed to the back of his mind. He wouldn’t insult Kasim by assuming it was a lucky guess. Kasim continued. “You know what it is like, then? Keeping the men under you from making up stories at the fire, scaring themselves like women?”

Donnelley nodded and heard Smitty snort, Kingsley looking back at him with a chiding gaze. Confusion and curiosity started to grow on Donnelley’s face, “Of course.”

Kasim placed his hands on his desk, leaning forward, “Anzor is a bogeyman, like you say in the West. A demon, they are saying in my country.” Kasim’s hardened eyes went from Donnelley’s own to Kingsley’s and back to Donnelley, “In Yezidi villages, mothers and sisters and daughters will weep. Sons, brothers, fathers. He will come in the night and it is said they will kill them.”

“They?” Smitty asked, coming to stand with his hands on his hips between Donnelley and Kingsley.

Donnelley was expectant of something like that. ISIL wasn’t a bunch of church boys going around knocking on doors and asking if they’ve heard of their Prophet Muhammed. But whatever weighed heavy on Kasim even gave Donnelley a little fear. A little curiosity. “Anzor.” 

“What happens?” Donnelley spoke, his voice cutting through the heavy silence.

Kasim slid pictures across his desk for them to see, the man himself looking away from them and shaking his head almost imperceptibly. Donnelley didn’t know what he was looking at, at first. He thought it was just goats after being skinned before he saw true. He leaned back, hand hiding his frown as he looked at Kasim. The pictures were of people, skinned down to the muscle and tendon. “You try telling faithful Sunni policemen to care about Yezidis.” Kasim shook his head, sighing. “Some say they worship demons. But they live in Iraq. They are Iraqi. They are [i]my people,[/i] in [i]my country[/i]. They are butchered while their women watch, skinned like animals, left with no tongues in their mouths.”

The four men in the room were silent, thinking all of that over. They all might be thinking and fretting on how Anzor was a brutal butcher, how ISIL kills wantonly and more brazenly now for some reason. And Donnelley, not the CIA Officer, but Donnelley of Working Group UMBRA. Of The Program, his mind lingered on the methods, on the whys and hows. “What kind of stories do they tell at the fires?”

Kasim eyed Donnelley and the man saw a flicker of something in his face. For only a second, his fingers stopped rubbing together. “The Yezidis say that Shayatin or Djinn come in the night on wings of black that whisper words to Anzor and his people.”

“Mm.” Donnelley’s eyes narrowed as he nodded slow.

“I will take you?”

Donnelley looked to Kingsley, the office seeming stifling to them now. Kingsley and Donnelley nodded, Donnelley spoke up, “Take us.”

>OUTSIDE...///

While Kingsley and Smitty stayed with Kasim, Donnelley slunk back to the car and dialed one of the only numbers on his phone. Kasim and Donnelley’s team would be busy for a bit organizing the expedition to the most recent village ransacked. They’d need an escort from Iraqi police. While he waited for the others he had music playing, just in case anyone was listening in on what he was saying. His phone trilled with the dial-tone before Foster picked up, “We’ve got a situation. I’m working a case for the Agency in Iraq.”

“A situation in Iraq? I had no idea, this was so unexpected.” Foster said, sarcasm barely hidden and dripping from the phone.

“You know what the fuck I mean, dickhead.” Donnelley growled before he continued quieter, “People out in the villages. Yezidis, they’re being fucking [i]skinned.[/i]”

“By what?” Foster grew more serious.

“First suspect is a man named Anzor Bekzhaev, used to be high up in the Moral Police in Mosul for ISIL.” Donnelley whispered, “I’ll keep you posted.”

“Because? A brutal shithead is skinning people brutally.” Foster said. “Why should this be our problem?”

“All the men in the village, in one night. Usually they just dismember them, shoot them. But that shit they save for the cameras.” Donnelley said, “He’s going out every night with his boys and butchering people without provocation. The Yezidis say it’s Satan himself that comes, or Djinn.”

“Superstition. You and I both know that people can be pieces of shit, Donnelley. They don’t need to do it for some dark being whispering in their ear. They do it for some asshole giving them orders.” Foster reasoned. “Killing infidels and heretics. Yezidis. That’s Anzor’s, that’s ISIL’s M.O.”

“Goddamnit, Foster.”

“You do that then. Feed me everything, Donnelley.” Foster said. “While you’re at it, you can call me every time your piss is too dark, maybe it’s aliens making you dehydrated.”

“Something else too.” Donnelley said, almost regretting speaking up now, but he’d already said it, “Laine’s case in Washington… the evidence is all gone. You wouldn’t know…”

“No.” Foster said, “And what I do know, you don’t need to. It’s not her case anymore and it was never yours. Leave it be, Donnelley.”

“All I need to know is if it’s in good hands. Give me something, Foster.” Donnelley shook his head, pleading. For what? He asked himself. Foster was right, he didn’t have a stake in Laine’s case. But anywhere a black slab was, he wanted it [i]gone.[/i] “You know how I feel about [i]scary black rocks.[/i]”

Foster sighed, and Donnelley wished he was face to face with the man to at least see what he was thinking. Foster came through the phone again, “The Program has it now. Another Working Group. Trust them, Donnelley.” Donnelley frowned, and Foster added as if he could see it, “You have to.”

“[i]Fine.[/i]” Donnelley spat with a bit more acid than was needed before he settled himself, taking a few breaths. “Fine. Alright.”

“Good. Anything else?” Foster asked.

“No, no.” He saw Smitty and Kingsley walking back to the car, Kasim in tow with a couple other official looking men. “I have to go.”

“Look, keep me posted on Iraq and Anzor if you want. But we don’t have the resources to play Interpol.” Foster said, “Understand?”

“Yes, yeah.” Donnelley hurriedly hung up the phone.

...End of Part I