Code Name: Camelot (Noah Wolf #1)(15)

Some people might have thought that he was being compassionate, concerned for her feelings. The truth, though, was that his mental programming, the logical progression of thoughts that he had forced upon himself since he was seven years old, required him to consider the best interests of the people he dealt with. In Iraq, that had led him to become an extremely efficient soldier, so that his enemies did not suffer unnecessarily. In this case, it meant that he felt he should lessen her grief as much as he could.

Noah decided to end his appeals. By doing so, he would clear the way for his own execution, which would relieve Lieutenant Mathers of her duties as his attorney and allow her to begin the grieving process while he was still alive, which he had read could sometimes make it easier to bear.

He sat down at his table and began composing a letter, telling her of his decision. He didn’t explain that he was doing it primarily to make things easier for her, because he knew that would make her more resistant to his choice. Instead, he told her that he was beginning to feel a depression set in, and that since he had been without emotions for so many years, the sudden onslaught was just more than he could handle. He pointed out that there was no hope, not really, of any success in preventing his execution, so he would prefer to simply let it happen as soon as possible.

And then, he encouraged her in her plan to write his story. Perhaps, he said, his name might one day be cleared by her efforts, and he hoped that the attempt to tell his story truthfully would help to bring her peace.

Since the letter was to his attorney, he didn’t have to leave it open for inspection. Noah sealed the envelope and added the address that she had given him during her visit, affixed a stamp, and pushed it through the slot.

Two days had passed since Lieutenant Mathers had come to visit, and Noah was back to his usual schedule, working out for an hour and a half in the morning before sitting down to read until lunchtime. After lunch, he would get his hour of rec time, running laps around the yard, and then would come back and read until dinner, after which he would work out again for an additional hour and a half. It was morning, and he had just finished his morning workout routine, before climbing into the shower to wash off the sweat.

He heard the keys over the sound of the water, reached up to turn it off quickly, and then peeked around the curtain. Lieutenant Spencer stood there, grinning at him.

“Foster,” he said, “you got a visitor, a light colonel from the JAG Office. Better hustle it up, she doesn’t look like one who wants to be kept waiting.”

Noah’s eyebrows shot up. “Yes, Sir, be right out.” He hurriedly rinsed himself off, dried as quickly as he could, and climbed back into his brown jumpsuit. As soon as he was dressed, he knocked on the door, and he wasn’t surprised when it opened immediately. Lieutenant Spencer was still there, and personally escorted him down the hall to the interview room.

The lieutenant opened the door and let him step inside, to find a thin, graying woman he’d never seen before sitting at the table. As Spencer had said, she wore the insignia of a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army. She looked up at him and smiled, motioning for him to take the seat across from her.

“Sergeant Foster,” she said, “I am Lieutenant Colonel Janice Hogan, from the Judge Advocate General’s Office. I’ve been sent here to interview you prior to your execution.”

Noah sat there and looked at the woman for a moment. “Wow, you guys don’t waste any time, do you?”

The woman smiled. “Well, I try not to. On the other hand, contrary to what you might think at this moment, my purpose is not to hasten your execution. My interview is on another matter entirely, but since it wouldn’t do me any good to try to interview you afterward, well, I thought it best to come on down and see you now.”

Noah’s eyebrows raised, and he cocked his head a little to one side in confusion. “I’ll grant you it wouldn’t do a whole lot of good to try to interview me after my date with the needles, but if you’re not here as part of the process for getting ready for the execution, then can I ask what this is about?”

“It may well be about keeping you alive, Sergeant Foster,” she said. “Assuming, of course, that’s something that still interests you at all. Does it?”

Noah sat there for a moment and thought through what she had just said. “It does,” he said, “depending on what it’s going to cost me. Since I know what kind of pressure has been applied to make sure I keep that date, then I can only assume that you’re not who you claim to be, and this meeting isn’t anything like what you logged when you signed in here today. That tells me that there’s a catch, and until I know what it is, I’m not going to make any agreements.”

Hogan’s eyebrows were the ones to go up this time. “Impressive,” she said. “No one else has ever figured me out so fast. What tipped you off?”

Noah shrugged. “It’s like I said,” he said. “Congressman Gibson wants me dead, because I killed his son and because he doesn’t want the reason his son died to ever come out publicly. Since he’s on the fast track to the Republican nomination for president, and stands a decent chance of winning in the next election, I don’t think there’s anybody in the Army who is going to go up against him. That tells me you’re not Army, so you must be with one of those alphabet soup groups that we hear all the legends about. Normally, I’d guess CIA, but Gibson is on their oversight committee. FBI doesn’t have the kind of power it would take to get you in here like this, nor does DEA. If I had to gamble on it, I probably bet you have something to do with Homeland Security, am I right?”