Brotherhood and Others by Mark Sullivan Page B

0500.”
    â€œThat’s all the time they’re giving Mr. and Mr. Pale?” Tatupu said, surprised.
    â€œThat’s all the time we’re giving Mr. and Mr. Pale.”
    â€œWhatever. When this is over, I’m taking some R and R in Berlin.”
    â€œWhich will make you what? Like an Englishman in New York?”
    He broke into a grin that seized his entire face. “I’ll be a Samoan man in Berlin,” he sang, hitting the Sting melody spot on. “‘Oh, oh, I’m an alien, I’m a legal alien, I’m a Samoan man in Berlin!”
    Laughing, they entered the room where Barnett was running a small optical device over the GPS tracker.
    â€œAnything?” Monarch asked, tearing off a hunk of bread and making a sandwich with roast beef and cheese.
    â€œTwo solid prints,” she said, and gave the computer an order. The prints appeared large on the screen. “I’ll send them through, see what we get.”
    Monarch washed down the sandwich with a can of orange juice, belched, and said, “I’m going to sleep.”
    â€œI’ll be quiet,” Barnett promised.
    â€œLatrine?”
    â€œTake a right, end of the hall there’s a door takes you outside.”
    A moment later, Monarch stepped out the door, feeling the cold, raw wind again, but not the rain. As he relieved himself, he looked around, making out the long flank of the building and wondering where they’d taken DeGrave.
    When he got back, Tatupu was already on the floor, trying to fit his massive frame on one of the camping pads.
    Monarch got one for himself, walked by Barnett, and whispered, “What do you think they’re doing to him? DeGrave?”
    She looked up at him. “You mean, exactly?”
    He shrugged.
    She looked awayand said, “I didn’t ask the pale guys, and they didn’t offer.”
    â€œWhat I figured,” Monarch said.
    He lay down on the air mattress and drew a blanket over his shoulders. Over the years in the U.S. Special Forces, long before he was recruited to the CIA, Monarch had learned how to switch off his brain and sleep when he could. He considered it one of his most important skills because he believed that a tired mind was a vulnerable mind, and a vulnerable mind could be fooled, and a fooled mind was a dead mind.
    He shut his eyes and fell into sleep, trying not to think about how vulnerable his mind had been to Antonia Valera.
    *   *   *
    It had all happened so quickly. They’d pulled into a garage well away from the Villa Miserie, and the graffiti-covered overhead door lowered behind them.
    Julio got the girl from the car. She was whimpering as he led her by the elbow out the back door into a dimming light. They crossed an alley and went through a second door. Robin and Claudio followed.
    â€œWhat about the car?” Robin asked.
    â€œWe’ll call some of the others to take it apart,” Claudio said. “Mercedes. Nice car. Nicer than the one you stole a couple of years ago.”
    â€œOh, really?” Robin shot back. “That one may not have had a side-view mirror, but it didn’t have a piss stain on the backseat, now did it?”
    â€œMove,” Claudio said, acting disgusted with him, handing him his clothes. “Get the uniform off.”
    Going through that door on the other side of the street, Robin faced a steep set of stairs. Julio and Antonia Valera were already up there. He could hear them walking on the creaky wooden floor as he climbed.
    He found Julio with the girl in a windowless room lit by a single bare lightbulb. There was nothing in the room except a stained mattress, a box of canned and dried goods, and several bottles of water. The fourteen-year-old lay on her side on the mattress, sniffling beneath her hood.
    â€œYou watch her,” Julio said. “Make sure she drinks, eats. She has to piss or take a dump, she uses the bucket down the hall. She gets no time