“The explosion on the University of Washington campus was due to a faulty furnace,” Calder said.

“We know that. We have the ever-loving report! And at that point Dr. Rickman tried to pull you back and you insisted this was something major.”

“That was my judgment call at the time, sir. I was just starting to interrogate Dr. Talcott when she escaped from the hospital. Her escape looked highly suspicious. I thought it was prudent to go after her.”

“I have yet to be convinced that anything about this was prudent,” Deall commented with disgust.

“What happened in Poland?” Dr. Rickman leaned in, his elbows on the table. “The other agents said you were ahead of them in the woods, chasing Dr. Talcott and the others. But they lost them—and you.”

“I got ahead of my men without realizing it. I was trying not to lose the quarry. When I reached them they had doubled back toward the concentration camp and a dirt road. They were about to take off in a jeep. I jumped onto the back of it in order to stick with them. That’s when I lost my men.”

General Deall flipped through the report in front of him. “The other agents made no mention of a vehicle. They said the pursuit took place in deep woods.”

“Part of it, yes, but the woods edged the grounds of Auschwitz. I was close enough to the quarry that I managed to stay with them when they doubled back. The other agents must have missed it.”

“Why didn’t you radio them?”

“I tried at one point, but I was running too fast. And once I was on the jeep I couldn’t get to my radio.”

“There’s always time for radio contact, Farris. My god!”

“Yes, sir.”

“There was a bright light, according to your men,” Rickman interrupted. “An enormous flash. What was that?”

Farris shook his head slowly, face bewildered. “No… the suspects had flashlights. Or maybe they saw the headlights on the jeep.”

Deall and Rickman exchanged a look.

“Well? What happened once you were on the jeep?”

“It had a hard-shell top and I didn’t think they’d seen me. I stood on the back bumper, hanging on to the sides. It took both hands and I couldn’t get to my radio. My plan was to wait until we’d reached our destination, then arrest them. I had my gun and I didn’t think they were armed. But we drove for miles. It was freezing. My hands grew numb and I was thrown off the jeep on a sharp curve. I struck my head.”

Farris recited this stiffly and to the point. He raised his hand to a bandage on his head, where a months-old scar had been carefully reopened that morning.

“I don’t remember a lot after that. I walked in the woods for a long time. I finally managed to find a town.”

Deall and Rickman were both observing him with suspicion.

“Why didn’t you use your radio after you were thrown from the jeep?” Deall demanded.

“I don’t know. I don’t even think I had it on me. It must have been lost when I was thrown.”

“Why didn’t you call when you reached a phone?” Rickman asked.

“I think had a concussion. For a while there… I wasn’t sure who I was or where.”

“Have you seen a staff doctor since you’ve been back?”

“Not yet, sir.”

“Well, you’d better!” Deall ordered. “Go directly after this meeting, and have them send me a report.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You certainly look like you’ve been through the wringer,” Rickman pointed out. He did not say it sympathetically. It was just an observation of fact.

Farris had dyed his hair that morning back to something approximating the color of his roots, but it was still shorter than he’d once worn it. His eyebrows had not completely grown back. His face was haggard. There was nothing he could do about the minor surgery he’d done to slant his eyes.

“What I don’t understand is why you now believe this case has nothing of interest when a little more than a week ago you were insisting it was a matter of vital importance to national security.”

“I reviewed the case while making my way back here and again last night preparing to make my report. I can see now that I was… overzealous. I don’t believe Dr. Talcott was working on anything of interest to us. In fact, I believe she is simply… a flake, sir.”

Ricker raised a patronizing eyebrow. “You might have figured that out earlier, Lieutenant, if you had showed what you were working on to our people. I had several physicists look over the scanty material you’d procured and they were unimpressed. Dr. Everett said that without seeing Dr. Talcott’s so-called equation he could only surmise that the simulator results had been rigged and that her brief notes about a ‘universal wave’ were either delusions of grandeur or an attempt to perpetuate a hoax.”

“I don’t see how you could be so taken in, Lieutenant. You were trained better than that,” Deall said, disappointed.

“I have no excuse except that I’d allowed myself to get too obsessed with my work. It had been a long time since I’d taken a vacation. If you decide to allow me to continue my job, a short leave of absence would probably be in order.”

Deall huffed. “Allow you to continue? Do you know how much alarm you caused? Let me tell you, Lieutenant… ”

The rest of the meeting they lectured him. Farris took it, shoulders straight, hands clasped in front of him on the table. He didn’t think they were serious about reassigning him. Calder Farris had not been liked, but he had without doubt been useful over the years. A great emphasis would be put on the results of the doctor’s examination, but Farris was not concerned. He knew he could convince a physician, given the very real bump on his skull, that he had met with a mind-altering accident recently.

Deall left the office first, still pissed off. Rickman was slower to gather his things, kept eyeing him. Farris sat, back straight, looking out the window at the sun.

Rickman suddenly leaned forward over the table, staring. That old feeling of being different, of being found out, assaulted Farris. He kept his face impassive.

“Look at me,” Rickman said.

Farris did. Rickman gazed at him searchingly from behind John Lennon spectacles.

“My god, Farris, what happened to your eyes?”

Farris clenched his teeth. “I had a little cosmetic surgery. I did it months ago.”

The scars were there, behind the ears, should anyone ask him to prove it. It was a strange thing to do, strange enough to go on his record as questionable, but not strange enough to get him committed.

Rickman looked puzzled, his gaze going back and forth between Farris’s eyes.

“Did you? Whatever for? But… no, that’s not it.” Rickman’s face cleared. “I see. You’re wearing colored contacts. They’re quite an improvement, if you don’t mind my saying so. Make you look more… approachable.” Rickman flushed, as if embarrassed to have brought up the subject. “Well, good luck with the doctor.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Before reporting to Medical, Calder stopped at the men’s room. A man with a penis remarkably like his own was using the urinal. He finished and left, hardly giving Farris a glance. When he was alone, Calder studied his face in the mirror.

Rickman was right. He wasn’t sure when it had happened, but his white-blue eyes, the eyes that had always spooked others, had darkened. They were now a shade resembling the blue of sunlit skies.