"You don't know that".
Three sets of eyeballs exchanged glances. "We just assumed..."
There was that word again.
Valentine let out a breath. "It's not worth arguing. I'm not interesting in slogging over who knows how many mountain ranges, sorry. Send a radiogram".
"You haven't heard what we're offering", Lambert said.
"Some kind of pardon".
"Not for you. You know that baby Reaper you brought out of Kentucky..."
"He has a name".
"How can you tell it's a he?" Duvalier asked. Reapers had no vulnerable reproductive organs sharing space with their simple elimination system.
"Calling him 'it' won't..."
"You've been good enough to let the researchers at the Miskatonic take a look at him a couple of times", Lambert interrupted.
"Until he broke two fingers and the wrist of the nurse subjecting him to ultrasonics", Duvalier said.
"They were hurting him", Valentine said, heating at the memory.
Lambert smiled. "The Kurians are very interested in your little Reaper. Their agents have offered substantial bribes for information up and down the Free Territory as to his whereabouts. They think we've got him in a lab someplace".
"Of course", Valentine said.
"Even I don't know where you've got him stashed, 'zactly", Duvalier said. "You always meet the Miskatonic people in the Groglands around St. Louis".
Lambert ignored her. "They think we've got him hidden in the deepest, darkest hole in the Ozarks and they're trying to find it. Sooner or later they'll learn the truth".
Valentine remained silent, waiting for it.
"Or", Lambert said, "I can make sure that every record, every test, every note, and every photograph disappears. We've mocked up a pretty convincing skeleton out of bits and pieces of other Reapers. He'll be listed as dead, killed during testing, the bones archived, some tissue samples dropped into formaldehyde, and everything but abstracts of the research will be destroyed".
How did they know the chink in his armor? Duvalier, probably. At times it seemed she knew him better than he knew himself. She was a sound judge, not just of risk, but of character, vulnerabilities - it made her a better assassin. Save for the bloodlust that sometimes came over her when a Quisling touched her - if she'd had an education beyond the sham of her early years in the Great Plains Gulag, she could have ...
Keen judge of character. She picked you to train.
Valentine didn't know whether to hate the trio or admire them. He'd gotten careless with the last of Mary's murderers gone. Part of him was itching for something to do anyway. How much of his unwillingness was an act?
"There's got to be more to this", Valentine said. "Why not just contact the Pacific Northwest by regular channels? Southern Command must have some kind of communication route".
Styachowski suddenly became interested in a frayed cuff.
Lambert spoke again: "The Cause up there is in the hands of a genius. But like many geniuses, he's got his own ways".
"Friends and enemies both call him 'Mr. Adler,' " Styachowski said. "They say he came out of Seattle, originally. Didn't know one end of a gun from another when he showed up barefoot to volunteer, but he carried sixteen tons of grudge. He took a bunch of guerrillas
starving in the mountains and fighting each other as much as they did the Kurians, and turned them into the Terrors of the Cascades. They appear and disappear like a fog, always somewhere the Quislings are weak. He's putting a headlock on the most powerful Kurian in the western half of the United States, Seattle himself. The Big Wheel".
"Him I've heard of", Valentine said. "Wasn't he trying to absorb the whole West Coast?"
"We were both at the War College then", Lambert said. "It was all the talk among the higher-ups, worries that Seattle would be running the whole coast, knock Denver out, then come after us. I suppose it could still happen, if the forces in the Cascades fall apart".
"All the more reason to set up liaisons", Valentine said.