“First of all.” I pushed the folder to one side. “Let’s get something straight. I’m not an inspector. I resigned, handed in all documentation, badges, identification, keys, and privileges attached thereto.” I checked to see if the mean stare across the table was still running; it was. “Second, maybe you can read in a dark room like this, but I can’t, not anymore. It’s the eyes.”
“Perhaps you’d rather be somewhere the lights are on twenty-four hours a day.” The staring man spoke up. He was younger than the other two, seemed comfortable in a dark room at a long table. I changed my mind. Probably not military, but I couldn’t figure out where he fit. He looked too intelligent to be SSD. When they stared, their jaws went slack. “It’s very tiring, I hear, having lights all the time,” he said. His voice had a lulling cadence. “Then again, with constant lighting, you could read whenever you wanted.”
The man at the end of the table stirred. The others glanced at him quickly, but he only looked idly into space, as if they weren’t there.
The military man in the center frowned to himself. If I had been interrogating him, I would have said he was trying not to show how angry he was. The frown was covering something, but he wouldn’t let it out. Finally, he pointed at me. “Go through that folder tonight. Study it carefully again in the morning when you wake up. Read through it as many times as you want during the rest of the day, in the sunlight. We’ll meet here again tomorrow, after dinner.” This was an order; it made him feel better to be giving orders, you could tell.
“I can’t, regrettably,” I said.
The younger man leaned forward. “You have another appointment?” There was a sneer hanging on the edge of the voice. I revised my estimate-he was definitely SSD. Sneering was something they all picked up after a while, like diphtheria.
“No, I’m returning home. I don’t, as it happens, have a change of clothes.”
From the corner of my eye, I saw the man at the end of the table smile, almost in spite of himself. “Maybe later, Inspector,” he said so quietly that the others had to strain to hear. “But for now, you’re needed here.”
I could sense the discomfort across the table as soon as he spoke. There was nothing overt, no clearing of throats or tightening of lips, but the temperature in the room went down suddenly, and they sat like ice figures. It didn’t seem to bother the man on the end. He lit another cigarette and leaned back in his chair, very much at ease. All right, I thought to myself, time to leave. I whisked the folder off the desk and stood up.
“An honor,” I said, and nodded. The nod was a good touch, I thought. It came almost automatically. Social grace was trickling back into my system. “I’ll study this closely.”
As I backed out of the room, the general in the center closed his eyes and slowly exhaled. The other two, sitting motionless beside him, didn’t seem to be breathing at all.