Chapter Twenty-Three Vitamin T

When one is pretending, the entire body revolts.

— Anais Nin

Freedom is the harmony of the inner life with truth.

— Walter Jackson Bate

Tuesday, October 27

White. A blinding white, whiter than any bleach could whiten it.

A hospital room—for that was what it was, a hospital room—all white.

Blinding white.

White : less a color than a placeholder for color, and at the same time the most concrete of all the colors.

Her room was white. Her blankets white. The ceiling. The whirring, blinking, beeping machines colluded around her bed, crowding the bedside, blank of bedside manner but linked to her by wires—all white.

The whiteness was all.

Lizzy gasped and arched in the bed as memory, red-black, returned.

The present, in all its whiteness, faded. Dark . She was beneath Wickham…he was about to enter her…claim her…violate her. His hands squeezed her throat.

And then he was on top of her, dead. A shot to the head. Her name in Fitzwilliam’s voice.

All in the dark.

She shuddered, the shudder less a subjective reaction than a whole mode of being. She was a shudder.

Escaped . At the last moment, she had escaped Wickham's threat. He had not done what he planned. Wickham's dark intention. Not a promise of a promise but a threat of humiliation and death. He had seen what she never intended him to see, touched her where she never intended him to touch her and… like that… but he had not succeeded.

Now he was dead. She was sure of it. She touched her hair, expecting it to be matted by blood, Wickham's blood, red but black in the moonlight. But her hair was clean.

She was clean.

Slowly, she untensed. That memory retreated, jagged and raw, and it was replaced by another.

***

Fitzwilliam, standing surrounded by white, his handsome face enshadowed in regret and self-loathing, talking to her, repeating a whispered Sorry.

Finally, he spoke in sentences. "He's dead, Lizzy. Wickham. I killed him. Damn it, we should have given you a sat phone before you left, but we worried about hiding it from Wickham, especially at the security gate. And then the CIA plane from Chicago registered a mechanical problem before take-off, delaying us. Agent McDougal was outnumbered and outflanked…

"I failed you, Lizzy. Failed you. I should have stopped this as soon as I knew that I…that you…that we…I should have stopped this. Even before that, when I saw how much it was taking out of you."

She remembered tears but was unsure if they were hers or his or both.

Sad. It had all been so sad. Fitzwilliam had been so sad. So sorry. But so was I. So sorry.

She tried to tell him that she should never have accepted the mission, that she should have quit, that she should have walked away when she knew what she wanted, when she knew she no longer wanted to be Agent Bennet. When she knew she wanted him. Wanted another life.

Until this mission, I never knew myself.

But she had been afraid to tell him the truth, afraid he would not want what she wanted, to share that new life with her. She had chosen to stay, to stay undercover, and to continue the seduction of Wickham until that seduction had taken her to the breaking point.

The habits of her CIA life had been hard to break, harder than she realized. Deeply instilled, installed by training, and reinforced by danger after danger. Welded by stress. In Chicago, with Fitzwilliam, she had decided against her habits but had still been trapped by them.

The only way to break a habit is to acquire a new one. Changing a habit is not as simple as changing your mind, and even that's not always simple. Habits are more complicated.

Someone had said that to her at the Farm when she was being trained to abandon normal, civilian life behind and acquire the habits of an intelligence agent. Returning to it was going to take more from her than a change of heart. But her heart had changed—and her habits would change, were already changing.

She tried to tell Fitzwilliam all that—but she could not manage to get it out, to say the first few words that would summon all the others. Words are deeds, and sometimes words can be hard to say, deeds daunting.

Fitzwilliam had started again before Lizzy could start. "When you got here, they used…a rape kit. I told them…what happened…I haven't been told the test results, but the doctor did tell me that Wickham…hadn't…" He stared at her, agony and shame deep in his eyes, his face dark.

"No," she finally said, thickly, his self-recrimination making her heart hurt. "No, he hadn't…didn't. He dragged me into the moonlight, my…lingerie bunched up…either he did that or the dragging did it. He saw me…and he…it…touched me…there…but you stopped him…"

The humiliation she’d endured was not the kind Wickham most wanted.

She lifted a weak hand from beneath the white blankets and touched Fitzwilliam’s arm as if she could finger the words she could not say, deliver them by touch.

He acknowledged her touch but did not recognize the palmed words, and he nodded, grim and defeated, as if her gesture of thanks made him feel worse and hate himself more.

"My fault. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong—almost. It could have been worse, but that doesn't mean it wasn't awful. The doctor told me…so I could report to Kellynch. I did, and I told him it was all my fault. What Wickham did to you, to Karen.”

"No," Lizzy said again, "it wasn't! I…Wait, how's Karen? Agent McDougal?"

"Alive—but in ICU. She was shot twice and lost a lot of blood, but she's tough. Steely. In the firefight, she killed one of the men who shot her and badly wounded the other. He died…later." Fitzwilliam paused and blinked, as if blinking away a memory. "She's not in a coma, but they're keeping her under sedation."

There was a quiet moment between them. Fitzwilliam reached out, stopping her from speaking―perhaps without intending to―and moved a lock of her hair off her forehead. She stopped trying to talk. He did it with infinite care, a devoted gentleness. Leave-taking.

No!

"This mission's done, Lizzy. But the fact that Wickham's dead doesn't mean the Wicker Man is. I'm going to finish them, whoever they are. They did this to you as much as he did. And they’re still a threat. My new mission. Go back to sleep. You need sleep."

He leaned forward and kissed her lips as gently as he had moved the lock of her hair. Reverse Snow White. "Goodbye, Lizzy. I have to go."

Her weakness and her surprise combined to keep her silent. Tears streamed from her eyes. Her tears. She could feel them hot on her cheeks.

He turned away and left the room, leaving her alone in the whiteness. She did not know if he had shed tears.

***

Lizzy blinked away fresh tears at the memory. When did that happen? How long ago? Everything was white; everything was jumbled.

The door to her room opened, and a doctor walked in. White lab coat, a woman, older, gray hair, half glasses, wearing a full smile that was kind and warm. "Agent Bennet, you're awake! And you’re looking better, too. You've been in and out the last three days, but mostly out. I'm Dr. Williams.”

As she considered Lizzy, her smile slowly hardened into a thin line. “I've been briefed on who you are and what you were doing. Director Kellynch called me personally. And I talked with both Agent Darcy and Agent Bingley. He's outside."

"Agent Darcy?" Lizzy’s voice sounded halting, raspy, brittle. Fall leaves crushed under slow feet.

"No. Sorry. Agent Bingley . Agent Darcy had to leave yesterday."

The doctor gave her a moment, looking at her chart through reading glasses. Lizzy absorbed the news staring straight ahead, recalling Fitzwilliam’s lips on hers in the white room.

Dr. Williams looked up from the chart. "How are you feeling?"

"Tired. No…I'm exhausted. Enervated. How do you say I am?"

The doctor raised an eyebrow. "You certainly are exhausted. You needed sleep. You still need sleep. What you've been doing…" She paused. "From talking with Kellynch and with Agent Darcy and Agent Bingley, I take it that you have been under enormous stress. They told me about the last couple of weeks, but my educated guess is that you've been under enormous stress for months, probably years.” She blew out a frustrated breath. “Doesn't the CIA require periodic psychological evaluations? Don’t they allow agents time off?"

Dr. Williams paused again but then spoke before Lizzy could answer. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to sound like I'm accusing you of something. And I probably shouldn’t be saying this all to you . I should have asked Kellynch these questions, but I was so… shocked …to be on the phone with the director of the CIA. My outrage didn't grip me until the call ended. I’ve never been good at caging outrage."

Lizzy stopped gazing at the ceiling to look at her. "It's okay. I was usually given time, a short time off between missions. And yes, there were periodic evaluations at Langley, but I've…always been…good at test-taking." She understood herself then, the game she had played with Langley and with herself.

"Meaning you were undercover even at Langley, pretending among the pretenders. Pretending to be a whole-hearted pretender. You gave the evaluator what the evaluator needed to release you for the next mission instead of giving the evaluator the truth?" The doctor’s tone softened as she asked the question.

Lizzy took a moment before nodding in concession. "Yes. The truth isn't easy for me, not as easy as it should be."

"I don't wonder. You've lived a lineup of lies for a long time.”

"All the lies that are my life," Lizzy said bitterly through a frown of self-mockery.

The doctor stared at her for a moment, thinking.

"What is it?" Lizzy asked.

Dr. Williams shook her head to downplay what she was about to say. "Let me speak unofficially. Personally. Just a pet theory of mine.” She shrugged. “I'm convinced human beings need the truth like they need sunlight. Call it Vitamin T. Without it, we shrink, shrivel, and die. The heart naturally loves truth. And I don't mean what people call ' my truth.' I mean the truth, the genuine article. It's why we crave knowledge in a way we don't crave mere belief. You can only know what's true—but you can believe what's false. And falsity enslaves." She stopped and pursed her lips, and then she smirked, but kindly. "Anyway, my ultimate but unofficial diagnosis is that you are suffering from a serious Vitamin T deficiency.

"But that's just my pet theory―ignore it if you want. I don't offer it as your doctor but as one woman to another, one human being to another."

She looked down at the chart self-consciously and cleared her throat. " Officially , I'm here to tell you that, so far, all the tests we've run"―she glanced up, eyes above her half glasses, then back down at the chart―"including the tests that are part of the sexual assault evidence collection kit"―she paused―"have come back negative . No penetration, no discharge of semen. No disease. Given that, any risk of pregnancy is very, very slim, but we will test you before we release you.

"I want to keep you for a few more days. Physically, you'll be fine. Head trauma, mild concussion. Some stitches necessary, but there’s no skull fracture. You were in and out for a while, as I already told you. You may or may not remember the conscious moments. Your back was bruised and badly scraped. You have two cracked ribs. Bad blisters on both feet. But everything's healing well.

"You need to rest, sleep as much as you can. As my sainted dad would've said, you've been burning the candle at both ends. Serious burnout. Stress… mountainous stress. People used to call it a nervous breakdown―now it's called a mental health crisis. You're uncomfortably close to having one, whichever term you use."

Lizzy nodded, listening, processing, and went back to staring up at the white ceiling again. For how long have I been operating under this level of stress? Denial?

She knew the answer. Since the Farm .

It had been an unspoken part of the training there, an overarching class they all took that no one acknowledged because it never appeared on a syllabus. Inhumanity 101. Lizzy shook her head at the realization, one that she’d never entertained before. At college, she had been a student of the humanities. At the Farm, she graduated to the inhumanities.

"A mental health crisis? Am I crazy?"

Dr. Williams laughed indulgently. "No, but that's exactly your problem. You've managed to stay sane, to cling to sanity somehow in what I'm guessing is and has been a gonzo world. That’s created the stress. If you were crazy, gonzo in your gonzo world, there'd be no stress—but of course, there'd be other problems, like, well…a steadily worsening psychopathology. They put you through training school, right?"

Lizzy nodded.

"The CIA? What's it called, The Farm?"

Lizzy nodded again.

"They must be teaching crazy there and excusing themselves for doing it because, for all the damage they do to you agents, they claim the good you do for others justifies it. The tool doesn't matter―beat it to death, foul it beyond recognition, strip it of integrity and self-respect—only the job matters. Assholes! " The doctor's voice was quiet, angry, and exasperated. She stomped her foot on her final word.

Lizzy did not respond to any of what Dr. Williams said. Mention of the Farm brought Agent McDougal to her mind. Karen's words: " I hated those classes at the Farm."

How could I have forgotten to ask about her? Maybe I am crazy?

"What about Karen? Agent McDougal? What can you tell me?"

Dr. Williams shrugged. "I really can't say much. In fact, I shouldn't say anything―HIPAA and all―but I will say that I believe she'll pull through."

"Can I see her?"

"Yes, but wait until tomorrow. Let’s see how she's doing then. We'll get you up today and let you walk around some in your room, but we should put off any hallway travel until then, anyway.

"Besides, Agent Bingley is outside and wants to talk to you. Sorry if I was making long speeches. I don't care for your Director Kellynch, as I guess you can tell. Agents Darcy and Bingley I like, even if Agent Darcy's a little stiff, a little hard. But I'll be glad when my hospital exorcizes all its spooks."

"Wait," Lizzy protested, shifting in her bed. "Where am I?" Only then had she realized she didn't know.

She was a mess, her thoughts swampy, her emotions distant, numb. She could remember how she felt when Fitzwilliam left her hospital room, but she could not feel it. The sadness was there…but far away, funereal velvet she had touched, crushed in her hand, but now she could only recollect, not handle.

"You're at Banner Wyoming Medical Center," Dr. Williams said. "In a wing of the hospital that's recently been remodeled and is not yet open for use or to the public. Director Kellynch demanded it. By the way, there are guards outside your room and Agent McDougal's, which is just down the hall. A precaution, Kellynch called it, but he didn't explain beyond that. It’s obvious, though, he’s worried that the two of you are still in danger. I suspect Agent Bingley can tell you more about that. Shall I let him come in?"

"Please," Lizzy said. She wanted to know about what had happened on the mountain, what had happened since. What happened in Rapid City?

Her doctor left the room.

A moment later, Charlie walked in, eager and sheepish. He gave her his best boyish smile as he reached the bed, his eagerness winning out. "Hey, Lizzy! So good to see you awake!"

"Charlie! What happened in Rapid City, the Pow Wow?" There was so much she needed to know―no time for greetings.

He put his hand on her forearm and gazed into her eyes. "Thanks to you, nothing happened! You came to for a minute up on the mountain and kept telling Darcy to check your phone. Over and over. We did, and we found the pictures. The plan. A bomb squad found the explosive the next morning and disabled it. No one was hurt. The events went on that day and night as planned but with extra security. Who knows what kind of chaos and injury and death would have happened if you hadn't found those plans and told Darcy?"

"I told him?"

"You don't remember?" His voice was soft as he removed his hand from her arm. "You were upset, badly upset. Blood all over you."

Lizzy tried not to remember Wickham dead on top of her, the blood on her face and in her hair. "And Karen? She's in the ICU, the doctor said."

"Yes, down the hall. She’s stable. Got shot twice―once in the stomach and once in the thigh. Lost a lot of blood before the paramedics arrived, although I did my best. Darcy helped after he tended to you, covered you with his coat, made sure you were okay. She was in surgery for a long time."

"She's stable?" Lizzy needed to hear it again.

"Yes."

"What happened up there, Charlie, on the mountain? How did Wickham find us?"

"The man Karen wounded told us what happened. We interrogated him at the hospital later, before he died. Frank Northup, an electronics specialist, a thief.

“Wickham and another man were in the cabin and stayed there. They never came down the mountain after you. Not on foot. You had Wickham's sat phone on, and he tracked it using the other man's sat phone."

"Goddamn it! A rookie mistake!" she said through her teeth, her emotions now awake enough for her to feel fury at herself.

Charlie nodded but patted her arm. "Even if you’d turned it off, it wouldn't have mattered. There was a backup tracker in the guts of the phone. Evidently the Wicker Man likes to keep tabs. It could have been tracked either way, on or off.

"The man who followed you down the mountain was Cory Musil―he’s a professional hitman with ties to a number of terrorist groups. He used a walkie-talkie to tell them you'd taken another walkie-talkie. That's how Wickham knew he could contact you on it. He didn't want to use the phone for fear you might toss it afterward since the walkie-talkie had no tracker. Musil went across the mountain to the road. Wickham and the other man, Northup, picked Musil up in a car above you and Karen.

"They figured out roughly where you were heading when you turned to go across the mountain, and they got down there before you. Wickham left Musil and Northup near Karen's car and went to wait for you. He let her go by when she showed up first. Even in the dark, he could tell the difference. He only cared about you—that's what Northup said. Wickham knew you were nearby because of the phone. When the shooting started, you came to the rescue, as he expected."

"But there was a third man,” Lizzy said, “in the second team. Karen killed two of them, but a third ran away. She fired at him, and I thought she missed."

Charlie’s sheepishness returned, and he made a face. "Never caught him, never found him. We think he got away, although it's possible she hit him and he died on the mountain somewhere. No one's found any remains, though, and there was no blood trail."

Lizzy nodded slowly, trying to imagine how all the events on the mountain had unfolded and how wrong her understanding of them had been at the time. She'd never performed so poorly on a mission.

"Why are there guards for Karen and me?"

"Kellynch. We don't know how, but your cover was compromised. Someone sent those teams after you. Not Wickham. The man we interrogated didn’t know who it was, but there's someone in the Wicker Man who runs the show―has more power than Wickham did."

"But didn't Wickham meet with them when he left the cabin?"

Charlie gave her a significant look. "We don't actually know what happened in the cabin beyond Wickham's being tranqed and…what you were wearing. If you're up to it, could you tell me? Kellynch wants your report."

Lizzy did not want to revisit the Little Red Cabin, but she did. She started with their arrival in Casper, the bathroom meeting with Karen. She ended with Wickham hitting her from the dark. Charlie listened closely, sympathetically.

"Huh," he said when she finished. "We didn't know Wickham left the cabin. But he didn't meet with the teams. They were sent by someone else―he wasn't in that loop. Evidently, there was dissension in the upper ranks of the Wicker Man."

They were both quiet, and then Lizzy asked, "And Darcy's gone after whoever sent them, the more powerful person? He's still chasing the Wicker Man?"

Charlie’s face saddened. "I'm sorry, Lizzy. I told him to stay. But he was so angry…inconsolable." He shook his head slowly. "He told you about the trouble we had with the plane?" She nodded. "I was afraid he would tear the O’Hare apart barehanded before we left, got airborne. And when we found you? After Darcy killed Wickham, he was raging.

"Kellynch ordered him to stay here, to wait, and for the three of us to travel back to D.C. together, but he wouldn’t do it. 'I'm MI-6,' he said, 'not CIA.’ He refused the order. Kellynch tried to get MI-6 to give the same orders, but they declined to do so."

Charlie had lost focus on Lizzy as he spoke, but now he looked at her again. "Yes, he's gone after the Wicker Man…alone. I asked him to let me know where he was. I wanted to see if I could get Kellynch to let me join him later, but Darcy told me no, that I should go home to Jane. He told me to find another life."

Lizzy stared at him, catching his eyes and holding them. "I'm done, Charlie. I'm going to talk to Kellynch and resign. Agent Bennet did not die on Casper Mountain, but she disappeared there, never to be seen again."

He seemed unsurprised. "You love Darcy, don't you?" he asked softly.

Lizzy delayed for a moment, first considering making it a joke— stop it! Say it now and say it seriously— and then she nodded firmly. "Yes, I do, desperately."

Vitamin T.

After Charlie left, Lizzy slept for hours.

When she finally awoke, a nurse came to help her from the bed and to walk around the room. She was unsteady at first but quickly did better. The walking helped clear her mind, bringing her back to herself. She re-inhabited her body, her painful body.

Lizzy had settled in the bed again when her room phone rang. She had noticed the landline on the nightstand but assumed it was not yet connected. No one had mentioned it, and it had never rung.

She picked it up and answered hesitantly. "Hello?"

"Lizzy, it's Director Kellynch. How are you?"

"The doctor says I'm doing fine, physically."

He made a pleased sound. "Good, good. But how are you, I mean, given what happened… what almost happened?"

She thought about what Fitzwilliam said before he left her. "What happened was awful enough. I don't want to think about what almost happened."

"No, I suppose not. Do you need someone to talk to there? I can send one of our psychologists and have someone there tomorrow. For you—and Agent McDougal, if she wants."

"Do you know any more about Karen? They haven't told me anything but that she's stable, and she’s still under sedation."

"Dr. Williams is chary with information. I don't think she likes me. Or the Company." He seemed more personally offended by the second than the first. "Yes, that's what I know. All I know." He stopped. Lizzy could all but hear him change gears. "Agent Bingley told me about what happened…what you told him. I take it Agent McDougal performed satisfactorily? How would you evaluate her performance?"

"Yes. She was exemplary―resourceful and courageous. I doubt I would be here at all without her."

"But she forgot to give you a sat phone even though she’d been tasked to do it."

"That’s true, but this was all thrust at the last minute on her, an agent with no real field experience. When you factor that in, what she did was remarkable. I would work with her again in a heartbeat and put my life in her hands."

"Well, perhaps you will have a chance to do that down the line."

Lizzy pulled up. She had said that to praise Karen, not to promise her future to Kellynch. She was done. Done with Kellynch. Done with the Company. Hearing his voice only made that clearer.

"No, sir, I won't. I haven't given you my self-evaluation. I did not perform satisfactorily." She told him about Wickham's sat phone, about the numerous errors she had made in the cabin and on the mountain.

When she finished, he was silent for a moment. "Well, Lizzy, you made errors, but those are more or less your first―your first in years. The outcome, while not all we wanted where the Wicker Man was concerned, was more than satisfactory. You saved lives, the Pow Wow. Well done, especially since I know how much you hate seduction missions. I know your heart was not in this assignment."

"That's incorrect, sir. The problem was not that my heart was not in it―the problem is that my heart was."

"What?"

She cleared her throat. Years ago, she had substituted pleasing Kellynch for pleasing her father. She had chosen the Company in extremis and had lived in extremis ever since. She had imprisoned and shadowed her heart and fed it falsity.

No more.

"Director Kellynch, I am resigning. Effective immediately I will send you an email to that effect so there's an official record."

Based on the resulting silence, she had stunned him. Her tone had been final, resolved. It took him a minute to speak. "And there's nothing I can do to change your mind? Nothing? I don't want to lose you. What can I do?"

Her eyes filled with tears for herself, for what happened on the mountain. For Karen. Lizzy cried for all the missions before that. For the years of self-division she had repressed. Tears for her Company past, lived in shadows and now lost in shadows. Tears for her imagined future, now doubtful. Tears for Fitzwilliam’s return to the shadows.

Despair backward and despair forward.

She restrained the tears long enough to answer Kellynch, to control her voice. "Nothing, sir. Goodbye."

She hung up the phone, dropped her head into her hands, and wept bitterly.