Blitzed on Terror and Calculation

A standalone spypunk story

☛ Leo Vaughn writes unusual fantasy for unusual people, rep’d by Lucienne Diver of the Knight Agency. His novels are coming soon to a bookstore near you.

Deadwater Inn is a series of standalone short stories—basically Casablanca meets the Cold War in the multiverse. You can jump in anywhere without prior reading.

Come on, don’t be shy. The water’s cold and moody.

—

It was the white lights that got to Nora. Always the white lights.

Uncle Sam’s goons were pitiless interrogators. Debriefing, they called it, but she wasn’t about to pretend it was anything other than a loyalty test. And where a lover might look for subtle clues, the veiled gaze or fingers touching the face, Uncle Sam took a scientific approach. This was the American way.

“Tell me again your impressions of your captors. Were they likeable people?”

Kill me now. She’d answered the same question an hour ago. They were trying to catch her in a lie. She sagged over the cold, metal table. The lights pointed right at her, and she could barely make out the face of the CIA mandarin seated across from her. The white linoleum walls blinded her with all the strength of a blizzard. Linoleum? Here, too? The Lubyanka, that hellish Soviet prison, had had rooms with linoleum walls and floors. Did this room also have a drain in the center for the blood of the interrogated?

The CIA goon leaned a little closer. Crew cut, narrow black tie, eyes of a sheep—he was a follower, a paper-pusher, a good administrator. He’d never tried nearly dying for a country that wasn’t even his own.