Empire Games Series, Book 1(40)
“Of course not.” Louis gave the English monarch a heavy-lidded stare. “And you’re absolutely right. I haven’t suddenly had my head turned by the ethereal beauty of your precious jewel of a daughter, cousin. She is somewhat willful—some might even say waspish—and I believe I need not inform you of her opinion of me, or of my mistress. But the times turn, and the seasons change, and the usurpers have proven themselves to be uncommonly ingenious in the mechanical arts, have they not?” He snapped his fingers and glanced over his shoulder: “Bring me my new toy now!” he called.
Back to John Frederick: “There have been more unwelcome developments, and I think some in particular that you need to see with your own two eyes.” Behind them, a quartet of liveried servants pushed and heaved a television set into the room—a hulking piece of cabinetry fronted by a circular green glass disk—and positioned it at an angle convenient for the princes. “We are used to reigning as of right, cousin. But things are spinning out of control: the revolutionaries are ingenious, and I very much fear that unless we hang together and put an end to this nonsense as fast as possible, then dedicate our lives and those of our heirs to suppressing it, we will hang separately…”
PART TWO
FAST TRACK
Learning carries within itself certain dangers because out of necessity one has to learn from one’s enemies.
—Leon Trotsky
Training Mission
NEAR BOSTON, TIME LINE FOUR, MAY 2020
Two months after her abortive kidnapping, Rita was allowed a weekend trip home to visit her family. In fact, she was urged to do so. “E-mail and Facebook aren’t enough,” explained her supervisor, an affable African American named Patrick O’Neill who’d worked surveillance operations when he was in the FBI. “If you vanish off the face of the earth for weeks, then send them vaguely reassuring messages, your parents will worry that you’ve been abducted; it’s entirely natural. But you’ve been through basic orientation and briefing now, and it’ll make life a lot easier for us—and for them—if you go home and explain what’s happened.”
“Easier for you?” Rita asked dubiously.
Patrick shrugged. “Your grandpa’s been rattling the bars. Your father’s even talking about hiring a private eye, just to shut him up. It’s not going to help anybody if they waste money on a wild-goose chase, and we figure they’ll calm right down if they get a chance to see you in person. Regularly, even. So we’ve got a cover package for you that should hold up for a weekend, and we can work it into your training schedule. Think of it as a field exercise. We’ll recycle the same cover when you go to Quantico for the National Academy course, so it’ll help you bed in.”
“Okay!” Rita resisted the urge to jump up and down. Eight weeks of grueling exercise and six-hour classroom days at the TSA’s off-world Camp Graceland training center had begun to blur into a hellish cross between the Girl Scouts, college, and a prison.
Camp Graceland was a boot camp for spies. The teacher/student ratio was nearly 1:1, and except for her direct supervisor, Patrick, everybody knew her by a false name. They had started with medical tests (drug tests, epigenetic methylation scans: the usual), then rushed her through a bunch of interviews and security checks—some while being monitored by a polygraph, others with her head stuck in an fMRI scanner. She still remembered the Very Serious security officer’s expression as he’d asked if she was now, or ever had been, a Communist: he’d been a sight. (The question was clearly the legacy of some paranoid congressional imposition on the national security apparat. “No, but my grandpa Kurt used to be one, and I send him photographs of government buildings via dead letter drop” clearly wasn’t on the list of acceptable answers.) It had led to her explaining her geocaching hobby to him—and the idea that there was an entire subculture of folks who went on furtive Internet-mediated treasure hunts for buried objects using GPS and old-school spy tradecraft seemed to have caused him deep personal distress. Luckily for her, eccentricity was not yet illegal. So she eventually passed the checks.
The interviews and a swearing-in were followed by a weeklong basic organizational orientation course, then a stripped-down version of the training that National Clandestine Service people got. The upcoming course at Quantico was more conventional—it was the law enforcement leadership course the FBI ran for other organizations. Clearly someone upstairs thought it might help if she knew how to think like a senior cop … or a senior counterespionage officer. “When do I go?”
“You’ve got two more weeks on this segment,” said Patrick. “We’ll use the final week to work up your cover and establish operating procedures. Then you get to go on leave on Friday, using your cover while traveling. You don’t need to use the cover while you’re with your folks, but resume on Monday when you travel to Quantico.”
“Huh.” She paused. “How much can I tell them? How much do you want me to hold back?”
Patrick checked a file on his tablet. “You can tell them you landed a job with DHS; that’s not a problem. If they know anything about your, uh, birth parents, you can hint that it’s connected. But they don’t need to know about Graceland, about anything that’s happening here, or anything you’ve been told is classified or that you suspect is classified and somebody screwed up and forgot to tell you about. And if they don’t already know about your birth mother’s capability, they don’t need to learn about it now. There’s a cover story for them—a boring office job and some stuff you periodically get asked about. If they conclude that we’ve roped you in so we can keep an eye on you, that’s perfect, because it’s partly true.”