Empire Games Series, Book 1(8)
She was gloomily going through her toilet bag when the door opened again. It was Gomez.
“Here’s what you asked for,” she said, holding out a bag at arm’s reach. “Cotton pads, baby oil, the lot. We’re calling out for food in half an hour: do you have any dietary restrictions?”
Rita took the bag and Gomez let go as if stung when their fingers made momentary contact. “I’m easy,” she said quietly, trying to give no sign of discomfort that might put the other woman on the alert. Am I a prisoner? A guest? A witness? What is this, anyway?
“Get yourself cleaned up and make yourself comfortable. We’ll interview you after you’ve eaten, then you can get a night’s sleep and if necessary we’ll continue tomorrow morning.”
Gomez turned to go. “Wait,” said Rita. “Am I free to leave if I want to?” She looked at Gomez imploringly. The fed wasn’t wearing her government-mandated lifelogging specs. If their interactions weren’t being recorded, what did that mean?
Gomez paused. “In theory,” she said slowly, then stopped.
“But…?”
“I wouldn’t recommend leaving before we’ve had our chat. Be ready in half an hour, Ms. Douglas.”
The door closed with a too-solid click behind her.
This is so fucking weird. Rita shuddered and pulled out her phone. They hadn’t even bothered to take it off her. Instead of her regular carrier it was displaying the red FEDERAL OVERRIDE network ID. So the only phone signal in the building was supplied by a government agency picocell, and if she used it she was waiving her Fourth Amendment rights and explicitly consenting to her communications being searched. (Not that withholding consent meant anything these days: the Fifth Amendment—the right not to incriminate oneself—was a dead letter, too.) Her sense of unreality was almost overpowering as she turned the phone off. This was popularly supposed to prevent its bugging her—unless the feds had gone to the trouble of asking for a warrant to override the power switch. She collected a change of clothes from her bag of supplies, then retreated to the bathroom to remove her makeup and costume and seek comfort in simple routine.
Maybe it was her subcontinental outfit that had triggered Gomez, or maybe she was just a bitch. But off came the sari, choli, and lehenga and on went jeans, bra, and blouse. By the time her half hour was up, Rita was back to resembling her normal all-American self: hair in a ponytail, face scrubbed clean of greasepaint, costume ready to go back in HaptoTech’s trade show wardrobe. But ten minutes later she was beginning to go stir-crazy: the lack of social feeds was almost as irritating an itch as her implants. So she turned the phone on again and was sitting cross-legged on the bed, poking frustratedly at a puzzle game, when the agent who had identified himself as Jack pushed the door open. “Ms. Douglas? Please step this way.”
“Sure.” She followed him down the indicated corridor. I’ll pretend I’m happy to be here and you can pretend I’m not under arrest, she imagined herself saying. Let’s get this over with. Whatever it is. The sense of dread rasped away at her shell of false bravado.
They want something. That much was obvious. But they’ve got nothing on me. Her parents and grandfather had raised Rita to be cautious, law-abiding, and risk-averse. She didn’t have a criminal record: not even a parking ticket. If they had anything on her they’d have arrested her right from the get-go—once they had you in the system, they could get a warrant, go on a fishing expedition, and unravel your entire life if you didn’t cooperate. But they clearly didn’t have anything, otherwise why do the low-key approach? Either they were hoping she’d trip up and hand them something or they were going to try to co-opt her some other way, using threats, promises, and lies.
Grandpa Kurt was East German—he had escaped across the Wall during the cold war. His stories about the way the secret police worked you over when they wanted something had scared her half to death when she was a kid. She might have discounted them as she was growing up, the way kids always discounted their elders’ cautionary tales, but some of it had stayed with her. Particularly the way he’d sat, staring at the rolling TV news coverage of the mushroom cloud over D.C. back in 2003, muttering “Reichstag fire” until Mom shushed him, glancing in fright at the landline telephone. She’d been nine at the time, and already old enough to realize everything was wrong that day.
Her fugue state deepened when Jack ushered her into a boringly ordinary meeting room. Gomez was waiting with a plastic carry-out bag full of foil-wrapped burritos: “Qdoba,” she said, pointing. “Help yourself.” There were office chairs clustered around a bleached pine board table. A big bottle of Caffeine-Free Dr Pepper completed the still life. So they’re going to try seduction first, she realized. Of course—the shortest way to an informer’s brain was through her stomach.
Rita sat down, deliberately (and cautiously) mirroring the cops’ body language. She accepted the offered burrito with unfeigned gratitude, then watched while Jack poured three cups of soda and slid one across the table toward her. This didn’t match any of Grandpa’s horror yarns—but these weren’t ordinary secret police, were they? The DHS had a big concrete office block downtown. The DHS went after terror suspects with drones, GPS tracking, network taps, and Hellfire missiles. The DHS did not invite them round for burritos and soda and a fireside chat. If these cops are regular DHS then I’m the tooth fairy, Rita told herself. But they could call on the DHS for backup in the field. That, if anything, made them even more frightening. Whatever they wanted, they wanted it badly enough to be using kid gloves: that was the scariest realization of all.