Empire Games Series, Book 1(88)
DR. SCRANTON: Right. So tell me how we’re going to do it.
END TRANSCRIPT
Shell Game
PHILADELPHIA, TIME LINE TWO, AUGUST 2020
Rita jaunted back into the real world, as she still thought of it, at seven minutes past four in the morning. By four forty she’d been through a decontamination shower, a medical check, three blood samples, and a humiliatingly random piss test. (Apparently someone was worried she’d spent her hour in the BLACK RAIN time line cranking up on crystal meth: the war on drugs might have ended in an armistice, but government employment regulations took a dim view of using recreational pharmaceuticals on the job.) So when Patrick materialized and shoved a steaming mug of Starbucks into her hand, it came as a blessed relief—until he shook his head. “Save it for the debriefing committees,” he murmured.
“Committees, plural?”
“Yup.”
“Oh hell. Sorry.”
They let her take off her body armor and extract herself from the rat’s nest of biomonitor electrodes before they sat her down and grilled her for eight hours. Her interrogators took shifts in strict rotation: Patrick and the Colonel, first and fastest, then two teams of suits from Maryland, one to perform due diligence and oversight on the Unit’s reportage, and the other to perform due diligence on the due-diligence checkers. Patrick and the Colonel wanted her to walk them through her telemetry feed and provide commentary, giving them insights into why she’d done particular things. Suit Team One wanted to walk her through their checklist instead, and Suit Team Two seemed to want her to walk them through Suit Team One’s checklist, while demonstrating all the flexibility of a gang of incredibly advanced animatronic department store mannequins.
Back in college old Prof. Hanshaw had explained the Second Artist Effect to her class: “The first artist paints the landscape they see with their own eyes. The second artist paints what they see in the first artist’s exhibition. They can’t show you a true representation, because they never saw the real thing in the first place.” This, Rita was beginning to feel, was as true for intelligence operations as for any other art form—and so she spent a weary morning and early afternoon regurgitating endlessly chewed-over morsels of data for the third-and fourth-string hacks to squabble over.
The worst part of it all was that they mostly seemed to be intent on undermining each other, or the Unit’s reporting, by digging dirt. She half expected one of the Men in Gray to stand up suddenly, point an emotional, accusatory claw at her, and denounce her as a double agent in the pay of Moscow Central. Or perhaps they were hoping to accuse her of summoning imps to sour milk, or of not complying with federal standards for hand sanitizer application during her restroom breaks. If only they knew, she told herself hopelessly, cleaving to the memory of the smell of the nape of Angie’s neck in the early hours as if it was an anchor cable to reality.
At two in the afternoon, Colonel Smith broke in to rescue her. He’d enlisted reinforcements. Dr. Scranton trailed behind, her poker face frozen—like a thin rind of ice covering a lake of viciously dry amusement—as she sent the brigade of second-guessers scattering like tenpins. “Ah, Ms. Douglas.” She nodded to Rita. “Ladies and gentlemen”—she glanced at the Suits from Maryland—“you’ve had your fun. Ms. Douglas, if you’d come with me, please?”
She turned and stalked away without waiting. The Colonel hung back and ran interference while Rita apologized to the swarm of third-tier interrogators and hotfooted it after the doctor. “Sorry about that,” Scranton said offhandedly, then paused for Colonel Smith to catch up. “You were right, Eric.”
“Right?” Rita echoed.
“You were being nibbled to death by…” Smith mopped his brow with a tissue. “What are those fish they use for pedicures? Doctor fish?”
“Diffusion of responsibility meets infighting,” said Scranton. “Well, we left you in the pedicure pool for eight hours, until you were nice and wrinkled. They can’t complain about being denied access.”
“This is a rescue?” Rita yawned, too enervated to raise a hand and cover her mouth.
“First you came to the attention of important people, then you delivered an unexpected result.” Scranton shrugged: her elegant suit jacket’s shoulders rose as if padded with kevlar. Chanel couture for a D.C. bureaucratic quarterback. “They were bound to go apeshit looking for anything they can use as leverage. Do you think they found anything, Eric?”
The Colonel looked, if not haggard, then perhaps somewhat stale. He, too, must have been on the go since yesterday evening, Rita realized. “Not really, but that won’t stop them trying to mix it. We’ll just have to outrun them,” he said. “My office, please. We should keep this quiet.”
“What’s this about?” Rita asked, trudging after him as he led the way to the elevators.
“Phase Two.”
The Colonel’s temporary office was a business suite on the top floor of the hotel building. An open door led to a bedroom. The main room was dominated by a conference table, a sofa suite, and a kitchenette where a coffee filter machine burbled welcomingly. Rita sank into a recliner and tried not to let her eyes close prematurely. Dr. Scranton took the sofa to her left, and spoke: “We’re going to have to get rid of the leeches before they suck us dry.”