Empire Games Series, Book 1(9)
“I expect you’re wondering what’s going on,” Gomez said neutrally, raising her cup but not drinking from it.
Rita unpeeled the foil from her dinner. “I’m confused,” she said noncommittally, remembering more of Gramps’s advice: The cops don’t have to tell you the truth, they can lie to get you to incriminate yourself. And they can lie by being friendly. “I’m not under arrest, right? Am I under investigation? Should I have a lawyer present?” Not that she could afford an attorney. Or that there was any guarantee they’d let her have one.
“You’re not—” began Gomez, just as Jack interrupted: “Yes.”
Gomez glared at him, but Jack cleared his throat, then looked back at Rita. “You are not under suspicion of any crime, but you are nevertheless under investigation.” He paused. “Clear?”
Rita shook her head, then took a bite from her burrito to buy time and mask her confusion. She was starving: there was nothing like a day of one-woman performances to work up an appetite.
Gomez shot a look to her colleague and snorted. “Let me explain, Ms. Douglas. Rita. Have you ever met your birth parents?”
“Have I—” Rita closed her mouth and tried to chew without biting her suddenly dry tongue. “What?” She shivered, suddenly feeling cold and shaky. What? Gathering resentment began to boil over into indignation. “No!”
“Hey, take it easy,” said Jack. He turned to Gomez. “I told you we should let her chill first before breaking it to her.” He looked back at Rita, crow’s-feet wrinkling the corners of his eyes. “Quickly, before we go into the details: your birth parents—”
“Donors,” said Rita.
“What?”
“DNA donors.” She laid down the partially eaten burrito. Her hands trembled with tension but her movements were slow and deliberate. “They put me up for adoption while I was still in the maternity ward. I have no idea who they are; they never called, and I never saw fit to ask. My real parents are Emily and Franz Douglas, and they raised me and my kid brother. They changed my diapers, nursed me when I was sick, loved me, and put me through school and college. So I’ll thank you not to call those other people my parents, if you don’t mind.”
“Whoa.” Jack leaned away from Rita’s outburst. Gomez focused intently on a point just off to one side of her face. “Okay, I’m sorry. No offense intended. But, uh, we need to talk to you about them. Your, uh.”
“Genetic donors,” Gomez said drily.
“I don’t know anything about them,” said Rita, crossing her arms defensively. “And I don’t want to.” She abruptly realized that her heart was hammering and her palms were moist. Anger or fear or some less nameable emotion made her hunch her shoulders.
“Well, you see, we’ve got a problem right there.” Jack was implacable. “That’s got to change. Because we got word that they want to know about you.”
BALTIMORE, NOVEMBER 2019
FEDERAL EMPLOYEE 004930391 CLASSIFIED VOICE TRANSCRIPT
COL. SMITH: Okay, motivational crack. Greg, what do you think? Can she do it? How do we put fire in her belly?
DR. SCRANTON: You scanned the backgrounder. She’s just not interested in her birth mother. She’s bedded in with her, her—
COL. SMITH: Adoptives.
DR. SCRANTON: Right. She doesn’t give a rat’s ass about Miriam Beckstein. Or if she does, she resents her.
AGENT O’NEILL: I don’t think that’s all there is to it. It’s her, um, the adoptives. They were pretty damn good for her, apart from the whole moving to Phoenix thing when she was nicely settled in. It’s a close family. She’s an independent adult but she still likes them. Goes home for Thanksgiving and birthdays. Phones mom and dad every week.
AGENT GOMEZ: You could fridge them, pin it on the world-walkers to motivate her—
COL. SMITH: (emphasis) No, we couldn’t. We don’t do that shit anymore. We don’t discuss that shit. We prosecute that shit, ‘pour encourager les autres.’ It is illegal and off-limits. This isn’t the fucking CIA.
AGENT GOMEZ: Hey! I wasn’t suggesting—
COL. SMITH: Damn right you weren’t.
DR. SCRANTON: Well, how about you come up with something legal that will motivate her instead? As it is she’s got nothing you can sink your claws into … nothing. I mean, I read her file and I will concede it is eerily clean. In thirty years of intelligence operation oversight work, I’ve never seen anything like it. None of the three-felonies-a-day stuff. No sexting, no unusual Facebook drama, no underage drink or drugs. Even her hobbies are boring: painting, landscape photography, going for long walks with a bit of geocaching to liven them up. It’s like she anticipated coming to our attention from the age of eight! Or as if she was trained by a professional paranoid—the grandfather perhaps. I can tell you right off that blackmail’s not going to work. It’s okay if an informant hates their handler, but a field agent in a foreign state—an illegal—has to love you. If you threaten her adoptive parents she’ll hate you, so that’s out too.
AGENT GOMEZ: You said she doesn’t give a damn about her original parents. How about we make her give a damn, then give her a hand up? So she has to go through us to get them.
AGENT O’NEILL: Hmm. Like, if we can’t fridge her encumbrances, how about we run a false flag op? Make her think Beckstein wants her dead?