Eve and the Faders

by Berneta L. Haynes

  "Sir—" she began but stopped when he held up his hand.

  "Would you care to explain to me how this operative has eluded you for weeks now?"

  "I am sure that if given a little more time, I can—"

  "This is not the first time you've lost control of an assignment."

  "Sir?"

  "But Miss Cooper was a special assignment, Agent. I explained this to you before giving you the assignment. And you insisted you were capable of handling her, that you would not fail as you did before with Special Operative Forest Sherman. You remember Sherman?"

  Her hands balled into fists on her lap, but she remained quiet and held his gaze. "What happened to Sherman was not my fault. You know that."

  "You're aware that I didn't have to take another chance on you, that I could have assigned Miss Cooper to a more capable agent but that I believed in your skill and vision. Clearly, I overestimated you. So, I have a question. If you were me, what would you do in this situation?"

  Agent Yu's shoulders drooped, but she held her head high. "I'm sorry, sir. She removed the chip and, whatever she's doing, she's making sure not to leave a trail. I have had no call from her since a couple of days after her escape."

  "You haven't answered my question, Agent. What would you do if you were in this situation?"

  She cleared her throat. "I don't know, sir."

  "Well, let me help you out. For example, I could assume that you assisted Miss Cooper in her escape and that you are continuing to assist her in some naive attempt to subvert me. How else could she evade our notice so well for this long? How else could she have known about the tracking chip?"

  "Sir?" She blinked. "As I’ve informed you, someone else helped her escape. I believe the person is likely still with her. I’m working on identifying the person. But I’m not assisting her."

  "Aiding and abetting a terrorist is an extremely serious crime," Agent Grobeck went on and stopped to allow this sentence to simmer. "But if you're not helping her, then I can safely assume you're grossly incompetent and fire you right now. There goes your pension and your career. No amount of CPR would ever resuscitate your reputation. You'd never get another job in the federal government. I'd make sure of it." He sighed as though this conversation was draining him of energy.

  "Sir, I have not assisted her, nor am I incompetent. I have more years—" She hesitated, reconsidering her words. "My years of recruiting experience and successful assignments in this department speak for itself. I assure you that I can and will complete this assignment if you give me more time. If you can give me more time, a couple more weeks perhaps, I promise you I can deliver her to you. This doesn't have to get any worse than it already is."

  "Well, considering what hit the news today, you sure as hell better hope it doesn't get worse." He turned his computer screen to face her.

  Agent Yu pulled her chair closer to read the article on the screen. A large headline read— "A secret black site in Chicago?" She scanned past the headline and stopped after the fourth paragraph. Her heart sank when she saw her name and Grobeck's name. She sat up straight and looked at him.

  "Congratulations, we're both trending. Thanks to your incompetence."

  "I—"

  "If you're helping her, I can't imagine why you'd let her smear your name. Although, I can only assume from your expression that you had no idea she intended to do so, meaning you're more incompetent than I realized."

  Her body stiffened. She stood, narrowed her gaze on him, and his eyes widened in surprise.

  "Resume your seat, Agent Yu."

  "I can't prove to you my innocence or my competence, David." It had slipped out. His name. She couldn't recall ever referring to him by his first name, and she took pleasure in the look of shock on his cruel face. "So I see no reason to sit here and let you continue to demean me."

  "Excuse me?"

  "I have far more years of experience at SPI than you have, and I'm better at this job than you are. But they made you, a good old boy with connections, my superior."

  "Agent, you are out of line."

  She ignored his interruption. "For years, I accepted that. Not anymore. You can fire me right now if you'd like, but know this: you'll never find her without me, and she'll undo everything SPI has worked to accomplish. I'm willing to own my mistake in this and to try to rectify the damage. You can do that as well—admit your mistake and try to fix this shit show. But if you choose not to, believe me when I say I'm not going to go down with you. When the shit really hits the fan, it'll be on you."

  "Until now, word has never gotten out about these individuals. I’ve worked with Charlie Ford and Senator Abbott to make sure of that. What mistake did I make this time, agent, besides putting you on this assignment?"

  "You overestimated yourself. And just like I did, you underestimated her."

  His eyes flashed with a level of fury she hadn't seen him exhibit before. There was something feral about his expression, but just behind it, there was the shadow of a smile.

  For a moment, she pondered that smile lurking beneath the mask of rage. That smile frightened her more than anything he'd said in the last ten minutes. Was he hiding something, something he'd use against her eventually?

  "I have an idea about how to find her," said Agent Yu. "You can either let me do my job now, or you can fire me. It's up to you. What's it going to be?"

  A knock at the door interrupted the moment, but neither of them moved.

  "Yes?" he said.

  A timid-looking assistant ducked her head in. "Mr. Grobeck, the meeting on the Cooper matter is starting in conference room one in ten minutes. Charlie Ford of FordTech International is waiting there, and Senator Orval Abbott is on his way. He may be a little late."

  "Thanks, Jen. I'll be out soon."

  The assistant nodded and shut the door.

  Agent Grobeck sat back in his chair. "Find her. And don’t come back to me until you have news."

  "Thank you." She didn't smile or show any other signs of relief. Instead, she turned to leave. But before she exited, she faced him. "One more thing. That is the first and the last time you'll refer to me as incompetent."

  He glared at her, and now it was her turn to smile.

  After she exited his office, she hurried through the cubicles of young interns, all of them staring at her. When she reached the empty hallway, she leaned against the wall and exhaled.

  ***

  Olivia Yu sat at the kitchen table and peered out the window at the rain pouring on the patio. As a child, she'd liked to walk outside in the rain during thunderstorms. None of the adults at the group home took much notice whenever she drifted away from the house. On some occasions, she walked around and stayed gone for hours, enough to give her some hope that one day she'd leave for good.

  Listening to the thunder pound against the roof, she had an urge to go for a walk. Yet now there was nothing to run away from, nothing that the outside could bring her that she didn't have already in her home—safety, freedom, comfort. So she stayed put, forced her thoughts on Eve Cooper, and reread an email she'd received from an operative with information regarding her whereabouts. A photograph was attached to the email. She'd spent at least thirty minutes studying it.

  "He's one of us," the operative had said about the dark-haired man in the photo. "I've seen what he can do."

  "What he can do?" she'd asked, curious about the operative's choice of words. The operative was silent. "You understand that the agency's top priority is to prevent dangerous and deadly weapons from falling into the hands of terrorist groups, groups that seek to destroy this country and our way of life? SPI is trying to protect the American people. If you have information that the agency should know, I implore you to share it."

  "I understand."

  Something about the operative's reticence had left Agent Yu wondering if there was more that she and the agency didn't know about these operatives. Were they capable of things other than invisibility?

  She'd seen evidence t
o suggest so years ago, but that was just...no, Sherman was a special case. She never should have let Agent Grobeck and Doctor Thomas near him. He'd be alive if she'd known earlier, if she hadn't doubted her eyes, if she'd shielded him from those maniacs. Someone that gifted in the hands of Agent Grobeck and Doctor Thomas...she should have known what would happen. She should have known better.

  It occurred to her that Agent Grobeck's mention of Sherman's name during the meeting was a threat. He'd pin the whole Forest Sherman debacle on her if she failed to complete this assignment and apprehend Cooper—that much was clear to her now. But if she completed this assignment, what about the next assignment? Would he wield Forest Sherman as a weapon against her again if she hit a rough patch in the next assignment? She knew the answer. As these thoughts raced through her mind, a cold reality set in.

  She needed to destroy Agent Grobeck. But how?

  "Who is he?" she'd asked the operative about the man in the photograph.

  The operative had offered no response other than silence.

  "Okay, that's fine. Can you at least tell me your name? I'd like to know who's helping me."

  "I'm not helping you," said the operative.

  Before Agent Yu could respond, the operative hung up.

  Staring at the photograph now, she tried to recall the faces of all the trainee operatives. The man in the photo resembled none of them. She got up, poured herself a glass of water, and studied the photograph on her phone. "Maybe he's one the agency hasn't found yet. That's the only reasonable answer." She drained the glass of water and dialed her assistant.

  "I need you to run a face for me. I'm sending the image to you now." She hit send and the photograph disappeared.

  "Sure. What information do you need?" said Owen Creekmur.

  "Any file we have on him. Any criminal records, financial statements, newspaper clippings, anything you can find on him. When can you get that information to me?"

  "Right now," he answered. She could hear him pecking at a keyboard. "The man's name is Mauricio Candela. A few weeks ago, he checked into the ER downtown. According to the report, he had a deep knife wound in his right arm."

  Agent Yu stood. "His right arm?"

  "Yes. The report states that he was accompanied by a young woman, no name, and they both were treated for similar wounds. The young woman's wound was on the right forearm as well. Treatment was terminated due to the patients' unavailability."

  "So they both took off, in other words?"

  "It seems so. The record ends there."

  Agent Yu sat once again. "A wound in his right arm," she mumbled to herself.

  "Just a moment, I'm searching for more information. It looks like he has no bank records, no property records, and there's no criminal records that match his name. Wait...there's a Mauricio Candela whose passport was scanned at an airport in Calgary five years ago."

  "Canada? He's a Canadian operative."

  "Possibly, Agent. I'm still looking...but presumably these individuals are not unique to our country, and we were prepared for the likelihood that other governments would have similar individuals in their intelligence agencies."

  "Yes," she replied. "I remember Agent Grobeck saying that we needed to be ready for that reality. But for the Canadians to send them into our country to spy on or steal information from us...they're our allies."

  "Agent Yu?"

  "It doesn't make sense. And if they didn't send him, how did he happen to meet Cooper? It's too coincidental."

  "Agent Yu, it's an American passport."

  She leaped to her feet. "He's one of ours?"

  "It appears so. And, oh, this is unusual..."

  "What is it? What's unusual?"

  "I'm seeing footage here from our cameras. The image is fuzzy, but the system is giving me a face match, so it's definitely him..."

  "Get to the point, Creekmur."

  "It's a match with the unidentified man in the CCTV footage from Salazar's office. And from another match...it also appears that he's met with Agent Grobeck at least once."

  Agent Yu closed her eyes and sighed. "That motherfucker."

  "Agent, may I ask why you didn't have me run his face the day Miss Cooper fled? You knew she was being assisted by someone, a man—you said you heard a male voice in the car that day. We already had the CCTV footage from Salazar's office. Why didn't you have me run the man's face then?"

  "Is it foolish that I wanted to wait? To see how far they would go first?"

  "May I be frank, Agent Yu?"

  "Of course."

  "Yes, it was foolish."

  Sighing, she went to her patio and stared out the window. The rain had stopped, and the wind was blowing with enough force to bend the trees. "Don't say anything about any of this to anyone. This conversation is between you and me, you understand?"

  "I understand."

  "And Creekmur, do me a favor and look up everything you can find on Zoey and Gabriel Ellis," she said, remembering the call her assistant had traced.

  "Yes, ma'am. You got it."

  ***

  Agent Yu stood at the gate, pulling her scarf tighter to protect her neck from the ice-cold wind. She opened the call box, dialed the number Creekmur had provided, and waited as the phone rang.

  "Hi, how may I help you?" said a woman with a voice like silk.

  "I'd like to speak with you about Eve Cooper."

  There was silence.

  "Miss?"

  "I don't know an Eve Cooper. I'm sorry."

  "I only want a couple of minutes to talk," said Agent Yu.

  "Look, I don't know—"

  "I think she's in trouble, Miss Ellis. I only need a couple of minutes of your time."

  Silence again. Agent Yu waited, careful not to press too hard. For this to work, she had to apply just the right amount of pressure and that required restraint. "Miss?"

  A moment later, there was a buzz, and the gate opened.

  When Agent Yu entered the greystone apartment, she looked at the narrow stairs and watched as a tall woman and a man of similar height descended. They stopped on the last stair and regarded her with suspicion.

  Agent Yu softened her expression and furrowed her brow in concern. "I'm so sorry to show up like this. I'm a former colleague of Eve's."

  They remained quiet and watchful.

  She took this as an opportunity to launch into the cover story she'd practiced, lacing her voice with urgency. "I...there’ve been whispers at SPI about something big. Something involving Eve, and I just...I didn't know who else to turn to...to warn her." She kept her voice low and looked around frantically.

  Zoey took a step forward, but Gabriel placed his hand on her shoulder. She backed up. "Warn her about what?" asked Zoey.

  "SPI is coming for her," said Agent Yu, pleased to see the fresh fear on the woman's face.

  Gabriel folded his arms across his chest. "Coming for her how? When?"

  Agent Yu looked around and shook her head. "I don't know. I'm not sure. But there's a man with her that they're—"

  "That guy...Mauricio," Zoey muttered to Gabriel, "I knew I didn't trust him—"

  Gabriel immediately shushed her.

  This exchange piqued Agent Yu's interest. "I think it's him they want, not her. But I don't know. I'm just guessing." She fidgeted and looked at her phone. "I'm sorry. I have to go."

  "Hey," said Zoey, coming forward as if to urge the agent to stay longer.

  With her hand on the doorknob, Agent Yu looked over her shoulder at the couple. "If you have any way of getting in contact with her, please warn her. Tell her if she's smart, she'll get out of the country."

  Not waiting for the couple to say anything else, she pulled her scarf tight and rushed out the door.

  ***

  "Look, I don't have time for a meeting right now. I'm still in the process of trying to clean up the shit you made," said Agent Grobeck as Agent Yu stopped him in the hallway outside his office. "Which is why I have a call with a reporter from The Chicago
Sun-Times in less than ten minutes." He opened the door, and she followed him inside.

  "Sir, I have an update on—" she began, but he held up his hand dismissively.

  "Agent Yu, now is not the time. Unless you've managed to somehow make this media blitz disappear, and I seriously doubt you'd be capable of that given you can't even keep up with one operative, nothing you have to say is important right now. We can meet later. I'm sure Jen can find some space on my calendar." He sat behind his desk, opened the laptop, and shooed her away. "Shut the door on your way out."

  Smiling, she merely stared at him.

  He groaned. "How many fucking times do I have to—"

  "Sir. I've got her," said Agent Yu.

  His eyes widened. "Where?"

  She sat in the chair across from his desk and crossed her legs, still smiling at him. "If you want to save yourself and win this, I suggest you stop being a tool for five minutes and allow me to explain my plan that, by the way, involves how you should handle this reporter."

  He shifted in the leather chair. "Fine. I'm listening."

  "First of all, we need an extraction unit ready to deploy in Philadelphia as soon as possible."

  "How soon?"

  "This week."

  ***

  "Oh, my God. I can't believe it," Eve murmured, sitting on the bed and staring at the computer screen. "Mauricio!"

  "What? What's going on?" He emerged from the bathroom.

  AJ, who was standing at the closet door and admiring her reflection in the mirror, turned to Eve.

  "Zoey came through. She did it. First The Chicago Sun-Times and now The Washington Post is running stories based on my leak," she exclaimed, staring at the screen. "I didn’t even think the Sun-Times would run the story, and now this.”

  “Doesn’t it usually take longer for newspapers to run a story?” asked AJ. “It all seems really fast.”

  “I think they like the sensationalism of it all,” said Mauricio. “This is an election year and an insane story like this looks terrible on the current administration.”

  “No, it looks like they’re tying the abuse of the faders to a larger issue. The second paragraph here talks about black sites that have been discovered around the country where regular people—not faders—have been taken,” she said, leaning close and reading the screen, “This reporter is claiming it shows a general pattern of the federal government engaging in constitutional violations against Americans. There’s some stuff here about habeas corpus and so forth. This Post reporter just connected it to a wider issue she’d been reporting on about this administration for the past several months. Interesting. The article went up a half-hour ago, and it already has sixty-five comments. Not all of them are nice comments. Some folks think I might be paranoid or schizophrenic."