by M A Gelsey
“Fuck you, it wasn’t that,” Jack said, an irritable bite to his voice. John smirked. The two of them looked like they could be brothers; both had dark eyes, dark hair, and aquiline noses. John was paler than Jack and had a spray of freckles across his face, but both were handsome in their way. And Jack had the sort of deep baritone voice that could make women shiver with pleasure. Stop that, Mira chided herself. Don’t be stupid.
“You’d better hope it was that,” Liesel told him. “It’ll be much worse for us if it’s because she found out who you really are. That could set us back months.”
Jack opened his mouth to retort but was drowned out by Warren calling, “Mira, get in here!” from his office.
Mira hastened to obey, not wanting to find herself on the receiving end of Warren’s notoriously prickly temper. The second office was larger than it seemed from the outside, and Mira found Warren pacing the periphery with a feverish look in his eye. With his stocky build and gray hair, Warren looked like an aging boxer. As he paced, he ran his hands through his hair several times in quick succession.
“Where are we with Harlow?” he asked.
“Things are going well enough. He’s had me out doing a lot of his random errands lately. Nothing overtly connected to the black market, but it’s possible we’ll get a lead from it. He doesn’t suspect me at all.”
“Good to know not everyone on my team is incompetent.” Warren cast a sour look towards the door as though he thought Jack would be able to feel his wrath emanating through the wall. There was a pause.
“It may not have been Jack’s fault. Maybe he just wasn’t her type,” Mira wasn’t sure why she was defending Jack.
“That’s no excuse,” Warren grumbled. “His job was to become her type. Sterling is entirely too cocky. Thinks he’s God’s gift to women. Ha!”
Mira couldn’t disagree with that, so she didn’t say anything. Warren shook his head in disgust, then crossed the room and left the office. Accustomed to his taciturn moodiness, Mira followed. When Warren sat down at the head of the table, Liesel smiled at him and he appeared to soften slightly. Liesel had always been his favorite.
“Have a seat, Mira,” Warren said gruffly. “Apparently Liesel and these two clowns have a report for us.”
Mira sat. Jack smirked, but kept his retorts to himself. John cleared his throat, then began.
“We already knew that Harlow’s multinational owns a string of shelters designed to provide care for clones that are deemed defective, either by the producer or the commissioner. These shelters are government funded, but privately owned. We also know that sometimes these clones are adopted by third parties, and we suspect this may be a cover for Harlow’s black market sales. We can infer that these purchases result in everything from illegal organ sale to sex slavery. So far, we’ve been unable to trace any of the financial transactions associated with these clone adoptions.” Warren huffed at this, and John took a deep breath before continuing. “However, Liesel has been cataloguing the details of these purchases. Many of the clones are taken oversees shortly after leaving the shelter, which makes keeping tabs on them more difficult. As with traditional human trafficking, they find themselves in a strange place, completely dependent on their captor.” John paused, and turned his computer screen to show them all what looked like a passport photograph. The man was pale with black hair and distinctive bronze eyes. He appeared to be in his late twenties or early thirties. The corner of his mouth curled upwards in the tiniest ghost of a smirk.
“On paper, all the adopted clones are placed with different people. The ones from overseas flew in specifically to retrieve their clone. But when we looked at airport security footage from all the arrivals, this man showed up multiple times using different aliases.” John paused, to let this sink in.
“So you’re saying...” Warren frowned in concentration, and even his hostility towards Jack seemed to have been forgotten.
“He appears to act as a courier,” Liesel said. “The purchase is made — we think there are darknet auctions, but we haven’t been able to access them yet — then the clone needs to be transported to his or her new legal guardian. While it seems that some of them do pick up the clones themselves, others don’t want to be associated with the transaction at all. So our friend here comes to get them, using a different name each time. It’s likely he’s not the only one fulfilling this courier function. There’s a lot of data to get through, but we expect to find others who travel under multiple names as well. And this isn’t even taking into account the ones who remain in the U.S.”
They all digested that for a moment.
“Do we know this guy’s real name?” Warren asked.
“We’re working on it,” Liesel said.
“The connection with Harlow himself is pretty thin,” Mira said. “But it’s a good start.”
“I think we should pick him up,” Jack said. “Let’s see if we can flip him.”
“And if we can’t?” Mira countered. “It’ll alert Harlow to the fact that his people are being investigated and he’ll change up the routine. ”
Jack shrugged. “No reward without risk.”
“Listen, cowboy,” Warren said in his gravelly Texan accent, “This is the FBI, not a nursery. The director may have stuck me with you, but so help me, if you do anything reckless that blows this investigation I’ll make sure you spend the rest of your career doing clerical work in the Quantico basement. Do you understand me, Sterling?” He spat the name, his distain palpable.
Jack yawned ostentatiously. Everyone knew the threat was an empty one; Jack’s father had been with the bureau for over thirty years, and was a longtime friend and golf buddy to the director. Warren, on the other hand, was not. He’d made a splash early in his career for catching Paolo and Lucrezia Leone, heads of the most notorious mafia family of the twenty-first century. But that had been many years ago now, and things had taken a definite downturn for Warren since then as a result of him refusing to play the political game. Considering Warren’s well-known animosity for Jack’s father (rumor had it there’d been an affair with Warren’s ex-wife), having Jack assigned to his task force was just the latest in a string of slights carried out by those he had offended over the years.
To add insult to injury, their operation was badly underfunded; Mira suspected that without Warren’s bullheaded persistence they wouldn’t be investigating the clone black market at all. The potential for political fallout was too great, success too unlikely. Warren liked to grumble that the suits had grudgingly granted him this task force after he put in dozens of requests, but gave him so little funding that he was almost certain to fail and ruin what was left of his career. Mira had always liked Warren, and had privately vowed to do everything in her power to prevent that from happening.
“Have you ever seen him, Mira?” John asked.
She thought for a moment, staring intently at the photograph. “No,” she said finally. “Harlow would never have someone like that around his office. He’d want to keep that connection as invisible as possible.”
Warren grunted in assent. “Given time, maybe he’ll slip up and send you on an assignment that has to do with his other business, Mira. Until then, we’ll watch and wait, and hope one of our other leads bears fruit.” Warren turned towards Jack, with a scowl. “Let’s have your report now, Casanova. What went wrong with your mark?”
Jack’s mouth twisted, then he shrugged. “Her name is Deirde Kirke. She’s in her fifties, wealthy. We came across her in the records as someone who’d adopted a thirteen year old clone from Harlow’s shelter a couple of years ago. At the time, Deirdre’s daughter was the same age, and needed a heart transplant. Her prognosis was serious, but not quite bad enough for her to top the transplant list. Shortly after the clone was adopted, the three of them spent several months in Thailand. Officially, the clone died in a car accident there. When they returned, the daughter had been miraculously cured.”
Mira felt a chill go through her. All of them wait
ed for Jack to continue.
“Deirdre likes jazz, and there are a few clubs she goes to regularly. I approached her at one of them. She seemed interested at first, but after a few weeks she tells me out of nowhere that she can’t see me anymore. I tried to ask her why, but she wouldn’t explain. And that was it.”
Warren harrumphed at that.
“It wasn’t totally useless,” Jack said defensively. “I copied the hard drive of her laptop and I cloned her phone. We might get something off one of them.”
“That remains to be seen,” Warren said mulishly. Mira thought he was letting his personal resentment towards Jack cloud his judgement. After all, it was entirely possible they’d find something helpful on her hard drive, something about the clone auctions or some link to Harlow. It was really the best they could hope for under the circumstances.
Mira left shortly after the meeting concluded, carrying a small bag of equipment that John had finally managed to procure for her. She thought about their poorly-funded operation — her first time going undercover. It was different than she expected; easier in some ways and harder than others. She was nearly at the subway when Jack caught up with her. When he lightly grabbed her arm she whirled around, just stopping herself from kneeing him between the legs. She mentally cursed herself for allowing him to catch her off guard. He regarded her with a smirk as she yanked her arm out of his grasp.
“You startle too easily,” Jack informed her. “Gotta work on your situational awareness. Daydreaming will get you killed.”
“What d’you want, Jack?” Mira was angry, but more at herself than him. She knew he was right.
Jack shrugged. “Thought you might want some company.”
“Company?” she repeated, wishing the idea didn’t cause her stomach to flutter pleasurably.
“Sure. Let’s get a drink.”
It was Mira’s turn to smirk. “So you can drown your sorrows? It’s gotta be rough, being rejected by a mark.”
“You have no idea.” Jack’s voice was low, seductive. His eyes glittered in amusement, and she found herself torn between desire and annoyance. They were coworkers, it wasn’t a good idea.
Mira took a step back. “Another time. I have to be up early tomorrow.”
“Come on,” Jack said. “You know you want to.”
“Goodnight, Jack.” Without waiting for an answer, Mira turned away and walked briskly towards the subway entrance. She didn’t look back, and he didn’t try to stop her.
When Mira arrived home to her messy, poorly lit studio apartment, she pulled some leftover Chinese takeout from the fridge and ate it while listening to the three voicemails her mother had left her from her cousin’s wedding, each drunker than the last.
“Mira my dear, I can’t believe you would want to miss this for some silly job, the ceremony was beautiful,” her mother crooned. “The next time you come home, I’m going to introduce you to the son of Sylvia Nuri, my friend from the Mahjong club. She tells me he’s very, very handsome, miraculously single, and he just started his own production company. You two would really hit it off.” Mira scoffed at that. Her mother was in a state of continuous bafflement that Mira would choose to work for the FBI instead of settling down with some nice man to start a family like her older sisters all had. As far as her mother was concerned, her career was little more than a phase. Every time Mira returned to the Beverly Hills home where she’d grown up, there were several new suitors for her to meet, courtesy of her mother’s friends. It was endlessly tedious, which was perhaps why Mira had not returned home in almost a year.
Deciding she could wait until tomorrow to call her mother back, Mira brushed her teeth, stripped off her clothes and fell into bed, exhausted. The next morning, Mira woke earlier than usual. She arrived at the office while it was still dark and deserted. She went straight to Harlow’s office, and set about installing the small bugs John had given her throughout the room: under Harlow’s desk, under his sofa, behind his filing cabinet. This part of the operation was meant to commence weeks ago, but it had taken ages for the grinding bureaucracy of the FBI to obtain the necessary warrant from a judge. When Mira finished, she went downstairs to visit the coffee shop in the lobby. She drained the last of her caramel macchiato as Harlow passed her desk with a jovial smile and a joke about how she worked too hard.
A short time later, Harlow’s first meeting arrived, and Mira led him into Harlow’s office. When she returned to her desk, she saw a text from Warren that read, “Nice work.” The bugs were in place, and the trap was set. It was only a matter of time before Harlow blundered into it.
17: BOB
Bob was almost entirely sure the man following him was with Interpol. He’d noticed the tail half an hour ago, but hadn’t bothered to shake him yet — he still had two hours before his meeting, and he figured if he was lucky his inaction would lull the man into complacency. Surveillance was dull work for the most part, and his tail looked young and was likely inexperienced.
Rome was the perfect city for losing a tail — the cobblestoned streets were an endless maze, mobbed with tourists and street vendors to run interference while he slipped away. Bob sat sipping his macchiato at an outdoor cafe near St. Peter’s Basilica and pretending to read a newspaper. He noticed a pretty, olive-skinned woman at the next table eyeing him with interest, and suppressed a smile. He toyed with the idea of chatting her up — he had an easy way with women, generally — but he knew it would pique the attention of his shadow and he didn’t want that. On the pretense of glancing around the square in a bored manner, Bob snuck a look at his tail. He could practically feel the waves of frustration pouring off the man — Bob suspected he’d be reckless. Good.
After another hour, Bob stood up lazily and made his way towards the street. He didn’t have to turn around to know his shadow had mirrored his movements. He wove through the crowds expertly, until he ducked down a narrow alleyway, partially blocked by a fruit cart. he made an immediate left then right, picking up his pace. When he emerged, it was a diagonal two blocks from where he’d left the street. His tail was nowhere to be seen.
To be safe, he walked a little further, then repeated the process down a different network of alleys. This time just before he came out on the street again, he shoved his windbreaker into the fanny pack he was wearing and pulled on a baseball cap before starting a surveillance detection run. For over an hour he meandered through the streets of Rome, changing speed and direction frequently, looking for all the world like a lost American tourist.
In truth, he was indirectly making his way towards the Spanish Steps. Once he was certain he was not being followed, he approached the building where his meeting was to take place. It looked much like all the others on the cobblestone street: demure, graceful, and frozen in antiquity. He used the key he had received for this assignment, and stepped into an elegant lobby. The rickety elevator in one corner had a sign that read, “Out of Order” in Italian. Bob took the polished mahogany stairs up to the fifth floor. Without knocking, he used a second key to enter the penthouse apartment.
The inside was sleek and modern, and seemed dissonant with the baroque exterior of the building. Bob closed the door softly behind him, and made his way to the terrace where a man was waiting for him, looking out over the city. The man didn’t turn around until Bob was a few feet away, but appeared entirely unsurprised at his arrival. He was younger than Bob had expected, no more than early-forties. He had black hair and a neat beard, both flecked with gray. There was something cold about his eyes.
“Bob Smith.” He held out his hand.
His contact eyed it with suspicion. “That’s far too generic to be your real name,” he said.
Bob waited another few seconds, then dropped his proffered hand. “My name doesn’t matter. Neither does yours.”
“No,” the man said. “I suppose it doesn’t.”
“You’ve received our instructions about payment?”
“If I hadn’t, I’d have asked what the fuck you were d
oing in my apartment, wouldn’t I?” The man had an unpleasant, nasally voice. Bob pitied the clone who’d end up with this one.
“Good. It’s important that you follow the instructions precisely. My employer expects the money before the delivery next week.”
The man gave him a long, sour look. “Are you this patronizing to all your buyers? You’re not the only market in town you know. I’ve half a mind to look elsewhere.”
Bob knew the threat was an empty one. None of the other sellers were half so reliable. “Remember,” he said. “Payment before delivery. You have the account information to make the bitcoin transfer.”
The man gave him a vague nod, and turned to lean once more on the ornate terrace railing. As he gazed out over the city, apparently lost in thought, Bob reflected on the fact that rooftops made him wary. All it takes is one sharp shove . . .
“It goes without saying that I expect the utmost discretion,” the man said, interrupting Bob’s train of thought.
“Of course.” Bob did not ask the man what he intended to do with his clone. He’d found that it was better not to know.
18: ANNABEL
“Here you go,” Ms. Durant said, handing Annabel a steaming mug of coffee. “Almond milk and honey just the way you like it.”
“Thanks,” Annabel said. They were seated on the windy balcony, but the sky was a brilliant blue and the sun kept them comfortably warm. For a moment they each sipped their coffee in companionable silence.
“Wildflowers are beginning to bloom,” Ms. Durant observed, gesturing down at the lawn where buds of all colors peeked through the tall grass.
“Yes,” Annabel said. She could feel Ms. Durant’s eyes on her, but did not acknowledge the scrutiny.
“Marriage seems to suit you,” Ms. Durant said finally.