by G T Almasi
Patrick shifts in his seat and quietly gnaws one of his fingernails. I’ve tried to make him stop doing that, but nervous habits are hard to break, particularly for someone who can’t forget he’s a clone from ARI.
Harbaugh says, “We now know these activities were the motive behind the Breach. Info has confirmed Fredericks is the Office of Security’s unknown suspect, Scorpio.”
Under the table, Brando taps his foot into mine. I glance at him. He’s stopped fidgeting and now glows with smugness.
“What?” I comm.
“Jakob is Scorpio,” he comms. “I knew it!”
I grin and squeeze his hand under the table. Before Operation ANGEL, Brando presented a coarsely woven pattern of Fredericks’s activities as his Scorpio hypothesis. Cyrus shot it down; it just wasn’t credible enough to sell upstream without more evidence. Patrick doggedly pursued the idea by surfing CORE for more unexplainable coincidences. He kept coming back to ExOps’s infamous Great Breach.
As fire is to wooden ships, so are moles to spy agencies. In the early 1970s, ExOps was infected by three moles who burned the Russian Section to the ground and nearly sank the whole agency. CIA’s Office of Security locked ExOps into quarantine and climbed up everyone’s ass with torches and pitchforks like medieval villagers hunting ogres.
The investigators labeled the three moles Virgo, Libra, and Scorpio. Their probe was selflessly aided by one of ExOps’s most senior officers, Jakob Fredericks. The Office of Security quickly nabbed Virgo and Libra—or at least we think they did. Maybe there was only one mole—Scorpio—who liquidated the Russian Section to frame two other ExOps officers and deflect attention from his own misdeeds.
Patrick connected Fredericks’s supernaturally efficient management of the security breach, his devotion to the Asexual Reproduction Initiative, and Scorpio’s pattern of filching classified intel about cloning. Patrick became convinced the notoriously disgruntled Fredericks and the deeply placed Scorpio were the same person.
Turns out Brando was right, and he went on the record about it before anyone else. It’s a huge win for him. Mega-brainy premonitions like this may someday take my partner to the top of the clandestine community.
As long as he survives working with me.
Harbaugh’s next statement snaps me back to the present. “Perhaps Fredericks’s most egregious offense was the betrayal of his field agent Big Bertha. This asset was remitted to the German secret police in exchange for cloning data from Carbon.”
My dad clenches his jaw and stares at the coffee mug in front of him. Harbaugh glances at my father. Director Kennedy follows Harbaugh’s eyes.
Bobby asks, “Philip, you okay?”
Dad says, “Yes, sir.” Then, to Harbaugh, “Get on with it, Bill.”
The next section of the acting director’s report is stuff I already know: Fredericks stole agency funds, produced human clones, tampered with official records, and tried to kill American agents. Bobby glances at me when he hears the three black-haired girls I’ve iced during the past year were clones of Talon.
Then we get to something I don’t know. Talon isn’t an Original. She’s a clone of a woman named Dr. Eleanor Shaw. All four of these clones—plus Falcon, of course—were produced by Fredericks and raised at the Aberdeen Lake House.
Man, is there anyone Fredericks didn’t clone?
My father exhales sharply and rubs his forehead. “Jakob,” he whispers, “what have you done?”
“Philip?” Harbaugh asks. “Who’s Dr. Shaw?”
My father continues to press his fingers to his head. “Bill, can we just review her file on CORE?”
“She…” Harbaugh hesitates. “She doesn’t have one, Philip.”
Dad stops rubbing his temples. “How about FED?”
The former acting director shakes his head. “Nope.”
My father drops his head into his hands. “Jesus.”
Dr. Herodotus, who has been passively observing, tunes in to the conversation and cries, “Wait, what?”
Harbaugh directs his attention to Dr. H. “Your report about the infant clones mentioned Dr. Shaw. I searched both our Catalog of Records and the Federal Employee Database but found nothing. By the time I returned to your report, you’d removed the passage about her.”
“Bill,” Dr. H sputters, “I haven’t touched that report since I filed it.”
The room falls silent.
Herodotus locks eyes with my father. “Fredericks,” they both say.
Kennedy leans on his elbows. “You think Director Fredericks erased Dr. Shaw from your report?”
Dr. H nods. “Yes, sir.”
I comm to Patrick, “How could Fredericks do that so fast?”
My partner comms back, “He could have hidden a daemon program that scans CORE for…well, anything he wants. The program would alert him when something matches.”
“Philip,” Bobby says, “you knew Dr. Shaw?”
“Yes, sir.”
“But you never talked to anyone about her?”
“I try to not even think about Ellie. Sir.”
RFK crosses his arms across his chest. “Let’s hear it, Philip.”
My father clears his throat. “Ellie was a chemist. She and I worked with Jakob on the Levels project. I engineered the Mods, Jakob wrote the software, and she formulated the Enhances.”
Dad recounts how the three of them had to work very closely. Shaw’s chemical compounds went through many iterations, each stronger than the last. Dad would then reinforce his hardware to take the extra strain while Fredericks updated his software to recalibrate the timing and keep the whole whirligig from flying apart.
Kennedy continues to cross-examine my father. “What happened to Dr. Shaw?”
My father starts to speak, but his voice fails him. He tries clearing his throat again, but his mouth is so dry he can’t. Finally he croaks, “Jakob directed Ellie to develop a hallucinogen. CIA’s MK-ULTRA project made him think a substance like that could help a field agent manage stress. Ellie knew about psychedelics, of course, and insisted that the side effects were too unpredictable. They argued. Finally Jakob pulled rank.”
“Fredericks pressured her?”
“He pressured all of us. We had to meet a deadline to secure another round of congressional funding.” Dad briefly presses his fist to his mouth. “It sounded good to me. If this concoction could prevent the sort of battle fatigue I experienced in Korea, then I was all for it.” My father looks down at his lap. “We talked Ellie into it. The synthesis took a couple of hours. Ten minutes later she was dead.”
I blurt, “She tested this shit on herself?”
“Yes,” Dad says. “The Levels project was so secret, CIA ordered Jakob to minimize the number of participants. We used ourselves as test subjects for everything.”
The roomful of us spend a minute mulling over this dreadful story.
“Well,” Director Kennedy finally says, “now I really wanna nail this greaseball.” He leans back and stares at the ceiling. Then he sits forward. “My brother says he can get us anything we need.”
Brando and I share a look. He comms, just to me, “Well, how about that?”
“Bobby and Ted have commphones?”
“Sure seems like it.”
Kennedy hashes out our next mission with Harbaugh’s people. Dr. H angrily sifts through a sheaf of printed files from his briefcase, almost as though he hopes Eleanor Shaw’s ghost is hiding in his paperwork. My father stares at the wall across the room and grinds his teeth together. After a few moments he blinks and shifts his gaze to me.
I comm to him, “It wasn’t your fault, Daddy.”
My father gently shakes his head and looks away.
“Cripes.” I sigh to myself. He’d better not start drinking
again.
—CORE: ADMIN—
6 SEP 1981
CATALOG OF RECORDS: EXOPS TO BE REPLACED
From: ExOps Technical Department
To: All users
NOTICE: The Catalog of Records: ExOps has been severely compromised and will be offline until further notice. Please ask your technology administrator for information about the new Database of Active Records: ExOps.
CORE files will be scanned for malware, daemons, viruses, and trojans. They will then be reviewed for misinformation, unauthorized alterations, and missing data before being ported to DARE.
—DARE: SCORPIO—
6 SEP 1981
EXPANDED SCOPE
From: Robert F. Kennedy, Director ExOps
To: Philip Nico (L20-LIB-ret.), Director Technical Department, Acting Front Desk, German Section, ExOps
TOP SECRET—FOR YOUR EYES ONLY
Philip,
Extreme Operations has been authorized to intercept SSC Director Jakob Fredericks and return him to the United States to stand trial for treason. I know your section is already heavily engaged in the European crisis, but I will authorize any requisitions you deem necessary to pursue this mission.
Our latest intelligence indicates Fredericks has fled to Greater Germany, presumably to seek asylum with his many friends in the Reich.
How you proceed is up to you, but I would consider beginning at the American embassy in Dublin. Our ambassador to Ireland, my brother Jack, has spent his extended tenure nurturing hundreds of contacts all over the British and Baltic Provinces who will be as well informed as anyone regarding Fredericks’s movements.
Good luck.
—RFK
09
THAT NIGHT, SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 11:51 P.M. EDT
2906 KEY BOULEVARD, ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA, USA
I stare at the ceiling of my bedroom. My parents’ room is next to mine, and I can hear my mother snoring. Not big elephant snores, more like those little “zzz’s” in cartoons. Dad doesn’t snore for the same reason I don’t: We’ve been trained not to. Secret agents need to be quiet all the time, even when we’re asleep.
Or not asleep, in my case. My anesthetic from surgery has finally worn off and now I really feel my burns and other injuries. None of them hurt too badly as long as I don’t move around, but I’m such a restless sleeper I keep waking myself up to searing blasts of pain. Then I lie perfectly still until the soreness goes away.
A car quietly glides along Key Boulevard, outside my bedroom window. I slide my hand under my pillow. The car passes on down the street. I place my arm by my side again and try to think about something besides how uncomfortable I am.
Being injured reminds me of my father—he came back from some missions in pretty rough shape. I’d say the roles are reversed now that Dad’s home, except it’s more like the roles are already taken. Mom and I are so used to running the house by ourselves we forget to include him in our planning. Just last week one of us needed to be here to let a repair guy in. My father quietly listened as Cleo and I bent our schedules all around to see which of the two of us could be home.
When he finally said, “I can be here,” my mom and I jumped like cats.
Mom recovered first. “Oh! Um, yes, of course.” She reached across the table to pat his hand. “Thanks, honey.”
Dad muttered, “Maybe I should wear a bell around my neck.”
The first few nights were especially weird, because Cleo kept serving my father food he didn’t like. She had to learn his preferences all over again. He’d eat it anyway, but those were the kind of meals where the silverware sounds like a marching band being shot out of a cannon.
The worst has been Dad’s disorientation. Some nights he looks for the bathroom in the wrong place, like we’re still in our old house in Crystal City. He gets frustrated when Cleo doesn’t answer her commphone, until he remembers she doesn’t have one.
Not surprisingly, his sense of time is totally screwed up. He has to keep asking Cleo how long they’ve been married. One morning he was convinced the mortgage hadn’t been paid in nine years. Another time he yelled at me when I grabbed a Schlitz out of the fridge.
“What on earth do you think you’re doing, young lady?”
“Dad,” I said. “I’m twenty!”
He pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose. “Right, sorry.” I set my beer on the table and wrapped my arms around his shoulders.
That’s the hardest part for me, how vulnerable he is. I mean, this man saved his platoon from a battalion of North Koreans, ended the civil war in Vietnam with a single bullet, and survived the disastrous 1968 mission in Berlin. This is why the dictionary’s entry for “tough” has his picture in it.
Daddy does better at the office, even though his role at ExOps is really different now. He loses himself playing mad scientist in his state-of-the-art shop, where—since returning to duty—he has been an inventing fiend. I hadn’t received the Big Voice Mod before because my father just designed it a month ago. He upgraded ExOps’s Level software to manage two sidearms at once, which is why one of my new Mods is a second WeaponSynch pad in my right palm.
He’s also written a firmware upgrade for our commphones so we Levels can share targeting information with one another. He calls it WhackNet. Last week Dad borrowed my pistol, Li’l Bertha, to test it out. He linked Li’l Bertha to his new sidearm, an LB506 he’s nicknamed Roxy. Then he had me run around the office pretending to shoot my understandably apprehensive co-workers until Roxy synchronized my weapon’s data onto her screen.
My father’s drive for the latest-greatest took him beyond CIA’s normal suppliers when he purchased some new pistols from Mantis. Our established firearms vendor, Lion Ballistics, builds big, heavy, feature-packed rods, while the new kid in town—Mantis—produces weapons that are slim, light, and supremely elegant.
Elegant—yet undeniably odd. The Mantis S61 fires edged disks, not slugs. It doesn’t even “fire” in the traditional sense. Instead of gunpowder, the S61 uses a battery of electrically charged magnets. It’s essentially a handheld railgun. The weapon emits a sharp, metallic “tang” when the disk whips out of the barrel at some unholy number of feet per second.
A few days ago my dad was setting me up with my very own Mantis. I asked him why everybody wasn’t grabbing these cool new guns.
“Cost,” he said without looking up from his workbench.
I twirled my S61 like a cowboy. “How much does this one go for?”
Dad reached out and firmly pressed the pistol’s grip into my right palm. “Five hundred.”
“That’s not so much.”
“Five hundred thousand.”
Gulp.
“Dollars?”
He clicked my new pistol in and out of my right-hand WeaponSynch pad. “Beaver pelts.”
“What? Oh.” I laughed. “You mean we killed half a million beavers to get me this pistol?”
“Yep.” He finished his adjustments, took the Mantis out of my hand, and placed it on his bench. He said, “I’ll need this sidearm for another day so I can hook her into the WhackNet. Then she’s all yours.” He attached a data cable to the I/O port in the grip and asked, “What are you gonna name her?”
“Punxsutawney Phil.”
“Who?”
“That beaver. Y’know, if he sees his shadow then winter will last another six months.”
My father stopped what he was doing to stare at me. Then he said, “Alix, it’s six weeks, not six months—”
Oh.
“—and, Punxsutawney Phil is a groundhog!”
“I knew that.”
Fuckin’ biology. I named her Punx anyway.
10
NEXT DAY, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 7:05 A.M. EDT
2906 K
EY BOULEVARD, ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA, USA
I look under my bed. Not there.
“Fuck!”
Where the hell are my pants? They were just here!
“Babe, was that you?” It’s my father.
“Yeah.”
“What’s the matter?”
“I can’t find my—”
Cleo calls from downstairs, “Alix, hang on, I’ve got them here.”
“Mom, I’m packing for a mission!”
She runs up the stairs and into my bedroom. My black cargo pants are draped over her arm.
Christ, she ironed them.
“Young lady, if you think I’m letting you out of this house in dirty clothes—”
“Okay, okay. Thank you for cleaning them.” I point to my duffel bag on the floor. “In there, please.”
Mom puts my pants in the duffel with my underwear, socks, some shirts, a sweater, my F-S fighting knife, two pistols, and thirty vials of refills for my Enhances. This is on top of a case of batteries for my guns and gadgets, a couple dozen grenades, a brick of plastic explosive, twenty-five detonators, and the equivalent of twelve hundred rounds of ammunition.
Dad’s footsteps come upstairs. He walks in and asks, “Got everything?”
“Now I do, yeah.” I zip the bag shut and carefully hoist the strap onto a less-injured part of my shoulder. “Nothing like freshly pressed combat gear.” I wink at my father, who grins back at me.
Cleo harrumphs at the both of us.
I gently poke her and snicker into the hall. My bag grazes each step as I lead my parents down to the front hallway. Normally I’d just chuck the heavy duffel down the stairs, but the fucker’s contents are 80 percent kablammies, so it seems appropriate to exhibit some discretion.
I open the front door and check the street. No cab yet.