Leona is about to leave after a long day at work when the internal
investigator from a couple weeks ago steps into her office. He exhales,
lowers her head, and pinches the bridge of her nose, wishing that she had
just made her way to the elevator when she had the chance.
“I’m not here to take up your time,” he claims. “In fact, I’m here because I
want to give you a heads-up about something that will be happening in the
future.”
“What is your authority here again?” Leona asks, not expecting a direct
answer.
“Authority Zero.”
“That is a band where I come from.”
“Where I’m from, it’s the freedom to do whatever I want,” he replies.
“Yeah. What do you want?”
“I have a team in Munich as we speak, who have been charged with acquiring a
certain object under...shall we say, special circumstances.”
“They’re stealing it.”
“Well, yes...”
“They’re stealing it violently.”
“I can neither confirm, nor deny, the nature of the operation.”
She clears her throat, not wanting to give away the fact that three members
of her team are presently in Munich, and they may or may not be involved in
all that.”
“There are no more secrets between us,” the Authority Zero Internal
Investigator lies. “We know your husband is there. We tapped him for this
assignment, but he declined...also violently. We had to come up with an
alternative.”
That’s why Ramses isn’t answering his phone. Mateo doesn’t know where he is,
but he expressed his theories. “If they get hurt...”
“I take care of my team. I can’t guarantee their safety. We would have to
put them in a padded room for that, and even then, nothing is perfect. The
point is, Mister Abdulrashid—”
“Abdulrashid.”
“Abdulrashid.”
“Abdulrashid.”
“Abdulrashid.”
“Why can no one in the world pronounce that man’s name?”
“It’s because people in this country are...less enthusiastic about Arabs—”
She interrupts again, “he’s not an Arab, he’s from Egypt.”
“The point is that people around here do not generally associate with people
from that part of the world. Pronouncing their words is just not something
we find necessary to learn.”
“Ramses hasn’t experienced any racism in this country,” Leona notes.
“There’s a political reason for that. It’s a lot to explain, but people most
likely assume he was relocated from the slums as a child. There was a huge
push for that a few decades ago. Tens of thousands of children—mostly
infants—were rescued from their parents, brought to civilized regions, and
assimilated into the culture. Your friend is the right age to have been part
of that. It’s interesting he seems to have kept his name, though. That’s not
common. Or did he adopt it later out of reallocated loyalty?”
“I knew there were religious issues, but I guess I didn’t realize how
widespread the racism was.”
“It’s not racism,” he defends. “It had nothing to do with race. Now, I’m not
saying what they did was right, per se, but those kids were living in utter
squalor. Their lives are better now. They’re better here. Our culture—across
all religions—teaches scientifically proven idealistic life values, which
they were lacking in their home country. Again, I didn’t participate in
that, but you can’t argue with the results.”
Leona blinks. Racism. What he just described is racism, and he can’t see it.
It’s xenophobia too. Because of Marie and Heath, the team was mostly
prepared to just live here forever, but every day comes with at least one
more reason to get the hell out. “Oh, I certainly can. You give me enough
information, I’ll argue until the cows come home.”
“What cows?”
“It’s obviously just an expression. Is that all?”
“Ah, right,” he says. “The object that Mister—uh...what your friend will be
securing for us will need to be reverse engineered when it gets here. That’s
what you’ll be doing, probably at the start of next week.”
“What is it?”
“You don’t need to know that just yet.”
“Does it pertain to my work, or will it just be a distraction?”
“We hope it will help, actually,” he decides.
He has her by the balls, as Mateo once said. He knows about the team, and he
knows about their connection to timey-wimey stuff. Or at least, he knows
that they have a connection to something weird. The forger is aware of all
this too, and God knows who else. Their only option now is to play ball.
It’s the only way to protect Marie. She just has to hope they don’t know
about that aspect of their lives. “What’s your name, if not Shady Corporate
Authority Zero Interrogator?”
“Honeycutt. Senator Melville Honeycutt.”
Crap, that can’t be good. “It’s nice to formally meet you.” Now she really
is going to have to fake being polite to him.
“I assume Leona Matic isn’t your real name?”
She adds more belongings to her bag. “No, it is. We didn’t think there would
be anyone we would need to hide from.”
“Why did you need forged papers, then?”
“We required identities, not names.”
“I see.”
“What’s her name, the forger?” she presses, even though she really just
wants to leave. “The one who is endangering my friends overseas?”
“Winona. Winona Honeycutt. I call her Winnie.”
Double crap. What is the wife or daughter of a senator doing as a forger in
the seedy part of Kansas City? And what is a senator doing interrogating a
suspect in what’s meant to be a semi-academic, semi-private laboratory? And
how did they find out anything about them in the first place? “If you’re
related, then you must know that I’m now pretending to work for SD6, and
also that I’m apparently in charge of investigating her forging den?”
He dismisses this with a wave of his hand. “We set it up so that you would
become the de facto lead investigator. They won’t find anything at the
alleged crime scene, and you won’t implicate my daughter at any rate, will
you?”
“No, sir. She’s safe. I just don’t know what to tell the agent and
detective. I reached out once to tell them that my lead evaporated, and they
have been calling me ever since.”
“I’m sure you’ll think of somethin’. Try to keep them out of it. They’re not
part of the inner circle; you are.”
“Very well, sir.” She’s becoming more respectful by the minute. But of
course, she still doesn’t trust them, so when she finally makes it home that
night, after updating the group chat, she asks Angela to begin running some
countermeasures.
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