INTERVIEW ROOM 2 was a fluorescent box, typical with its two-way mirror and heavy door. Reinforced-concrete walls, ubiquitous gray table, three aluminum chairs. She took her place across from Vale and Johnson, who leaned a fashionable briefcase against the leg of his chair but didn’t open it. “Where is this going?” she asked.
Johnson looked confused. Vale said, “How so?”
“Paulson’s releasing this next week,” she told them. “Now that he’s said the words aloud, and the director has backed him up, Congress isn’t going to let us walk it back. Are you going to include our talk in an amended version? Will I get my own appendix?”
“Let’s just see what we get first,” said Johnson.
“Maybe you’ll turn the whole thing on its head,” Vale said as she placed her phone on the table. “Mind if we record this?”
“Thanks for asking,” Rachel said.
Vale pressed the red button and spoke. “It’s March 13, 2018, and we’re at the Seattle field office with Special Agent Rachel Proulx. The time is…” Though the time was right there on her phone, Vale made a show of looking at the slender gold watch on her wrist. “Ten oh eight in the morning.”
Their initial questions were scene-setting and verification. Had she worked on the Massive Brigade case during the summer of 2017? She had. How long before the July 4 action had she begun her investigation? Two months. What had triggered the investigation?
“The pressure came from outside,” Rachel said, thinking back. “You remember. People were claiming, without evidence, that the Massive Brigade was a terrorist organization.”
“People?”
“People like Sam Schumer. The talk shows. We’d never listed Massive as a threat—something to keep an eye on, yes, but not a threat. But then constituents began calling their representatives, who in turn asked the director why we weren’t closing down the group. People didn’t feel safe. So I was asked to look into it.”
“You were the expert,” said Johnson.
“I was knowledgeable.”
Vale said, “Your study on radical movements is required reading.”
“That old thing?” she asked. “I’m surprised it’s still around.”
Johnson and Vale smiled, and she realized that both of them were fans. Had they known how slapdash those months on the West Coast had been, or how she’d been suckered by a Russian-speaking enigma named James Sullivan, then maybe they’d be less impressed. But wasn’t that the way with all great works? The composition is never as glorious as the result.
She straightened herself, concealing her pride. “I may have been qualified, but now, looking back, I can see that I went into the Massive Brigade investigation prejudiced.”
This seemed to interest them both. “How so?” asked Johnson.
“I’d been sucked into the hysteria like everyone else. Two thousand seventeen was a year of absolutes. The new president, the marches that were just starting—Women’s, Science, Immigration, the Tax March. Jerome Brown—that was big. You were either a sympathizer or a fear merchant. There was no in-between. There was no gray in 2017.”
Johnson snorted. “But July 4—that validated labeling the Brigade terrorist.”
“Did it?” she asked.
“Three politicians dead, one injured.”
“I suppose so,” she said, as if she’d never really thought about it before, though of course she had. She’d thought of little else over the last eight months. “But before July 4 they were labeled based on fear rather than direct evidence. You remember. A kind of psychosis took hold. Didn’t you feel that?”
“That’s the question,” Johnson countered. “Did we feel it, or was there evidence of this psychosis?”
It was a good point, and Rachel gave it to him. But she would not be swayed on the issue, for it had troubled her a very long time.
“Can we move on?” Vale asked. Not impatient, just practical.
“How much do you want to know?”
“Well, we don’t really know how much of your work was left out of the final report.”
“So, you want to know everything.”
“We’ve got unrest in the streets,” Johnson said. “We’re worried about some nutcase taking his marching orders from whatever’s left of the Massive Brigade. We’re worried that if we don’t release this report the right way we’re going to have blood on the sidewalks. So, yeah, Rachel. Everything.”
“Everything” lasted until the end of business. Seven hours of questions that prodded, sometimes painfully, at Rachel’s formidable memory. They weren’t memories she would have chosen to spend the afternoon with, but she could tell they were of interest to Johnson and Vale, and perhaps even helpful.
After asking permission, Vale powered up a clumsy-looking e-cigarette that, in place of an ember, had a pale green light on the end that glowed stronger when she inhaled. Her exhales smelled faintly of sandalwood. She asked about June 18, the day Martin Bishop went underground, which led to a discussion of Bill and Gina Ferris’s party and, inevitably, David and Ingrid Parker. Everyone knew about David Parker—published excerpts from his forthcoming novel rehashed his experiences—but his estranged wife, Ingrid, was still missing.
“You have no idea where Ingrid is?” Sarah Vale asked, as if this question were very important.
“It’s a big country,” Rachel replied. “She could be anywhere.”
“Well, it would be really helpful if we could find her.”
“Why?”
Vale rocked her head from side to side. “From what we’ve gathered, she was closest to Bishop at the end. We expected her to show up when the amnesty was announced, but she never raised her head.”
Rachel, too, had wondered about Ingrid’s disappearance. “Then why isn’t her picture on the wanted lists? I haven’t seen it.”
Johnson leaned forward. “Honestly? We don’t want some local cops going Rambo on her—she’s got a baby. We just want to bring her in and have a conversation.”
By the time she’d worked her way through the events of July 4, their Thai lunches had arrived, and as they cracked open polystyrene boxes, releasing fragrant steam into the little room, Rachel took the opportunity to turn the conversation around. She asked if her story thus far jibed with the report Jakes had filed, and their replies were noncommittal. She asked if the congressional investigation into Watertown was causing anxiety in the halls of the Hoover Building—was Jakes worried about keeping his job? Paulson? Neither wanted to answer that, but Vale said, “Sometimes the idea of being here in Seattle, on the edge of the continent, feels like a smart career move.”
That answer said a lot without admitting a thing, just like Johnson’s reply when she asked if Owen Jakes knew they were meeting with her: “Let’s try not to bother him with details.”
She liked them both.