Cassandra couldn’t remember the last time she slept. She’d never felt this tired. Short naps at her desk were all she allowed herself.
“Feel guilty later,” she mumbled, for a moment unsure if she’d actually spoken, or only thought it. She knew she was losing focus, but couldn’t afford to rest. Too much going on.
Frantic work to get the Edens out of Alaska and figure out a plan for massive numbers streaming out of North America occupied most of her time. She knew every minute resulted in more death, and she felt the passage of time like barbed wire around her neck.
The damned Colombians hadn’t helped, wouldn’t see reason. She’d been forced to resort to blackmailing their entire leadership, threatening their livelihoods and their political positions, even their lives. There would be time to clean it all up later. After Spooky got back. Intelligence and spy work was one thing. Managing dirty politicians – a redundant phrase if she ever heard one – was not her strength.
Cassandra started awake. Her mind had been wandering and she’d dozed off. She looked up to see her assistant.
“What? What is it now?” asked Cassandra sharply.
“Nothing important,” the woman said, her face falling. “It can wait.”
Cassandra sighed. “No, come on in. I’m sorry for snapping at you. Just a little tired, that’s all. What do you have?”
“Nothing yet from the Camp Pleasant operation due to the blizzard. All comms are down.”
Cassandra tried to smile reassuringly. “No news is good news. They’ll be fine.” Who was she trying to convince? She could hear her own voice ring hollow.
“There’s another matter. Something Reaper asked the counterintel team about.”
Cassandra noticed for the first time the woman carried folders, holding them with both hands. “What is it?”
“She asked us to check into the background of the two new team members. I tried to pass it along to her, but haven’t been able to reach her.”
“And?”
The woman hesitated. “Just some anomalies our counterintelligence people identified in the man, Conlan O’Malley.”
Cassandra was torn, and so tired. She had dozens of crucial tasks vying for her attention. She finally surrendered and held out her hand for the folder. “Let me see.”
The woman passed along one folder with obvious relief, yet Cassandra could see she clutched another.
Would it never end? And Cassandra felt a sense of foreboding at the woman’s reaction. She opened the file and forced herself to ignore the fatigue. Her brain felt half mush.
“It’s –”
“Get me some fresh coffee, will you?” Cassandra interrupted, to stop her assistant from hovering.
Flipping through pages, she didn’t see it at first. O’Malley’s story seemed all too common. It looked like a normal life gone bad, typical for escaping Edens. Grew up here. Went to school here. Got married there. Bought a house and started to raise a family. Infected with the Eden Plague by their youngest daughter, who caught it at daycare in the early days before the system took preventive measures. Months of hiding before being turned in by neighbors. Interrogation and imprisonment.
Coffee arrived, along with more hovering. She sipped at the scalding liquid. Cassandra felt there was something she wasn’t seeing. “Does his statement check out?”
“As much as it can,” her assistant answered. “All we have on him is open source material, but that is consistent.”
“He said his family died in one of the camps,” Cassandra said flipping through the pages and stopping on a family photo of Conlan O’Malley, a lovely blond woman, a towheaded boy and a girl in pigtails.
Cassandra went back to the man’s statement. I love my wife and children very much. “He speaks of them as if they are still alive,” Cassandra said.
“Not uncommon,” said her assistant. “Our psychiatrists say it’s part of the grieving process. It takes us a while to adjust to our losses.”
It does indeed, thought Cassandra.
She finally closed the file and looked up. “I give up; what is it?”
“The CI folks think it’s too perfect,” said the woman. “Usually there’s gaps. No one shows up here and has every piece of a four-year jigsaw puzzle ready to fill in.”
Cassandra rubbed her face. “Okay, what else?”
The woman hesitated, fingering the other folder. “It’s nothing concrete.”
“Let me see,” said Cassandra holding out her hand.
The woman gave her the folder. Cassandra opened it to find pages covered from top to bottom with police mug shots, names and dates of birth.”
“One of our sources was able to download this on a thumb drive while visiting Eddyville Prison. The compound was converted to holding high-value Edens a year ago. They don’t seem to be abused there. No experiments, just tight security.”
Cassandra flipped through the pages quickly. There were hundreds of pictures from all races and genders, and ages from children to young adults.
One mug shot caught her eye. A little blond girl with pigtails.
“Interesting,” said Cassandra comparing it to the family photo. “Not just the same child, it’s the same photo.”
“I thought so too, but the names don’t match.”
“What about the others? Are they in here too?”
She nodded. “Page thirty and fifty-six.”
Cassandra turned the pages rapidly and compared the mug shots to the family photo.
“His family is still alive,” Cassandra said. “He lied about them.”
“Unless it’s not his family at all. He could be a plant. They could have simply used handy images to build his history.”
“Or it might be another cover layer, in case we find this out.
“Could he be one of the CIA psychos?”
Cassandra thought. “If he is, he won’t care about family, and these will be falsified. If he’s not a psycho, he’s being blackmailed.”
“But he’s been in Colombia for almost a year, never made a misstep,” her assistant said.
“That’s why they call them moles. They burrow in and wait.”
“What do we do now?”
Cassandra shook her head in frustration. “Who’s been working this?”
“Fleede.”
“Brief him and tell him to keep trying to contact the team to pass the info. That’s all we can do.”
Her assistant took the files and left the office.
I should have spotted this, Cassandra thought. I’d have seen it if I weren’t so preoccupied with everything else. She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes for just a moment to help her focus, and promptly fell asleep.