Cold realization crystallized in her guts. “I’d flown home to Boston from Seattle,” she began, then recounted her story for the second or third time this morning.
Eventually Thorold shook her head. “We didn’t do it.” Her tone was blunt. “Whoever they were, they used totally the wrong protocol. Amateurs! If we’d wanted you—assuming we even knew who you were—we’d have caught you. You know what I think? It was a set-piece scenario organized to motivate you to say ‘yes’ when they recruited you. You were probably expected to break away when they parked somewhere, or to call up those friendly DHS people who’d bugged your phone.” She snorted. “Idiots.”
“I suspected something like that,” Rita said defensively. “But I didn’t have any good alternatives.”
“You could have phoned us.”
“What! How?”
“Let’s see.” Miss Thorold put her papers away. Not for the first time Rita noticed that the woman’s hands were shaking. “You’re twenty-six. Born in 1994. You’re a world-walker. They finally figured out how to activate the ability in by-blows, did they?” Rita nodded reluctantly. There didn’t seem to be any point in denying it. “That means you’re a relative. We can confirm it if you like, but at a guess … Indian father, right?”
Rita looked away. “I never met my birth parents,” she said. “They gave me up for adoption right after I was born. Who are you and where are you taking me, ma’am? And what have my birth parents got to do with anything?”
“Those are three very good questions. You might also want to add, why did your Colonel send you in particular?”
Thorold sounded approving. As if she wanted Rita to ask questions. Her skin crawled. Asking questions in a classified security perimeter was a good way to get yourself a one-way trip to a jail cell. Even thinking the wrong questions could be dangerous. “I changed my mind. I don’t want to know—”
“Tough, kid. I’m going to give you more answers than you want. Firstly”—Thorold held up a finger—“the Clan of world-walkers that the US government is so pants-wettingly scared of doesn’t exist anymore. We are citizens of the New American Commonwealth—naturalized immigrants—and we mostly work for the government. In my case, I work for an agency called the Department of Para-historical Research. As you probably guessed, my specialty is para-time security. You could say I’m your Colonel Smith’s opposite number. Right now we’re en route to the DPR headquarters in New London—that’s the Commonwealth capital, although you know it better as Manhattan.
“When we get there, you’re going to meet my boss. She’s a Party Commissioner, a member of the Central Committee—there is no exact equivalent in the US government, but she is responsible for an entire government ministry. And she’s going to give you a message to take home to your bosses.”
“A message?” Rita felt a stab of hope.
“Yes. Don’t you think it’s better if our political leaders start talking to each other?” Thorold’s cheek twitched. “Talking like responsible adults, instead of shooting down drones and playing stupid cold-war spy games? They should be exchanging embassies, sending diplomats, that sort of thing. This playing footsie with spies, somebody could get hurt.”
“You want me to be a messenger?”
“Yes.” Thorold raised her finger again. “But let me warn you what I’m talking about. Your boss couldn’t have picked a worse time to play head games with us. The Commonwealth is on a hair trigger. That’s because in this world, we’re one of two superpowers who are pointing lots of nuclear weapons at each other. Our enemy is a totalitarian regime that covers the whole of Europe, Asia, the Middle East, most of Africa … and they’d love to take advantage of any internal crisis to damage the Commonwealth. There are lots of proxy wars on the fringe, and everyone’s afraid the Big One will start by accident if someone sneezes at the wrong time—just like the cold war you might have learned about in history lessons.
“I’m telling you this because it’s possible the Commissioner will be too distracted to mention it, and if she does mention it you’ll probably be too distracted to remember. But it’s vitally important that your bosses get the message. The last high-altitude drone they sent over nearly triggered a nuclear war. If that happens again, the consequences will be very bad for everyone.”
Rita’s stomach clenched. “You’re soft-soaping me. Why? What are you softening me up for?”
Thorold muttered under her breath: “Lightning Child … there’s no easy way to say this. Rita. Ms. Douglas. I am not certain of this—I won’t be until the results come back from running the DNA sample the police took from you, and that’s going to take a while—but you’re the right age, ethnicity, and background, and everything else about you fits.” Outside the glass bubble of the helicopter, the world rolled by. Rita’s sense of unreality intensified as Miss Thorold continued. “The woman you are about to meet is almost certainly your mother. She’s known of your existence for about an hour. You are her only child. And I believe you were recruited, trained, and sent here to fuck with her head.”
AIRBORNE, EN ROUTE TO NEW LONDON, TIME LINE THREE, AUGUST 2020
Miss Thorold clearly had some idea of the impact her words would have on Rita, for she fell silent for the next ten minutes. This suited Rita completely. She was shaking; her hands felt cold. She raised them to cover her mouth. “Mother” meant Emily, not some stranger in a foreign government ministry. Not the woman who had turned her back on her as a baby. The realization that she was going to have to meet her made Rita feel increasingly resentful. Angry, even.
Many little girls went through a phase of thinking they were different, of playing make-believe that they’d been left with foster parents but that when their real parents found them they’d discover that they were actually a princess. Rita had known better from an early age. Just by looking in the mirror she could see that she didn’t resemble her parents. They hadn’t bothered pretending otherwise. They wanted her regardless, and had showered her with love. Rita hadn’t ever searched for Cinderella shoes to wear because she’d grown up knowing that she was a pale brown Snow White. Her make-believe queen had betrayed her, abandoning her for good. And now she found herself sitting in the middle seat of a military helicopter, thundering through the skies to answer the evil queen’s summons.
When she could trust herself to speak, Rita lowered her hands. “Tell me about my—about who I’m going to, to meet.”