“I worked with her on some assignments early on in our careers.”
“I know,” responded DiCarlo.
Robie looked surprised by this, but DiCarlo’s expression showed he shouldn’t have been.
“We keep score, Mr. Robie. People do, you know. In everything. Sports, business, relationships.”
“And killing people,” said Robie.
“Terminating problems,” corrected DiCarlo.
“My mistake,” he said dryly.
“We admired your record,” said DiCarlo. “Jessica in particular was an admirer of yours. She often said you were the best of all of them. You graded higher than her head-to-head. You were the only one to do so.”
“Since she almost killed me I think she might have to reevaluate her opinion.”
“The key word being ‘almost.’ The fact is she didn’t kill you. You escaped from her attempt.”
“Part luck, part instinct. But that doesn’t help us get to her.”
“It may, in a way.”
DiCarlo sat forward and steepled her hands in front of her. “I have evaluated both of you as objectively as I can. I think you are equally gifted, in both similar and dissimilar ways. You think alike. You adapt well. You have ice in your veins. You pride yourselves on being one step ahead, and if the other side catches up, you can still win by changing tactics on the fly.”
“Again, how does that help me get to her?”
“It doesn’t. Not directly. I’m telling you this so that you will better know how to confront and beat her when the time comes.”
“If the time comes. I have to find her first.”
“Which leads us to the question of why she’s doing what she’s doing. That may well take us to the next target before she gets there. I see that as your best chance to catch up, so to speak. In fact, it’s probably the only way. Otherwise, you’ll always be one step behind.”
“So why do you think she’s doing it?” asked Robie.
“When I was first told that Jessica was suspected in her handler’s murder, I refused to believe it.”
“Do you still not believe it?”
DiCarlo laid her hands flat on the table. “It’s ultimately unimportant what I believe, Mr. Robie. I have been tasked to aid you in finding Jessica Reel.”
“And killing her?” Robie said. He wanted to see her reaction, because only Blue Man had expressly said they wanted her for interrogation. Everyone else, including Jim Gelder and Evan Tucker, had been either vague or silent on that point.
“You’ve been assigned to this mission long enough to know what results are desired.”
“You would think. But nothing about this task has been made clear.”
DiCarlo sat back in her chair and stared off. She finally regrouped and said, “Be that as it may, it doesn’t really impact you and me and why we’re here.”
Robie nodded. “We can agree on that, for the time being. So that gets us back to the question: why is she doing this?”
“I think it might be beneficial for you to hear some of her history, Robie. Using the skills that I know you possess, one or more of these facts might aid you down the road.”
Robie mulled over this for a few moments. “Okay. Let’s take a trip down Jessica Reel’s life.”
She began, “Reel came to the agency under what I would say are unique circumstances, that is, not through traditional routes.”
“So she wasn’t former military? Most of the people who do what we do are.”
“No. Nor was she in the intelligence field.”
“She never talked about herself to me.”
“I’m sure she didn’t. Jessica Reel was born in Alabama. Her father was a white supremacist who led an antigovernment group for years. He was also a drugs and explosives trafficker. He didn’t like the color black, but he apparently loved the color green. He was arrested in a shootout with the DEA and ATF and is now serving a life sentence in a federal penitentiary.”
“And her mother?”
“Killed by her father when Jessica was seven. After he was arrested, her remains were found in the basement of their home. They’d been down there for quite some time.”
“So you’re sure he killed his wife?”
“Jessica witnessed the execution, for that’s what it was. Mrs. Reel did not share her husband’s views and was thus a liability to him. By the way, all of the facts I’m telling you we have independently verified. We didn’t simply take the word of a little girl for it. And the authorities had plenty of other evidence tying the husband to the crime. It was just a matter of finding the body. Not that it mattered, really, since he was in prison for life on the other charges, but it was a semblance of justice for Jessica and her poor mother.”
“Okay. And what happened to little Jessica after that?”
“Shuttled to relatives in other states who either didn’t want her or couldn’t afford another mouth to feed. She ended up in the foster care system in Georgia. Some really bad people got hold of her. Forced her to do things she didn’t want to do. She escaped from them and started living on the streets.”
“She doesn’t sound like the sort of person the agency would ever consider recruiting. How was the connection made?”
“I’m getting to that, Mr. Robie,” DiCarlo said, frowning.
“Sorry, ma’am, go ahead.”
Robie sat back, his full attention on the woman.
“When she was sixteen, Reel did something that would later lead her to be put in the Witness Protection Program.”
“What?” said Robie in surprise.
“She became an inside informant against a neo-Nazi group that was planning a mass attack against the government.”
“How did a sixteen-year-old girl manage that?”
“One of the foster parents she was taken in by had a brother who was in the Nazi group. He and some of his friends would use their house as a base when they were in town recruiting in Georgia. Reel went to the FBI and offered to wear a wire and take other steps to help build a case against them.”
“And the Bureau let her?”
“I know it sounds extraordinary. But I read the special agent in charge’s report on the initial meeting with Reel. He couldn’t believe she was sixteen. Not just in looks. His notes said he thought he was interviewing a hardened combat veteran. The girl was unshakable. She had an explanation for everything. Whatever the Bureau threw at her she flicked it off. She really wanted to nail those guys.”
“Because of her old man? And her mother?”
“I thought that too. But you’re never sure where you stand with Reel. She does things for purposes that seem clear only to her.”
“So she helped nail the neo-Nazis?”
“Not only that, she killed one of them. This was after she had taken his weapon from him.”
“At sixteen?”
“Well, she was seventeen by then. She spent a year infiltrating the organization. She gained their trust, cooked their meals, wrote their disgusting hate pamphlets, washed their filthy uniforms. By the end she was helping them plot out their master attack. And of course feeding the Bureau all the details.”
“I can think of only a handful of undercover agents at the FBI who could have pulled that off. And none of them were teenagers.”
“When they mounted their attack, the Bureau was waiting, with force. But there was still a battle. The man Reel killed was in the process of ambushing several FBI agents. She saved their lives.”
“And was put in Witness Protection?”
“The neo-Nazi organization is a labyrinth in this country. Their reach is far. With Reel’s help they wiped out part of it, but the monster still lived.”
“And how did she go from Witness Protection to the agency?”
“Through the Bureau we learned what Reel had done. It occurred to us that she had a skill set that was going to waste. And we could protect her as well as the U.S. Marshals could. And with her new job she would be invisible. New identity, traveling all the time, and she would gain personal protection skills that would make it very hard for anyone, even the skinheads, to get to her and kill her. We approached Reel about coming to work for us. She accepted on the spot. No second-guessing. We spent years educating and training her. As we did you.”