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  The first step was to focus on my identity parameters – to learn who Michael Hashir was, and how I could use this identity to get close to Nikki.

  Despite some mild disorientation, my mind was clear with regard to the mission. I centered my thoughts and triggered a memory capsule, as if by instinct, and with a little mental effort I was able to access what I needed to know about my cover.

  Michael Hashir could be summed up as a paranoid tycoon. Living in the shadows and pulling the strings, the corporations I owned had strong ties to Middle East oil, and I used a share of my vast financial resources to secretly fund fringe organizations that shared my extreme views.

  It was certainly an ideal cover for getting in with Nikki’s group, Slaves of Freedom. Now all I had to do was find her. At first, I was amazed at how ATC laid the groundwork for the cover of their agents. Somehow, everything about my new identity was in place. As I thought about it, I seemed to remember that ATC sent back what they called forensic agents for brief missions to assemble the fake lives of the field agents.

  Looking at my driver’s license, I saw that I had been set up with a penthouse apartment in Washington D.C. that served as the base of operations for my nefarious off-grid activities. I caught a cab back to my place, paying for it with my Black card.

  In my apartment, I booted up my computer and started combing my files for useful contacts. After a few encrypted cell calls, I managed to find someone who was willing to put me in contact with Nikki. A meeting was arranged for that night, Wednesday, October 31st, 2012. Halloween night.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening familiarizing myself with my cover, and reading up on the day’s news. Less than one week out from the general election, the news was all politics. From what I could see, it was going to be a very tight race between two historic tickets.

  When eight o’clock rolled around, I headed out to meet Nikki. She’d agreed through an intermediary to meet me on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. I knew who I was looking for; she was told to look for a man in a white trench coat. As I approached the Memorial, I passed several groups of Halloween revelers, decked out in a variety of costumes, including caricature masks of the presidential candidates. The political cycle had powerfully infected the population this year, and was even worse here in the nation’s capital.

  I headed up the steps toward a masked woman sitting at the feet of Abraham Lincoln’s oversized stone likeness. The mask she wore resembled one of the vice-presidential candidates. I was not in costume, but my collar was turned up to ward off the frosty air, and my scarf was pulled up to cover my mouth and nose – so my face was slightly obscured.

  “Crazy, isn’t it?” I said, sitting down beside her and looking out over the crowds.

  “Not as crazy as it’s going to be,” she said.

  “Well, yeah,” I said. “Half of those people are going to be sorely disappointed by this time next week.”

  “That’s not what I was talking about,” said Nikki.

  “Oh?”

  “Who won, who lost – none of that will matter,” she said, remaining cryptic.

  As I pondered her words and struggled to grasp their meaning, she pulled off her mask and turned to me. “Well, I’m here. What exactly did you want to talk about? My people told me you’d said it was urgent. So, let’s skip the small talk. What do you want?”

  When I saw her face, looked into her eyes, my heart leapt in my chest and I caught my breath. I tried not to let my feelings show on my face, but I knew that she had to have seen something in my eyes.

  “I want to help you,” I said.

  “Oh yeah? How can you help me?”

  I lowered my scarf to reveal my mouth. Again, I had to catch my breath. “I have information that will affect your plans.”

  Her eyes narrowed slightly. “What do you know about my plans?”

  “Practically nothing, to be honest. But I guarantee that the information I have will affect you, regardless of the details of what you are planning to do.”

  She said nothing, sizing me up with her eyes. I remembered that look. She was appraising me, using her gift for discernment to determine if I was lying to her. I passed the test.

  “All right,” she said, pursing her lips, “but we do this on my terms. I’ve done a little research on you, Mr. Hashir. I couldn’t find all that much information, but from what I saw, I think we have a lot in common. Let’s return to my headquarters, and then you can tell me everything your little heart desires.”

  “Good,” I said. “And you can call me Michael.”

  We stood, started to walk down the steps, and then she stopped. “Just one thing, Michael. Why?”

  I just stared at her.

  “You say you want to help me,” she said, “but what do you want out of this deal? Surely you’re not doing this out of the goodness of your heart.”

  “For me, this is personal,” I said, telling her the truth. “If things work out between you and I, it will mean that I will get my wife back.”

  She looked at me for a moment, and it seemed like a flicker of recognition crossed her features, but then it was gone. “Very well,” she said, turning to continue down the steps. “I trust a man with personal motives more than I trust a man with mercenary motives. In the end, money means nothing, anyway.”

  With that, she put her mask back on and strode down the steps, leading the way to her organization’s lair. I pulled my scarf back up and followed her to a car. We got in the back and her driver drove off without receiving a word of instruction from Nikki. After about twenty minutes of riding in silence, we entered a parking garage. Inside, we parked and then got in an elevator that took us down to four levels below ground. It opened to a narrow hallway that had one locked door, flanked by a pair of bearded men with large assault weapons.

  “Aren’t those illegal in D.C.?” I asked.

  “Only if you get caught,” said Nikki, nodding to the guards as we passed through the door into her office.

  We took a seat on a couch that faced a world map that was marked with push pins of various colors.

  “Drink?” she asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “Suit yourself,” she said, decanting a ruby liquid into a short glass. “So, how are you going to help me, Michael?”

  I knew I had to take this slowly, or risk winding up with a new hole in my body. “First, I do need to know a little bit about your plans,” I said. I knew I needed to stall a little – to find a way to let the conversation flow so I could start slipping in some clues and hints that may start to trigger Nikki’s subconscious grasp on reality.

  “Fair enough,” she said. “I’ll be glad to share – after all, if you aren’t able to help me, you don’t have to leave here alive, so it’s no risk to me.”

  I cringed inside as I heard my wife speaking so coldly and callously. A memory came unbidden – Nikki standing in front of our bathroom mirror, sneering slightly, practicing her “villain” talk. She knew that one day she may get an assignment like this, and she wanted to be convincing undercover. As I looked at her now, I realized that all that practice had paid off only too well.

  “Tell me about your time line for the next ninety days,” I said. I wanted to find out if the potential change of administration was going to affect Slaves for Freedom’s plans.

  “Okay,” she said with a smirk, taking a sip of her drink. “But I’ll start at the end and work backwards, just for fun.”

  I nodded. “Whatever works best for you.”

  “January 21st, 2013. A new world order begins. January 20th – this city is leveled by a thermo-nuclear device.”

  My heart sank and my mouth became dry. My face remained a stone.

  “January 19th, the president-elect – whoever that is – and the vice president-elect, along with the president, vice president, Supreme Court, most of the Congress and a number of dignitaries and heads of state arriv
e in D.C. for the inauguration. January 18th, the final stages of the bomb delivery are put in place. A week before that, some of our mid-level operatives allow themselves to be captured overseas, and give up some fake information that helps lull the establishment into a false sense of security. Two months before that – that is, next week, after the elections – Slaves for Freedom formalizes ties with our foreign allies, al Qaeda. Tomorrow, I meet with my AQ contact to set up the rest of the details and put this time line in motion.”

  I took a deep breath. “I’ll take some water, now,” I said.

  She poured me some water from a pitcher on the end table and handed it to me. “So, are you impressed?”

  “Very,” I said, fighting the urge to express how sick this was all making me. “So, you’ll manage to get everybody, then, eh? Inauguration Day will be a real jackpot,” I said, faking a smile.

  “Anyone who’s anyone will be there,” said Nikki. “It’ll be a gold mine. And with Washington gone, everything will change.”

  “How large of a warhead are we talking about?”

  “Enough to take out the entire Beltway, including the Pentagon and the CIA. We’ll cut the head off the snake.”

  “And the body will die with it,” I said.

  “Exactly.” She raised her glass as if offering a toast. “And a new world will begin.”

  As I offered her my best fake grin, I wondered how she could have fallen like this – how she could have become so evil. But then I thought back to my life as Michael Jacobsen. I wasn’t particularly evil, but I was definitely someone else. That was simply the effect of the memory download and the false memory implants, combined with many years too long spent in this undercover condition. I still didn’t have all my memories of our life together, but I knew she was my wife, and I knew this was not who she really was – so I tried not to hate her.

  “Tell me about this wife of yours,” she said, as if reading my mind. “She sounds very – valuable – to you.”

  “Oh, she is,” I said, glad that she had asked the question and given me an opening. “Like you, she’s a true patriot. And beautiful. She’s extremely intelligent and capable. And she has a wicked sense of humor – really keeps me on my toes.”

  The more I spoke of Nikki, while staring right at her, the more easily the description came. Little memories seemed to flash in my mind – Nikki sitting on the bed reading a book – the way she would curl up next to me on the couch after a long day – her laugh.

  “She sounds like quite a woman. Where is she now?”

  I had to fight the urge to tell her that she was right in front of me. “Look,” I said. “I know that there are some details of your operation that you’re not telling me – and that’s your prerogative. Likewise, as I’m sure you understand, there are some things that I can’t tell you right now.”

  “Fair enough,” she said. “It just seems that if you want help getting her back from wherever she is, it would be useful for me to know where that is.”

  “When the time is right, I’ll let you know,” I said, finishing my water.

  “Whatever works for you,” she said, a little gleam in her eye. “Now – what information do you have for me that will help me achieve my goals? And let me remind you – this had better be good.”

  I leaned back against the leather couch and cradled my empty glass in both hands. “What if I told you that when your men are captured overseas, and try to plant that false intelligence – it won’t work, and security will be heightened as a result?”

  “How could you know that?”

  “If I reveal all my secrets, that won’t be any fun now, will it?” I said. “Let’s just say that I have connections that you did not find when you researched me – and those connections have reliably informed me that they are aware of that part of your plot.”

  “Only that part?”

  “Only that part. But knowing that part, and nothing else, means that they are going to step up security on a large scale in January.”

  “Then we’ll have to compensate, by moving up our prep time line to get things in place before the security is increased,” said Nikki.

  “That’s right, you will.”

  “Thanks for the heads up. Is that all you have?”

  “Oh no. I have much more that can help you. That’s just a sample. What I need to know, before proceeding any further is – are we okay? Do we have a deal?”

  “Well, I don’t really have a way to verify your claims, but it seems you are trying to help me. And your profile – what I know anyway – indicates that you’re on the same page as us. In fact, there are rumors that a fair amount of your money has found its way into the hands of our new partners, AQ. So, I’m inclined to believe you.” She stared me in the eye with that piercing look of hers. “To trust you.”

  I breathed a quiet sigh of relief. “Excellent.”