Fains I (A John Chance Mystery) Chapter 9 – Blackbird Singing in the Dead of Night
Rhonda Gilbert lost her Company tail in a fifteenth-floor custodian’s closet at Trump Tower. The custodian’s closet contained one of her many New York City caches, one of thousands across the globe. Wherever she posted, she used a mathematical formula based on the host city’s name to determine which buildings to use, which floors to use, and what to cache there. LiquidKey – a sweet little Special Services gadget – provided access to any mechanical lock. A Special Services app provided access to electronic locks.
Each cache contained a complete makeover. In this case, the athletically thin, black suited, middle-aged woman with thick, hip length blonde hair went in and an older, matronly woman with thick glasses, a slight lisp, ruddy complexion, and dark, Mediterranean features came out.
Rhonda enjoyed playing both sides. She enjoyed having her own island which nobody knew about. She enjoyed the Russians paying her while they figured out how they could resurrect their empire, what shape it would take and who would run it. She enjoyed going to them, not waiting for them to come to her, with bona fides of a high-level US intelligence/security weapons research group they knew nothing about.
She offered them some comfort. “Don’t beat yourselves up too much. Most of the people who should know about it don’t know about it.”
Irregular meetings were set up at various hotels – dives to five-star – at odd intervals and wherever her missions took her.
Lots of the stuff she told her handlers returned a nod, a “good job,” a “just continue what you’re doing.”
But everything changed when she mentioned Shaman to them, the US’ latest and greatest attempt to determine if ESP and now labeled PSI abilities existed, and if so, how to screen for them, how to foster them, how to develop them for strategic and tactical purposes.
One or two or her handlers completely lost their composure when she originally brought it to their attention. Many sat forward. Most reached across the table for the files like greedy children seeing handfuls of candy for the taking. A few knocked phones off their cradles to make sure they got their candy first.
She, of course, remained calm, cool, and composed, something she learned to do in high school; reveal only what you want revealed, or reveal something completely opposite to your true thoughts and feelings; lessons learned thanks to the repeated, ongoing, incessant, never ending insults, the emotional, psychological, and physical abuse, and let’s not forget the soul-scarring embarrassment she suffered at the hands of students, teachers, administration, neighbors, parents, cousins, aunts, uncles.
The lessons were locked in place by the middle of sophomore year; she no longer showed what she thought or felt, and remembered telling her worthless priest-father-confessor, “Getting no response is no fun. Even they get it’s no fun besting an idiot, and if that’s my safest game, I’ll play my safest game.”
In the middle of her junior year she saw a matchbook with BIG MONEY and INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL on the cover. Beneath them was “look inside for details.” There she read “Draw a camel and answer these three questions Yes or No” with a postal address at the bottom.
She drew a horse and answered each question with “It depends.”
Three weeks later a limo pulled into her parents’ driveway. A nicely tanned gentleman in a tailored three piece suit got out of the back, smiled at her, walked up her parents’ steps, and offered his hand. “Ms. Gilbert? Ms. Rhonda Gilbert?”
The driver kept the limo at a quiet idle while the nicely tanned gentleman held his hand out and smiled.
“Who’s asking?”
He handed her a card. She read
WH3N U G37 17 54Y U G07 17
1N73LL1G3NC3
15 7H3
4B1L17Y
70 4D4P7 70
CH4NG3
She laughed and handed the card back. “Got it.”
He explained who he was, the organization he recruited for, and explained a few mysteries she’d wondered about most of her short life. “Remember that matchbook test you responded to?”
She cited color, print, number of matches in the book, the address, the stale cigarette smell of the book in her hand, the feel of the roughened cardboard in her hand, even the direction matches had been struck based on the marks on the striker.
“Just what I hoped you’d tell me. Remember anything else?”
She shrugged and recited the day she found it, the weather, what she wore, who she talked to, who talked to her, counting out her change to pay for the envelope and stamp, … She stopped her recitation, cocked her head, and frowned at him. “How much detail do you want?”
“That’s quite enough, thank you. You have a talent, Ms. Gilbert. You’re hyphethymesic.”
