Genomorph

Chapter 40

CHAPTER 40

They drove Karen to the airport Thursday morning and had another good cry all around. When Brandi and Melissa returned to the house in Venice, it seemed empty. Brandi knew that Melissa had to be feeling it more than her; she had known Karen for six years after all.

“Do you want to talk?” Brandi asked once they were inside. They walked into the living room and sat down on the couch.

“It’s just, we always knew this day would come,” Melissa said, fighting tears. “And it had to be soon … I just wasn’t ready for it to be this soon.”

“And Karen was there for you when you needed her most,” Brandi said.

Melissa nodded, “I wouldn’t have made it this past year without her. Dammit she’s my best friend and I’m happy for her, so why do I feel so lousy?”

“Because you love her, silly,” Brandi told her as she wrapped her arms around her. “It always hurts to say goodbye.”

“I’m so glad I have you,” Melissa whispered, burying her head in Brandi’s hair. “I love you so much.”

“It’s exciting too,” Brandi said. “I remember how Brandon felt as he reported to Coronado after training. The feeling of being out there on the front and having a chance to really make a difference in the world. I’m so happy for Karen.”

“I know,” Melissa said as she nuzzled Brandi’s neck.

“Keep that up and you’re gonna get me started,” Brandi moaned softly.

“That’s my plan,” Melissa whispered. “Let’s go upstairs.”

*****

Friday morning dawned sunny but cool in the nation’s capitol. Even though she had most of Thursday free Karen had stayed in her hotel, reading through several stacks of material that had been sent to her by the State Department. None of it actually pertained to the Combined Threat Assessment Group; it was all mundane information on benefits and such, but she devoured every word. She was so excited when night fell that she had a hard time getting to sleep.

She was up early and had breakfast in her room; her expenses were being covered by the government, which was also a big thrill. After eating she showered and dressed and then headed out to meet the director of CTAG, Kyle Laughlin.

Karen paused for a moment as she approached the entrance to the Harry S. Truman building, home of the United States Department of State. As she looked up at the impressive structure she took a deep breath and wondered if she was really ready for this.

She was definitely dressed for it. She wore a chocolate brown wool knee length skirt and matching tie front blazer over an off white silk blouse. It was a designer suit and even though they had found it for half price it still cost three times what her other outfits had. She had three of them thanks to Brandi, the other two in black and red. She was a little worried about overkill, but she had to admit she looked sharp.

Karen took a deep breath and entered the building. She checked in at the security desk and after reviewing and signing several documents on security she received a visitors badge and was told that someone was coming to escort her. She turned to walk over to the waiting area and collided with a tall man and found herself flat on her butt on the floor.

“Ow,” Karen said.

“Oh God, I’m so sorry,” the man said as he helped her up. “Are you ok?”

“Well I think my pride is a bit bruised but otherwise I’m fine,” Karen replied.

He was handsome; not a Brad Pitt certainly but he had a boyishly charming face that was countered by piercing grey eyes. His short hair was thick and brown and while it was neatly styled it had a hint of wildness to it; definitely not the standard gel cemented look of most men she had seen in DC so far. He looked to be in his late twenties or perhaps just over thirty, and he smiled rather sheepishly as he extended his hand.

“I had hoped our meeting would be a little less abrupt,” he said in a warm tenor. “I’m Kyle Laughlin, head of the TAG Team.”

~ Oh nice, what a way to make a first impression, ~ Karen thought as she shook his hand.

“Karen Meadows,” she said, feeling her face getting warm. The last thing she wanted to do was blush. “It’s a pleasure to meet you Mr. Laughlin.”

“The pleasure is all mine and please call me Kyle,” he laughed. His demeanor was very relaxing and Karen felt herself developing an instant liking for him.

“I’ll do that, Kyle,” Karen said as he ushered her through the security scanner. “Please call me Karen.”

“So where are you staying?” Kyle asked as they approached a bank of elevators beyond the scanners.

“Just over at the State Plaza,” Karen said.

“Ah, good choice, it will make your commute easier the next couple of weeks.” Kyle said. “Is this your first time in DC?”

“Not exactly,” Karen said as the elevator doors opened. “I was a delegate to Girl’s Nation from Colorado.”

“Ah I see,” Kyle said. “And how did you like it?”

“It was a lot of fun and very informative as well,” Karen said. “I think it gave me a far better understanding of politics than I would have had otherwise.”

“So do you see yourself on the Hill one day?”

Karen shook her head, “Understanding politics is good, but I don’t have aspirations in that direction. I’d rather be part of the machine that makes everything work.”

“Good answer,” Kyle said as the elevator began descending. “I think we have just the place for you.”

The elevator descended to a sub-basement and immediately outside the car was a security checkpoint. The guard, a Marine, checked their badges and had Karen sign in and then buzzed them through. Kyle first led her to a secure door and swiped his badge. Inside the large room were numerous cubicles and one wall which held several plasma display screens.

“This is what we on the TAG Team euphemistically call the Pit of Despair,” Kyle told her.

“I see,” Karen said. “You wouldn’t by any chance have six fingers on your right hand?”

“That depends,” Kyle smiled, “on whether your name is Inigo Montoya.”

Karen laughed, sure now that she was going to like Kyle. Anybody in his position who was a fan of The Princess Bride had to be all right.

“So what exactly is the TAG Team?” Karen asked as they left the Pit.

“Let’s talk in my office,” Kyle suggested. “Not that the halls here aren’t secure, but it will be a lot more comfortable.”

Kyle’s office was spartan, like the rest of the basement area. There were a few pictures, one of Kyle in Navy uniform, next to several framed decorations. Prominently displayed on the wall to the right of his desk was a framed newspaper article. The headline immediately caught Karen’s eye. It read, ‘Navy SEAL awarded Medal of Honor posthumously’. The picture with the article caused Karen to stare momentarily in shock. She quickly hid the look, but Kyle had noticed it.

“Did you know Brandon Anderson?”

Karen shook her head, but realized she could not deny the look of recognition.

“Not personally,” she said. “I know someone who was a friend of his though.”

“I keep that there as a reminder,” Kyle said. “I was in Naval Intelligence when he was wounded. We had information about the presence of Republican Guard units watching the objective, and we sent it up the line. Somewhere along the way it got squashed and never made it to the people who needed it.

“That’s what CTAG is all about. We are the Combined Threat Assessment Group, charged with identifying threats before they become threats. But more than that, we are here to cut through the interagency bullshit and see that information gets to the people who need it, before someone flies a plane into a building or sets off a nuke at the Super Bowl...before another good man has to lay down his life because of a screw up.”

Kyle looked for a long moment at the framed article, his eyes haunted.

“One ghost is all I ever want to have to deal with,” he said.

Karen spent the rest of the day going through a variety of orientation procedures. Kyle showed her around the facility, which was not very large, and introduced her to several people she would be working with. She was given a cubicle in the Pit where she would work from. Her primary duties would be to analyze intelligence from a variety of sources and look for patterns or warning signs. Each piece of intelligence would be reviewed jointly by multiple analysts, each with a different area of expertise. As they made notes they would instantly go into the system and be viewable by everyone.

There were a number of complex computer protocols to learn, and CTAG’s chief computer technician Mira Gallo went through them with Karen at length. Mira was a very pretty young woman; her Italian heritage was plain to see in her dark complexion and long, silky black hair, but she obviously went to great pains to look as plain as possible. She wore big glasses that were not particularly attractive and had her hair pulled back tightly in a functional but not very flattering bun. She was also very good with computers and had a mannerism that was very easy going. Karen strongly suspected that in her off hours the mousey look vanished and Mira literally let her hair down.

Much of the orientation material concerned the history of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, or INR, to which CTAG was attached. INR was founded as the Research and Analysis Branch of the Office for Strategic Services in World War Two. After the war, it was renamed and attached to the State Department while the OSS itself went on to become the foundation of the Central Intelligence Agency.

With less than two hundred analysts, INR was only about a tenth the size of the CIA, yet they turned out nearly two million written reports a year. And though the intelligence community had been widely criticized for its failures leading up to the war in Iraq, the INR was credited as having been ‘the least wrong’, and on more than one occasion the little agency with no spies and no satellites had outperformed their larger counterparts, delivering assessments that contradicted the bigger agencies…and ultimately proved to be accurate.

It was a matter of quality over quantity; most of the analysts had been with their particular region of expertise for a decade or more, and many had advanced degrees. They were encouraged to specialize in a particular region so they could more accurately read the meaning behind events.

The world was a changing place, however, and new threats that were well outside the bounds of reason were now all to real. A new approach and mindset was needed to counter these threats, but one that was willing to work with the more seasoned analysts. CTAG was quite in contrast to the rest of the INR. Most of the senior analysts were in their forties at least, but the Team members had an average age in their late twenties. Their mission was to think outside the box. They were there to follow up on leads uncovered by the more senior analysts as well as that from other agencies, and Kyle had told Karen that there would likely be field work involved, especially for someone like her who was multilingual. Through college Karen had taken numerous language courses and was fluent in Arabic, Russian and Chinese and had a working grasp of several other languages.

It was a long day, with a lot of information to absorb, but by the evening Karen’s visitor pass had been replaced by a security identification granting her Level Three clearance, an intermediate level common to the majority of the Pit crew. Her thumb and hand prints were scanned and stored as well as a retinal image, voice print and several full facial images for the photo recognition system.

On her way out of the Pit at the end of the day Karen ran into Kyle again, though not so literally as at their first meeting.

“So how did your day go?” Kyle asked.

“It was amazing,” Karen said. “There is so much to learn it’s like being a freshman in college again. It’s very exciting though, I can’t wait for Monday.”

“Do you have any plans for the weekend?” Kyle asked.

“Nothing special, probably just some sight seeing,” Karen replied.

“If you like, I’d be happy to be your guide,” Kyle said. “I think I can promise you some sights that aren’t on the usual tourist routes, but they will be very interesting.”

“That would be wonderful, but I don’t want to be a bother.”

“Oh yes, escorting a beautiful young woman is such an imposition, but I think I can endure it,” Kyle said. “Why don’t you let me take you to dinner tonight?”

“I’d like that very much,” Karen said, hoping the flush she was feeling did not show on her face. “Can you give me an hour to freshen up?”

“Sure, I’ll pick you up at your hotel,” Kyle said. “It’ll be a semi casual place so you don’t have to get dressed up.”

“I’ll see you in an hour then,” Karen said.

*****

The Post-Modern Bimbos arrived at the Back Beat on Friday afternoon and set up their equipment, with Brandi’s help. She even went through several numbers with them for a sound check. It did not draw any unusual attention from the staff, Brandi had been seen with the band on several occasions and had done the sound check before when Karen was not able to be there early enough.

They returned to the club an hour before the performance was to begin and Brandi slipped into the backstage area unseen through the back door. She stayed out of sight in the dressing room until just before the show was to begin, and then transformed into Karen and quickly dressed and did her makeup. She had been spending a lot of time of the last few days with her form altered and could already tell that it was making a difference. The transformation was much faster and they were more than half way through the night before she started feeling the first hint of strain. Once the show was over she switched back to her natural appearance in the back of Cyndi’s van.

“You certainly don’t seem uncomfortable about your body,” Renee remarked as Brandi dressed.

“Modesty was not part of the programming,” Brandi said. “If anything, the opposite is true. For a Genomorph to accomplish her mission, she couldn’t be worried about being naked in front of others.”

“Yet you’re uncomfortable about sex,” Renee said.

“Sex with a man,” Brandi corrected, blushing as she looked at Melissa. “The programming for that is there, very strongly there. But it’s at war with forty years as a perfectly straight male. My body wants it and even my mind wants it, but the part of me that is still Brandon fights it.”

“You did really great tonight,” Cyndi told her. “If I hadn’t known, I would have never suspected you weren’t Karen.”

“It’s not like it’s talent,” Brandi said. She knew Cyndi was still uncomfortable about her and did not want to focus on her abilities too much. “I’m just mimicking her and thanks to my enhanced memory I can mimic every nuance.”

“That may be true when you’re being Karen, but when you did the sound checks you were being yourself,” Cyndi said. “I know your voice range is a product of the changes, but you have a presence that is all your own, and very, very powerful.”

“Thank you, Cyndi that really means a lot.”

“Brandi, I find what has happened to you both fascinating and tragic,” Cyndi said. “My problem was never about you.”

“Actually Brian the music director, was asking about you,” Amber said. “He wanted to know if you were going to be joining the band, or if you had your own.”

“I couldn’t even think about doing that as long as they are looking for me,” Brandi said. “I believe in hiding in plain sight, but that’s a bit too out there to be safe.”

“You won’t always be a fugitive,” Cyndi said.

~ No, but I may never really be free either. ~