Jolaine felt a chill. “I don’t do suicide missions. Let’s establish that up front.”
“Duly noted.”
“How much danger is this kid in?”
“I really don’t know,” Maryanne said. “His mother and father feel threatened. This is their demand — that the boy have protection.”
“So they’re working for you,” Jolaine said. “Why else would you be concerned?”
Maryanne said nothing.
Jolaine nearly apologized for wandering into territory that had already been declared off-limits. “Would the family be my responsibility, too? Would I be part of a larger team?”
They stopped on the sidewalk to allow three cars to exit the driveway for the Maple Inn, while two others entered the same lot. There were no better chili dogs in the world than those from the Maple Inn.
“No team,” Maryanne said. “Just you. You’ll be the body man for the boy — sorry, body girl. You’ll go where he goes, and take him to and from wherever that is. During the day, the mom and dad will fend for themselves however they intend to do that. We’ve paid for a good alarm system at the house, so at night, once the boy is tucked in, you’ll be more or less off-duty.”
“More or less?”
They started walking again. “You go where the kid goes. As long as he’s in motion, you’ll be in motion, too.”
“That’s a lot for one person,” Jolaine said. “When I pulled gigs like that over in Afghanistan, we had four-to six-person teams for ’round-the-clock coverage.”
“That’s interesting,” Maryanne said in a tone that made it clear how little she was interested. “You’re free to say no. Remember, though, you’re not going to have to worry about IEDs, and I’m predicting that the sniper risk is virtually nil. You won’t have to do advance work, and, frankly, there’s a whole world of honest local law enforcement to keep the technicals off the street.”
Jolaine recognized a “technical” as a rust-bucket pickup truck fitted with a machine gun and laughed in spite of herself. Point made and taken. Perhaps it was a waste to attempt to compare the two missions.
“How old is this boy?”
“Eleven.”
“Oh, God.”
“What’s wrong with eleven?” Maryanne asked. “There’s no butt-wiping involved.”
Jolaine said, “Eleven is all whiny insecurity and drama. I’m not sure I want to sign on for drama.”
Maryanne laughed, amused by whatever she saw in Jolaine’s face. “You won’t be his mother. You’ll be his protector.”
“Why on earth would the mother and father want a woman to be in charge of a developing hormone factory? I’d think they’d want a stronger hand.”
Maryanne stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, just in front of the town’s new war memorial. “I’ve met this kid. I’ve met the whole family. He’s… less than respectful of authority. I believe their thinking is that a male bodyguard would just not work.”
“So, I would be his mother.”
“Only if you let that happen. Like I said, I know this family. They’re not bad people. Mom and Dad don’t have a real strong hand on the parenting tiller, but Graham is basically a good kid.” She blinked as she let his name slip.
Jolaine felt a rush as she heard the mistake, but right away wondered if Maryanne had let it slip on purpose to make Jolaine feel a victory. This was precisely the kind of second-guessing and mistrust that made Jolaine hate so much of the security industry.
Maryanne sensed that something was wrong, and gestured to the benches in the sun on the far side of the memorial. “Let’s take a seat,” she said. She led the way past the granite disk that praised “those who served our country” and past the poles that flew the flags of the United States, the Commonwealth of Virginia, and the Town of Vienna. This was a slice of tranquility in the midst of commuter chaos.
Maryanne sat on the north end of the bench and waited for Jolaine to help herself to the other seat. Jolaine sat sideways, her left calf tucked under her right thigh.
“Talk to me,” Maryanne said. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
Jolaine steeled herself. Should she open up and tell the truth, or should she play the same game she suspected that Maryanne was playing?
“I’m thinking that this is coming out of nowhere,” Jolaine said. “I’m thinking that I don’t know you from Adam, and that this is a bizarre assignment. I think that you’re holding out important details, and that those details define the reason why you’re coming to me when the FBI is fat with salaried, career agents. Then, when thinking about those assets that you’re choosing not to use, I begin to think you’re here because I’m considered expendable.”
Maryanne gave her a long, hard look. “How old are you?”
“You already know that,” Jolaine said. “I suspect that you know just about everything about me. And the fact that you just asked that question does nothing to make me feel better.”
“The question was more rhetorical than real,” Maryanne said. “I’m just amazed that you can be burdened with so much cynicism when you’re only twenty-four years old.”
“Cynicism is born of experience,” Jolaine said. “As you so eloquently said, war is hell. Remember, I’ve done two tours soldiering as a non-soldier. I’ve seen what happens to careers and futures after contractors have done their jobs exactly as they’d been instructed, only to have official Washington shove a knife in their backs as soon as something goes a little wrong. I don’t want to be one of those people.”
“You’re in the United States now, not in Afghanistan. The rules are different here.”
Jolaine waited for more.
“Okay, here’s the deal,” Maryanne said. “In broad strokes. Do you know what a double agent is?”
“A spy.”
“A very special kind of spy. In this case, a man whose foreign bosses think he’s spying on us when in fact he’s providing information to us about the other guy.”
“I assume we’re talking about the father now?” Jolaine asked.
“Exactly.”
“And one of his rules for helping you is that his son be protected from retaliation.”
“Correct.”
Jolaine wasn’t buying. It didn’t all add up yet. “This circles back to my previous question,” she said. “Why just the boy? Why not the whole family?”
“Because the boy — Graham — is the best leverage point. The family and the FBI both agree that if the bad guys discover that they’ve been betrayed, they’ll just kill Mom and Dad outright. There’d be no reason to do otherwise. But if the bad guys only suspect that they’ve been betrayed…”
Jolaine finished the thought for her: “They could kidnap the boy and use him as leverage to make sure.”
“Yes.”
“And my job is to make sure that they can’t get close enough to make that happen.”
“Right.”
“By myself. How the hell am I supposed to do that?”
Maryanne pressed her lips together. “There are a couple of moving parts here,” she said. “The first is what we just discussed. The second is the fact that Graham doesn’t know about any of his parents’ behavior. They don’t want him to know — another condition of moving forward.”
Jolaine scowled. “Then how are you going to explain the lady with the gun going to school with him?”
“We’ll create a cover story. The nature of his father’s work is sensitive — that’s true, by the way. That’s why we’re working with him and why the bad guys want information from him. We’ll tell Graham that the extra security is just an abundance of caution.”
It still sounded like a lonesome loser of an assignment to Jolaine. She waited for more.
“Which brings me to the final set of moving parts,” Maryanne said. “I believe that this whole exercise truly is one of abundant caution. Overkill caution. I think the danger involved is miniscule.”