Special projects evoked in Mildred the same visceral pleasure she had first felt so long ago during deer season in Minnesota with her beloved grandfather. She would always love the kindly, soft-spoken Norwegian farmer who taught his awkward, bookish, eight-year-old granddaughter the thrill of the chase and the rush of the kill.
Hunting was much more than finding and scoring a kill. That was the lesson that her grandfather had taught. There was a system, a methodology that had to be followed: finding a fresh trail, stalking the quarry through its daily chores, gaining knowledge of the minute details of its life, setting up the final moment, and finally the kill, the ultimate intimate moment. The explosion of the rifle followed by the almost choreographed falling of the prey. There was no anguish, no dramatic last gasping moment, just the silent slumping of the deer as the bullet completed its grisly assignment.
Young Mildred was upset and shocked when her grandfather field-dressed her first deer that cold November day so long ago; the careful knife cut through the fur and the musculature of the fallen deer lying peacefully, as if asleep, in the fresh-fallen snow. Afterward, steamy entrails of white, yellow, and blue poured out of the deer’s split belly in a cascade of crimson, glistening in the noonday sun.
Her initial shock at the horror of that moment quickly became a lifelong fascination with the machines of life. Mildred was fascinated with the thought that fur and skin were merely the outer coverings; packaging for the intricate construction of separate mysteries that lay hidden so close to the surface. Mysteries that could be only revealed when the outer covering was carefully peeled back just as her beloved grandfather had taught her. Her parents applauded this bent for science and quietly dreamt of Mildred someday teaching biology at the local high school.
Like others of her kind, the young Mildred first experimented with small animals, making sure that the procedure was always within acceptable limits. She often used the .22 caliber sports rifle her parents gave her. Sometimes her conquests were far more creative. Her biological totems were carefully packed in rubbing alcohol in small canning jars discarded by her mother.
Mildred’s parents were ecstatic that their otherwise quiet, bookish child enjoyed this healthy outdoor educational activity. Mildred’s father was particularly proud of his daughter, who didn’t spend time playing house like other girls, but was out practically every day perfecting her hunting skills. They encouraged and supported this aspect of Mildred’s childhood development.
Now, in the twilight of her career, Mildred had become an elder statesman of CSAC. Legend had it that she was the most prolific assassin in the agency’s history. With her milk-fed complexion, shapely figure, attractive features, innocent blue eyes, and golden locks, the younger Mildred had been able to get into places more hardened agents could not. Once in, Mildred accomplished her assignment with deadly accuracy. Mildred’s knowledge of anatomy, especially human anatomy, made her surgically efficient.
Investment bankers like Mike Liu may have their brass, Lucite and wooden souvenirs, but people with Mildred’s particular bent of mind also kept souvenirs. Souvenirs meant to bring back the rush and to symbolize the thrill of the moment. Mildred was no different. However, her strict Lutheran upbringing limited those souvenirs to objects found on or near her achievements. The more grisly totems would be kept by others. The only biological souvenir she kept was a broken fragment of antler from her first kill. Her souvenirs were kept in a cardboard shoe box hidden on her closet shelf. During quiet moments, she would bring the treasures down and relive the excitement and rush that her assignments had brought her.
Mildred enjoyed her semi-retirement, taking only occasional courier assignments, which allowed her more time with her long-suffering husband, their four daughters, and many grandchildren. Her family never knew the extent of Mildred’s secret life and dismissed her grisly treasures, because of their seemingly ordinariness, as mementos of their wife/mother’s travels abroad as a State Department researcher. Despite her secret career, Mildred was a devoted wife, mother, and grandmother. Upon her retirement as a State Department researcher, Mildred and her family had returned to the rich black dirt of her beloved Red River of the North valley and established a life of rural stability. Her husband farmed sunflower or sorghum wheat or corn or sugar beet, whatever was profitable. Mildred ran a Scandinavian hobby shop in Crookston. Mildred’s shop was a popular place in Crookston, particularly during the long, cold Minnesota winter.
The debriefing room was, in actuality, a small operating room. After examining the superficial wounds to her left hand and neck, the duty nurse asked Mildred to put on a hospital gown and to lie on the operating table. The surgeon had already scrubbed and was standing beside the table. In a corner, two armed Marines in battle fatigues stood quietly with an iron container, its top open.
Exposing Mildred’s remarkably well developed and still physically firm body, especially given her outwardly older appearance, the board-certified plastic surgeon made a small incision directly below Mildred’s left armpit. With a surgical nurse helping with the spreaders, the surgeon retrieved a small plastic and gold cylinder from the subcutaneous layer of Mildred’s skin using a retractor that fully enclosed the small thin cylinder. The surgeon then placed the retractor containing the cylinder gently into a lead-lined cylinder, closed the cover of the lead lined container, and handed the cylinder to a Marine Lieutenant, who was dressed in a green surgical gown, as was everyone in the operating room except the two guards.
The Lieutenant placed the cylinder into the lock box held by the Marine guards, evacuated the container with a portable pump, and injected nitrogen gas into the apparatus. The surgeon then opened a plastic bag and retrieved a small plastic and gold cylinder, which he placed into the open wound below Mildred’s left armpit. He closed the wound, taking great care to close tissue layer by layer to minimize any scarring of Mildred’s skin. When completed, the scar over the cylinder would be barely noticeable.
The discarded plastic bag lay in a stainless steel bowl. On the plastic bag in typically bureaucratic language was printed the message: MILSPEC 1993-35.77, Recording Chip — DOD/CSAC Classified — Z Level — Cryptographic.
The MILSPEC 1993-35.77 Recording Chip was a remarkable technological breakthrough. Small enough to be inserted subcutaneously into a courier’s body, the chip was programmable through use of digitized magnetic induction devices. Once programmed, the chip could not be altered by conventional devices. For example, magnetic detection security gates at airport security stations could not alter the message implanted in the cylinder. The chip had to be physically removed to access or change the magnetically induced message.
If removed by someone other than a CSAC surgeon using the proper extraction tool, the chip would be rendered useless. The chip was used only for the most secret information. The existence of the recording chip was one of CSAC’s most closely guarded secrets.
In Mildred’s case, the information had been encoded using an induction magnetizer at the CSAC field office located at the Grand Forks Air Force Base near Grand Forks, North Dakota. The basic data had been flown by military personnel from Watch Station Four located somewhere in Lake Superior. Since the nearest encoding devices were located at Grand Forks, the data had been flown there instead of directly to Washington.