The one blocking his path became more insistent while the other guard in the back reached for his firearm. The person inside turned around and followed Prie’s gaze toward him. Roen quickly turned away, taking the identification clip off his shirt and putting it into his pocket.
“Ralphy?”
Crap. She had noticed him. Roen stopped, turned around, and smiled. “Special Agent Kallis. What a surprise to see you here.”
“Official business. You?”
Roen motioned toward his left elbow. “Was looking at some rot on a pile of wood. Fell off. Thought I broke an arm. Got it checked to be on the safe side. Trying to get out of here now. Kind of got my way twisted around.”
“Good to hear you’re all right.” Kallis looked back in the room and then at her two men. “Hey, Charles, I’ll be right back.”
The agent on the left nodded. “Take your time, Ma’am. Fritz should be here any minute, anyway.”
She turned back to Roen. “I’ll walk you out.”
“Uh,” he stammered. Without a good excuse, he sighed and allowed her to lead him out the hospital that he had just spent the entire morning trying to get into.
The two of them stepped out through the emergency room exit and into the cool dewy afternoon air. It had rained the previous night, and a low-hanging mist had fallen over the town. Roen stared longingly back at the hospital. He’d have to do this all over again.
“Well, Ralphy,” Kallis waved, and paused. “Ralphy’s not your real name, is it?”
For a second, Roen thought he had blown his cover, then he realized what she meant and shook his head. “Nah, only…” he had to take another second to pull up the stupid name Marco gave himself, “…Cornelius calls me that. My real name is…” To be honest, Roen didn’t like Ralph either. He went with the first thing that came to mind. “…Rutherford.” That wasn’t much better. Mentally, Roen imagined himself palming his own face. He could see Tao doing it too, if Tao had hands. He could hear his friend berating him.
What did I tell you about not complicating your lies? Stick with Ralphy and keep things simple, dumbass!
“Okay, Rutherford,” Kallis grinned. “I’ll see you later.”
“Hey,” Roen called after her, not sure what he was doing. “You, um, want to grab some lunch?”
Kallis stopped, looked at Roen, then back at the hospital, and then shrugged. “Sure, why not? Not a big fan of these places anyway.”
“I’m right there with you,” Roen agreed. “Every time I truck through here, I get the chills.”
Kallis frowned playfully. “Are you that big of a klutz?”
Roen realized his mistake a second too late and tried to play it off. “Ulcers. Comes with being Cornelius’s business partner.”
In his head, he began to tally all the lies he was stacking on top of each other. At this rate, if Kallis ever ran into Marco again, Roen would have to give him a complete dossier on his new secret identity. For now, he was just going to have to keep track of everything.
Keep it simple, stupid.
The two walked across the street back to the Woodchuck Chuck. It was here or the run-down pizza joint, the even more run-down burger place, or the fake Mexican fast-food place down the street. Not that Woodchuck Chuck had much better food, but at least they served alcohol, and that basically clinched their choice.
Pretty soon, the two were picking at mediocre fish and chips over a pitcher of crappy beer, commiserating on their shared hatred of hospitals. Roen had to do a little more creative alibi-building as she questioned him about the redwood lumber business. It became pretty clear five minutes into their chat that she was primarily interested in Marco.
After the initial generic questions about him, the conversation shifted to all Marco all the time. She asked about how they met, how they got into business, and what sort of guy he was. She delved a little deeper into why he was single at his age, if he was ever married, and whether he had children. And of course, Roen had to talk Marco up, which was one of the most painful things he’d had to do in recent memory.
It was bad enough he had to work for the guy, now he had to say nice things about him. Yes, Marco is nice and considerate. Yes, Marco is witty and a good friend. No, Marco isn’t a player or have gambling or alcohol problems. It really couldn’t get much worse. Eventually, though, he had lied enough to satisfy her curiosity about the Brit, and even got a few digs in, like telling her Marco loved to recite poetry and was once a junior champion river dancer.
“You should ask him to show you,” Roen said. “He’s fantastic. His nickname in prep school was Tapping Fairy.”
Then it was his turn. Roen asked Kallis about how she got to her position and what she was doing in IXTF. He had much of this information already. The Prophus still had some access to certain federal personnel files. He had researched bios thoroughly when her name began to pop up more frequently during his jobs for the Underground Railroad.
She had risen through the CIA and was assigned to the IXTF during the agency’s inception. Since then, she had been a fast riser within Interpol, but had been passed up for the directorship of the North America region twice. After her latest failure, when she was assigned to the Pacific Northwest, she thought her career had stalled. However, she found that she was enjoying this assignment much more than when she was operating out of New York.
“Part of it’s the wilderness, and you’d be surprised, but part of it’s the action,” she said. “I can’t get into details, but there is a lot of heavy traffic coming in from Canada south toward Mexico.”
“Like drug smuggling?” Roen asked, playing dumb.
Kallis shook her head. “People smuggling, and lots of it. For some reason, a lot of aliens are running from something.”
“Are these aliens really bad?” Roen asked. “I hear that they’ve been around for longer than we were. Doesn’t that give them a better claim to the planet?”
She made a face. “That argument might have held water if they hadn’t spent their entire existence screwing us. We can’t trust them.”
“Well, they did come clean,” he said.
“Only after supposedly one side lost. At the end of the day, humans should be in control of our own destiny. They even admitted to purposely causing wars in order to advance technology. How messed up is that?”
Roen had to be careful here. It was a fine line between acting stupid and defending his cause. “I thought there were two sides to the aliens. Mind you, I’m only getting this from the news and the Internet. You’re the expert here.”
Kallis thought it over. “Well, there has been some evidence of two differing groups of Quasing. But we don’t know if they’re just playing us again. At the end of the day, it seems they need us more than we need them. They need to come clean and tell us everything.”
Roen grunted. Fat chance of that. Kallis thought she knew what was going on, but if she only knew how deep the rabbit hole went. There would be no hope for reconciliation then. However, she did prove to him that she was somewhat open-minded about things, which was a far cry from the times he had spoken to her as the Rayban Ghost.
After their meal, he walked her to her car in the hospital parking lot. She smiled, a genuine one now, and held out her hand. “Hey, it was fun. Really. I’m glad we had this opportunity to chat.”
Roen accepted it. He sincerely thought so as well. “Hey, um, I’m about to go see Cornelius. Did you want me to tell him hi? We’ve been running around busy over the past few days, but I’m sure he’d love to see you.”
Kallis smiled. “Thank you, Rutherford. I’d like that. Cornelius has a really good friend.”
Roen kept that smile plastered on his face until she turned away. He almost felt bad for using her, but it was important he and Marco nurture this relationship. Prie’s life could depend on it. Still, Roen couldn’t help liking Special Agent Kallis. She was the enemy, no doubt about it, but in another world, they could have been friends.