Lana"s coffee was getting cold on her desk for a few minutes now.Spencer had just brought it to her and had gone three floors higher for instructions from their superiors.
She took the opportunity to reread the part of the file reporting the child"s statements during his interrogation to the FBI branch of San Francisco, the city where he was found.
There were quite a few gray areas in his testimony, but this kid was a mine of information and given the progress of the investigation.
He may well prove to be their only hope.
She gobbled up her double espresso in seconds and went straight to the ladies restroom to make herself more presentable.
She couldn"t help but notice her pitiful appearance when she saw herself in the mirror.
"I have seen corpses s.e.xier than that..."
By dint of having sleepless nights, we end up antic.i.p.ating the blow.
She combed her hair and pulled out her makeup bag to fix what was possible.
"Irresistible once again!"
Back at her desk, she found Spencer who was very agitated.
Probably because he had been waiting precisely 38 minutes for her to return to her post.
"You! We"re going to be late with your bulls.h.i.t."
"They gave the order, we are going to San Francisco, right?"
"Yes, the plane leaves in 1 hour and a half, take your stuff."
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Lana had spent the entire flight drooling over her partner"s shoulder.
She had many hours of sleep to make up for and the business cla.s.s seats were far too comfortable for her to have a chance of staying awake.
Spencer didn"t dare point out to her that she was staining his costume since she was always taking advantage of the fact that they had to share their costs when traveling together.
He was particularly thrifty and had already spotted all the elements at risk around them.
"Minibars next to our seats, the food and alcohol menu is in front of us. If she decides to wake up, I will spend at least 100 dollars knowing her."
He thanked G.o.d that she woke up only a quarter of an hour before they landed.
The stewardesses refused to give her the gla.s.s of wine she had asked for because of the turbulences that were going to occur, she only had the time to take a can of soda from the minibar.
"I avoided the worst, please G.o.d make it happen again when we come back!"
Since they didn"t have to go through customs and had no luggage, only 15 minutes had elapsed from disembarking of the plane until arriving at the exit of the airport.
They were now heading to the outdoor parking lot to meet a liaison agent who was supposed to take them to see the child in an interrogation room.
The omnipresent sun of San Francisco had nothing to do with the morne climate of Boston, it made Lana want to go on a vacation.
"San Francisco! The sun, the beach, the Alcatraz prison, there is so much that I would like to see here. As soon as we are done with this, I ask for my holiday!"
Their contact spotted them fairly quickly.
A blond woman in her late forties with a two-piece suit similar to that of Lana motioned for them.
"Agent Walker and Raffson I presume?"
"Yes! It"s us, to whom do I have the pleasure of addressing dear Madam?"
"I know she"s cute, but calm down!"
Spencer had been divorced for 2 years and intended to benefit from it, this often led him to jump on all women of around his age.
Lana criticized him, but on this point they were similar.
If the liaison agent was a man whom she finds at her taste, she would be in the same state.
"Agent Lorence, nice to meet you two. My car is parked there, follow me."
She showed them an unmarked FBI car, a black sedan. Spencer hurried up to the pa.s.senger seat as soon as Agent Lorence unlocked the doors.
The journey promised to be long to their destination and the extremely clumsy method of seduction of Spencer was becoming annoying for everyone.
"I don"t know San Francisco at all, would you like to show me around? Why not tonight for example?"
Seeing Agent Lorence"s face full of distress in his rearview mirror, Lana decided to come to his rescue.
"Are you married agent Lorence?"
The embarra.s.sment in Agent Lorence"s gaze turned to recognition.
"It"s planned as soon as the gay marriage takes effect in California, it"s planned for next year apparently. We"re waiting for this with my wife, we"ve been together now for more than 20 years now."
"Ahahah! You ran into a lesbian! You know how to choose them."
The disappointment was visible on his face, for the first time since he got into the car he had nothing to say.
"But we don"t complain, we"ve never really had a problem living normally here. San Francisco is a very progressive city you know, Agent Walker."
The m.u.f.fled laughter in which Lana was in the back seat of the car stopped short when she saw the wink full of innuendo sent to her by agent Lorence.
"Oh..."
"Cough cough... Let"s go back to the investigation. What can you tell us about the kid?"
"Ah... Can you believe it? He was found by a container transporter who heard him knock on the door of one of them at the port. He hadn"t eaten and drink for a while, he must have been in it for several days."
"He may be affiliated with a detestable person, but I pity him."
"Poor kid... I had already read that in the report, however the source of the container wasn"t indicated, do you know more about this?"
"No, it was the first thing we looked at when we took the affair back from the police. We don"t know who, but it"s obvious that someone has erased the traces of his route, we just know from which port the container left to reach San Francis...o...b..t before that, nothing."
Spencer had found the courage to speak again.
"How did you know who it was? Until now, we didn"t even know that Sogorov had children."
"It"s simple, he said it as soon as the police found him and he had something to convince us."
"Another reason for our coming here."
"These famous doc.u.ments he had on him?"
"Right, but before you rejoice, know that you won"t get anything overwhelming with these doc.u.ments."
"Huh, how that?"
"If the doc.u.ments were enough to resolve our affair, we wouldn"t be there."
"Haven"t you read the files we send you Agent Raffson? I hope you are better informed, agent Walker."
"Spencer, it was said in the report that the most important tracks from these doc.u.ments aren"t usable."
"Then why are we here?"
"If you are there it"s because he says he has the rest of the informations we need and that he wants to negotiate."
"Negotiate? Are you serious? Last time I check he was 10 years old."
"Ah ah ah! I already like that kid."
"Be careful when you will be with him, he is not a kid like the others. When we came to pick him up at the port to go take him to the interrogation room this little motherf.u.c.ker bit my partner."
"Directly from the port to the interrogation room."
Looking in his rearview mirror, Agent Lorence saw that the jovial expression that hadn"t left Lana since their meeting had been replaced by a tense smile.
"Is something wrong, Agent Walker?"
"You tell me, Agent Lorence. You seem to have forgotten to tell me about the time when you took this child to the hospital."
Lana couldn"t bring herself to believe that people who were supposed to represent justice could treat a child who was guilty only of being part of an abject family as a criminal.
"I..."
"What you did is unspeakable, I don"t want to hear anything from you until we arrive. I can only advise you too much that it should be as soon as possible, I don"t know if I could contain my anger any longer."
She was first shocked that an officer 20 years younger than her allowed herself to speak to her like this.
Then, thinking about the inhumanity that she and her colleagues had indeed shown and seeing a vein swell on Lana"s forehead, she pulled out her emergency lights so that the cars in front of her would give way and speed up.
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A child looking pitiful and dirty and a man dressed in black with a recent bandage on his right hand were facing each other.
They were in a large room, also entirely black, with a tinted plexigla.s.s window integrated into the wall behind the man in black.
The child was tied to the table by handcuffs barely small enough to restrict him, and before him was a cardboard bag with food that he couldn"t reach.
"You can play the tough guy as long as you want, we have all the time. I give you water so that you don"t die but for the moment nothing forces me to give you food. All you have to do is talk."
The child didn"t seem at all impressed by what he was told, for him, sooner or later it would be they who would crack and this although his belly hasn"t stopped gurgling for several days.
"You know, that can take several weeks before starving to death? I think I can keep up another 1 or 2 weeks."
Psychologically, the closest to imploding was the man in black.
Violence was prohibited during interrogations, but there, he was really tempted to use it.
"Do you think you are so important that we won"t let you starve? Think about who you are and you will understand why what you are asking is ridiculous!"
Previously, they had tried to deceive the child by promising him what he asked for with false official doc.u.ments.
They didn"t understand who they were dealing with until he demanded the a.s.sistance of a lawyer to recognize the authenticity of the doc.u.ment and a copy of the recording of the interrogation room.
The only thing he hadn"t tried with him was the violence and he knew no one was behind the plexigla.s.s window to see him do it.
Before he could even try anything, a woman stormed in the interrogation room.
"Get out of here! I"ll take care of him!"
With the door open, he saw his partner waiting outside with another agent he didn"t know.
"What the h.e.l.l is this, Jessica?!"
"Don"t argue and go out Murphy. I"ll explain it to you."
He got up from his seat, after all, he was not unhappy that someone else was taking care of this kid.
He was going to go out when the woman called him.
"Pa.s.s me the keys to his f.u.c.king handcuffs!"
She might be 6 or 7 inches shorter than him in size, but he felt that it was better not to take the risk of angering her further and gave her the keys without arguing.
There were only Lana and the child in the interrogation room now.
"I can"t believe these a.s.sholes used food deprivation to torture you! Besides that, they didn"t even let you take a lawyer! Don"t move."
A tinge of surprise and respect could be seen in his eyes at the sight of this woman who had just defended her.
She approached him and took off his handcuffs, she expected him to throw himself on the bag which was now at hand, but he did nothing.
"What"s going on with you? You can eat, go ahead."
"No."
She couldn"t believe her ears.
"What kind of kid is going on a hunger strike voluntarily?"
"Eating is not urgent for me, I want to solve my problem first."
"His English is perfect... It almost looks like he comes from an English speaking country."
"Don"t play fools, eat, we"ll have plenty of time to talk about it while you do it."
"I thought you were different, but it looks like you are looking to save time like all the other agents who have spoken to me during the past 4 days."
"Ah-ah! You have a lot more in common with your father than I thought."
By telling him that, she wanted to see his reaction to get an idea of their relationships.
She didn"t expect to provoke such a reaction in him.
"Never compare me to this person."
"He looks at me like I"m the worst person in the world, it"s not a hatred that can be simulated."
"I"m sorry. I was told you wanted to negotiate, what do you want?"
"His informations are invaluable, what can give them so much trouble?"
"My grandfather"s last wish was for me to come here and live in a normal family. That"s all I want."
"I understand why they couldn"t agree."
"It"s impossible... You would endanger the family you will be in if we did this. The only thing we can do is change your ident.i.ty and protect you, but your life will be anything but normal."
Oddly, the child smiled at her.
"At least you"re honest, thank you. But it"s either that or nothing, sorry."
"He"s not a bad boy, he just had no luck in life... No one will ever reach out to him because of his father."
"Are you alright Madam?"
"It"s not inevitable, maybe I can help him."
"Lazar?"
"Yes."
"I am a single woman and I live in a messy apartment in downtown Boston..."
"Where are you going with this?"
"I spend most of my free time playing video games or hitting bars with my friends..."
"Uh..."
"Anyway, what I want to tell you is that I"m far from perfect and that I would probably make a horrible mother..."
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Behind the plexigla.s.s window, Spencer was beginning to fear what Lana was going to say.
Agent Murphy and Lorence were already convinced of Lana"s madness, but there she was reaching new heights.
"Is that your partner?"
"Oh shut the f.u.c.k up! It"s difficult enough like that!"
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Lana had finished her monologue on all the reasons she was anything but responsible.
"This is the best I can offer you. I can adopt you and sign a paper within the hour declaring that you are my son, you can live an almost normal life with me. But so that they let you go and to keep you safe, you have to tell them everything you know."
He didn"t answer and had an odd expression on his face, which allowed Lana to realize all the absurdity of what she had just said.
"Uhhh... Sorry, I should never have said..."
"It looks fine to me."
She hadn"t expected this response at all.
"What!"
"You are weird, but you are also a good person, that"s fine with me."
He threw himself on one of the tuna sandwiches in the bag. Lana took this for a sign that he trusted her.
She had just realized the reality of the situation.
Her mother was wrong, she wasn"t going to end her life childless.
She turned to the plexigla.s.s window and started to shed tears.
"SPENCER! CALL THE ADOPTION SERVICE! I"M GOING TO BE A MOM!"
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"d.a.m.n! What do we pa.s.s for Lana!"
"Are you all like that in Boston?"
"We don"t kidnap children at least!"