The Widow File

by S. G. Redling

  “They let me talk to her,” Ev said, her long legs covering ground quickly, forcing Dani to double-time alongside Choo-Choo. “She’s not hurt, thank God, and she says they’ll make the trade. She was glad we checked the drive. Good call on that. She said she was really proud of me, keeping both of you safe. She said I had surpassed her expectations.” Choo-Choo squeezed Dani’s arm against his side and Dani squeezed back. Ev was not getting any less frightening as she ranted.

  “Where are we headed?” Dani asked, not that she had any choice but to follow.

  “The Pacific side of the World War Two Memorial. It’s a standard Stringer drop point. Kind of fitting tonight, don’t you think?” Ev noticed their silence. “Heroes? People fighting for the American way?” Choo-Choo’s eyes widened and Dani squeezed his arm. Ev dismissed them with a grunt. “We meet at the wall, under the American Samoa wreath. Maureen says we’ll see them once we get there. I give her the drive, she passes it on, and we all walk away.”

  “You can’t believe that, Ev.” Dani couldn’t hold her tongue. “They killed everyone we work with. They blew up our building. You think they’re just going to let us walk away?”

  Ev bared her teeth in an ugly grin. “No, I don’t. That is, they won’t until we don’t give them a choice. Maureen gave me the code.”

  “The code?” Choo-Choo asked.

  “Yep, the code we worked out in case something like this ever happened. She said in our line of work it was crucial to have a code in place in case a hostage situation occurred. It isn’t unlikely, considering Maureen’s position.” Ev steered them through Scott Circle onto Sixteenth Street. Dani wished she’d worn fewer layers. This near-run had her sweating.

  “She gave the signal that said she’ll have people in place.” Ev’s breath showed no signs of struggling from their fast walk. “We’re not alone out here. These sons of bitches are going to regret ever trying to fuck with us. Come on, let’s pick up the pace.”

  By the time they made it to Lafayette Park, Dani’s legs ached with fatigue and her eyes burned with the need to close them. The White House shimmered under the misted lights and from the corners of her eyes she saw flickers and flashes of light. Soft patches of fog lingered around bushes and trees and the rain made the black streets glossy when the occasional headlight shone on them. She clung to Choo-Choo, grateful for his solidity.

  It took what felt like an hour to cross the pedestrian-only plaza, the Eisenhower Executive Office Building seeming to stretch on for miles. Turning the corner onto Seventeenth Street, she saw the Washington Monument glowing white and tall. It looked close but Dani knew it was an illusion. The stomp-stomp-stomp of their feet hypnotized her so that by the time they made it to the gentle sloping steps of the World War II Memorial, Dani had almost forgotten what they’d come for.

  The memorial spread the length of a football field, and was ringed with tall columns etched with the names of states and U.S territories. Broad steps opened up in the center of the wall along which they walked and led down to a shallow fountain lit from below. Dani knew that if they went down the steps, they would be invisible from the street. She also knew that if they went down those steps, despite their easy shallow slope, she would never have the energy to walk back up. As it was, the soft gurgling of the fountain and the low, broad marble walls they stopped beside made her want to lie down, let the rain wash over her, and forget everything she had already pushed to the back of her mind.

  “There’s the van.”

  That snapped her out of it. Past the edge of the memorial, behind the column recognizing those veterans who had fought in the Pacific, a road snaked around a visitors’ center and pulled to the curb sat a black, windowless van.

  Choo-Choo whispered, “At least they’re sticking to form.”

  Dani drew back. “I’m not getting into that van.” Choo-Choo stood with her.

  Ev marched several paces ahead before she caught what Dani had said and spun back. “What the hell do you mean you’re not getting in? The hell you’re not.”

  “The hell I am. You think I’m just going to climb into a black van with a CIA file? That’s your plan, Ev? Don’t you think you’d want to check and see if Mrs. O’Donnell is okay?”

  “She told me to get us into the van.”

  “She told you?” Choo-Choo asked. “Or the people who took her told you?”

  Ev scowled at him, whispering even though there was nobody in sight. “She told me. She told me the deal was made. Maureen told me to get into the van and she gave me the code that said the situation is being taken care of. She has a plan.”

  “You know what?” Dani pulled her arm free from Choo-Choo’s and stomped to the corner where the marble walls of the memorial met in an L. She took a second to look over the wall, down at the long fountain, the lights playing off the bubbling water making her dizzy, and turned back to Ev. “I’ve spent the whole day running from other people’s plans. I’m tired.” She knew she sounded petulant and didn’t care. Her legs and feet ached from exhaustion and the bags around her neck seemed to weigh a hundred pounds each. “I’m not taking another step until I see Mrs. O’Donnell and I get a guarantee that Choo-Choo and I walk away from this.”

  “You’re in no position to demand anything!”

  Dani hopped up onto the lower of the abutted walls and swung her feet. “Well, unless you’re going to pull out your gun and shoot me right here, I’m not moving.” At that moment, with the weight off her feet, Dani probably wouldn’t have moved even if she had pulled out a gun. Choo-Choo smiled and strolled over to join her. The casualness of their refusal seemed to irritate Evelyn even more. She huffed and stomped her foot, then wheeled away on her own toward the van.

  “If you two screw this up,” she yelled back at them, “I swear I’ll kill you. It must be nice to be so cavalry with someone else’s life!”

  Dani dropped her chin to her chest. “Cavalier.” She heard Choo-Choo giggle. “The word you’re looking for is ‘cavalier.’”

  Dani felt herself drawn into Choo-Choo’s growing laughter. “Oh my God,” he said softly, his hands over his face. “‘Cavalry.’ Oh my God. All this time I thought she was enigmatic. Turns out she was just stupid.” They leaned against each other, shoulders shaking as nervous exhaustion turned into shuddering giggles for the second time that night. Dissociation, Dani thought, one of the long-term effects of stress. The laughter died out, bone weariness flooding back in, and the two leaned more heavily against each other.

  Dani rubbed her eyes; even her knuckles ached in the cold. The rain and mist played tricks on her mind, shadows appearing to jump and dart while traces of white flickered on the edges of her vision. She closed her eyes and leaned in to rest her head on Choo-Choo’s shoulder—a mistake, she knew, because she could feel sleep rushing in. “What are we doing?”

  “Fuck if I know,” he answered. “Ev is insane but it doesn’t mean she’s wrong. I keep running it over and over in my head and I keep coming back to the same place. You got the job after applying to the Feds. Grandfather pulled strings with his government cronies to get me in. I think we work for the CIA. I think Rasmund is a front for the CIA.”

  “But that’s illegal, isn’t it?”

  He patted her head where it rested against him. “Don’t be as dumb as Ev. Most of what the CIA does is illegal. And maybe it’s not even the CIA. Maybe it’s the NSA or some other A that doesn’t have letterhead or a tab in the Appropriations Committee binder. What difference does it make? Whoever it is, they’ve got the power to make people disappear.” She knew that information should probably make her panic but Choo-Choo’s shoulder was so warm and solid and it felt so good to close her eyes. “I bet Hickman found out what was going on downstairs. I bet he stole the file. He was a good man.”

  “You’re a good man.”

  “So are you.”

  Dani giggled and dragged herself back up into sitting position. She ran her fingers through his rain-darkened hair, pushing it behind his ear.
“You really are a good man. You could have left me a dozen times today. You didn’t have to be involved. You could have run but you didn’t. You stayed with me and you helped me.”

  “We helped each other. I guess that makes us real friends then, right?”

  “I guess so.”

  He stared at her for a moment. “I hope this isn’t the last day we get to enjoy it.”

  “We’re about to find out.” She nodded when she heard a car door slam. Ev headed back up the sidewalk toward them, Mrs. O’Donnell at her side. The older woman looked as regal and intimidating as ever, wrapped in a long black coat. Dani kept her voice low. “It looks like being kidnapped agrees with her.” Choo-Choo made a noise of agreement and helped Dani jump down from the wall.

  “I’m glad to see you two are okay,” Mrs. O’Donnell said. “I should have known if anyone was going to make it out alive it would be you two. You’re both very resourceful, aren’t you?”

  “Don’t forget Ev,” Dani said. “She made it out too. She’s no slouch.”

  “Of course.” Mrs. O’Donnell gave the redhead a tight smile and Ev smiled shyly, ducking her head. “Evelyn tells me you’ve seen the file. Did you make any copies?”

  “No,” they answered together.

  “Evelyn also tells me you don’t wish to get into the van. Is this true?”

  “It is.” Dani stood tall, though leaning against Choo-Choo to feel his support. “We’d like to leave. Just go away.”

  “It really isn’t safe. The people who took me will look for you.”

  “We’ll take our chances.”

  Mrs. O’Donnell nodded, her eyes toward the ground. When she looked up, she sighed. “Why does everything have to be so difficult? Evelyn, may I have your gun please?” Ev jumped at her name, hurrying to pull her weapon for the woman. Mrs. O’Donnell turned back to Dani and Choo-Choo. “I’m going to ask you again, did you copy the file?”

  “I checked,” Ev said. “There were no copies.”

  “You checked?” Mrs. O’Donnell rubbed her thumb over the younger woman’s cheek. Ev tilted her head into the touch. “Sweet Evelyn, do you trust me?”

  “Of course. With everything.”

  “I’m glad. Do you have a suppressor?” Ev shoved her hand into her pocket and pulled out a long, fat cylinder. Mrs. O’Donnell smiled at her and screwed the suppressor to the end of the gun. “Good girl. Now close your eyes.”

  Dani felt Choo-Choo lean forward as she did, not believing what they saw. Evelyn stood still, eyes closed, tilting toward the woman’s touch, her face a picture of bliss. Mrs. O’Donnell’s other black-gloved hand brought the pistol up under Ev’s chin. Dani wanted to scream, to demand she stop, but couldn’t make the words form. Even when the muzzle of the gun touched the soft skin under Ev’s chin, the young woman didn’t open her eyes. Dani closed her eyes at the spray of red that exploded from Ev’s skull.

  The body dropped backward, sprawled before Mrs. O’Donnell like a rug spreading itself on the pavement. Choo-Choo started to pull Dani to the side but Mrs. O’Donnell stopped them.

  “Ah-ah-ah,” she scolded, waving the gun in their direction. “None of that. I assure you, I am the least capable of the marksmen drawing down on you right now.”

  Dani stared at the horrible scene before her. “She loved you.”

  “I know. I loved her too. In my way. Evelyn was very loyal. That is a rare quality these days. Believe me, I appreciated it.”

  “So you shot her.”

  “I spared her.”

  “That was big of you,” Choo-Choo said.

  “Evelyn was many things,” Mrs. O’Donnell continued, “but a genius wasn’t one of them. She said she was certain you didn’t copy the Widow File even though you saw it. I assume you understand what you saw?” When they said nothing, she nodded again. “Then I can also assume you did copy the file. I want that copy.” She raised the gun toward them. “Where is it?”

  Dani lifted her messenger bag from her shoulder, slipping the strap over her head and tossing the bag onto the ground. “Here.”

  Mrs. O’Donnell smiled. “Well now we know two things. One, you did copy the file, and two, we know one place it’s not. Let’s try this again.”

  “What are you going to do?” Choo-Choo asked. “You’re going to kill us? Make us disappear? You really think you can make a dozen people who all work at the same place just disappear in one day and nobody is going to notice? I can see Ev—she made it pretty clear she doesn’t have anyone—but I’m not some runaway junkie from nowhere.” His voice grew stronger as he spoke and he stepped forward. “I am Sinclair Charbaneaux. My family doesn’t slide under the radar, and they don’t take payoffs. How are you going to make me disappear?”

  Mrs. O’Donnell chuckled. “My, but you have a high opinion of yourself. What makes you think you haven’t already disappeared? Have you seen your passport lately? Talked to anyone in your family? Hmm?” She watched him watch her. “Do you really think you got the job because you’re a Charbaneaux? That got you the interview. You got the job because, like everyone you worked with, you are erasable.

  “We took the liberty of intercepting communication with your family. You obviously didn’t notice. Not quite the favorite son, eh? Even as we speak your family thinks you’re in the Seychelles on a party yacht. You gave your notice weeks ago. Naturally, I phoned your grandfather myself to convey my concerns. It seems that since then you’ve sent quite a few disjointed e-mails and texts explaining your choices, your desires, and your complete unwillingness to follow in your family’s footsteps.”

  Her smile was ugly. “Would you like to know what your father told me two days ago? It seems he’s given up the search for you. He knows how elusive you can be when pursuing your pleasures. How did he put it? ‘I don’t want to find him with a needle in his arm and a dick up his ass.’ That was the spirit of it at least.”

  Choo-Choo swayed where he stood. Dani could see the words hitting him like stones. “And you?” Mrs. O’Donnell smirked as Dani pulled Choo-Choo closer to her. “We had to search for someone to leave a trail with for you. Do you even have any family? All we had to do was break up with Ben by text, tell him you were leaving town and never wanted to hear from him again. He wanted to know if he could get his shirts back. You two really know how to knit a tight circle, don’t you?”

  “Why?” Dani asked. “Why are you doing this?”

  “This?” Mrs. O’Donnell waved the gun. “This is the price of power, the price of justice. It’s fitting that it happens here, at this memorial that honors those men and women who understood what it is to sacrifice, to make difficult moral choices for the higher good.

  “The world is at war once again. The entire world, not just the United States.” Mrs. O’Donnell’s voice swelled with emotion. “There is no one front, no one enemy. We are facing men and women who are willing to strap bombs to their children and send them onto crowded buses and into busy cafés. And what are we told to do? We’re told to fight with honor.”

  She jabbed the gun at them. “Let me tell you what honor gets you. Honor and justice get you smoldering embassies and planes shot out of the sky. Even as we speak there is an investigation into extraordinary rendition. They don’t want us exporting our interrogations, yet God forbid we perform them domestically. People are horrified to find out that the civilized world still relies on torture to retrieve information to keep people safe. They seem to think the men we interrogate, men who were raised like animals in hovels, will respond to the threat of jail time. That we should give them backrubs and an education and a cup of warm cocoa and they’ll roll over on their terrorist brothers and hand us the information we need to keep the world safe.”

  She drew herself up to her full, imposing height. “It doesn’t work that way.”

  “Wow,” Choo-Choo said, clapping slowly. “That’s quite a speech. Been practicing?”

  “You would sneer at it, you silly, useless boy. You’re a parasite, a gluttonous eavesdroppe
r who contributes nothing to the world. But I defend you anyway.”

  “By killing me?”

  She closed her eyes as if overwhelmed by the enormity of his stupidity. “I am not killing you. You are being killed by Hickman and the Oversight Committee and the investigators and the weak-minded who insist we keep them safe but insist we hide the deeds. Your death comes at the hands of terrified children hiding under the covers and pretending there is no monster underneath the bed.”

  She looked toward the Washington Monument. “Do you think I want to do this? Do you think I relish having to erase a decade of my work? I’ve given my life to build Rasmund and now I have to oversee the eradication of every nut and bolt.”

  “And person,” Dani said.

  “Yes, and every person. All of it because Hickman stuck his nose in where it didn’t belong and what he found scared him. He was a coward and now all my work is being erased.”

  Choo-Choo gave a derisive snort. “I notice you’re not being erased.”

  “No, I’m not.” Mrs. O’Donnell smiled. “And I’m not done fighting. They can force me to erase my work but they cannot erase my cause.”

  “You’re the third person today,” Dani said, stepping forward, “who has said they’re going to kill me. The third today. That’s got to be a record, right? Do you know what makes Evelyn better than any of you? Poor sad crazy Evelyn? At least when she said she was going to kill me, she took credit for it. She owned it. She didn’t pass it off as some holy obligation coming from God himself. She was willing to pull the trigger and willing to own it. She didn’t need all this moral rationalizing pseudo-patriotic bullshit. You are nothing but bullshit.”