Mina Cortez: From Bouquets to Bullets (7 page)

At the request, Mina picked up on that hint
of aluminum that she was beginning to associate with her chip
kicking in. The name of the clinic triggered five different routes
to get there, along with the uses of each route. One was fastest.
Another let her avoid cameras. One was only accessible by foot or
bicycle at several points. Eventually, it settled on a combination
of the address, and knowledge of precisely whom to talk to and what
to say to be allowed into the elevator to the basement.

“Training facilities for tomorrow are in the
clinic basement. It's one of several safehouses we've got available
to us in the city.” Park continued outlining the usual plan for
getting her to such places. She'd get a call for delivery to any of
a number of locations at the far end of the usual 'biking range,'
or a series of closer deliveries. Either way would justify a couple
of hours. Her tracking comm implant had already been rigged so that
she could appear to be anywhere she wanted within the region,
should her parents check up on her progress, or if Miko were
looking for her.

“Fortunately, the whole 'medical
complications' excuse that's covering for you here now should
prevent your parents being too surprised, these next couple days,
if you come back more out of breath, or don't quite hide the
stiffness properly when you walk.”

“Oh, that doesn't sound ominous,” Mina
remarked ironically at the implication for her initial physical
training.

“It didn't? I must not have said it right,”
he said with just a hint of a smile. “We're going to be thorough,
Cortez. From the sound of things, you're enough like your
grandfather that you wouldn't settle for less even if we would.”
More of a smile. “Which we won't.”

“So his car accident—”

Agent Park sighed slightly. “I think you can
guess what kind of 'car accident' it was, but that's also more of a
question for the Deputy Mayor. Today or a day like it, obviously,
not during everyday life.”

“This stuff and everyday life ... it's a
little bit of cognitive dissonance.”

“Yeah. The Inquisitor angle—” At Mina's
sudden eyebrows, Agent Park clarified with a sheepish gesture. “The
organization, 'this stuff'—it will bring some big cases. Sometimes
very big: international crime syndicates, black marketeers, and
human trafficking. Most of the time, though, I'm a cop. You're a
florist.”

Mina nodded. But the big stuff colored
everything else, really. Even deliveries would be part of her
chance to do something important. Which reminded her. “The Director
mentioned a first case. What is it?”

Agent Park sighed. “That's not really a
question for me either,” he answered, before urging her towards her
next meeting before she inquired further.

There was a lot she was still confused about,
but she was feeling better about the situation in general.
Suspicions about the veracity of any of this cropped up now and
then, but her earlier encounter with the Director amidst a police
investigation helped. She was able to confirm pretty easily that
they were at the FBI building. Likewise, while still uneasy with
being kidnapped at all, she was positive that anyone able to kidnap
someone from the chipping center had to have some pretty high level
clearance.

Now, they were willingly dragging her before
one of the city's longest-serving officials. While it was further
evidence the 'secret police' were legitimate, that meeting still
made her nervous. She was pretty sure she wasn't on the Deputy
Mayor's list of favorites after their meeting at Scott's party.
Just standing in front of the door, that growing comfort from Agent
Park's easygoing frankness suddenly dissipated.

* * * *

Whatever she was expecting, it wasn't the
friendly greeting she received. The Deputy Mayor met her at the
door. The big man Mina had seen at the party was settled onto a
couch to one side of the office, along with a much smaller Japanese
man in a similar suit. Where before, she had had to wait for the
hint of gun oil to guess at the man's being armed, now tiny
telltale signs raced through her brain, sizing both men up for
armament, combat readiness and state of alertness, and that was
with little beyond a cursory glance.

That glance was all she got before the Deputy
Mayor all but hugged her. “Mina! It's wonderful to see you again.
I'm so sorry for the awkwardness at the party. Despite all of your
marks, no one was quite certain about you as an agent. It's a lot
of tough criteria, and not very many people are suited for it.”

“So, are you one of the Secret Police?” Mina
asked. Her chip gave her the all clear on talking to the woman, at
least.

“Oh, no. At least not as an agent. I'm a
political liaison. While I have a lot of responsibilities, one of
the big ones, at least as concerns your organization, is to make
sure that the city, state, and federal authorities aren't in your
way, and coordinate with you when necessary.”

Mina blinked a couple times. “Federal? So ...
where, exactly, do we rank compared to the FBI? The Director
mentioned multinational work.”

The Deputy Mayor nodded. “You'll work with
select agents sometimes, if they get sufficient clearance to know
that some of you are undercover, though they never know precisely
who you're undercover with.” Mina could sympathize. Miss Lasko
continued. “Please come and have a seat, and I'll give you the
standard history lesson.”

Mina started towards the desk. “You do this a
lot, um, Ma'am?”

“Please, Mina, call me Deborah,” she said,
then shook her head. “Not as much as I used to. Certainly not as
much as my predecessor. The role of your organization has been
steadily decreasing with each generation.” she explained, as she
moved to the other side of the desk.

“So there used to be more than ... what, four
of us in the city?” Mina checked, trying to get a sense of what
size organization she was a part of.

She nodded. “In your grandfather's day, there
were quite a few just in Seattle. Now, there are, yes, less than
half a dozen normal agents, a few contacts who know part of the
story, and a few emergency contacts.

The allied governments are paying a lot of
money for each fully chipped agent to be doing another job. In some
cases, where they're still doing police or security work, the
politicians who know what's going on are more easily convinced that
it's still a worthwhile investment.

Police have strict limitations that private
investigators don't, though, and then there's all the delivery
people, people who run import/export companies, translators,
private chefs, wine tasters, and others whose jobs give them
excuses to end up in sensitive places or getting close to just the
right people. Instead of grasping that, the paper-pushers just see
expensive chips and salaries for everyday jobs and don't want any
more.”

Mina settled in, considering the Deputy
Mayor. “So ... my organization, the secret police, the
....Inquisition? We work with the FBI, but we're not part of them.
It's been around since my grandfather, but ... I'm still missing a
lot of details here. What organization am I working for,
exactly?”

The Deputy Mayor nodded. “Ultimately, you're
the Allied Investigative Agency, or AIA. A multinational
organization with broad investigative powers.

“I'm not an expert on that sort of thing,”
Mina said carefully, “But aren't limits actually a good thing for
... secret police?”

“I know the term often makes for images of
brute squads, people disappearing in the middle of the night and
Big Brother listening in on every word... ” Deborah Lasko smiled,
her hands in a 'but wait' style of gesture. “This organization is
tied to no one country or regime, does not support or oppose any
political party, and only gets involved with high profile organized
crime and similar concerns. The program only selects agents with
psych profiles with the highest scores as far as personal integrity
and responsibility.”

Mina managed a sheepish smile. It was a
little flattering, certainly. Some of the commentary still made her
uneasy, but she was glad to hear that there was at least some kind
of checks in place.

“Historically, the AIA have always tried to
intrude on the day-to-day lives of most people as little as
possible, aside from keeping them safer from multinational cartels
and threats on a similar scale.”

“Historically?” Mina was glad for the
opening.

Miss Lasko settled back in her chair a bit,
Mina taking her easy smile as approval of the general line of
thought. “It started after the Decimation Event. After the
supervolcano in the American Midwest, there was almost no sunlight
for a year and a half. Earthquakes, floods, armies of refugees. No
one was prepared for a disaster on that scale. Uncontaminated
drinking water was going for fine wine prices in some regions.
Survival necessitated international cooperation on a massive scale.
Problem was, it took a lot of people a long time to realize it.
Wars broke out—everyone wanted organization to be on their terms.
Eventually, though, there were enough food riots, coups, and real
threats that the bullying and flag-waving stopped and negotiation
started.”

Mina listened and nodded. “But those were
trade and aid agreements, to get food and whatever from wherever
anyone found sunlight or new farming stuff. How did ...?”

“The problem afterwards was simply that no
one trusted each other. The United States and China, in particular,
had a great deal of trouble dealing with each other on a diplomatic
basis. Combined with rampant organized crime and the black market
having boomed, and the whole process threatened to fall apart.”

Mina reflected that Miko would probably have
some interesting commentary on all this. She decided it was best
not to ponder any of this coming up to Miko, and continued
listening.

“England managed to bring together a number
of nations with reasonably good diplomatic relations. The purpose
of the AIA was to monitor some of the heavy international travel
and trade for signs of black marketeers, enemy spies, and signs
that other nations weren't holding up their end of the deal. Unlike
most of the security agencies who worked within only one nation,
the agents were given broad rights across the alliance. There were
no central offices, no acknowledgment that the organization
existed, or anything for the political machine to latch onto and
start legislating. There were abuses of power. The AIA's early
history was occasionally ugly, and not that dissimilar to that of
most top-secret programs with little limitation on their
power.”

Mina was a little shocked that the woman so
readily admitted the abuses. She wasn't whitewashing the AIA's
history, and she definitely didn't seem to be glorifying the United
States' role in things. Miss Lasko continued to surprise her. She
nodded her understanding, gesturing for the Deputy Mayor ...
Deborah ... to continue.

“But the AIA eventually instituted strict
rules for the recruitment of agents based upon psychological
profiles. Worked right alongside the evolution of chipping, really.
The world was in desperate need of more doctors and farmers, fast.
Various agencies, meanwhile, needed loyal agents who were up to
their high standards. At that point, the AIA had people everywhere,
particularly among the crowds of refugees, merchants, and aid
workers. With a more responsible AIA hiring policy, the abuses of
power dropped drastically. The less people had to worry about the
secret police, the less anyone wanted to believe in such an
unpleasant-sounding thing.”

“So they ... disappeared into
skepticism?”

“Pretty much. They adopted a strict policy of
not interfering in anything that didn't strictly follow the
organization's mandates, because that was what resulted in them
getting the most funding and freedom to do their jobs in those
cases where they were necessary. People like me started being hired
on, not to be agents, but to handle the bureaucracy so agents
didn't have to. We took jobs in Parks and Rec so that we could go
to the agents,” Miss Lasko grinned a bit. “And evidence of
conspiracy to enforce the law became harder and harder to
find.”

Mina mirrored the slight grin at the last
part, finally relaxing back in her chair a little.

“Your grandfather was pretty famous in
certain circles,” Deborah said. “Tommy Escalante started out as a
delivery boy. Organized crime figures still have flowers at the
funerals and weddings. He got very good at just not drawing much
attention. For a while, there was a lot of hope that his daughter
would go into the real family business ... well, from a lot of
people other than your grandfather. He was pretty happy the day she
ended up a florist for real.”

Mina remembered her grandfather from her
youth as a man old before his time, moving around on a cane with
difficulty. What happened to his legs was attributed to a car
accident, but not the one in which Carmen Escalante, now Cortez,
had lost her mother. She recalled her earliest days at the flower
shop, before her parents took over fully. They'd been doing a lot
of the work for some time anyway. Her increasingly immobile
grandfather's real contribution by then was the web of contacts
he'd built up. He knew everyone, remembered everyone, had a kind
word and a few questions as to health of family or the latest
gossip for everyone who came into the shop. As soon as the shop
closed, he was much quieter. Closed and private even with family,
often citing exhaustion and wanting to just go home to rest, but
he'd always be there first the next morning. And now she was
hearing him like he was some secret soldier.

“After he got hurt in the line of duty,” the
Deputy Mayor continued, confirming Mina's most recent suspicion,
“he turned the shop into a safehouse. Agents would disappear there
for as long as needed, and leave in empty delivery trucks bound for
anywhere needed the next time inventory was dropped off. And then
there was his registry. There is an amazing amount of history and a
whole web of connections between people for the last fifty years in
the computers at your shop. It’s all in addresses and flower
inventories ... but it's still history. You'd be surprised how many
cases he got started just with noting who was a whole lot more
elaborate with their daughter's wedding or their mother's funeral
or their grandson's Chipping Day party than their income would
suggest. When your grandfather died, an awful lot of agents were
very relieved that he had such a network of friends, so they could
safely show up to pay respects. For obvious reasons, most agents
don't tend to end up with a lot of close friends.”