"Just about half an hour ago, a teenager allegedly set off a bomb in the Mall of America."
The blue-eyed Caucasian newscaster stands in front the taped off rubble of what was one of the world's largest shopping centers.
"The bomb appears to have used an advanced, custom built trigger which, experts say, indicates that the teen may have had accomplices. Witnesses on site claim that local law enforcement personnel, coordinated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, evacuated the site a full hour before the explosion. Agents from the Department of Homeland Security have declined to comment on their source of information."
The on-site anchor pauses for a moment. Her eyebrows furrow as her eyes tilt down, head cocked slightly as if listening to a bird on her left shoulder. Storm grey eyes focus on the camera again. "This just in: our source has confirmed that besides the teen fatality, rescue workers report not a single casualty. A joint taskforce has been set up to investigate this event and the alleged terrorist who is at yet unnamed. We'll keep you updated with any developments"
The scene changes from the caved in left wing of the Mall of America to a minimalist newsroom.
"Thanks Tammy, let's keep our fingers crossed."
The anchorman, a well-aged African American with dignified wings of grey in his hair, turns from the onscreen image of Tammy and towards a pale man in a dark blue business suit.
Blue business suit has a patrician look and a comb over (if one could say that of a few brave strands of hair holding the fort). His thin lips and grey eyes are pinched, as if to tell viewers that he is enraged with the attack but saddened at the single youth casualty. The total effect ends up making him look rather constipated.
...
The slightly curved cathode ray tube screen of the antique TV suddenly darkens, leaving an after-image of four-pointed brightness on a dark grey background.
"I suppose we have you to thank for that?" a male voice rumbles in a gravelly baritone.
"I suppose you do." an airy female voice replies.
Gravelly baritone turns from the television screen. He has olive skin, an inheritance from Mediterranean ancestors. Stocky, with an immaculately groomed look and hints of grey peppered in his glossy black hair and trimmed beard, he stands out from the other FBI agents in the room. There's a relaxed wariness in movements, a calm poise of assumed command and control.
He now gazes across the surface of sturdy leather-top writing desk stacked, somewhat haphazardly, with files and loose sheets. His eyes settle on the African child sitting behind it.
The girl's hair is close cut, like a boy's. Tiny silver stud earrings and a plastic Mickey Mouse watch are the only adornments she wears. Her eyes are her most arresting feature, large and dark liquid brown. Closer inspection reveals a slight scar on her lower lip, most likely from an old injury. She sits behind the desk as if she belongs there.
My desk. He reminds himself. She's just sitting behind it.
This is merely new strange.
"So Miss Boateng..."
"Call me Yaa".
She smiles, not at him, but at the blinds of the office towards which she now stares as if blind, eyes slightly glazed over. Her smile is not a mocking sort of smile, it's just a middling sort; amusement just on the edge of humor.
Without pausing she continues in a steady accent; few rises and falls and emphases on leading syllables.
"Did you know, Agent Fontaine, that people spend a majority of their days dreaming?"
Her 'th' sounds more like a soft 'd' than the proper non-sibilant fricative of standard English pronunciation.
With a wry grin, he replies. "I don't believe that is correct Yaa, people only spend about eight hours of the day asleep, and very little of that time is actually spent dreaming."
And here I thought I was the one going to be asking the questions
"You're wrong." she says bluntly.
A hint of a frown creases her brow, and the glaze of a disturbingly blind stare flits across her eyes.
"On both counts"
Yaa finally turns towards Fontaine and the other two agents in the room.
"The agreement was that this conversation would be between just me and you."
Fontaine nods curtly.
Me and you instead of you and I. She's barely older than my niece.
As he turns to ask the extra agents to leave the room he doesn't notice her mutter, too low for him to hear, "Between just you and I."
****
Yaa gestures towards a seat on the visitor side of the desk.
"You may want to take a seat for this, Agent Fontaine."
He sits before realizing, to his chagrin, that a ten year old subtly ordered him to take a seat in his own office.
Precocious isn't she?
His face betrays his bemusement for a split second before he starts to speak.
"Let's go over the facts now shall we? At noon, two days ago, you called my private line with a tip off. You gave no proof of how you got your information and you somehow convinced me not to report my source to either Homeland Security or the Department of Defense."
He raises an eyebrow in silent question. She smiles back, dark brown eyes innocent as a predatory lamb, and shrugs.
"It was necessary ".
Fontaine clears his throat. His corners of his eye squint, just a tiny bit.
This is bloody odd, she's a ten year old but she speaks like she's sixty. She speaks like she's sixty but she looks like she's ten.
He puts his elbows on the desk, fingers steeped as he leans forward
"You told us the exact time and place it would happen and exactly how to manage it to ensure minimum fatalities. All this from across a thousand miles of ocean."
"What do you want to know first, how or why?" she asks.
"How"
Yaa mirrors the Agent's pose her stare bores back at his.
"I saw his dreams. Awake and asleep he obsessed over it . It was easy to know the when and where."
"You expect me to believe that?"
She sits up and looks at him levelly, "No, I came here to make you a believer...or wait, I made you get your government to bring me here." That innocent smile seems to have shifted from amused to mocking.
The desk is a dark reddish brown, a stained replica of rosewood. It now seems to act as a barrier. physical and psychological, between the dark skinned child sitting at one side and the stocky FBI agent on the other. Near the tall tempered glass windowpanes to the agent's right, stray motes of dust glow like flecks of gold in the light of a rather spectacular sunset.
She saw his dreams she said. She actually looks like she believes it. This is going to make for one hell of a report!
He unconsciously twists a white gold wedding band clockwise around his finger as he slowly leans back into the plastic seat.
Let's play along then shall we? There's probably a nugget of truth hidden in the fairy tales somewhere.
She doesn't give him room to change tack. She leads in, with a reasonable voice, "I expect you to doubt Mr. Fontaine, but I do not have time for it. The Rising approaches and I'll need you and the Bureau to support our actions within North America..."
She pauses briefly and sighs pitifully, "Today would have been your anniversary. The one most people don't know about. When you got married in Vegas, years before the real wedding."
"And you know this how?" Fontaine rumbles; velvet cool gaining a touch of fire. His fingers twitch slightly, as if to form a fist, before conscious effort relaxes them.
Ignoring him, she continues without missing a beat, "You love Denise now, but you still wear your wedding band as a shield. She knows your wife is dead, even though you haven't really told her. She's waiting for you admit it to yourself."
"I could tell you more." She continues, her voice now relentless and void of pity.
"I could say the reason you hate London, even though you went to English private schools and then Oxford University. I could mention the names of the two junior agents, out of the three who just left, who are... intimate. I could also tell you the reason you haven't reported them. I even know why each day at 5pm, even after five years without alcohol, you get a craving for a spot of bourbon..."
She pauses as if to let the silence soothe the moment. Unfortunately the over loud cooling fan of the ancient laptop on to one side of the desk fills the silence with its own, rather annoying, rattling monologue.
"Alcohol, was never a problem for you was it? It's what it represents, how it changed things on that day. She was good at many things, but she never really got the hang of driving a manual car did she?"
Comments (0)
See all