Express Male

The room in which they had all gathered was outfitted more comfortably than the interrogation room, but was by no means luxurious. In addition to a metal table and chairs, there was a long couch and two upholstered chairs. Along one wall was a kitchenette of sorts, with sink and refrigerator and countertops—upon which whattayaknow, were some doughnuts—and a coffeemaker.

That last was coughing out the final drops of a fresh brew, so Noah made his way over and removed the pot, filling a white ceramic mug. Over the speakers, he could hear Gestalt’s voice as she spoke to Lila, a low, indulgent, monotonous tone clearly meant to be soothing. It put Noah’s teeth on edge. He moved to stand next to the others, his attention fixed on the television. His boss, too, a man of indeterminate age and average everything else, had his attention focused entirely on the TV screen.

Gestalt had seated herself at the end of the table kitty-corner to Lila, a less adversarial position than Noah and Zorba had held sitting across from her. She’d removed her jacket and hung it over the back of the chair to further her image as relaxed and less administrative. Lila leaned back in her chair with her hands in her lap, eyeing the other woman warily, just as she had Noah and Zorba. But she didn’t seem to reek quite as much contempt for Gestalt. Yet.

“Do you mind if I call you Marnie?” Gestalt said.

Lila’s response was an irritated sound, followed by a weary, “No. It would be nice to hear my name. I just wish you were calling me that because you believe I am who I say I am and not just to humor me.”

“I do believe you.”

“Then why aren’t you doing something to see that I’m released?”

“Because it’s not up to me to make that decision.”

“Who are you people?” Lila demanded. She sounded genuinely confused, which Noah knew she wasn’t, and genuinely angry, which he was sure she was.

Gestalt smiled in the way a kindergarten teacher might smile at a new pupil. “We work for a branch of the U.S. government called the Office for Political Unity and Security.”

“I’ve never heard of you,” Lila muttered.

“That’s because we’re a small, top-secret organization,” Gestalt told her, clearly unconcerned about revealing information she shouldn’t be revealing to anyone outside the organization, since Lila wasn’t outside the organization, no matter how much she insisted she was. “We don’t want anyone to hear about us, so few people have.”

“Are you law enforcement or what?” Lila asked.

“We fall under the domain of Homeland Security, and we have many functions,” Gestalt said. “Essentially, OPUS tackles anything or anyone that poses a threat to national security, be they domestic or international. We are both collectors of information and enforcers of the law. Right now, much of our focus is on finding two people. One man, one woman.”

“Let me guess,” Lila said. “The woman is this Lila person.”

“Lila Moreau,” Gestalt said. “She works for us. Her code name in the organization is She-Wolf.”

“Code name?” Lila echoed dubiously. A nervous-sounding chuckle escaped her. “You people actually have code names?”

“We do.”

“Gosh, do you have a secret handshake and decoder rings, too?”

Gestalt smiled that benign smile again. “No secret handshakes,” she said.

Lila hesitated a telling beat, narrowing her eyes before saying, “So then you do have decoder rings.”

In response to that, Gestalt removed what looked like a college ring from her right ring finger and laid it on the table between herself and Lila.

Lila looked at it blankly, then back at Gestalt. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“It has a laser in it, too,” Gestalt told her. “And a camera. And a microphone. And a global-positioning device. And a few other little features that are too hush-hush for me to share with a civilian like you.” She reached for the ring and put it on again. “But I could break into the Bank of Switzerland and take out half the United Arab Emirates with it if I wanted to.”

“Unbelievable,” Lila said, even though she owned a ring exactly like it. Just as Noah did. Just as every agent did. “So what makes you people think I’m this Lila Moreau slash She-Wolf person?”

“Well, you do look very much like her.”

Ha, Noah thought. She looked exactly like Lila. Same face, same height, same build, same mannerisms. Because she was Lila. Yeah, her hair was a little darker and she’d dropped a few pounds, but he’d know Lila anywhere.

“What’s she done to make her such a priority with your organization?” Lila asked.

“She’s an agent with top-secret clearance, and she disappeared five months ago without a trace.”

“How do you know she’s not dead?”

“We don’t know that. But it would be unlikely. She’s quite a good agent. Arguably our best.”

No argument here, Noah thought. At least, Lila had been their best agent, up until the time she vanished. Unfortunately, there was so much innuendo and rumor surrounding her disappearance that he wasn’t sure what to think now.

The official word was that Lila had taken a short leave of absence in the middle of an assignment to return to her hometown of Las Vegas because her mother was terminally ill and near death. Within a few weeks of her arrival in Vegas, her mother died, so Lila had asked for a little more time to sort through her mother’s effects and settle the woman’s estate. Well, as much estate as a woman could leave behind when she’d spent her adult life as a showgirl and hooker and had no family besides the illegitimate daughter who’d left home at age sixteen and never returned.

After that, things got a little murky. Last November, Noah, like everyone at his level and higher, had received a report that She-Wolf had returned to Washington and, while being debriefed by He Whose Name Nobody Dared Say, had gone nuts and tried to murder him. Then she’d disappeared.

This, Noah had trouble believing. At one time or another, everyone in OPUS had wanted to murder He Whose Name Nobody Dared Say. But everyone in OPUS, especially someone as smart as Lila, knew that to even attempt such a thing would be suicide. Plus, Lila wasn’t one to lose control and go nuts. She never let her emotions overrule her. She was the coolest, at times the most emotionless person Noah knew.

So, like many in OPUS, he’d had his doubts about the reliability—he hesitated to use the word veracity—of the report. It wouldn’t be the first time the big muckety-mucks in D.C. had inflated—or created—a story to suit their own needs. Still he’d had no choice but to follow protocol and treat Lila as an enemy of the organization.

Watching her now, he couldn’t quite figure out what she was. She certainly wasn’t cooperating with them. But she didn’t seem to be a threat, either. So Noah would reserve judgment and observe.

“If she’s your best agent,” Lila said to Gestalt, “and if you think I’m her, then why are you treating me like a criminal? For that matter, if I’m her, why wouldn’t I come along peacefully and cooperate with you? Why would I keep insisting I’m someone else?”

“Well, there were some…circumstances…surrounding her disappearance,” Gestalt said. “Circumstances that are a bit unclear.”

Lila was silent for a moment, clearly digesting the information. Then she said, “Meaning she either screwed something up really badly, or else she’s turned to the dark side.”

Gestalt smiled again. “Let’s just say there are a few questions we’d like to ask her. A few things we need for her to clear up. But let’s talk about you, Marnie. I want to hear more about you right now.”

For the next half hour, Gestalt quizzed Lila on her phony-baloney Marnie Lundy persona, asking questions that ranged from her childhood illnesses to her high-school social life to her experiences as a teaching assistant at Ohio State. Had he not known better, Noah would have sworn Lila really was some woman named Marnie Lundy. Not once did she stop to think before responding, and not once did she waver from her story. Even when Gestalt tried to trip her up, Lila always made perfect sense.

But that was Lila. She had a gift for changing herself into whatever she needed to be. When she took on the identity of someone else, she didn’t just pass herself off as that individual. She became that individual. Mind, body and soul. The fact that this time the identity was one she’d assigned to herself instead of being assigned it by OPUS didn’t change that.

At the end of Gestalt’s questioning, she left Lila alone and returned to the room where Noah and the others were waiting. Much to his surprise, her expression when she entered was one of philosophical acceptance.

“You think she’s telling the truth?” he asked incredulously.

“I think she’s telling the truth as she sees it, yes,” Gestalt told them. “I think She-Wolf genuinely believes that she’s Marnie Lundy.”

“What?” Noah barked.

“She’s delusional,” Gestalt said. “Something happened to her that’s made her block out her actual identity and assume the identity of a fictional person who lives a life completely different from the one she’s used to. A quiet, uneventful, safe life,” she added meaningfully. “She’s even given that fictional person her initials, albeit reversed. Lila Moreau. Marnie Lundy. But I’m quite convinced that right now, She-Wolf firmly believes she’s who she says she is.”

“So what are we supposed to do?” Noah asked. He still wasn’t sure he believed Gestalt’s analysis, but he couldn’t offer a better explanation himself.

The psychologist sighed heavily. “There are a number of ways we can deal with it, but most of those take time, and I gather you don’t have much of that to spare.”