COINTELPRO

Of course there’s a way to spy on the dining room. The way you do it is simple: you plant yourself in the library above the room and you open the hatch in the corner of the room where the bookshelves meet. Then, you put your ear to the heating duct, and you listen to the voices drift upwards. It’s as simple as that.

That’s how Imelda, Sanchez, and I end up crouched in the corner of the library, splayed out on the ground with our heads tilted towards the duct.

“Another month of work, and you still don’t have a single promising lead on Markus,” my Father says.

We hear the disappointment in his voice and glance at each other with raised eyebrows.

“So that’s what Vidocq is hired to do?” I whisper, sounding surprised but deliberately keeping my voice low.

“Among other things,” Imelda says quietly.

“We thought he might have been in Miami. There was some fuss being made about a vagrant from out of town kicking up a fuss, stealing things, being generally very elusive… but we think he’s just a run-of-the-mill criminal now,” Vidocq says.

“I’ve given you a team full of intelligence operatives, codebreakers, bounty hunters, the best in the business. Together, what you have come up with is… nothing?”

Father’s voice gets dangerously silky in times like these. I see the shiver running down Imelda’s spine, and Sanchez grins at her, raising an eyebrow.

It takes Vidocq a second to find his reply.

“Sir, I think you overestimate Markus. I think the reason we’ve found nothing is because there is nothing to find. Knowing him, he’s probably drunk himself dead in the back alley of some city, or jumped off some tall bridge, and we’re never going to see a trace of him again,” Vidocq says. He sighs. “The man was never right in the head. Definitely didn’t have his life together.”

“You can say that again,” Hyerim scoffs.

It doesn’t surprise me one bit that she’s in the room. She might not have a large presence in the public eye, but unofficially? She runs just as much of the house as Father does.

“I am still concerned about him. Keep trawling through the missing persons reports and the unidentified homeless and anyone that turns up dead,” Father says.

“Of course,” Vidocq says.

“And Erin?” Hyerim asks.

“Your daughter—” Vidocq begins, and then he pauses. He clears his throat. “Erin has been staying put in her Cambridge apartment, holed up with her girlfriend. Twenty-four seven monitoring and our wiretaps tell us what you suspected. They’re just working and staying quiet.”

“So nothing to report?” Hyerim asks. She sounds skeptical.

“Oh no, I wasn’t done,” Vidocq says. “Ricardo, the man that was… intimate, shall we say, with the two of them, he appears to have had a falling out with them. We’ve been monitoring their texts, and they had a nasty spat about two, three weeks ago. They cut ties shortly afterwards and stopped speaking then.”

“Why didn’t you tell us immediately?” Hyerim asks.

“It’s not exactly actionable news,” Vidocq says, shrugging.

“It’s ammunition we can use,” Father says. “We’re happy to have Erin out of the picture for now. If she stays quiet, we’re content to let her be. But if she ever decides to move?”

“We want to be prepared,” Hyerim says, finishing the thought for him.

“Shall I arrange to make contact with him?” Vidocq asks. “I’ll see how willing Ricardo is to cooperate with us.”

“Form a plan over the next two days. Nothing executes until I give my word,” Father says. “Get him in our hands.”

“We’ll draw something up,” Vidocq says.

There’s the sound of silverware clinking on silverware over the next few seconds as they work on the food that we saw being prepared in the kitchen. I can feel my mouth watering again, even though I’ve just had lunch.

“I’d best get going,” Vidocq says, a few minutes later, after his plate has presumably been cleared. “We’ll deliver you a plan in the next two days.”

“Good,” Hyerim says, and then we hear Vidocq noisily picking up his coat and heading out the room.

I let the hatch silently fall back down, covering the vent.

“Crazy stuff, huh,” Sanchez says. “Nobody would believe it, if you told anyone.”

“Don’t tell me you’re thinking of going to the press again,” Imelda groans.

“The press?” I ask, growing a bit concerned.

“Back when the whole Erin Najbreit affair was making the rounds on the news channels, Sanchez was thinking of leaking some stuff he knew to the press,” Imelda says.

“I’d be like, I dunno, James Bond or something, but like, slipping top secret information to a hot reporter, you know?” Sanchez says.

“Yeah, but then you realised that the Najbreits would figure out there was a leak,” Imelda says.

“And then off would go my head,” Sanchez says, drawing a line across his throat.

“Far better to stay quiet,” I agree. I pause, looking contemplative. “Are there any other secrets this house has that I should know about?”

Imelda and Sanchez share a look, and then they laugh.

“You’ll find out all the good stuff in due time,” Imelda says, patting my shoulder. “I doubt you even know the true story regarding what happened with Erin. That stuff in the media? All a bunch of bullshit.”

“Really?” I say, pretending to sound surprised. “But… why would Warren kick out one of his daughters, unless the allegations were true?”

“It’s a good question, isn’t it?” Sanchez laughs. “But we staff have a pretty neat theory. I’ve got to get back to work—wouldn’t want anybody to catch us listening in here—but catch me sometime later and I might tell you about it.”

“Sanchez has the wrong story, listen to mine if you want the truth,” Imelda says, rolling her eyes. “But he is right, we should be getting back to work. See ya!”

Once they’re gone, I’m left with only a single thought: How can I warn Erin before it’s too late?