The Brain and the Bunker

The Bunker by the northern end of the house used to be mom’s space. But times have changed. When Father takes us into that wing of the house, I see that the place has been renovated from top to bottom. Where there used to be elegant hallways of dark wood and comforting Victorian antiques, the furniture has been replaced with modern cosmopolitan everywhere-is-nowhere pieces of plastic and metal, the lighting much too harshly bright for this nighttime hour.

We travel down a series of steps leading us underground. I stare at Hyerim’s ass as she descends before me. She still hasn’t put on any more clothing. She turns back briefly and smiles back at me, as if sensing my eyes.

“You don’t tell anyone about what you see tonight,” she says, the British accent in her voice somehow making that sound seductive.

I shake my head.

“Behind this door is a group of highly trained specialists,” Father says, softly knocking on the light grey door. “Their backgrounds span four different intelligence agencies, and you will find their assistance helpful, should you prove… cooperative.”

The door opens, revealing a conference room. Four different figures stand by a screen filled with garbled numbers. One man stands by the door. It takes every last drop of my willpower to not react.

“What is he doing here?” Inspector Vidocq asks, staring at me.

“We had our planned chat tonight,” Father says.

“So who does he work for?” Vidocq asks.

“Nobody,” Hyerim says. “He came here on his own.”

“Bullshit,” Vidocq says, breaking down into a series of coughs that seem fake to me. Father pats me on the back, jostling me forward a step.

“Claude, this is Inspector Vidocq,” he says. “He’s in charge of some this family’s investigative operations.”

Fuck you, I resist saying. Instead, I smile at him, extending an arm.

Vidocq spends a whole five seconds staring suspiciously at me, before he reaches out and shakes my hand.

“Vidocq, Mr. Ashworth is here to assist us in our search for the Brain,” he says. “If he proves to be helpful, then we will help him with his efforts to crack open the pedophiles.”

“You trust this man?” Vidocq says, still staring at me. “Out of all the red flags that we saw…”

“Are you questioning me?” Father asks.

Vidocq quickly shakes his head.

“Good,” Father says. He puts an arm around Hyerim. “The two of us will be going while you orient Claude to the task at hand. Oh, and… let’s leave the Knave out of it, for now.”

“Understood,” Vidocq says, and the next thing I know, Father and Hyerim are walking away, leaving me to enter the conference room with a very suspicious Vidocq watching me.

While the four at the front of the room continue to argue over the numbers on the screen, Vidocq pulls out a chair by the other end of the conference room, gesturing for me to sit. I do. He continues to stand, pacing around me. The false Frenchman looks like he’s aged ten years in less than one, and that makes me glad.

“I don’t know what the Boss was thinking, bringing you into this,” he says. “You and I both know that you’re not here out of the kindness of your heart. But the Boss and I agree. You know what you’re doing. You might be able to help us.”

I give him my most un-Markuslike charming smile that I can muster. If there’s anyone who will see through my adopted identity, it’s this man, who spent twenty years of his life watching my every step.

“Your file is still incomplete,” he continues. “Dangerously so. We’ll work on filling in those gaps over the next few weeks. These are big gaps that need to be filled. After all, we can’t help you if we don’t know who you are. And we don’t know how you can help us, until we know who you are either. And since we don’t know who you—”

“So,” I say, interrupting him. “What exactly am I meant to be helping you with? I don’t think anybody has actually told me.”

“I was talking,” Vidocq says, folding his arms across his chest.

“Yes, and I got the point. Since it’s so important to you, I’ll help you fill out those gaps in my file… eventually.”

Vidocq frowns at me. Damn, that feels good.

“Fine,” Vidocq says. “You want to know what’s going on. I’ll tell you what’s going on. We’re trying to figure out what Erin Najbreit is up to.”

“Erin?” I ask, pretending to sound a bit surprised. “What is there to figure out about her? Isn’t she exiled from the family?”

“She’s been engaged in suspicious activity since she was exiled,” Vidocq says. “But we can’t figure out what she’s doing.”

We think she’s been helping Markus, I translate in my head. But we have no idea how.

“What’s your best guess?” I ask. “What kind of data do we have on her?”

“We think she’s been consorting with criminals and fugitives, but we don’t know what kind, exactly” Vidocq says.

That tells me what I suspected might be the case. They don’t want me to know about Markus, and they don’t think I know the connection between Erin and Markus. But even if I were really Claude Ashworth, I would still know the truth—Salome told it to me, after all. I note this as something that I can use in the future. Revealing it now doesn’t seem right.

“As for the information we’ve got,” Vidocq says. “We have mountains of it. We have her house under constant surveillance, we monitor all her internet and cellular activity, and we even have a mole that she might trust with sensitive information.”

“Sounds to me like you’ve got the whole job done already,” I say, leaning back in the chair. “What do you need me for?”

Vidocq scowls at me, masking the frustration under his face.

“Because she’s been very careful in covering her tracks,” he says. “None of our data shows the suspicious activity that she’s engaging in.”

“So how can you be certain she’s up to something suspicious?” I ask, feigning confusion. “Maybe she’s not up to anything.”

“Because she slipped up once,” he says. He pauses, holding a hand as he coughs again, and then straightens his back, clearing his throat. “That was why she was exiled from the family. Not because of the nonsense we made up about her and a student fucking. But that’s all we have. That one shred of evidence.”

“What’s the evidence?” I ask.

Vidocq shake his head.

“We can’t let you know that,” he says. “Not until you get permission from the Boss.”

“Aw, well it’s going to be tough for me to help you then, isn’t it,” I say.

“Nothing I can do about that,” Vidocq says, sounding strangely smug about the fact. “We keep all our briefings in that filing cabinet,” he continues, pointing to a heavy steel cabinet by the side of the room. “You can start by reading all of those.”

I get out of my seat and pull open the cabinet, staring at the hundreds of pages of briefings stored there. I stare back at Vidocq. Seriously?

But secretly, I am glad to have the chance to comb through all of these files. Now I’ll truly know how Vidocq and his crew operates, and we’ll know just what they’ve gathered on Erin.