The Red Herring

The courtroom was standing room only. Reporters from every major newslink crowded in the rear with satcams poised and aimed, the air buzzing with pent up electricity. A solemn hush falling when she arrived, the room turned quiet as a sanctuary of prayer. We all held our breath in the stillness of the precious moments of her passing, the burnished wooden benches elevated to pews by her mere presence.

Even manacled in her orange jumpsuit, Scarlet became the object of our devotion, the shekinah glory of a saint glowing in her features as the guards led her to the defense table, tears working their way down my craggy cheeks. For any other workmate I would have wiped them away with a secretive flick of my handkerchief. But not that day. I let them fall unashamedly, along with every other tear that followed.

She was the best of us. How had she let such a thing happen?

I warned her in our very first training session to never let a coder get inside her head, but she gave me a sassy smirk like she knew something I did not.

Her baby blues and luxuriant red locks graced her with an aura of innocence even back then. It made me want to trust her in spite of my better instincts.

Even when the Bailiff read the charges, I believed in her still, her face radiating a quiet confidence as she pled 'Not guilty.'

A week later I sit at the other side of interview table across from where I once controlled my own destiny rather than whomever the agency has picked to take me down. I stare morosely at the two-way mirror wondering who gazes back from the other side, and how long they will make me wait, the minutes ticking slowly into a quarter, then a half hour and well beyond.

How does an agent gain the upper hand, Cadet?

Control the narrative, sir!

But my narrative is already written, my career at an ignominious end. The only question is the means. Censure and loss of my pension or resign. But time ticks slowly away and I begin to count the grey concrete blocks surrounding the two-way rather than continue to imagine the worst.

When the door opens after an hour and half sitting on this hard metal seat, my interviewer finally enters. He flashes his Secret Service ID and sits, his face scrubbed clean of human kindness. Inwardly I groan.

I'd like to keep this interview as pleasant and professional as possible, he begins with a markedly unpleasant tone.

My rules are simple. Answer my questions firmly and without prevarication. You get hostile or resist answering and the pleasantness will end.

Can you spell prevarication for me? I'm gonna want to look it up later. I smile to prove my earnestness. Maybe this will be fun after all.

His jaw tightens, his cold gray eyes boring into mine as I stare innocently back.

Did you have a relationship with her?

Her who?

Miss O'Haire.

Define relationship.

Did you fuck her?

No. Is that firm enough? I smile.

A half dozen of your colleagues have already told me that you showed her favoritism during her training and falsified her final exam results to ensure she was promoted to agent without merit.

I laugh out loud, his jaw tightening even more.

How about this? You tell me what you really want to know instead of wasting my time with the petty jealousies of lesser agents.

But his words sting anyway. Scarlett was smarter than any of us, but I made her toe the line like every other cadet. That first day when she smirked at me, she learned the hard way that it was my way or the highway.

You know how many former agents are serving hard time, kid?

She looked at me in shock just like all of the newbies do when they hear a voice inside their head that isn’t their own. Her lips opened but the answer never got past her frozen processing center.

Cat got yer tongue, kid?

Five of our former agents are serving time for murder one convictions. If your finger pulls the trigger you take the rap. It doesn't matter if someone else surfed your processing center just like I hijacked yours. The guild invented and perfected human processor surfing. If you have unprotected Wi-Fi, they can surf you as easily as any interlink.

She never smirked at me again.

The Secret Service agent coughs, my eyes focusing with a trembling shake of my head. What the hell is wrong with me?

What I really want to know is who surfed the guild master in the courtroom during Miss O'Haire's trial.

I involuntarily grin. I dreamed for most of my adult life of surfing a master of the art.

Are you saying you froze the processing center of a guild master?

I wish.

Then who did?

That is the question I have asked myself again and again. Fraid I still don't have the answer.

Did Miss O'Haire ever surf you?

An old pro like me? Don't be absurd.

You know what worries me?

I'm guessing the same as me. If Scarlet surfed the best of the best, how could any guild member get close enough to surf one of her team members?

Xactly, he nods. If she could have prevented the Viceroy's murder, as well as one of her own team members serving life without parole for pulling the trigger, why wouldn't she?

Have you ever heard of a team lead who never had to kill a compromised agent to prevent an almost certain assassination?

Only Scarlett, I whisper back.

He sighs and looks almost human. Some good came out of this, anyway. Have you heard the news?

My clearance was pulled following the assassination.

Blowback is a mother, He replies with another a chuckle. The Guild Master arrested at the courtroom gave up the entire operation. Fifty cells, a 1,000 Satlinks, a hundred or so server farms and a million terabytes of actionable intel. It will take years to process it all. We'll be arresting guild clients and associates for a least a decade.

I am speechless, my mouth hanging open like a freshly surfed newbie.

If Scarlett was responsible, he mutters, she traded a Viceroy to destroy the entirety of their organization, his murder a red herring for the overthrow of one of the greatest criminal enterprises in history.

Tears involuntarily leak from my eyes. But I honestly do not know if it is pride or love or the horror of her betrayal. Maybe a little of all of them.

When I ask him what he will do, I see for the first time pity in his eyes.

That's above my paygrade, he answers. Then he stands and offers his hand. We shake and he turns to leave. Go home, Skip, he says over his shoulder, If I was you, I'd prepare my resignation, and hope they don't take O'Haire's betrayal out on you.

I sit down heavily after he pulls the door shut behind him. But my eyes have finally cleared of the fog that overcame them after the trial.

I can still see Scarlett mounting the witness stand, queenly in spite of her manacles, and I am filled with profound sadness. Prepping for a protection mission is all about paying attention to the little details. Dot every i and cross every t. Trust no one. Never let your guard down. For five years Scarlett did it better than any other agent ever had or will ever again.

She scored Viceroy duty in her fourth year. In truth, she could have done it in her rookie year. I had trembled when she took the oath in the courtroom, genuinely fearful for her in a manner I had never experienced for anyone else before.

The Viceroy was murdered under her watch. Fortunately, the state charges were dereliction of duty, not murder one. But she could have easily gotten ten years of hard labor anyway. I knew she would never work for the agency again regardless of the outcome.

Never let a coder get inside yer head, kid, I muttered under my breath that terrible morning.

I've got this, Skip. Trust me. Looking up I saw her gazing kindly back from the defense bench before she turned to face the prosecutor giving his opening statement.

My hands shook when she hijacked my processing center as easily as I had hers the day we first met. That had not happened to me since I was a shave tail cadet.

When the Secret Service agent asked if she had ever surfed me, I had answered No with utter conviction. My hands trembled anew with the realization that what he had only suspected I now knew was true.

But that wasn't the worst of it. Scarlett wanted me to know. She wanted all of us to know.

That first day she smirked because she did not need our training at all. She let me get in her head and then played me for a fool. Did the guild plan the Viceroy's assassination by penetrating the agency with the greatest guild master of them all?

But that answer is too pat. The Scarlett I knew would never have traded the Viceroy's life without reason, even for a reward as great as the destruction of the guild. I knew in my heart the Secret Service agent was wrong. Maybe she had already whispered the truth inside my head once upon a time when I believed no one ever could.

Whatever the cause or inspiration, I believe with all my heart the analysts will eventually find in that ocean of intel what Scarlett must have known the very first day we met.

The guild began operating with impunity once the Viceroy was appointed by the Emperor. Even I knew that. The guild never compromised the agency, they penetrated the loftiest government office of them all.

The murder of the Viceroy was not the herring. It was justice. The true red herring was the woman we all thought we knew. And then the hair on my arms stood on end. She was never in any danger at all in the courtroom. Jury and judge hung on her every word, worshiping her just as I did with tears in my eyes.

She did more than control the narrative. She rewrote it and made it her own. The whole world is hers for the taking. Maybe if I say a prayer to Saint Scarlett, she'll have pity on me and take her old skipper under her angel wings.

I've got this Skip. Trust me.... and so help me Scarlett, I still do.