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Rasmussen nods.
"I can personally guarantee that no such evidence will ever reach them. Of course, I have every intention of you returning. I merely want you to know the risks. But I assure you, Ms. Townsend, this is no suicide mission. I believe in your success and your return to us as a conquering hero."
Rasmussen smiles again, and there's something about it I just don't like. A feral quality to it. A fakeness.
But then, heisa spy. Most of the CIA spooks I've met are like that. A little too charming, a little too manipulative by nature. It's like they can't help it.
“You can take a day to think on it,” he tells me.
“I don’t need it. I’m in."
The restaurant hasdining on the balcony. Rasmussen requests a table outside. The sun seems to irritate him, so I’m not sure why he did it. He spends most of lunch shading his pink scalp with the leaf of a nearby elephant ear plant.
Footsteps behind me catch my attention.
"This is your new father," Rasmussen tells me.
The man approaching us wears a white suit and has a hard face split by a thick, gray mustache. A man who's seen and done terrible things. If I didn't know he was the head of a crime syndicate already, I'd have guessed it from looking at him.
"Caron Zedona, also known as the Butcher of Brooklyn. We own him." Rasmussen says it in a whisper, so Zedona doesn't hear as he walks up. "Enough evidence to put him away for a hundred lifetimes. And now he works for us. With his instruction, and of course his presence, you’ll easily pass for Mia when you meet the Nightshade clan. With Caron here on your side, presenting you to them, it won’t ever occur to them to doubt your identity."
Zedona stops and looks me over, his gaze traveling up and down my body. I know what he's looking for, so I stand up and puff out my chest, and glare at him like I'd like to kill him.
The exact look I've seen on Mia Zedona's face a dozen times during my briefings. I've practiced it in the mirror often enough.
Zedona nods. A look of deep sadness fills his eyes, and for a moment, he's not a killer anymore, but a man who has lost a child. And now he's forced to look at a mirror image of his daughter. He’s supposed to teach me in every way to look and act like her. I see, etched in his face now, it’ll be torture for him.
"It’s true, she looks very much like my darling, Mia,” Zedona says. “Except in the eyes, where she shows too much kindness. Listen to me, girl. In our world, there’s no kindness. Only weakness. Mia was a diamond of the mafia, a brutal woman. The kind who could not be told no. The kind a man would be proud to tame. But you?"
Zedona shakes his head.
"You’d be happy to be taken on a date to Olive Garden."
He sits, looking disgusted.
And yes, Iwouldbe happy to be taken to Olive Garden by the right guy. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Besides, they have bottomless breadsticks. Maybe when you're the Butcher of Brooklyn they don't tell you about the breadsticks.
"When you're there, you're family," I tell Zedona, gravely.
Zedona narrows his eyes at me, but says nothing.
Rasmussen clears his throat.
"That's enough of that," he chides us both. "Zedona, you concede that Lily is close enough in appearance to pass easily for your daughter? Aside from the kindness in her eyes?"
"I do," Zedona says.
He keeps looking away, or at Rasmussen. He can't stand for his gaze to rest on me for even a moment. I see in his eyes that it's hurting him just being near me.A father who has lost his daughter. I remember suddenly that my own father and mother might losemeif I'm not careful.
Or even if Iam.
There's no sure safety for me on this assignment. Any moment could be my last. And then my own parents would go through what Zedona is going through right now. It makes me wish I'd called them instead of being a coward and letting Homeland handle it. Someone's secretary had to call them and relay that I'd be on assignment and unavailable.
I’m told my father was furious. Big surprise.
Then they would’ve tried to call. But it doesn't matter because my phone is gone, along with anything that could ID me.
That could literally be the last my parents hear from me. I know Rasmussen told me not to contact them again after this gets started, but I need to do something. A note perhaps, or a short letter. Something to explain.
