SELENA

"Mark Tuello, as I live and breathe! What are you doing in Kaladi Bros. Coffee? How long are in you in Anchorage for?"

Tuello had not seen Selena since his university days in Urbana, Illinois. Given how close they'd got back then, Tuello was surprised he hadn't since really thought much about her - much less that she might be in Alaska. Despite the influx of Americans from outside, Alaska was still a relatively small place!

Tuello said to Selena, "I'm just on my way to a meeting at the Department of State. How that goes determines how long I'm staying north."

Honestly, Tuello had assumed that once the Gilead revolution had toppled the United States, that someone like Selena would have stayed in whatever Illinois was to become. Back then, she and Tuello would spar about religion as only college kids could, what it meant to be 'born again', as only college kids would argue. All the while, they fought to keep their hands off of each other. She thought his, then, thick Georgian drawl had been 'cute'. That they'd fallen into bed on his last night in Urbana, he regarded as an outlier.

Selena had been pretty doctrinaire about her, well… her Christian doctrine. Then again, back then, Tuello had not yet gone to school on Evangelical Puritinism as he had subsequently about Gilead. Honestly, he'd first done it to understand Selena. The 'thought, theory and theology' of Gilead came later, which had bred the kind of theonomic State that Gilead had become.

Tuello's career at State had been because of a girl!

Since, Mark Tuello had become known as an expert on people like Serena Joy Waterford and Commander Joseph Lawrence, and it's why he drew the detail and billets he did.

Then again, the more he got to know Gilead, especially directly on his trip with Serena Joy to Commander Waterford's funeral, he stopped thinking of Gilead as especially religious.

He now regarded them as rank hypocrites. Raw power grabbers.

At Kaladi's, neither he nor Selena exchanged numbers. They were both from outside, so they both stood out anyways. If his grilling at State was not too bad, but it meant he was not returning to Toronto, maybe he'd check out Kaladi Brothers Coffee again. Selena, she still seemed nice. Older, more mature. Maybe they wouldn't argue so much.

For all that he knew, his future was radically open.

WHERE SELDOM IS HEARD

"You've got friends in Toronto, I'll give you that."

Mark Tuello had been sitting in the main conference room at State in Anchorage for more than 40 minutes. Alone. In a room that could sit 30 at its ornate table, ringed by leather high-backed chairs. All the HDR QLED screens littering the wall surrounding him, they only had the United States Department of State logo on them, the Great Seal of The United States.

When the undersecretary had come in, Tuello imagined that this was going to go badly. The Deputy Secretary of State had farmed his disposition out to a junior - the disposition and inquiry into State Department employee Mark Tuello was now in an undersecretary's hands, and it had started poorly with her saying…..

"You've got friends in Toronto. I'll give you that."

Tuello knew enough to keep quiet for the beginning of the meeting. He had had enough experience in the field to value patience, letting 'the other' commit themselves with verbiage, before he committed himself to the same.

"Okay," the undersecretary rehearsed, "you drew the Mrs. Waterford card during Gilead's initial trade mission to Canada. You were regarded as an 'expert on fundies'."

'Fundies'!? Tuello thought. Surely they have a better word for it than that!

The undersecretary continued. "That was the one that blew up for Gilead because of those written women's testimonies which were published on the 'net."

Tuello sat silently.

The undersecretary asked, "You had nothing to do with those women's testimonies, had you Mark?" He uttered a simple 'no', but that was not enough for the woman. She said, "Mark, feel free to pipe in with any corrections or clarifications."

Tuello said, "I'm fine, ma'am," immediately regretting the use of 'ma'am' for such a young woman. In old Georgia, that would have had currency - but this undersecretary, she was from Seattle and now both of them were in Alaska.

"You'd attempted to recruit Mrs. Waterford, did you not?"

Tuello finally broke his cone of silence. "Yes….." he stopped, swallowing one more 'ma'am' which he would allow into his head, "….. she thought of what I was offering as 'treason and coconuts', her very words. It was clear from that point that any progress to be made with her was the long game. She was formidable. I vowed not to make that mistake again."

The undersecretary closed every file in front of her, then clasped her hands on top of them. "Before getting to the military disaster in Montana, and the shootings at the Toronto memorial for the lost US personnel," the undersecretary listed off other screw-ups, and then other events which had happened on his watch, "I also want to cover your time with Mrs. Waterford in New Gilead….. I've heard stories of 'irregularities', shall we say."

She looked up, and Tuello knew why she'd made eye contact with what came next, "as well as the disposition of Commander Waterford, who was passed from your possession to Gilead officers at the border…"

"I have written about that at length," Tuello interrupted.

The undersecretary, undeterred said, "yes, I've read that, Mark. We'll get to it. I want to return to Mrs. Waterford, herself currently at large in Toronto."

SERENA JOY WATERFORD

"So, you also handled Mrs. Waterford's solo trip back to Toronto Airport, Pearson, is that correct?"

"Yes," Tuello offered, "that was the Baby Nichole trip. The Consulate thought that I had already developed a working relationship with her, so I met her and choreographed her time with Lucas Bankole."

"Had you?" the undersecretary asked. She clarified, "developed a 'working relationship', I mean."

"I believe so," which he said swallowing another, 'ma'am', before it could sneak out.

"How?"

"Well," he said, "in exchange for an old-style tape cassette which she was carrying, one with Lucas Bankole's name on it, I dropped my personal, fully charged satellite phone into her bag. I was guessing that as a Commander's wife that she'd not be subject to any search back in New Gilead, especially if it was her husband picking her up."

".… and she did call, didn't she, from Gilead."

"Yes. She called twice, he called once. Then I assume the battery went dead. Before it did, though, I arranged with them, for them to come alone north to a spot just north of the old Vermont border. I was betting that they'd be unfamiliar with the terrain there, and that because of the unsanctioned nature of their trip, they'd not have security of their own."

"I'm reading here, that that resulted in their capture by combined US, ICC and Canadian officials."

"Yes, that's correct. While in the ITWC lock-up, it turned out to be fairly straightforward to turn them against each other. Neither of them are/were stupid."

"Angel's Flight changed all of that?"

"Angel's Flight as well as Mrs. Waterford's surprise pregnancy." Tuello paused, "I've reported back about this part of it, but June Osborne's freedom and refugee status in Toronto mixed up that house of cards as well."

YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS…..

The undersecretary had not consulted any of the files in front of her since clasping her hands. So it took him by surprise when she brought it up. Apparently she'd planned on raising the matter all along.

"When in New Gilead, Mark," she said looking at him and not breaking eye contact, "on her last night there, you accompanied her back to her room."

Tuello said, "I did." He'd made a full report to Rachel Tapping back in Toronto. He also knew where she was going with this.

With as neutral an expression as she could manage she said, "she invited you into her room, and the two of you shared a kiss."

Tuello did not manage as neutral an expression! He said with not-so-veiled anger, "you're really asking me that?"

She said evenly, "yes, I am really asking you that."

"It's in the report," he said sternly, "read the report. She. Kissed. Me."

"You must be a rather irresistible man, Mark." She paused, then said, "let me put it this way. Just a few days previous to that, you'd delivered her husband to the Canada/Gilead border, where he was executed in No Mans Land, by American refugees otherwise residing in Toronto - you'd accompanied the grieving widow back to Gilead, and the next thing that happens is that you're making out with his pregnant widow….."

"Is this really why I'm back in Anchorage?" Tuello protested. "I told you. She. Kissed. Me." He then continued by saying that his part of it was to try to get Mrs. Waterford to change her mind about staying in Gilead - which that evening had been her plan.

A plan which the next day had changed, when she showed up at the jet at the old Logan Airport for the flight back to Toronto.

The undersecretary continued, again without consulting any of the files near. "You were the one who released Mrs. Waterford on to the streets of Toronto, where she briefly stayed at that Gilead information Centre, the one that was then closed for building code violations."

"Yes," Tuello said, "I was the one who escorted her to the street from the ITWC. But neither the ICC nor the Canadians had grounds for keeping her, not with Fred Waterford dead."

The undersecretary paused, then asked, "Do you know who Mr. Wheeler is, Ryan Wheeler of Toronto, Canada?"

"Yes, I do," Tuello said. "Wheeler is a mover and a shaker in Canada's right-wing, populist movement. Canada is monitoring him for funding mercenaries in No Mans Land, mercenaries who lean towards Gilead."

"And you've let him operate, unfettered?"

"You know," Tuello quipped, "you need reminding, Madam Undersecretary, that Canada is a sovereign country, and we Americans are guests and visitors."

"Well, on behalf of our American Joint Chiefs," she said emphasizing 'American', "you planned and were in operational command of the raid to free American girls at the Wives' school in Colorado."

"I was." Tuello finally had had enough. "Look, there seem to be accusations floating around this inquisition, and I wish you would get to the point. Are you accusing me of conspiring with Serena Waterford to have her husband murdered? Or of botching a military raid, the worst embarrassment to The United States since Operation Eagle Claw?"

"What do you think happened, Mark?" she asked. "Why did that raid fail and why did we lose lives and Black Hawks?"

Tuello said that he had already accepted full responsibility. Indeed, that the reason for his recall to Anchorage, as well as this grilling, was because of the failed raid. But he added, "there were two additional, classified assets inside Gilead that we thought could be relied upon. Apparently the video meta-data, as well as the meta-data on the disc - we used that as primary intel. Whoever sent it to us, he knew everything we knew. We were set-up. It was my call, I was wrong. I take responsibility."

The undersecretary said, "okay, my last line of inquiry. What were you thinking, Mark - the memorial outside which got picketed by the Canadian nationalists? The shootings, the injuries….?"

The night of the memorial back in Toronto, when the shooting started - the first thing which had gone through his mind? That in all his years with the Department of State, he'd never once been shot at. Until that night. Being 'shot at', it changes one.

THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN

At that, the door of the conference room, it opened. Striding through the door was the Deputy Secretary of State. He said to the undersecretary, "I've heard enough."

At that the undersecretary opened her briefcase, slipped all the files inside, closed it, got up and left the room.

The Deputy sat across from Tuello, and stared at him. Finally he said, "I don't know whether or not to fire you, or give you a medal." Tuello thought to himself that both choices sounded nice, for differing reasons.

"Mark," the Deputy said, "I'll give you Commander Waterford. I'm from Texas, and there are some people who need killing." He paused, then continued, "The United States, Mark, we're not as big and unwieldy as we once were. Before Gilead, when we were at Foggy Bottom, we patted ourselves on the back for our ability to coerce all manners of alliances with the strangest of countries, worldwide. Neither China nor Russia could manage what we managed, China still does not have satellite countries, Russia relies on military might."

"Us?" the Deputy said, "we dangled money, Starbucks, McDonald's, and first run movies in front of countries, that they could then be like us. That is no more."

"Right now, Mark," the Deputy continued, "Gilead is making a play for American seats in places like the U.N., NATO, NORAD, The World Bank, the IMF….. the list goes on. We up here in Anchorage, we are spread pretty thin to what once was. We're in danger, Mark, of going the way of Taiwan."

"So," the Deputy said while standing, "here's what the Secretary wants you to do. Hell, here's what The President wants you to do. Go back to Toronto, and find Serena Joy Waterford. I don't think you know it, but at last count, she's not at the Wheelers, although by the time you land at Pearson, that could change."

"We're at war, Mark. You know that. You're on the front-lines, you've screwed up. Royally. You've endangered the remaining integrity of The United States of America. But war is not an exact science. You're good at what you do."

"Besides, they like you in Toronto. But if you find Serena Joy before the Wheelers do, Mark, try to keep it in your pants!"

KALADI BROS. COFFEE

Tuello wasn't due back at the Toronto Consulate for another three days. He could take today's State Department flight from Anchorage, through Edmonton to Toronto.

Or…

He could spend two more nights there in Anchorage and fly commercial, through Vancouver.

Besides, the coffee at Kaladi Bros. had been top notch. Or as they'd say in Atlanta, 'I'm a twelve, so I like coffee, and there are some slick people there….'