Chapter 3

"So the CIA," Kara ventures. "How'd you manage to get out from under that organization?"

"Long story short, I didn't have much of a choice." Carrie's voice is clipped.

Kara nods and remembers the choices she's made. How she's landed where she has and the dreams of other worlds that still plague her every night.

Kara remembers flight. She wants Carrie to drive the heinous streets of Los Angeles, because cars never felt like enough, like she was meant to drive some other vehicle. What, she doesn't know because she's never driven anything but a car. A bicycle maybe? Lift, drag, and something. She wishes she could remember, but maybe it's better not to. Not to know what else she could be doing in that alternate universe lingering, but ephemeral, like déjà vu somewhere in her mind. What would be the point. She's here now, an agent of good, in a car with this stranger, a woman focused on work,but still also, somewhere in her mind, somewhere else. She looks over to see Carrie's eyes are closed. Power naps, for the win.

Kara looks down at her upper arm and strokes the tattoo there. A wing and a circle. One wing missing its partner. Maybe finding the other wing will give her that sense of flight she needs? What other wing, she asks herself. She can only vaguely remember the sleepless night, filled with scotch and cigars, when she found herself in a tattoo parlor. A parlor? More like a dingy back alley, where she grabbed a stone off the ground and on the wall, drew out the design she wanted, her hand remembering something that her mind didn't: a solo wing in flight embracing a circle. The guy carving it into her skin had asked what it meant, and, of course, she had no answer. The pain of the needle nearly jolted her out of her slurry buzz, but not quite. She paid the guy and walked away humming an old Bob Dylan/Jimi Hendrix tune.

This one recurring dream she has, both awake and asleep, of flying a vessel unlike anything on earth, some sort of raider, a living breathing creature. In the dream she's flying, vocally repeating the mantra "thrust, lift, gravity, drag" and she's cringing from the smell of the vessel, the smell of organic waste and decay. She always wakes up with the smell still in her nostrils and her mind a jumble with knowledge of aviation that she doesn't remember ever learning anywhere or practicing in her real waking life. In her dream she's the most kick-ass pilot in the galaxy. So how did she end up fighting street crime in Los Angeles?

Long story short, she didn't have much choice. Her brother wanted to be where he could meet other musicians. He was ready to make his music in a city with a lot of venues for playing music. And she had to be where he was, so she followed along. And then he died. She had to find something to do with all the anger and injustice, so she decided to become an officer of the law in Los Angeles.

Carrie interrupts Kara's thoughts. "Did you ever stop to think – are we really making a difference? I mean for the good?"

"Doesn't anyone who works any job think about that at some point?"

"Yeah, but what we do…get the bad guys…who we're never really totally sure are the bad guys until they go to trial. Who may end up off on some technicality anyway. Or be released and 'forgiven' but killed anyway over something entirely different. Does what we do have a point? Or are we pissing in the wind most day?"

Kara sighs. "I don't know Cagney. Does a doctor's work make a difference every day? We know a lawyer's doesn't. Does a teacher's or a parent's? Not every day, sure, but, in general, on average, yes. All work makes a difference. If not necessarily in outcome but just by us doing it. The process, you know? Sometimes it's just about the means, and turning that part of your brain off that dwells on the ends. Us putting ourselves out there in the world makes a difference. Whether we succeed or not or even whether we or anyone knows what success is. Otherwise, why not just crawl under a blanket and never came out."

Carrie frowns. "Yep, that's the temptation every damn day isn't it?

She continues, "Do you remember that massacre that happened out in Bethesda, the one we, I mean the CIA, just barely missed, a mother and her daughter in law bludgeoned. One shot and the other stabbed repeatedly with a broken bottle?"

Kara thinks back the headlines a couple years ago. "Yeah, I guess. There were a lot of massacres during that time. But go ahead, make your point."

"Quinn worked the case and he told me all about it. He had to cover up the thing to keep the murderer in play for us, I mean for them, the CIA." Carrie shakes her head at how often her mind and language deceive her into thinking she's still with the CIA. She continues, "So he tells the cop on the scene that it's a matter of national security, you know the spiel."

Even though Kara has no experience working on matters of national security, she knows how often law enforcers and coerced into covering up things for the sake of the greater good, or so they think. She exhales. "Yeah, I know the spiel."

"And the cop. Like he's totally disgusted by the scene and he's all frustrated at the stone wall Quinn is putting up and he asks Quinn: does anything you guys ever not make things worse?"

Kara snorts. "What does Quinn say?"

Beneath a wry smile. Carrie says, "Well, he has no answer, does he. He can't say a damn word to this good decent cop who just wants to bring a little bit of justice to his little corner of town. He clams right up just like he's trained to do. Just like all of us, I mean them, they, in the company are trained to do."

Kara nods. "So, you're wondering if what we do makes things worse?"

"Yes."

Kara is silent. So Carrie continues, "Look, I just came back from Palestine. So let me give you a hypothetical."

"Wait are you guys allowed to call it Palestine?"

"Yeah, okay, Gaza. So, we know that Americans hire Mossad to spy on Americans for us, right? I mean that happened with Brody and it's happened before with other assets we needed to keep an eye on. We know we can get Mossad to work for us, because who has invested fifty plus years into Israeli intelligence and military, America, that's who. So we know we can cash in that debt any time we want."

Kara nods, "So?"

"Did you ever think that's the formula, the balance sheet, for what's happening to Gaza right now? A crippling, soul-crushing blow to the so-called terrorists via the Israelis. America-funded non-Americans doing our dirty work for us. How many Americans are going to care about a war where no Americans are in danger? Let the Israelis do America's work, on our dime. Meanwhile our hands are cleaner than ever."

Kara shakes her head. Her only knowledge of the Middle East is what she hears on CNN. Nonetheless, she ventures her own theory. "Or…we never got the full story from the other side? Maybe the people of Gaza are starting to think Hamas wasn't such a good idea for leadership after all? These leaders got wind of the sentiments on the street and decided that maybe democracy is not such a good idea? Maybe Hamas started firing rockets to get Israel to fire worse at these people on the streets of Gaza. People who were losing faith in Hamas? Maybe it was all some internal shit that we never got the full story about? The point is, do we, will we ever, have the full story? And does it even matter for us to do our jobs?"

"Hell, yes, it matters. It matters to me. I want to know everything, every slimy little detail. How else am I supposed to fix it?

Look, here's another story for the books: The CIA worked through rural healthcare workers, women physicians who deliver immunizations and other routine care to the poorest areas. They used them to get information about Bin Laden's whereabouts in Pakistan. And now, after the CIA got their man and moved on, those healthcare workers are confronted with mistrust and worse in those same areas where they're trying to help people, give women and children the medicines they need. Humanitarian aid, diplomatic aid, economic aid, the CIA sees the whole lot as opportunity for information, for infiltration. Way before the US was hit on 9/11, still, and to the foreseeable future."

"So, what, are we just supposed to let these people go? Let them hurt us again? Shit happens in war Carrie. Shit that never should or would happen otherwise. We can't just sit back and sing kumbaya. Not when we have the most at stake to lose."

"Do we? Do we have the most at stake? What makes my life or your life more significant than the life of a mother who'll lose a child, maybe two or three children, to diseases that are totally preventable?"

"Maybe because, instead of saving one, two, or three people, what we do can save hundreds and thousands? Maybe because the money and the resources and the advancements our country creates and puts out into the world are what keep the damn thing spinning? Someone's gotta police that shit, don't ya think? Why not us?"

"Money? Sure, but only to those corrupt politicians who we can assure will be our tools. Money so that they can invest in their country's infrastructure and people? No, that American tax payer money goes straight to marble palaces, hunting lodges, and fleets of BMW's. Resources? What, like guns? What else do we still produce and export all over the world? Cars? Building supplies? Freakin apparel? Nope, just flame throwers. Advancements? Let's see. Polio vaccine, sure. Followed closely by Baywatch, Bold and the fucking Beautiful, showing everyone all the lives they'll never live, all the worlds that they'll never be citizens of. Unless they come to America. Come into the arms of America, that hallowed ground that only a few will tread, to work their asses off driving our cabs, cooking our food, pumping our fucking gas, just to have the chance to send a kid or two to school, give their kids some hope for a better future than what they had in their corrupt cesspool hell of a country."

"Good God, you are cynical. What the hell Carrie, what do you want me to tell you? That you're right? That you've just rattled off all the reasons that so much of the world fraking hates us at the very same instant of wanting to be us? Yes, you are right. But you gotta do what you can with what you have. Right? Isn't that the only way to get up and get to work every day? Somehow believe that what you're doing is right. Do no fraking harm, not on purpose, at least. Negotiate and mediate so that, at the end of the day, the lesser evil has a chance to win."

Kara looks away, exhausted. "Maybe wanting to fix it all single-handedly is the problem, Carrie. Do you want to end up where my brother is?"

Carrie jerks her head toward Kara, confused. "Gai was a musician. What's he got to do with matters of national security? And did you just say 'fraking'? Twice?"

"I did?" Kara is momentarily perplexed but she shakes her head, refusing to be distracted. "Look, yes, Gai was a musician. Every single thing you just said, every question about all the who's and why's of how the world works, he put all of that into his music. It wasn't brain surgery or hunting spies, but music was the tool he had to work with. His tool for fixing it all. And when he finally, inevitably, realized he couldn't possibly fix anything, that was the end."

Carrie sighs in exasperation. "If that's true, if being driven is always going to lead to destruction, then why work at anything at all?"

"Because it's our job. And we do it piece by fucking piece, one day at a fucking time. Do the work without expecting any one outcome. Do we whatever we can, punch the clock, and call it a fucking day, Carrie."

The car jolts with the sound of shots fired inside the building Carrie and Kara are staking. A man holding a gun runs out.

Kara jumps out of the car to pursue while Carrie phones headquarters.

"Perp has left the building. Officer in pursuit," Carrie dictates to the car radio. "Can you guys give me a visual on my cell?"

"Sure thing." Back at HQ, Dante punches some keys on his computer. "It'll be a second, Carrie. Server's been kind of slow today. I'm opening up another socket."

Carrie slams down the radio device and exits the car. She sees Kara turn a corner behind the building and starts running towards the opposite corner of the building.

Carrie and Kara, both with guns drawn, meet behind the building.

Kara shouts, "Where's our visual?"

"Damn server," Carrie exhales. "Dammit," they say in chorus.