Vision Impossible by Victoria Laurie Page B

know?” he pressed, clearly worried that word would get out.
    Again, Tanner shook her head. “No one knows,” she stated. “Des Vries was taken off the plane in Israel by Mossad agents posing as paramedics, and at our request, the Mossad have been keeping his incarceration very quiet. As far as we can determine, no one should get wind that anything’s amiss with Des Vries for at least another week or two.”
    I eyed the woman on the screen again moodily. Cup size aside, she was at least four inches taller than me and about ten pounds less. Clearly she needed a turkey sandwich, a soda, and a bag of chips.
    “I look nothing like her,” I said.
    “Don’t worry about it,” Tanner said easily, which of course only made me worry about it even more. “You don’t have to take on her identity, just portray the type of woman that Des Vries would be seen with: dumb, blond, and pretty. While Agent Rivers is working to locate Intuit, you can give your feedback on Kozahkov or any other suspects you identify directly to him. It’s actually a terrific cover for you, as no one would ever suspect Des Vries’s arm candy as being an undercover agent, which means that no one’s likely to perform an extensive background check on you.”
    Great. Dutch got slick arms dealer, and I got flouncy bimbo. “Okay,” I said with a sigh. “I’ll do what I can.”
    Tanner beamed at me. “Excellent. After this briefing I’ll have Dawn take you downstairs for your new wardrobe and a selection of blond wigs. Your identity has already been created, and we didn’t want you to worry about slipping up when introducing yourself. Your new name will be Abigail Carter, Toronto native.”
    Tanner then tossed me a blue and gold passport and I opened it to a photo of me that had obviously been Photoshopped because in it, I had platinum blond hair and, shall we say, rather enhanced cleavage.
    “What’s my occupation?” I asked.
    Tanner smiled tightly. “You don’t have one,” she said. “The less we have to fabricate, the easier it is to believe you are who you say you are, but we’ve managed to arrange for a cover story. An American named Robert Carter, now living in Canada and married to a very wealthy heiress, owes his country a favor, and we’ve called it in. He has grudgingly agreed to admit to an extramarital affair some thirty-odd years ago resulting in a love child named Abigail Carter. He’s recently set up a monthly stipend and is interested in keeping the story very hush-hush.”
    “Ah,” I said, because what else could I say? I mean, they were trying to pass me off as a love child? What idiot was going to buy that? Still, there wasn’t much I could do about it, so I kept my mouth shut.
    Tanner got back to the briefing. “To make the lure of the original software even more appealing and give legitimacy to Des Vries showing up in Toronto with it, we’ve made it look as if he knew all along that the drone was about to be stolen, and he let the real thief take the bait because he also knew about the device’s software glitch. Hence, when the drone went missing, it would cause us to double-down our security on the real code to the software, revealing where it was being hidden. Last night, we snuck Agent Rivers into Canada. Once there, we had him book a flight to Las Vegas, posing as Rick Des Vries, and made sure he was seen in the neighborhood of Dr. Steckworth’s home near Lake Mead.”
    I turned to look at Dutch. “That’s where you were?”
    He nodded.
    Agent Tanner continued. “This morning we posted an internal alert to most of the federal securities agencies that there had been a major breach to a secure facility located in the area of Lake Mead.”
    “There was?” I asked.
    Agent Tanner shook her head. “No,” she said patiently. “There was no security breach. We just made that up because we knew it would be leaked. What we are attempting to orchestrate is a smoke screen. We want to create a bit of a paper trail