Free The Singer's Gun by Emily St. John Mandel Page B

reached into the inside pocket of her jacket and held up a yellow-and-blue badge in Elena’s direction without looking at her. U.S. Department of State, Special Agent. “I’m not really a freelance corporate investigator, and you’re not really legal to work in this country.”
    Elena’s hands were shaking. She clenched them together in her lap until her knuckles went white and when she tried to remember the conversation a few hours later this was the point where her memory faltered. What did she say then? Difficult to recall: something stammering and unconvincing along the lines of “There’s been a mistake” or “I think you’re mistaken,” something utterly inadequate to the catastrophe at hand.
    “I work with the Diplomatic Security Service. We’re an enforcement arm of the State Department, and my specialty is passport fraud.” Broden turned away from the window and stood watching her. “It isn’t that I’m all that interested in you, to be perfectly frank. What I’m interested in,” Broden said, “professionally speaking, are your dealings with the syndicate from which you acquired your Social Security number and that gorgeous fake passport of yours. It’s the syndicate I’m interested in prosecuting, Elena, not you. So answer me honestly when I speak to you, cooperate fully in our efforts, and I’ll put you on track for a green card. You won’t be deported. Otherwise I’m afraid all bets are off in that department.” Broden was silent for a moment, watching her. Elena felt anchorless, as if she might float upward toward the ceiling. She was painfully aware of her heartbeat. “A response might be appropriate at this point,” Broden said. “Do you understand your choice?”
    “It’s just,” one last attempt at deflection, “that I have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t know what you’re referring to.”
    Broden sighed and glanced briefly at the ceiling as if hoping for divine intervention.
    “I’m referring to the time,” she said, very patiently, “when you purchased a Social Security number and a fake passport from Anton Waker at a café on East 1st Street.”
    Elena remembered this part of the interview very clearly, and the part immediately afterward when they talked about recording devices, but later she couldn’t remember how she got home after the interview was done. She closed her eyes in her cubicle a day later and pressed her fingertips to her forehead, wishing herself almost anywhere else. There were tears on her face. Soon she would go down to the mezzanine level, where at that moment Anton was contemplating throwing his stapler through the window. In a moment she’d step through the door of Dead File Storage Four with a recorder in her handbag, and smile, and ask him questions about his life. It was Friday, and it was nearly five o’clock.

4.
    Aria at twelve: she walked fast under the bridge with her hands in her pockets, a sheen of black hair falling to her waist, dressed in one of her father’s shirts with the sleeves rolled up, wearing pants a few sizes too big that had been left behind by a cousin on the other side, the Ecuadoran side that used to come up for long contentious visits before her mother was deported, and Anton’s mother murmured in his ear as Aria approached, “Be nice to your cousin, she’s having a rough time of it.” But the departure of Aria’s mother hadn’t changed her. Except for her clothes, except for her general air of neglect and the way she winced at even a passing reference to her mother, she retained an inner core unchanged from the one Anton had always known. She was infinitely confident. She was an expert thief. She shoplifted candy, bags of chips, fashion magazines. She wasn’t kind and she tolerated nothing, but she was capable of friendliness. She exuded courage and malice in equal parts.
    Anton was eleven. Aria was only six months older, but there were times when the space between them felt like years. He sat