Wakey, wakey!
Aw, look at you. You poor thing. Don’t bother, I tied the knots myself. You’re not going anywhere.
Please! Language! There are ladies present, you know.
I’ll admit, Special Agent, you gave me a run for my money. I haven’t had such a bracing challenge in years. I almost couldn’t believe it after that whole nasty affair in Richmond, but it makes so much more sense now that I know — well, I’m getting ahead of myself.
Oh, don’t look so glum, Jane! May I call you Jane? You were never going to beat me, but you came closer than anyone else ever has. That’s something to be proud of, don’t you think?
Ah, yes, the Mandrake Dossier. I thought that might come up. Your girlfriend was most cooperative, you see. Come now, don’t give me that look! I promise you, we didn’t hurt her even a little bit more than was strictly fun. A few stitches and she’ll be good as new. Better than new, even — perhaps now she’ll have learned not to stick her pesky little nose into affairs that don’t concern her. And do you know? I got to use a genuine Pinochet-era parrilla for the first time!
And how are you going to do that tied to a chair?
I have to say, Agent, I never imagined a by-the-books cop like you would go so far off the reservation. Forging passports, bribing the Federales, murdering a judge in cold blood — yes, Jane, you did, and I have the gun you used. Juanita made sure to get your prints all over it while you were napping. Or Jessie, or Miranda, or Annabelle, or whatever name she was going by when you crossed swords. I can barely keep track myself sometimes.
I have to thank you; it would have briefly inconvenienced me if he'd managed to testify in court. But you, Jane, you came along and made yourself the perfect fall guy.
Well. Fall girl, in this case.
Kill you? My dear, whyever would I kill you? As much as the North Koreans would pay me for your pretty little head, you’re so much more useful to me alive. You’re going to be so cooperative, after all.
As if. I know you, Agent Pearson — better than you know yourself, in fact. Your charming paramour might have handed us the Dossier after a gentle beating or two — bruised and bloodied is such a good look on her, by the by — but you, no, you’re made of sterner stuff. I could leave you hooked up to a car battery all night and you’d still be spitting in my face come morning, or so says a certain a Sinaloa friend of mine — oh, and I'm supposed to tell you, Mariela says hi. No, dear Jane, I have more… sophisticated means of persuasion in mind for you.
Mrs. Pearson? I think your daughter would like to see you now.
Hurt her? Now, now; why on earth would I ever want to hurt our mother… sister dearest?
Clarice Bianchi is Approved News 6’s diabolical mastermind correspondent. Born Anna Pearson in 1981 to lonesome housewife and drug kingpin Patricia Pearson from a secret dalliance with Italian intelligence operative Agostino Bertolucci, Clarice learned at an early age the art of spycraft and the trade of organized crime. She lives under a volcano with her crack squad of jungle commandos and hundreds of armored vehicles, where she relentlessly pursues a goal known only to her most trusted lieutenants.