Camouflage

—38—

The fingerprints betrayed the changeling. The real Rae Archer had her driver’s license renewed, and her fingerprints went into the Homeland Security database.

In a fraction of a second, a computer flagged them as identical to a set that was in a CIA database. The CIA thanked Homeland Security for the information and said they would take it from here.

Everybody working on the Poseidon project had unwittingly provided latent prints to a Samoan dishwasher who was employed by the CIA. When the CIA found that there were two Rae Archers with identical prints, one of them employed in a supersecret foreign scientific project, they went into high gear.

An apologetic man from the LAPD showed up at Rae Archer’s place and said he had to do the driving exam fingerprints over; they’d been misplaced.

The real Rae Archer was pleasantly surprised that the state would come to her, rather than asking her to come back downtown, but wished they’d given her some warning; she looked a mess. The handsome officer didn’t care, though, and neither did the woman in the car, behind the telephoto lens.

Back in Langley, in a bland building that had served the same function for sixty years, agents looked at the evidence and considered what was possible, what was legal, and what they would do.

They had several minutes of video of Rae Archer, somewhat harried mother of triplets, and six jpegs of Rae Archer, lab assistant in Samoa. They were at least superficially the same woman, a very attractive Japanese-American. That they shared features and figure was unusual; that they shared fingerprints and retinal patterns meant that the one in Samoa was a new kind of spy, perhaps a clone.

But who would bother to clone Rae Archer, and who could have done it, back in the nineties?

They asked around and confirmed that no, she was not one of ours, and no, the fingerprints and retinas were not in our bag of tricks. You could fake the retinal patterns by data substitution, but the fingerprints were pulled from a water glass the spy had handed to the dishwasher.

They desperately had to get her in a room and ask her some questions.