Jocasta and Marshall Discuss the Needle
Leonard
Just before quitting time, Jocasta takes a quick tour of the halls in the main building at Livermore, finally locating Marshall chatting up the ladies in the typing pool. Popping in through the glass door and lifting up a small cellophane bag containing the pen nib and needle, she calls to him: "Marshall, a quick word?"
Brant
Marshall bids goodbye to the ladies and follows Jocasta out into the hallway. “Ms. Menos.”
Leonard
"Dr. Redgrave," she replies, proffering the sealed bag. "I did as you requested with the Librarian's belongings. She was giving herself a tattoo, I'm quite sure of it — at great pain and with great care. Looked to me like a partially completed glyph."
Brant
Marshall takes the bag and opens it, drawing out the needle. He looks at it for a second, then gestures for Jocasta to follow him as he walks to a nearby lobby — one of those liminal spaces in office buildings set up for people to sit in, but where no one seemingly ever does. He takes a seat.
Leonard
Jocasta dutifully follows.
Brant
“Do you think she was attempting to complete the glyph and couldn’t? Or that she stopped herself from doing it?”
Leonard
"Oh, I absolutely think she was making it partial on purpose. Whether it was because she intended to finish it later, or she was just testing herself to see if she could do it, I'm less sure, but I'm quite certain it was what she intended."
Brant
Jocasta, with her people-reading skills, can sense a sudden tension in Marshall’s face, a real anger. He closes his eyes for a beat and exhales, and it evaporates. When he opens his eyes he smiles. “Well, she really fucked me, didn’t she, Menos?”
Leonard
Genuinely puzzled, Jocasta asks: "Fucked you? Not sure I follow. If this whole … situation … is on the level, she didn't fuck any of us, and if it's not, if she's working a cross, then she fucked all of us."
Brant
“Yes, but it’s not any of your jobs to watch for people like her — to spot moles and sympathizers. That’s my job. And I didn’t do my job. For the past, what, two years she’s been running this whole operation, telling us where to go and what to look for. Like dogs on a leash. And she was compromised. Which means we’re compromised.” He’s still smiling. “Now she has us spinning our wheels investigating Targ’s moronic project at SRI, feeding them good intel with one of our best assets, while she burrows her way into the Project’s darkest depths.”
Leonard
"So you think the whole SRI investigation is a wild goose chase?" Jocasta sinks into thought for a moment. "Our man Fred is legit, I know that much, but if he's the best they've got and he can't be suborned, he can be neutralized. Do you reckon there's nothing to their link to Charley, or just that it doesn't matter?"
Brant
"I don't know what I don't know. What I know is that over the past half-year every objective we've pursued has been one given to us by a psychologically broken woman who is plainly on the razor's edge of corruption, if not already corrupted. Whatever is going on at SRI — and maybe there is something to that, I don't know — we have to stop looking at it like just another thing to look into because it's not. It's something that a potential agent of the opposition told us to investigate before breaking all Project protocol and, basically, disappearing." He's still smiling.
"The best — worst? — part of it is that she must know my hands are tied now. If I go to the Project with this information, and they already know it, they'll think I'm a moron for not catching her sooner. If I go to them and they don't know it they'll wonder why I didn't act sooner. So the only course of action available to me is to do nothing because that way, if the Project doesn't know and later figures it out, they'll just assume she fooled me like she fooled all their best head-crackers."
Leonard
Jocasta has a distinct flashback to her intel training, when she had to figure out if the instructor was testing her, testing someone else, or not testing anyone and letting everyone dangle. "Well, I'm gonna do some due diligence on this La Cienega Strangler case just to see if it sets off any alarm bells, but otherwise, I'm at an impasse. I'll run interference on Fred, but if you need me to work on anything else, I'm at your disposal."
Brant
Marshall stands. "Yes. Yes I think we are ... at an impasse, that is. Thank you for the assistance. And, of course, for listening." He smiles, pockets the needle, and heads off.