American Girl

Barbara Hellmeister was back from her weekend visit to Charlottesville, disappointed she had failed to find a new Nazi lover and partner to help her raise her unborn Hitler-DNA-infused Donald Trump clone.  Her pregnancy would start showing soon, and then it would be too late.  She crawled into her perch in the bridgeman's quarters of the 14th Street Bridge--which always had a calming, comforting effect on her, despite the semi-squalor.  (She didn't know that this feeling came from the demon Ardua lurking in the Potomac below her.)  She counted the cash she had made selling chemical weapons to white supremacists, and examined a couple Nazi artifacts she had picked up.  (Her personal collection, inherited from her Nazi grandfather, had mostly perished in the blaze she had set several years earlier.)  Since the closing of the White House science office, she had not held a lucrative position.  She was still on the FBI's most-wanted list, and it would be far too risky to return to the CIA.  She pressed her hand to her stomach, wondering at her own decision not to follow one of the neo-Nazi groups back to Georgia or Alabama.  It was true that most of them were stupid, couldn't even spell Charlottesville properly on Twitter, had more Celtic blood than Aryan, and had only managed to kill one person--a white woman!--but somehow none of those things really mattered in comparison to the inexplicable draw she felt pulling her back here.  Her phone buzzed, and she was surprised to see a text message from Ricky Chesterfield, a KKK car mechanic from South Carolina who had decided to look her up in DC before heading home.  She smiled at his message asking if she wanted to "have some fun" at the Holocaust Museum.  Do I ever!

Over at the Justice Department, Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions had happily put in motion a civil rights investigation into the white supremacist murder in Charlottesville (since the victim was white and no civil rights violation would be found).  Now, with that public relations coup behind him, he was eager to get back to prosecuting government leaks and deporting oncology nurses for the crime of being born in Mexico.  "Hawk!"

"Yes, sir, General Sessions, sir!" cried DOJ attorney Atticus Hawk, jumping to his feet and saluting.

"At ease!" replied Sessions, shutting the office door behind him before sitting down next to Hawk's desk.  "How's the leak investigation going?"

"Well, sir," began Hawk, sitting back down and shoving his taco salad away from his papers, "we've narrowed it down to about fifty suspects in the CIA, a hundred in the White House, two-hundred at the Pentagon--"

"TWO-HUNDRED!?"

"Well, statistically speaking, that's actually a pretty small number considering how many people work at the Pentagon."

"TWO-HUNDRED!?  It's the trans-sexers, isn't it?!"

"The trans?  Um, we're not examining that, uh, factor."

"We have enemies on all sides, son!"

"Don't I know it?!" declared Hawk, who was regretting his lunch choice and desperately wanting to use the bathroom.  "We did identify one DOJ cleaning woman deported a couple weeks ago who told some Mueller grand jury stories to an Associated Press reporter in Guadalajara."  (This was a complete lie:  Hawk was responsible for most of the leaks about Robert Mueller.)

"Guadalajara!" exclaimed Sessions, instinctively recoiling in disgust from the Spanish name.

"Well, the reporter has a British passport, and I assume you don't want us to bring the woman back for questioning?  She claims she was deported in a case of mistaken identity."

"What happened when you questioned those pesky reporters from the Post and the Times and the Buzzkill?"

"Buzzfeed?  Well, sir, General, their lawyers all sent protest letters citing the First Amendment."

"And you let that stop you!?" cried Sessions, getting red in the face.  "The God-damned First Amendment doesn't protect traitors!"

"Well, sir, there's no proof of treason--"

"I told you to get me the proof!"

"It's a chicken and an egg thing," replied Hawk.

"What?!  You a country boy all of the sudden, telling me about poultry?!"

"Um--"

"They publish government secrets, they need to tell us who leaked 'em!" hollered Sessions.

"We did trace some of the leaks to Barron," whispered Hawk, "but you don't want us to haul him in here, do you?"

"Bannon?!  YES, haul him in here!"

"Barron, sir, the kid."  (Sessions shook his head in confusion.)  "Melania's son, Barron."

"Get me those reporters, damn it!" declared the Attorney General, before storming out of Hawk's office.

I didn't get to tell him our suspects for the "Game of Thrones" leak, Hawk thought to himself.

Not far away, FBI agent Dulles Samuelson was, in fact, delivering a sealed envelope of material from Atticus Hawk to a member of the Special Prosecutor's team.  The woman nodded silently and was quickly on her way.  Samuelson walked quickly into a different corridor before slowing down his pace and exhaling deeply.  It was absolutely astonishing to him that Donald Trump was still in office, that there was still no law enforcement against him, that the bullying Trump had personally aborted the years-long planning for construction of a new FBI building to show his displeasure with the investigation, that the President of the United States had thanked Putin for expelling U.S. diplomats...then gave a wink and a nod to a white supremacist rally responsible for murder.  Samuelson heard whispers of things here and there--how important it was to build a slam-dunk case and not make anything public before all possible criminal conspirators were nailed--but serving as an officer investigating and arresting small-fry criminals every week seemed more and more surreal to him.  He walked into his office to finish up a drug ring report, thinking about Angela de la Paz--who had stopped talking about the supernatural world and thrown herself into espionage for Charles Wu again.  Hawk had still only seen her kill a couple of demons, but he knew it was always on her mind.  She might be talking about North Korea or the undercover agent in the Russian suite of Trump International Hotel, but he could always see in her eyes that intense glow indicating how tuned in she was to what was happening just across the natural/supernatural divide.  When he had first learned of this, he had considered Angela's unique abilities to fight evil a gift; now he understood what a weight it was on her, the massive presence of evil in this town.  The whole town was full of "fire and fury" now, and there seemed no way it could end well.

Over at George Washington University Hospital, Dr. Khalid Mohammad cried in relief as his laboring wife Yasmin gave birth to their first child.  He shook his head when offered the scalpel to cut the umbilical cord, not interested in taking his eyes off Yasmin cradling the baby girl.  "I want to name her Charlotte," whispered Yasmin, "or Heather".

Khalid laughed at the idea of giving their daughter a non-Muslim name, but nodded.  "Charlotte Heather Mohammad," he said.  "An American girl."

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COMING UP:     Jared fixes the Middle East!