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Soviets in the late 20th century,” said Finn. “The Russians developed the technique of infiltrating agents into key positions—or positions that would
become
key positions—and leaving them ‘dormant’ for years, capable of being triggered by a key word or spoken code phrase. These agents were frequently preconditioned to perform certain specific missions, based upon long-range projections. Quite often, they were ignorant of the fact that they were agents until the time that they were triggered.”
    “You’re to be congratulated, Mr. Delaney,” said Forrester. “Your analysis of the situation and the TIA’s coincide exactly, except for one small point. There is one possibility for gaining access to the right equipment and the necessary expertise that you’ve overlooked. Subverting someone in TAMAC.”
    “Hell, that’s right,” said Finn. “That never even occurred to me!”
    “The TIA put it all together,” said Forrester, “but then, they had all the facts. When they moved to make mass arrests of the members of the Temporal Preservation League based on the results of your Paris mission, one of the people they apprehended was Captain Lachman Singh of the Temporal Army Medical Corps—a psychiatric specialist. He committed suicide before he could be interrogated and we now know why. Once Falcon’s identity was discovered to be false, the TIA began to backtrack. It turns out that the woman I knew as Elaine Cantrell was a complete fabrication, in a manner of speaking.
    Whoever she is, she seems to have no history. She must have had herself imprinted with a personality to match her cover identity as Elaine Cantrell prior to joining the service. A check of her service record reveals that she enlisted in Colorado Springs, which means that she would have been processed at TAMAC, where Captain Singh was in an excellent position to find some ‘inconsistency’ in her psych profile and put her through a scanning procedure for verification purposes. That would have given him all the cover he needed to put her through a modified reeducation program, imprinting her with a bogus personality and some sort of trigger, as Delaney puts it, to reawaken her true identity. Then he cleared her, as the records show, and she went on to Pathfinder training and eventual assignment to my unit.” Forrester winced slightly as he said that. He swallowed hard, then continued.
    “Temporal Intelligence confirms that she applied to the agency while still under my command. She passed their scanning procedures—thanks to Captain Singh—and was accepted for training as a field agent. At that point, Elaine Cantrell disappeared in Minus Time. I believed her to be dead, but now I’ve learned that the TIA arranged for her to be MIA so that Elaine Cantrell could ‘die’ and begin a new career with a new identity, as Sophia Falco—code name: Falcon. She became one of their top field agents.”
    “And since Mongoose was the senior field agent, they obviously got to know each other pretty well,” said Lucas.
    Andre grimaced. “Yes, but unfortunately for Mongoose, not well enough.”
    “The ironic part,” said Forrester, “is that the TIA assigned her to infiltrate the Temporal Preservation League with an aim to making contact with the terrorists and infiltrating them. When she succeeded, the Timekeepers knew that
they
had succeeded, at which point they must have triggered her.”
    “It’s almost funny,” said Finn. “It’s as though the Timekeepers gave the TIA the ingredients to make a bomb. The TIA assembled it for them, then gave it back so they could push the button. The scary thing is that Falcon might not have been the only one.”
    “That’s precisely what they’re worried about,” said Forrester. “This has thrown the TIA into an absolute panic. They’ve recalled every single one of their field agents in order to put them through a series of exhaustive scanning procedures designed to check for the possibility of