And he did. When I told the President what I was cashing in my card for, that I wanted a sit-down with the Director of the CIA, he only had good things to say about the top brass at the Central Intelligence Agency.

LeHigh spent twenty-five years with the CIA as an analyst before becoming Deputy Director of the newly created Terrorist Threat Integration Center in 2003. Six years later, he was nominated as Homeland Security Advisor to the Obama administration, and in 2012 was nominated by President Sullivan to be Director of the CIA.

LeHigh nods, but says nothing.

“So you want to tell us why we’re here?” Sullivan asks, running his hand through his famous presidential salt and pepper waves.

I didn’t tell Sullivan anything last night, only that I was cashing in my favor, that I needed ten minutes with Director LeHigh. And I needed those ten minutes face-to-face.

“My mom,” I say.

Both men glare at me.

“Elena Janev.”

After I’d hung up with the President, I’d sent Ingrid a text. I needed her to lean on her contact at DHS one more time. I needed my mom’s name. Her real name.

Maybe Ingrid felt bad about having not come over for nearly a week. No matter, when I woke up twenty minutes ago, my mother’s name had been waiting for me.

Both men stare at me blankly. If my mother’s name means anything to either of them, they don’t show it.

“She worked for the CIA,” I say.

The President cuts his eyes at LeHigh, but the Director is impossible to read.

A statue.

“You didn’t know her?” I prod.

“No,” he says with a soft shake of his head.

To expect Director Lehigh to know all the people who work at the Central Intelligence Agency is to expect the CEO of Coca-Cola to know Jim who stocks the local Coca-Cola machines in Telluride, Colorado. But my mother wasn’t a paper-pusher at Langley. She was a Red Four.

Big difference.

“Thousands of people work at the CIA,” interjects President Sullivan.

“And how many of those people were murdered ten days ago?”

The President straightens. “What are you talking about?”

“A woman’s body was pulled from the Potomac River last Monday. She was shot in the back of the head. The woman’s name was Elena Janev. She was my mother.”

“How do you know about this?” asks the Director, with a hint of annoyance.

“I’ve been paying a surveillance firm to look for my mother for the past five years. I received an email Wednesday morning that the prints of a Jane Doe pulled from the Potomac matched the fingerprints I sent them.”

This was a big leap to knowing my mother’s real name and that she worked at the CIA, but LeHigh doesn’t ask how I made the connection.

“I’m sorry,” offers Sullivan.