I'M FEMALE, I'M MAFIA

DOPs

Soon, Brenda was funneling all the fakes found by the other agents in the office to Jade for scrutiny. With time and a lot of practice, she was able to distinguish fakes so quickly that agents at nearby Secret Service field offices - in Moscow, Bucharest, Frankfurt and Rome - began sending her suspicious banknotes to check for fast turnaround. Sending paper money to Washington to be verified through official channels was slow and required a lot of paperwork. By making this unnecessary, she began to develop a reputation for speed and reliability, even gained a little fame around the region. 

A few weeks after she had gotten settled, Brenda came excitedly into her office, a piece of paper in her hand.

“Remember the fake we picked up from that undercover operation the first day you were here?”

“Yes...”

“Turns out it matches a couple of others that have surfaced around Eastern Europe. I just got this report from Treasury, and it says these notes may be coming from a genuine KBA Giori printing press."

That was a bit of a shock. KBA Giori was a company in Germany that made all the intaglio presses used to print U.S. dollars. The machines were manufactured under top secret contract for the American government. From what Jade knew, the factory in Wurzburg had tighter security than the Pentagon.

“How’s that possible?” Jade said.

“Well, I’m sure you know Giori makes basically the same machines for virtually every country in the world."

“Yes...”

Brenda shrugged. “Some third world country could have sold one of their machines to a criminal ring. Every Giori press is accounted for, except for one that never made it to Chile about five years ago. Nobody ever figured out what happened to that one." Brenda paused. “This is big, Jade. Maybe the biggest case I’ve ever worked on. My god, if someone actually has their hands on a genuine KBA Giori machine like the ones we have at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, and figure how to use it right, they could make a perfect counterfeit, one that’s so good even the Treasury Department wouldn’t be able to tell the difference."

“But there were a lot of mistakes in the one I checked."

“Yeah, but from what I’ve been told, other notes they’ve found are better. Whoever has this machine is on a learning curve, figuring out how to use it as they go along." 

“Can you get me scans of those other notes? I’d like to see them."

“I’ll see what I can do,” Brenda said. “Once they go to Treasury, getting them back is like pulling teeth."

* * *

At the end of the month, when Jade was doing paperwork, she asked if she could see Brenda’s DOPS to get a better feel for how the Sofia office worked.

She frowned at her. Gesturing around her messy office, she said, “You think I do DOPS?”

“I just assumed... ”

“I’d rather spend an afternoon at the dentist than fill out those summaries. I’d rather be tied up and forced to listen to the President’s State of the Union address. I’d rather have bamboo shoots... ”

“But don’t you have to do DOPS?”

“Well, yeah. Everybody has to do them. Every once in a while my boss in D.C. calls up and chews me out. I lock myself in here for a few hours and make stuff up, fill out as many as I can. It’s pure torture."

“I’ll be happy to do your DOPS, Brenda."

“You’ll do my DOPS?"

“Yes, I can do them when I do my own. I don’t mind doing DOPS - they make me feel organized."

She pointed at her. “You’re on, girl!” She nodded slowly, thinking about it. “Yes. Perfect! I can tell my boss we ‘synchronize our DOPS.’ He would like that." Brenda grinned at her. “Sounds kinda kinky, doesn’t it?”

Jade blushed.

Jade soon found that she looked forward to every moment she spent with Brenda, and that she felt empty when she was out of the office or away on an assignment.

The highpoint of her week was when Brenda would come into her office and say, “Let’s synchronize our DOPS.”

They would pack up their papers and go to an Ethiopian cafe across the street that served delicious coffee, and Jade would sit there and write all of Brenda’s DOPS, with her catering to her every need. He would buy her a double cappuccino and make it just the way she liked it - with one spoon of white sugar stirred in, and a half spoon of demerara sprinkled across the froth. Lovingly sprinkled over the froth, she liked to think.

Brenda would hover around her. “Can I get you a muffin? A fresh squeezed orange juice? A thousand dollars in cash?”

They talked a lot during this hour-long ritual and got to know each other better. She didn’t know how Brenda felt about it, Jade relished every second of it.

After three months of working in Bulgaria, she finally admitted it to herself. She was falling madly, hopelessly, unstoppably in love with Brenda Hanks.

Brenda seemed to know everyone in Sofia, and she took Jade with her to “make her rounds” at a variety of the city’s seediest clubs and bars, which she found deliciously intriguing. At least at first.

It was clear that Brenda was homosexual, Jade had noticed - from the way she carried herself and her attitude around pretty females - during her first week in Sofia, before Brenda had even casually mentioned it during one of their lunch hours at the Ethiopian café. It was also clear that she had lots of casual girlfriends, the type that hung around bars and lived off the generosity of men - or women - they met there, particularly “rich” foreigners.