Marquesa of Misdirection
By: Motsie of Atlantis
Temporary Operations Manager Owen Granger saw his number one political analyst, Nell Jones, on her way back to ops and asked her to come into his office. She had just finished washing her cup after having a tea break in the bullpen area of the mission.
“Jones, he asked, “do you know Hetty’s passwords for some of her encrypted files here in the computer?”
Nell screwed up her face and held her right hand with its index finger extended under her chin, as if she was trying to remember for just a moment or two, then shook her head slowly as she said to him “No, sir, I don’t.”
The answer she gave the Assistant Director was technically true – she hadn’t memorized the passwords, just so she could have plausible deniability in situations like this. But she knew where they were stored, and she knew how she could access them. But she was not going to volunteer that information to the Assistant Director, because that was not the question he asked her. And since he had made it abundantly clear to everyone that he wanted them to do everything “by the book” and not operate the way had operated under Hetty, until he asked the proper question, she would not give him the answers he was really seeking.
As she left and passed the agents sitting at their desks, she started to ascend the stairs up to her appointed station in ops. The young woman let out a long held breath that was so loud that even Deeks looked up at her with a question on his face. Nell shook her head in amazement as she breathed the words, “Dodged another one.”
LAPD Detective Marty Deeks smiled and nodded to the little redhead. He knew exactly what had happened in her encounter with Granger. He made reference to that very thing when the team psychologist, Nate Getz, asked him to describe how he felt about the other members of his team during his first psych evaluation. When he got to Nell Jones, all he said was, “If Hetty is the Duchess of Deception, then Nell Jones is the Marquesa of Misdirection”.
When Nate looked at him and asked him to explain, Deeks continued. “Our little Nell does not lie, because she can’t do it well. She never distorts the truth because it goes against her moral fiber. Whenever she comes out and lies deliberately, you can see the color rise in her cheeks, the bigger the lie, the deeper the blush. That is why she can never play poker – her face will give her away. But she is intelligent enough to have a complete mental list of answers, that technically are not lies, but do not disclose any type of answer a person expects. The easiest one that falls off her lips is, “…Could be…” throwing the ball back into the other person’s court without any confirmation or denial of the subject in question. So if Hetty is truly the Duchess of Deception, then our little Nell must be the Marquesa of Misdirection.
It was not just her exactitude with words and their definition that seemed to make Nell someone who shaded the truth. She also perfected the ability to blather so constantly, that those seeking information from her at the time would forget what they asked after trying to follow her thought patterns. She disguised it so well, always looking like the little girl that everyone dismissed because she was too young to really know anything, or blaming it on her ADD. She had worked on this defense mechanism throughout the years, and now she had it down so well it was almost an art form when one saw her put it into play.
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