by David Archer
“I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t nervous about coming here,” Monica replied. “For all I know, I could disappear into one of your dungeons and never be seen again. The problem is that Noah didn’t give me any choice. It was either sign on or die, and I’m just not ready to give up living yet.”
“That’s what he was counting on. That, plus the fact that you have kids; he didn’t think you’d want them to feel your loss. Noah himself is an orphan, so despite having no emotions, he does tend to think about such things.”
They pulled into the restaurant a few minutes later and went inside. Once they were escorted to the private dining room and had given their drink orders, Allison took a pair of glasses out of her purse and put them on, then turned to her guest. “The first thing I want to know from you,” she said, “is the names of every person inside my organization that you have subverted.”
Monica looked at her for a long second. “Okay,” she said. “And when I do, what happens to them?”
“That depends on how you got to them. If it was through blackmail, then we’ll consider letting them live. If not, they’ll be terminated.”
“Ouch. Well, there are only two. Jack Miller works in your equipment supply department, and he managed to get me a few items that your R&D came up with. I got him to cooperate by threatening his mother. The other one is Carol Porter. She’s in your…”
“She’s our NSA liaison,” Allison said, and Monica nodded. “Now, who else is there?”
Monica’s eyebrows rose. “That’s it, just those two,” she said. “Why would I lie to you?”
“Because there’s someone you’re trying to either protect or keep for yourself. Now, Noah told me that you have someone watching me. I’m assuming this is the person you’re trying to keep from revealing, but you might as well understand now that the cost of your survival is going to be absolute honesty. If you lie to me again, your children will be orphaned before this day is over.”
Allison reached up and took off the glasses she was wearing, then passed them over to Monica. “Put them on,” she said.
Monica looked at the glasses for a moment, then slid them onto her face and looked at Allison. Instantly, the little orange dots settled onto the prominent points of Allison’s face, and Monica’s eyes grew wide.
“I’m going to give you a pink elephant for your birthday,” Allison said, and the text box lit up.
Monica snatched off the glasses and stared at Allison. “These glasses just told me that you were lying,” she said with awe. “How in the world is that possible?”
“You’d have to talk to our Research and Development people,” Allison said with a grin as she reached out and took the glasses, then put them back on. “They came up with the technology, but I understand it’s based on something that was already available. The point I wanted you to see is that I know when you lie to me. Now, who else do you have in my organization?”
Monica shot her a sour look but then lowered her eyes to the table in front of her. “Is it absolutely necessary for me to tell you? I can assure you that he’s going to know I’m no longer a threat to him, and…”
“What part of don’t lie to me did you not understand?” Allison asked. “I cannot trust anyone in my upper circle that has already been subverted once. Tell me who it is, now.”
Monica sighed but then looked up into Allison’s eyes. “His name is Donald Jefferson.”
* * * * *
Donald Jefferson stepped into Allison’s office and immediately noticed the small blonde woman sitting across from her desk. “You wanted to see me?”
“Yes, Donald,” Allison said. “I wanted you to meet someone. This is Monica Lord. Monica, Donald Jefferson.”
Jefferson smiled and stepped into the room, extending a hand toward Monica. “Pleased to meet you,” he said.
“I sincerely doubt that,” Monica replied.
Jefferson looked at her quizzically, then turned back to Allison. “Am I missing something?”
“Donald, Mrs. Lord is the mole we’ve been looking for.”
Jefferson looked at her for a moment, then turned back to look at Monica. “You?” The incredulous sound in his voice made her look up at him. “Seriously?”
Monica stared at him for a moment, then turned to look at Allison, who—against all logical reason—had a smile on her face.
“I suspect it’s me that’s missing something here,” she said. “I’m going to guess that you knew?”
“Of course,” Allison said. “Donald came to me immediately after you contacted him and threatened his wife and daughter. Unlike some of the others in my organization, he knew that cooperating with you without my knowledge would be the biggest mistake he could ever make. Instead, he chose to let me in on it so that I could help him decide what information to share with you. It was necessary, of course, to keep you believing that he was firmly under your control, but the fact of the matter is that he was working against you the entire time.”
“And you couldn’t have told me this over lunch? Do you have any idea how miserable I felt after I gave him up to you?”
“A little misery is good for everybody, once in a while,” Allison said. “The reason I didn’t tell you is because I wanted to see your reaction when you met him. After all, there was always the possibility that he was playing us both, but there’s no doubt in my mind now that his loyalty is to me and this organization.”
“If there was one thing I knew for certain,” Donald said, “it was that Allison would do everything in her power to protect my family. If you ever found out that I was playing double agent, you would have found it almost impossible to get any of your people near them. Meanwhile, I was another ace in the hole in our efforts to identify you. I’m sure you understand.”
“Understand? You can’t imagine how relieved I am. There’s nothing worse than having to let someone know that their most trusted friends and associates have betrayed them.”
“She must’ve liked you, Donald,” Allison said. “She tried every possible way to avoid giving up your name, but I wasn’t having it.” She turned and smiled at Monica. “On the other hand, she now knows the futility of trying to deceive me, and I felt it was important that she learn that lesson the hard way.”
Monica shook her head. “You people are disgusting, you know that?”
Donald and Allison both laughed. “Join the club, sweetheart,” Jefferson said. “You’ve been at the top of every dirty list in the country for months now.”
She managed a grin. “Yeah, yeah, tell me about it. No, on second thought, don’t tell me about it. Just tell me where we go from here?”
Allison leaned forward and clasped her hands on her desk. “First, there are a couple of things I need to make clear. Under no circumstances am I going to trust you anytime soon. For that reason, you are going to be under twenty-four-hour surveillance. Any problem with that?”
Monica shrugged. “It’s exactly what I would do with someone in my position,” she said. “Am I going to get a new assistant or something? Somebody who has to go everywhere with me?”
“No need for that,” Allison said. “As I’m sure you’re aware, our R&D is one of the most advanced in the world. You’ll be paying them a visit this afternoon, where you’ll be getting another implant. This one will record every sound around you, even down to picking up the other end of a phone call. Periodically, it will upload the recordings into a highly secured server that will then provide copies to my analysis department. We’ll know everything you do, everywhere you go, and everything you say.”
“I think I like the assistant idea better.”
“Yes, I imagine you would,” Allison said, “but that is not an option. It’s too easy to slip away from someone assigned to watch you, but you can’t get away from yourself. This is part of the price of your survival. Take it or leave it.”
“I’ll take it, I’ll take it. Geez, you people drive a hard bargain.”
Allison smiled at her. “Just remember
,” she said, “we’re doing things the easy way. You don’t want to know what the hard way would have been.”
“Hey, I’m in,” Monica said. “You don’t have to beat me up over it.”
“Sorry, but I’m enjoying myself a bit. You almost cost me some of my best people, remember? I might be willing to extend amnesty, but not without putting a few marks on you of my own.”
“Almost?”
“Can I tell her?” Jefferson asked, his voice filled with childish excitement. Allison nodded, and he turned toward Monica. “Remember Randy Mitchell? You had him under your thumb for quite a while, as I recall, and then you ordered Noah to kill him.”
Monica’s eyes narrowed again. “Yeah,” she said cautiously.
“Well, Noah is pretty devious. He decided that he would prefer not to kill Randy, if there was any way to convince you he was dead, so he and his team came up with a way. Poor Randy was given an injection that made him appear to be completely deceased, to the point that the medical examiner was willing to certify it. In reality, though, he was just in the state of suspended animation, so we sent him out to R&D to get a new face and created a whole new identity for him. He’ll be back to work within a week.”
“And of course,” Allison added, “if anything were to happen to his sisters, our entire deal with you is off. You understand that, right?”
“Understood,” Monica said. “They are in no danger from me.”
“Well, okay, then,” Allison said. “Donald will take you out to R&D for your little procedure, while I get started on putting together your supervisory committee. They’ll be based in DC, so you might plan to spend the next month or so bringing them up to date on your activities. I’ve got it set up so that you will speak to them only on a conference call, so that they will not know who you are. Once you get finished here, you can go on home. I’ll give you a call sometime in the next few days to let you know when the committee will be ready for you.”
Monica just looked at her for a long moment, but then Donald chivalrously offered her his arm. “Shall we go?”
Allison managed to hold on until they had gotten into the elevator before she cracked up laughing.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“So,” Monica said as they rode down the elevator, “you were playing me the whole time?”
Jefferson smiled at her. “Just doing my job,” he said. “Allison and I decided together what items of information I should pass along, and a lot of it was very real. I’m sure that you gained some genuine benefit from the things I gave you, but only so far as we were willing to allow.”
“She was right, you know. I did kind of like you. That’s why I tried hard not to give you up, even though I knew you’d find out I had accepted this deal and would know you are free of me.”
“Yes, and there’s a part of me that appreciates that,” Jefferson said. “On the other hand, you should know that Allison is probably one of the most shrewd and cunning people I have ever known. Even attempting to refuse her what she wants could be suicidal. That applies to everyone who works for her, as much as it does to you. If she ever thinks for a minute that I’m genuinely disloyal, she would not hesitate to send Noah or one of the others to pay me a visit.”
The elevator door opened in the parking garage, and Jefferson led Monica to his car, which turned out to be a new Tesla. He opened the passenger door for her like a gentleman, and she slid in. She had her seat belt buckled by the time he got behind the wheel, and then they were pulling out of the garage.
“I’ll confess I’m a little excited,” Monica said. “I never thought I’d actually get to see the inside of your R&D, or meet Wally. Does he know that he’s quite a legend in the entire intelligence community?”
“I think he knows,” Jefferson said with a chuckle, “but Wally is the kind of guy it wouldn’t matter to. He’s not so much interested in being famous or legendary as he is in coming up with his newest creation. He’s shown me things they’re working on that literally blow my mind. Maybe I’ll ask him to let you see a few of them while we’re there.”
“Are you getting me that good a clearance? I know that most of Wally’s work is TS/R.”
“Allison says there’s no point in trying to keep any secrets from you. You probably already know a lot of this stuff, but there’s also the fact that you may sometimes need us to provide you information or equipment in order to do what we are asking you to do. If we went through normal channels, you’d probably never get a true top secret clearance, but these are not normal circumstances. Allison has the authority, granted by the president, to activate anyone she chooses in any capacity. She’s chosen to activate you.”
“Thank God for small favors. And yes, I’d love to see anything Wally has come up with. Like I said, he’s a legend.”
They arrived at R&D a short time later, allowed through by the security guards on Jefferson’s authority. As second-in-command of E & E, he was allowed to override normal security protocols. His own ID was carefully examined and scanned, but none of the guards questioned Monica’s presence.
When the security officer at R&D had finished scanning his ID, he handed it back and then notified Wally that Jefferson was there with a guest. Monica’s eyes went wide when they heard running footsteps, and then Wally came skidding around the corner into the foyer. He stared at Monica for a moment, then motioned silently for the two of them to follow him back to his office.
As soon as they were inside and the door was secured, Wally turned to Monica with a huge smile and held out both hands. She reached up to shake with him, but he wrapped her right hand in both of his and brought it to his lips, then kissed it gently before releasing it.
“Allison briefed me this morning,” he said. “I cannot tell you what an honor it is to finally meet you face-to-face. Mrs. Lord, you have done some incredible things, and the fact that you did most of them alone simply speaks to what a genius you must be. I am humbled to be in your presence.”
Monica stared at him for several seconds, then turned to Jefferson. “Has he flipped?”
Jefferson laughed. “Monica, you need to understand something. Even the most seasoned espionage agents have never given our intelligence agencies half the headaches that you did. To Wally, you are the one who is a legend.”
She rolled her eyes and turned back to Wally. “The honor is mine,” she said. “Every intelligence agency in the world wishes they had you designing their equipment. I understand I’m here for what might be an unpleasant procedure, but there’s a little bit of pride I’m feeling in the fact that it will be a Wally Lawson device that’s being implanted in me. I understand it’ll be something that can actually keep track of every sound around me, is that right?”
Wally started laughing, and his laughter was so high-pitched that it sounded like a slightly insane giggle. “Oh, I’ve come up with something better than that,” he said. “When Allison told me you were coming in and that she wanted me to fit you with a monitoring device, I called a couple of our bright kids and asked them for something special. It took them almost three hours to put it together, but it’s awesome.” He turned to one of the tables and picked up something that looked like a thin blank quarter. “We’re going to put this just under the muscle above your left breast. It’s got a miniature diamond betavoltaic battery that will last for—well, pretty much forever, and it will deftly record every sound around you, but it does even more than that. Every couple of seconds, it will send out a burst of UHF sound waves that act like super-sophisticated radar. Those waves won’t even be slowed down by the tissues of your body, but they’ll echo back a clear image of everything around you. It’ll be in black and white, of course, but we’ll actually be able to see who you’re talking to, where you are, everything. Isn’t that great?”
Monica’s smile turned into something of a grimace. “Absolutely fantastic,” she said sarcastically. “Are those sound waves going to cause me any harm? What about cancer risk, things like that?”
“Oh, the ris
k is very low,” Wally said. “We calculate that there’s less than a ten-percent chance it’ll ever cause cancer, but you might experience a little loss of bone density. You probably want to start taking calcium supplements now, instead of waiting for menopause.”
Monica made a face. “Only ten percent, huh? Oh well, I guess I’ll take whatever good news I can get. Is this gonna hurt?”
“Oh, you’ll be sore for a few days. The doctor will actually make the incision up under your armpit and insert the disk from there. That way, you won’t have a visible scar. Are you ready?”
Monica swallowed and looked at Jefferson. “Um, Mr. Jefferson suggested that you might show me around a little bit before we get started. He said you’ve got some really great new things that you like to show off.”
Wally spun and looked at Jefferson, his smile getting even bigger. “Can I?”
Jefferson, doing his best not to burst out into belly-busting laughter, nodded his head. “Sure, Wally,” he said. “She’s one of ours, now. Allison says we can show her anything.”
Wally spun back around and grabbed Monica by her left hand, then yanked the door open and took her out into the hallway. He was moving quickly, and it was a little hard for her to keep up, but she managed.
“First thing I want to show you,” he said, “is something that nobody else has seen yet—well, except for Allison and Donnie and a couple of people who work here. You’re going to get the biggest kick out of this, I swear you will. Come on, it’s right down the hall.”
Jefferson followed along, and they turned and entered a workshop on the left of the hall. Wally closed the door behind them and then pointed at a young woman who was sitting behind a desk.
“This is Esmeralda,” he said.
Esmeralda looked up at Wally, then turned her face toward Monica. “Well, hello,” she said. “What can I do for you today?”
Monica put on a smile. “Hello, Esmeralda,” she said. “I’m Monica. Wally says you’ve got something interesting to show me?”