Mira smiled and nodded. “Yeah, totally.”
Totally? Last Mira checked, she’d graduated high school. What the hell was it about this man that made her lose her words? Usually she had plenty at her disposal, in multiple languages.
“But then again, there's been a lot of crazy stuff that I've had to skip over. Pure crazy. You know, like a guy in the subway just shouting things or what-have-you... Not that I'm saying that's you.”
She tried to smile.
“Matthias vetted you, and I trust Matthias.” He cleared his throat. “So, Mira, let's get started.”
Weren’t they getting started already? Mira straightened up against the chair-back, awaiting whatever he meant by "get started."
Jackson began with a quick flip of the name badge that hung around his neck, so that his gleaming white smile faced Mira. And then a question: “Can you tell me how much you already know about DARC Ops?”
“Not very much,” Mira said as she looked around the sparsely lit room. “Which, I'm sure is intentional?”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, I understand you deal with covert, black ops, uh... stuff. So I'm guessing you'd prefer to stay under the radar.”
He smiled. “To a certain extent, yes. But we also have to advertise somehow.”
“Well, Matthias used to date a good friend of mine. So there's your viral marketing.”
“That's right,” he chuckled. “Matthias can certainly be clingy like a virus.”
Mira couldn’t help but giggle a little bit. But why? It wasn’t even that funny. She quieted herself and then got back on topic: “But, yeah, I guess I'm here because you can handle tech and foreign policy.”
“Not just handle...”
“Exactly. You're the best, apparently.” She waited for his reaction, which turned out to be a casual little shrug. It seemed like an oft-used show of modesty, an instinctual reaction to his company receiving yet another superlative. But Mira could feel how certain he was. It was evident just by the way he sat in a chair. “And you wouldn’t be scared to take on people in high places,” she continued. “Maybe even people in government?”
“Hmm...” Jackson leaned back and crossed his legs. “That's where it gets complicated. If the person is just in the government, then it's not really a problem. But on the other hand, if they're acting on the government's behalf...”
She thought for a moment. “I can't see that being the case.”
“I can. And I have.”
Mira felt his eyes studying her face, reading her frown and worry lines like decrypted messages. She fought the urge to look away, to shift her body from his strong, discerning gaze.
“So Matthias tells me you're a translator for Senator Langhorne...”
She gave in to the urge, shifting uncomfortably in her seat at the mere mention of that name, the Senator who'd gone from boss to bogeyman overnight.
“And you came across this... document?” Jackson made a little apologetic frown. “I'm sorry. I should let you take it from here.”
Mira had been staring past his broad shoulders to the doorway, the room's only exit. It was closed. She took a deep breath, and then remained silent.
“Can I get you anything?” he asked in a softer, more comforting voice. “Water? A soda?”
Her gaze finally found its way to Jackson's lightly stubbled face. “Could we talk somewhere else? I don't want to be bugged.”
He laughed. “No one's bugging you. Unless you mean, annoying. In which case you might be right. Am I annoying you?”
“No, I mean bugging. Recording.”
“No one's recording you.” His face was relaxed and honest-looking. He was either telling the truth, or hiding his sociopathy. “Mira, this conversation is private. Trust me.”
Trust him? She'd already done enough of that in her life. Mira had enough experiences in her past to know the value of skepticism when dealing with good-looking men. No more free passes. Right?
“And if you don't trust me, then you can certainly trust U.S. code section 2511 of title eighteen.”
Her laughter started up before he could finish. “Really? DARC Ops is scared of a little wiretapping law?”
With a growing smile, Jackson leaned his head back so that he could talk to the ceiling. “That is correct, Mira,” he said loudly and clearly. “Our company has done and will do everything in its power to rigorously observe the constitutional rights of our past, current, and potential clients, as well as comply with all local and federal laws and statutes, including U.S. code section 2511 of title eighteen.” He lowered his gaze back to Mira. He seemed proud of himself.
“That's all well and good,” Mira said calmly. “But D.C. has a one-party consent law, which means that you can record even if I'm unaware of it.”
“I'll put it this way,” Jackson said, playing again with his name badge. “If we're recording you in here, then we're recording you in every other room in the building too. Does that make you feel better?”
“Sort of?”
“Do you still want to change rooms?”
Mira looked around the statement room again. “Well, what is this, the office bomb shelter? Slide in a Culligan water treatment system and some canned food and you're good to go.”
Jackson smirked politely.
“I mean, look at it.”
He kept his eyes on her. “I'm pretty familiar with how it looks. I actually come in here to do my crosswords. It's nice and quiet.” He paused a moment, shifting in his chair. “Also, we don’t usually take in people off the street like this. No offense. But when we do, we like to have our first meeting in here. I forgot why we ever called it the statement room. But it is what it is.”
“You like crosswords?”
Jackson nodded. He seemed reluctant to discuss his hobby, like it had been some office secret. Maybe that was why he needed a secret hideaway.
“Really?” Mira pressed on. He looked about ready to crack. “Crosswords?”
“I've got one cooking in my office right now,” Jackson finally said.
“The Sunday crossword or New York Times?”
“Sunday.” He was referring to the Washington Post's weekly puzzle, which was also Mira's favorite.
“Do you have thirty-six across?” she asked.
Jackson suddenly had a sheepish grin on his face.“I don't know... What is it?” For a micro-second he almost looked... vulnerable?
“I don't know it, either,” Mira said. “That's why I asked.”
“I meant the clue. What's the clue?”
“Enigma vanquisher. Six letters.”
“Turing,” he said promptly.
She'd been smiling since his first mention of their shared hobby. Maybe he was a nerd, after all. Mira delighted to imagine this sexy military bad-boy billionaire hunched over the same lame crossword that she brought into bed with her every night.
“Alan Turing. World War Two cryptanalyst.” Jackson cleared his throat as if it would camouflage his lightning-quick glance to the shiny Rolex peaking out past his shirt-cuff. “Anyway, back to your document.”
“Oh sorry. Yes, the document.”
“Yes, you were just about to tell me your story,” said Jackson. “And could you tell it loud enough so our mics can pick it up?” He flashed her a quick grin. There was that urge to roll her eyes again.
There wasn’t much of a story, really. She’d found a document. Live-decrypted it. And now she was in the statement room of a company with an ominous-sounding acronym, sitting with the owner, a covert crossworder , who was also a total hottie.
She left out that last part, and the next part about her wanting to feel up his chest a little bit, her reaching behind his tie to undo a few buttons, her hand sliding through... It was superfluous information that would hinder the case.
“It's what I'm best at,” Mira said, sensing that she'd somehow lost his confidence in her. “That's all I do, decrypting text, languages. I don't even have to think about it.”
&nb
sp; Jackson remained quiet, his eyes seemingly observing the tiniest micro-twitch and mannerism of Mira's face. After a while he looked down to his lap where he causally brushed away some stray lint or strand of hair. “But what did it say? I mean, specifically.”
Mira drew a green leather notebook from her purse. “I wrote down a few fragments, whatever I could remember after I rushed out of there.” She flipped through a few pages before looking up at Jackson. “I was pretty nervous. I'm not, um... I've never really, uh...”
“That's completely understandable, Mira. But you're handling it better than most people would. You're here aren’t you?”
She nodded and looked down at her page of notes. The penmanship was scraggly, the work of a nervous hand. She remembered the exact feeling, the hollow shakiness. And she remembered sitting that day at her cubicle, waiting for someone to come by and finally let her in on the joke and it would all be a hilarious relief. Just a little office joke. No need to worry. No need to seek out someone like Jackson.
“Can you read some of it?” he asked.
“DGH, thank you for assurances... Mr. K. is very close to agreeing and moving into action regarding the new toys. Kilaguni airport is preferred.”
Jackson took a deep breath before exhaling with an, “Okayyy... Well, it's interesting, certainly. I wouldn’t say it's a smoking gun just yet. But, there really is no good reason for a senator to have such material on his computer. And the way it was encrypted... That in itself is very suspicious. You don't think he's a cryptogram hobbyist or anything, right?”
Mira thought of the stuffed big game animals that hung like garish war prizes in Langhorne's office, and the muscle car YouTube videos, and then she answered Jackson with an emphatic, “No.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“There was nothing hobbyist or amateur about the encryption.”
“Then how could you crack it?”
She felt mildly insulted. Although it was true. She was an amateur.
“You even cracked it on the spot,” Jackson added. “And to be perfectly honest with you, Mira, I'm still not sure what to make of that.”
Mira sighed and looked back to her scribbled transcript. “Me neither, I guess,” she said quietly. “But, like you said, it is what it is.”
“I said that about the name of this room. What you're bringing up here are some very serious allegations. Maybe deathly serious. Do you understand that?”
“I'm here, aren’t I?”
Jackson nodded as if to say “Yes, there certainly is a crazy woman in my office.”
“Okay, fine,” Mira said. “Let's pretend for a second that I did make this whole thing up.”
Jackson barely raised his eyebrows.
“What would be my motivation? What's the payoff?”
He began to say something but stopped himself, opting for a simple, non-committal shrug.
“Basically, why the fuck would I do that?”
Jackson sighed and tapped a few fingers against the table. “Can you show me some of these symbols? Have you sketched any of them in your book?”
Mira gladly produced a full page of sketches which Jackson quietly stared at. It was almost a blank, dead stare, save for a faintly twitching left eyelid.
She couldn’t wait any longer. “What do you think?”
Before he could answer, someone knocked very lightly on the door. Jackson, after excusing himself to answer it, spent a half minute murmuring to someone through the slight gap he'd cracked open. When he returned to his seat, he was shaking his head.
“What is it?” she asked. “Something wrong?”
“It's just... a little... incredible.”
“What is?”
“And I mean incredible in the bad way. I'm sorry, Mira. I am. I like you, and I'm not trying to be rude here. But it's just really difficult for me to believe that you've live-encrypted this code, this language that you've never seen before. It's even new to me. And this is what I do.”
Going into the meeting, Mira had felt a slight nagging suspicion that it would—despite what Lashay kept insisting—be a complete fucking waste of time. Turns out she’d been right.
“You can understand that right? I want to believe you. And I'm going to look into this and get to the truth, and—”
“You think I really want to believe that a United States Senator is making deals to arm children soldiers in Kenya?”
“I'm sorry to inform you, Mira. But that's just a drop in the bucket. And it's a big bucket. Welcome to your real country.”
Another soft knock at the door.
“Later,” Jackson growled.
The knocking stopped.
“Look, I'll have my guys poke around and—”
“We don't have time to poke around. Jackson, the weapons fly out in six weeks.”
“But it'll only take me a few days to know if you're paranoid delusional.” Damn, he said that with such a straight face. “And when I verify that you're not, because you seem nothing but intelligent and logical and just a charming, pretty young lady whom I've enjoyed talking with, then we'll get together again, in a nicer room, and you'll sign some papers and we'll plan our attack.”
Mira was suddenly acutely aware of how awful she looked, how tired and lonely she felt, and how long and dark and quiet the night ahead was going to be for her.
“Hey, it'll be alright,” he said, getting up from his chair. “You did the right thing. You’re here. That's the most important part.”
5
Jackson
“Of course I don't believe her.” With a quick stab of the accelerator, Jackson's black Mercedes powered up the incline of his building's underground garage. Three seconds later, the car was bathed in the orange glow of streetlights as it crawled along a congested Connecticut Avenue. The road shimmered black from a brief afternoon shower, the rain having arrived right around the time his security alerted him about a woman named Mira. He distinctly remembered the darkening approach of rainclouds as he stared out of his corner office window, him saying “Thanks, let her in,” in his most bored, slow-workday drawl. He also remembered how his workday was suddenly filled with interest at the sight of a petite blonde who, despite her adorable nerdiness—or maybe because of it—looked, sounded, and moved just like the type of woman he'd find himself naturally gravitating towards in dimly lit cocktail lounges or someone's latest crowded banquet for this or that D.C. vanity project charity. The only problem was that she was batshit crazy. Or, at the very least, harboring a borderline personality disorder. Sad because he loved the smart ones. And Mira was definitely smart. Why were all the smart ones crazy?
Now, the weather and workday having cleared, Jackson sat in the plush leather seats of his car, debating with his passenger, Matthias, about how seriously he should handle Mira's case. Or if he should even handle it at all.
“She's too pretty,” said Jackson.
“So?”
Jackson remained quiet. There was no need to elaborate.
“So now you think she's a honey pot?”
“Set up through your friend, your ex. Yes. I do.”
Matthias sighed as he thumbed through his smartphone. “Now you're the one sounding paranoid.”
“When haven’t I been paranoid, Matt?” He thought it was a pretty good question, one that bought a little more silence from Matthias. “Think of the world we live in. Comes with the territory.”
Jackson navigated his car around the traffic loop of Dupont Circle before turning on to Massachusetts Avenue. He'd always liked the opulent, old-world architecture of the District's premier residential street. Maybe he'd sell his suburban eyesore and move into one of its finely bricked mansions with someone like Mira—minus the delusions.
“She scares me, Matt. I don't know why.”
“Yeah you do. You don't want to go rooting around in a senator's wastebasket.”
“I don't care about that,” Jackson said. There had been a hundred decidedly less glamorous tasks that he'd been a
ssigned as a Navy SEAL. “You know I've got a thing for destroying the lives of corrupt pencil-pushers. That doesn’t bother me. It's the girl. Who the hell is she?”
Matthias shrugged. “My ex's friend.”
“Exactly.”
“Mira,” said Matthias. “Translator by day, master cryptanalyst by night. It's no wonder you've got a thing for her.”
“Hmm, I dunno. But I'll tell you what I don't have a thing for. Someone's covert operative getting a little too familiar with our building and our protocols, and anything else she'll be witness to if we take on her case.”
“If she was sent from someone, why would she tell such an unbelievable story?”
It was a good question. Jackson had no idea of the answer.
“Look how much it got your attention,” Matthias said with a chuckle. “I doubt you'd be feeling this way if it was just another piracy case.”
Jackson was shaking his head. There had to be more to it. He'd been living in the world of dirty tricks for too long. “There must be something really nasty with Langhorne. Some can of worms. Maybe we're being tricked into opening it.”
“Yeah, which would make Mira look pretty credible. Wouldn’t you say? If there really was something wrong?”
“At that point, it wouldn’t really matter.”
Matthias stared at his boss. “Then what the hell are we talking about?”
“We're talking about doing a little homework on Mira,” Jackson said as he steered around another traffic circle, guiding the Mercedes deep into the heart of Embassy Row. One by one they passed the various flags. Burkina Faso, Kyrgyzstan, Madagascar, Paraguay, Malawi, Cote d'Ivoire, Republic of... “We're talking about you doing the homework, specifically,” Jackson continued. “Which should be easy since you already know her so well. Let's do school records, grandma-grandpa, the whole bit.”
“Alright,” Matthias muttered. “Fine.” He muttered a lot. It seemed like every day Jackson would discover a new reason why girlfriends like Lashay jettisoned his relationships. “When she comes back clean you can buy me a beer.” He was moping now.
DARC Ops: The Complete Series Page 5