“I have zero problem with that.”
“Which reminds me...”
“What, that you're an alcoholic?”
“Not me,” said Matthias, offering no further elaboration.
Was he starting to clam up already? Fuck. Some days it was like dealing with overgrown children. Just the toys were a little different, instead of building blocks they got guns and radar scramblers.
“Okay, well who is?” asked Jackson.
“Mr. Davis.”
Mr. Davis was really Tom Davison, a youngish nobody that may or may not have some useful information. He was a lower level IT guy for Osprey. In essence, he was trying to fortify what Jackson had sent Tansy to infiltrate. An air-gapped network. That was tech-speak for a system not on the public internet, but physically isolated on a secure, independent network. Tansy had been hacking on it for weeks and Jackson was getting a little impatient. Sometimes a real world hack works better.
“Think he's at the bar?” asked Matthias.
Jackson made an abrupt right turn down a tight residential lane. They were now heading in the general direction of Swinies', a neighborhood pub where Tom liked to imbibe over-priced draft beer while hitting on anything female that moved. Jackson and Matthias liked catching him there when he was at his sloppiest. Maybe one night he'd tell the bartender a secret, or conveniently lose his phone, or maybe he'd get kidnapped and then water-boarded until he coughed up some answers. In lieu of water-boarding, DARC Ops personnel were always sure to keep him well-stocked with tiny little tracking devices. After five or six beers, you could put a bowling ball in his courier bag and he wouldn’t notice.
Jackson received a call just as he parked along a curb a few blocks from Swinies'. It was Tansy.
“We're checking in on your boy,” Jackson said. “You need all the help you can get.”
As he and Matthias walked to the pub, Jackson queried Tansy for his opinion of Mira's amazing talents.
“I've never heard of her,” Tansy said. “If she could really do that, I would know her.” Tansy's modesty knew no bounds. But he still was one of the net's leading underground figures. The guy used to have LAN parties with Edward Snowden and other misguided youth who'd grow up to be the NSA's leading hackers.
When they neared the pub entrance, Tansy had some final advice that Jackson didn’t want to hear. “I wouldn’t automatically dismiss her, though. As you know, I'm somehow terrible with a Rubik's Cube. But my autistic cousin can do it in fourteen seconds. Some people just have those crazy abilities, like a savant.”
There was that word again.
“Is she autistic?” asked Tansy.
“No. That's the problem.”
Mr. Davis had apparently been thirsty after work. Jackson and Matthias ordered drinks, found a corner booth, and began the stakeout. Across the room, their subject sat alone with a froth-laced half-glass of beer. His phone was plugged into a wall outlet. He was texting, his back hunched almost perpendicular to the table. He momentarily straightened his back to take a sip of beer.
“The connections are all there,” said Matthias, reading off the screen of his encrypted cell. “The family arms business. The big game hunting in Kenya. Maybe that's how he met his unsavory friends? Illegal hunting. Poaching. That's a big business out there.”
Jackson half-listened as he scrolled through some files on his own phone.
Matthias had more ideas. “Do you think he could be forced into it, like through blackmail? Maybe he's compromised.” He took a sip of beer and continued. “Maybe someone's threatening to release a video of him shooting an endangered elephant or something.”
“Matthias, stop making sense and just drink your beer.”
“Well, we should be doing something in case she's right about that document.”
“We are,” Jackson said.
“How? Right now we're watching some loser get drunk.”
“No, that's what you're doing” said Jackson, still on his phone. “Or rather, what you should be doing. I'm refreshing my memory about Kenya. And that airport, Kilaguni. You know I've been there?”
“I just figured you've been everywhere,” Matthias said. He glanced at Mr. Davis. “Hey, he's leaving.”
Jackson looked over to the kid. He was unplugging his phone. And then standing.
“It's perfect,” whispered Matthias.
Mr. Davis, heading for the bathroom, left his table with a phone charger cable laying across it.
“Let's do this,” said Jackson as he fought back an unprofessional, mischievous grin. He felt like a kid, savoring the rare adrenaline rush of the internet security business.
Matthias quickly strolled over to the Mr. Davis' table, grabbed the cable, and headed towards the bar. He made the switch on his way, stuffing the cord in his right pocket and then pulling a new one from his left. This was the cord he showed to the bartender, saying, “Hey, I think some guy left this.”
“No he didn’t,” called Jackson from his seat, his voice projecting across the room. “He's just in the bathroom.”
“Oh, okay, whoops,” said Matthias, the good Samaritan. “My bad. I'll just put it back.”
Jackson paid their tab as Matthias plugged the new charge cable into the outlet. And that was it. No big deal. Just someone trying to be nice.
6
Mira
One of the perks of working on Capitol Hill was its close proximity to a variety of interesting lunch break locations. Even on shorter "coffee breaks", Mira could circle the Capitol Building, the Supreme Court, and the Library of Congress, all in a 15 minute walk. In nice weather, she'd eat lunch on a concrete barrier in front of the gleaming white dome of the Capitol, or on the wide steps of the Thomas Jefferson Building, home to the second largest library in the world. It was also home, for the better part of most weekdays, to Mira's friend, Lashay.
One of the perks of knowing an archivist at the Library of Congress was the occasional access to a variety of otherwise restricted areas. This time it was the scan room, where Lashay had been digitizing old posters with an oversized scanner.
“Just a little personal project,” said Lashay, her gloved hands flattening a weathered sheet of canvas on the scan bed. “I'm actually supposed to be scanning some phone book from 1932. But this is so much more important. It actually says something about us as a culture.”
As the machine began to scan its document with a low buzzing sound, Lashay held up the next poster in line so Mira could see the print. Backgrounded in white was a small black silhouette of a bomb. Circling it was a red circle with a cross through the middle. Next to that was a circled “A” with no cross.
“I found these on eBay,” Lashay said, smiling like a child who with a new toy. “They're from the mid-seventies when some members of the Clamshell Alliance spoke at Berkeley. Anti-nuclear stuff, obviously.”
Lashay had been on an anarchist kick ever since Mira had first met her, which was back in their slightly pot-hazed undergrad days at GWU. She remembered it was Lashay's anarchy "A" wrist tattoo that first caught her attention during an elective Hegelian philosophy class. A few days later, Mira would watch her future anarchist friend climb up the campus statue of George Washington, bull-horn in hand, to give an impassioned speech against paternalism from her seat on the first president's shoulders. She found it amusing that her friend went from an undergrad of rebellion and pot smoke to a job of name badges and security clearances.
“I thought you were trying to take a break from all that,” Mira said as she flipped idly through a small stack of already-scanned artwork.
“From what? Collecting posters?” Lashay switched out a new poster and began the process all over again – aligning the document, pressing through various settings on the touch-display, and then watching her digitized image arrive in vertical bars on a nearby computer monitor. “I'm scanning them for inclusion in the archive as important cultural artifacts. It's a vital service to the country.”
“Scanning is one thing,” said M
ira. “Printing and distributing is another.”
“And that's what I'm taking a break from,” said Lashay, who had a habit of using government resources to print and circulate anti-establishment manifestos. “But I'll always be an anarchist.”
“An anarchist archivist,” said Mira as she pulled her hand out of the poster pile. “Will you always be an oxymoron?”
“Will you always be a faceless bureaucratic stooge? A translator of terror for an imperialist senator?”
“Maybe not for much longer.” Mira walked away from the stack of posters, no longer interested in their political messages. She had enough injustice to worry about.
“You're quitting?” asked Lashay.
“Or getting fired, because I just can't…I can't do the work anymore.” Mira collapsed into a leather office chair which faced an over-sized computer monitor. Sick of looking at monitors, she swiveled the chair away. “So, I guess something has to give.”
It had only been two days since her discovery. The first day she went home "sick." And today she was taking an extra long lunch break, which at this rate might be her last.
Lashay walked to a set of metal drawers on the other side of the small room. “I found some reading material for you,” she said, opening a drawer and pulling out a thin paperback. “In case you suddenly have a lot of free time on your hands.” She handed the book to Mira.
Triumphant Gamble: My Early Politics.
The book had a solid green cover with no images. Although its aesthetics dated the book at least 30 years, it looked brand new. No dog ears. No spine crease. No signs of it being read.
“It's by your favorite author,” said Lashay.
Mira's eyes traveled to the text at the bottom edge of the book.
William D. Langhorne.
It sparked pain in Mira's chest.
“I can loan it out for you if you want.”
Another perk of knowing a Library of Congress librarian.
Mira turned the book over, finding that it only contained two things: a barcode and a black and white photo of the Senator on safari to some vast African grassland. He wore a wide-brimmed hat, baggy khakis, and the beady-eyed smile of a degenerate who'd just killed something. A shotgun rested in his hands. A dead buffalo slumped at his feet. “What the hell is this?”
“A memoir,” said Lashay. “From 1986.”
Mira opened the book and flipped through the first few pages.
“I read through a little of it.” Lashay returned to her scanner and prepared the next document, her practiced hands moving without her breaking eye contact with Mira. “It's pretty embarrassing. Like a big pat on the back. He talks about the family business, too. One of the early chapters. I thought it might be useful, or at least interesting.”
“Lashay, it's both. Thank you so much.”
“Wait till you see chapter six.”
Mira scanned the table of contents.
7
Mira
“What the fuck...” Mira said under her breath.
“Exactly. WTF. I had the same reaction.”
“So fucking bizarre...” Mira closed the book and gave her friend a wide-eyed stare. “How'd you find this?”
“I just did exactly what I tell everyone else to do, when they're looking for something in here.” Lashay pressed the "scan" button and the machine hummed to life. “I typed in his name in the search bar.”
Mira sighed as she plopped the book down at her table. “I already met with DARC Ops.”
Lashay looked up from the screen.
“With Jackson.” Mira couldn’t keep the frown off her face. “He thinks I'm nuts.”
“You are nuts. So what?”
“So then he won't touch this with a ten foot pole.”
“Is that what he said?”
“No.” Mira swiveled around in her chair. “He said he'd look into it.”
“Then he'll look into it. That's good. Wasn't that the point of going there?”
“Yeah, but...” Mira trailed off. She could feel herself getting a little too... girly?
“But what?”
“I wanted him to believe me.”
Lashay laughed. “From what I've heard, he's too smart for that.”
“What have you heard?”
“That he's smart enough to be suspicious of you. He probably thinks you're some kind of agent. From the government or otherwise. He can be difficult to, um... get close to.”
“Oh. Do you know that from experience?”
“No,” said Lashay. She looked a little annoyed. “What do you mean?”
“I dunno. So what else do you know about him?”
“Hold up. Did you just ask if I tried to get with him?”
Mira laughed nervously. “Maybe?”
“Hell no. It's a little hard to hit on someone you've never met,” she grinned. “But I probably would if I could, that man in a tux, and that was just the photo. Did you?”
Mira could feel her face reddening. Did she flirt with Jackson?
“Damn, girl. You hit on him.”
Mira laughed. “No, no...”
“You hit on him bad.”
“No. No way. I was too nervous for that.”
“Right.” Lashay pushed some buttons on the scanner.
“So what else do you know about him? I mean, his business. Let's stay on topic here.”
“Just stuff through Matthias. He practically worshiped Jackson when we were dating. I thought it was cute at first, like a younger and older brother thing. But then it just seemed kinda annoying.” She switched out another poster. “He's rich. A billionaire. Used to be a Navy SEAL but something went wrong with his ear.”
“His ear?”
“And he has all these big clients. He's even worked for foreign governments. Mercenary hacking. And, uh... What else... Oh, he's... you know... He's really hot.” Lashay took a quick peek at Mira, and then went back to calibrating the scanner. “But that's only from seeing his photos. Was he as good-looking in real life?”
Hell yeah, he was.
“Totally,” Mira said.
Totally...
“Okay.” Lashay sounded disappointed. “I knew it. So did he offer you a price?”
A price? The thought never occurred to her. Mira knew he wouldn’t work for free, but... She suddenly felt like an idiot.
“I'm guessing no?” Lashay said.
“We didn’t talk money,” Mira said casually, as if the topic was unimportant.
“That's good.”
Was it? The last thing Mira could handle was a budgetary surprise.
“Well, keep hitting on him,” Lashay said. “He might do it pro bono.”
Mira liked the idea. She liked any sentence about Jackson that contained the words pro and bone.
Lashay burst into laughter. “You should see the look on your face. He might even do you pro bono.”
“For God's sake, Lashay!” Mira pretended to be offended but it was the best idea she'd heard all year. It had been a long time between drinks.
Lashay was still laughing. “Come on, don't even act.”
“Shh... You come on. We're in the Library of Congress...”
“So what?” Lashay smirked and then shook her head slowly from side to side. “You don't know how it is, Mira. You don't know us librarians. We get freaky up in here.”
Mira wanted to laugh more. But when she'd absent-mindedly glanced at the book laying in front of her, and read the Senator's name on its spine, a familiar tightness returned in her chest. As did the knowledge that her return to work was long overdue. She then thought of the horrific photo of Langhorne posing over a dead water-buffalo. Had that poor creature been added to the current collection "decorating" his office? A part of her didn’t ever want to return there to find out.
“Can I see you in my office for a minute?” were the exact words she'd been dreading to hear since her return from lunch. But that was how Langhorne's phone call had ended.
When she entered his offi
ce, Mira made a conscious effort to keep her eyes off the walls. But was his face any nicer to look at? He had the pinkish hue of a pig, or someone who had ingested way too much pork, bourbon, cigarette smoke, and enriched white four.
“Mira, I'm concerned that you came back to work too early.”
Her sentiments exactly. Although it was still a little unsettling to agree with him on something.
“You're sick,” he said. “I know that. I can tell just by looking at your face. It's like you're just not there. Your work also says that. It screams it to me. How many jobs have you done today?”
“Uh... Two?”
“Two? It's well past lunch, Mira.”
She made a pained expression and nodded. Yes, yes, she knew how shitty it was. She definitely knew that.
“Which ones?” he asked, frowning. He put his hand in a bowl of paperclips, his fingers stirring and clinking them around mindlessly.
“Uh... Johnson-Tilly-Harriman... And the UNESCO...”
“No. That won't do.”
“I know,” she said. “I'm sorry. I think you're right about coming back too early.”
“Hell yes, I'm right. Mira, if you need some time, take it. How many sick days do you have built up?”
“Not many.”
“Well, I'm sorry, but you'd be more productive if you stayed home and recuperated. What is it, by the way? If you don't mind me asking... Is it stress?”
“Stress, yes.” Her brain was suddenly flooded with the image of a wooden crate being filled with machine guns. “But I'm also fighting a flu, I think.”
His eyes widened. “Mira, get that flu outta here.” He drew his hand from the paperclips.
“I know, I'm trying.”
“I mean out of this office. I can't have you spread that around.”
“It's at the tail end, sir.”
“Yeah, I can imagine.”
“I mean the flu. I'm almost over it.”
“Well, good.” Senator Langhorne sighed, brushed some donuts crumbs off his suit, and stood up with the soft groan of a geriatric. “You need to take better care of yourself, Mira. You're way too valuable to let yourself run ragged like this. Eat something. You're so thin.” He started strolling around the room, still brushing a few crumbs off his rotund body. “Something healthy. Go get yourself some matzo ball soup or something. And sleep for God's sake.”
DARC Ops: The Complete Series Page 6