by James Hunt
“I highly doubt that, Chancellor.” The man who seemed to be in charge sat in the middle. He was average height and size. His clean-cut hair and freshly shaved faced indicated a man who was disciplined. “My name is Special Agent Taylor Grimes. These are my colleagues, Agent Mallory and Agent Thompson. We’ll be partnering with your staff to aid in the president’s inquiry about this woman you’re seeking.”
“Well, it’s good to have you gentlemen on board,” Andrea said. “I’ve briefed my team on your arrival, but I know you said you wanted to meet with me personally, so I hope you have something more than just pleasantries.” The two agents flanking Grimes flushed red, but Grimes kept his composure.
Grimes reached for a briefcase at the side of his chair and rested it on the table between them. He popped both locks, grabbed a manila folder from inside, and set it flat against the tabletop. “The president wants us to be clear that everything done moving forward is collaborative. In the current global climate, it’s important for the good guys to stick together, and while I understand that my organization doesn’t have the best reputation for collaboration, I was hoping this would be a gesture of good faith on our behalf.”
Grimes slid the folder within Andrea’s reach, and she took it from him. “Am I to believe the CIA has adopted a new mission statement?”
“No, ma’am, we’re just trying to let our friends know we’re on their side.”
The right corner of Andrea’s mouth curled upward. The farm boys from America always called her “ma’am.” It was a term she’d learned to accept over the years, although that didn’t mean she liked it. She pulled out the document and scanned its contents.
“Feel free to share that with who you think appropriate on your staff,” Grimes said. “I’ll swing by first thing tomorrow.” Grimes extended his hand, which Andrea took absentmindedly.
Once they had left the room, Andrea picked up the paper, along with the folder and its contents, and found Alexander waiting for her in the hallway. “The Americans think the organization’s Chinese,” she said, handing the folder over to him.
“That’s quite the accusation,” Alexander said, flipping through the document. “Most of this looks like conjecture.”
“Conjecture that could hurt the treaty negotiations between us and China,” Andrea said. “The agents will be coming by in the morning. I want a meeting with Finn and you the moment we get back to the capitol building. Despite the CIA’s peace offering, I want to be careful what we share with them. I don’t buy the Boy Scout act.”
***
The bustling downtown streets of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, made Mack nervous. He kept his head forward, but his peripherals were fully alert for anyone following or watching him closely. The HQ back in Chicago was nestled in the factory district, away from the millions of prying eyes that wandered downtown. Here he felt like everyone was watching him. He didn’t like it. There were too many people.
Mack pushed through the lobby doors of one of the many cloned skyscraper office buildings with a box tucked under his arm and didn’t return the smile of the receptionist as he made his way past her. He walked past the elevators, the first-floor offices, and the maintenance room until he was out the back door and entered a courtyard with a small shed in the left corner.
The courtyard was fenced in and had a few tables and benches for those on their smoke break, but for the most part went unused. Mack opened the door then locked it behind him. Rusty garden tools and lawn equipment lined the walls and hung from the ceiling. On the far back wall was a large chest, four feet long, three feet wide, and four feet tall with a lock over the latch. Mack pressed his thumb against the face of the lock, and it glowed red then green and popped open. He opened the lid and stepped inside. His body was slowly lowered into the ground, and the lid closed then locked after he had disappeared.
The deeper the floor descended, the inside of the box opened up into a larger elevator space, and when it came to a rest, the doors opened to reveal a large floor with a cluster of desks being set up. Mack marched past the support agents unpacking gear and setting up their stations toward the small corner office at the far end of the room. His secretary, Grace, smiled at him, handing him his mug full of piping-hot coffee, and took the box from under his arm.
“Make sure you set it up like Chicago,” Mack said. “It’s bad enough we have to be in this cramped space. I at least want it organized.”
The GSF Milwaukee satellite office had been built as a contingent secondary site in the event the facilities in Chicago were ever compromised. It didn’t have the pomp and circumstance of the original HQ, but Mack had hopes that they wouldn’t have to be there for very long. He sipped the black coffee and let the bitter, caffeine-fueled concoction pump through his veins. Halfway through the mug, he started to feel better.
Once his secretary had set up the office, Mack leaned back in his chair, which squeaked, triggering a frown and bringing him back to the situation that brought them here in the first place: the mole. Grace brought in a large box with a stack of papers toppling out of it and dropped it on his desk with a thump.
“Is this all of it?” Mack asked.
“No,” Grace answered. “There are a LOT more. You want to tell me what all this is for?”
Mack pulled one of the sheets of paper out of the box and answered without looking at her. “Just making sure everything is still secure after the Chicago breach.”
Grace rolled her eyes, which Mack ignored. He started the long process of sifting through GSF’s financials to find out who would have had something to gain with the agency’s demise. With each piece of paper Mack looked over, cross-referenced in the GSF’s database of employees, and crossed off his list, he could feel a piece of himself chipping away. It was a slow crumble, a poison almost. He operated the GSF under the premise of knowing exactly where the money was coming from and that the agents under his management were trained to be the best at what they did while adhering to the GSF’s regulations. Up until a week ago, that had never been called into question, but in the world of espionage, Mack knew things were bound to get uncomfortable sooner or later.
Chapter 3
The church spires were massive pieces of concrete and steel that looked as though they were trying to pierce the sky above them. Bodies dressed in black dresses and suits walked up the steps of the stone cathedral to pay their respects to Ben Hill, and Sarah felt herself frozen at the bottom of the staircase.
“We have to go in sooner or later,” Bryce said, staying close to her side.
Sarah nodded and forced her foot forward, then the other, and the other, until she passed through the old cathedral’s doors. The pews were filled at the very front, and Sarah could see a picture of her brother alongside the casket, which was circled with clusters of flowers. She slid into one of the seats toward the back, and Bryce filed in beside her. She kept her head down, but her eyes scanned the front until she found Becca and the kids in the first pew. Becca was giving something to the children, and Sarah could see the very tops of their heads sway back and forth in a slow cadence. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed them until that moment. She found herself gripping the back of the pew in front of her, knuckles turning white, as she half stood, but she forced herself back down, avoiding drawing any more attention to herself.
“You should go talk to them,” Bryce said, leaning in to whisper in her ear.
“They don’t want to see me,” Sarah said, keeping her voice low.
“They do,” Bryce answered, his voice still quiet but firm. “They just don’t know it yet.”
“Did you learn that in one of your romantic comedy movies?”
“Hey, just because you don’t like the genre doesn’t mean other people don’t get something out of it.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t get something out of it, I just said I think they’re stupid.”
A woman in front of her turned around and gave the two of them a harsh look along with a very terse “shush.” T
hey apologized, and the woman turned around, keeping the offended glare Sarah figured she probably wore during ninety percent of every day of her life.
The sermon was quick, and a few of Ben’s friends spoke, along with Becca’s younger brother. Sarah remembered him from the wedding. The two of them had been paired for the walk down the aisle due to their similar height. He had been soft spoken then, and even now with a microphone in front of his mouth, his words left him like whisper.
Everything anyone said about Ben was words of love. He was kind, smart, funny (in his reserved, straight-man sort of way), and a loving father, son, and husband. And brother. Nobody said that in their speeches, but she finished it for them in her head. She wondered if Becca would speak, but the procession came and went, and she never walked up front.
When the funeral was over, Sarah and Bryce followed the caravan of vehicles to the graveyard, the same one in which her and Ben’s parents were buried. Just like at the church, Sarah watched from a distance as the casket was lowered into the ground. Once the casket disappeared into the earth, a silent exhalation of what was left of the breath in her lungs escaped, and she found herself walking toward the excavated piece of dirt, her feet with a mind of their own. She pushed through the crowds of people, oblivious to whatever curses came out of their mouths from her forceful entrance. She collapsed on the edge of the grave, causing some of the dirt from the side wall to sprinkle on top of the gleaming brown surface of the casket.
“Goodbye, Ben.” The words left her involuntarily. She wondered if the pain she felt was the same Ben had experienced when he watched their parents being lowered into the ground. He’d had to do that alone, without her, without the one person who knew what it felt like to lose their parents. And now she was here watching her brother being buried, just as alone.
A shadow towered over Sarah and blocked out the sun above. She didn’t need to look up to know who it was; she could feel the disdain and disgust rain over her. Sarah wiped her eyes, smearing some of the dirt that lingered on her palms onto her cheek. She pushed herself off the ground, and Becca was nose to nose with her. Her eyes were dry but red, and her face looked like a cold piece of stone.
“What are you doing here?” Becca asked. The words came out less as a question and more as a threat.
“I came to bury my brother,” Sarah said, trying to keep her emotions in check. Her sister-in-law had every right to be upset, but she wasn’t the only one grieving. She wasn’t the only one hurting. Sarah looked past Becca and saw Becca’s mother carrying Ella and Matt toward the car. “How are the kids?”
Becca shoved her finger into Sarah’s chest, and the tense crowd around them started to back off as her words grew louder. “I don’t want to see you again, do you understand that? I don’t want you to call. I don’t want you to come by the house. I don’t want you to ever contact my family again.” Her jaw clenched together with every syllable, and Sarah had to make a conscious effort to bite her tongue and take the lashing. Becca gave Sarah a shove that pushed her back only a step then turned and marched toward the car.
The dam holding back Sarah’s emotions gave way. The fault line in her heart cracked wider, spraying the first few drops of rage out of her control. “You can’t keep me from the kids, Becca.”
Becca stopped. She spun around and stomped back. “Are you threatening me?” Sarah could see that her fists were clenched at her sides. Sarah immediately regretted speaking up. But before Sarah could take it back, she blocked a swing from Becca that was meant for the side of her face.
The surrounding crowds jumped in before it turned into something more, not that any of them could have stopped Sarah if she decided to retaliate, and she was glad there was a group of people there to stop her from having to try.
Becca ripped away from the arms restraining her and stomped away without another word. Sarah stood there until the crowd dispersed, and the gravediggers dumped piles of earth onto her brother’s casket. Sarah felt her veins swell with anger until she thought they would burst. She was angry at herself, Becca, her brother, the agency, anyone and anything that popped into her mind. But the largest culprit her rage fastened on was Rick Demps.
“Hey,” Bryce said. “You all right?”
“No,” Sarah answered. “But I will be.”
***
Agent Taylor Grimes sat at a long conference room table piled with boxes and papers and the sweat and fatigue of the past twelve hours as he and his team sifted through everything the chancellor’s group could provide them on the woman. He’d undone his tie and taken off his jacket, allowing himself a brief reprieve from the formalities of the day after his team had long since left and gone to bed. He rubbed his eyes and reached for the cup of cold coffee, draining the final gulp and giving himself one last burst of adrenaline.
When the CIA’s director had given Grimes the assignment, he hadn’t been sure how to approach it. The director was adamant that it be downplayed to the rest of the team but that it was very important to the president. He knew that this woman and whatever organization she worked for had been responsible for giving them the necessary coding to end Tuck Investments’ hold on Global Power and end the blackout. He’d always prided himself on the fact that he worked for the best. The CIA had no equal in regard to training, agents, and equipment. But everything he’d seen so far in regard to this mysterious agency made him question just how good he thought he was.
Grimes knew that in any scenario, to bring down the mountain, you had to remove the first piece of stone, and he was already on the right track. He had the flight reports the Germans had found that tracked the woman on her landing in Berlin, along with the only known (yet terribly pixelated and distorted) picture of the target. Another piece of information that had come from his own superiors was a report from a unit of soldiers that had been responsible for holding the Alaskan border when the Russians made their advancements. It wasn’t enough to give them any matches in their known databases, but these two stories along with a few other accounts during other timelines gave Grimes a connecting piece of data. Chicago. It was the only pattern he could find in all the stories and flight documents. Whether it was a layover or a departing or a returning flight, Chicago was always on the manifest.
With O’Hare International Airport just getting back up and running after the blackout, along with almost every other transportation hub around the globe, he used the pixelated photo of the woman and programmed it into the cameras of O’Hare. If she walked into that airport and the cameras caught her face, he’d be notified immediately.
Normally, the facial-recognition software used in tracking fugitives required a match of at least ninety percent before it alerted the authorities. However, with the low-quality picture, he lowered it to a thirty-five-percent match, which flooded his inbox with thousands of notifications. It was slow going, but it was a start. Grimes sifted through doctors, construction workers, lawyers, fast food employees, anyone and everyone the software spit out at him, but so far he only had five matches worth investigating and another three thousand he still needed examine.
A knock sounded at the door, and the chancellor’s chief of staff stepped inside. “You’re here late, Agent Grimes.”
“Just trying to make as much headway as possible before the long grind starts,” Grimes replied, smiling. Despite the chancellor’s warm welcome, Grimes knew he and his colleagues’ presence didn’t agree with everyone in the administration.
“Have you handled these types of cases before?” Alexander asked. “These ghosts?”
“In my experience, there are no such things as ghosts. Just individuals better trained with better equipment. I’m sure there are a few people out there who think we have ghosts in the CIA.”
“Don’t you?” Alexander rapped his knuckles on the door and gave him a wave. “Don’t stay too late. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.”
Grimes gave a nod, still looking at his computer screen. “Will do.” He knew Alexander was right. He had to slee
p at some point; it was something his superiors had to point out to him as well. Work was like a drug for him, worse than any cocaine, alcohol, or heroin addiction. The longer the wick burned, the stronger he felt. He’d always been like that, even when he was a boy. There was a satisfaction in the long workday that he couldn’t find anywhere else.
The only side effect from his addiction that he had found so far was time. He never had enough of it, and he was always struggling to find a way to maximize what little he had left. Friends and family were frequently pushed aside, making room for advancing his career. Everything he planned, everything he did revolved around his job.
Grimes rubbed his eyes and pushed himself out of his chair. He placed his hand on the laptop’s screen, and just before he was about to close it, a notification popped. He sat back down and opened the file.
Like the other five matches he’d deemed worthy of investigating, this one seemed like it would fit the bill. High school diploma, low-profile factory job that required skilled use of hands, Chicago resident, and around the same age and size as the woman they were tracking. He jotted down the name next to the list of others. Sarah Hill.
***
The satellite HQ had finally gone through its last run-through, and Mack gave the thumbs-up to resume operations. The slightly smaller, cramped space was still a little musty, but the fact that they had agents returning to what they did best helped soothe the aching sores in Mack’s mind. At least a little.
The doubts and anger resurfaced when Mack returned to his office, where the mole still beckoned his attention. He slumped into his chair and searched through the reams of paper on his desk that had told him little more than that his field agents enjoyed spending well beyond their allotted budgets on missions.
Mack’s eyes kept darting over to a particular box in the corner of the office that he’d been putting off going through. If he found something that hinted at the mole in that box, then he and every other member of the GSF was in for a very, very rude awakening.