Shell Game

by Jeff Buick

  “I’ll stay here,” she said, standing between the inner and outer doors where the heat vent aimed a steady stream of hot air at the new arrivals.

  Kelly shook his head. “California girl,” he said. More customers were a few feet from the door, and he pulled her in by the elbow. “Come on. Let’s get a table.”

  The interior of Pasta Mia was very crowded and very Italian, with brightly colored red-checkered tablecloths adorning the tightly packed tables. They found a table, one of the last empty ones and settled in, draping their coats on the backs of their chairs. The waiter was by a few seconds after they sat down, with menus and to take their drink order. Taylor scanned the selection of twenty-five or more pastas.

  “What’s good?”

  “The spinach fettuccine is out of this world. It’s done in a porcini-mushroom sauce. And the bread is baked fresh in the kitchen.”

  “The food looks really good,” she said, watching the waiter go past with two steaming plates of pasta.

  “It is.” He changed the subject. “Anything more on what the Mexican police found at the scene?”

  “Not really. Nothing of any significance.”

  “Did they find any more of him—I mean, more than just his hand?” He swallowed hard, realizing how insensitive that must have sounded to Taylor.

  She reached over and touched his hand lightly, to let him know the gaffe was okay. “I think the Mexican police tried to find his body. There was no way. Not with the currents at the end of the cape. And there are so many fish. Big fish.” She didn’t bother describing any more of what had happened to Alan’s body.

  “Where’s this photo that you didn’t want to part with?”

  Taylor dug in her inside pocket and pulled it out. She handed it across to him. “I suppose I should have asked Alan where this picture was taken, but this was my little piece of him that he didn’t know I had.”

  “How’s that?” Kelly asked, taking the photo. “Not sure I know what you mean.”

  Taylor waited as the waiter dropped off their drinks and took their order, then said, “You remember how every now and then I’d get roped into going to one of those horrible golf tournaments with clients?” she asked.

  Kelly rolled his eyes back in his head. “Remember? You’d make all our lives hell for about three days every time that happened. You hated those tournaments.”

  “Loathed them,” she said. “Anyway, I had one and I checked my golf bag—no balls, no tees. So I poked through Alan’s bag. Found what I was looking for, but also found this picture. It was in one of the side pockets of his bag. I thought about telling him, but tucked it away in a book instead. It was my little piece of him that was just mine. I’ve always treasured it.”

  “He sure looks happy,” Kelly said. “I wonder what got him laughing like that.”

  “It’s a great picture.”

  Kelly scrutinized it closely. “I see the writing you were talking about. I can’t make it out either.”

  “Do you think somebody at your office could enlarge it, maybe sharpen it up?”

  “Probably. I think I know who to ask. She’s a real whiz at stuff like this.”

  “Thanks.”

  Their food arrived, and they ate and talked mostly about his new life in Washington. Taylor was interested and asked a lot of questions, some of which Kelly was very vague answering. After he had danced about a few replies, she set her fork on her plate and leaned back in the chair.

  “Sorry, Kelly, I know you too well. There’s something you’re not telling me. I’m okay if you want to keep certain things private—just tell me to stop asking questions. I’ll live.”

  Kelly played with his food for a minute or two. Finally, he set his fork down and took a drink of beer. “Because of who I work for, there are some things I can tell you and some things I can’t. I’m sure you understand that.” She nodded and he continued. “What I’m going to tell you is not classified, but it’s stretching the limits of what they would want me to say. And all this stays at this table.”

  “Of course.”

  He took another drink of beer. “Before I came to work for G-cubed, I was with the agency.”

  Taylor’s face registered shock. “But your résumé, your work history. I checked out your references before hiring you. There was no tie-in to the National Security Agency.”

  He shook his head. “They’re very good at manufacturing past identities to mask where their former employees have worked. For some reason, they like to wipe that slate clean when you leave.” He set the beer glass on the checkered cloth. “And there’s one other thing. Not all my time is spent at NSA.”

  She furrowed her brow. “What? Then where do you . . .” She let the sentence trail off. Finally, she said, “You work for the CIA. That’s why you live in D.C.”

  He nodded. “National Security Agency loans me out to the guys over at Langley. I’m not a spy or anything like that. I work in the Science and Technology Directorate. Computer forensics. Nothing devious. And technically speaking, I’m employed by NSA.”

  “How long did you work there before you came to San Francisco?” she asked, her mind spinning.

  “About five years. I was getting burned out. I needed a change, and we agreed on an extended leave of absence. It was a good idea to put a lot of mileage between myself and both agencies, so something on the West Coast was perfect. They created a work history for me, and I applied for the job at G-cubed. Everything from there on is exactly as you know it. I wasn’t involved in any clandestine activities while I was working for you. What you saw is what you got. With the exception of my work history.”

  Taylor was quiet. The news was simply unbelievable. Was nothing in her life normal anymore? The one person she had reached out to when all else seemed surreal wasn’t who he seemed. Kelly Kramer’s life was a lie. She stared at her pasta, her appetite gone. She saw her hand reaching for her wineglass, wondering if she was telling it to do that. Her fingers closed around the stem and she took a sip, the fruity taste of the chardonnay pleasing to her palate. She repeated the action, this time tilting the glass back and drinking heartily. She set the empty glass on the table.

  Kelly hadn’t deceived her without good reason. He was bound by whatever contract he had signed when he first entered the top-secret world of the National Security Agency. They had manufactured the work history for him and insisted he use it on his résumé. She had done her due diligence and phoned the references he had provided. The answers to her questions concerning his work ethic had been predetermined by the agency.

  She made a decision.

  Taylor let her hand slide across the table and rest on top of Kelly’s. “Okay, I can live with this. I think I understand.”

  He didn’t move his hand, just left it sitting under hers. “All right then, let’s see if we can’t find a silver lining in this cloud. After all, we’ve got some pretty high-tech government resources at our fingertips.”

  “Tomorrow,” she said, smiling. It felt good to smile. “Tomorrow we find out what we can about that photo.”

  He returned the smile and turned his hand over, gripping hers. “Tomorrow.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Taylor woke and rolled over on her side, the pillow soft on her cheek. The room was dark except for the low red glow from the alarm clock. 6:35. She closed her eyes and let her mind drift.

  Kelly and she had spent another hour in the restaurant, sipping wine and talking. The more she listened to him talk, the more she realized Kelly was exactly the person she thought he was. The National Security Agency recruited him after he graduated Missouri Southern State University, wooing him with a substantial salary and the promise that he would be contributing to the betterment of his country. But it didn’t take long for him to understand the intelligence community was fighting a losing battle. Every time they decoded a covert message or uncovered a terrorist plot, another one popped up on the radar. And the scientists working the cutting-edge technology at NSA knew they we
re just touching the tip of a very large iceberg. Decipher a communiqué, forward the information to the SEAL teams and watch the real-time satellite images of the commandos destroying a lab or a clandestine terrorist camp, knowing the entire time that the monster was a Hydra—cut off one head and two more appear. And after seeing a handful of missions go sideways, watching the live satellite feed of American and British soldiers dying in distant sand-swept lands, he had needed to get out. Just for a while. A break. Something different. Anything.

  He ended up on her doorstep in San Francisco. A man looking to escape a horror many suspected was real, but few admitted existed. Kelly Kramer had operated in the dark corners of the nation’s back alleys. The information he dredged out of secret messages had seen many terrorists killed, but had also sent good men to their deaths. His desire was to close that door and open a new one, where light filtered in and life flourished. And by offering him employment at G-cubed, Taylor had given him that chance. That made her feel good.

  She opened her eyes and glanced about his guest room. It was well-furnished, the maple headboard matching the night stands and the credenza, the wall color a muted ochre. She burrowed into the pillow, soft against the nape of her neck. It struck her that it was the first night since Alan had died that she had slept right through. She reluctantly pulled herself out of bed and padded into the attached bathroom. The shower had a pulsating head, and the water prickled her skin. It was invigorating, and after ten minutes she reluctantly shut off the water. She toweled dry, refreshed and ready for whatever Kelly had planned. When she reached the main floor of the condo, Kelly was sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee and reading the newspaper.

  “Sleep okay?” he asked.

  “Great. I feel really good. Rejuvenated, sort of,” she said, sitting at the table.

  He poured her a coffee and set it in front of her. The cream and sugar were already on the table, and she added a bit of each. She glanced around the condo, noting the designer touches—black vases and bric-a-brac a solid contrast against the soft color of the maple. The floors were slate, the kitchen countertop dark granite. It worked, and it worked well.

  “You have an interior designer in here?”

  “Nope. Did it myself. You like it?”

  “Very much,” she said, sipping her coffee. “You’re a man of many talents, Mr. Kramer.”

  He just smiled. “You ready for a trip to Crypto-City?”

  “Absolutely.” She set her cup on the table. “You won’t get in any trouble for this, will you?”

  He shook his head. “I cleared it with my boss. It’s all above board. I’m coming in on my own time and so is Renita.”

  “Who’s Renita?” Taylor asked.

  “Renita Gallant. She’s our resident genius at stuff like this. Her specialty is recovering data from grainy photos and blurry videotape. It’s mostly a matter of filtering out the garbage and enhancing the right pixels. Sounds easy, but it’s not.”

  “I can imagine. You sure she doesn’t mind coming in on the weekend?”

  “Positive. In fact, she’s got two kids and her husband is taking them to a movie. She’d rather come in and do this than go to the flick. Called it boys-time-out.”

  “When are we meeting her?”

  Kelly checked his watch. “Noon.”

  They finished their coffee, snugged into their coats, and Kelly pulled his Subaru around the block and picked Taylor up in front of the condo. The car was cold from sitting outside all night, but it warmed up quickly. After a couple of minutes, she started to fidget in her seat.

  “Are these heated seats?” she asked.

  He laughed. “You really are a California girl. Yes, they’re heated.”

  “Oh, thank God, I thought I was starting to have hot flashes.”

  Washington was white, blanketed under an inch of fresh snow. The roads were mostly clear, but the boulevards and trees sparkled like gemstones as the sun refracted off the snow. The evening storm had passed—the sky was blue and the air still. Taylor watched the monuments and squares flash past as they drove. The nation’s capital, a city of pride and history. The dome of the Library of Congress was briefly visible to the south, the pinnacle of the world’s largest library. They passed Capitol Hill, the Supreme Court and Union Station on their route out of the city.

  The surrounding countryside was covered with virgin snow. Kelly took a right onto Route 32 after the Patuxent Wildlife Reserve. Ahead of them, a group of buildings loomed above the snow, their reflective windows showcasing the brilliant white popcorn clouds against the deep blue December sky. The road inclined a bit, then crested and began dropping toward the buildings. Taylor caught her breath. Laid out before her was the entrance to the National Security Agency. Cameras were everywhere, following the progress of the car as it approached the main gates. Huge concrete pylons punctuated the road, forcing them to reduce their speed as they pulled up to the barbed-wire fence. It took the better part of five minutes to get a visitor’s pass for Taylor and go through the security checkpoint. Once they were in, Kelly took the main road to National Business Park-1, the building where he worked, and used his parking pass to access the underground lot. He drove directly to P6 and slipped into stall 874.

  “Even on a Saturday, you don’t park in anyone else’s spot. That’s one thing around here—we’re all pretty anal about our assigned parking.”

  “That’s universal,” she said, following him to the elevator. They rode it to the twelfth floor. The halls were dimly lit, only the emergency sconces throwing shards of yellow on the walls. They walked abreast through a maze of cubicles, and Kelly pointed to a bank of darkly tinted glass with one security door. It was impossible to see what was behind the glass. Kelly entered a code, and the door swung open. He waved Taylor through, and she sucked in a breath as she entered.

  The room was very large with no walls to delineate the space, which was taken up by banks of networked computers and workstations. The lighting was low, most of the visible wavelengths coming from the computer screens. Against the far wall was a large, blank white screen. A solitary woman was in the room, working on one of the computers. She looked up and smiled when Kelly entered behind Taylor.

  Kelly steered Taylor to where the woman sat. She was mid-thirties with straight blond hair just past her shoulders. She had a quick smile and lively, blue eyes. Taylor liked her before she said hello. Kelly made the introductions, and the two women shook hands.

  “Thanks for coming in today,” Taylor said as they sat around the work station.

  “Not a problem. Don’s got the kids. Even with working all week, I still need breaks. This is a nice one.” She waved her hands about the room. “No one in but me. I can actually get some work done.”

  Kelly handed her the photograph. “What do you think?”

  Renita slipped it under a desk lamp and flipped the switch. She studied it for a minute, then said, “It’s pretty blurred. The photographer had the f-stop wide open, probably 2.8. It wiped out a lot of the background, but I might be able to get it back. The architecture looks very European, the stone baton work on the corner of this building and the wrought iron covering this arched window.” She pointed to a jumble of colors and shapes behind Alan.

  Taylor stared at the photo. “You can see all that?”

  “That and a bit more. Wait until I sharpen it up. Make yourselves comfy, it’ll take an hour or so.”

  Renita scanned the photo into her computer and alternated between the cordless mouse and the keyboard. She talked as she worked and explained what she was doing. She used a series of filters to break the picture down into its various color components. Each color represented a change in the way the light reflected off the surface of the stone buildings. As she worked, the edges of the batons began to sharpen, and a darker image on the wall mutated into what appeared to be a street sign mounted to the stone. Light lettering was cut into the sign, a rectangle with a small half-round on top. The photo began to take on more dimension as
well, and what had appeared to be one building was actually two, the structure on the right side farther away and on a different angle from the nearest building. Lettering appeared just under the wrought iron fronting the domed window.

  “Now here’s the fun part,” Renita said, her fingers flying across the keyboard. “This is my own program. It recognizes letters from almost every known alphabet and about a million common shapes as well. Then it ignores all the superfluous stuff and sharpens what it considers to be the image. Here goes.” She hit Enter, and the screen went blank for about a second, then flashed back on. Clearly written on the road sign was Rue Mazarine. The letters under the window were FRE and what appeared to be the first half of an E or a B, cut off by the edge of the picture. To everyone’s surprise, the program also found six more letters on the upper left corner. KTAILS. Renita clicked on the print icon and the laser printer hummed. A moment later it spit out a high-quality picture of the image on the screen. She laid it on the table, under the light.

  “Rue Mazarine,” she said, looking closely at the lettering. “An entire street name. That should be easy to find.” She exited the sharpening program and started another application. It took a few seconds and three entries popped up on the screen. “Israel, and two in France. One in Paris.” She glanced again at the picture, scrutinizing the architecture. She tapped in a couple of commands and leaned back in her chair, a slow smile creasing her lips. “Rue Mazarine,” she said, pointing.

  “Where is it?” Taylor asked, in shock at the ease which Renita had pulled the hidden information from the picture, then identified its exact location.

  “This is a partial map of Paris. It covers the Latin Quarter and St. Germain-des-Pres, just south of Île de la Cité.”

  “That’s the Island where Notre Dame is,” Taylor said excitedly. “I know it. I’ve been there.”