We got off on the eleventh floor of the hotel, and Christie swiped a key to open the door to a suite. The large upscale living area was cluttered with luggage, clothing, and odds and ends of just about everything. A half dozen makeup kits covered the coffee table. Make up?
I hoped the makeup wasn’t for me.
Nic walked in from one of the bedrooms. “Hey, Amanda!” He gave me a big hug. “Hi, Nic. Got a girl-fiend yet?”
He scowled as he caught my reference to our conversation about Christie last fall. “Watch yourself, little girl.”
I winked at him. I was pretty sure he and my aunt were going to end up married and having babies one day.
“Do I look older?” Nic moved back for me and Will to get a better view.
He had grey in his hair now, around the temples. I studied him a minute. “Yeah. You do.” He had dressed like a bartender last time I'd seen him. Today, he wore an entirely different kind of “casual” clothing. He wore what I could see was an expensive heather grey sweater. His pants had the same pricey look to them.
I glanced over at Christie. “She doesn’t look older.”
“We haven’t finished with her yet,” Nic said.
Christie wore upscale, conservative clothes. I hadn’t noticed at the airport because I was so distracted by Will. Christie looked like a page out of the Talbot’s catalog.
“What do you mean you haven’t finished with her yet?” I asked.
My aunt snorted. “Nic has to apply some wrinkles around my eyes. We aren’t sure he can get the right effect.”
“She isn’t sure,” Nic clarified. Then he held a hand over his mouth as if to hide his comment from her. “She doesn’t seem to be able to come to terms with aging.”
Will laughed.
“Nic, I should apologize.” Her grin turned almost evil. “As you both know, Nic has infinite experience with cosmetics. I should never have questioned his skill considering his affinity for wearing makeup.”
“I don’t wear makeup,” Nic protested. “Except when the mission calls for it.”
“You know, Nicky, we really should see what they think about that other matter.”
“What other matter?” Will asked.
Nic shook his head vigorously. “Nothing.”
“We’re trying to age appropriately, so we should look like ourselves in ten years. I kind of have an idea about how I’ll age based on your mother and grandmother.” She grinned as she motioned to Nic. “He also has an idea of how he’ll age based on his brothers and his father.”
I wasn’t getting it.
“Shall I show them, Nic, or would you prefer to tell them?”
Nic sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. “The rest of the men in my family are bald. I’m not sure why I have my hair, but in ten years, I probably… definitely won’t.”
“So what’s the big deal?” Will asked.
“He should be bald for this mission, but he’s too vain.”
“Uh, like he said, what’s the big deal?” I looked at Nic. “You’d still be handsome without hair.”
“Thanks, Amanda. But my beloved partner isn’t being honest. The real reason we can’t do it for the mission is that there’s a risk of someone noticing the hair growth during the day, even if I did shave parts of my head.”
“He’d have to shave, and if he applied some ointment to retard the growth of hair…”
“I like the grey,” I said.
“Me too.” Will looked at Nic for a minute. “It’s easier than the shaving, and it works. He looks older.”
“I offered to do it,” Nic said. “I would have if my lovely bride did as well.”
“Women don’t get male pattern baldness.”
“Some do,” Nic said, a challenge in his eyes.
Christie stood and walked over to get in his face. “If I wake up with my head shaved, I’ll be doing some redesigning of your anatomy.”
“Gee Mom and Dad,” Will said with exaggerated enthusiasm. “When I grow up, I want a marriage just like yours.”
“True love,” I said with a sniffle. “It gets me every time.”
Nic laughed. “Let’s get some wrinkles on my old lady.”
Christie swatted at his shoulder. Nic caught her arm, and after what seemed like a tiny bit too long, Christie moved away from him and returned to the couch.
I shot Will a questioning look, and he raised a brow to indicate he’d noticed it too.
Interesting.
“Once we finish this, we can talk more about the mission,” my aunt said. Nic had pulled back the coffee table and sat on it facing Christie. He opened a small case and unscrewed the cap of a tiny bottle.
“Glue,” he said. “We had these prosthetics made for wrinkles around her eyes. I just have to get them correctly positioned and add makeup to blend them with her skin.”
Will and I watched as he carefully applied the wrinkles and then began smoothing on some thick base the shade of her skin. He held her cheek in one hand as he worked on the other side. His movements were gentle, tender, and I noticed my aunt’s discomfort with his proximity.
“And,” he said, dabbing at her eyes with a makeup sponge, “that should do it.”
Christie cleared her throat as she turned to face us. “Well, what do you think?”
“He did a good job,” Will said. “They look real.”
“I’m not sure if you look old enough,” I said.
“There’s a couple more steps. I use this wax pencil to age my lips a little before adding lipstick. With the lighter hair color to wash me out a little…”
The color wasn’t as flattering as the dark brown she usually wore. “It doesn’t look like the exact right hair color.”
“Does it look like I’m going gray and was trying to color over it?”
I cocked my head and looked again. “That’s exactly what it looks like.”
“Good. Let me do my lips while Nic briefs you.”
Nic moved from the table to a nearby chair. “Okay. Thanks for being available on such short notice. We did have some concerns about pairing the two of you. We would have preferred to avoid using Amanda for a few more months since she just finished one mission. And of course, your relationship complicates things. Unfortunately, the program has come to the attention of the Agency’s legal department, and they are mucking up the works as they issue opinion after opinion on the legality, constitutionality, and liability involved in using minors. Luckily, you two are fair game between your aunt and your grandmother working for GASI.”
Will leaned over and fist-bumped Nic.
“So you two win,” Nic said.
“What are we working on exactly?” I asked.
“There has been an attempt on the life of the UN Secretary-General,” Nic explained. “Vicente Vargas, a Chilean National, and his family live here in New York most of the year. We need to apprehend the people behind the plot on his life before New Year's Eve. The Secretary-General is scheduled to make a grand gesture at the celebration in Times Square.”
“With all of those people? How could you possibly keep him safe?” The place would be nuts. Justin Timberlake was performing live.
“The local and national agencies work hard to ensure heightened security at the site for the New Year's Eve celebration. However, with nearly a million people crowding in to watch the ball drop, we don't want to risk his safety. We need to eliminate the threat before the event begins. Otherwise, the special appearance will be canceled.” Nic looked over at Christie.
“We are in a particularly awkward position this year with the UN,” she said. “The recent revelations about the US monitoring communications has led to strained relations with other nations and unfortunately, with the United Nations. Because of this negative publicity, the various US agencies had backed off on electronic surveillance to an unprecedented degree, especially as far as the UN is concerned. Now, we are presented with a threat and we don't have the intelligence that we would normally be able to rely on. We w
ere lucky that the gunman failed. He died, and we weren't able to get any information from him. We had an anonymous tip that would tie the attempt to a group called the Avaritia Militia. We get tips all the time, and this one wasn't particularly credible. But we cannot rule out the involvement of that group or one like it—a third party, a non-governmental private interest group.”
Nic nodded. “We don't know much about the AM at all,” he said. “There has been some chatter about a consortium operating on an international scale for a decade. Recently, there have been incidents, interference with politics in various countries, that we haven't been able to pin on any country.”
“Avaritia would mean greed,” Christie interjected. “And militia implies that they are military in nature, perhaps violent, and most likely willing to use force to further their interests.”
“Their interests of greed?” I asked.
“Do you think they tried to kill the Secretary-General?” Will asked.
“GASI has a team working on the Avaritia Militia now. They are charged with finding out the people and ideology behind the group as well as what they have done in the past.”
“How do we fit in?” I asked. “Are we protecting the Secretary-General?”
“No. We have a team assigned to protect him and others assigned to work various angles on the threat. Likely enemies on a personal level, professional level, etc. Our role is to get eyes and ears on the ground and to determine whether the plans for Times Square have spread outside the circle of trusted employees.”
“So we're planting bugs?” I asked. “What if we get caught? Won't the world criticize us if they catch us spying on the UN again?”
“There is nothing to show we ever spied on the UN in the past,” Christie said as if programmed to deliver the legalese at the end of a commercial. “We have the cooperation of the Secretary-General, um, to some extent. We need to be discreet, but we also need this intel. We won't be planting bugs exactly. Nic will be driving a Town Car in the motor pool assigned to high level UN officials. He can hack their devices, phones, laptops, tablets, easily and without their knowledge by offering various chargers so they can recharge while they ride. GASI has developed these special chargers that will upload a virus to allow us access to the devices.”
I could totally see that working. Why wouldn't you charge your phone while you rode in the Town Cars? It was a brilliant idea.
“You two will be doing the same kind of thing. You'll be working your way through a social network of teens, most of whom have parents with a connection to the UN. You'll borrow phone chargers and replace them with the GASI chargers. You'll ask for the wifi passwords so you can play games. Once we have the wifi passwords, we can monitor everything going on, including keystrokes on each device. We can hack into home security systems, check calendars for suspicious appointments, and track the movements of key individuals over the last week. We can find out who met with whom, where they met, and hopefully why they met.”
I thought about the arguments I'd read in various articles about the government's access to information. They didn't know the half of it.
“That's a huge amount of data,” Will said. “How will anybody have time to look through any of it?”
“We have teams working on analyzing the data. We have search programs to spot certain patterns or key words.” Nic shoved his hand through his gray hair. “It's not going to be easy, but I think we have a good chance of finding the culprits. You two will get access to places that would never trust adults. You are our secret weapons.”
“What about burner phones?” I did watch television after all. “If they use those disposable phones, we aren't going to be able to get any information about who they've called or where they've been.”
“In another part of the country, we'd have a shot at accessing the information,” Christie said. “However, with the population this dense, the information we get from the cell towers doesn't help us. There are over 66,000 people per square mile in Manhattan.”
That was seriously a lot of people. I wondered how many people out of a thousand were criminals. If one person out of every thousand was a criminal, there would be 66 criminals within a mile of me right now. Yikes. How many guns were there? Or knives? Or police officers?
I glanced over at Will. Or girls who wanted to hit on Will?
“What happens with all the information on the innocent people?” Will had a good point. It wasn't their fault that the Secretary-General was in danger.
“The Agency plans to send out a code to all infected devices and networks. The code will disable the virus and nobody will be the wiser. We are trying to avoid a public relations nightmare by staying outside of the UN complex with all of this activity. The UN campus is technically not part of the US. It's an international zone belonging to the member states.”
“How are we going to meet any teens? That's what you want from us, right?” I didn't quite get it.
“Exactly,” Will said. “You dropped Amanda into my school without any trouble, but this is Christmas break. How are we going to get to know anybody?”
“That's why we picked the loft. The neighbor works at the UN facility. He has three teenagers, and he's never home. They hang out there all the time with their friends. We don't think you'll have any trouble meeting them. You are planning to transfer to their school when they start back next week. Once you are introduced, you should be able to tag along wherever they go.”
“You really think they'll like us that much?” I wasn't so sure.
“Think about it,” Christie said. “The girls will want to check out the new guy, and the boys will be interested in Amanda. It’s the middle of the school year, and people are getting bored with their classmates. The school only has 200 students, nothing like your schools back home. You two are a hot commodity.”
I thought about it for a minute. I would certainly want to know more about a new guy transferring to my school. If Will walked into my school, he’d have girls all over him. Yeah, he’ll be in high demand.
“That’s why you have to be brother and sister. Plus, this way there’s only one new family in town. It would be suspicious to bring in multiple families. And you can take turns watching each other's back.”
“What you cannot do,” Nic said, “is let anyone believe you two have a romantic relationship. As of now, you are brother and sister. If you make googly, lovey eyes at each other, you will blow your covers. You will put all four of us in danger. You will be dealing with kids your age. You will be closely monitored. But this is serious stuff. Someone who will kill the UN Secretary-General will not hesitate to kill you.”
Christie walked over to a rolling file case on the floor. She punched in a code and raised the lid. Then she reached in with both hands and hoisted a three-inch thick volume of bound papers. “I printed a copy for each of you. You’ll need to memorize this as quickly as possible.”
“Read all that by tomorrow?” I asked.
“No, silly,” she said. “Memorize it all by tomorrow.”
She bent down and dropped the bound pages into the file with a thump. I swear the floor shook a little.
“Don’t worry. It’s all on your Agency-issued tablets. You can study that way if you like. Personally, I’m Old School when it comes to studying.” She bent down and lifted out a plastic freezer bag with highlighters, sticky notes, and tabs in a hundred colors. “Cool, huh?”
Will grimaced. “How many pages was that?”
“Don’t worry,” Nic assured him. “There’s a fifty page summary in the front. Memorize that and then read the rest to flesh out the details.”
“Okay.” I sighed. “That’s a lot of homework.”
Christie laughed. “You two will be fine. You’ve got all night.”
“We should get going,” Nic said with a glance at his watch. He didn’t seem like the watch type to me. “The other member of our team is setting up at the loft.”
“Other member?” I asked.
“Yeah,”
Will said with a smile. “Our grandmother.”
Chapter Three
Grandma was part of this mission! I grinned back at him. This was going to be fun.
Nic drove us, not in the Nissan but in the Town Car he'd be driving all week. The center console held a variety of chargers. They looked like your typical chargers. “Nobody will look at these twice,” I said, holding one out to Will.
“What if somebody doesn't use them?” Will asked. “You won't get their data.”
“We'll still get their data,” he said. “We'll just have to work harder at it.”
“Are these teens going to be from other countries mostly? What languages are we going to need?”
“Most of them have grown up here. I'm not sure how much you'll use your language skills.”
I tried not to be disappointed. Hadn't GASI wanted me for those skills? And I hadn't gotten a chance to use them.
While Nic drove, Christie made phone calls, texted, and sent emails communicating with the other teams, updating our information, and making additional arrangements. I'd never seen this side of her, the super-organized efficient office assistant kind of side. She did everything well.
I wanted to be as good as she was. I wanted to impress her. The last mission, where I'd met Will, had worked out okay. My stomach fluttered with butterflies about this one. There were a lot more variables than there had been when I'd befriended Will. We didn't even have a real suspect for crying out loud. And working with Will could be tricky. I glanced over to see him reading through the voluminous materials. How was I going to convince people that I thought of him like a brother? Seriously. The boy made my heart nearly thump right out of my chest. And what if we didn't get along? What if we argued when we tried to work on the case? What if he thought I was a terrible spy? Or even worse, what if he was bad at it? We'd been boyfriend and girlfriend for two months, but this mission could be the beginning of the end of our relationship. The end of Willanda or Amandwill, or whatever we'd be if we were a celebrity couple.
Undercover with the Hottie (Investigating the Hottie) Page 2