“Well, that’s that, then,” his boss said quietly. He pushed a button on the phone on the table and a voice instantly answered.
“Yes, Mr. President?”
“Virginia, what times today can you open up for me without the press wondering what’s going on?”
There was a pause. “10 to 10:45, and 1:30 – 3:00, Mr. President.”
“Good. I’ll want a one-hour meeting of the National Security Council this afternoon. Do what you need to do to clear everyone’s schedule as much as possible. And I want to have that meeting somewhere where we won’t attract too much attention. Can you do that?”
“I’m sure we can work that out, Mr. President. I expect that many of the Council members are out of town, so we’ll need to video conference them in.”
“That’s great, Virginia. Thanks.”
He was reaching for the speakerphone button when Virginia spoke up again.
“Happy birthday, Mr. President!”
The President turned to give his old friend a tired smile before he replied. “Yes, Virginia. Happy birthday to me.”
* * *
Carl Cummings was on a tear. Much too loudly, he was talking over his cellphone to his detailer back at headquarters.
“Look, damn it, this is the second time in ten days you haven’t been able to give me anybody.”
“C’mon, Carl, what do you expect me to do? I can’t work miracles here.”
Carl clutched the cellphone to his ear as he stared out at the street. “Do you know where I am? I’m standing behind a tree in Georgetown half a block from Saxby’s, that’s where I am. I’m getting covered in snow and I’m stamping my feet to stay warm and kids with backpacks are giving me weird looks like I’m some kind of pervert they should report to the campus cops. I’ve had about all of this I can take.”
With that, the detailer decided he’d already had more than he could take. His voice switched from conciliatory to cold.
“Listen Cummings, let me give you some friendly advice. Pull out your ID and look at your hire date. You’ve got five years with the Company, maybe. And in case you’ve been too busy admiring yourself in the mirror to read the papers, we’ve got a couple of wars on and more hotspots popping up all the time. Some people around here have real work to do, got it? So why don’t you just quit whining and get back to tailing your mark?”
Carl was about to unleash an appropriately responsive blast into his cellphone, but as he turned back towards the street he found himself abruptly frozen in place with his mouth open. Not three feet in front of him stood Marla Adversego, with her arms crossed and a look on her face that would stop a bull in full charge.
Carl shut and opened his mouth twice without uttering a sound, and then swallowed.
“Gotta go,” he said into his cellphone.
Marla dropped her arms to her side as Carl stuffed his cellphone in his coat pocket. He noticed that her hands were rolled up into fists. Involuntarily, he took a step backwards.
Marla stepped right up to him again and hissed into his face, “You’re following me, aren’t you?”
Carl tried to think fast, but found that his brain was temporarily out of order.
He gave up. “Yeah. Yes. Yes I guess I am.”
Marla stared at him for what seemed to him like a full minute. “Okay, then follow me!” She turned on her heel, and walked off at a rapid pace towards the Georgetown campus.
Carl stood still for a moment, dumbfounded. Then he cursed to himself. Damn it – what choice did he have? Following her was his assignment.
For a couple of blocks, he followed a hundred feet behind Marla, feeling like an idiot. How far behind someone who’s not supposed to know you’re following them but does anyway do you walk?
Finally, the absurdity of the situation became too much for him. Half running, he struggled to catch up to Marla. When he got close, he called ahead, “Look, I’m sorry. This isn’t like you think it is.”
Marla whirled around.
“Oh really? And exactly what do you think I think it is?”
Carl found that he was tongue-tied again. What actually did he think she thought it was?
She jumped in. “You think I think you’re following me because you’re interested in me? Is that it? It is, isn’t it? You know what? You’re pathetic!”
She spun around and walked off once again, more briskly than before.
Carl stood stock still for a moment, and then began chasing her again, angry and bewildered at the same time. Was that what he had been thinking she was thinking?
He called ahead again. “Alright, alright – I don’t know what you think this looks like. But please – stop for a minute and let me explain.” They were standing in the middle of the Georgetown quad now. It was too early for many students to have ventured out, so they were alone in the falling snow. Finally, Marla stopped, crossed her arms once again, and stared ahead without looking at him.
“Look, I know that your father isn’t behind what’s going on. I didn’t know that at first, but I do know that now.”
Marla turned around with a furious look on her face.
“Then why the hell hasn’t anyone told me he’s in the clear so I can tell him? What’s the matter with you people? Do you even know what you’re doing?”
Carl felt helpless, and then made some quick decisions. “I’m sorry. I can’t tell you why no one’s talked to you. All I can tell you is that we assume that whoever is behind the Alexandria Project must know about your father’s reputation in security. If that’s so, then we also have to assume they’d assume we’re using your father to help catch the hackers.”
Marla still looked hostile, but she was listening carefully now. “Marla, everybody knows your Dad is the best there is. Whatever the game is that’s going on here, we’ve got to assume that the bad guys are playing for keeps. That means that they’ll do anything to get to your father and stop him from discovering who they are.”
“So why are you following me?”
Carl looked briefly around them, and then said more softly, “Marla, I just said that they would do anything to get to your father.”
Well, that made sense, didn’t it? She probably was at risk, and Carl had probably been following her for weeks now. Marla suddenly felt off balance rather than angry; ten minutes ago she had been a grad student with a backpack walking to class at Georgetown, and now she was a pawn in a national crisis with a 24-hour CIA detail covering her. She needed time to think.
Distracted, Marla wondered what time it was, and turned to look towards the clock tower on the side of the quad. But it had dissolved into the falling snow. She wondered whether it was snowing where her father was, too. She could see only one of the trees dotting the quad, barely visible in the near distance; everything else was a grey void out of which ghostly, individual snowflakes swirled into view before disappearing once again. She noted with surprise that each flake looked darker, and not lighter, than the silent backdrop of the storm.
She realized that Carl was staring at her, and forced herself to snap back. “Okay,” she said, once more in command. “Give me everything you’ve got.” Then she turned and started walking again. But this time, she moved more slowly, allowing Carl to walk at her side.
* * *
It was indeed snowing in Nevada, too. Unable to sleep, Frank was pacing back and forth in his clearing, waiting for dawn and for someone to take his bait of doctored iBalls. The snow was drifting, and he wondered whether he’d be able to get out of his mountain hideaway if he wanted or needed to. He’d had to fold up most of the solar panels, too, fearing they might collapse under the weight of the deepening snow. If it stayed cloudy, he’d need to use the Avenger’s gas-powered back-up generator to keep everything running.
Lost in thought, he didn’t notice how deeply the snow was building up around the path he was trampling in the snow. In the background, he could hear a muffled heartbeat, steady at seventy-two beats per minute, floating through the falling snow li
ke the very life force of the wilderness that surrounded him.
No surprise, there. With little to relieve the anxiety of waiting to see if his master plan would work, he had returned to playing with his electronic toys. One diversion he had dreamed up was to program in a new sound every day to confirm that his monitoring software was functioning properly, and another to alert him when the Alexandria Project eventually (he hoped) breached the defenses of his new honeypot.
But day after day, the alarm failed to sound. A metronome had borne witness to the first twenty-four hours of “no activity” signals from his intrusion alert software, as had full days of Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major, the waves at Malibu, and the sounds of termites devouring a stump, pirated from an old National Geographic documentary. Frank had been up in the mountains for weeks now, and things were becoming a bit surreal even without the termites.
He couldn’t help wondering if this whole enterprise wasn’t a ridiculous farce. As usual, he’d been confident that he’d come up with a foolproof plan when he first thought of it. Also as usual, he was consumed with self-doubt once his strategy was not immediately validated. As he paced, he reviewed his plan over and over, questioning every assumption upon which it was based.
Abruptly, he realized how cold he felt. How long had he been walking in the clearing? To his surprise, he realized that the snow was now over a foot deep.
Frank hugged himself and shivered. He looked around the clearing for a sight of anything in the mad, dark swirl of snow, but there was nothing identifiable to be seen. The only sensations he could detect, besides the piercing cold, were the wind-driven needles of snowflakes striking his face, and the throbbing heartbeat that he felt more than heard emanating from the all-weather speakers of the camper. Just like that night when he had driven north on the endless road that disappeared into the distance of the moonlit, desert night, he felt lost in space and time. Only tonight, he felt suspended in a void of nothingness as well.
And then something changed. What was it? He tried to stop shivering, the better to concentrate on what it might be.
That was it – the heartbeats were beginning to distort. Frank unconsciously put his hand to his chest as he realized that his monitoring software was going into atrial fibrillation.
In the muffling embrace of the snow, Frank could no longer tell where the sound was coming from. He turned to his right, and then to his left, confused and listening as hard as he could. Suddenly, all was silent. Realizing the absurdity of the thought even as he had it, he wondered whether he should call 911?
He whirled around. Were the heartbeats beginning again? Or was that the sound of muffled drums?
And then, one by one, the slow, austere sound of horns swirled around him like the snowflakes – the pure, soaring opening notes of Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man.
Laughing like a madman, Frank floundered through the deepening snow in what he hoped was the direction of the Solar Avenger.
The Alexandria Project had taken his bait.
Three days later, a team of Stanford sophomores found The Big iBall.
* * *
22
What a Difference a Dong Makes!
George marchand was ordering a mixed selection of donuts at The Bakers Dozen, a coffee shop in a small town outside the Beltway. Paying for his purchase, he asked the teenager if they had a restroom. “In the back,” she said, counting out his change without looking up.
George strolled through the seating area and walked through an open door. Ignoring the two restroom entrances he found there, he began to climb a flight of stairs that rose, turned a corner, and dead-ended at a closed door.
When he arrived at the top, George saw that this door had neither a lock nor a doorknob. He slid his fingers along the right side of the door frame until he felt a recessed area. Pushing against it, he felt the door trim unlatch. George lifted it open on hidden hinges and looked for the security device that would allow him to open the door. There it was – a metal plate at head-height, painted the same color as the wood but for a small, black circle in the middle. He positioned himself so that his right eye aligned with the circle, and a light flickered on, scanning the retina of his eye. With that, the light winked out and the door swung open to reveal a modest-sized room containing nothing but an inexpensive conference room table and chairs. He saw that there was another door in each of the other walls. Sitting around the table, one to a side, were two men and a woman, each about his own age. One of the them was the Director of the CIA.
“How come I always have to buy the donuts?” George asked to no one in particular as he closed the door behind him.
“I guess you’re just lucky, George. You want me to pick up some dry cleaning for you on my way upstairs next time?” one of the men said.
George took a seat across from the Director, and nodded to his two co-leaders on the Alexandria Project investigation. Each of them, he knew, had entered the building through a different street level commercial establishment.
“Sure, thanks. Anyway, what’s with the face-to-face meeting?”
George hadn’t been to this particular room in a while, but it was typical of the dozen or so discreet locations the CIA maintained in the D.C. area. None of them were fancy, but all were highly secure and conveniently located for ready use when the brass wanted to hold meetings with field operatives without jeopardizing their covers. It was easy to concentrate there as well – none of their cellphones would work with all of the shielding in the walls.
The Director replied, “Actually, this isn’t a face-to-face meeting at all. For the record, this is just a social get together. It’s been much too long since we’ve had a chance to enjoy each others’ company and shoot the breeze, don’t you think? No need to enter this in your logbooks.”
George raised his eyebrows and said nothing as he passed the box of donuts around. This was different.
The Director peered into the donut box and settled on one with cinnamon sugar.
“You know, this is my favorite secure meeting room. Best donuts anywhere. And it’s always someone else’s treat.
“Anyway, I had an interesting meeting over at Homeland Security yesterday. We covered a lot of ground, and finally got around to the Alexandria Project investigation. Of course our good friends from the FBI were there as well.”
Ah, George thought. Now he knew what the topic was. The House Cybersecurity Subcommittee hearing had been an ugly exercise for all concerned. Chairman Steele’s strategy had been to pit the CIA and the FBI against each other. One of them, he claimed, must be asleep at the switch, so which one was it? With each question, Steele had turned up the heat, trying to goad each witness into revealing some detail that would provide him with an opening to attack the other.
The CIA Director had declined to play the Chairman’s game at first, but his opposite number at the FBI had willingly played ball. Ever since 9/11, the FBI had felt like its domestic turf was being invaded from all sides. Subjecting itself to the authority of the new Department of Homeland Security had been bad enough. But sharing responsibility for domestic cybersecurity with the CIA had really put a burr under the FBI’s saddle.
Without ever accusing the CIA of anything in particular, the FBI Director implied that every point of weakness and responsibility on the cybersecurity front clearly lay on the CIA’s side of the equation. And after all, how could the FBI protect America if it didn’t own the entire project? Relations between the two agencies hadn’t benefited from the hearing, George knew. He listened with interest to hear what the CIA Director had to say.
“It was quite an interesting meeting. Now that I think of it, you might say we picked up right where we left off at the end of the Steele hearing. If I didn’t know that we were all on the same team, I might have even gotten the impression the FBI sees this whole Alexandria Project investigation as their big chance to kick our butts out of the country – and then take our passports away so we can’t come back.”
The Dire
ctor let that sink in for a moment as he dunked his donut in his coffee and took a bite.
“So you might want to keep your wits about you till this situation is resolved. You might even want to look over your shoulder now and then to see if our valued allies over at FBI headquarters are keeping an eye on you as closely as they’re keeping an eye out for the bad guys. It may be that they’re watching us even more closely.”
George and the others exchanged sidelong glances.
The Director finished his donut and wiped his hands on a napkin. “You know, we really ought to do this more often. It seems like we never have time to enjoy each others’ company anymore. And I really do enjoy a good donut now and then.”
The Director stood up and smiled, and the others followed his lead. A moment later, four doors closed silently and the room was empty once more.
* * *
Marla Adversego, it seemed, needed a book to read and was having trouble making up her mind. It looked like a good mystery novel might do the trick, but nothing seemed to be just right. Even after fifteen minutes at Amazon.com she still hadn’t found a book that quite made the grade, no matter how many “people who bought this book also bought” links she clicked on and reader reviews she read. Finally she seemed to have found just what she was looking for in one reader review, and stared at the screen intently while scribbling a few notes on a pad of paper.
Almost as an afterthought, she punched a few more keys, and bought David Baldacci’s latest thriller to give credibility to her time online.
A few minutes later, Marla picked up her cellphone, dialed a local number, and waited for the “Hello?” at the other end.
“Coffee?”
There was a pause, and then a surprised voice said, “Sure. Where?” Marla gave an address. “See you in a half an hour.”
* * *
President Rawlings looked across the broad cabinet table somberly. How old was this particular piece of furniture, he wondered? How many presidents had sat exactly where he did today to decide whether to take a step closer to war? Could he decide as wisely? He grasped the edge of the table with both hands, as if to draw wisdom and strength from its smooth, solid weight.
The Alexandria Project: A Tale of Treachery and Technology (Frank Adversego Thrillers Book 1) Page 18