Kill Switch

by William Hertling

“We didn’t do anything. I mean, we cuddled for a little bit, but that was it. We still even had clothes on… Well, some clothes, anyway.”

  “Fucking gross. I don’t want to think about that.”

  “Come on. That’s not fair. You said back when we started dating that ‘guy sex was not without its benefits’.”

  “Oh, thanks. I wasn’t even thinking about that. Nice. Those are benefits that I can’t provide.”

  Essie sighed. “It’s not a competition. I like and love you. I also like spending time with Michael. One doesn’t take away from the other.”

  Logically Igloo knew that Essie was right. Igloo’s time with Charlotte didn’t affect her feelings for Essie. So why couldn’t her stupid lizard brain just shut up and let her be? Why was she so afraid? So afraid of losing Essie, and even more, of losing Essie’s respect. That was what scared her the most: that somehow Essie wouldn’t think of her in the same way anymore. That she wouldn’t be worthy of Essie’s love.

  Igloo tried to hold back her feelings, but she couldn’t anymore. The tears trickled out at first and then she sobbed.

  Essie wrapped herself more closely around her.

  Chapter 13

  A knock interrupted Enso’s review of Robin’s case files, and his door opened before he could respond.

  His second-in-command, Alice, had a broad smile. “FISA court order is in.”

  Enso rested both hands on his desk and imagined the look on Angie’s face when her precious Tapestry was split open so the government could monitor what was going on. It would be a big win for the intelligence community. They’d run up against Tapestry over and over during the last two years. Everyone knew their security was top-notch. Terrorists, criminals, foreign governments. They were all moving to Tapestry, making it more and more difficult to conduct the kind of widespread information surveillance that characterized most intelligence work these days.

  “Great news. What’s the timeline?”

  “Ninety days. Thirty to turn over their data and network architecture, sixty to be in complete compliance.”

  Three months, and then the government would have their big pipes hooked up to the internals of the Tapestry software. A huge data vacuum, sucking everything into the NSA’s data center where the world’s most powerful computer farm would analyze and correlate everything.

  Yeah, it was worthy of a celebration.

  He didn’t understand why FISA had been so slow to act. They issued orders to all the top Internet companies when they were smaller than Tapestry was now. Maybe it was because Tapestry had grown so quickly. If anything, they’d been understating their actual user base for months, perhaps to stall any FISA action.

  “Is this going to change anything about our operation?” Alice asked.

  That was the kicker. The part of Enso that wasn’t celebrating. He knew Angie was crooked. Had been sure of this for a long time, ever since she’d made a fool of him by killing Chris Daly, the BRI agent tasked to her. She’d gotten away scot-free, making it look like the agent had attacked her, and that she’d been acting in self-defense. He didn’t see how constructing a homemade robot armed with a 9mm could be construed as self-defense, but that case was long done.

  It sure as hell didn’t help that Chris Daly had been a sick fuck. Between Daly’s frequent disappearing acts and his surveillance of people who had nothing to do with his cases, Enso had known something was going on. And later, there’d been the weird sex stuff with the women in the hotel rooms. But Daly was one of his most effective agents, and always professional with his partners, so it was a no-brainer for Enso to keep pushing everything under the rug. After all, nothing Daly did was any worse than what people in power did all the time. Of course, during the investigation, evidence of Daly’s psychopathic behaviors surfaced. Enso learned his lesson from that too late.

  BRI would turn up something on Angie. They had to. He had to. The budget invested in discovering Angie’s misdeeds had to uncover something or BRI would never lead another major operation. The whole point of BRI was that they could do what other, more legitimate organizations couldn’t through legal means. If they were unsuccessful in the case of Tapestry, then they were going to die a slow death of irrelevance.

  Alice started to tap her toe.

  Enso frowned. “We’re going to increase the pressure on Angie.”

  Alice fully entered and closed the door behind her. “Increase? What more can we possibly do? We’re analyzing every bit of cleartext in and out of Tapestry, every bit of meta-data.”

  “I want real time coverage of her conversations.”

  Alice shook her head. “Every bug we’ve put in place, she’s detected. We stopped trying.”

  “Let’s put a long-range surveillance team in place. Lasers off windows, that sort of thing.”

  Alice looked doubtful. “That’s CIA stuff. Who do we have that can staff that?”

  “That’s what I want you to find out. Come on. Work with me here.” Enso ran his fingers through his hair, then instantly regretted it. He’d probably made a mess of it.

  She dropped into the chair in front of his desk. “I know you want to dig up something. We all do. But we’ve been investigating Angie for-fucking-ever.”

  Enso glared at her. “Don’t fight me on this, Alice. We’ve got a few months, if that, then it’s all out of our hands. What options do we have?”

  Alice sighed. “If we treat this as a potential terrorist op, we can get satellite coverage. Intermittent only, not full-time. But we can get a few hundred photos a day of the Portland area, or wherever she is, and use that to track her, her vehicle, her husband. You get the idea. We look for any discrepancies in her real-time data, which we can assume she’s falsifying.”

  “That’s good. Do it. What else?”

  “We can only hide so many of these big requests. People will eventually ask questions.”

  Everyone in BRI had a day job. They reported to different parts of the government. Some were in intelligence, purportedly working for one organization, but actually reporting informally to Enso. Between these BRI shadow employees and countless favors from regular government employees, they kept BRI off the books.

  “I’ll provide high-level cover,” Enso said. “I’ll talk to Griz, get him to give us blanket approval for longer-range plans. You work out the specifics. What else do you have?”

  “We could ask NSA to do some deeper machine learning algorithms on Angie’s historical data. We’ve got records going back fifteen years. She can’t always have been this good at covering her tracks.”

  “We did that last year and didn’t get anything.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Machine learning is improving all the time. Plus, they’ve got a hundred times more computing power now. New exploits on old encryption methods. It’s worth taking another pass.”

  Enso nodded. “Do it then.”

  “Also, we can widen the scope. Everything Angie does is already under a microscope. We can do the same for all of her known associates. Husband. Amber. Igloo. Other execs. Business associates. Family. Friends. Maybe she’s got perfect operational security, but they don’t. We slurp up all of their online data, computers, any connected devices. She could have let something slip around them. We’re talking about maybe a hundred key associates. But we’d need a few more full-time analysts, and BRI is tapped out. Can you get us people?”

  This was getting expensive. “I’ll get us some more loaners.”

  “They have to be good,” Alice said. “We can’t babysit junior analysts fresh out of school. Get us some senior people. And while you’re at it, how about having the cyberwarfare group take a look at Angie?”

  Enso raised an eyebrow. There were limits to his influence. The NSA’s cyberwarfare team was top-notch, but it was akin to asking that an aircraft carrier be retasked for a pet project.

  Alice took in the eyebrow. “Our guys are good, but you know cyber command has tricks up their sleeve that they’re not sharing.”

  “Yeah
, because they’re supposed to be saved for active warfare ops.” He shook his head.

  “You asked for ideas, I’m giving you ideas.” She shrugged. “Do what you like.”

  “Fine, fine, I’ll ask.”

  Enso wasn’t looking forward to the size of the favors he would owe in return.

  Enso had his aide chase down Griz to set up an off-record appointment. SigInt Director Feldson was technically the lead for the Tapestry initiative, though Enso had been running the operation. Rumor was he’d been grizzled back when he was a young lieutenant in the Navy. His own commanding officer had taken to calling him Griz, and the name stuck.

  Enso needed a plausible reason to visit. He showed up at Griz’s office an hour early, and signed into the log for a meeting with a Colonel in military intelligence. He ducked into the Colonel’s office for fifteen minutes, chatted about an operation they’d worked on last year, then made his way to see Griz.

  An unburnt stump of a cigar sat on Griz’s desk. Griz looked up to see Enso enter. He hit a button on his desk, and the hiss of a white noise generator started. Enso knew there’d be the equivalent in the electronic spectrum as well.

  “Enso,” Griz said, by way of greeting.

  “Griz, thanks for seeing me.”

  “I assume you got the news about the FISA court order.”

  Enso nodded. The official path for the request would have originated through Griz’s office. “Thanks. The taps are going to help with a number of investigations.”

  “About that. Once the court order takes effect, we’re not going to need BRI on Tapestry anymore. You can start to wind down operations. We’ll have all the inside data we need.”

  Enso was incredulous. Griz already thinking about winding down BRI? Didn’t he see the risk that Angie posed? He opened and closed his mouth twice, then took a deep breath, and tried again. “You have no idea what Angie is capable of. Shutting down our operation is a mistake. We’ve potentially tied her to dozens, maybe hundreds of murders. Hell, we know Daly’s death was premeditated. She entrapped him to make us look bad. We need to keep digging. There’s more out there.”

  Griz waved away his protests with one hand. “Look, what Angie has done is irrelevant. We need Tapestry data for intelligence purposes. The FISA court order will give us that. So what if she killed a hundred men? It’s nothing in the grand scheme of things. Your organization killed that many, and you’re working for us.”

  Damn Griz and his myopic focus. Enso stood and stalked back and forth, trying to form his thoughts.

  “Assume Angie is actually the killer we suspect she is.”

  Griz sat back, folded his arms, and nodded.

  “And assume she was able to bury all the evidence, digital and otherwise.”

  “Go on.”

  “She was able to take out one of my top agents.”

  “A deranged, sick man,” Griz said, “according to what came out during the investigation. But what’s your point?”

  “My point is, that makes Angie a very dangerous person. She’s potentially sociopathic. She foiled the police, the FBI, and the intelligence community. She’s in control of one of the largest and most secure information networks, a phenomenally powerful tool. Who knows what she might do next? How could we stop her? She’s a clear and present danger.”

  “What do you want to do? You haven’t turned up anything. The FISA court order will give us insight into what’s happening on Tapestry. That’s actually meaningful.”

  “I want to bury her, while we still can. Before we have FISA scrutiny. One last effort to discover the secrets in her past. BRI has a plan. All-in on cracking her historical data. All-in on current surveillance. Find something meaningful. If we can’t, then we creatively generate the leverage we need to get her out of power. Failing that, we eliminate her.”

  Griz sat back in his chair and chewed on the stump of his cigar.

  “If we remove Angie from the picture,” Enso said, “we’ll have way more influence when we apply the court order. We can reshape Tapestry from the inside out. Make it a front organization for the intelligence community. A modern-day, digital Air America. Can you imagine that?”

  Griz stared at the ceiling, still masticating his cigar. Finally, he grunted and sat upright. “Hypothetically, of course, an asset like that would have immense value. But the risk of exposure is equally immense. We’ll hang you out to dry if word gets out.”

  Enso nodded.

  “We didn’t discuss this,” Griz said. “I don’t want to know about it. You must want people—you wouldn’t have come in person if you didn’t. The people are approved.”

  “Some of them might be controversial—” Enso was thinking of the proposal to use the cyber command team.

  “What did I say? I don’t want to know. Do what you have to do.”

  Chapter 14

  Igloo hoped Angie would hurry. They had many methods of getting together outside the office when they wanted to talk about hacking and didn’t want government agencies spying on them. But requesting her to electronically sanitize herself and meet at 10A.M. on a Saturday was not a favorite.

  Worse, Angie hadn’t said what she wanted to talk about. Igloo hoped it would be something simple. Some abuser who needed to be put away. But something in the way Angie said she wanted to talk suggested it would be bigger.

  Her body was mixed up, unsure if she was awake very, very early, or maybe very late. She’d had a scant three hours of sleep. Bleary-eyed, standing on a corner holding a coffee in each hand and a bag with two carmelita bars, the tiredness was at the level of physical pain. She needed a hot soak. She and Essie should take a weekend at Breitenbush. That would be amazing.

  If Essie would even go with her. In the past week, things had remained, if not frosty, then at least distant between her and Essie. Where she’d once felt closeness with Essie, now there was a void.

  Igloo tried to bury herself in work to fill the gap. Which was good, since there was a ton of pressure to make progress on Angie’s onion routing project. But the events of her personal life continually intruded. She’d made half the progress she’d hoped for.

  Shit. Did Angie want to talk about Igloo’s contributions? She had a momentary panic. She’d never contributed anything less than 110 percent. It was only that the last few months were so confusing and complicated.

  Every time she’d sit down to code, she couldn’t stop thinking about Essie. She’d struggle at her computer for a while, then end up going for a long walk listening to angry or sad music or both. In the evening, she’d come home and mope around by herself or bicker with Essie.

  Midweek, Charlotte had messaged, saying she unexpectedly had a free night on Friday, and wanted to go to a rope party together. It was a bright spot in an otherwise distressing week. After a brief hesitation, Igloo had said yes. She’d already planned to go with Essie, but there was ample time to do two scenes in one night.

  Still, Igloo hadn’t been sure what Essie would say. Her responses didn’t make sense sometimes. Igloo felt herself struggling with jealousy and insecurity all the time. She’d understand if Essie felt the same. But Essie continually asserted everything was fine, while getting upset at random times.

  Was being able to date other people really worth all this?

  When Igloo, prepared for a fight, finally told Essie that Charlotte was coming, Essie simply responded with a “whatever.” Igloo couldn’t decide what to make of that. Did ‘whatever’ mean it was genuinely fine? Or that Essie was distracted with Michael? Or that Essie had stopped caring about her?

  Igloo felt she wasn’t getting the whole story. She wanted to have an honest discussion with Essie, but she was afraid of what she would learn. Would Essie turn out to have one foot out the door? In the end she didn’t have the energy or courage to tackle that conversation, and decided to let Essie’s answer be, even though it raised so many questions.

  When the party finally arrived last night, she’d played with Charlotte first, full of excitem
ent and joy. They did a simple rope suspension scene with a few kisses and gropes snuck in. She enjoyed the scene, especially experiencing Charlotte’s responses, all of which were tinged with a certain exotic newness. But she wanted more and resented the rushed timing. She feared that if she gave Charlotte too much attention Essie would be angry.

  After a short break, she tied Essie. She enjoyed the familiar sensations and curves of Essie’s body, the comfortable way their bodies nestled together. The predictability of Essie’s responses helped Igloo feel confident, her mastery of sexual and kink skills at an all-time high. She pushed herself, working extra hard to give Essie something novel and fun that didn’t repeat anything she’d done with Charlotte.

  The experience left her riding high—she’d done two excellent scenes. But she also felt wrung out, like she’d expended way more energy than she’d taken in. Her need to please both partners, to ensure that everyone else had a great time, exhausted her.

  Igloo and Essie went home, and though Igloo was cognizant of needing to get up early to meet Angie, Essie unexpectedly wanted sex, which stretched on for hours. The lovemaking was hot—they’d fucked with a kind of urgency, like the world was ending.

  But this morning, the differences between their relationships felt unfair. Essie had consistent, weekly dates alone with Michael. But on the once or twice a month occasions that Charlotte was available, Igloo would often already have plans with Essie. If she wanted to see Charlotte, she had to fit it in like last night, a quick scene before spending the rest of the night with Essie. Why did Essie get solo date nights while Igloo had to split her attention? It didn’t seem unreasonable for Essie to give Igloo some extra leeway when Essie had so much.

  Essie had remarked about Igloo being lucky she was getting two dates in one night. To a certain extent, it had been fun and ego-gratifying. But what she really wanted was a level of intimacy and connection with Charlotte that she didn’t feel when she was self-conscious about Essie watching them.