Serpents in the City (Mac Ambrose Book 3)

by HN Wake

  This wasn’t good. She glanced up through the diner’s windows and down at Patriot News. The lobby’s bright glass wall dominated the block: an ice fortress.

  She typed back, “What are my options?”

  “There’s only one. I need to recreate the email’s path. You need to physically release a virus on the same local network the blackmailer used. From inside Patriot News. You need to go inside.”

  89 hadn’t been able to identify who had sent the email.

  The operation had just become exceptionally more dangerous. The noise in the diner dimmed. The throbbing crowd in Times Square blurred. All she could think of was Joe.

  From the trunk of her hidden Alfa Romeo, they had retrieved the single cardboard box that held her prized belongings. His dog, Junior, met them with enthusiasm at the door to the drafty house. The rooms were big and empty. The chirping of birds was loud through the windows.

  She felt alien and unsure.

  He understood this was difficult for her.

  Anxiety pressed her to say something, anything. “Am I the first here?” She cringed. “No, never mind. Don’t answer that. Dumb question.”

  “Actually, you are.”

  She nodded to the box in his arms. “I’m not sure where to put that.”

  “Well, it’s definitely going to clutter up the place,” he joked. He set it on the bare kitchen table. “Let’s just wait till we see where you want it. No rush.”

  He took her hand, led her up the stairs. He showed her the bathroom on the second floor, opened the medicine cabinet with a grin, handed her a packaged toothbrush. “I always have a spare.”

  The toothbrush was hard. She preferred soft. She remembered thinking, Oh, god, this was all going to be too hard.

  He whispered, “I have a softer one if that’s better.”

  She turned to him, pulled him close, held him for a long moment.

  Against her hair, he had whispered,“Mac, it’s going to be fine.”

  Her phone pinged again. “The blackmail email came from a computer in the basement. Studio 3 control room. You must release the virus into their network there.” It was followed by instructions. “I sent virus file to chat room. Transfer to a USB. Transfer to one of their computers. Then use password: $#5678*^ rHc3$.”

  She wanted to give up, wanted to go home.

  Then her training and years of experience kicked in like a self defense mechanism. When in doubt, don’t be. She pulled up a chatroom on her screen, downloaded the file to a USB thumb drive, then clasped the drive in her fist. She stuffed her laptop in her bag, dropped money on the table, stood, and strode to the back of the Brooklyn Diner.

  When in doubt, act now. Hesitation can topple an operation.

  In the bathroom, she shook out of the trench coat, lifted off the baseball cap, balled them up and stuffed in the trash can. On the counter, she set out a blond wig, a prosthetic nose, glue, lip plumper, and thick dark sunglasses.

  She pulled on the wig, applied the nose, plumped her lips and slid on the sunglasses.

  When in doubt, one step at a time, add it all up later.

  She looked at her reflection in the mirror and saw cold-blooded, well trained, highly effective CIA operative: undercover, on guard, ready for the next step. She breathed deeply, lowering her heart rate.

  When in doubt, just get shit done.

  Daylight was fading as the sun set over the building. The commuter crowd had picked up. She approached Patriot News slowly as a swell of workers left at the end of a business day. Eventually, a blond woman emerged, laughing loudly with two young men, oblivious to the crowd around her.

  Mac stepped in pace behind them and followed them for a long, noisy block until the trio entered a packed Irish bar.

  Inside the acoustics were terrible, making the noise level deafening. The three colleagues were lucky to get a high top table in the back, and one of the two men went to the bar to order drinks. The young blond women unclipped her Patriot News badge and slipped it into her purse on the back of a chair. Mac elbowed her way into a tight spot among the crowd at the bar and ordered a soda water with lime.

  Mac cased the three for twenty minutes until they had each had a second drink and were fully immersed in a rowdy conversation.

  She pushed off the bar. As she passed the young blond’s chair, her handed dipped into the purse and her fingers grasped the ID card. She was back out on the street within two minutes.

  17

  Washington, DC

  Joyce answered the phone in her cubicle, “Tattle.”

  “Hi,” Isaac said.

  “Hi back,” Joyce replied with a grin. “What’s up?”

  “Can you meet me at Union Station for a coffee?”

  “As in pronto?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Ooooh. Mysterious. Totally. Our regular spot?”

  “Yup.”

  “I’m leaving now.”

  Union Station was a short walk through a green park from the Russell Senate Office building. It was a clean day with a blue sky and puffy, white clouds that made her daydream of cloud walking. Joyce wondered if there was a relationship between political party affiliation and cloud thoughts?

  It didn’t bother her that even her daydreams morphed into work questions. She liked her job. She liked research and legislative work. She hoped her boss was going to run again next year when his term was up, but he hadn’t discussed it with her. He was generally a quiet man, despite being a politician. If he were going to run, he would have to gear his staff up soon. The polls gave him pretty high marks.

  The portico of Union Station was busy with tourists and Hill types. Taxis lined up waiting for travelers.

  The heavy door shifted cold air as it closed behind her and she stepped into the low lit, towering atrium. Dim echoes reverberated off austere grey walls and grey floors. Amtrak announced the boarding of the Acela to New York, the loudspeaker cutting across the hum.

  Isaac was waiting at the far table of the cafe, his hair askew.

  She planted a kiss on his forehead, fixed his hair, then sat opposite. “What’s up?” she grinned. “You talk first, then I’ll tell you what happened this morning! Timing is cray cray.” She cupped her chin in both hands, an eager listener.

  He pushed his glasses up on his nose. “So, 42 is doing some kind of operation.”

  “Roger that.”

  Isaac said, “He needs some help.”

  She wrinkled her brow. “Okay?”

  “He asked if I knew someone who could do something like that.”

  She sat up and gave him a sly, dramatic look. “And?”

  “So he needs some background material. He needs a dossier.”

  Her fingers wiggled and she waved her hands to release the adrenaline. “Oh my god. It’s Agency days again! Yay! Yes, yes, yes.”

  “I didn’t even ask you yet.”

  “You’re going to ask me if I can prepare a dossier for 42 on Gillis. I’m so far ahead of you. You’re like over at the Supreme Court steps right now and I’m here in Union Station.”

  “Yes, Einstein,” he chuckled. “That’s what I was gonna ask.”

  “That’s so spot on that this is happening today. I was just in a hearing on the FCC where Gillis dropped some bomb that she’s introducing legislation on…wait for it…fairness and accountability in cable news. The room went bonkers.” She sat back with a huge grin. “I’m on it. Yes, I’ll totally put together a backgrounder on Gillis. This is so the reason Patriot is blackmailing her! ”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

  “It totally is the reason.” She crossed her arms over her chest and sat up importantly. “This is so perfect, Baby. Your budding hacker entrepreneurial effort is working! I could be your first employee! Actually, I am your first employee.”

  “Okay, okay. I guess we can look at it that way.”

  “We sure can, Boss.”

  “Easy, teacher’s pet.”

  “Did you figure out a name y
et?”

  He shook his head, slightly embarrassed. “I keep coming back to something but it sounds super corny.”

  Her eyes lit up. “Oooo, tell me, tell me.”

  “Well I was thinking of playing on Latin for curate. Like a guardian or a care taker, or a trustee.”

  “Curiae?”

  He nodded, grinning at her. “Exactly, Einstein.”

  “Oooo, my rectum tingles just at the thought of your shop being named that.”

  “It’s just a name--did you just say your ass is tingling?”

  “My rectum. That’s specifically what I said.”

  “Nice. Provocative. Imaginative. Superbly descriptive.”

  She laughed. “It’s a cool name. You should definitely let that settle in and see what you think.” She reached out and took his hand. “And thanks for the assignment. This shit is super exciting for me. If I hadn’t lost my job, I’d still be over in Langley happy as Larry.”

  He squeezed her hand. “You’re being exceptionally scatological today, and your old boss from the Agency had no idea what to do with you and that is his loss.”

  He was right of course, but the intrigue and clandestine nature of the Agency had been perfect for her whirring mind. She leaned over and kissed him. “Yes,” she said. “I’m totally on it. When does 42 need it?”

  “ASAP.”

  “Oooooh! We’ll stay up late and work together. Red 10.” Long ago Joyce had measured her happiness on a scale of one to ten, ten being the happiest. A year ago, well into a second bottle of Chianti during a vacation they had taken to Costa Rica, she had decided that the simple scale did not adequately capture the spectrum of human emotions. She had declared that she was adding the color wheel to her measurements. Red, yellow and orange were degrees of warmth. Blue, green and purple were shades of cold. A red 10 was a hot happiness. She winked at him. “We’ll be like two little off-the-grid hackers.”

  He shook his head at her use of the term hacker. “I do not think you mean what you think you mean,” he said, mocking a line from the Princess Bride movie. “But regardless, I’ll get wine.”

  “Make it chewy.”

  “Anything you desire, my little ass-quivering love,” he said with a smile.

  “Rectum,” she corrected. “It’s just my rectum.”

  18

  Across America, homes tuned in to CNN as the red and blue news studio came on the screen. The nice looking black anchor started the segment. “CNN is reporting live from the front steps of Capitol Hill. We have just had word that six senators are planning an announcement.”

  The image switched to a young, white female reporter, her back to the steps of Capitol Hill as five suited men and one woman made their way toward a podium. As they stepped into a neat line, bulbs flashed.

  Senator Eleanor Gillis stepped forward to the microphone and held up her hand for silence. Her face was serious. “I’m pleased to report we just had a very successful meeting with the President. Those of us here today, from both sides of the aisle, represent a swelling voice of concern about a grave issue facing our country. We can no longer sit idly by as politics devolves into destructive rhetoric of half-truths and bitterness. This growing trend of abrasive, argumentative, and single-mindedness is threatening this country.” She paused and looked into the camera. The men behind her nodded in agreement. “We as a nation, have learned to shut out any ideas we don’t like. We have turned deaf to those who do not have the same beliefs. This country has dangerously forgotten how to negotiate or how to compromise. Let me be clear. There is a profound divisiveness in politics. As a result, we are unable to govern properly.”

  She looked out over the film crews. “We will return civility to politics. That starts with civility and truthfulness in our news. Today, we are introducing Senate Bill 1111 to bring back fair reporting. We believe the country is owed a functioning government.”

  Congressman Tom Wayne stepped up to take questions.

  19

  Washington, DC

  Joyce sat in yellow pajamas at the round kitchen table, piles of papers spread within reach. Two uncapped red pens stuck out from a bun of hair perched high on her head and another hung from her lips like a Winston Churchill cigar. An unopened jar of Ragu sat on the counter and a saucepan on a burner contained a brown pile of charred pasta. The scent of singe hung in the air.

  Her phone pinged with an SMS from her mother.“You eat greens today?”

  Annoyed at the interruption, she typed back quickly, hoping to end the conversation, “Already.”

  It pinged again instantly. “Good. Kale?”

  She ignored her.

  It pinged again. “Scurvy if you don’t.”

  She’d been at the research on Senator Gillis for an intense three hours and her eyes burned. “Scurvy doesn’t exist anymore.”

  “It could. For you.”

  Setting the phone down, her teeth resumed their work on the red pen.

  The phone pinged again. “Or gout.”

  This time she turned down the phone’s volume.

  The front door opened with a groan. Pulling the pen from her mouth, she yelled, “Hey, Babes. Just getting up to speed for you. And I tried to cook dinner but it threw a tantrum so I had to put it in a time out.”

  He stepped into the kitchen sniffing the air, and kissed her cheek while he surveyed the littered table. “I see we’re working hard here.” He dropped his bag and moved to prepare a new pasta pot, throwing the clingy burnt mass into the garbage and filling the pot with fresh water.

  “What I’m gonna say is that Gillis is an anomaly.” She flipped through papers. “I had no idea about her record. She’s kinda conservative for a Democrat—“

  “You want a wine?”

  “Uh, oh, yeah, that would be awesome, thanks, Babes.”

  He poured them glasses and settled in across from her.

  “So, she’s conservative on about half the issues. On climate change she is against any regulations to lower carbon emissions and prefers market-based solutions. On fiscal and debt management, she’s a very staunch advocate of the role of market forces for corrections. Longtime critic of national debt.”

  He sipped his wine.

  She was in her element. “She’s against any regulations on the financial industry, against raising taxes, has proposed tax cuts, hates the unions and she’s demanded raising the retirement age. She’s hawkish on war, supporting ground troops and airstrikes against Islamic radicals.” Looked up, “Oddly conservative for a Democrat.”

  Isaac had never been overly interested in politics. He knew a lot, primarily because he lived with Joyce, but it was not a personal interest.

  “But she consistently breaks to the left on other issues,” she continued. “On education, she supports improving public schools, on immigration she supports a legal path to citizenship, and on women’s and minorities issues she’s been a proponent on choice, pay equality and marriage equality. She supports regulation on guns.”

  “Okay? That part makes sense. She’s a registered Democrat, right?”

  “Her donor base for her elections has been predominantly liberal East Coast and California because of her stances on the social issues. Most of her career is pretty uneventful except one thing. Almost twelve years ago, right before she was elected to the Senate, she rode through a scandal. She had just left a meeting with a bunch of environmental activists, promising them to do right by them in Pennsylvania and got into a big limo. One of the reporters on the scene took down the license plate. Turned out the limo was rented by a big energy company—oil, gas and coal. The reporter called her to say he was investigating what he thought was a scoop and did she have any comment? Get this: she high-tailed it down to the newspaper’s office in Scranton, waltzed right up to the editor, and demanded he call the journalist off the hunt because there is no proof of any relationships. As if that’s how you pull a story! From an article the newspaper later published, it was at that exact time the reporter discovered the ener
gy company had donated over $5 million to her campaign. Oopsi.” She looked up at Isaac. “That’s a huge sum of money for a US Senate campaign. She got elected two days later. But the newspaper nicknamed her Guilty Gillis and it stuck. It’s been used by her opposition ever since.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Right? Politicians hate when their deals with the devil get outed.”

  “But she seems to be okay now?”

  “Yeah, six years ago during the last election, she had a rebranding effort. She actually turned the nickname on its head—said she’d learned from her mistakes and was committed to playing clean politics. They started calling her Comeback Gal Gillis—which is a sucky nickname but it’s better than Guilty Gillis, I guess.”

  “Huh.”

  “So, moving on. Practically since the whole time she’s been elected, she’s been the Chair of the subcommittee on Communications, Technology, Innovation, and the Internet.”

  “Uh, those sound horrendously boring.”

  “Until you drill down. It’s the committee regulating the future of communication. Tech. Internet. Online economy. Wire taps. Think the Federal Communications Commission, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. These are all hugely influential in the way we receive, send, and share information.”

  “Okay?”

  “This is in no way boring or insignificant. ”

  “Okay?”

  “Today she introduced Senate Bill 1111.”

  He gave her a questioning look.

  “Let me digress for a moment,” she took a sip to wet her whistle. “Back in the 1940s, media was very laissez-faire in this country, which didn’t rub well with the government at the time who then decided they didn’t want a media driven purely by profits. Government believed that the public had a right to ‘read, see and hear’ legitimately fair news under the First Amendment. So the government regulated under the theory, the working supposition, that the social benefits of the news outweighed the rights of the media owners.”