by C. E. Murphy
"We need it."
"What about—" Alisha broke off, unwilling to voice the actual question in a public area, even if no one was paying attention.
"Reverse engineering will take too long," Greg answered, intuiting her meaning. "We've got techs on it already, and the remote you delivered with the drone is proving incredibly useful. It's in perfect working condition, all of it, the remote, the drone, everything. The whole program is intact. Beautifully done, Ali. Very well done."
"Thanks."
Greg went on as if she hadn't spoken. "So we've got people on it. But their best estimates suggest weeks, more likely months, before we've gone far enough back to begin moving forward again. We need the software."
"There can't be many facilities prepared to host that kind of backup," Alisha said, more to herself than to Greg. She wanted to just flat-out ask why he didn't turn to Brandon for help, but squelched the impulse until she actually knew who Greg was working for.
The thought made her mouth dry, ashy distaste filling her throat. She swallowed against it and crossed the lounge to a water cooler bearing an expensive brand name to fill a glass—real glass, but not crystal—so she could drink her fill. "Do we know if Brandon's got a copy of the software?"
"I assume not, after our acquisition and removal of the target. " Greg said. Alisha drained her water glass and set it aside, retreating to the window again. The woman from the plane came into the lounge, exchanged a brief smile with Alisha, and sat closer to the laughing family than anyone else in the room did. Unlike everyone else, the woman looked pleased by their joy, and Alisha smiled again as she turned away from all of them and focused on the green horizon, and on what Greg had said.
On the surface of it, Greg was almost certainly right. Odds were that even if Brandon had had all the drone software on the Kazakhstani base computers, he hadn't had the capability to back it up onto something he could take with him. But that was on the surface, and Alisha didn't trust much of anything Greg had to say right now. He almost certainly knew for certain whether Brandon had the drone software, and could presumably get ahold of it himself any time he needed to.
But she wasn't supposed to know that, and letting even a hint of her knowledge slip could spell disaster. For whom, she didn't know, but it probably wouldn't go well for her. Trying to keep her voice neutral, or at least like she sounded determined to do the job, she said, "We need to be sure. Not many places have the kind of processing power or storage he's using."
"I've narrowed it down to five or six facilities," Greg agreed. "If he's looking for backups himself, we might catch him at one of them. The two most likely places in the States are in San Jose and Dallas. Where are you?"
Alisha lifted her gaze to the lounge windows again, looking out over the plane-littered runways and beyond them at the green haze that hid the distant Potomac River that welcomed visitors to the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.
"Los Angeles," she said easily. "I'll go to San Jose, and call you when I've got something."
Chapter 21
Alisha was accustomed to slipping through foreign cities, avoiding their surveillance and keeping her head down. Doing the same thing in DC felt genuinely strange, but she'd purchased jeans, a t-shirt, sneakers, and an "I <3 DC" baseball cap in the airport mall and slipped out into the afternoon sun with her hair tucked into the cap like any camera-wary tourist. She called a ride-share to the airport pickup ranks instead of using a legitimate taxi service, because it was far less likely to have an in-car camera she could be tracked with. It took her to Georgetown, where she called another one, which dropped her off a dozen blocks from a CIA safe house outside of Fairfax, Virginia. She went the rest of the way on foot and regretted it by the time she got there: her feet throbbed in the heat and sweat poured down her spine. After all that, she was still early, and went inside gratefully to shower, dress again, and sit with her feet in a pot of cool water until she drifted off.
She awoke to a deep male voice saying, "Well, this is unusual, Cardinal," and jolted to her feet, knocking the pot over in the process. Water spilled everywhere while she dropped back into the couch, white-lipped with pain from stubbing her feet against the pot's sides.
Director Daniel Boyer let out a startled yelp and danced backward, avoiding a deluge over his leather shoes. Alisha, mortified, stood up again, eyes watering with pain. "Director Boyer. Sir. I didn't hear you come in."
"You don't say. What on earth, Cardinal." Boyer, a big man with very dark skin and close-cropped curls receding from his forehead, lifted his hand. "Never mind. Sit back down while I get this cleaned up and then you can explain. Don't argue," he said firmly as Alisha inhaled to do just that. "You're obviously injured. Sit."
Alisha sat, face hot as she watched the director of the CIA clean up her mess without staining his well-cut tan suit. After he'd tidied up, he looked around as if assessing his efforts, gave a satisfied nod, and sat across from his barefoot agent, hitching up the thighs of his slacks as he did so.
"All right, Alisha. What's going on?"
Alisha puffed her cheeks and blew out the breath. "This might take a while, sir."
"Really." Boyer's deep voice was as dry as a desert. "An agent makes a personal call to the director of the CIA to request a clandestine meeting at one of our own safe houses, and you think he can't figure out explaining it might take a while? I'm injured."
Alisha laughed despite herself. "Sorry, sir. Um, the shortest version is that Greg said I was supposed to report to you as well as to him and I'm taking advantage of that."
"Why do I get the feeling that's the tip of the iceberg?" Boyer gestured for her to continue.
"Because it is, sir. Director, I understand that it's not necessarily my job to know what the reasons behind my missions are. Most of the time that's okay."
Boyer's eyebrows, dark straight slashes, rose a little. "But not this time?"
"Not this time," she agreed. "Sir, I really need to know where we got the intel that sent us after Brandon Parker. I need to know if he's an undercover agent, and whether Greg knows about it or not."
Boyer's eyebrows shot up again, higher this time. "Would you like to know who shot JFK, too?"
"Oh, come on, sir." Alisha made a face. "This isn't that important." Cold nerves knotted in her belly, making a burp there, and she felt her expression slide toward disbelief. "Wait. First, do you know who shot JFK? And second, is it that important?"
Boyer chuckled. "No. You just looked so serious."
Alisha ducked her head, exhaling a quick laugh. "Oh. Okay. Sorry. I'm feeling the strain on this one."
"You need to be taken off this mission?"
"No, sir." She looked up again, quickly. "But I'd feel a lot better if I knew what I was dealing with. I feel like I'm being played, and I need to know who's playing me."
Boyer leaned back, considering her. He was broad-shouldered and thick through the waist, not fat, but barrel-chested, and the cut of his suit jacket made him look too large for the dim, neutral colors of the safe house living room. Reassuringly dangerous, Alisha thought. Like he could break a neck or rescue a kitten with equal ease. "I can't tell you where the intel on Parker came from," he said after a moment. "I can tell you that you were specifically recommended for this mission by someone whose judgment I trust."
"That's very flattering, sir," Alisha muttered. "Are my loyalties being tested?"
Surprise turned into a one-sided grin on Boyer's face. "What do you think?"
"I think if you deliberately sent me in to investigate an undercover agent who could identify me that you're being reckless and careless with both his and my life, and I resent it. Sir."
Boyer's eyebrow quirked again. "To the best of my knowledge, Brandon Parker has not worked for the CIA since he left nearly ten years ago."
"Is it possible that he's working undercover without your knowledge?"
"Anything is possible, Cardinal. Langley isn't the only operations center, and while I'm kept apprised of othe
r operations, I'm sure there are a few of my own that would come as a surprise to some of the other directors."
"Thank you," Alisha said dryly. "That fills me with confidence."
"As well it should. His story, then, is that he's working for the CIA?"
Alisha nodded. "As a double agent within the Sicarii."
That garnered a reaction from the director, a brief look of surprise flashing over his face. A knot of tension she hadn't realized existed unlocked at the base of her neck, relaxing the muscles in her shoulders. "So they are real. Jesus." Alisha lifted a hand to rub her eyes. "That's actually a relief."
"If Brandon Parker claims to be working as a double agent for the Sicarii," Boyer said, words slow and measured, "you will proceed as if he is telling God's own truth, Agent MacAleer."
"Is he?"
"I don't know." Boyer's voice dropped into a deeper growl, making Alisha straighten her spine against the chill that ran over her. "But I will find out. In the meantime," he went on, voice resuming its normal baritone, "what about Greg? You asked if he knew about Brandon's theoretical assignment. Why?"
"Because I saw them together in Beijing." Alisha spread her hands, shaking her head. "I don't know who to trust anymore, sir. Greg doesn't even know I'm in D.C. That's why I wanted to meet here instead of at the offices."
"You have gotten paranoid." Boyer pursed his lips, eyebrows shifting upward again. "What do you propose to do?"
Alisha took a deep breath. "Nothing." Boyer's eyebrows lifted higher and she shrugged. "I'm going to steal the software backups for the AI prototypes. I'll deliver a copy to you, but I want to give one to Greg as well. A corrupted copy, with a tracer set in it to see if the files are copied before you get them."
"And if they're not?"
"Then I'll be incredibly relieved, sir. I want this to turn out clean. I want it to turn out that Brandon Parker is working so far undercover that only six people in the world know about it."
Boyer rumbled a laugh that lifted the hairs on Alisha's arms again. "A secret known by six people isn't a secret, Cardinal."
"Heh. Yes, sir. But honestly, sir, I want this to be above your head."
"You want it to be. But you're afraid it isn't."
"I wouldn't be here if I wasn't."
Boyer nodded, then stood."You have a go, Cardinal. Set your bait. We'll see what happens."
Alisha stood as well, wincing as she put weight on her feet again. "Thank you, sir." They shook hands, Alisha remaining on her feet until the director left the room. Then she clenched her hand into a triumphant fist and grabbed her purse off the couch's end table, upending it over the couch cushions. Passport, loose change, lipstick, a pad of paper—Elisa Moon's life in a bag, Alisha thought, searching for a flat makeup case.
Habit made her check her hair in its mirror—it looked fine, not smashed down by sleeping on it with a wet head—as she worked the bottom loose, exposing an LCD panel that covered two-thirds of the box's bottom. Powder dusted the panel, kicking up a fine sweet-smelling spray as she puffed her cheeks and blew to clear it. She could almost hear Erika scolding her: that's a delicate piece of equipment, Alisha! Don't spit on it!
Pressure on the lower third of the pad activated it without so much as a telltale beep. The screen came up, so dull it was difficult to see under the bathroom's overhead lighting. Alisha cupped her hand over it, making shadows, and the monitor came into sharper relief.
Now a grid was visible, a single point—two letters, A-4—blinking silently. Alisha mouthed, "Hit," as if she played Battleship. The blip might be a dead end, but at least it was still active. She had a chance of finding Brandon Parker.
Alisha fished the eye makeup brush out of the main section of the case and left a dot of silver-brown on the screen where the point blinked. The lower half of the screen cleared, coordinates writing themselves out in dim green block letters.
Forty-seven degrees, twenty-three minutes north. Eight degrees, thirty-three minutes east. Alisha closed her eyes, visualizing the curvature of the globe, counting out bars of latitude and longitude. Europe, certainly, with latitude crossing so high on the line of longitude. She superimposed the European states over the lines, grade-school colors differentiating one country from another. The images centered together easily, Alisha using Greenwich as the starting point. Germany, Austria—
Switzerland. Zurich.
Alisha opened her eyes, grinning. Hit and sink.
#
She had barely been in the States six hours before she left again on another commercial flight, her CIA-issued phone stripped of its battery so she couldn't be tracked on her way to Europe. She hadn't touched the passport she was now using in years, although the brazen persona that went with it stretched back to the beginning of her career. Career consultant Doreen Green got by on abrasive charm, and Alisha MacAleer, beneath Doreen's surface, loved every minute of it. Doreen took up more space than Alisha, wore high heels and big hair, and walked with a swing to her hips that made people stare. Usually that was sheer fun, although now both the shoes and the strident walk made Alisha very aware of the ache in her feet. Approaching the target still filled her with sassy good humor, because these were her favorite moments in the spy game: bold engagement with a target when she had nothing but the most illicit of plans in mind.
A tilt of her head brought the short-cropped A-line wig, dark brown and full of waves, swinging forward to conceal the angle of her cheekbones. She wore wire-frame glasses, tinted to further alter the contact-changed color of her eyes, and penciled-in lip rouge thinned the shape of her mouth. A bulky, if well-tailored, suit added weight to her body until at a glance in the mirror, not even she saw herself. It was what she wanted: no one would see the agent beneath the brassy figure she cut.
Brandon had long since left Zurich when she deplaned there, the tracer she'd put on him indicating he'd gone back to Italy. That was fine: she would catch up with him later, after planting what she hoped would be a crippling blow. For now, she had what she needed to deliver that blow: the address of the Swiss security headquarters where the Attengee files were stored.
The modern-built headquarters, on Zurich's edge, were pleasantly unremarkable: clean-cut Swiss architecture that stood out against the summer greenery but didn't draw the eye with unusual detail. A guard came to attention and opened the door for her as she swaggered up the steps and she winked at him. He pretended not to see, but the corner of his mouth twitched as she swanned by and entered the lobby. All marble and metal, it glowed with sunlight pouring in through massive windows that Alisha bet were bulletproof as well as visually appealing. Despite its brilliance, it wasn't a friendly space: there wasn't even anywhere to sit down, and only a single, unadorned reception desk broke the lobby floor. There were a couple of hallways to either side of the lobby, and one tremendous steel door off to the desk's left, like a behemoth waiting to devour the unwary. Alisha sauntered up to reception and drawled, "Doreen Green," to the pasty-skinned young man sitting there. "Ah called yesterday."
"Yes, of course, Ms. Green." She could see him sizing her up with disapproval, although he mostly kept it out of his tone. "You're late for your appointment."
Alisha rolled her eyes. "Aw, only a couple of minutes. Don't tell me you're gonna be a stick in the mud about that, honey. I hate it when cutie-pies are sticks in the mud."
The faintest hint of alarm creased the corners of his eyes. Alisha fought an urge to laugh, leaning forward over the desk instead. "So have you got a little tour of the—" She raked her gaze over him and came back up to his eyes with a smile. "—the facilities for me?"
"I'm afraid that will be my associate's pleasure, Ms. Green." He lifted a hand, gesturing for a blond man who appeared through a heavy steel door. "You represent—"
"An expanding IT corporation," Alisha said lavishly. "Quantum computing. It's the new plastic."
"I think you'll find our facilities an excellent backup storage site, Ms. Green. We already have at least one other client sto
ring the quantities of data capable of being run through quantum computing here."
Bingo. Alisha thrust a hand out at her guide, who shook it with the enthusiasm of a man accepting an aging dead fish. She fixed a brilliant smile in place and allowed herself to be ushered through the steel interior doors, into an elevator, and down into literal acres of data-storage warehousing.
The air was cool to the point of being frigid, the pervading sound that of air-conditioning running full-blast. It wasn't comfortable, but it kept the enormous computers from overheating. Alisha shivered, but nodded in approval, which her guide noticed and looked faintly smug about.
"Ah trust," Alisha said, laying on the drawl for all it was worth, "that each computer is independent of the others, so a failure in one won't result in a catastrophic chain reaction?"
The guide's expression changed from smugness to mild affront. "Of course."
Crap, Alisha thought. That didn't make it easy to set a virus. Her mouth, however, smiled and said, "Fantastic. Now, without compromising the security of your other clients, might Ah see an array that could ostensibly handle our quantum chip backup needs? All Ah'm saying, you understand, is that a quantum chip is capable of processing huge amounts of data in a way standard chips can't, and we're gonna require storage for massive quantities of raw data." She leaned into her accent until her guide looked pained. "Of course, Ms. Green."
She fought off a grin, imagining what he and the kid at the front desk would have to say about Americans when she was gone. "Tell me about your security measures," she commanded as he led her through towers of data storage units that stood twice her height. "Ah notice you've chosen a real low profile instead of makin' this place showy."
"Security is not about gleaming walls and bright lights, Ms. Green," her guide said a bit severely. "I'm sure you've noticed the chill. Among other things, our sensors are calibrated to detect body heat in the midst of this facility. We only turn it off for client arrivals and tours like this one. Otherwise the alarms would have long since sensed us and the police would be on their way."