A knock sounded on Rob’s apartment door. Rob jerked, but Kiera slowly reached into her purse and pulled out her Glock 21.
She tipped her head at Rob and crept to one side of the door. Rob stood to the other side. When Kiera nodded, he asked, “Yeah? Who is it?”
“Special Agent Ross Gamble. FBI. I’d like to speak with you, Mr. Tellerman.”
Kiera frowned. When she jutted her chin, Rob demanded, “Put your credentials to the peephole.”
Rob, then Kiera, studied them. Kiera gave Rob another nod. He stood behind the door and she moved behind him. Rob opened the door partway but blocked the entrance.
“Thank you, Mr. Tellerman.”
“What can I do for you, Agent Gamble?”
“May I come inside?”
“I don’t see why you can’t ask me what you want from there.”
Gamble smiled. “That depends. Do you want your neighbors to hear me ask who you really are, Mr. Tellerman?”
Kiera signaled Rob with a tap on the shoulder. He opened the door. As soon as Gamble stepped inside, Rob closed it. Kiera, not altogether convinced of Gamble’s identity, moved out from behind Rob and leveled her gun at Gamble.
Gamble nodded amiably. “Oh, good. You’re both here.” He looked around. “Nice place, Rob. May I sit down?”
Rob cut his eyes at Kiera, who nodded.
“I guess.”
“Great.” Gamble settled himself in a side chair. “Well, you’re probably wondering why I’ve come calling.” He glanced at Kiera. “Would you mind putting that away? I’m sure you know how to handle a firearm, but I’d feel better if it were pointed elsewhere.”
“How about I just keep it handy?” Kiera lowered the gun to her side and moved across the room, about ten feet away. “Now, what do you want?”
“What? No polite conversation? No ‘getting to know you’? Just cut to the chase?”
She nodded.
“All right, then. A funny thing happened to me today. Oh, wait. I guess funny things happened to you guys today, too. Am I right?”
Rob and Kiera did not move.
“Okay. As I was saying, a funny thing happened to me today. You see, I ran your names in the FBI database and, shazam! Both your files came up classified—which is significant in two respects, don’t you think? No opinion? Aren’t you curious? No?
“Well, here it is. One, I knew before I searched the database that your IDs were fake and, two, the fact that your fake IDs were classified tells me why: Both of you are FBI, working undercover. And I’ll bet,” Gamble looked from Rob to Kiera, “I’ll bet that your assignment is to look into the disappearance of Wayne Overman. He vanished without a trace, and the disappearance of such a high-level NSA executive—one privy to so much classified information—raises national security concerns. How am I doing so far?”
“Haven’t a clue what you’re babbling about.”
“Why, sure you have. The thing is, I have a similar assignment . . . only my assignment comes from higher up the chain of command—a lot higher up.”
Kiera scowled. “I’m a lowly clerical worker. A government contractor employee. Haven’t the foggiest idea what you’re talking about, Agent Gamble.”
Gamble stood, causing Kiera to put both hands on her sidearm and lift it.
“I’m a nice guy, so let me spell it out for you two—in the nicest of ways, of course: I’m warning you to lay off a certain mutual acquaintance, one of your coworkers.” Gamble dropped his good-natured façade. “You either stop monitoring her movements, or the next ‘request’ you receive will be more, shall we say, strongly worded.”
This time Kiera looked uncertain.
Gamble pointed at Rob. “Your purview, Mr. Tellerman, is the IT help desk at the NSA—IT, not Safety and Security. Safety and Security functions do not fall into your network permissions, and they frown upon unauthorized intrusions.
“Just so you know, should you venture into NSA video surveillance or the badge tracking system again, your management at the NSA will be apprised of your activities—including how you downloaded files to a contraband device. I think you’ll lose more than your job and clearance, don’t you?”
He flicked a brow at Kiera. “This is your first and only warning: Back off.”
On his drive home, he called Jayda and left voice mail. “I’ve handled the situation. Your friends at work shouldn’t be a problem from here on out. I’ll fill you in when we meet next.”
Chapter 16
IT WAS FRIDAY, THE end of my second week at the NSA. All things considered, we had made considerable progress toward completing our assignment for the President—but I couldn’t believe how full Zander’s and my life had become in that little time. Sundays were church in the morning and meetings with Gamble at night. Twice a week Zander and I trained at the dojo. Wednesdays were our tradecraft classes, Thursdays were Celebrate Recovery—and in between we were scanning and filtering data the nanomites uploaded to Alpha Tribe.
A lot of data.
No wonder they wanted to upgrade their storage capacity!
While I was at work, the nanomites spent much of their time decoding and searching Repository files, looking for connections between Harmon and others that might lead us to hard evidence against those who had colluded with him. According to them, they found lots of “interesting information,” but nothing that helped our investigation.
Maybe being hired to work in the Repository wasn’t the great positioning we first thought it to be. At least Kiera hadn’t come by my cubby today to dig her suspicious eyes into me.
Thanks, Gamble.
As far as gathering intel from my job, our best leads to date came not from the Repository but from the nanobug arrays. The nanomites monitored the four SPOs I’d tagged as well as the Secret Service agents from the White House detail. Most of what we heard was innocuous, but certain patterns did begin to emerge.
The SPOs’ work routines were consistent and predictable. Nothing unusual there—except for occasional calls from a certain burner phone. It took the nanomites only one such call to identify Lawrence Danforth’s voice coming from the burner. Before long, we had an idea how many NSA SPOs Danforth controlled directly—how many and which ones.
It was daunting that Danforth had corrupted more than a dozen of the NSA’s police force.
And once the nanomites had identified Danforth’s burner cell, they went to work mining that phone for Danforth’s other calls. One number stood out as being Danforth’s most frequent connection: Since he spoke weekly with that number’s owner, we were anxious to discover the identity of the party on the other end.
If we hadn’t tagged the White House Secret Service plants, it may have taken us longer to figure out who Danforth called most often. The “sick” agents were the key to that connection.
During the first three days they were out sick, the agents spoke to no one. I chuckled every time I visualized them sprawled on their bathroom floors, weak from heaving up their toenails. On the fourth day, the nanomites had the nanobugs ease up a little to simulate recovery from the dread “norovirus.” We were anxious to discover who they would report to.
By the afternoon of the fourth day, each of the sick agents had called two numbers, one a desk phone, the other an unregistered cell phone—the same cell phone Danforth spoke with weekly. During the agents’ calls, the nanomites pinpointed the location of the desk phone—the corner of H and 10th in D.C.: Headquarters of the U.S. Secret Service.
No bombshell in that, right? The agents’ boss worked at Headquarters. Uniformly, the agents reported to the White House detail chief that their health was improving and that they hoped to return to work the following day.
Of course, we didn’t want them returning to the White House just yet, so . . . each of the agents would suffer a regrettable “relapse” over the following twenty-four hours.
Tsk tsk.
But the agents also called a second number, a cell phone, and that call, too, the nanomites discovered,
terminated within Secret Service Headquarters. The agents’ conversations with the man on the other end were similar to those they’d had with the chief of their detail: “I’m recovering and will return to work soon.”
The man’s response? “You had better. All our listening posts are off-line.”
The nanomites pulled and cataloged the audio greeting from every desk phone at the Service’s headquarters until they matched the voice at the end of the cell phone. It belonged to Secret Service Deputy Assistant Director Blake Morningside.
Morningside was too high up the food chain for rank-and-file agents to call, even agents on the White House protection detail—and yet they had. Better still, once we had put Morningside’s name to the number, we then knew who the NSA Deputy Director spoke to on a weekly basis.
Bingo. Danforth had engineered Wayne Overman’s death and disappearance; Morningside ran the dirty Secret Service agents within the White House. Danforth and Morningside spoke weekly. Secret Service Deputy Assistant Director Morningside and NSA Deputy Director Danforth were major players in Harmon’s plan to usurp the presidency.
Zander and I joined the nanomites in the warehouse to study the diagram they were constructing—the identified participants in the collusion, how they were connected, and where they were placed in the government. Harmon’s plot to assassinate the President was beginning to take on a recognizable shape.
It bothered me that we hadn’t yet identified Harmon’s man on the inside of the Army’s Institute for Infectious Diseases, the man who had provided Harmon with the biotoxin to kill President Jackson. But getting someone inside USAMRIID to unmask Harmon’s man would be problematic and take time we didn’t have. We were more likely to uncover him through his connections with the accomplices we’d already identified.
As we studied the nanomites’ diagram, Zander zeroed in on the call log from Danforth’s burner. “Huh. See all these one-off incoming calls to Danforth’s burner?”
“What of them?”
“Nano. Eliminate all the callers we’ve identified from Danforth’s call log over the past, say, nine or ten months.”
Thirty-three unknown callers remained.
“Interesting. He received calls from these thirty-three numbers once and only once; they are never repeated. Nano, show us these calls on a timeline.”
The nanomites displayed a line that stretched from last fall to within recent weeks.
“See how they are spaced out over the last year? Never less than a week apart; not more than four a month. And notice the call length? Really short. Three minutes tops.”
“They could be marketing calls. You know how persistent and annoying they are.”
“Do you spend three minutes on the line with a telemarketer?”
I saw his point. “No. I hang up immediately. Hmm. What are you thinking, Zander?”
“Well . . . what if it’s the same caller using a different phone each time? What if this guy bought a whole bunch of single-use, disposable phones? What would that tell us?”
I nodded my comprehension. “That he was—is—being very careful.”
“And who do you think would exercise that much caution?”
“Someone nearer the top of the heap?”
Zander Cruz, you have made an astute observation. We have now collected and cataloged the metadata from these phones. Although we have little to go on, we will attempt to uncover where and how these phones were purchased.
It hit me.
“Suppose . . . suppose the phones were bought in bulk—like a case lot or at the same time from the same place?”
“I guess it’s possible. But I doubt someone as careful as this caller appears to be would make that kind of mistake.”
I pondered the diagram. “So, thirty-three disposable phones over the past ten months. Maybe that’s how we track this caller. If this is Danforth’s boss in the conspiracy and they talk regularly, shouldn’t we expect another call soon? Shouldn’t we be ready when the next one comes in?”
“You’re right. Tracing the phones isn’t necessary—we just need the nanomites to listen for the next call and trace it in real time.”
Zander Cruz, it will be difficult to trace a call in under three minutes. We can, however, catalog the voice and attempt to identify it.
“Do your best, Nano. Unmasking Danforth’s superior is our new objective.”
OUR NEXT STINT IN THE dojo took an unexpected turn.
Zander Cruz, Jayda Cruz, we have altered your training regimen.
“Oh?”
You raised a valid concern after our last session. You will not always have your sticks with you. It is also possible that you would encounter a situation where we are unable to draw sufficient electrical current to power your integrated weapons.
“Integrated weapons?”
The weapons you possess as a result of our integration into your physiology.
“Oh. Yeah. Integrated weapons.” I lifted one shoulder. “Uh, okay. So, what’s the new drill?”
Your updated training program will focus on using materials at hand, forming effective weapons from ordinary objects. You will be required to innovate, to think on your feet. Scenarios will evolve from general to specific, from elementary to complex.
“Thrilled, I’m sure.”
My experience with Gus-Gus and Ninja-Noid being what it was, I figured our updated training program would “evolve” from “general” pain to “specific” agony, from “elementary” trauma to “here’s a taste of the hurt locker.”
Our one solace was that the simulations had the two of us training and fighting together.
We started the first scenarios in possession of our escrima sticks. Six opponents attacked at once. Zander and I intuitively fought back-to-back and did pretty well. If it had been real combat, we would have prevailed.
After a short break, we reentered the simulation. The “room” was the same size, but now it was furnished—meaning we had all kinds of obstacles to work around. Or trip over. I didn’t much like it, but who can say what a battleground might consist of?
The same six opponents swarmed into the room. Zander and I could no longer hold a strict back-to-back defense. Too many things got in the way, although I didn’t see any of the sims stumbling or tripping, just us.
Grrr!
“Maneuver into that corner, Jay! We’ll use the walls to keep them from overwhelming us.”
Normally, I wouldn’t think a corner a good thing, but he was right; we were able to fight side-by-side without being flanked. We’d taken out three of the sims when they began to push us further into the corner where we wouldn’t be able to swing our sticks effectively. On top of that, the corner contained two chairs and a small, elbow-high table.
“Hold the line, Zander! Don’t let them back us up!”
“Easy for you to say.”
And then one of my sticks broke in two. One half went flying; the other piece was too short to be of any use.
If I’d had false teeth, they would have fallen out of my mouth.
“Improvise, Jayda!”
“Easy for you to say!”
The sims were encroaching, pushing us back, and I was down to a single stick. I felt the edge of the table brush against my waist. I grabbed the table edge and swung it like an oversized Frisbee at the sim battering me. He fell back a pace. I reached for a chair and crashed it over his head.
I was left holding half the chair’s frame. I beat him with that and it broke down further.
“Good move, Jay.”
Huh?
I looked at my hands. One held an escrima stick; the other a sturdy chair leg about the right length.
“Hey. Not bad.”
With two sims left, we gathered momentum and fought for more room. Then we attacked.
Three minutes later, we won, and the simulation ended.
My breath came in ragged gulps. “Not . . . gonna have . . . chairs next time.”
Zander’s chest was heaving, too. “The nano
mites . . . have been hiding their sadistic streak, haven’t they, Jay? Am I . . . right? All our jokes . . . at their expense? They’ve been patiently storing them up until now, waiting . . . for the right situation for payback?”
“Duh. If they weren’t before, they will be now.”
“Oh. Yeah. Ooops.”
Chapter 17
I SPENT MOST OF SATURDAY cooking. Back when I was “Gemma Unemployed” and had to economize to make ends meet, I’d cooked from scratch and eaten out infrequently. Now, with what Zander and I packed away on a daily basis, dining out at all-you-can-eat buffets was cheaper than shopping and cooking for two bottomless pits.
However, I’d promised Macy a hot meal tomorrow and several for the freezer—so here I was in the kitchen, humming happily and cooking up a storm.
After I’d put away two pans of enchiladas (easy on the red chile for Macy and the babies’ sake) and a deep-dish gourmet mac and cheese that would feed the family twice, I went to work on the meal I’d deliver hot and ready tomorrow afternoon.
I put all the ingredients and spices for spaghetti sauce in a pot to simmer before I started cutting up salad greens. I made the equivalent of two salads for a family of four—one for Macy and her family, one for us. After I put the salads in the fridge, I sliced fresh French bread, mixed up some savory herb butter—without garlic, for Macy’s sake—and slathered the butter on the bread slices.
Zander wandered into the kitchen and sniffed. “Smells great.”
“I’m making enough for us, too.”
“Yum.”
“Tomorrow after church, when we come home to change our clothes, I’ll cook the pasta and heat up the sauce and bread.”
SUNDAY MORNING SERVICE was awesome. We were settling into our new church, and we loved it. When they announced that the church would hold a baptism after next Sunday’s service, Zander looked at me.
“You haven’t been baptized, have you, Jayda?”
My mouth made a tiny “o” shape. “No, I haven’t.”
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