Chameleon Uncovered

by BR Kingsolver

  I went to the closet as I shed my clothes. “I’m not sure what I have that will fit you. Maybe a skirt.”

  “Not a chance,” Deborah said with a laugh. “I haven’t been as thin as you are since high school.”

  I came out of the closet with the largest skirt I had and found Deborah stripped to her bra and underwear, the same garments I still wore. I held the skirt against her, and it became very apparent that it wouldn’t fit.

  “I told you,” she said.

  When I looked up from the skirt to her face, I saw she was looking at my breasts. I took a step back and turned toward the closet.

  “You’ll have to do with what you have in your bag. I think I can send your wet things down and get them dried.”

  “I’ll send for a car. My running clothes will do to get me home,” she said from very close behind me.

  Slowly, I turned around to find her standing less than arm’s reach from me.

  “You have the most incredible body,” she said. “I always wanted to be an athlete, but I got this.”

  ‘This’ was an hourglass figure with world-class curves. She was built even better than my mom, and that was saying something. The comparison was apt, since they were about the same age.

  “And you have the kind of body men drool over,” I said. “When I was a teenager, I’d have killed to have curves.” I noticed her skin was covered in goose bumps. “You’re cold. Get out of those wet things and either dry off or take a hot shower.”

  I put my hands on her shoulders and turned her away from me, guiding her toward the washroom. I pulled towels off the shelf and handed her a couple, then took one myself and went back into the bedroom.

  The room phone rang and I answered it.

  “Libby?” It was Dad. “Did you make it back before this storm hit?”

  “No, we got soaked. Deborah doesn’t have any dry clothes.”

  “Well, as soon as things settle down, I’ll have a car take me over there, and she can go home.”

  “Okay. Call me when you leave.”

  I heard the shower start. By the time Deborah dried herself and came back into the room, I had dried off and dressed. She looked disappointed.

  Room service brought hot tea and pastries, and took our wet clothes. We watched a news feed about the storm while we had our tea and chatted.

  Dad arrived at about the same time as the hotel staff delivered Deborah’s and my dry clothes. The intensity of the storm had died down to a steady, pounding rain, and Dad said he would rather have dinner at the hotel than go out. Deborah declined and said we’d go out another night.

  I walked Deborah down to her car. As we said our good nights, she suddenly drew me into a hug, then turned and walked away. I went back upstairs to have that talk with Dad.

  Chapter 7

  “Other than a few minor issues, which we’ve fixed, the electronic security system installed by Securitas is solid. You got your money’s worth,” I told Director Zhukoff and Board Chairman Donnelly as I pushed a thin report across the table.

  I took a deep breath. “We do find significant vulnerabilities due to staffing, training, and procedures in use by your security office.”

  Dad and I had worked six days a week for a month testing and documenting our test results. We found a loose camera here, a nicked cable there, an unconnected door contact, and half a dozen other minor problems, none of which could be exploited by themselves.

  The museum’s leaders paged through the report that identified those issues. None of them had taken me more than fifteen minutes to rectify.

  “And the report on staffing issues?” Donnelly asked.

  “It’s not completed yet. We would like your permission to perform two black-hat incursions, one here and one at your warehouse complex.”

  Donnelly’s eyebrows rose. “And what value do you think that would provide? Can’t you simply detail the issues and provide a plan to remedy them?”

  “To be honest,” Dad said, “in more than forty years, I have yet to see a corporate management team take such a report seriously enough. Our interactions with Chief Wilson and his commanders leave us with a lack of confidence that he will consider our recommendations at all. Black hat operations destroy the denial, the excuses and justifications.”

  “Do you remember my warnings about your trash?” I asked. “Has anything been done about that?”

  Deborah squirmed in her seat. “I gave orders to have all the trash screened.”

  “And?”

  She glanced at Donnelly. “I’m not sure how much has been done.”

  “Are you aware,” I spoke slowly to capture their attention, “that in almost two months of me working in this facility, no one has ever checked to see what I was carrying out at night?”

  I let them chew on that for a while. “Your blueprints and security schematics are stored on your computer network.”

  “Such documents are protected by appropriate security,” Donnelly said.

  “Yes, but anyone with access can send the documents outside of your network. I have done so, sending them to my own off-site account.”

  “How did you get into our network?” He glowered at Deborah. “Did you give them access?”

  I handed them a much thicker report. “The computers controlling your security system are practically impregnable. Your administrative computer systems are not. I’ve detailed the tools and methods I used to break into the system. You can duplicate everything I did. That includes access to your warehouse inventory database. I know where all your treasures are located.”

  The stunned looks on their faces told me we had finally broken through their complacency.

  Donnelly paged through the report for a few minutes while we waited. When he looked up, he asked, “How do you want to run these black-hat things?”

  The voice over the public-address system announced, “The museum will close in fifteen minutes.” The docents and security guards began ushering people toward the exits.

  I went to the women’s restroom. Inside, along with all the normal fixtures, was what appeared to be a locked door. An hour earlier, my lock picks had made short work of opening it to reveal mops, brooms, cleaning supplies, and enough toilet paper to open a store.

  Pulling the door closed behind me, I made myself comfortable sitting on a barrel, plugged in my earbuds, and called up a book on my tablet. A package of jerky and some dried fruit served as dinner.

  Between ten-thirty and eleven, fresh guards would come on and the current guards would go home. When that happened, they would turn off the door alarms.

  At ten o’clock, I exited the closet and slipped through the shadows to my target, Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh.

  I quickly cut the screws holding the frame to the wall and gently lowered it to the floor. Using a screwdriver, I pried off the plaque on the wall identifying the painting, and put it in my pocket.

  I put on my gas mask while walking down the stairs to the back entrance.

  At ten-thirty, three security guards came through the employee’s entrance. I rolled a canister emitting smoke down the hall toward them, and just to make sure, shot each of them. Trotting toward the guard station near the main entrance, I shot a guard who came around a corner toward me. I tossed another canister of smoke into the guard station, and shot both guards as they flushed out into the hallway.

  The sergeant in charge looked down at the splash of red paint on his chest and back up at me. “Damn!”

  My answer was a grin as I shoved the paintball gun into the holster at my waist.

  I hit the employee entrance door at a dead run. A white van pulled up to the door and I jumped in. Giving Dad a thumbs-up, I turned to Deborah and Malcolm in the back seat and handed them the plaque.

  Deborah’s eyes bulged. “Where’s the painting?” she asked in a panic.

  “Sitting on the floor where I found it. I took the frame down from the wall, but even touching it made me nervous as hell.”

  “Any problems?�
� Dad asked.

  “No. The guards were angry that I got them, but everyone was well behaved.”

  “And if it had been a real robbery?” Donnelly asked.

  “If I used drug darts, they’d all be asleep. If I used bullets, you’d have six dead guards.”

  The insides of the warehouses were divided into pods, each with its own climate control system. The settings varied depending on what was stored in each pod.

  I targeted a pod containing small stone sculptures and jewelry, art objects least susceptible to temperature and humidity fluctuations. Art that was also difficult to damage. The idea was just to show their vulnerabilities, and I didn’t want to take any chances with harming any of the art.

  Three nights after my ‘theft’ of Starry Night, I stood fifty yards from the ten-foot-high chain-link fence surrounding the Institute’s warehouses. Razor wire coiled along the top, and there were sensors every three yards. The guard station at the entrance was manned around the clock.

  That was just the first obstacle. Getting inside the warehouse would be more difficult.

  I had considered several different ideas, but in the end, chose the most direct approach. At four o’clock in the morning, I walked up to a stretch of fence out of sight of the guard shack. Pulling a laser welder out of my backpack, I used it to cut a hole in the fence. The sensors didn’t detect anything touching the fence because nothing ever did.

  The next obstacle involved the guards at the locked entrance. I stripped out of the black coveralls I was wearing to reveal the security guard uniform underneath, then walked up to the front door and pushed the buzzer. Inside, the guards would be watching me on their cameras, and there really wasn’t any reason for me to be there. I was counting on human nature. I had made it through the front gate, so I must be legitimate.

  “What’s your business?” the speaker at the door barked out.

  “Special delivery.” I held up a bag often used by the museum to transport small objects. “This was supposed to be brought over this afternoon, but someone screwed up and forgot it. Wanted it brought over before all the stuff was inventoried this morning.”

  I waited a couple of minutes, then the door clicked. Pushing against the door, I pulled out my paintball gun and shot both guards as soon as I stepped inside. They stared at me incredulously.

  “You’ve been had, boys,” I said.

  Entrance to the various pods required a keyed entry code, but the security guards had little electronic wands that could override the locks. I took one of them and headed into the facility. Curiosity drew the two ‘dead’ guards along in my wake.

  It took me a few minutes to find the pod I wanted. The wand opened the door, and I walked in. Stacks of shelves, reaching three stories high, surrounded me in all directions. The air was cool, but dry. Nothing in that pod needed water or humidity.

  Access to the upper shelves required use of three-story rolling metal staircases. I searched until I found the aisle, location and shelf of the statue I wanted. Pushing the staircase into place, I found the wooden box with the correct bar code. It fit in my hand and only weighed a couple of pounds.

  From my research, I knew the granite carving was swathed in bubble wrap and steel straps reinforced the box. The statue would survive unharmed even if I dropped it three stories.

  After I put on my dark coveralls again, I walked out of the building and through the hole I’d cut in the fence. A half-mile walk around the outside of the fence brought me to the entrance gate as the sunrise began to lighten the sky.

  “Hey, how’s it going?” I called to the guards as I approached them. I held out the box. “I think the museum lost this. You should probably call the director and tell her you found it.”

  The next thing that happened was they pointed guns at me, and I ended up spread-eagled on the ground while they searched me.

  “Careful, boys. This is only a drill,” I said as one of the guards started to get a little too personal. “Watch where you put your hands.”

  Deborah showed up half an hour later, and Dad made his appearance immediately after. He’d been watching from the trees nearby. The guards handed her the box.

  “What is it?” she asked me.

  “A ten-thousand-year-old fertility goddess.” No one could put a price on such an object. It was the definition of priceless.

  “Parlor tricks,” David Wilson yelled. “You gave them all the information about our systems and procedures, and turned them loose. Of course they were able to exploit what they call vulnerabilities. My men would have responded differently if those were real robberies. They knew it was only a test. What were they supposed to do, shoot her?”

  He glared at me and Dad. I got the impression he wasn’t happy about our intrusion testing.

  “We understand the difference between a test and an actual situation,” Deborah said. “The fact remains that she did manage to penetrate our facilities.”

  “You gave her everything except the damned key,” Wilson grumbled. “Not a fair test at all.”

  Chapter 8

  Dad wrote up his recommendations for a reorganization of the security staff, along with new processes and procedures, and a training program. I prepared a quote for securing their administrative network. We submitted our invoice, and the museum paid it. I felt as though I was walking on air.

  Deborah and Malcolm indicated that they would quickly approve my quote for the computer work, so I decided to stay in Chicago rather than do a back-and-forth to Toronto.

  I had seen Wil a few times, but I’d mostly been busy, and with Dad on site with me, I felt kind of uncomfortable when I took any time off. But after I put him on the train with all of our equipment, I decided I deserved a little rest and relaxation.

  “Hey, are you busy tomorrow evening?” I asked when Wil answered his phone.

  “I have a couple of dates, but nothing I can’t break for you,” he replied.

  I snorted a laugh. “I’d hate to be the cause of any supermodel suicides.”

  He laughed. “What’s going on?”

  “We finished the gig with AIC, and I wanted to take you out to dinner and thank you for the recommendation. Choose your favorite place.”

  He said he would make reservations. “The place is nice, but more dressy-casual than upscale fine dining. I’ll pick you up about seven.”

  I did an infonet search on ‘dressy-casual in Chicago’. How was I to know what that meant? After looking at some pictures, I went out and bought a new dress.

  Whether I got it right or not, Wil greeted me with a wolf whistle when I walked out of the elevator in the hotel lobby. I felt my face burn as everyone turned to look.

  Cajun food was a new experience for me, and even though it was really spicy, I liked it. We lingered over strong bitter coffee and cognac while I listened to a story he told about traveling in Europe and fantasized about taking him to bed.

  It remained a fantasy. His phone rang.

  He gave it a quick look, then said, “Damn. I’m sorry, Libby. I have to take this.”

  I watched him stand and walk out to the lobby with the phone to his ear. He was only gone a short time, but he grabbed the waitress on his way back to our table.

  “I’m sorry, but I have an emergency. I’ll ask the host to call you a cab.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “Not sure. Maybe a terrorist attack.”

  Later, I blamed it on the brandy. “Screw the taxi. I’ll go with you and watch your back.”

  His eyes widened in surprise, but before he could say anything, the waitress brought the check. He paid while I grabbed my coat and purse.

  “You need to keep your schedule more private,” I said as I got in his car.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I think the terrorists are planning their attacks on nights we go out.”

  With a chuckle, he pointed the car into the air and headed north.

  “Dear, God,” I breathed, checking my seatbelt. “I di
dn’t know this is an aircar.”

  “Prevents traffic issues,” he said, leaning forward and flipping a switch on the dashboard. People began talking, and I realized we were listening to some sort of emergency security channel.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “A bomb in a bar near the University of Chicago. It doesn’t sound too bad, not like the one at Torbert’s,” Wil said.

  I tried to make sense of the voices on the radio, but except for one very clear voice giving orders, everything seemed garbled. Wil was listening closely to it, so I kept quiet.

  In spite of the terrible circumstances, flying over Chicago was a treat. I couldn’t help but be impressed by all the pretty lights stretching away to the horizon in all directions except for the dark of the lake.

  An explosion of static came over the speaker. It took me a moment, but then the screaming and cursing from different voices told me that it really was an explosion.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Wil shouted into his microphone.

  Everything coming over to us was unintelligible confusion. Then a voice broke through. “There’s been another explosion.”

  “Where?” Wil barked.

  “In the street. Busy. I’ll get back to you,” the voice on the radio said.

  “First responder targeting,” I said.

  Wil shot me a look. “What?”

  “It’s an old terrorist trick. Set off a bomb, then when the emergency personnel show up, set off another one. Wil, there could be more.”

  He clicked his mic. “Warning. Everyone be aware, there may be more bombs. Extreme caution.”

  “We have massive casualties,” a voice answered. “At least thirty or forty down.”

  Wil looked over at me again.

  I shook my head. “Any new responders should come from the same direction as the original ones,” I said. If there are more explosives, the chances are they’re waiting for people to come from the other direction. Wil, I know it sounds callous, but you should hold people out of the area until you can secure it.”