by Tim Tigner
The Hay Adams was, quite simply, the pinnacle of elegance. You can’t trump a hotel that looks over the White House when it comes to glamour or prestige. Rita’s room was neither glamorous nor prestigious, as its large third-floor windows looked out over a courtyard at other windows, but it was plenty elegant. Traditional decor in espresso hues, with a molded ceiling, and a queen-size bed covered in enough thick linens and puffy pillows to make you want to leap and bounce.
A sofa was positioned at the foot of the bed. Before it, the room’s only light shown down on a glass coffee table. Rita led us right to it.
I took the middle seat, which wasn’t optimal for talking. My relative size made me a wall of sorts between the women, as was my intent. Despite her charms, Rita was the enemy, and I wanted to shield Katya.
Rita set her small, pumpkin-toned purse on the table where it seemed to glow like a log on a fire. She flipped the gold clasp, and withdrew a couple of alcohol swabs and a Romeo & Julieta cigar tube. Noting my appraisal, she said, “Camouflage, always camouflage.”
She unscrewed the little aluminum lid, tilting a filled syringe out onto her palm where it looked innocuous as baby vaccine. Then she asked the big question. “You ready to up your game? Ready to become one in a million?”
Chapter 74
Adroitly Ambitious
RITA’S INJECTION PROCEDURE was reminiscent of a phlebotomist drawing blood, except this was a deposit rather than a withdrawal. A small deposit. The syringe was just two cc’s and I only got half. Katya was watching me wide-eyed the whole time, as though my transformation would be visual.
“That’s all there is to it,” Rita said. “You’ll be a different person when you wake up in the morning.”
As Katya and I switched positions on the couch, I asked, “Is there some test we should be doing to calibrate?”
Rita paused and looked up from the alcohol swab. “Good question. It’s not a shades-of-gray difference. The change is dramatic enough that there’s no need for a validated questionnaire like you’d be taking if this were, say, an Alzheimer’s screening. You can test-drive your new neural performance any number of ways, and the neat part is that I don’t need to tell you what they are. You’ll know. Which, ironically, is a form of calibration in and of itself.”
I was beginning to think this might be real. So far, I’d been intuitively assuming there was some trick involved. “How long have you been using it?” Katya asked, as the needle pierced her flesh.
“No personal questions. That’s Rule Two: Complete Anonymity. You remember Rule One?”
“Absolute Secrecy,” we said in chorus.
“Good. You’ll get Rule Three when you show up for your first infusion. Or rather, on the way there.”
“Speaking of which,” I said. “I’d like to participate in the infusion event this weekend on the West Coast. I have a big presentation coming up in a week. Career making or breaking. So I’d love it to be Brillyant.”
Rita mulled that over for a second. Looked like she hadn’t received that question before. It would lock in a double commission check. I watched her struggle, but lose the fight. “I wish I could help you, but payment is required in advance. Since it’s Friday night, your funds won’t arrive before Monday. I learned the hard way that while many private banks work Saturdays, wire transfers don’t post when the federal banks are closed.”
“Suppose we were to make the transfer together, right now, using my phone?” I pulled my iPhone out of my breast pocket. I had prepared it ahead of time, as well as Katya’s. Setting it on the table, I invited Rita to watch as I unlocked it with one-zero-one-zero.
“Ten-ten. Your birthdate.”
“You really have done your homework.”
While I logged into my numbered, offshore account, Katya extracted her own phone, pulled up a blank note, and offered it to Rita. “This will help. You can enter your account info here. That way, we’ll have it for future transfers as well.”
Rita’s head moved back and forth between us. “You two really are on the same page.” She took the phone, keying in routing and account numbers.
“You have it memorized,” I said. “I’m impressed.”
Rita didn’t look up from her task while replying. “Wait till you see what you can do once you’re Brillyant. Ten-ten will be way behind you.” She finished typing and returned the phone to Katya, who set it carefully on my thigh where I could read it.
I keyed in the transfer order. “Since it’s a numbered account, I put Alisa Abroskina and Chris Pine in the memo line.” I presented it to Rita. “If that looks right, go ahead and hit the send-funds button.”
She took the phone from me and studied it carefully. Not just the payee details but the website address as well. She looked up. “Looks good.” She made a point of pressing send. Then she watched the transaction complete and returned the phone, which I slid gingerly back into my outer breast pocket.
“It’s a good day for you,” I said. “Two for one, with both signed, sealed, and delivered.”
Rita returned a genuine smile. She was beautiful, and seemed sincere. “This brings us to our last point of business, a week ahead of schedule. Tomorrow evening at six o’clock a limo will meet you curbside outside Door One on the departures level of the domestic terminal at SFO. You got that?”
I repeated it back.
Katya asked, “How do we dress?”
“It doesn’t matter. You’ll be given a new wardrobe to change into in the car. You’ll also be leaving everything with your driver. Jewelry. Cell phones. Everything. Anonymity is our first concern.”
“That sounds kinda creepy,” Katya said.
“Wait until you get there. You’ll find it tremendously liberating. It’s amazing what absolute anonymity will do for you. In fact, Alisa, for that very reason, I’d suggest that you go to the event here. Let Chris go to SF by himself. It’s best if you don’t know anybody, and nobody knows you.”
“No worries there,” I said. “We’re not involved. Our relationship is strictly, shall we say, Machiavellian.”
“As you wish. Just a suggestion, from experience.”
“What if we have questions?” Katya asked.
“Ask them now. Once you go out the door, you’ll never see or hear from me again. Rule Two.”
“How did you find me?” I asked. “What made you pick me from the phonebook?”
“Rule One, Chris. But you should consider it an honor. It’s not quite the Nobel Prize, but we’re far more selective than either your employer or your alma mater. Anything else?”
“Yes. What do you do when people decline? Either after the initial pitch, or after the free sample?”
“It’s never happened.” Reading my incredulous expression, Rita added, “I’m very selective in whom I approach. I don’t just look for people with sufficient income at the right point in their careers. I also look at character. I only approach people who are adroitly ambitious.”
“How do you know if someone is adroitly ambitious?” Katya asked.
Rita looked down as the right side of her mouth drew back in a smile. Then she looked back up to meet each of our eyes in turn as hers glowed with intelligence. “It’s a demonstrable quality. Picture a politician weathering a sex scandal. Or a CEO fighting corruption charges. Or a trial attorney defending a wealthy killer. In your case, Alisa, you hired a Russian hacker known as Sciborg7 to identify and alter competing admissions applications at Princeton.”
Katya was so into her role as Alisa that she blushed at Rita’s revelation, while I let my eyes grow wide in wonderment. Rita had discovered that scandalous secret in just a few minutes. She had to be plugged into a resource that rivaled my CIA system. This added a new dimension to things, but I couldn’t dwell on it now. “What would you do if someone declined? If they walked away?”
“And went to the authorities? To the police or FDA?” Rita clarified.
I nodded.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“We’d do nothing because that’s exactly what the authorities would do: nothing. What would they really have to investigate? No product. No company. No witnesses. Nothing but crazy talk.” She canted her head and shrugged with open palms. “Anything else?”
She had a point. Anyone whose house had been robbed or car stolen knew that if there wasn’t blood on the ground, nobody really cared.
Rita stood and we followed suit. I wasn’t sure if we’d been foolish or brilliant, but we were one step closer to the truth, the truth that was trying to kill us.
Chapter 75
White Powder
WE LEFT RITA in her room and caught a cab to a Thai restaurant near Chris’s apartment. Tam yum soup and a red curry dish to go. I wanted to get some non-alcoholic calories in us, and Katya was in the mood for spicy.
The wait for our order gave me time to confirm that we hadn’t been followed, five minutes of which I used to visit the corner drugstore and make a few purchases. Confident that we were clean, we returned to our neighboring hotel suite with Thai in tow. “Feeling Brillyant?” I asked, while snicking the deadbolt into place.
“Feeling hungry.”
“You go ahead and start. I want to check the prints.”
Katya pushed the food bag. “I gotta see this. The soup will wait.”
I removed a bottle of talcum powder, a big blush brush, and a can of compressed air from the drugstore bag. Then I gingerly slid the iPhone from my breast pocket, holding it only by the edges as I had when giving it to and taking it from Rita.
Katya placed hers on the table beside mine with similar care.
“I’m a bit surprised we got these,” I said, delicately pouring talcum powder onto the shined surface of the dark wooden desk. “When I saw her using the cigar tube, I concluded she’d been schooled in tradecraft, but apparently it wasn’t an extensive course.”
I dabbed the blush brush into the talc, just enough to dust it. I’d selected the brush with the longest bristles I could find, but their grouping was still a bit dense. Using pressure as light as hummingbirds’ breath, I swirled the brush around the front surface of both iPhones. The white powder revealed multiple partial prints on the bottom half of my screen, including a decent index pad in the right corner. As Katya leaned over my shoulder, I said, “That’s from when she hit send.”
Katya’s phone had fewer prints, but we knew they were all Rita’s. The jewel there was an upside-down thumbprint on the top, from when she’d handed it back. Satisfied with the dustings I’d applied, I held the compressed air can about a foot above the phone and began dispensing micro bursts through the straw, a half-second puff at a time until most of the non-adhered powder was gone.
Katya watched with fascination. “Wow! Looks good.”
“White powder on black glass is about as good as it gets. I don’t think fingerprinting was what Steve Jobs had in mind when designing his phones, but he got it right.”
I put the camera on Katya’s phone in macro mode, snapped a few pictures of the index print on my phone, then reversed the procedure and captured the thumb off hers. I used AirDrop to get both photos on my phone, and then enhanced the contrast. “We got lucky. It’s better than I’d hoped. This will definitely do it if her prints are in the system.”
“You think they will be?”
“She’s got a British accent. If she’s living here and hasn’t been an American citizen since birth, she should be. We print most foreigners entering the country these days, and everyone applying for a work or immigration visa. Most professional licensures require it as well, although I’m not sure about pharmaceutical reps.”
“Surely you don’t think Rita’s licensed?”
“Not for her current job, of course. But I’d wager she used to be legit. The pharmaceutical industry is famous for using sharp, attractive young women for reps. The way she talked about titration curves and validated questionnaires makes me think she’s experienced. If I were looking for someone to sell Brillyanc, that’s where I’d go to recruit.”
“How long will it take to check?”
“It’s usually just minutes, given computer speeds these days. The FBI processes about a hundred million fingerprint checks a year, so it’s got to be quick. Their algorithms have gotten really good too. With latent prints like these, their accuracy is up over ninety percent.”
I was navigating my way back through my magic CIA portal, typing while I spoke. “Why don’t you get our tickets back to San Francisco while I input this. Then we’ll be done for the evening and can enjoy our dinner.”
I finished before Katya, and laid our food out on the table.
“How’s a noon flight sound?” she asked. “Gets us there at three. I figure we’ll want some buffer in case there’s a delay.”
When I didn’t respond, she looked over at me. “What?”
“We already got a match on Rita.”
Chapter 76
Dangerous Territory
KATYA’S FACE REFLECTED her marvel at the power and speed of the technology I’d employed. “Who is she? Is Rita her real name?”
I read from the fingerprint analysis report. “Margaret Rosen. Birthdate is July 30, 1988. Born in London, England. Granted an F1 student visa in 2004 to attend Columbia University. Granted permanent residency in 2014. At that time, she had a New York City address. Her employer is listed as Bricks, the pharmaceutical multinational. No criminal record.”
“Anything else?”
“That’s all the good stuff the FBI has, other than her social security number. I’m sure Homeland Security has extensive biographical files as a result of her immigration applications, but I’m not going to bother with that now. We’ve got a back door into their organization if we need it.”
“If we need it?”
“If tomorrow’s assault doesn’t work.”
Katya started in on her soup. “What did you think of her pitch?”
“I thought it was masterful. She sold me, despite the exorbitant price. I’d bet she really does bat 1000.”
“But?”
“Her pitch was seamless, like Vondreesen’s, but it was also fundamentally different from Vondreesen’s. No mention of sun bears. Makes me wonder.”
“Wonder what?”
“We’ve heard two entirely different reasons why Brillyanc is kept secret. Vondreesen’s endangered-species explanation, and Rita’s backlash-avoidance explanation. Both fit perfectly. Both feel authentic.”
Katya set her spoon down and brought her hand to her chin. “There’s no reason they both can’t be true. They’re not mutually exclusive. Perhaps they keep it simple, and just mention the one most meaningful to the recipient. Endangered-species for investors, and backlash-avoidance for users.”
“Could be. I just wonder if we have the whole truth between those two parts, or if there’s more. I wonder if the Russians are playing Rita, the way they did Vondreesen.”
“I think you’re over-analyzing.”
“We’ll find out tomorrow night.”
“Do you think the Russians will be there?”
“You heard Rita explain the event. She made it sound like the party of a lifetime. In my experience, a person only okays that kind of expense when he plans to enjoy it himself.”
Our conversation yielded to the consumption of Thai food and thoughts of what was to come. A mysterious meeting. A debaucherous party. A treacherous investigation. And the ultimate confrontation.
I still found it hard to fathom how completely my life had changed from one minute to the next, just six months ago in Santa Barbara. It was like that interrogation room had been a cocoon, only I’d gone in a butterfly and come out a caterpillar. Tomorrow I’d once again be walking into an entirely different world, masked no less, in more ways than one. That would be another cocoon. I’d either become a butterfly again, or never emerge.
“What are you thinking about?” Katya asked, with a mellowed voice and empty bowl.
“It’s all coming down to to
morrow night. Exoneration, or incarceration. If they send me back to jail, it’s going to be maximum security. The dullest inmates. The cruelest guards. The worst conditions. And no end in sight.”
Katya’s expression assumed an intensity I’d never seen her exhibit before. “It won’t come to that, Achilles. You underestimate yourself. They’ve been sending monsters at you from every direction, and you’ve been swatting them away like so many flies. You seem to think it’s routine, but I’m in awe. After seeing what you’ve done this past week, I’d bet against the sun rising before I’d bet against you winning.” Her eyes were misting up. Her voice, quivering.
There was nothing I wanted to do more than cross the two steps between us and crush her body to mine. I wanted to kiss her and caress her like there was no tomorrow. But if I took those two steps now, it would all be over. Her emotions were high, her reserves depleted. She’d either recoil or reciprocate. Either way I’d be going into the most important day of my life feeling like a rat. I’d be the guy who made a pass at his brother’s girl.
No doubt Katya would be similarly impacted. She’d hung in there as well as any covert operative I’d ever worked with. She seemed to have a nervous system welded from stainless steel. Bulletproof. But guilt and revulsion were entirely different forms of strain. They could bend and twist and deform. “We better get some sleep.” With a wink I added, “Even superheroes need shuteye.”
I drifted off, having forgotten something that would soon become unforgettable. I’d forgotten about the Brillyanc coursing through my veins.
Chapter 77
Brillyant Minds
WHEN I AWOKE, I knew what to do.