by David Archer
“Oh, yeah, just minor surgery,” Noah said. “All taken care of. How’s it going for you?”
“Gary says I’m ready,” Marco replied. “I gar-on-tee, I be ready to go do some work wit you, mon ami.”
Jenny’s eyebrows went up. “Nice accent,” she said.
“I growed up wit dat accent,” Marco said with a grin. “Ain’t hard to go back to it. I talk like dis all de time when I need to.”
Jenny giggled at him. “And you do it very well,” she said.
“I do, yes.” Marco grinned, then turned to Noah. “So, you decide when you want me to come in yet?”
“I’ll be back in Arkansas tomorrow,” Noah said, “and I want you to give me a call there in the morning. If you call around nine o’clock, I should be with Morgan, so he’ll be able to hear my side of the conversation. Tell me about getting out of prison and tracking me down, and I can pitch him on letting me bring you in. He’s basically turned me into his new right-hand man, so I’m pretty sure I can get away with it.”
Marco’s eyes widened and his smile got bigger. “Awesome,” he said. “Don’t waste any time, do you?”
Noah shrugged. “It’s all happened a lot faster than any of us expected,” he said. “My first night in town, I happened to be in the right place at the right time to keep some drug addict from killing Morgan’s son, and it got me his attention. He hired me to run the boy’s security team at first, then decided I was smart enough to be in his inner circle. You know about the phone thing?”
Marco nodded. “Yeah, Renée told me. Smart idea.”
“Well, I pitched Morgan on using these encrypted phones to avoid letting the wrong people listen in on conversations, and he liked the idea. I shot him another idea, something that would make him a lot of money if it were real, and that’s when he decided to take me off security and keep me close.”
“Hey, if anybody can fit in, you can. You think he’ll be okay with you bringing in someone of your own?”
“I think he’ll at least hear me out. Since we did time together, he should think you might be his kind of people.”
“Cool,” Marco said. “You know my backstory, right? Aubrey did nine years for accessory to murder, helped his girlfriend get her hands on some kind of poison to kill her husband with.”
“Yes, I know,” Noah replied. “And that seems to be the kind of people Morgan likes having around, someone who isn’t afraid to kill.” He lowered his voice a little bit more. “First thing I had to do was kill that drug addict,” he said.
“No problem there,” Marco said. “I be a loaded gun, I gar-on-tee! You point me, you pull my trigger, I go bang!”
Jenny snickered again.
Marco joined them for breakfast, and they dropped into simple small talk. Sarah told Marco and Jenny about the house in Arkansas and how much she loved all the antique furniture, and Marco let slip the comment that he and Renée were thinking about making their relationship more permanent. Sarah and Jenny gave each other a high five and began coming up with ideas for a wedding, but Marco’s eyes went wide.
“Hey, slow down,” he said without the accent. “I didn’t mean we were getting married—we’ve just been talking about moving in together. That’s all.”
Neil rolled his eyes. “Yeah, that’s what you think,” he said. “Just wait till these two get a chance to talk to Renée alone. I hear bells in your future.”
Marco stammered a bit, but Sarah and Jenny promised to behave themselves and he relaxed. He carefully avoided any further mention of Renée as they finished breakfast.
Since he had nothing better to do, Marco decided to follow them out to R&D. Sarah told Noah she thought he was just trying to make sure she and Jenny didn’t corner Renée, but she was chuckling as she said it. They made a three-car convoy with the Charger in the lead, but they got separated a bit when they reached the first security gate.
Noah and Sarah waited for the rest of them when they got to the R&D building, and then they all went in together. The security officer carefully checked their IDs, then notified Wally. He came up front again but didn’t run this time.
“Okay, we got everything ready,” he said. “Noah, I’ve got something special for you, if you’ll come with me.” He led Noah into a small room and closed the door behind them, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of stylish sunglasses. “These are the ones I was telling you about,” he said with a grin. “Put them on and ask me a question.”
Noah accepted the sunglasses and put them on, then looked at Wally. On the inside of the lenses, he saw numerous tiny orange dots appear over various points on Wally’s face, at the corners of his eyes, different points on his lips, on his eyebrows and around his nose. “Is your name George?”
“Yes,” Wally said with an excited grin, “yes, it is.”
Several of the dots blinked, turning from orange to red. A text box that read “Deception detected” opened up in the upper right corner of both lenses. A second later, the dots turned orange once more and the text box disappeared.
“This is pretty cool,” Noah said. “How did you come up with this?”
“Oh, it came to me in a dream,” Wally said, and the dots blinked red once more as the text box appeared again. “Actually, there is an existing software that’s used in deception-detection training to assist students in learning to recognize microexpressions. We just took it a few steps further, added in a facial-recognition algorithm and then some AI functions that let it make its own determinations.” He leaned close to Noah, as if he had something to say that no one else could hear, but didn’t lower his voice. “Allison’s been using a pair to check for other people the mole might have gotten to, and she’s already cleared a lot of them. Anybody who shows any sign of being deceptive is put under direct surveillance, but so far there’s only been a few of them.”
“I can see that,” Noah said. “All she’d have to do is tell people not to let anyone outside the organization know about something the mole might be interested in. Anyone who was under Monique’s thumb would automatically show signs of deception because they’d know they had to relay the information on, but of course whatever it is would be false, anyway.”
“Exactly,” Wally said. “I don’t know exactly what it is she’s using, but she’s confident that it’s working.” He reached up and took the glasses off Noah’s face, then pointed at a small red decoration on each of the temples. “Right button turns it on, left button turns it off. When it’s on, if you grab the left temple and adjust it on your face, it waits two seconds and then snaps a photograph of whatever you’re looking at. Hold the left button for five seconds and it turns on Bluetooth, so you can download the pictures to your phone or something.” He handed Noah an eyeglasses case and pointed to a small slot on the bottom. “A normal phone charger plugs in here, and you just put the glasses inside to charge the batteries. Full charge lasts about sixty hours, but it’s best to charge it every night.”
“This is perfect,” Noah said. “Is there any possibility that knowledge of this technology has gotten out of your department?”
“Not counting you,” Wally said, “only eight other people know these exist. That’s the two people who developed and made them, me, Allison, Donnie Jefferson and his daughter, your girl Molly, and Dr. Parker. Allie said she didn’t want anyone else knowing about it just yet, so we’re keeping it quiet.”
Noah thanked him and put the glasses into his pocket, and they stepped back into the foyer. Wally motioned for them all to follow him and started down the hallway. “Come on, let’s go get your phones.”
All of the phones were completed and packed into boxes like any other new phones. Wally opened one and held it out. “These are Android phones, and they are as good as just about any smartphone on the market today. The only real difference is that they have our case on them, all but this one. I mean, it has our case, but it doesn’t have a detonator. This one would be yours, and it’s got this special app that sends out the detonation code.
” He turned the phone on and opened its apps screen, then pointed at the icon for a war game. “All of these phones have this game on them, and if someone got hold of your phone and tried to play the game, it would work. The only difference is that yours would allow you to input a special password that will open the actual detonation screen. The password is ‘absolution,’ and all you need to do is tap the screen twice, wait two seconds, then tap it six more times to get to where you put it in. Once you do, you’ll see every detonator that’s been programmed for you—these phones are already programmed in, by the way—and they’ll be in a list format with check boxes, and if you’ve got a contact name assigned to the phone, it will show that, too. Just select the ones you want to set off and then tap the button marked ‘GO.’ As soon as you do, it will send the detonation code to all of the ones you selected, whether it’s a single detonator or a number of them at once. Wherever they are when that code comes through, they’re going to explode.”
He showed his evil grin. “And if you happen to get them all together at the same place when you set them off,” he said, “make sure you’re at least a mile away before you send the code. I’d hate to think what would happen if all of these phones went off when they were close together.”
“I don’t think I want to know, either,” Noah said. “Can we go ahead and switch my number over to that phone? I don’t want to take a chance on it getting mixed up with any of the others.”
Wally signaled one of the technicians in the room, and she came over to take the new phone from him. She punched a couple of buttons on its face and then used the touch screen to enter some information before handing it back. “There you go,” she said. “It’s got your number and all of your contacts already programmed in.”
Noah handed Wally his iPhone and slipped the new one into his pocket. “Thanks, Wally,” he said. “Incidentally, Morgan gave me a satchel full of cash to pay for these. Any idea what I should do with it?”
Wally shrugged, chuckling. “Buy something nice? I’m pretty sure we don’t need the money; my budget here is almost a billion a year, and it comes through some kind of black ops funding arrangement, so nobody on Capitol Hill even knows about it.”
Noah blinked but didn’t say anything. Marco picked up the box, and they all followed Noah back out to the Charger, where he put it in the trunk.
“Okay, now one more thing,” Wally said. “All of you, follow me. You’re gonna freaking love this!”
They followed Wally back into the building and through the hallways, until they ended up in a large, warehouse-sized room that seemed to have been set up as some sort of mock battlefield. A couple of technicians were walking around the room, and Noah saw that they were setting up a couple of small tripod-mounted contraptions.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Wally said with a flourish, “let me present the smart gun. We’ve got four of them set up at different points around the room, and they’ve been programmed to spot and kill some manikins. We mounted the manikins on remote-controlled movable platforms so that they simulate living targets walking past. Watch this.” He waved at one of the technicians, who gave him a thumbs-up before taking a box out of his pocket and pushing a button on it.
“Okay, he just armed the guns. Now, watch what happens when our manikins go roaming around.”
A door opened on one side of the room, and five manikins on wheels came rolling out. Each of them turned and went a different direction, maneuvering around the big trees and other obstacles. They made slow progress, but then suddenly one of the smart guns moved, aiming at the nearest manikin. It wobbled for a second as it centered its targeting system; then they all heard a loud puff. The head of the manikin exploded.
A second gun aimed and fired, and then a third. The first one got another manikin, and then the fourth gun fired last. All five manikins were completely decapitated.
Noah nodded appreciatively. “How do you program the targets in?”
“Each of the guns has its own cell number,” Wally said. “All you have to do is take a picture of the target and send it to the gun. It uses enhanced facial recognition, so even a profile photo is good enough.”
“What’s its margin for error?” Neil asked.
“Less than one percent,” Wally replied. “In two hundred targets, we only had one mistaken hit and two misses.” He shrugged. “It’s brand-new technology—it’s going to have a few bugs to work out, but one misidentified target out of two hundred is pretty impressive.”
Noah nodded. “Are they available yet?”
Wally grinned and rubbed his hands together. “I can give you six of them right now, if you want them. They fire 9 mm rounds, and the magazine holds fifteen.”
“Okay,” Noah said. “I want them.”
Wally called out to the technician, who put six boxes onto a wheeled cart and brought them over. Marco took over pushing it as they went back out to the car, then loaded them into the trunk with the phones.
Noah shook Wally’s and Marco’s hands while Neil was saying goodbye to Jenny. He was planning to get on the road immediately so that they could get back to Arkansas before dark. The three of them climbed into the car and waved at Marco and Jenny as Noah started it up and backed out of the parking space. Wally, in catlike manner, simply turned around and walked back into the building.
CHAPTER FIVE
They were almost out of the restricted area when Noah’s phone rang, and he glanced at it to see that it was Allison calling.
“Camelot,” he said.
“What, you thought you were going to sneak out without seeing me?” Allison asked.
“I was actually avoiding you,” Noah said. “I didn’t want Monique to hear that I’d been to see you. Was I supposed to come by?”
“No, I’m just yanking your chain. I just figured I’d give you a call on your new phone, since it’s completely secure, now. Of course, your old one was, too, but since she had you unconscious when she implanted that device, we couldn’t be absolutely certain that it hadn’t been physically compromised.”
“I agree,” Noah said. “You’ve been apprised of the entire situation with Monique?”
“Everything Neil sent, so I’m sure the answer is yes. How’s the mission going?”
“Better than we ever expected. With these phones, I may be able to complete it within the next few days, unless you want me to hold off.”
“Goodness, no,” Allison said. “If you are certain you have everyone who should be targeted, you take them down as soon as you can. It might not hurt for you to let Monique think you hurried it up a bit, like you wanted to get it out of the way so it won’t interfere when she comes up with her plan to pull you out.”
“All right,” Noah said. “Any leads on who she might be yet?”
“None,” Allison said. “She’s got power of some kind, and she has to be tied to the CIA somewhere, because even they think the mole is one of theirs. There aren’t many people I trust over there, but I’ll be visiting one of them tomorrow. I want to know everything they know about her, though I’m afraid we might be ahead of them on that score. If I’m right, this all may still be resting on your shoulders.”
“I’m okay with that,” Noah said. “Especially now that we got her little booby trap out of me. If she was telling the truth, killing her is going to automatically kill everyone she’s actually allowed to get close to her. I doubt I’m the only one who ever got one of those implanted in an armpit.”
“And you are undoubtedly right. What that means for us, though, is something good. Since we found out the device puts out a close-proximity signal and we were able to copy it, we’re putting together a way to detect them. If we can find anyone else who’s got one of those gadgets implanted in them, it may give us a lead on identifying her.”
“What surprises me,” Noah said, “is that she’s so difficult to track down. How many women her size could there be connected to the CIA?”
“More than two dozen,” Allison said, “but none of them fit
the description you gave us. There are a few in the right age range, but none of them would ever be considered attractive. Noah, we’ve even looked at wives of Company men, and we can’t find her anywhere. Whoever she is, she’s very well insulated.”
“That’s an extremely sobering thought,” Noah replied. “I suppose the only thing to do is ride this out. At some point, I should find some kind of information that will allow us to track her down. I’ll just keep you apprised of every development.”
“That’s all we can do. Complete your mission, but stay safe.” The line went dead.
Noah put the phone back in his pocket and stared straight ahead through the windshield. “They can’t seem to find Monique,” he said. “No one connected to the CIA fits her description at all, but she’s got to have some sort of tie to it.”
Neil, in the back seat, shook his head. “I wish you could’ve gotten a picture of her,” he said. “I’d love to run it through facial recognition, starting with the Russian databases. If she’s connected to CIA in any way, they’d have something on her.”
“I’ll bear that in mind. Maybe I’ll get the chance, someday.”
* * * * *
They made three stops for gas on the way back, taking time for lunch at one of them, and rolled back into Berryville at just before five o’clock. Noah called Morgan to let him know that he was back, but the big man told him to get some rest and they would meet the following morning.
“That’s a long drive,” Sarah said as they headed out toward the house. “I hope you don’t want anything complicated for dinner, because I’m tired.”
“I can fix that,” Noah said. He turned in at the farm supply store and went inside, returning ten minutes later with a big bucket of chicken and side dishes. He passed them to Sarah and then drove them on home.
When they got to the house and went inside, Sarah set the food on the table and dug out plates and silverware, then told the men they could dish up their own. She made a plate for herself and carried it into the living room, plopping herself on the couch.
