But not all people. Prisha felt the women’s eyes on her first. Didn’t even have to look up, for she had the keen peripheral vision of an apex predator. Without any other discernible movement, she raised her eyes just enough to see three women standing nearby, large coffees in hand. They huddled together, speaking among themselves, with faces like curdled milk. They were not morning regulars and clearly did not know the drill.
What these three women didn’t know was that Prisha’s earbuds were all for show. They were always turned off in the shop, although she smiled and bobbed her head occasionally to indicate she was enjoying an imaginary song or video. Another thing these women didn’t know was that Prisha’s sense of hearing was as keen as her sight, even with the earbuds jammed into her ears. The ruse caused people to speak in normal conversational tones around her, and say things they might not say if they knew she was listening.
Prisha heard the all the women’s snark. How rude she was for taking up a whole table all by herself, and what a bitch she was for not giving the table up to them. One of them suggested they should complain to the manager. The other two eagerly agreed, and all three turned and headed for the counter to complain to Adam. Prisha’s face creased in a mirthless smile.
The three women stood at the counter, backs to Prisha, gesticulating at Adam. Prisha caught his eye and winked. He smiled back. A fait accompli. Prisha went back to her laptop and in her peripheral vision saw the three women stomp out of the shop. She took a long pull of her coffee and signaled Adam for one more. She watched the little group bustle past the big window, and stared at them until one of the women looked her way. It was another power she had: her stare never went unanswered. Prisha nodded at the woman, held up her coffee cup in salute. The woman’s face flushed, and she turned and tugged at the arm of the friend closest to her. The other two turned around and got the same coffee cup salute. Prisha smiled widely now, her full red lips pulled back to bare her prominent white teeth. She knew this was going to be a good day.
Prisha closed out the file she was reviewing and ejected the thumb drive. She placed it into a small plastic pouch, zipped it, then zipped the pouch into a second bag before putting it in the front pants pocket of her charcoal-gray Chanel pantsuit. Her last cup of coffee was half full. She raised it to her lips and almost choked as the shrill scream of a small child at the next table pierced her ears.
The child was under two years of age, red in the face and screaming at the top of his little lungs. Prisha was childless by choice. She hated kids of all ages. Screaming, obnoxious toddlers most of all. Hated the all fawning over children, and the aggrandizement of the mothers. Like they were all heroes for being born with eggs capable of fertilization.
This mother appeared to be satisfied to let her little demon cry it out. She made no attempt to stop the screaming, or even acknowledge it, as she calmly pecked at her iPhone. Prisha shuddered as she thought of what her father, a devout Wahhabi Muslim, would make of this. The West was still such a foreign land to her in many ways.
Prisha looked around the coffee shop at the other customers. The shop was rectangular, with the counter and bar area on one side and the tables on the other. The décor was a modern, industrial style; the stained concrete floors and tin ceiling magnified the child’s screams. Most customers were clearly annoyed but braced their heads into tucked shoulders and avoided eye contact. A few women gave the mother sympathetic looks and tried to make light of the situation. The kid maintained his decibel level, undeterred.
For the second time this morning, Prisha activated the stare that could not go unanswered. This time a toddler would be the lucky recipient of her laser sights. Thankfully the boy’s mother was hopelessly self-absorbed and didn’t notice a thing. The child knew something was amiss but was slow and clumsy in his response. C’mon, kid. Over here. Prisha would cull this one from the herd. Sure enough, the child returned her gaze. The boy gagged as if a hand had been clamped over his mouth; his screams went from moan to murmur. His face then fell slack, confused. His eyes widened in recognition. He stared at Prisha, motionless. Prisha returned his stare with a tight smile that did not reach her eyes. The boy bobbed backwards as if struck by a blow, then turned and buried his head into his mother’s side. There it is! You little shit.
Only the innocent—dogs and small children—can truly recognize evil.
The mother stroked her son’s hair. He peeked out from under her arm, looking uneasily back at Prisha. His mother followed his eyes. Prisha smiled and nodded, which the mother misinterpreted as more accolades.
Prisha packed up her laptop and surrendered her table. She intentionally walked past the mother, on the side of the table where the toddler was now seated, quiet as a mouse.
“What a beautiful boy you have,” Prisha said as she approached, trying on her widest smile, meant to disarm the mother.
The mother beamed and accepted the flattery.
Prisha leaned in towards the boy and asked him what his name was. The child again buried his face tight into his mother, who chastised him in a singsong voice. Asked him to tell Prisha his name. The boy shook his head violently, refusing to turn around to greet the nice woman.
“That’s odd,” the mother said. “He’s usually really outgoing.”
“That is odd,” Prisha responded. “Because I love kids, and they love me.” She then told the woman about the two cute little nieces that she did not have, and how they adored their Aunt Prisha.
Her work done, Prisha walked out of the coffee shop and stood on the sidewalk. The sun was rising in a clear blue sky. It promised to be a hot and humid day. But Prisha had been born and raised in Saudi Arabia. The heat didn’t bother her. She didn’t even break a sweat as she walked around the block to her car.
Prisha accelerated her new Lexus past the main employee gate and smirked at the thought of the incident here in 1993 that had cost two American lives. Amateur hour.
She circumnavigated the compound and arrived at the executive entrance. She flipped down the visor to check her makeup and tussle her hair, worn down today for this very moment. Prisha pulled up to the guard shack, opened her window and handed her ID to the new uniformed guard, a young stud recently discharged from the Marines. He smiled and blushed, called her ma’am. She continued her banter, winked at him once. His blush deepened. She welcomed him to the company and said she would see him around.
“You’re good to go, Deputy Director,” the guard said. He handed back her ID and gave the military arm chop that signified entry granted.
“Thank you,” responded CIA Deputy Director Prisha Veda Baari.
Chapter Four
August 17, 2016
CIAHQ
Langley, VA
Prisha was running late, as per usual. She stood at the door of her boss, Robert Johnson, head of the CIA. She had swept past his secretary with nary an acknowledgment; the woman was one of the few at CIAHQ who was immune to Prisha’s charms. Johnson’s days as CIA director were numbered—Prisha would see to that. She would also take great pleasure in crushing the secretary when she could no longer hide behind her powerful boss.
Prisha stood outside the door and unbuttoned the top two buttons of her white poplin blouse. She closed her eyes, got into character, then blew out a protracted, silent breath. Eyes wide, smile firmly in place, she opened the heavy door and entered Johnson’s office, then shut the door behind her. Because she knew better.
Johnson rose and emerged from behind his desk to greet her. He was a dumpy, thick- bodied man, a full two inches shorter than Prisha. He never removed his suit jacket in public. This gave him a perpetually wrinkled and slovenly look. He wore an ill-trimmed goatee, now full gray like his thinning hair. He stroked it with his right hand when he was nervous or anxious, a tell that Prisha had put to good use over the years.
Johnson’s eyes went right for Prisha’s abundant cleavage as she approached. Years before, a top-notch Beverly Hills plastic surgeon had given Prisha what Allah, in his infinite wisdo
m, had not, and Prisha still marveled at the power her breasts had over men. Prisha wielded them as a samurai did his sword. Men were such simple creatures, so easily manipulated.
“Morning, Prish,” Johnson said in greeting. She hated when he called her that, but granted the fat bastard this indulgence. It was a small price to pay.
The hug that followed was tight and extended, lascivious to the outside observer. Prisha wriggled free. Johnson’s hands came to rest high on her waistline, just below her bra. Prisha shuddered, then gently pulled his hands away. Her pasted-on smile hid her revulsion.
“Good morning, Bob,” Prisha said. Without invitation, she took a chair in the informal seating area nearest the door, opposite Johnson’s desk at the far end of his cavernous office. Experience told her to stay off the sofa. Johnson sat in the matching black leather chair across from her. She was grateful for the low table between them.
The office was opulent, its appointments more suited to a Fortune 500 CEO than the head of a government agency. But the CIA was unlike most government agencies, with its secret budgets and culture of deception. It was expected that taxpayer money would be diverted to provide for the comfort of not only the CIA director, but all Agency employees. Big, dark budgets were a piggy bank, with spending accountable only to Congress, who were themselves unaccountable. So it came down to trust—trust that the democratically elected representatives were monitoring these secret warriors, and that these freedom fighters lied only for the greater good. But Prisha knew better. She knew that trust was no absolute entity, or true emotion; rather, it was a commodity to be traded and exchanged, valued and devalued, bought and sold. Prisha was at home, at peace, in this world. This funhouse mirror world where reality was manufactured and nothing was exactly as it seemed.
Johnson had served his purpose. At his hand, Prisha had become the first woman appointed to deputy director, the number two at CIA. At thirty-four, she was also the youngest ever to have held this position, a fact that earned her the animosity and disrespect of most of the rank-and-file at the Agency. Though they hated Prisha, they also feared her, for she was well connected, both politically and within the leadership of the seventeen USIC agencies. Prisha was an expert Beltway infighter and had the scalps to prove it. She had been deputy director for seven years now and had matured into the position. She had built her fiefdom, her castle walls impervious to both breach and siege. No one dared to challenge her. Not anymore.
Prisha and Johnson met once a week. These meetings followed a similar pattern: they greeted, he groped, she parried, they sat, he flirted, she misdirected. Prisha would then walk him back to their meeting, like a dog on a leash. And so it was today.
“Bob, I need your support with POTUS tomorrow,” Prisha said with a jerk of the leash. Prisha was briefing the president in the Oval Office tomorrow on the ODYSSEUS Project, a project she had taken over within a year of her ascension to DD/CIA. Prisha would brief the president in the Oval immediately prior to the PDB—the President’s Daily Brief.
The PDB, a daily summary of high-level national security issues, has been presented to the president, in some form, since Harry Truman received the inaugural one in 1946. Over the years, the PDB has evolved to meet the needs and preferences of each president, and had expanded to become an all-source digital product that addressed both domestic and foreign threats. The PDB was now produced by the ODNI (Office of the Director of National Intelligence) with contributions from the CIA and the other USIC agencies.
Each president has received the PDB document in his own way. Some preferred hard copy, some preferred it digitally on a tablet, and some preferred the document be orally briefed. The current president, Morris “Mo” Udell, preferred an oral briefing. Accordingly, the DNI (Director of National Intelligence, and head of ODNI) briefed the PDB to POTUS at a daily meeting attended by key Cabinet members and advisors. D/CIA Johnson was one such key advisor, and he sat at the big adult table with POTUS. Prisha, by virtue of her pre-briefing, would be kissed into this PDB briefing as a “back-bencher” and relegated to the row of chairs that lined the wall of the conference room behind the adult table. Prisha did not mind sitting at the kids’ table for this meeting, as it got her valuable face time with POTUS and the rest of the USIC sharks.
“ODYSSEUS is bleeding money, Prish,” Johnson said. “POTUS knows it, I know it, you know it. But that’s not the real problem. What he’s really concerned about is the delay. He wants it operational. Now.”
Prisha had known this complaint was coming, and was prepared to address it with POTUS tomorrow. She had appeased Udell before, but knew his patience, and her time, was running out. The dazzling complexity of ODYSSEUS’s bleeding-edge technology gave her safe harbor for any number of jargon-laden excuses, but POTUS was mercurial and sometimes unpredictable. And the other USIC agency heads, envious of ODYSSEUS’s multi-billion-dollar budget, were knives out, ready to strike at the first sign of weakness. The more Prisha delayed, and the longer ODYSSEUS stayed off-line, the more vulnerable she and it became. Covert funding in the intelligence community was a zero-sum game. And not for the faint of heart.
“We’ve had some difficulty with a few providers granting us complete access to their servers,” Prisha responded, searching Johnson’s eyes. “And some of the latest tech had issues in beta, but—”
“Shit, Prisha,” Johnson said in a raised voice. “POTUS doesn’t want to hear that.” He threw up his hands. “And neither do I. You keep telling me we’re close. But this damn thing is still on the drawing board, and I’m tired of getting my ass chewed over it. This is your project. Fix it!”
ODYSSEUS was Prisha’s project. She was all in on it. All her ambition, her hopes and dreams, were wrapped up in it. It was her life, and would be her legacy. She knew it. She hadn’t always known it, not at first. But she had seen it soon enough, had seen, clearly, what no one else had. And it was then that she had known that ODYSSEUS had to be hers.
Prisha had come to the CIA in 2005, a political appointment at the hand of an influential congresswoman for whom she had served as chief of staff. Her placement as a senior executive in the Directorate of Analysis had given her access to ODYSSEUS, which at the time had been more theory than anything. Nascent technology in search of a benefactor. One of many outside-of-the-box ideas the Agency big brains routinely hatched, most of which die in their infancy.
Her epiphany still gave her chills. She remembered it all as if it were yesterday: a sunny Tuesday afternoon; CIA cafeteria; she wore a cute little scarlet Oscar de la Renta outfit with matching lipstick; had veggie pizza and a soda. She had attended a routine ODYSSEUS briefing the day before, but was thinking of nothing in particular except her upcoming trip to Manhattan that weekend and how much she loved pizza.
It had hit her like a lightning strike, so much so that she’d choked on her mouthful of pizza so forcefully that it watered her eyes and drew concerned co-workers to her side. She’d washed down her clot of pizza with a large gulp of soda and waved away her benefactors. Electricity flowed through her. She had never before felt this intoxicating power. Prisha wiped her eyes dry and couldn’t stop smiling. She saw it, and none of them did. She knew what she had to do.
After that, Prisha had screamed and moaned to get assigned full-time to the ODYSSEUS Project, and when her pleas were ignored, she made her boss, DD/DA Williams, scream and moan until she would no longer be ignored. D/CIA Johnson was not her first rodeo.
Prisha had gone over to ODYSSEUS full-time in 2007. At that time, the project had consisted of a bundle of technologies that, in aggregate, formed the concept that would years later be termed cloud data storage. It later fascinated Prisha how readily hundreds of millions of Americans willingly surrendered control of their personal data. But who didn’t like fluffy white clouds? Seemed innocent enough, and besides, it meant people could access their data wherever they wanted! Convenience trumped common sense. A wolf in sheep’s clothing. Prisha chuckled at the irony of it all, a sheep’s wool being
so similar in appearance to those fluffy white clouds in the sky.
The NSA and FBI saw ODYSSEUS as collection—a surveillance or “pull” technology to spy on anyone they deemed worthy. The NSA would cast a wide net, collect everything and spend their time and budget sorting through the twenty-nine petabytes of data each day for their gold nuggets. The FBI, on the other hand, chose targeted surveillance, individuals or groups who posed a threat to national security.
The CIA took a more aggressive approach. They viewed the potential for ODYSSEUS differently. For them, ODYSSEUS was not a means of collection but a disinformation platform; a push technology to impact a target’s beliefs and actions. In those early years, CIA leadership had had no real vision for ODYSSEUS. But Prisha did. By 2010 she was DD/CIA and had wrested complete control of ODYSSEUS for herself.
Everything had changed in October 2011, when Apple put the digital personal assistant app, Siri, on the iPhone 4S. Americans had fallen in love with it. The marketplace now had a convenient bridge to their fluffy cloud—voice command. But this bridge allowed traffic to travel in both directions. Siri was now in people’s ears, sitting vigilant on every new iPhone. Amazon’s Alexa had followed in June of 2015, but this time she lived in Americans’ homes, inside the smart speaker called Echo.
This shocking abridgment of privacy and the fourth amendment had been welcomed wholeheartedly into the American home. Now anyone with the right access and technical ability could theoretically “push” information from the cloud into people’s living rooms—and into their heads.
Prisha was no technophile, but she had spotted a command-and-control issue with ODYSSEUS and knew an opportunity when she saw one. Anyone else would have labeled it a vulnerability, but Prisha was not anyone else. The ODYSSEUS technology was highly complex and truly understood by few, least of all CIA executive management, luddites all. Rather, they were reliant on the project experts to provide them with the truth of things they could not themselves see, touch, or even understand.
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