Stealthy Steps

by Vikki Kestell

  I know. I know because I took notes at those staff meetings.

  In those meetings, Dr. P asked a great many technical questions, and those questions only stirred up Dr. Bickel’s impatience and contempt. Sometimes when Dr. P questioned Dr. Bickel, Dr. Bickel took the opportunity to subtly (or not so subtly) criticize and buck Dr. P’s authority and/or decisions.

  Dr. P, for his part, couldn’t abide having his authority questioned, and Dr. Bickel’s outbursts were sometimes nothing short of open rebellion. And still Dr. Bickel continued to work under Dr. P—which, again, seemed odd since Dr. Bickel could have worked anywhere in the world he chose.

  As an aside, the work of the AMEMS lab was highly classified. Demonstrations and detailed discussions of the research included only those people actively involved in the work. These were people with the appropriate clearances and a need to know.

  I did not have a need to know. I just handled administrivia and inventory and project controls: I recorded progress in the AMEMS lab against the project goals, deliverables, and timeline. I often handled classified documents that concerned the research in the lab, but I didn’t read them. Their scientific mumbo-jumbo was nothing I could fathom—or cared to.

  The move to the AMEMS facility happened a little more than two years ago. Everything about my job in the new program was great except for Dr. Bickel’s standoffishness—and one new expectation: Dr. P tasked me to provide him with regular reports . . . reports of a discreet nature.

  The fact was, Dr. P expected me to spy on Dr. Bickel. Oh, not on his work, but on his whereabouts and other activities—which was bizarre, right? I mean, didn’t they work together? Why would Dr. P need me to report on Dr. Bickel’s movements? And why me? Dr. Bickel wasn’t comfortable with me like the rest of the staff was; he didn’t talk to me anymore than he did the others on the team—with the exceptions of Rick and Tony.

  Over my feeble protests, Dr. P set up a standing weekly meeting between the two of us. He required that I track Dr. Bickel’s whereabouts every hour of every day and bring a printout that showed his movements to each meeting.

  I tried to follow Dr. P’s instructions. I tried to insert myself into Dr. Bickel’s good graces. I tried to keep track of the seedy little scientist, but Dr. Bickel worked long hours, sometimes late into the night and sometimes on weekends. Then again, he frequently left the lab for hours during the day. To say that he kept an odd schedule would be an understatement. And when Dr. Bickel left the lab, how was I supposed to know where he went? How was it any of my business?

  With grudging compliance, I did my best to monitor and track every minute of Dr. Bickel’s day. If he left the lab, I asked him to tell me where he was going and when he expected to return—so I could let people know in case they asked. Yes, he was out of the lab a lot, but he always had plausible reasons and seemed not to mind when I asked. Once in a while he’d turn a very penetrating look on me and I, not knowing what else to do, dummied up.

  I did my duty and, to the extent I could, provided Dr. P with the requested weekly account of Dr. Bickel’s schedule and activities, making it as detailed and complete as possible. At each meeting Dr. P studied the schedule and questioned me, asking me if Dr. Bickel had said anything about this or that, or if he had met with anyone.

  Dr. P’s inquiries during our weekly meetings were exhaustive—and exhausting. If I answered, “I don’t know,” to any question, his reply was, “Then find out, Gemma. I expect you to know everything there is to know about Dr. Bickel.”

  His demands didn’t sit right with me at all, but I couldn’t dredge up the internal fortitude to refuse Dr. Prochanski. I felt that I owed him a lot, and I didn’t want to disappoint him. So I kept dogging Dr. Bickel.

  Had I been in Dr. Bickel’s shoes, I think I would have resisted the questions asked of me. I also questioned Rick and Tony about Dr. Bickel’s whereabouts. They might have been stone bookends, one on either side of Dr. Bickel, for all the progress I made. Of course they were closemouthed about the work, but about Dr. Bickel himself? I wondered why they were tightlipped about him, too.

  Under growing pressure from Dr. P, I took to looking through Dr. Bickel’s office in his absence. As I spied for Dr. P, I learned some of Dr. Bickel’s habits—such as how he never went home without first typing up his lab notes for the day and how, after he finished, he locked his lab book in the small vault in his office. It was classified matter, so that was perfectly understandable.

  Then there was the one time he returned while I was in his office. Talk about awkward! I was smooth, though: smooth, blank-faced, and unflappable—all while shaking inside.

  Dr. Bickel studied me with that thoughtful, knowing look and smiled. It was a tiny smile, and he added, “I hope you’re being careful, Gemma.”

  What does he mean by that? Is he trying to warn me? I nodded and returned to my desk.

  And later I started detecting patterns, patterns in when he’d be gone and when Rick and Tony would also be gone. Patterns in late work nights, early morning arrivals, and a few “all-nighters.” I started paying closer attention to what Dr. Bickel wore to work—particularly when it was the same thing under his lab coat two days in a row.

  Over time, the relationship between Dr. P and Dr. Bickel deteriorated. At the same time, my role as spy grew more onerous and my feelings about what I was doing worsened.

  As I studied Dr. Bickel I noticed how exhausted he appeared most mornings. I started to see worry lines growing on his forehead and around his eyes. I maybe started fretting about him, Just a little.

  And I stewed about how Dr. Prochanski intended to use my reports. Soon I was wondering if he planned to use them as ammunition to discredit Dr. Bickel.

  I grew to resent the position Dr. P had placed me in. The more he demanded, the more reluctant I became. That’s when I grew selective about what I gave Dr. P.

  I started leaving out bits and pieces of things I could have reported to Dr. P but intentionally chose not to. After a while, “bits and pieces” became big chunks.

  It wasn’t much of a rebellion and it didn’t do a lot to assuage my conscience, but it was what I could manage.

  I just re-read those last several paragraphs. Seeing what I did for Dr. P, seeing it spelled out in cold, plain text, looks horrid. Because it was. It was wrong.

  I’m ashamed of myself.

  I guess my only excuse, Dear Reader, is that I was young and gullible. Naïve. I could have refused. I could have gone to HR and complained. In the end, though, I have to confess the truth: When it began, I was motivated by my need for Dr. P’s approval.

  Dr. P had a way, a way of making me feel valuable and trusted, a way of making what I did for him seem right. And once I started, I couldn’t find a way to stop.

  I know better now. I know Dr. Prochanski used me for his own ends.

  I fell for his lies. I swallowed them, along with the proverbial hook, line, and sinker.

  Chapter 3

  Dear Reader,

  Remember the opening scene of my account, the attack on Dr. Bickel’s lab? The next chapters of my narrative occurred about six months prior to that. I was closing out my third year as an employee at Sandia, still working on Dr. Prochanski’s team, and studying hard for my PMP exam.

  It was March, early spring. Spring in New Mexico is wonderful, but spring winds are not. I’m not grousing about gentle breezes. Oh, no. I’m talking fifty-mile-an-hour gales. It was a blustery spring day like the one I described above. I blew into our building on a blast of freezing wind and set to work making coffee.

  And just like that, the last day I worked at Sandia began like any other.

  One of my responsibilities was to take notes during our department’s formal, unclassified meetings. I used my Sandia-issued laptop and typed the notes as the meeting took place. Before the meeting, I would pass out the agenda, which consisted of business left over from previous meetings, action items due at the present meeting, and items Dr. P told me to schedule for discu
ssion.

  That morning I passed out the agenda and waited for Dr. P to start the meeting. Nothing out of the normal there. What was out of the ordinary was that only Dr. P and Dr. Bickel were scheduled to attend the meeting. Dr. P had directed me to uninvite the other scientists and techs on the team.

  That’s when my antennae went up. Since only Dr. P and Dr. Bickel were scheduled to attend this meeting, I figured a confrontation was looming.

  Scary.

  I smelled trouble in the air, but I knew enough to keep out of it. I positioned myself in the corner of the room, away from the conference table. Out of line-of-sight.

  Dr. Bickel entered the conference room first, seated himself, and looked around. “Where is everyone, Gemma?” He appeared tense and tired, and I was surprised when he spoke to me so familiarly. I didn’t think he had noticed me, sitting in the corner, ready to take notes.

  I cleared my throat. “I’m certain the, um, other attendees will be along shortly, Dr. Bickel.”

  I flicked a second glance at him. He was not one to care overmuch about his personal appearance, but I was again surprised and a bit concerned at how disheveled and tired he appeared. Exhausted.

  And yet he’d been out of the lab a great deal in the past several weeks. I presumed that when people weren’t at work, they were resting up at least part of that time. Dr. Bickel’s appearance was puzzling, because he looked worn to a frazzle. I wondered if he were experiencing personal or family problems.

  Does he even have a family?

  I couldn’t remember him ever mentioning anyone, but then he wasn’t one for chitchat, personal or otherwise.

  Dr. Bickel stared at the conference room clock. It read 10 a.m. straight up and he and I were still the only meeting participants in the room. Then he turned penetrating eyes on me.

  I bent my head toward my keyboard and kept it there, but from under my lashes I observed Dr. Bickel nod to himself. To no one in particular he murmured, “And so it begins.”

  Dr. P charged into the conference room at exactly 10:05, his big, bullish presence filling the doorway. “Sorry to keep you waiting, Doctor,” he boomed.

  Did I detect a note of scorn in Dr. P’s greeting?

  Dr. Bickel said nothing. His expression was as impassive as mine was.

  I shrank farther into the corner.

  Someone followed Dr. P into the room. I stopped breathing when I saw who it was. General Cushing, smiling her shark-toothed smile, stepped inside the conference room and waited until Dr. P closed the door behind her.

  It was only the second time I had encountered General Cushing. She hadn’t changed much in the two years since our first meeting—and neither had my visceral reaction to her. My sense of self-preservation kicked in. I licked my suddenly dry lips.

  Of course I hadn’t known she would be attending the meeting—she wasn’t on the invitee list, after all. Apparently, Dr. Bickel hadn’t known she would be attending either. His expression turned to stone.

  General Cushing, for her part, locked eyes with him as Dr. P ushered her to a seat opposite Dr. Bickel. Dr. P took the seat next to her. The general’s and Dr. P’s backs were angled toward me.

  “Imogene. I wasn’t expecting to see you today.” One corner of Dr. Bickel’s mouth turned up a fraction. I halfway expected his stony face to split from the effort.

  “It’s lovely to see you again, Danny.”

  I couldn’t see Cushing’s and Dr. P’s faces now that they were seated—I was in the corner behind them and off to their left, after all—but I shriveled, visualizing General Cushing’s smile growing wider, her pointed, sharky teeth gleaming.

  And what was all this “Imogene” and “Danny” business?

  Dr. P coughed into his hand. “Now that we’ve exchanged pleasantries, let’s call this meeting to order, shall we?”

  Dr. Bickel said nothing; Dr. P’s fingers fluttered with the papers in front of him. After a moment, he opened a manila folder and extracted a document that he passed across the table.

  Dr. Bickel did not reach for it. He did not so much as glance at it. He simply stared—with contempt, I might add—in General Cushing’s direction. I could not see Cushing’s expression, but she kept her back ramrod straight.

  Dr. Prochanski’s big voice echoed in the nearly empty room. “Dr. Bickel, your involvement in the research and development work of the AMEMS lab has been outstanding. I appreciate your contribution to our breakthrough, the successful development of the world’s first-ever smart, multi-functional nanobots.”

  Whoa! I knew the work in the AMEMS lab had been racing toward a notable success, but it was all very hush-hush. I had heard rumors, but I was not cleared to know exactly what that success might be.

  I was troubled, however, by how Dr. P addressed Dr. Bickel. The way Dr. P phrased it, Dr. Bickel was only a gear in the AMEMS machinery, a useful but replaceable cog. I might not be the sharpest stick in the stack, but I knew from Sandia’s welcome of him that Dr. Bickel’s theories and work were what drove the lab.

  Right then my admiration for Dr. P slipped a notch.

  Dr. P continued, “Under my leadership, the work of the AMEMS lab has flourished. Our results have attracted the admiration and attention of many in the federal government. Of course, I am humbled but gratified that our government has taken notice of my lab.”

  Wait. What?

  It almost sounded like Dr. P was taking credit for Dr. Bickel’s work?

  He continued, “It is now time to take the next step and apply our work to an arena where it is much needed.”

  “Oh, yes,” General Cushing murmured. Staring at the back of her head, I could still picture pointy teeth sliding over plump lips and oily words slipping out from between them. “The Pentagon has agreed to fully fund the next leg of AMEMS development. They are quite enthusiastic. We will enhance Dr. Prochanski’s staff with our best and brightest minds and accelerate the rate of nanobot production.”

  “Not with me, you won’t.”

  Dr. Bickel, growing as red as his fading hair must once have been, pushed away from the table and stood up. The chair in which he’d been sitting rolled away from the table and banged into the wall.

  “I refuse to participate. My contract with Sandia stipulates that none of my research is to be transferred to the military. You already know, dear Imogene, that I will not allow you to appropriate any part of my work for military or ‘national security’ purposes. The matter is closed.”

  As though to punctuate his last word, Dr. Bickel stormed from the conference room and slammed the door behind him.

  Yikes!

  My hands froze on my laptop’s keyboard.

  “That went quite as you predicted, Doctor,” General Cushing purred.

  Cushing drew her chair closer to Dr. P’s. The intimate manner in which she bent her head toward Dr. P and he leaned toward her made me want to upchuck. I forced myself to keep typing, “10:24 a.m. Dr. Bickel left the meeting,” while listening.

  “Yes. Dr. Bickel is nothing if not predictable.”

  “And how will you manage without Dr. Bickel’s cooperation?” I could visualize her words oozing through the gate of her spiky, white teeth.

  Dr. P chuckled. “During Dr. Bickel’s entire tenure at Sandia he has kept two sets of data—one set he ‘allowed’ me to access and one he thinks he has hidden from me. He believes he has kept his progress secret, but he has not.”

  He leaned closer to Cushing.

  Gag.

  “The bots he has developed are adaptive, cutting edge, as you wished, and I have taken pains to copy all of his data—his hidden data. He doesn’t know it, but his every movement in the lab has been recorded. Since he refuses to cooperate with us, I will simply assign him to other tasks and we will carry on his work without him.”

  My esteem for Dr. P crashed to the ground.

  Cushing thought for a moment, tapping a fingernail on the conference room table. “Doctor, oh, my dear Petrel, I have quite an unsettled fee
ling about all this. The nanobots are too precious, too important to trust to Dr. Bickel in his present state of mind. I sense that we need to protect them, perhaps remove them from Dr. Bickel’s oversight sooner than we planned. What do you think?”

  Dr. Prochanski nodded vigorously. “If you think so, then yes. Of course, Dr. Bickel might present a problem when we do—he has many powerful friends in the scientific community, you know, and he would likely raise an outcry. I take it you’ve managed the contractual issues he spoke of so that the legal end is covered?”

  Instead of answering, Cushing sighed and murmured, “Still, perhaps we should consider whether if, at this time, Dr. Bickel has served his purpose altogether.”

  Huh. What?

  It was spoken so carelessly, so cavalierly, that its import took a moment to sink in. My hands slowed.

  Dr. P didn’t need a moment, though. “I confess that I have similar concerns. I’m confident that, with the proper resources, I can oversee the development of the nanobots to the next level and, as we’ve discussed previously, we should really consider how to, ah, remove Dr. Bickel, er, permanently.”

  I wasn’t typing anymore. My hands shook on the keyboard.

  Is he saying what I think he’s saying?

  And then a second chill washed down my back as I realized how stupid I’d been.

  Neither of them realizes that I am still in the room—directly behind them, overhearing every word of their whispered conversation!

  I should have stood and excused myself as soon as Dr. Bickel had stormed out. But it was too late! It was too late to excuse myself now.

  I swallowed and forced my quivering fingers to move over my laptop’s keyboard, but I wasn’t typing. Instead I was berating myself for getting into this mess—and I was scrambling to figure out how in the bloody blue blazes I was going to get out.

  Snap.

  My game face clicked into place and my mind scrambled. I pulled up several bookmarked pages and kept my eyes on the laptop’s screen.