by Cate Dermody
“Thank you. I’m all right.”
The woman beside her was as lovely as the light floral perfume she wore: porcelain-skinned and delicately featured, with amber in her brown eyes. She smiled and nodded, breaking eye contact with Alisha almost immediately, clearly not wishing to seem rude. Alisha returned the smile briefly and relaxed back into her seat, eyes closed again.
If it was a setup, the Sicarii could be a false lead. Brandon’s midnight conversation in the bunker could have been for her benefit, introducing a third player simply to confuse the issue. But—amusement lanced through Alisha, her awareness of the irony too great to ignore—Reichart had corroborated the Sicarii story, even if the ancient records in the Vatican library hadn’t lent credence to at least certain aspects of it.
Of course, he could be a double agent, too.
Alisha groaned and sank down as far as her seat belt would let her. The woman beside her shifted, concern evident in her voice as she asked, “Miss?”
“Where do we go from here?” Alisha said the words very softly, thin strains of song breaking through them, as if waiting for the fuller music of the next lines. She bit them off in her mind, unwilling to pretend even the Pyrrhic victory they promised.
“Miss?” the woman beside her asked again. Alisha shook her head.
“I’m all right,” she said again. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I’d rather not talk right now.” There were too many thoughts to pursue, and too little grounding in logic for any of them to make good sense. The woman ducked her head in apology, pulling her elbows in toward herself, shrinking in the seat. Alisha put her teeth together, warding off her own culturally bred instinct to apologize in turn until the impulse passed.
Occam’s razor. The simplest possibility was the most likely. Reichart had his own loyalties; the possibility that he was part of a scheme to set her up seemed remote. Not impossible, but remote. The idea that she might be important enough to set up, for that matter, seemed unlikely.
She had to choose somewhere to begin trusting. Her history with Reichart made him both the first and last choice; she wanted to trust him, and didn’t dare. But Greg and Brandon being together at the destroyed production facility made her stomach curdle with foreboding. Bad choices all around. Alisha tilted forward in her seat, elbows on her thighs and fingers pressed against her face in a steeple. The plane pulled back from the jetway, flight attendants beginning their safety lectures as Alisha swayed in her seat with the jet’s motion.
“Assume,” she whispered out loud, the words directed at her lap. Assume you’re being played, Leesh. Assume you’re a pawn. And then figure out a way to get queened. She sat back, elbow on the seat’s arm as she curled her fingers against her mouth, staring sightlessly out the window.
“They’re hardware schematics, Alisha.” Greg’s voice crackled over the cell phone connection, delays breaking the words up. Delaying her processing of them, Alisha thought; it took several seconds before his comment mattered to her. Then she stepped away from the airport window and lifted her free hand to press it against her other ear, eyes focused on the floor.
“Hardware. Of course.” The flight from Beijing had been pleasant, allowing her to drift and sleep in equal parts, thought rarely intruding. She’d come up with no answers, but she felt rested. Even the throbbing in her feet had mellowed by the time they landed, and walking across the thinly carpeted concrete only sent distant twinges through her lower body. “The software must be massive.”
“We need it.”
“What about—” Alisha broke off, unwilling to voice the actual question over an unsecured line, in a public area.
“Reverse engineering will take too long,” Greg answered, intuiting her meaning. “We’ve got techs on it already, and the remote you had will be tremendously useful—it’s undamaged,” he added with a note of triumph. “The protocol you used to shut it down left the entire program in perfect condition. Beautifully done, Ali. Very well done.”
“Thank you,” Alisha said automatically. Greg went on as if she hadn’t spoken.
“So we’ve got people on it. But their best estimates suggest weeks, more likely months, before we’ve gone far enough back to begin moving forward again. We need the software.”
“There can’t be many facilities prepared to host that kind of backup,” Alisha said, more to herself than to her handler. Why, she wanted to demand, don’t you just ask Brandon for help? She squelched the impulse, unwilling to play the card until she had a better understanding of who Greg was working for.
The thought made her mouth dry, flat distaste coating her throat. She swallowed against it, looking around for a shop. A news store lay a few dozen yards down the terminal. “Do we know if he’s got a copy of the software himself?” she asked.
“With the acquisition and removal of the last target, I’m assuming no,” Greg said. Alisha tucked the phone between her ear and shoulder, digging into her purse for enough cash to buy a drink, and brushed past the woman from the airplane on her way to the store. They exchanged brief smiles as Alisha silently translated Greg’s careful phrasing: with the destruction of Project ACUTE’s computers, it was a reasonably safe bet that even if Brandon’d had all the drone software on those computers, he hadn’t had the capability to back it up onto something he could take with him.
Alisha ducked into the store, grabbing a ginger ale out of the glass-fronted refrigerator. “We need to be sure. Not many people’ve got the kind of processing power or storage he’s using.”
“I’ve narrowed it down to five or six facilities,” Greg agreed. “If he’s looking for backups himself, we might catch him at one of them. The two most likely places in the States are in San Jose and Dallas. Where are you?”
Alisha looked over her shoulder toward the terminal window. She couldn’t see the distant Potomac River, but knew it lay toward the horizon, a welcome to the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.
“Los Angeles,” she said calmly. “I’ll go to San Jose, and call you when I’ve got something.”
Chapter 21
“This is rather unusual, Cardinal.”
Alisha jolted out of the couch, catching the almost-empty bottle of ginger ale by her fingertips so the now-flat liquid didn’t spill. Her feet, grateful for the respite of sitting, protested the weight suddenly put on them with shocks of pain. Alisha gritted her teeth into a relieved smile and took a step forward. “Director Boyer. Sir. I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Then you’re slipping.” Boyer came forward to offer her a hand, concerned smile playing across his mouth. “My agents don’t usually call me to set up clandestine meetings at our own safe houses, Alisha. What’s going on? Why aren’t you reporting to Parker?”
Alisha puffed her cheeks and blew out the breath, gesturing toward the couch. “This might take a while, sir. The shortest version is that Greg said I was supposed to report to you as well as to him and I’m taking advantage of that.”
“Why do I get the feeling that’s the tip of the iceberg?” Boyer hitched up the legs of his pants as he sat, a gesture Alisha always thought of as peculiarly masculine. The director was a big man with a voice deep enough to raise the hairs on her arms. She found something oddly reassuring about its depth, as if a man whose voice rode that low must have roots that sank into the earth itself, making him a solid and trustworthy figure.
She hoped she was right. “Because it is, sir. Director, I understand that it’s not necessarily my job to know what the reasons behind my missions are. Most of the time that’s okay.”
Boyer’s eyebrows, dark straight slashes, rose a little. “But not this time. You might as well sit, too, Cardinal. This might take a while.” He flashed her a quick grin and Alisha answered it wryly, folding a leg under herself as she curled onto the opposite end of the couch.
“Not this time,” she agreed. “Sir, I really need to know where we got the intel that sent us after Brandon Parker. I need to know if he’s an undercover agent, and whether Greg knows
about it or not.”
Boyer’s eyebrows shot up again, higher this time. “Would you like to know who shot JFK, too?”
“Oh, come on, sir.” Alisha made a face. “This isn’t that important.” Cold nerves knotted in her belly, making a burp there, and she felt her expression slide toward disbelief. “Is it?”
Boyer chuckled. “No. You just looked so serious.”
Alisha ducked her head, exhaling a quick laugh. “Sorry. I’m feeling the strain on this one.”
“You need to be taken off this mission?”
“No, sir.” She looked up again, quickly. “But I’d feel a lot better if I knew what I was dealing with. I feel like I’m being played, and I need to know who’s playing me.”
Boyer leaned back, considering her. He was broad-shouldered and thick through the waist, not fat, but barrel-chested, and the cut of his suit jacket made him look too large for the dim, neutral colors of the safe house living room. Reassuringly dangerous, Alisha thought. Like he could break a neck or rescue a kitten with equal ease. “I can’t tell you where the intel on Parker came from,” he said after a moment. “I can tell you that you were specifically recommended for this mission by someone whose judgment I trust.”
“That’s very flattering, sir,” Alisha muttered. “Are my loyalties being tested?”
Surprise turned into a one-sided grin on Boyer’s face. “What do you think?”
“I think if you deliberately sent me in to investigate an undercover agent who could identify me that you’re being reckless and careless with both his and my life, and I resent it. Sir.”
Boyer’s eyebrow quirked again, amusement. “To the best of my knowledge, Brandon Parker has not worked for the CIA since he left nearly ten years ago.”
“Is it possible that he’s working undercover without your knowledge?”
“Anything is possible, Cardinal. Langley isn’t the only operations center, and while I’m kept apprised of other operations, I’m sure there are a few of my own that would come as a surprise to some of the other directors.”
“Thank you,” Alisha said dryly. “That fills me with confidence.”
“As well it should. His story, then, is that he’s working for the CIA?”
Alisha nodded. “As a double agent within the Sicarii.” To her pleasure, that garnered a reaction from the director, a brief look of startlement flashing over his face. “You know about the Sicarii, then.”
A knot of tension she hadn’t realized existed unlocked at the base of her neck, relaxing the muscles in her shoulders. “So they are real. Jesus,” she added inadvertently, lifting a hand to rub her eyes. “That’s actually a relief.”
“If Brandon Parker claims to be working as a double agent for the Sicarii,” Boyer said, words slow and measured, “you will proceed as if he is telling God’s own truth, Agent MacAleer.”
“Is he?”
“I don’t know.” Boyer’s voice dropped into a deeper growl, making Alisha straighten her spine against the chill that ran over her. “But I will find out. In the meantime,” he went on, voice resuming its normal baritone, “what about Greg? You asked if he knew about Brandon’s theoretical assignment. Why?”
“Because I saw them together in Beijing.” Alisha spread her hands, shaking her head. “I don’t know who to trust anymore, sir. Greg doesn’t even know I’m in D.C. That’s why I wanted to meet here instead of at the offices.”
“You have gotten paranoid.” Boyer pursed his lips, eyebrows shifting upward again. “What do you propose to do about your uncertainty, then?”
Alisha took a deep breath. “Nothing.” Boyer’s eyebrows lifted higher and she shrugged. “I’m going to steal the software backups for the AI prototypes. I’ll deliver a copy to you, but I want to give one to Greg as well. A corrupted copy, with a tracer set in it to see if the files are copied before you get them.”
“And if they’re not?”
“Then I’ll be incredibly relieved, sir. I want this to turn out clean. I want it to turn out that Brandon Parker is working so far undercover that only six people in the world know about it.”
Boyer rumbled a laugh that lifted the hairs on Alisha’s arms again. “You know they say a secret known by six people isn’t a secret, Cardinal.”
Alisha produced a wry smile that she directed at the couch cushions. “Yes, sir. But honestly, sir, I want this to be above your head.”
“You want it to be. But you’re afraid it isn’t.”
“I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t,” Alisha agreed. Boyer nodded, then stood.
“You have a go, Cardinal. Set your bait. We’ll see what happens.”
Alisha stood as well, wincing as she put weight on her feet again. “Thank you, sir.” They shook hands, Alisha remaining on her feet until the director left the room. Then she clenched her hand into a triumphant fist and grabbed her purse off the couch’s end table, upending it over the couch cushions. Passport, loose change, lipstick, a pad of paper—Elisa Moon’s life in a bag, Alisha thought, searching for a flat makeup case.
Habit made her check her hair in its mirror even as she worked the bottom loose, exposing an LCD panel that covered two-thirds of the box’s bottom. Powder dusted the panel, kicking up a fine sweet-smelling spray as she puffed her cheeks and blew to clear it. She could almost hear Erika scolding her: that’s a delicate piece of equipment, Alisha! Don’t spit on it!
Pressure on the lower third of the pad activated it without a telltale beep. The screen came up green on green, so dull it was difficult to see under the bathroom’s overhead lighting. Alisha cupped her hand over it, making shadows, and the monitor came into sharper relief.
Now a grid was visible, a single point—two letters, A-4—blinking silently. Alisha mouthed, “Hit,” as if she played Battleship, the only gesture of triumph she dared allow herself yet. Brandon might have discovered the bug she’d pressed into the fold of his beltloop, or might have left the clothes behind somewhere between Rome and Beijing. The blip might be a dead end, but at least it was still active.
Alisha fished the eye makeup brush out of the main section of the case and left a dot of silver-brown on the screen where the point blinked. The lower half of the screen cleared, coordinates writing themselves out in dim green block letters.
Forty-seven degrees, twenty-three minutes north. Eight degrees, thirty-three minutes east. Alisha closed her eyes, visualizing the curvature of the globe, counting out bars of latitude and longitude. Europe, certainly, with latitude crossing so high on the line of longitude. She superimposed the European states over the lines, grade-school colors differentiating one country from another. The images centered together easily, Alisha using Greenwich as the starting point. Germany, Austria—
Switzerland. Zurich.
Alisha opened her eyes, grinning. Hit and sink.
High heels and a walk that made her think: watch that back door swing! The shoes and strident walk made her far too aware of the ache in her feet, but Alisha was filled with sassy good humor anyway. These were among her favorite moments, brazen approach of a target with nothing but the most illicit of plans in mind. The persona she’d adopted was full of audacity and what Alisha thought of as abrasive charm, and stretched back almost to the beginning of Alisha’s career. Writing about her escapades became sheer fun in the pages she allowed herself to relive the shameless, saucy characterization she put on. Such outright exuberance was rare enough to linger in her mind, even as she focused on the challenge ahead of her.
A tilt of her head brought the short-cropped wig, an A-line, swinging forward to conceal the angle of her cheekbones. Wire-frame glasses were tinted to further alter the contact-changed color of her eyes, and penciled-in lip rouge thinned the shape of her mouth. A bulky, if well-tailored, suit added weight to her body until at a glance in the mirror, not even she saw herself. It was what she wanted: no one would see the agent beneath the brassy figure she cut.
Brandon had long since left Zurich when she deplaned there, the tracer ind
icating he’d gone back to Italy. That was fine: she would catch up with him later, after planting what she hoped would be a crippling blow. For now she had what she needed to deliver that blow: the security server headquarters where the Attengee files were stored.
The headquarters were completely unremarkable, a detail that Alisha noted with approval as she breezed through the front door. A guard came to attention, her swagger sufficient to put him on alert without reckoning her an immediate danger. She shot him a sly smile that he pretended not to see, and crossed the lobby to the unadorned front desk. “Julie Stiles,” she drawled to the pasty-skinned young man sitting there. “Ah called this mornin’.”
“Yes, of course,” he murmured. “Ms. Stiles. Like the actress.” She could see a trace of disappointment in his eyes, although he kept it from his barely accented English.
“Like that,” Alisha said with an expressive roll of her eyes. “Only we come with some meat on our bones where Ah come from.”
“Texas,” he said, glance barely flickering down at the paperwork she’d sent ahead.
“Oklahoma.” Alisha waved her hand. “Ah’ll let the detail go, seein’ as how you’re cute and all.”
The faintest hint of alarm creased the corners of his eyes. Alisha fought an urge to laugh, leaning forward over the desk instead. “So’ve you got a little tour of the—” She raked her gaze over him and came back up to his eyes with a smile. “—facilities for me?”
“I’m afraid that will be my associate’s pleasure, Ms. Stiles.” He lifted a hand, gesturing for a blond man who appeared through a heavy steel door. “You represent—”
“An expandin’ IT corporation,” Alisha said lavishly. “Quantum computin’. It’s the new plastic.”
“I think you’ll find our facilities an excellent backup storage site, Ms. Stiles. We already have at least one other client storing the quantities of data capable of being run through quantum computing here.”
Bingo, Alisha thought cheerfully. She thrust a hand out at her guide, smiled brilliantly and allowed herself to be ushered beyond the nondescript lobby area into literal acres of data-storage warehousing.
