Now, my shield felt the approach of another mind. It was not one of the neighbors who shared this floor of my apartment complex. It was a female mind who now aimed for my door and its Apartment 412 number. My apartment was a corner unit at one end of the complex’s fourth floor, which meant the only close neighbors were across the hallway and to one side. Who the hell was looking for me? The sense of the mind that came through my psychic shield was not the work-fixated mind of Bridget from REI. Nor was it one of the women who worked on my shift. Who?
“Brr-ing,” went the simple doorbell.
I lowered my shield and reached out to the mind on the other side of my door.
Female it was. Someone young as me. From the FBI!
I blinked and told my heart to stop hammering. There was absolutely no way anyone from my two rescues could know my name or that I was the Green Mask guy. There were thousands of young men with blue eyes and black hair who were tall and lanky like me. Some of them worked for REI, including at my local store. As for my clothes, my blue hoodie, Hawaiian shirt, bluejeans and tennis shoes could be found at second hand stores, in addition to REI. At least I was not wearing the hoodie or shoes right now. Just had on a long-sleeved, green UNM football t-shirt and jeans, with my feet bare. The soft carpet in the apartment made it nice to walk around barefoot. I looked around the living room where I sat. Neither the business suit nor the hoodie were in this room. My walls held Asian art. And some Van Gogh prints. Two small bookcases held books. My 27 inch flatscreen TV sat atop the gas fireplace that filled one corner of the room. My CD music player sat near it.
“Brr-ing.”
Could I pretend I was not here?
The mind on the other side of the door called itself Janet Van Groot, special agent, who had just driven to Santa Fe. Her mind partly held the taste sensation of a red chili and egg burrito she’d eaten at the Second Street Brewery place, in the Railyard. Damn. She’d visited my workplace and discovered I had finished my shift. Now, she was here. I walked to the door, unlocked the deadbolt, and twisted the doorknob. I pulled the door open.
♦ ♦ ♦
Janet looked up. Jeffrey Montgomery Webster was tall, taller than she’d realized. His blue eyes fixed on her.
“Hello.”
Interesting. No looking down at her breasts, which pushed out the top of her pantsuit jacket. No look at her hips. There were none of the common ‘first scan’ actions that are so common to nearly all men, especially horny men in their twenties. And no step back as an implied invite to enter his apartment. Most young men would have done all this and more upon seeing an attractive young woman at their door. He didn’t. Why not?
“Hi there. I’m Janet Van Groot, special agent with the FBI.” She held up her black purse with her badge stuck to one side. “I’d like to visit with you about Los Alamos National Laboratory. Your parents used to work there and you lived in Los Alamos. I’m doing a security review of LANL that is in addition to what lab security does.”
Jeffrey’s mildly tanned face showed zero expression. Though his eyes were bright and intense in their focus on her. His lips opened.
“I’ve never worked at the lab,” Webster said, his tone evenly modulated. “Why do you want to talk with me?”
Interesting again. No show of male macho talk. No statement of “I’ve got nothing to hide, sure, come in”. And zero facial expression. As if he knew he was under investigation.
She smiled pleasantly. “Mr. Webster, I know that. Part of my work assignment is to interview the adult children of parents who worked at the lab. That’s why I am here. May I come in?”
♦ ♦ ♦
Maybe there was something worthwhile to be learned from this FBI person. I stepped back, held the door open as she entered, then shut it and walked over to my recliner chair. I sat, crossed my legs, rested my arms on the chair’s armrests, and looked over to where Janet Van Groot now sat on the brown fabric couch that faced my recliner. A glass coffee table lay between us, with the local newspaper and an old National Geographic magazine issue on it. There was also a Sierra Club mag on the table. I’d grabbed the mag from a cheapo sale at the La Farge library. Belatedly my Mom’s lessons on welcoming visitors to one’s home kicked in.
“Want a drink of water? Or some diet Coke? Also got apple juice.”
Van Groot gave me a serious look, then nodded. “A glass of water would be nice.”
I stood up, turned and headed into the kitchen alcove that looked out onto the living room. As I got a glass and let my hands fill it with water and ice cubes, my awareness shot like an arrow into her mind.
The Top level of her mind held thoughts about my parents, how they were LANL employees and musing thoughts over whether they could have been security risks, giving or selling lab secrets to foreign agents during their overseas trips. Biting my tongue, I realized my parents’ overseas travel were the bottom line reason she’d given for getting her bald-headed boss to okay her field trip to New Mexico. It was her first field trip since graduating from the FBI Academy at Quantico. The face of another young woman, a black girl, filled her mind along with the name Beverly. She was a friend who had helped Van Groot land the field assignment. Putting aside my upset at her thoughts about my parents, I probed deeper.
The Middle level of her mind held many thoughts about me. The images of several FBI file pages that detailed my school time, education, family and work history flittered through her mind like butterflies over a creek. Also present were memories from her interview this morning with Mercedes Johnson and the thought stream ‘why hadn’t Mercedes gone back to Jeffrey?’ Amid her thoughts about me and my work at REI hung a deep puzzlement over why I had no girlfriend, why I had no ‘real’ career with a big corporation like Target or Kohls or Walmart, and wonderment over what I ‘might be hiding’. Those last thoughts struck me deeply. It was clear her review of my file, as she looked over scores of files of other adult lab children, had poked her curiosity button. To get a direct look at me she had come up with the excuse of my parent’s overseas travels. And since she worked for the Counterintelligence Division of the National Security Branch of the FBI, checking out my parents for any security violations made sense. In a superficial way. But why was she so fixated on me?
Her Deep mind level held many emotions and feelings. She found me attractive, though my tallness had surprised her even though she knew from my bio page that I was six feet three inches tall. She was five feet eleven inches, taller than many other young women. Parallel with those feelings were a deep strand of how she felt about herself. Like me, she was a single child. Like me, her parents were gone, passed on. And like me she was determined to control her present and future. While she had had some short romances in college, no guy had ever held her interest, let alone her heart. Since her Quantico graduation she had told herself ‘no romance for me, gotta build my career first and foremost!’ Inside, Janet Van Groot was a tough, determined young woman who was focused solely on building her career in the FBI. And also on solving the mystery of me. Damn.
I put the glass with ice cubes down on the coffee table, in front of very smart Janet Van Groot, then turned away and sat in my recliner, thoughts of her churning at lightspeed, along with the beginning of a plan to divert her attention from me.
“There’s your drink.”
“Thank you,” she said, grasping the glass and taking a sip. She put the glass down, pulled over her purse, opened it and pulled out a small digital sound recorder. She put it on the table next to the water glass. “I hope you don’t mind me recording our conversation. I’m not good at taking notes in longhand and half of the job I do is to write reports!”
She lied most naturally. Van Groot was very good at writing down notes with her ballpoint pen, a pencil or any other tool she might need, including her personal computer. The point about reports sounded very true. But her face held a calm, attentive look that her memory of training said was the way any special agent should ‘look’ when conversing with a suspect. Whic
h I was, even though my parents were her excuse for coming here.
“My Dad died a year ago. My Mom before that. I never worked for LANL. Why are you talking to me?”
♦ ♦ ♦
Janet wondered at the steadiness of young Webster’s voice as he attempted to put her on the defensive. Nearly every person who heard she was a special agent went tense and thoughtful, trying to think of what they had done recently that might get them in trouble. Not so with Jeffrey Montgomery Webster. The man’s face had shown zero emotion as he brought over the water glass, glanced at her, spoke and then sat down in the brown recliner. Which seemed to be one of his few pieces of furniture in the one bedroom apartment. As she had entered the apartment she’d done a quick visual scan. The entry hallway led past a kitchen alcove into a living room with sliding glass doors on the left that gave access to a small porch with railing. Behind her couch was a short hallway. The hallway led to a standard bathroom at the end. On the left side of the hallway a door partly ajar must give access to his bedroom. The right side of the short hallway held openings that might be a clothes closet and perhaps access to the apartment’s climate control equipment. There was a gas fireplace in one corner of the living room. She felt the coolness of the air in the room, which meant this young man did not feel the need for warmth from the apartment’s forced air heating. Or from the fireplace. Several lamps and a ceiling light illuminated everything worth seeing, including the Asian and Van Gogh art on the walls.
She kept her face calm and professional, not bothering with a pretend smile. “Mr. Webster, your family history is known to me. My condolences over the loss of your father so recently.” She paused, wondering at the casual dress of Webster. Was a t-shirt, jeans and bare feet how he always looked on his time off? “As I said, my current work assignment requires me to interview the adult children of current and former lab workers. You are the seventh person I’ve interviewed since I flew into Albuquerque. Your father was a nuclear physicist who worked in the X Division of the lab, assisting in the design of nuclear weapons. Your mother worked at the Chief Information Officer’s building in information technology. The field you obtained a degree in.” She paused and gave Webster her ‘suspicion look’. “Did your father and mother ever talk with you about their visits to Prague, Berlin and Geneva?”
Those blue eyes held steady. “Of course they did. They enjoyed traveling overseas, going to museums and galleries, meeting the people of other nations and talking science with their fellow researchers.” He paused, his hands steady on the two armrests. She noticed that he wore a long-sleeved t-shirt that reached down to his wrists. A standard digital watch was attached to his left wrist. Two turquoise rings adorned the fingers of his left hand. No rings on the right hand and no bracelets on either wrist. Nor was there any sign of tattoos on his face, neck, fingers or feet, which were the only bare skin she could see. He blinked slowly. “After I began high school they took me overseas with them. I’ve been to those three cities along with London, Paris and other places.”
“What did they say to you about their visits? Did they ever mention meeting other researchers from those places?”
♦ ♦ ♦
It was clear special agent Van Groot had only a mild interest in my parents’ overseas travels. While she was very dedicated to finding any evidence of penetration at the national labs, including LANL, inside she was skeptical any adult child of a lab worker would be the source of a security leak, or know of such behavior by a parent. But her Analysis paper had highlighted the need to interview such adult children, on the theory that young people used to freely chatting over social media like Facebook, Tinder, YouTube and so forth, might let slip details of parental actions that would indicate contact with a foreign agent. While she knew the national intelligence agencies of China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and other communist nations were sending in agents pretending to be tourists, she thought catching such agents would more likely occur as they sought industrial trade secrets by way of cash payments to cash-strapped employees. Her paper on industrial espionage worldwide had shown her that such penetration efforts were more common than traditional spying on weapons tech. Perhaps it would be good to reinforce her prejudices.
“They told me about the sights they saw,” I said calmly, enjoying the sense of how she felt a bit unnerved at my poker face. “Dad sometimes mentioned lunch meetings he had with some researchers who attended the same conference he was attending.” I paused, then continued. “I’m sure you can check out those locations based on per diem receipts he submitted.”
Her blond eyebrows lifted. “What about your mother? I gather she often attended an IT conference in the same city as your father’s physics conference.”
“I recall Mom talking about trading some Mexican food recipes with other ladies attending her IT conference. She sometimes talked about the programming languages she used in her work, as did the other women, I recall.”
Van Groot’s mind heard what I was saying, noted it, and moved on to the next item in her mental checklist. “Did your father or mother ever mention talking to researchers from the German Democratic Republic, the Socialist Republic of Czechoslovakia or the Swiss Confederation?”
Time to feed her biases. “Well, I do recall my Dad mentioning a chat with a Russian he met in Geneva who asked about the current generation of three dee printer machines being used at the lab.” I paused as I saw her face tense and her mental attention go focused. “I recall my Dad saying he told the guy about fused filament fabrication and electron beam freeform fabrication.” Time for emotion. I allowed some puzzlement to show on my face. “Not sure what those things are, except they relate to how three dee printers work. Dad mentioned he gave the man the names of some companies that made good fabricators.”
“Did your father mention the name of the Russian scientist he spoke with?”
I frowned. “Well, I only heard this comment during a visit home in my senior year at UNM. But I think Dad mentioned talking to a Yuri . . . no, the name was Uri Ostranov from Belarussia.”
Van Groot nodded. “Well, thank you, Mr. Webster. I’m sure your father was only trying to be helpful to another researcher. What about your mother? Did she talk IT with any Russian or Chinese ladies?”
I chose to show a wounded look. “Hey! This is my Mom we’re talking about! She was a really smart person and a great Mom! There is no way she would do anything illegal, or let any secrets from her job get mentioned outside of the lab.”
The Top level of Van Groot’s mind showed mild satisfaction at the made-up comments I’d just shared. She too was skeptical that any LANL researcher would repeat the mistakes of Wen Ho Lee. But she was very focused on doing her job, and on digging out details about me. She shrugged.
“Mr. Webster, I’m sure your mother was a great person. As I said, this is my work assignment. And my agency does understand that lab workers can be approached while overseas by people of questionable backgrounds. Just because they spoke with such a person does not mean they shared any Classified information.”
I could read that she mostly believed what she was saying. She believed that money and power motivated people and both factors were sure to lie behind any covert selling of weapons or intelligence products to a real spy. To my surprise her mind held info on the bank balances of my parents over the years, along with recent info on my own Wells Fargo accounts. Irritation filled my belly. But I’d had long practice at pretending to be normal and at not losing my temper.
“Good,” I said, putting some emotion into my voice. “Who else have you talked with? The adult children, I mean.”
Van Groot squinted, held silent a moment, then spoke. “I’ve talked with some of your fellow graduates from Los Alamos High School. Had chats with Gloria Chén, Joaquin Espinoza, Abbie Spahn, Lawrence Mabry, Josie Samuels, Laura Edwards and Mercedes Johnson, so far.” She paused, her mind shifting to a new attitude. “I believe you and Miss Johnson attended the high school prom together, correct?”
; Bits and pieces of her talk this morning with Mercedes flittered through her Top mind like snowflakes caught in a gale force wind. I felt sadness at Mercedes thinking I had drugged her while we made love at her parents’ house. That was her way of explaining the brief contact with cold concrete in the basement of my parents’ home. It gave me some understanding of why she had dropped me.
“Yes, we went to the prom together,” I said, choosing a slow, casual tone. “She didn’t return my phone calls afterward. I heard she was dating a guy from the football team. Only saw her at graduation. That was five years ago. Don’t know anything about her now.”
Van Groot’s mind held strong curiosity over my relationship with Mercedes. As I scanned it I saw she had pressured Mercedes into admitting to the love-making we’d done. The love play had been clear earlier, but not how this agent woman had pressured Mercedes. Though I had no feelings now for Mercedes, I felt deep anger at the harassment she’d undergone, all due to her dating me. And to being the child of a lab employee.
Her eyebrows lifted. “Oh? You both attended UNM in Albuquerque, yet you never made any effort to renew your relationship?”
Superpowers 1: Superguy Page 14
