by Andrew Mayne
While in some fantasy world I have the time to flood their entire fire-suppression system with my glow catalyst and then engineer a superhack to cause a city-wide blackout, I have to think of a plan that’s a little more pedestrian.
The answer to my problem comes to me as I glance at one of the many Amazon Prime shipping boxes threatening to displace me from my hotel room like Tribbles.
I cut the bottom off a medium-size box and then tape it back on like a door, mounting my UV light inside the box.
This way I can open the flap and press it flat against any suspect surface and have a peek.
Also, I realize, given Amazon’s use of independent delivery contractors, I could probably pass myself off as one by carrying the box. I hastily make a label addressed to Thompson Consulting on the twentieth floor of the building.
I give myself one last look in the mirror to make sure nothing screams computational biologist masquerading as delivery man who is secretly releasing an untested genetically modified microbe into the general populace.
When I pull up at 33 Peachtree, cars still pass in and out of the underground garage, but it’s mostly empty.
The entry gate spits out a ticket, and I feel a little pride over the fact that it looks a lot like the one I made—except you can read the bar code on this one without having to resort to cryptographic measures.
I find a spot close enough to the lobby elevators, which I have to resist testing. If security’s watching, I don’t want to get kicked out or arrested before I get to check the main elevators.
My anxiety starts to grow as I step inside and press the button for the lobby. I didn’t scope the place out and have no idea if the entrance is being watched or if I’ll need to sign in.
When the doors open, I find myself staring down the hall and right into the eyes of a security guard sitting at a desk.
There are two elevators to the left and two to the right, but presently his attention is on me. I wave the box in the air like it’s some kind of universal multipass.
“Do you know what floor you’re going to?” he asks.
I stutter for a second, then remember to read the label, which adds a degree of authenticity to my bumbling. “Uh, twenty.”
“Take either one on your left,” he tells me.
“Uh, thanks,” I reply with all the suaveness of a thirteen-year-old about to sneak into an R-rated movie.
I stand in front of the brass-colored doors, waiting for them to open. The floor numbers go from eleven to twenty—which means that after I’ve looked in both upper-floor elevators, I’ll have to take a trip down a flight of stairs to catch the ones that service the first ten floors of the building.
“You need to press the button,” the security guard shouts across the foyer to me.
“Um, right.” I press the button and, a moment later, the doors open.
I step inside, press “20,” and breathe a sigh of relief. As the elevator ascends, I remember that I have something I’m supposed to be doing here. I already wiped and bleached my hands in the car to make sure I didn’t carry any of the strains into the building, so at the very least, I don’t need to worry about contaminating the buttons myself. I take the bottle of activator from my pocket, spray the buttons, then step out into the hallway. In case the helpful guard is watching me on a security camera, I make a show of walking all the way down to Thompson Consulting, then turn back around.
I try not to glance around for security cameras. One of the tricks of urban camouflage is that if you look sufficiently boring, people will soon get tired of looking at you.
I go to the other elevator bank, press the “Down” button, and, when the doors open, reach my arm inside and spray its buttons as well.
I have a thought as I do this: What if the guard is watching through a camera inside the elevator? Could I pass the odd behavior off as being the actions of an eccentric germophobe?
Better not to find out.
I press the button for the eleventh floor, step back out, and call my original elevator.
By the time it arrives, I already have my UV light on and the box’s bottom flap open. I have to be quick if I’m going to check all four elevators.
As soon as I enter, I kneel, press the box against the buttons, and congratulate myself for not impulsively touching a button, causing it to illuminate, and ruining my little darkroom.
When I peer inside my box, I see only the purple light of my UV lamp. No telltale smudges.
Of course, one problem looming in the back of my mind is that my suspect may have stepped into the elevator and told someone else what floor to press, leaving no trace.
I send the elevator to the eleventh and step back outside.
While I wait for the other lift, I try to figure out how much time I have before the guard notices I haven’t come back down. Will he call the cops or come get me himself?
Either scenario is acceptable if I get my data. I’m not really doing anything illegal—assuming they’re not too brushed up on microbiology or the Nuremberg Charter.
Stepping back into the second elevator I sprayed, I kneel and place my box over the buttons.
I’m greeted by a glowing smudge.
Hello, my little friends.
Miss me?
All . . . two colonies?
He pressed two buttons—“14” and “17.” Perhaps he was kind enough to press the floor for another person. What a guy.
That also means I have two floors to check—each with ten to fifteen office doors.
The thrill of the hunt sends my adrenaline spiking, and the fear of discovery twists my guts as I press the button for floor seventeen.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
SPEED ROUND
Here’s the plan, I tell myself in the five-second trip from the twentieth floor to the seventeenth: I’m going to speed walk through the hallway and spray every door handle as I pass, then double back and use my camera obscura to peer at each door handle as quickly as possible. If there are thirty knobs total and moving from each one to the next takes ten seconds, that means a maximum time spent on this floor of just under five minutes.
If I’m lucky, I’ll see my microbes on the first few attempts—but I understand mathematics well enough to know I’m just as likely to spot them in the last group, long after somebody has reported the kook on the seventeenth floor trying to break into offices with an Amazon box.
This idea sounded so much better in my hotel room.
The elevator doors open, and I zigzag through the hallway, watching over my shoulder, spraying doorknobs, and not paying attention to what the plaques by the offices say.
I can always look that up in the directory later. Speed is what I need right now.
I make it to the end of the left side with my spray bottle and realize that, instead of wandering back and forth across the hallway like a drunken sailor, I could simply pass close as I head to the end of the hall and then hug the other wall on my way back.
There’s a reason the DIA recruited me for an office job and not fieldwork.
As I pass the elevator bank and start spraying the other knobs, I hear the ding of an elevator arriving on this floor and freeze.
A woman carrying a large pizza box emerges, sees me, smiles, and heads down the hall. I watch her stop at a door and realize she needs to grab her keys.
“Let me help you,” I call to her as I jog toward her office.
I place my faux box under one arm and take her pizza in the other.
As she searches her purse for keys, she points to my box. “What’s that?”
I’m about to point out that they don’t tell me what’s in the deliveries. Then I look down and realize the flap is open and my box is glowing purple on the inside like a gay disco for mice.
“A . . . science experiment,” I reply.
From the look she gives me, I’d have been better off with the mice explanation.
She puts a foot in her door, takes her food, and all but calls me a weirdo nerd with her
facial expression. “Have fun.”
As soon as the door closes, I kneel and box the knob to see if she’s in league with the Toy Man.
It’s clean, but I hope she enjoys the threonine on her pepperoni—it’ll taste, well, not that special.
I move to the next door, shadow the knob, and peek in at it: nothing. Same with the next eight.
My pulse is starting to race at the thought that she’s going to call security, but I keep going. I’m not calling the game until they throw me out or arrest me.
As I reach the end of the hallway, I try to figure out the traveling salesman problem of hitting all the doors on fourteen as quickly as possible. I then wonder what I’ll do if his fingerprints don’t show up anywhere, because someone opened the door for him. Damn you, southern hospitality.
One step at a time, Theo. I can always park near the garage elevators and wait to see if he shows up.
I could even plant a camera in the main elevators and aim it at the keypad.
I have options, is what I tell myself. No glowing smudge isn’t the end of the world—well, not for me.
What’s killing me is the likelihood that the Toy Man has already selected his victim and is creating an opportunity to snatch him off the street.
The emergence of Ordavo Sims has made me suspect that he may have been some kind of accomplice to the Toy Man. Possibly he used bolt cutters to steal Christopher Bostrom’s bicycle so it would be easier to give the boy a ride home—not just as a matter of convenience. I could see how a distraught boy upset that his bicycle had been stolen would be emotionally vulnerable and easy prey for a man who offered him a new one if he got into his car.
The thought of this has me so worked up that I check a door, dismiss it, and start back down the hallway before realizing that I just looked at a glowing smudge.
I rush back to the door, kneel again, and squint into my box.
There’s glowing bacteria smeared all over the door.
The Toy Man walked through this door.
I snap a photo with my iPhone. And thanks to the resiliency of the suspension agent the bacteria are coated in, I get a partial fingerprint.
He was here just a few hours ago . . .
My blood turns to ice water.
Right here . . .
He touched this door.
Suddenly, the Toy Man is more than a phantom image. He’s a real man who walks the same plane of existence as I do.
I step back to see what office he stepped into. Was it his? Did he just visit here? What was the story?
When I read the letters on the door, I’m almost equally startled by the sound of someone answering a phone on the inside. Never have a few simple words made my heart skip like these.
I feel fucking numb.
The plaque on the door says: DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY.
CHAPTER FIFTY
SAFE SPACE
There could be a thousand reasons why he entered this office. None puts me at ease. The mere thought that this evil man could comfortably walk through this doorway, while, on the other side of the country, law-enforcement agents are trying to piece together his crimes, is a frightening notion.
Compounding my confusion is this is a satellite office, not the main DHS center in Atlanta. This is the kind of place where they put divisions when they run out of space or need to keep operations separate. The question is: What operations?
My hand presses the button next to the door before my brain can decide if that’s a prudent move or not.
What if he answers?
“May I help you?” says a man’s voice over an intercom.
I look up and see a small camera facing down on me. Was someone watching when I examined the doorknob with my box? Will I have to answer some awkward questions if they allow me to step inside?
I pull my DIA contractor ID from my pocket and flash it at the camera. “Hello . . . I had a question about someone who may work here.”
There’s a buzz, and the door unlocks. “Come right in, Dr. Cray.”
Their camera has an image recognition system that read my badge in a fraction of a second. Now they not only have my name—they also know everything about me.
I grasp the doorknob—the same doorknob he touched—and step inside.
The office is small. The reception counter nearly spans the room in front of glass doors. To the right of it stands an ordinary, closed door, which I’m guessing connects to another office suite. That would suggest that the DHS office has another, unmarked hallway entrance next door.
Behind the counter, a young white man in a white shirt and tie is sitting at a computer. There’s a half-eaten Subway sandwich by his keyboard.
“How might I assist you?” he asks cordially. “Most everyone has gone home for the night.”
I stare at the glass doors behind him and read the titles.
JACK MILLER: ASSISTANT DEPUTY—GLOBAL AFFAIRS
KIM DUNN: GLOBAL AFFAIRS LIAISON
CARTER VALCHEK: GLOBAL COMMUNICATIONS
These are spooks, and the repetition of the word global tells me that they’re not focused internally. Instead, they are intelligence-agency workers who talk to other government spooks in foreign countries. They’re covert counterterrorism. Covert, because there’s no mention of terrorism or narcotics.
The only reason the door was opened for me was because of my DIA card. Otherwise, I would have been told to go to the main office. I’m certain of it.
I try to think up a convincing lie that won’t get me ensnared in my own blundering. “I was at the other office . . . they sent me here.” I pull a print of the spy-cam image from my pocket, not the better, 3-D–reconstructed one. “One of my coworkers was injured in a hit-and-run. We’re trying to find witnesses. She said she spoke to this man right before and he might be able to back up her testimony.”
The receptionist stares at the photograph, glances at me for a fleeting instant, then returns to the picture. He shakes his head weakly—an unconscious tic when you’re lying.
“He doesn’t work here?”
He shakes his head more emphatically—what you do when you have something truthful to agree upon. “No. He doesn’t work here.”
I could ask him to check the camera logs, but that would be a security violation, and there’s no way he’s going to contradict himself on his lie.
The Toy Man was here. He might not work here, but he had important enough reasons for this man to lie to me.
“So this isn’t a DIA matter?” he asks, realizing that he shouldn’t have let me inside.
“I can’t really say,” I reply, leaving him to his own suspicions.
“Well, I can ask around. Is there a number where I can have somebody reach you? And would you like to leave the photograph?”
While I’m 99 percent certain this man knows the Toy Man, I’m fairly positive he has no idea what he truly is. If by leaving the photo and my burner’s number I can place more suspicion on the suspect, then all the better.
I write the number down and slide it over to the receptionist. “Any help would make a difference.” Then I add, trying to sound ominous, “We need to ask him some questions about Los Angeles.”
The receptionist takes the photograph and sets it on the counter, not bothering to read the number or look at the image again. “I’ll look into it,” he says.
I thank him and head back into the hallway. If there weren’t a camera above the entrance, I’d stoop to putting my ear against the door to try to hear whom he calls to tell about my visit.
The walk back to my car is filled with questions and hypothetical scenarios.
Why does the Toy Man have business with DHS?
Is he an informant of some kind? Informing on whom? About what?
There’s a slim chance I can find out at least part of who he is. I’d avoided using it because the number of false positives is immense, but now that I have another data point, I might be able to filter through a lot of them and get some usable answers.
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br /> CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
INSECURITY
The intelligence world includes many different categories of information, ranging from public information, such as phone directories, to top-secret gathered intelligence, like the conversations people in those phone directories are having.
As a contractor to the DIA via OpenSkyAI, I’m extremely limited in what I have access to. I’m given briefings that are relevant to the operation I’m asked to function in as an observer, and sometimes I even get answers to questions that they deem relevant.
Actual DIA agents like Birkett have access to a wider amount of information through an intelligence portal, but even that comes with restrictions and safeguards. Anything she looks up is logged. If she decided to see if an ex-boyfriend had been using another cell phone—information that is probably stored on some server in a basement in Virginia—it would raise red flags and possibly tag her with a felony, assuming anyone wanted to make the case.
But even work-related research can be challenging. I’ve asked her multiple times to get a piece of intel, only to be told that higher-ups deemed it nonessential, or worse, to discover that the info’s flat-out wrong or outdated.
While I’m convinced that we need to be vigilant to protect our secrets, there’s some solace in realizing that most of what the government knows about you is buried under miles of bureaucracy. There’s a reason that, so many times after something bad happens, we learn that some other intelligence agency had been sitting on a report and did nothing about it. They never even knew what they had.
Increasingly, one of the most reliable sources of intelligence for the DIA—and one I have no trouble getting access to—is private intelligence sold to corporations and investment firms.
If I contacted the CIA and asked if the Chengdu Aircraft Industry Group was building a new J-20 fighter in a defunct industrial park five hundred miles west of Sichuan, I’d get a terse rebuke about classified intelligence.
