by James T Wood
“We’re here until eight,” Bill said.
“I know a great bar down the street,” Gary added.
“Aw,” Anka literally pouted. It was both arousing and sickening all at the same time. “I’m so sorry. I have to be gone before then. Next time, for sure though.”
“Yeah.” Bill and Gary said in unison.
Anka walked off, but I felt the need to explain my presence behind her. Bill and Gary looked at me with disdain.
“What?” Bill asked.
“Sorry to bother you, but can you tell me where the restroom is? I’m here for an interview and I—”
“I don’t care why you need to pee. It’s down that way.” Gary pointed in the direction that Anka had walked away.
“Great, thanks.” I waved cheerily, but they just settled back in to their security monitor watching. Maybe they were hoping to catch another glimpse of Anka.
I caught up to her at the elevators where she was waiting impatiently.
“What the hell, man? I thought I told you not to say anything.”
“You did, but I felt awkward standing close enough to hear them but not being with you. I figured that would look suspicious. So I just asked them where the bathroom is to give an excuse for why I was listening in on your conversation with them.”
“Oh. That’s actually a really good point.”
“Thanks. Now what, agent Fez?”
“With the hat names again?” she sighed, “We go up to the lab level. Come on.”
We called an elevator and ascended to the lab floor. When we got up there we found all the lights off and the doors closed. The elevators let out into a small vestibule surrounded by glass doors with electronic locks. We walked up to the one for Dr. Grosskopf’s lab and Anka pressed the button.
“Please state your name,” an electronic voice prompted me.
“Gary Lewis.”
“Name not found. Please repeat your name more clearly.”
Anka was busy smacking my shoulder franticly and miming some sort of flipping, crossing action. I tried to figure out what went wrong when I figured out that I’d switched the first and last names. The weird thing was that I’d repeated the first name in Gary’s voice and the last name in Bill’s
“Gary Chang.”
“Access granted.”
Anka stepped through the door and pulled it shut behind her. She mimed pressing the button, so I did.
“Please state your name.”
“Bill Lewis.”
“Access granted.”
I opened the door and we both went inside the lab. I moved to flip on a light switch, but Anka waved me off and whispered to me.
“No, the lights might attract some attention. We need to get in and out without anyone knowing or my boss will start hunting us again.”
“Oh, right, the killer-spy-boss thing. So, where are the files we need?”
“I think they’re in Grosskopf’s office. I never got in there before. He always kept it locked up when I was here and he never let me in when he wasn’t around.”
“If they’re locked up, how will that help us?”
“Hey, I’m a trained super-secret spy. What’s a lock to me?”
She walked up to the door, tried the handle and nodded. Then she pulled out a set of lock picks from her back pocket and started to work on the door. I was surprised that she could conceal anything in her back pocket that I wouldn’t have noticed, for all the detailed examination I’d been doing. In a moment the door clicked and she pushed it open.
“Look for anything that might give us a lead on what Grosskopf was planning.”
“Uh…right. Any tips on what that might look like?”
“I really don’t know for sure. Hopefully you’ll know it when you see it.”
“How about you go through the files and I look on the computer?”
“Yeah, I guess that could work too. But how will you get onto the computer.”
“Can’t a guy keep some of his secrets?”
“No. No you can’t.”
“Oh, well, I’m going to boot into Safe Mode. That should give me a chance to look at the files without having to know Grosskopf’s password.”
“Okay then.”
I went to work booting the computer into Safe Mode. It still surprises me that people don’t think to change the administrator password. But in this case I wasn’t mad. I got in and found several folders with odd, numeric labels. I opened up one at random and found dozens of files inside with the MNA extension. I’ve never seen that file type before. I tried to open one but it only launched a text editor and showed the hex code. I’m nowhere near good enough to read raw hex code. I figured this wasn’t worth mentioning to Anka and kept looking.
In another folder I found some Word documents with labels like “Subject 1” that all looked creepy and helpful. I opened several and found nothing really useful, just a name, date and the word “deceased” which was ominous. Finally I came across a file called “Case Notes.” Inside were the doctor’s encoded notes about all the cases. He used some sort of shorthand that didn’t make sense to me, but I took pictures of every page in the document so we could look at them later.
I also found a spreadsheet with what appeared to be account numbers and balances. Dr. Grosskopf seemed to be doing quite well for himself. I grabbed shots of those too. The rest of the files were either the MNA junk or the operating system files. The good doctor kept a fairly clean computer, which made me suspect that he stored most of his information elsewhere. No one has such a tidy file system if they’ve been using a computer for very long.
Exfiltration
“Alright, let’s go,” Anka abruptly closed a file cabinet and turned to me.
“You have something?”
“Sort of. I have enough to know that what we need isn’t here. There are a few files here, but most of them are dummy files planted to look authentic.”
“So now what?”
“Now we get out of here before we’re caught.”
“Don’t you know you’re not supposed to jinx it?”
“What?”
“You said something about it and now you’ve probably jinxed it. It’s like when the sports announcer talks about how long it’s been since a guy has missed a field goal or thrown an interception. He’s bound to screw up on the next play.”
“That’s crazy. Not only is it crazy, it’s illogical, superstitious and nonsensical. I can’t believe that you, as an adult, would go around living your life under the threat of the ‘jinx’ as if someone just saying something could—”
The alarm sounded and all the emergency lights came on.
“Seriously?”
I decided to not answer her. I just got up, turned off the computer and headed out toward the vestibule. Anka followed after closing up the office and re-locking the door.
“Do you think we can take the elevators down?” I asked.
“It’s not a good idea, they can be waiting for us when we get to our floor. We should take the stairs.”
I thought about it for a minute. It felt like something was eluding me. We walked to the security door and I said the names to let us out. The door sealed behind us. Without asking I went over and pressed the elevator call button.
“What the hell?”
I didn’t respond. Within a second the elevator we’d ridden up opened.
“Get in.”
“No, we’ll be trapped.”
“Not if we go up.”
I stepped out and grabbed Anka’s arm to pull her in. As I yanked her inside I heard the ‘ding’ of another elevator arriving. Frantically I stabbed the close button and then pressed the button for the top floor. Just as the doors were sliding shut I saw Gary Chang walking toward the door of the vestibule.
“So how are we going to get out now, genius?”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Anka. Let’s not forget that I just saved you from getting caught.”
“You did. Now what?”
“Great, that’s only six hours away. We’ll have a ton of fun in the elevator for six hours.”
“Wow, with the sarcasm. Or you could come up with a better idea instead of just complaining about mine.”
Anka glared at me for a moment and finally sighed. She made a habit of sighing, it seemed. When the elevator arrived at the top floor, we found a similar vestibule with security doors. I didn’t want to hang out in the open where security cameras might be tracking us though. I hit all the floor buttons in the elevator and stepped out. I led us over to the stairwell door and walked inside.
“Your idea about the stairs isn’t bad. I just think that running out is a good way to get us caught, or at least shot at.”
“So now we wait in the stairs?”
“No, we can head down. We just don’t need to run now. We can take our time. If Bill and Gary don’t find anything soon, they’ll figure it was a false alarm and ignore it.”
“You’re assuming that they didn’t trigger the alarm because they saw us on the security cameras.”
“Did you see any cameras in Grosskopf’s office?”
“No, actually, I didn’t.”
“Yeah, neither did I. It looks like they have cameras in the vestibules and those cycle through the floors every so often. I was watching the screens as you were showing your boobs to the guards. They can’t see all the floors at once, just each floor every thirty-seconds to a minute.”
“I was not showing them my boobs.”
“Boobs, cleavage, whatever. You shake what your momma gave you.”
Apparently that wasn’t the right thing to say. She pushed past me on the stairs and started walking down. I followed, but I had to hurry to keep up. When we got to the bottom she slowly pushed open the door and peeked around.
“Anything?”
Anka just glared at me over her shoulder in a silent command. She was still angry about the ‘boob’ comment, it seemed. Inch-by-inch she opened the door and then slid out. I followed a few steps behind, remembering that no one had seen us as together. The whole trip across the lobby my heart pounded. I knew we’d be caught and then bad things would happen to us. Just as Anka got to the door I heard a voice from behind us.
“Ma’am. Ma’am please wait.”
We both froze for a moment. But something unstuck me and I kept walking past Anka on the way out the door. I looked back and she nodded her approval, so I kept walking. As I stepped outside I saw Bill Lewis step up to Anka and start talking. I walked out and stepped around the corner, just out of sight of the door.
What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t really take on the OHSU security team, but I couldn’t leave Anka behind either. Without her I would have no idea of where to go or how to stay alive. I realized at that moment that I needed her far more than she needed me right now. I was a job to her, she was life to me.
I’d just made up my mind to go back and fight off Bill and Gary when Anka stepped around the corner smiling.
“What happened? Did you have to kill him?”
“What? No. He just wanted to ask me out on a date.”
“Oh. So what did you say?”
“I said ‘yes’ of course.”
“You actually like him?”
“No,” she started walking back down the hill so I kept pace, “It’s the rule of flirting. You never say ‘no’ so they always feel like they have a chance. I’m going to stand him up, of course, but I had to let him think we were going on a date so he’d be happy to let me leave.”
“Where do you get your flirting rules?”
“From my training. There was a whole section on flirting, seduction and psychological manipulation techniques. I spent most of my time working on the flirting stuff since I’ve got the, um, natural talent for it.”
“You mean boobs?”
“Yeah, I suppose I do,” she blushed.
“So, back at Powell’s, you were just doing what you were trained to do.”
Her blush deepened and she avoided looking at me.
“Well? Were you just employing psychological manipulation techniques on me?”
“Yes. I’m sorry.”
“Well, it seemed to work. I’ve been following you around like a puppy ever since then. I suppose you can go tell your teacher that you were trained well.”
“Corey, it’s not—”
“It’s not what? I’m not your job to do? This isn’t something you’ll forget about as soon as you clock off and go home? Do you have a boyfriend or a husband back at home? Do they know what you do for a living?”
“Whoa, calm down. You know that I can’t just ‘clock off’ right? That drone probably came from my boss and that means he wants me dead just as much as he wants you dead. As for what I have back home…well, I don’t have anything. Part of the selection process my boss uses is to find people with no family ties, no strong connection and almost no history.
“My parents died when I was twelve. After that I lived with my grandma, but when I went to college she started losing her mind. She’s in a home now, with Alzheimer’s. So I don’t have anyone else. No husband, no boyfriend. I went straight from college to this job. I’ve been in training since then and now this is my first mission. When do you think I’d have time to make a life?”
I walked in silence for a few moments before saying, “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”
Hard Target
After several minutes of listening to our shoes hit the ground Anka stopped and turned to me.
“You know what? You’re right.”
“I am?”
“You are.”
“About what?”
“About having a life and learning to be my own person. Did you know that I’ve never bought myself clothes as an adult?”
“What?”
“No, it’s true. As soon as I graduated college and I started this job my boss started giving me clothes to wear.”
“Didn’t you think that was a bit…creepy?”
“I don’t know what I thought. I was happy to have a job, so I just took it all in stride.”
“Weird.”
“I know. But that’s going to change right now. Let’s go shopping.”
“Oh, okay. I usually like to follow up my espionage with some scrapbooking, but shopping will work too.”
Anka punched me in the ribs, but then grabbed my arm as I tried to protect myself. With arms linked we walked on down the hill.
“So, where do I go shopping?”
“Well, I usually go to Goodwill or something like that.”
“I could get a lot of things there, but I don’t really want a lot of things. I want something nice. I want something just for me because I want it.”
“We could go to the Buffalo Exchange.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s like Goodwill, but the clothes are nicer. People sell their stuff instead of donating it. They have standards for what they’ll take.”
“Yeah, that could work. I don’t know, I just want to shop like a real person for once. Does that make sense?”
“Not really, but I pretty much hate shopping. We could go to Nordstrom. They have a piano player that serenades the shoppers and a makeup counter and all that stuff. Nothing feels more like shopping than walking in to Nordstrom.”
“That sounds perfect.”
“And, while you’re trying on dresses or whatever I can go play some more hacky sack.”
“No you will not.”
“Uh, why?”
“We scammed them. You can’t go back to the people you’ve scammed. It’s the cardinal rule of con-jobs.”
“But what if I liked it?”
Anka squeezed my arm
and smiled up at me.
“Nope. Not this time. Maybe I’ll buy you a nice, new hacky sack. Would that make you happy?”
“Ha. Ha.”
She squeezed my arm again. I was getting extra confused by all of this. My experience with women hadn’t really prepared me for something like this. Usually the conversation revolved around getting drinks, or not. Then we might talk about hanging out more, or not. We might listen to music, or not. If I was really lucky we’d get some food, or not.
I didn’t have great luck with women for the most part. They were like animals in the zoo to me, I could look at them from afar, but I was never allowed to approach the really cool ones. My contact was relegated to the petting zoo goats and lasted about as long as I could keep putting quarters into the food dispenser.
Now I had a tigress on my arm.
When we got to Nordstrom, Anka didn’t want to go in right away. We walked around the building looking at the mannequins in the windows. She examined every outfit as if they were rare gems. I tried to see what she saw, but it all looked the same to me. Eventually we went inside and she found the women’s clothing section. A salesperson stepped up and offered some help. I, almost instinctively, notified her that we were just looking, but Anka stopped her before she turned away.
“No, I need help. I want a new outfit, but I’m not sure what it is.”
“Ah,” the thin, mid-forties woman with a tight bun and navy blue pant-suit said, “I think I can help you with that. My name’s Stacy.”
“Hi, Stacy. Thank you, I really need some help.”
Anka dropped my arm and walked off with Stacy. I trailed along behind thinking of all the forlorn men in malls that were relegated to the same role. My only comfort was that Anka didn’t have a purse to make me carry. The two ladies talked as I wandered behind them. I was actually happy when they’d collected enough clothes to justify a trip to the fitting room. I could park myself in a chair and just wait.
I pulled out my phone and looked back through the pictures from our raid. Nothing made any sense to me. I couldn’t crack the code and the MNA files were still enigmatic. I searched for the file type and came up with nothing. The only real result stated that it was an unregistered file type with no known programs that run it. Then I started searching for Grosskopf and brain research. I found a lot of recent articles about his arrest, but when I searched prior to that, there was almost nothing about him. No Facebook page, no graduation record, no publications, no journal articles, there was just nothing.
