The Cardinal Rule

by C. E. Murphy

  Even half-asleep, Alisha severed that line of thought as efficiently as a surgeon might cut through muscle, removing its emotional content. Frank Reichart was, at the most, nothing more than a job to her. Once that had been different, but not now. And if she needed a reminder of why, a Reichart-instigated compromise followed by a cliff dive did the trick nicely. Alisha shook her head and let the memory go.

  Compartmentalization: she'd been taught to put her emotions in one tidy package, locked away where they couldn't interfere with the job; the job and what needed to be done in another neat analytical package, far away from sentiment and passion.

  Alisha loathed it. Slicing up emotion, tucking it away from the guts and punches of her daily life, of the job, felt like denying her own humanity. Not that she would ever admit that to Greg, or any of the Agency psychoanalysts. Maintaining emotional distance from her job and the people she encountered was critical, in their eyes.

  So she'd found a way around it.

  She called the illegal journals she wrote out in messy cursive on hand-made paper her Strongbox Chronicles. She used fountain pens that blotched and stained her fingers when she wrote, as if the old-fashioned pens and the tediously made paper grounded her, made everything more real, than smoother, more modern tools would. Those pages held her fears and her frustrations, the things that had gone wrong and right with each mission, full of the passion that drove her to do the job she did. They were a dangerous luxury; any one of them, found by the wrong person, could compromise not just Alisha, but sometimes dozens of other agents and assets.

  So she never wrote them until the mission was over, usually taking one long night to scrawl out all the emotion that an official report couldn't afford to have. In the morning, when the notes were finished, she would find a bank and open a safety deposit box under her current alias. She'd left dozens of chronicles around the world that way, never going back for them. They felt like leaving traces of the truth behind, a promise to herself that her clandestine life had left at least one mark that someday might be discovered and understood.

  Counter to the point of being a spy, perhaps, but she did it anyway.

  Greg drew in a sharp breath, audible beneath the sound of the chopper blades. Alisha roused herself from introspective thoughts, coming fully awake with concern. "Greg?"

  "You won't be going back to Langley."

  Which meant the new mission was important, and immediate. Alisha sat back, shoulders relaxing. The opportunity for action, the chance to not have to think, was always better than hours spent cooped up on a plane replaying the last mission. Alisha doubted everyone found the prospect of imminent danger to be relaxing, but for her a new mission was always a chance to shed the skin of daily life. It was as freeing as the jump off the cliff, in its own way. "What's the job?"

  "You're going into a Kazakhstani base to cozy up to an American scientist."

  Alisha felt a little core of excitement build in her stomach, spreading out through her body to warm her in a way the dry clothes couldn't. "What's my cover?"

  "You're a potential buyer for the project he's working on. Your name is Elisa Moon. The details are in the mission brief." He handed her the folder he'd kept at his side.

  Alisha flipped it open, glancing at Greg before looking at the file. "And what's his name?"

  "Brandon." Greg fell silent a moment before inhaling deeply. "Brandon Parker."

  Alisha's chin came up, a sharp action that betrayed her surprise. "Your son?"

  Chapter 2

  Greg's mouth thinned as he looked away. Alisha closed the briefing folder and sat a few moments, looking out the window as she absorbed Greg's news. The early morning sunlight had lost dawn's soft edge and glared across the ocean below, making sharp lines of the few clouds on the horizon, like a child's sketch. Brandon himself had been an artist; she'd seen an old, solitary drawing of him on Greg's desk, a picture of a light-eyed young man with an air of impatient intelligence about him. The drawing was labeled at the bottom: B., self-portrait at 19, with the scrawl of his signature beside it. Alisha had often wondered how idealized the drawing was: in it, Brandon Parker was extremely attractive, features more angular than his father's, even if he was still a little baby-faced. There was less babyish about his broad-shouldered swimmer's build. She might have drawn herself that way, as if seen through a fun-house mirror that showed only the most flattering reflections.

  "I thought you were estranged," she said carefully. "You told me a long time ago that you and he didn't speak."

  Greg had said more than that, though it seemed neither appropriate nor necessary to remind him of that. He'd called Brandon arrogant and self-centered, with no eye for the bigger picture. Naturally, Alisha had broken a rule or two and checked the CIA's files on Brandon Parker.

  The aura of intelligence given by his portrait barely touched on the man's potential, according to his file. He understood mathematics as instinctively as breathing. At nine—with the comparatively pathetic equipment available to him twenty years earlier—he'd hacked into his own father's CIA file and discovered the truth about what his dad did for a living. The Agency had chosen to develop the boy's skills, and he'd been groomed since childhood to become a spy.

  But Brandon Parker had other ideas about what to do with his life. Not long after Alisha had been recruited—well before there was a chance she might ever meet him—Brandon had...defected.

  Defect had an ugly enough ring to it that Alisha shied away from the word, even in her own thoughts. He hadn't defected, really. He hadn't gone to work for another intelligence agency. Like Reichart, he'd become a freelancer, working for the highest bidder. When Alisha had read his file, it suggested his latest employer was having him work on a new computer chip—a piece of technology that literally encoded atoms, teleporting data from one place to another in an instantaneous transport. Called quantum computing, it had sounded like science fiction to her, until a news report mentioned the breakthrough technology and the anticipated price it would go for. If Brandon Parker was bringing in even a cut of the deal, he was a very wealthy man.

  But that had been years ago. Parker's trail had gone cold. His latest project, if there was one, was so secret that no one had been able to find him or his sponsors.

  Until, it appeared, now. Alisha leaned forward, touching Greg's forearm as the copter banked and brought the hazy British coast into view. "Greg?"

  Greg exhaled and let emotion go: when he turned back to Alisha, his expression was the familiar careworn smile that she'd come to know over her career in the Agency. The smile that masked whatever went on beneath, and always had. "You're right, we don't speak. I haven't talked to him in years. Long enough that I doubt he knows about you. He never had much interest in my work, even when we were both involved in the Agency. His focus was always the laboratory. It's imperative, Ali, that he doesn't know you're working for me."

  "It's imperative," she pointed out dryly, "that nobody knows I'm CIA. Even on my worst day, I don't think I'd just happen to let it slip that Gregory Parker happened to be my handler. I mean, really, Greg. It would lack subtlety. But if you're concerned about it, why send me?"

  Greg's expression tightened minutely. "You were recommended."

  The tone sparked Alisha's curiosity, but left no room for further questioning. She studied her handler for a moment, then nodded. "All right. What's he working on?"

  "A piece of new military technology. We think it's a rudimentary artificial intelligence, probably an AI that could potentially be sent into battle in lieu of human beings."

  "We have the Talon robots already." Alisha pressed her lips together. "But those are remote control battle machines. I didn't think real AI was more than theoretically possible." She waved his response off before he spoke. "But that's why you say rudimentary, I assume."

  Greg closed his computer most of the way, tapping a finger twice on its surface. "Our own military developers haven't gotten all that far with AIs, despite having extensive development bu
dgets. Brandon is brilliant, but we think we're fairly safe in assuming his project isn't too much more sophisticated than our own."

  Alisha twisted her hair again. Another line of water dribbled out of thick curls. Unmatting them later would take forever. "I thought his trail had gone cold. Where did we get the intel on this project?"

  "My orders came from above." Which meant that the source was sufficiently confidential that not even he knew who'd brought it in. Alisha was accustomed to not always knowing who or what prompted her missions. It was part of the job, which didn't make it rankle any less. She wondered if Greg, privy to a higher level of security, found it as frustrating to be in the dark as she often did. There was no sign of it in his voice, but then, there wouldn't be.

  "We went into the observatory to corroborate the information Director Boyer had been given." Greg opened the screen again, turning the computer to face Alisha. Satellite photos filled the screen, zooming in on pictures of a military complex. Greg keyed forward, flipping through more pictures. Individuals became visible, faces Alisha didn't recognize, until Greg pulled up a third screen.

  Brandon Parker had aged from a college-polished youth into a more rugged outdoorsman. Stubble graced his chin and his cheekbones were gaunter, but he'd filled out, and the drab, loose-fitting paramilitary colors he wore couldn't disguise the strength in the lines of his body. Alisha studied the photos a few moments before glancing up at Greg.

  "I thought the St. Abbs observatory took pictures of outer space, not surveillance photos on the planet's surface."

  Greg made a face. "It's been an MI-6 installation since it was opened in 1972. They do a lot of real astronomy to keep their cover, of course, but…."

  Alisha shook her head, amused, but her smile faded almost instantly. "I thought MI-6 was on our side, Greg. Why didn't we just ask for the photos?"

  Greg's good humor fled as well. "Because the British government still has obligations to the European Union that may not be in our best interests. My superiors—our superiors," he emphasized, "would prefer it if we were able to contain Brandon and his latest project without any outside interference."

  "I don't like it."

  A faint, sardonic smile twitched Greg's lips. "That doesn't matter."

  Alisha spread her hands. "I know. I'd just rather have it out in the open than let it fester." She shrugged, letting her concerns pass from her with the motion. It didn't matter; she would do her job and do it well, but dillydallying around the truth did no one any good.

  "I appreciate your candor."

  "Do you?" Alisha asked. He'd said the words before and she'd accepted them at face value, but curiosity suddenly caught her and she watched his expression for the answer.

  It came with a wash of surprise that lit Greg's blue eyes to pale gray. "Actually, yes, I do. I'd rather work with an agent who put her opinions on the line than kept them hidden. If you've got a bad feeling about something, I'd be irresponsible to not listen." He paused. "Do you have a bad feeling about this?"

  "No." Alisha spoke without taking a moment to think, then shook her head. There was no itch along her spine, no flat taste of copper at the back of her throat that told her something was genuinely wrong with the situation. A trained espionage agent wasn't supposed to rely on hunches and gut feelings, only cold hard facts. She had never believed it, and doubted most of her superiors did either. Intuition was as much part of the job as carrying a gun. "I just don't like going behind MI-6's back. I appreciate the whys, I just don't like it. It's fine."

  "Good. The base is in Kazakhstan. You'll be going in as a potential buyer for the combat drones." Greg turned his gaze to the view below the helicopter, which was fast leaving ocean behind in favor of coastal towns and European forests. "Your objective, Alisha…"

  "I know it's in here, if you'd prefer me to go over the mission myself." Alisha put her hand over the briefing folder, her heart aching for her handler. Sending in an agent he'd trained, one with whom he had an almost filial relationship, after his actual son couldn't be easy. The conflict set her stomach to churning, and it wasn't even hers to live with.

  "It's better if I tell you. That way if there are any questions you won't feel awkward about approaching me with them."

  "Greg, you've been my handler for almost ten years. I wouldn't feel awkward." Even as she said it, Alisha wondered if it was true. She'd never felt such sympathy for Greg's plight before.

  "Thank you." He looked back at her with the fond, patient smile again. "Your mission objectives are as follows. First, you're to obtain the prototype drone schematics we believe they have in development. Second, destroy any research that you can't take with you. Third, obtain the drone itself if it's moved into an operational phase. And fourth…" Now Greg hesitated. Alisha pressed her lips together and waited, unwilling to push him. Greg put his chin to his chest briefly, then lifted his gaze again. "Fourth, determine if Brandon Parker is a clear and present danger to the security of the United States, and report back to not only me, but Director Boyer on your assessment."

  Alisha felt her eyebrows shoot up again, surprise surging through her with unexpected strength. "Director Boyer, sir?" Only surprise or anger brought out the formality of calling Greg 'sir', and he knew it. She bit down on a smile that confessed to being aware of the tell, and he returned a similar expression that showed his tension clearly.

  "The operation is Boyer's. Given my proximity to the situation, I recommended that I not be the first or only person you were to report to on this topic."

  "You recommended, sir?" She'd done it again. Alisha ducked her head, humorously horrified at herself, and looked up unable to contain her laughter. It helped take some of the urgency away from the conversation, helped remove a little of the difficulty from the topic. "That was—"

  "It was covering my own ass, Agent MacAleer," Greg said bluntly. "I don't trust myself in this, and I'd rather make it clear to my superiors that the situation is better handled by someone else."

  "Of course, having done that, you prove yourself all the more trustworthy," Alisha pointed out.

  Greg turned his palms up. "I didn't say it didn't have its benefits."

  Alisha nodded and turned her attention back to the heavy folder. She had a lot to learn about Brandon Parker, and her own cover story to familiarize herself with, and, if Greg's quiet urgency was any indicator, not a lot of time to do it in.

  "Alisha."

  She lifted her eyes, eyebrows crinkled. "Yes?"

  "There's one other thing." Gregory took a deep breath. "If, in your assessment, Brandon is a danger, and the situation warrants it…"

  A chill that had nothing to do with her swim in the Atlantic spread over Alisha's body, lifting goose bumps beneath the sweater sleeves and making the tiny fine hairs on her cheeks stand up. "Yes?" Her voice remained steady and cool, the result of years of training, although the coldness she felt admitted she knew the next words Gregory Parker would say.

  "If necessary, you have the authority to terminate Brandon Parker with extreme prejudice."

  Alisha turned her face away, fully aware that her expression changed not at all. Compartmentalization, she mocked herself silently. A very good show, Leesh. Fool them all.

  She'd only been given such authority twice before in her career, and the first had come to nothing. The second—

  "You have the authority to terminate the subject with extreme prejudice." The words echoed in Alisha's mind, heartless and intense. The subject. The subject was a thing, not a person, not a living, breathing woman.

  Not Cristina.

  Alisha rejected all her training, forcefully, when it came to Cristina. Even now, she wouldn't allow herself to think of the woman who'd once been her partner as merely the subject. Lovely, fair-haired Cristina Lamken, who killed herself rather than face a life of imprisonment.

  Or maybe, Alisha thought for the thousandth time, maybe Cristina had killed herself to save Alisha from having to do it.

  They had been friends once, b
est friends, what seemed like a lifetime ago. Before Cristina, brave, intelligent Cristina, had proven herself a double agent. Her loyalties lay not with the CIA, but with the Russian FSB, the intelligence agency that had come into play after the KGB shattered with the rest of the Soviet Union.

  Alisha could not forget, would not let herself forget, the fragile smile Cristina had given her, in the moment before she plunged off the Peruvian mountainside. There were a thousand things in that smile: determination, fear, regret, desperation. Maybe even apology. For what she was about to do, or just possibly, for what she had done.

  The worst of it, though, had been the understanding in Cristina's eyes. There was no other way for it to end. They'd been partners and best friends, and they were, at the core of it, enemies. The last sight Alisha had of her closest confidante was down the barrel of a loaded .45, and Cristina's blue eyes were understanding. Cristina knew, as vividly as Alisha did, that it would have taken very little for the situation to be reversed. It could easily have been Alisha standing on the precarious lip of earth, three thousand feet of empty air only a stumble away. It could have been Cristina looking down the barrel of the gun, knowing she had to choose between her country and her friend.

  Alisha had pulled the trigger an instant too late. Cristina was already falling, backward with her arms spread, a glorious fatal dive into the cold air. And the look in her eyes had been one of understanding. It's all right, it had said, I know. You have to do this. This is how it ends, for people like us.

  Every day since then, Alisha had wondered if she'd seen forgiveness in Cristina's eyes as well.

  If, had she been at the other end of the gun, there would have been understanding in her own eyes.

  If there would have been forgiveness.