Somehow it was more than an hour and a half before they finished the last of their cheese and wine and left the restaurant. She saw him look at his watch, and told him he was still too American – a good meal took time to enjoy. And then she said that he must allow her to continue to help him become more Continental.
He told her that he’d like that very much. She smiled, and kissed him on both cheeks. Then she walked away, turning to give him another smile and a wave of her hand. He waved back, and stood there in the bright sunshine with a silly smile on his face, not giving a damn who might see him.
Across the street, a solitary figure noticed the two of them saying their good-byes. Had he glanced her way, he might at first have thought it was a young man, because she was thin, and her dark hair was short. But really it was a young woman, looking a bit forlorn and alone before she turned and walked away.
* * *
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Acknowledgements
I’d like to express my gratitude to a number of individuals who generously assisted me in completing this book. First off, my thanks to cybersecurity expert Ralph Rodriguez, who reviewed the text at the technical level to confirm that everything described in the book could actually happen, and made a number of helpful suggestions to make the plot more interesting. I’d also like to thank Andrew Oliver, Robert Minchin, Rob van Son, my brother Steve, and my daughter Nora, each of whom volunteered to read, error-spot, and comment on a near-final draft of this book. The suggestions of all of these individuals made this a better book than it otherwise would have been.
I’m also grateful for the constant encouragement of Nora, as well as for the patience and support of my wife Kathy, who had to put up with having Frank around the house (again) through the several years it took to get him packaged up and back out the door.
And finally, thanks to Frank. You’ve been good company along the way. I know you’ve had some other interesting adventures that deserve to be shared, so I’ll be back in touch soon.
THE ALEXANDRIA PROJECT
Prologue
Late In The afternoon of a gray day in December, a panel truck pulled up to the gate of a warehouse complex in a run-down section of Richmond, Virginia. Rolling down his window, Jack Davis punched a code into the control box, and the gate clanked slowly out of the way. Once inside, he wheeled the truck around and backed it up against a loading dock as the gate closed behind him.
After unlocking and raising the loading dock door, Davis threw a light switch, revealing long rows of pallets, each stacked eight feet high with boxes of paper plates, cups and towels. He closed and locked the door, and stamped on the brake release pedal of a hydraulic lifter parked against the wall. Counting to himself, he pushed the lifter along the wall of pallets. When he reached row nineteen, he turned the lifter and maneuvered its long tines under the pallet. Raising it a few inches, he backed up until he could swing the pallet through 180 degrees. Then he pulled it behind him until it was back exactly where it had been before.
Davis had plenty of room to work, because where the pallet in the second row should have been, there was only a large metal plate set in the floor. Near the edge was a small hinged panel, which he unlocked with a key to expose a biometric security pad.
When Davis pressed his thumb against it, he heard a familiar click. Stepping back, he watched as the plate swung slowly upwards, followed by the telescoping ends of a ladder extending up from a deep shaft barely illuminated in red light. Grasping the ladder firmly, Davis descended through twenty feet of reinforced concrete while the door overhead swung silently closed above him. At the bottom, he remembered to don a pair of sunglasses before opening an unlocked door.
As usual, even with this precaution the bright lights in the enormous room beyond nearly blinded him. But soon he could clearly see the endless rows of floor to ceiling metal racks crammed with identical gray boxes. Each box displayed a row of rhythmically blinking lights, and sprouted a bundle of brightly colored wires that ran down into conduits embedded in the floor.
The room hummed purposefully with the sound of thousands of cooling fans, one to a box. Davis felt more than heard the other vibrations that filled the room, generated by the pulse of the thousands of gallons of cooling water that every minute coursed through the collectors lining the walls of the room, absorbing the waste heat that the racks of computer servers threw off. No heat signature would give this facility away from above; once warm, the coolant was directed to the water intake of a nearby power plant, happy to take the pre-heated water from wherever it was that it came from, no questions asked.
Walking along the perimeter of the room, Davis could look down through the open metal grid of the floor at the first of many additional tiers of computer servers. But that always made him a little dizzy, so instead he looked out for the guard he was relieving. No surprise – there he was, heading Davis’s way, more than happy to call it a day. When they met, the guard stopped to slip on the coveralls he carried over one arm. Like the semi-automatic pistol the guard wore in a shoulder holster, they were identical to those that Davis also wore.
“What’s the weather like?”
“Sucks. Sleet and more of the same predicted till morning.”
“Figures. Tomorrow’s my day off.”
With that, the other man was on his way. In a few minutes he would drive off in the truck Davis had parked outside.
Well, the weather won’t be bothering me in here, Davis thought. The room was climate controlled to within a tenth of a degree of a chilly 54 degrees Fahrenheit, and well-insulated by the bomb-proof walls and roof installed above. It had taken two years for a fleet of delivery vans to carry all the dirt and rock away that had been excavated from beneath the warehouse. The same vans had returned with cement, steel, and, eventually, those thousands of servers, accompanied by technicians to set them up. The process had been tedious, yes, but not a single satellite picture had ever shown a trace of the ambitious construction project proceeding underground.
Of course, the effect worked in both directions. With no links to the outside world other than a voice line to his supervisor, the whole bloody world could come to an end and Davis would be none the wiser until after his shift was over.
Davis walked up a flight of steel stairs to the bullet proof, glass-walled security booth attached to the wall overlooking the room. His major challenge for the next twelve hours would be to stand watch in that booth without falling asleep. There’d be hell to pay if he did, because another guard, in another security room far away, would be watching him on a video screen.
The row of displays in front of Davis allowed him to see every inch of the outside of the warehouse complex. Racked on the wall behind him were a high powered rifle and a shotgun, but it wasn’t likely he’d ever need to use them. One flip of the large red switch in front of Davis would flood the server room with enough Halon gas to not only put out a fire, but asphyxiate any intruder careless enough to leave a gas mask at home. Not for the first time, Davis wished that the house where he lived with his wife and their two small children could be as well protected.
But the government didn’t put as high a priority on protecting suburban starter homes as it did on safeguarding its most critical computer networ
k facilities. Some storage facilities, like those serving the needs of the Pentagon and the National Security Administration, were located not far away at Fort Meade. Others, like this one, were scattered far and wide, hidden in plain sight but highly secure nonetheless. No way was anyone going to crack this nut. He was dead certain of that.
If Davis had been able to electronically monitor what was happening on server A-VI/147 on Level Three, though, his confidence might have taken a hit. True, concrete and steel walls, surveillance cameras and Halon gas were more than adequate to protect the physical wellbeing of his facility against anything short of a direct hit by a “bunker busting” nuclear weapon. But the data on the facility’s servers had to rely on virtual defenses – firewalls, security routines and intrusion scanners.
And those defenses hadn’t been enough. Someone had gotten inside.
* * *
1
Meet Frank
The next morning, a morbidly obese Corgi named Lily was sniffing a tree on 16th Street, in the Columbia Heights neighborhood of Washington, D.C. A cold, insistent drizzle fell on her, but Lily didn’t care, because Lily was sniffing at her favorite tree. Indeed, the meager processing power of Lily’s brain was wholly consumed by sampling the mysterious scents wafting up from the damp earth, for this was also the favorite tree of every other dog in the neighborhood.
Something was nagging at the edge of her senses, though.
“C’mon, Lily! Hurry up!”
Lily turned her head. The annoying distraction was coming from the person at the other end of her leash, someone with sockless feet jammed into worn, black loafers. Above bare ankles, a pair of pajama-clad legs disappeared into a rumpled raincoat. She saw there was an arm holding an umbrella, too, and under the umbrella, a stubbly, forty-something face topped by thinning black hair. Lily decided that the face did not look happy.
“Ah!” she thought. “That would be Frank.” Relieved that the distraction could be ignored, Lily returned to the important work at hand.
“C’mon, Lily!” the voice said again.
The fact that Frank’s face was unhappy was unremarkable. Even in pleasant weather, Frank tended to dwell pointlessly on the minor miseries of his life. Not long ago, those miseries had become much less minor when his mother Doreen entered a retirement home. After helping her move in, Frank took a deep breath and prepared to leave. No use dragging things out, he thought. Transitions are difficult and best dealt with quickly.
Still, it was sad. His mother was standing by the doorway of her new apartment, lower lip a-tremble and Lily held tightly in her arms. It was clear that she was rapidly nearing her emotional limits. Better hurry up.
“Well, Mom,” he said, “I guess I’ll be leaving now.”
Then it happened. With a lunge, Doreen thrust Lily into Frank’s arms. He stepped back with surprise into the hallway, too horrified to allow himself to grasp the obvious, while struggling to maintain his grip on the suddenly manic animal.
“The home doesn’t allow pets,” his mother blurted. “I could never have signed the lease if I hadn’t known that Lily would be safe with you. Now don’t you worry; I’ve made you her legal guardian, so it’s all set. Now go! Get out of here, before I change my mind.”
Frank desperately wanted her to change her mind. But his mother had already shut the door in his astonished face. He stared blankly at it as the enormity of his plight sank in. Now what? Lily was just three years old, and acknowledged his existence only by barking. He heard his mother sobbing piteously on the other side of the door. He felt like crying, too.
That had been two long, loud months ago. Only recently had he progressed from the denial stage to active mourning.
“Come on!” Frank hissed. At last, Lily turned away from her tree. She looked up at him reproachfully, and barked.
“Okay, okay,” Frank said, fumbling in his pocket. He held a dog treat up for Lily to see. “Okay?”
Satisfied that her efforts would not go unrewarded, Lily began looking for just the right place to do what finally needed to be done. At last, she squatted, looking blankly ahead. Frank sighed with relief.
A blue plastic bag inverted over his free hand, Frank scooped up Lily’s grudging gift. He handed over the treat, jerking back with his fingers barely intact.
Isn’t that just the story of my life? he thought bleakly as Lily happily consumed her treat. Every day I give her a cookie, and every day she gives me a bag of shit.
Trudging home through the rain, Frank reflected that his day generally went downhill from here.
* * *
Lily shook herself mightily inside the foyer of Frank’s dingy apartment house, wetting what little of Frank that was still dry. Satisfied, she planted her substantial hindquarters firmly on the floor, looked up at Frank, and barked. Frank sighed, picked up the still-wet dog, and labored his way up the stairs to his second floor flat.
As he climbed to the top, Frank’s rising eyes met a pair of fuzzy pink slippers, a floral house dress, and then a pair of folded arms draped with a bath towel. Just above them, he knew, would be the perpetually hostile face of his across-the-hall neighbor. As that scowling visage hove into view, Frank once again noted the uncanny resemblance his neighbor bore to North Korean president Jong Kim-Lo. Only with hair curlers.
“Morning, Mrs. Foomjoy,” Frank offered as Lily twisted wildly in his arms. He deposited the dog at her feet.
“Shame on you!” Mrs. Foomjoy barked as she knelt to massage Lily with the bath towel. “Poor, dear wet baby!” she crooned.
“It’s raining, Mrs. Foomjoy,” Frank observed. “Lily hasn’t learned how to use the indoor facilities yet.”
“Then why she not wear the lovely rain jacket I give her?” she snorted. “What is wrong with you? You don’t deserve dog like this!”
Frank couldn’t have agreed more. Lily groveled at Mrs. Foomjoy’s feet, and then leaned to one side until gravity obligingly rolled her onto her back. The dog gazed up with adoring, goggle eyes as Mrs. Foomjoy rubbed her stomach.
His neighbor grabbed the leash from Frank’s hand when she stood up. “I see to welfare of this dog!” she snapped, shutting her door loudly behind her. Frank stood suddenly alone in the poorly lit hallway, a warm, blue plastic pendulum swinging slowly from side to side in his hand. Relieved, he entered his own apartment and quietly shut the door.
Frank hung his dripping raincoat on a hook in the linoleum floored hallway inside. At one time, his apartment’s décor might have charitably been described as “Late-Twentieth-Century Divorced Middle Aged Male.” Now the most obvious theme was random clutter. He poured a cup of coffee and sat at the small table in the small kitchen. Before him the large screen of his laptop stared blankly back at him. With resignation, he turned the computer on.
Normally, the sound of a computer booting up would have struck him as cheerful; the imperceptibly soft whir of the cooling fan spinning up to speed; the blinking, blue light that assured him that the device was powering up; the screen phosphorescing into life with a pearly glow. After all, information technology – IT – was not only his profession, but the primary foundation of his existence.
Email was Frank’s preferred link to the outside world, providing a social firewall between him and the random messiness of direct human contact. Frank was convinced that digital relations were far safer than their in-person analogue. Electronic communications brought him as close to his fellow man as he usually wished to be. Any more intimate than that, and things were apt to become at best unpredictable, and at worst, well, he’d been there all too often before. You never got enough time to think before things started spiraling out of control.
Which brought him back to the night before. Be honest, he mused ruefully. You got what you deserved. Or didn’t get what you didn’t deserve, to be more precise.
He stared at the ke
yboard. Should he check his email or shouldn’t he? The rational side of his brain said, yes, what’s there is there. Deal with it.
But the other side of his brain had a different opinion: “Go back to bed,” it whispered urgently, “It’s Sunday. You don’t have to deal with anything today.”
That was true. And who knows what might happen by Monday? There could be a typhoon tonight. Or maybe giant pterodactyls would erupt from a wormhole next to the Lincoln Memorial, scattering screaming tourists towards the safety of nearby Metro stations. That side of his brain was lobbying strongly to take two aspirin, pull the covers back over his head, and let reality take care of itself for another twenty-four hours.
He sighed and made up his mind. Might as well see sooner rather than later what people from his office had posted on line about the night before. A few clicks later and he was at the Facebook page of Mary, the sullen receptionist. Yes, there were pictures from the party. Lots of them. Later would do just fine after all, he decided. He snapped the laptop shut without turning it off.
The sad thing was, for once he had actually been looking forward to the Library of Congress IT Department Holiday party, even bringing his daughter Marla with him, a Georgetown University grad student. He appreciated the great impression she always made on his co-workers. Unlike her dad, Marla was self-assured and sociable. She worked the crowd like a pro, chatting and shaking hands, poised and laughing. How could he feel anything but proud? It was hard not to drink a bit more than usual as he watched her from the security of the bar in the rear of the function room.
The Lafayette Campaign: a Tale of Deception and Elections (Frank Adversego Thrillers Book 2) Page 39
