Deep State Stealth

by Vikki Kestell

  We could use the badging software to track Wayne Overman’s campus movements in the weeks before he disappeared. It would take more time in the system to overlay that data with the schematics of the NSA campus and cross-check his movements against the badges of other as-yet-unidentified personnel.

  I would need to return to the IT Department and send the nanomites on further explorations.

  Jayda Cruz.

  “Yes, Nano?”

  We require time with the 3D printer.

  “What? Has something happened? Has the nanocloud sustained an injury? Have your numbers decreased?”

  No, Jayda Cruz. However, we require greater storage capacity. We wish to add capacity to Alpha Tribe’s numbers.

  An image of the Repository’s taxonomy and network file structure popped into my head: Xenottabytes of data.

  “It’s not necessary for you to download the entire Repository, Nano! We are here to find out what happened to Wayne Overman and to identify those who are involved in the conspiracy to overturn the President’s administration.”

  All knowledge is of interest to us, Jayda Cruz.

  “Yeah, well, as the Apostle Paul said, “All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient.”

  Strictly speaking, nothing we have done at the NSA is lawful, Jayda Cruz.

  “We’ve been tasked by the President—directly—to uncover those involved in the assassination attempt, to investigate the possible murder of Mr. Overman, and find evidence of collusion to commit treason and sedition. You heard Gamble talk about Executive Order 12333. The President has directed us to infiltrate the NSA. His orders make our actions lawful—that is, those actions that help us figure out this conspiracy, not download all the data in the NSA Repository.”

  The nanomites didn’t answer me, but I knew them well enough by now to recognize when they were sulking.

  I sighed. “How much time would you need with the printer, Nano?”

  At a minimum, forty-eight hours, Jayda Cruz.

  “Well, I can’t stay at the safe house forty-eight hours straight, Nano.”

  We see no reason why you cannot, Jayda Cruz.

  It was my turn not to answer.

  Why not, Nano? Because I don’t want to spend my entire weekend twiddling my thumbs, cooped up in that less-than-comfy safe house.

  I want to spend the weekend with my husband.

  Chapter 5

  IT WAS TUESDAY EVENING. I answered the phone. “Hey, Gamble.”

  “I have that space you asked for, a friend of a friend’s martial arts studio.”

  “What’s the arrangement?”

  “The arrangement is that if he notices anything out of place, he ignores it. He’s being compensated—and the studio has no video security. The windows and doors are barred and alarmed, so he gave me the alarm code.”

  “Okay, cool.”

  He rattled off the info, but I ignored it.

  We didn’t need no stinking alarm code.

  Besides, using the code logged an entry. If we cleaned up after ourselves, Gamble’s “friend of a friend” would never know we’d been there. As far as he would ever know, he was being paid for nothing.

  “This guy has lots of martial arts training equipment, including sticks.”

  “Great! Thanks for setting this up for us, Gamble.”

  “That’s what I do.”

  “CALLISTER HERE.”

  The disembodied male voice on the other end of the call was matter-of-fact. “Sitrep.”

  “Sir, I have nothing definitive to report, only that the head of the President’s detail is leery of recent personnel changes.”

  “Kennedy can’t influence White House postings other than his own detail, and we’ve given the repositioned agents sufficient inducements not to talk should Kennedy contact them and attempt to probe their abrupt change of station or departure from the Service. Alterations to the President’s schedule?”

  “Kennedy appears to be meeting with the President in the privacy of the Residence more often than before. They may suspect that the Oval Office is tapped.”

  “It would be difficult for them to prove that since our assets within the Service do the daily sweeps. Can you bug the Residence?”

  “It would be . . . tricky, Mr. M—”

  “Do not use my name.”

  Callister swallowed. “It won’t happen again, sir.”

  “Can you or can you not bug the Residence?”

  “No, sir. I’m already on Kennedy’s radar. He knows I was on Harmon’s detail.”

  “Hmm. Leave it to me, then. I have . . . additional assets in place. What about VP candidates?”

  “The President’s discussions with his chief of staff and party leaders seem at an impasse. The candidates generating the most enthusiasm won’t pass the vote in Congress to confirm them. The President and his staff have exhausted their short list and appear to be working up another list.”

  Silence stretched across the line as the caller pondered the information. When the caller replied, the response was terse. “I’ll pass this information up the chain. Anything else to report?”

  “No, sir.”

  Callister heard a click as the caller hung up.

  Chapter 6

  WE SET THE PHONE ON the table between us and put the call on speaker. Emilio answered on the first ring.

  Zander greeted him first. “Hey, buddy. How’s it going?”

  “Hi, Zander!”

  My heart melted as Emilio’s bubbly excitement came across the line. How I missed that boy! We knew he missed us, too. Being away from him was the hardest part of our assignment.

  I added my greeting. “Hey, you.”

  “Hi, Jayda! Hey, I have a new one. Betcha can’t guess it.”

  A “new one” referred to the jokes and riddles we swapped during our calls each week. Emilio loved trying to stump us—which was impossible, what with both nanoclouds chiming in, trying to best each other. They seemed to take an odd, juvenile pleasure in our ritual and had accumulated possibly the world’s largest storehouse of dumb gags, witticisms, brainteasers, and puns.

  I played along with Emilio. “You just try us; we’re ready for you!”

  “Okay, here goes: What kind of exercises do lazy people do?”

  “Um . . .”

  We know, Jayda Cruz!

  “Of course, you do, Nano.”

  We usually played along for a while, but Emilio had the patience of a gnat. “Give up? Huh?”

  Zander offered a lame answer. “Girl pushups?”

  I smacked him on the arm. “I can do as many pushups as you can, bub, and not girl pushups, either.”

  Emilio guffawed. “Nope that’s not it. Give up?”

  “Oh, all right. We give up. What kind of exercises do lazy people do?” Zander was grinning.

  “Diddly squats!” Emilio shouted.

  It was dumb but cute. We shook our heads and chuckled as Emilio hooted his triumph.

  “That’s a good one,” Zander answered, “but now I have one for you. Ready?”

  Zander seemed to draw from his own wealth of riddles—which made me question what kind of a kid he’d been at Emilio’s age.

  “Yeah, I’m ready,” Emilio answered.

  “Okay, here it is: What’s green and red and goes a hundred miles an hour?”

  We know, Jayda Cruz, we know! It’s—

  “Shhh. Let Emilio try, Nano.” Sometimes I wondered if Emilio was more mature than the nanomites were.

  Emilio fidgeted and sighed. Then we heard Emilio whispering, his hand obviously over the phone.

  “Hey! No fair. You don’t get to ask Abe.”

  “Shoot. Well, I guess I can’t figure it out. What’s green and red and goes a hundred miles an hour?”

  Zander waggled an evil brow at me. “Frog in a blender.”

  My mouth dropped open. For a few seconds, Emilio, too, was silent. Then he “got it” and cracked up. While he howled with laughter, I shook my head and groaned
.

  “Zander, that’s terrible,” I whispered.

  My husband wasn’t the least bit repentant. “Naw, it’s not terrible—it’s classic. Emilio will repeat that one at school for weeks. He’ll be the star of the playground.”

  I cupped my chin in my hand and waited for Emilio to laugh himself out. On the other end, we heard Abe say something.

  Emilio popped back on the line. “Hey, Jayda?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you guys have plans for the Fourth of July?”

  I flashed Zander a glance. Fourth of July? Was it almost that time?

  Even though colorful, bunting-draped firework stands had popped up in strip malls and grocery parking lots, neither Zander nor I had paid much attention to them. We’d been oblivious to the changes around us, wrapped in our own concerns.

  I looked at Zander. “Plans?”

  “Yeah. For the first week in July.” Emilio had stopped laughing, but he was simmering with excitement.

  “Um, I have work and we have a few recurring commitments. Why?”

  “Well, you get the Fourth off, don’t you?”

  I did? Oh, yeah. I did. And the Fourth was exactly two weeks from today.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, I do.”

  “Do they have good firework shows near you guys? Like, in D.C.?” Emilio sounded like he was going to burst.

  “I . . . I suppose so.”

  Jayda Cruz, we can provide a list of multiple events to celebrate the holiday in or around Washington, D.C., including the National Independence Day Parade down Constitution Avenue, a concert on the west lawn in front of the Capitol building, followed by fireworks on the National Mall.

  “I’ve been told we have lots of choices here, Emilio.”

  “And do you have a couch for Abe to sleep on?”

  “What?” Zander and I exclaimed at the same time.

  Emilio was bouncing around Abe’s living room. “I can sleep on the floor, but Abe is old. He needs something softer. You got a couch or an air mattress?”

  “What are you saying, Emilio?”

  Apparently, Abe had listened without participation long enough. He wrested the phone from Emilio.

  “Hello, Jayda. Zander. What my tactless boy is getting at—what he has bugged me about for a month straight—is that we’d like to come visit over the Fourth.”

  Now I was the one who was ready to explode. “You’re coming? Here?”

  “Well, I hope it’s all right, because I’ve already bought our tickets.”

  In the background we heard Emilio holler, “We’re gonna fly! In an airplane!”

  “First time the boy will have been on an airplane,” Abe added. “Now, if you don’t have room for us in your apartment, we’ll find a hotel and—”

  “No, you will not! You’re staying with us. Right, Zander?”

  “Absolutely. We have a nice couch, Abe. It folds down, too. We wouldn’t have you staying anywhere but with us.”

  Now I was the one jumping out of my skin. “When? When are you coming? And how long can you stay?”

  “We’ll fly into Baltimore at three in the afternoon on Monday and leave the following Saturday morning. Will you be able to pick us up?”

  I was distraught that I wouldn’t be able to go to the airport, but Zander answered, “I’ll be there, Abe. We should get home about the same time Jayda gets off work.”

  We talked a little longer, but my heart was singing over their news: They were coming to visit. Abe and Emilio!

  I tugged at the chain that hung around my neck and fumbled to find and hold the polished wooden cross dangling from it. At one time, Emilio and I had been enemies of sorts—he an angry, mistreated kid, stealing from the neighborhood (including me) just to eat; me his disgruntled, self-righteous neighbor, blind to Emilio’s neglect.

  Blind until I’d looked past my own nose and noticed how thin he was. Blind until I’d found him shivering and sobbing in the bushes, hiding from his uncle’s drunken abuse. That evening I’d presented the kid with a peace offering of hot pizza.

  Emilio had whittled the cross and rubbed it until its surface was smooth and glowing. He had left it on my front porch as a thank you.

  I’d worn it ever since.

  I held that cross and sighed. When I closed my eyes, I could feel our boy in my arms.

  WHEN WE HAD HAMMERED out the details of their visit, we hung up and readied ourselves for the hours ahead of us. For, as Zander had put it, spy training.

  I didn’t like it; in fact, I hated it, but I stripped off my wedding ring anyway and left it at home. Zander did the same. Night had fallen. We parked a mile from our destination and took different routes into the seedy warehouse district where our classes were to be held.

  An hour and a half after our phone call with Abe and Emilio ended, we reported to our first Wednesday evening “tradecraft” class. If I hadn’t had the nanomites with me, I wouldn’t have gone anywhere near the place. It was an ancient, three-story brick building surrounded by abandoned and falling down warehouses—many of them flophouses for the homeless and dope dens for the addicted. To get to our classroom, I had to waltz through a crime- and gang-infested neighborhood with dealers and prostitutes plying their trade on every corner. It was the hangout of pimps, alcoholics, two-bit criminals, and thugs—which is why we’d parked our car in a guarded lot where it stood half of a chance of being where we left it when we returned.

  I wore dark, sloppy clothes and a dingy, oversized hoody pulled over my head and around my face, and I kept my head down as I pushed toward my destination. A reconnaissance wing of nanomites flew a few yards out in front of me, checking my blind spots, telling me which shadows to step into and which to avoid, changing my route twice to avoid trouble.

  When some hulking dude in a watch cap cracked open a door I’d just passed and lunged at me, the nanomites zapped him so hard the impact tossed him back inside the hovel he’d emerged from. I shifted my gaze around to check if anyone had noticed and walked on.

  “Um, don’t do that again, Nano. I’m not supposed to use you tonight, remember?”

  We have agreed to be inconspicuous during your class, Jayda Cruz, but how will the training benefit you if you are assaulted before you arrive?

  Their reply did make me wonder why these guys were putting us—me, a woman, in particular—in danger. Not that I was in any real danger, but they didn’t know that, right?

  I sighed. Two blocks to go.

  When I found the address, I pulled back into a moldy niche between two nasty warehouses and studied the place. The old brick-and-mortar structure stood alone, like an island in the crumbling urban decay. Its windows were blacked out and, as far as appearances went, it could have been any other unoccupied building. Must have been the look they were aiming for.

  When the coast seemed clear, I went to a side door, as instructed, and knocked.

  The door—heavy, reinforced steel that could have withstood a tank—swung open. An unseen figure whispered, “Follow me.”

  He led me down a dark, narrow corridor, through a set of doors into another hallway, this one illuminated in dull yellow, to yet another set of doors. These doors opened into our classroom at the center of the building. The room was spacious and well lit, but windowless. Zander was already there, looking anywhere but at me. So were four more guys who appeared to belong on the street hustling drugs.

  “Sorry I’m a little late. The walk here wasn’t exactly friendly.”

  The largest of the men stepped forward. “It wasn’t meant to be. Welcome to Malware, Inc. This is our clubhouse, and this—” he gestured to the room, “is our training center. I’m your chief instructor, Malcolm; you can call me Mal.”

  He gestured to the other men and they fanned out. They were all fit and muscled with inscrutable expressions. A fifth guy, wearing a black watch cap, entered the room and joined the other men. As his eyes bored holes in me, he rubbed a spot on his chest.

  “These are your instructors: L
ogan, Baltar, Deckard, Dredd, and McFly, who escorted you in. Obviously, these are not our real names. What should we call you?”

  “Well, since we’ve got a cool sci-fi theme going on, how ’bout Ripley?” I jerked my chin toward Zander. “And who’s that?”

  “A classmate. He said to call him John-Boy.”

  I snickered. “What is this, a rerun of the Waltons?”

  “Don’t get personal, Ripley, or we’ll start calling you Mary Ellen.”

  The steel-cage of my poker face snapped into place—to which I added a sharp, grating edge. “No, Mal. You won’t.”

  I didn’t have to sneak a peek at Zander to visualize his shock. He hadn’t really known the old Gemma that well.

  I jerked a thumb at the other instructors. “And I take it that you-all supplied some of the neighborhood’s not-so-friendly ‘local color’?”

  “We did. We like to get a feel for the trainees before introductions.”

  “Fair enough.” I met the searing gaze of the guy wearing the watch cap. “And did you ‘get a feel’ for me, Dredd?”

  Silence.

  Dead, cold, creepy silence—like I’d pushed the envelope waaaay too far.

  Menacing silence . . . that gave way to snuffled guffaws and an undercurrent of chuckles.

  Mal grinned and snarked. Three of our instructors pointed at Dredd and howled. Dredd, a little shamefaced, managed a half-grin.

  “You’ve got chops, Ripley, I’ll give you that,” Mal said.

  I shrugged. “I have a few moves.” I flicked a glance at Zander.

  His expression said he did not know me.

  I don’t think he was faking it.

  After that, we got down to business. McFly delivered an hour lecture on “Mental State.” “Mental state is the most overlooked but vital aspect of tradecraft—because sloppy mental behavior will get you killed. Lack of vigilance will get you killed. Overconfidence will get you killed. Carelessness will get you killed.”

  McFly’s cold and implacable stare skewered us. “Don’t want to die? Then stay frosty. Never take anything for granted.”