Jezebel's Ladder

by Scott Rhine

  “This isn’t somebody whose bones you want to jump, is it?” Fortune accused.

  Jez kept her cool. “Kyle doesn’t even need to know I exist. You wanted good people for the red-giant project, and I think he can help you.”

  Baker said, “Let me check him out.”

  Jez took a deep breath. “The next one is a peace envoy for the Middle East. We’ll probably have to kidnap him, technically, to make the offer.” When no one objected on moral grounds, she continued. “I propose to get him alone in an elevator. I’ll have one of Oobie’s wheelchairs with me. If the envoy is active, I'll touch him with the tip of a page. This will cause a stun-gun effect. We take him off the elevator at another floor and have the interview.”

  Fortune frowned. “I can’t risk a valuable page in the field like that.”

  “What about the blank page in my safe?” Benny suggested.

  Baker chimed in, “Our working theory is that the information gets wiped when the carrier gets killed, but that shouldn’t change the theta effect.”

  Fortune debated with them for several minutes before grudgingly ordering Benny, “Try the blank on Butterfly. If it works, she can have it for this experiment.”

  Benny started to object when Jez interrupted, “That would be acceptable.”

  Fortune snapped, “This meeting is running over the allotted time. Who are nine and ten?”

  “A pupil of the late Professor…” she started.

  Fortune shouted, “Out of the question! They’re all under US-governmental seal. You know the rules.”

  “You just green-lighted the kidnapping of a diplomat,” she shouted back.

  “Not a US employee,” Fortune insisted. “The Midas team and I have an agreement. Case closed. Number ten, please.”

  Sighing, Jez put up the last slide and dug in for another battle. It was the only woman in her list. “Nena Horvath.” The blonde’s publicity picture was worth a few thousand words. Daniel was chomping at the bit, with a big thumb’s up and a huge grin.

  “A nineteen-year-old, Miss Iowa runner-up?” Fortune scoffed.

  “If you'll read further,” Jez persisted, “you’ll see that she was a high-level, executive assistant for one of the Fossil chemical companies.”

  “How is a gymnast, health-food nut going to be any use to our efforts?”

  She gritted her teeth and said, “Vice presidential-level assistant. Originally we thought it was sexual harassment. She did join a women’s self-defense class soon after. But your hacker contacts found out that she phoned a federal, whistle-blower hotline from her posh, corporate apartment. They tossed her out on the street the next day and had a gag order issued by a high, federal-court judge. Now, no one will hire her except the local animal shelter.”

  “I’ll send a contact team today,” Baker jumped in. “This is a golden opportunity. She can tell us a lot about their whole informational structure, and she has an ax to grind.”

  Fortune seethed. “Fine. It seems that Oobie has an opening for a new secretary. If you’ll excuse me, I have better things to do. Good day.”

  Daniel’s expression was priceless. “You set me up so the animal lady would like me. She likes horses, doesn’t she?” He sounded like he was about to hyperventilate. “You are the best wingman ever. Anything you want, I’ll do it.”

  Jez laughed. “I’ll remember that.”

  Chapter 9 – New Blood

  The Eye Corps flew to Seattle for standard search activities, while the rest of the project processed Jezebel’s recent recommendations. Daniel got a haircut, anticipating his first meeting with a new coworker and potential girlfriend.

  The first night back from vacation, they had no good leads. “There are a lot of rich people in this area who do strange things,” commented Daniel.

  Dirt Bag was already pushing for them to make up the time they’d lost on their week off. Jezebel decided to turbo-charge their effort by riding past about twenty-five other possibilities herself during daylight hours. The guards had to take turns driving her while she sensed for actives. She hadn’t driven a car herself since Chance’s murder. This gave her a chance to get to know the whole team.

  None of the Washington-state leads registered as actives. Still, working day and night, and using the new cluster techniques, they effectively tripled their previous output. On Tuesday, they were able to eliminate every suspect in the Oregon region. Unfortunately, to accomplish this feat, they missed a meeting that London wanted them to spy on.

  Jez refused to pass the phone to Daniel when the complaints came in. “He needs his sleep.”

  The calls escalated up the chain, culminating with Director Baker, code-named Trench Coat. He complained loudly for thirty minutes while she used her best, customer-service listening on him. After the “B word” was used, she promptly hung up and removed all intelligence requests from the queue for the next two days. She didn’t tell him why. He’d figure it out. The guards, now loyal to Jez, had orders to pass all future harassment through her. Whenever the London chief started a phone conversation with yelling or profanity, she hung up.

  On Thursday, they hit pay dirt on a UFO-worshipping commune in Idaho. The Right Reverend Alvin Turwilliger had been contacted by aliens. He had proof that he would show his sworn followers. According to the locals, the cult was harmless; they espoused a desire to have a complete sample of the human gene pool when the aliens returned. In practice, this meant that the leader had children with as many varieties of women as possible.

  They also had an obscure tenet about growing all of their own food in their sealed compound. This food included algae, hydroponic tomatoes, and tanks of shrimp. The reverend had been a shoe salesman and carnival barker in his previous professions. There was no way he would know enough of the science to get this right. So Jez stopped by to investigate at the coffee house he frequented.

  She spotted the reverend immediately. He was eating pie and charming a teenage waitress. Jez tried to sneak up so she could listen in, but the reverend snapped his head toward her like a cat who’d just heard the can opener. He was definitely active. The waitress spit in his pie when he ignored her to buzz around the new girl.

  After twenty minutes hearing about Turwilliger’s personal religious organization, Jez steered the topic toward food science. The reverend replied, “That’s not really my area. Francine is the wizard there. It’s why I married her.”

  “Why self-contained?” she pressed.

  The reverend leaned closer. “It has to do with the shadows, the light and dark cycles of an Ideal Planet.” His eyes sparkled. Here, his zealotry came to the surface. “Inhabitable planets are rare in our galaxy. Finding them is difficult. Right now, however, we can find gas giants easily. All we need to do is narrow our search to the giants with lots of moons that are in their sun’s Goldilocks zone—not too hot and not too cold to sustain human life. If we go to the expense of traveling to one of these systems, it would provide us with a dozen Earth-sized moons. That way, there’ll be plenty of room for centuries of expansion...and options in case we make mistakes.”

  “You’ve obviously put a lot of thought into this. Is this theory from another wife?” she asked.

  He shook his head, and whispered, “Sacred scriptures from the Mother Ship.”

  “Why Idaho?”

  “The mountains here give us shadow for about the right amount of time each day, as well as the extreme temperature swings we can expect on the surface of a moon in an Ideal System.”

  The man was deadpan serious. Furthermore, her scalp was tingling with the same sort of feeling the pages gave when transmitting data. The reverend was either a natural teacher or he was carrying his Golden Ticket on him.

  Jez fed him questions to keep him talking. “So they wouldn’t have the same day and night cycle we have?”

  He shook his head. “Day is the same, but when the giant starts to occlude the sun, we call that penumbra. During the eclipse, that’s umbra. Even when our colony is facing away from th
e sun, which is roughly half the time, reflected light from the giant will light our skies enough to read by. This time is called reflection. If we can control the effects of temperature swings, the algae may grow by this light as well. When we face empty space, we call this true night.”

  He sketched diagrams of the cycles on napkins and drew models as he spoke. Jez was captivated. After an hour of her hanging on his every word, he made his big pitch. “I’d be willing to show you my alien artifact if you agreed to be one of my wives.”

  Jez smiled. The bell on the café door rang as a seething Benny Hollis stepped in. “I don’t think my husband would like that, but he might be willing to make a sizeable donation for the chance to study your artifact.”

  The thought tempted Turwilliger. “We’re self-sufficient here. We don’t need many of the worldly trappings or artificial social constructs. Perhaps your husband wouldn’t mind sharing you for a week in exchange for…”

  Beside their table, Benny raised a finger. “I have no idea what is going on here; however, if you finish that sentence, I will be compelled to do you physical harm. Excuse me. Jez, outside, now.”

  She did a mock curtsy and apologized to the reverend, “He gets so caveman when he sees me with another alpha male.”

  Outside the shop, men in black blocked both directions on the sidewalk. Benny was conflicted. “Fortune has ordered me to bring you in from the field.”

  Jez snorted. “That’s nice. Be polite to the reverend. He’s a certified pervert; however, he’s also a gifted teacher with a Golden Ticket on him. It’s about a concept called Ideal Planets. Don’t let any women near him; he has this weird but intense seduction ability.”

  “That’s amazing! Four days, and you got a hit?” Benny said, impressed.

  Jez explained, “That’s what happens when you actually plan to do something rather than let bureaucrats bully you into incompetence. I’ve done more in two weeks than your old scheme has done in two years.”

  “I can’t argue results, but you’ve really kicked the hornet’s nest this time, Jez. You hung up on the head of intelligence after refusing to do scouting for him. Baker is flying in personally for the briefing on the new Fossil data. He’ll be there this afternoon. Dirt Bag is sending Crusader back with our new recruits to do training.” Benny shifted to a whisper. “If I can’t bring you to heel, he’s going to send his head of security after you.”

  Jez was unfazed. “So you’re picturing me in a dog collar now? Spikes or diamonds? I’m curious.”

  Her guard, Frank, was struggling to maintain his composure. Only the potential for hostile action kept him serious.

  Benny glared at her. “I’ll sweet-talk the walking dildo in there. You, head back on the jet and make nice with Trench Coat. The new page will smooth things over for the boss, but you need to mend fences. We’re all giving our lives for this project, and we need each other to survive.”

  Jez blew out the angry breath she had been holding in. “Damn it. I’m only doing this for you. Are you using your tricks on me?”

  Benny shook his head. “Never on a friend or coworker. That would be a betrayal.”

  “Good answer. I’ll get my things,” Jez said. “What about Oobie?”

  “I’ll spend tonight and tomorrow with him. We’ll complete the loop back to LA base for the weekend. I promised that I’d be the lector this Sunday.” We she looked confused, he explained, “The guy who reads passages from the Bible in front of the church.”

  “And you don’t break your promises. I like that about you, Buddy,” Jez said.

  ****

  Jez got to the airport on her jet less than an hour before Trench Coat arrived. She decided to stick around to greet him personally and pretend it had been her plan all along.

  Once in the limousine, Director Baker opened with, “Young lady, I am your superior.”

  She replied with a very controlled, “That remains to be seen. We do, however, have to work together.”

  On the long drive to the headquarters, they hammered out the foundation for a working relationship based on grudging mutual respect. Nevertheless, the spy kept discovering things to berate Jezebel about. The tirade continued until they reached the HQ lobby. Letting him out of the limo first, she snagged a grey hair that had fallen out. It had become second nature to sample DNA from people she might want to spy on later.

  Surprising them both, a perky, five-foot-one blonde in pink short-shorts stood in the center of the lobby. Her behind was emblazoned with the white logo “Juicy.” Twenty men waited on her every whim. Even the chief spy was tongue-tied when she bounced up to them in her Nikes and said, with a faint, Dutch accent, “Hi, I’m Nena. Are you my new boss?”

  Her black-lace bra was visible through the tattered, white shirt. She smelled like vanilla and the promise of decathlon sex. Old men would probably keel over at her touch. At least one of the guards was huffing on an inhaler at the prospect. However, she didn’t seem to have a brain in her pretty, little head.

  Jez grasped her hand with a warm smile. “Pleased to meet you, Miss Horvath. I am Daniel Fortune’s current assistant. I’m here to show you the ropes, but the first thing we’re going to do is take you shopping.”

  Nena clapped for a moment, and then her radiant face dimmed. “Is there something wrong with what I’m wearing?”

  Jez shook her head. “Not really. I just wanted to spend some time getting to know you. After we get you some new shoes, you’ll want outfits to go with them. At company expense, right Trench Coat?”

  The British agent just nodded.

  Jez co-opted the limousine without complaint.

  If I were evil, thought Jez, this girl could be a weapon.

  “Training starts at nine tomorrow,” one agent shouted, wanting to make sure the new girl showed up.

  “Just put in a wake-up call for me at the apartments for half an hour before tomorrow’s briefing on our competition,” Jez requested on the way out.

  Jezebel honestly had a great time with the new girl. Nena had been in an orphanage till age twelve and had never learned the secret language of shoes. Jez took it as her sacred duty to indoctrinate the girl, as well as to sell Daniel every chance she got. Jez seemed to have taken on the role of de facto big sister for all of Eye Corps. They stayed up till midnight talking and painting their toenails to match their new acquisitions.

  Chapter 10 – Spy School

  At 4:25 a.m., there was a knock at Jezebel’s door. Her first thought was that Daniel had failed to report in. She raced to the door in her baggy, gray UNLV sweats.

  When she saw the top of Daniel’s head through the peep hole, she opened the door. “You’re not dead,” she said groggily.

  “No, but you’re late!” he explained. “I’m on my way to the conference now. For Dirt Bag, on the east coast, it’s a 7:30 a.m. briefing. I don’t know why Trench Coat switched it at the last second.”

  Jez growled. “I do. He’s trying to get me fired.”

  “We’ve got to leave now; my driver is waiting.”

  As Jez rushed into the living room to slip on shoes and grab her fanny pack, Nena rolled over on the sofa bed and moaned. The sheet shifted, revealing a one-inch strip of flesh that ran uninterrupted from her calves to her neck. Daniel stared, open-mouthed, unable to speak.

  Not wanting to wake her guest, Jez said, “Go back to sleep, sweetie.” To Daniel, on the way out the door, she said, “Nena didn’t have an apartment yet, so I had her sleep over. No big deal.”

  When Daniel didn’t move from the spot, the dime dropped. There hadn’t been pajamas in the girl’s bag. She couldn’t ream the guy out for saving her job. Instead, she grabbed the handles of his wheelchair, and pushed. “Down, boy! Stay out of my room.”

  After they climbed into their ride, while the driver placed the wheelchair in the trunk, Jez fussed with her hair in the rearview mirror. “I look like hell.”

  Daniel was still grinning. “You are a goddess, my hero.” He handed her a highly caffe
inated soda from his saddle bag. “What’s Nena like?”

  Jez frantically combed and cursed. “She’s very friendly and would give you the shirt off her back. I’d classify her as incredibly sweet but a teensy bit high-maintenance. Her only weakness so far is her makeup cases. I’ve seen smaller tackle boxes on a professional bass boat. Half of it is specially formulated, some of it she uses on her body. And she won’t let anyone else touch the stuff. I think it’s residual privacy issues from growing up in the orphanage. You both have the no-original-parents thing in common.”

  Daniel nodded. “Keep my hands off her makeup. Anything else important I should know?”

  They chatted the whole drive, Jez struggling to stay awake.

  ****

  The conference room was packed. The head of the table was taken by a wide-screen TV that displayed Fortune’s face. A diagram on the opposite wall showed the chemical company’s departmental structure. Trench Coat glared at Jez as she entered. They were already several minutes into the meeting, and he wasn’t going to repeat himself. She let the Brit drone on about corporate holdings until he said, “Here’s where Smurfette’s data was critical.”

  Jez knew immediately who he was referring to, but Daniel objected before she could. “You can’t call Nena that.”

  Trench Coat raised an eyebrow. “We don’t like to change code names once established. Can you name any other traits of hers that another agent would recognize without hesitation?” He then proceeded to name a few as Jez seethed.

  Benny, sitting next to her, touched her hand and gave his head a miniscule shake. This was bait, and she shouldn’t rise to it. She had to pick her battles with the department heads.

  Daniel panicked under the pressure. “When she was in gymnastics, her picture was on the Cornflakes box for about a week. She embodies the image of the Cornflake girl.”

  Fortune cackled on his view screen. “Flakes. Hah! It’s perfect. Trench Coat, give the boy what he wants.” Thus, Daniel spent his political capital for the meeting.