by JT Kalnay
The Trade
JT Kalnay
Smashwords Edition
Published by jt Kalnay
Copyright 2011, JT Kalnay
This is a work of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the story is based on experiences, real or imagined, all names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of my overactive imagination or are used fictitiously. No reference to any real person is intended or should be inferred.
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The Beginning
"The CIA? You've got to be kidding?” Rick Hewlett looked at his younger friend Jay Calloway. "You'd work for those goons?" Rick demanded.
"Yeah sure. Why not?” Jay answered. "You get to work on the coolest stuff. They already told me they want me to keep working on my cryptography algorithms and viruses. The pay is pretty good, and you've got job security.”
"Job security? Hah! As long as you don't get killed!” Rick emphasized the last word.
The two computer science doctoral candidates had been bullshitting back and forth like this for their four years together in graduate school. With only three weeks to graduation they were still amusing themselves by abusing the companies that each had chosen for interviews. As American-born, English-speaking "computer geeks" they had their pick of high paying defense jobs or low paying professorships. Even Wall St. had come calling.
Jay Calloway, 26, wiry, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, lusting after money and/or excitement, had narrowed his choices to programmer/analyst for the CIA, research scientist with the Navy or systems architect with a Wall Street high finance firm, MacKenzie Lazarus. Jay had site interviews with the CIA and MacKenzie Lazarus (ML) next week. Surprisingly he’d been able to learn more about the CIA than the people he’d be interviewing with at ML.
Rick Hewlett, 35, tall, fully-bearded (though prematurely grey), well-tanned, equally enamored with the idea of an affluent lifestyle after the long Spartan days as a graduate student, but less interested in the high tech toys of the national security concerns, had also shortened his list to a start up software company in the Pacific northwest, which had recently relocated from the desert southwest to a remote suburb of Seattle, and a smaller environmental consulting firm in rural Oregon. Rick was packing for his trip to the West Coast.
"Hand me that Frisbee would you?" Rick asked. Jay tossed it over.
"You're taking me to the airport right?" Rick asked.
"Right" Jay answered. The two paraded from Rick's apartment out into the bright Midwest afternoon. Though Rick could have driven himself, Jay had offered to take him. The two friends had gotten along surprisingly well on several road trips. Perhaps the greatest adventure of Jay's life had been their trip to the Collegiate Peaks in Colorado where they'd camped, hiked, and rafted for six glorious summer weeks. At least a dozen pictures of the trip still adorned Jay's room. He often thought of simply moving there, becoming a guide of some type, and writing some programs in some abandoned cabin in some remote canyon.
Rick was Jay’s first real friend. Growing up in the most rural county in Ohio he’d been a "gifted child,” getting perfect scores on his SATs and posting a 4.0 in math all through high school and college. This had isolated him as much as the fact that his parents were hermits, even by the standards of Vinton County, home of Ohio’s most isolated places. An Ohio few know. An Ohio of old growth forests, towering cliffs, rushing rivers, white tail deer, and long buried, long forgotten arrowheads. Jay had been isolated and uptight until Rick came along. Ten years older than Jay, Rick was twenty years wiser. He had experience and cool that Jay had bathed in vicariously. Jay knew practically nothing about Rick's family or background, but it hadn't seemed to matter. Rick hadn’t cared a bit about Jay’s own dysfunctional family unit. Their one trip to Ohio’s wilderness had been spent hiking and hunting.
Working together the two friends had raced through graduate school at Miami of Ohio in a record four years, where the average was six or more. Jay had offered to drive Rick to the airport more from a feeling of impending loss than anything else. Having felt close to someone, the being alone was going to be worse than ever for Jay. Still, Jay knew enough not to follow his friend to the West Coast, even though lost puppy instincts were telling him to do exactly that. Jay realized it was time he did something on his own, if only for a little while. Though the two had made vague plans for the future about running the most high-tech consulting firm in the country, nothing definite had ever come of it.
The two friends got into Jay's old, rusted, beater pickup truck. Rick's bag and golf clubs went in the back.
"All work and no play," Rick said.
Rolling down I-71 through Cincinnati Ohio towards the Cincinnati International airport, which is conveniently located twenty miles away in Kentucky, the two listened to a Reds game on the radio. Rick was even quieter than normal, adrift in thought. He turned to Jay.
"Pull off for a second," Rick said.
"What?"
"Pull off for a second," Rick said. Jay eased off at the Mitchell Street exit, the way to the zoo. Rick and Jay both got out of the car. Jay walked around to where Rick was standing by the guard rail.
“Are you alright?” Jay asked.
"When you go to the CIA interview, don't tell them we’re such good friends. They’ll check on you, know you know me, know we worked together and studied together, they’ll know we’re friends, but it’ll go better for you if you don’t tell them we’re good friends," Rick said. He didn't look at Jay. He remained looking out over the guard rail, alternating between speaking and spitting.
"Why?" Jay asked. He realized it was a stupid question before the last syllable left his mouth. Wished he could pull the words back out of the air. Rick turned his head to look at Jay from the corner of his eye. Jay could see the scowl on his older friend's face. Had seen the angry older brother look before when he’d said or done equally inane things. He felt the back of his neck and the cheeks of his face go red and hot.
"Sorry," he said.
"Look," Rick went on. "It'll just go better for both of us when they ask you about your friends, you disown me. Okay? Tell them you know me, that we work together, that we played golf a few times, even went on a road trip together, but leave it there. Tell them we had a disagreement over a girl or something and that we’ve been distant ever since. You can honestly tell them you don’t know much about me."
"Okay," Jay answered defensively. He was offended, mystified. Jay worked his way back around the rusted out Ford 150. His mind was in turmoil. Jay was about to lose his best and only friend and now he had to disown him as well?
The rest of the trip passed in a strained silence, broken only when the Reds hit a home run to tie the ballgame in the eighth inning. The two friends shook hands outside the departures drop off at the airport. Jay got back in the truck just in time to hear "And this one belongs to the Reds" from long time radio announcer Marty Brenneman. The words didn't produce the feeling of well-being that they usually did. Jay drove back to his apartment in Oxford with his mind running, awash in emotions of loss and confusion that he didn't understand.
When he finally got back to his small apartment, he sat and wondered what the hell he was going to happen
to him.
Chapter
The kid looked good on paper. Very good. Cryptography, computer viruses, born in the Midwest, American citizen, both parents American citizens, dad a veteran, mom a member of the PTA. Very good indeed. But San Krantz hadn’t risen to his post at the CIA relying on paper. Humint. That’s what he’d asked for on the Calloway kid. Human intelligence. And he’d gotten very little of it. Apparently no-one in Vinton county knew the kid, or if they did, they didn’t want to talk about him. At least there were some loose-lipped people at his university. And that’s where something wasn’t perfect. One of the people he knew at school, Rick Hewlett. There was something there. So today, Stan knew he’d get a chance to grill the kid and see if he held up. Like any good lawyer, Krantz wanted to know the answer to all the questions he was going to ask before he asked them. And he mostly did. But he didn’t know all the answers. He doubted that Calloway even knew the answer to all the questions he was going to be asked.
But that wasn’t the point. He had all the data, all the statistics. He wanted to crawl around inside this kid’s head for a while. And today, in Langley, was his chance. Stan put the Calloway resume back in his desk, walked across his office, and strode down the hallway to where the kid was waiting.
"So what do you want out of the CIA?" Stan Krantz asked Jay Calloway. "Excitement? Adventure? We don't have much of that. Most of it is painfully dull work, especially in your field. Hour after hour, day after day, grinding out code that maybe never gets used. Brutal. Or worse, grinding through someone else’s code, trying to figure it out. I don't mean to disillusion you. I just want you to know what you're getting into,” Stan Krantz said. He was watching Jay's face closely, evaluating him, seeing if Jay understood his impending situation.
"Ninety-nine point nine, nine percent of our technical personnel spend their entire career without ever seeing a bad guy. In your field, no-one has ever seen a bad guy. We see their code, their hacks, their trails, their files, their accounts, but never see them. You just see computer screens and computer geeks.”
Jay shifted in his seat. He liked the idea of the job security and the secret, high-tech equipment, and getting paid to figure out how to break into computers while preventing his from being compromised. But he didn't like the idea of bad guys, or guns. Had never been the beer drinking, deer hunter like so many others from his rural Ohio home. Over half of the 27 senior boys in his high school had joined the military. Not Jay.
"Well sir, I really would prefer to never see a bad guy. I'll help find 'em and track 'em and hack ‘em, but I don't want to go into the field.”
Now it was Jay's turn to study the face of the older man looking for any clue. Did they plan to make him an operative or keep him in the shop? Were they shocked at his pacifist attitude? Stan's face gave away nothing. They were like two good poker players searching for a sign in the opponent's face. Jay flinched first.
"I don't have anything against the use of force, and I'm for the death penalty in capital offenses. But I'd prefer not to be in on it personally,” Jay said.
"Could you handle it if push came to shove?" Stan asked.
Jay waited a millisecond, "Yes,” he answered.
“Because the code you write might be more lethal than any bullet or any poison. A bullet is one shot one kill, but one virus could kill millions.”
“Still yes,” Jay answered.
He'd just passed a major test. A theoretical test. Stan would plan a practical test for later. Maybe a mugger, maybe someone pushing around one of his weaker students, maybe someone trying to break into his apartment. If he passed that test, and this Hewlett thing went away, Stan knew he had his man.
"So you've met everyone right?" Stan Krantz asked, shaking Jay's hand again. Jay had never shaken hands as much as he had today.
"Yes I've seen everyone on the list,” Jay answered. He carefully scanned the clipboard in front of him, twelve codenames all initialed by their owner. "Yessir, seen 'em all.” Stan watched him scan the list. The kid was methodical, thorough. The investigators had used those words more than once. It was how some of his students described him. Others had said “relentless.” Stan could see how it had happened. A genius. All alone in the boonies of Ohio. No close friends. A not-so-recovering alcoholic for a father, a mother who didn’t care. He’d turned inwards, to the math, to the computers, to a universe he could create and control. But a universe that required precision and patience. A world where every comma, every dash, and every bit counted. He mentally congratulated his investigators, then himself for sending out the A team on this kid.
"Well then, there's just one more thing for today. We'll get you started on the personal history. I've got a couple of my colleagues here to help you clarify things. It'll take about an hour and a half, maybe two hours. You'll probably be pretty tired by the end. Just try to remember. Whatever comes into your mind is okay. It's better to tell us now than to have us find out later. We can tolerate a lot, more than you’d think. But the one thing we categorically cannot accept is lying. For example, if you tried to get your date drunk at the senior prom so you could get some, I don’t care, as long as you don’t lie about it to me. My colleagues will tell you the same thing. If they wreck their car and kill a civilian over the weekend because they were dead drunk and getting a blow job from a crack whore while driving a hundred miles an hour on the wrong side of the freeway, I don’t care, as long as they don’t lie to me. We can stand pretty much anything except a lie. It’s the only leverage anyone can ever get over you, catching you in a lie.”
Jay's mind immediately switched to his promise to Rick.
"After you're done, I'll pick you up, take you back to the hotel, let you rest up for a bit then take you to dinner and we'll talk. Alright?" Stan asked. It was more a carefully planned itinerary than a question. Jay thought for a minute. He wanted to establish his uniqueness from the start, leave no doubt about his knowledge of his perceived value or his desire to have some special privileges. He hadn't worked all those years of college to be pushed around on his first job interview. And after Stan’s “I can stand anything but a lie” speech, Jay felt the need to push back.
"Sounds great sir. But if it’s all the same to you, after your colleagues are done grilling me, and I have no delusions about that, I'd hoped to get in a few miles on the track I saw earlier, maybe hit the weight room for a minute. Think we've got time?"
Stan reacted calmly.
"Sure Jay. No sweat.” Stan Krantz waited for a chuckle but his joke went either unobserved or unacknowledged. Stan Krantz realized he'd been manipulated, didn’t seem to mind, and gave the kid another mental mark.
"No problem,” he said again.
Two men and what must have been a woman materialized from a side office and Stan excused himself. The personal history began while Stan observed from the next room.
The sort-of woman was in charge. Her and her unabrow.
"You understand, of course, that the nature of the job requires that we investigate you, your past, your family and friends, in great depth. Most of the investigation will be done without their knowledge. We'd like you not to apprise them of your situation or our interest. Before we begin, we need to get you to read carefully and then sign this agreement.” She slid a paper and a pen towards him. He read the paper carefully.
"Let me make sure I understand,” Jay said, his hand hovering above the paper. "From this moment on, I don't tell anyone about my interview, any offer or basically about anything? I tell you everything I remember about myself and everyone I know, and then, if you decide at some future, as yet undetermined date, to make me an offer of employment, you will contact me? Is that it?" Jay asked. He was trying not to sound incredulous. It wasn't much worse than he'd expected. After all it is the CIA, he thought.
"That's about it,” the woman said. Her voice was matter-of-fact, refused to acknowledge his modestly sarcastic tone. Jay signed. The three interviewers took turns asking questions. After a while Jay picked up the
ir pattern. Self. Family. Others. Self, family, others. Starting a long time ago, moving forward through the years. Near the end of the two hour session they asked him about his friends at college, Rick and C. Daniel Kinchon.
"I know Rick from class and from the department, but he's not my friend anymore or anything,” Jay lied. Pencils scratched on papers.
"Oh?" the woman asked.
"Yeah, he's older you now. And. He’s weird,” Jay lied. He'd never once thought Rick was weird. Remote yes, illusive sure, weird, not really.
“We went hiking a few times, and even went out west. That was a lot of fun. But that was a couple of years ago. We don’t really do anything together anymore. I mean, we share an office, and we talk, you know, March Madness pools, super bowl, stuff like that, but I wouldn’t say we’re friends or anything. We used to golf a lot. Now not so much. We kinda got sideways with each other over this girl. She was a freshman…”
Again pencils scratched on paper.
After a few more minutes and a few more questions, the interviewer moved on to C. Daniel.
“He’s my brightest student, a good kid. Kind of like me. He’s from Kentucky, I’m from Ohio, but rural Ohio, you know that. Anyway, I like him, think he can do some cool stuff. And he likes working on my research, on the viruses. Sometimes we square off and see if we can hack each other’s computers. It’s a lot of fun.” The interviewers took notes, knew these facts well, evaluated his tone and facial expression more than his facts. A few more questions, a few more topics, and the interview was over. Stan Krantz appeared and shepherded Calloway towards the fitness center.
"Sure you want to run? Maybe you want to take on the old man in a game of racquetball?" Stan offered, swinging an imaginary racquet.
