Over bottles of silty, home-brewed beer that Maudie’s uncle had stocked the fridge with before he left, the two young women had talked.
“I think I finally get it,” Maudie said.
“About the pretty thing.” Winthrop sipped at the cloudy brew.
“Uh-huh.” “I mean, when I was a big tub, anybody who bothered to spend time with me did it because of my personality, such that it was, and it wasn’t as if I had to cary a stick to clear myself a path through my admirers when I went out. Now, I get calls from guys who thought I was invisible when I was a whole helluva lot bigger than I am now. It’s like I suddenly got rich and everybody wants to be my friend.” She took a big slug of the beer.
“I mean, the depth of a guy who is only interested in you because of your looks is about that of a postage stamp, isn’t it? Kind of hard to feel a lot of trust for somebody like that.
“Oh, baby, I love you for your mind!” sounds a little hollow when he’s fumbling to unsnap your bra strap.” Joanna grinned around another swig of beer.
“Tell me about it, sister.” Maudie looked at her, as if seeing her for the first time. had to deal with this your whole life. How did you finally get past it?” “Who got past it? I bump into it every day I go out. You learn to live with it.” “I may start eating again,” Maudie said.
“Who needs the stress? Maybe it’s better to be fat and sure of my friends than skinny and suspicious.” “No, I think the best thing is to find somebody who can get past your face and boobs, who doesn’t care too much about either. It’s okay if they’ think you look good, that’s fine, as long as they realize that isn’t all there is to you.” “You got somebody like that?” “I got you, babe.” “I mean somebody male.” “Well, no. Not yet. But I’m ever hopeful.
He must be out there somewhere.” “Better be careful. I might find him first.” Both women laughed, and drank more of the malty home brew-Winthrop’s virgil cheeped, and she pulled it from where it was clipped onto her belt.
Incoming call. The caller ID showed it was Commander Michaels.
It must be important if he was calling her from just down the hall.
“Yes, sir?” “We have a situation here, Joanna. If you could come to my office, I’d appreciate it.” “Be right there,” she said.
She discommed, stuck the virgil back on her belt, gave herself a final glance in the mirror, and started for the door.
Monday, December 20th, 10:45 a.m.
Michaels looked at the three leaders of his computer team, as good a group of people as he’d ever worked with. They all looked back at him with anticipation as he finished laying out the scenario.
“All right, folks, there it is. CIA is justifiably upset and they’d like us to do some thing about it. Forty years of work is going down the tubes, and more might follow that any second.
Let’s have some risk assessment and scenario building here. Jay, what do we have so far?” “I wish I could say it was good news. Boss, but so far, zip city. I don’t think we’re dealing with some kid hacker. What little I’ve found is a little rougher than the Russian we just dealt with. The guy snuck in and out, but he didn’t track a lot of mud–I haven’t found his footprints yet.” “Toni? How is he getting this stuff?” “Three possibilities,” she said.
“One, he’s cracking his way into secret files and stealing it; two, somebody who knows it is feeding him–or three, he knows it himself.” “So he could be almost anybody,” Joanna said.
“Somebody outside the walls, or inside them.” “How do we find him?” Michaels asked.
They all looked morose, and Michaels knew why. If the guy hadn’t left an obvious trail, and if he didn’t come back and blunder into a hole and break his leg or some thing, finding him would be iffy at best.
“All right, skip that. How do we stop him?” Again, Michaels already knew the answer, but he wanted to get his team cranked up to full alert.
Jay said, “We’ve already put out the word to all federal agencies to harden systems, change passwords, reschedule downtimes from periodic to random, all like that.” “Which will help if he is by himself outside and looking in,” Toni said, “but not if he’s a cleared employee.” “Or being fed by somebody who is,” Joanna added.
“We set some rattle cans up on real obvious targets,” Jay said.
“Squeals, squeakers, telltales, like that, but if he was dumb enough to blunder into those, he probably wouldn’t have gotten in in the first place.” Michaels nodded. It wasn’t their fault, but they had to catch this guy before more people started dying. He had to be hard here.
“Folks, this guy, whoever he is, has caused at least one death we know of, and maybe more, and is likely to cause more. He’s compromised our national security, pissed off our friends and enemies alike, and way down at the bottom of the list, he’s also making Net Force look bad.
There are people who will use this against us, and that’s a problem, but that’s the least of our worries. I want to see some contingency plans, some operational scenarios that will nail this bastard and get him off the net. Use whatever Cray time you need, spend what you need to spend, call in favors, whatever. This is critical, priority one. We have other business, sure, but this sits on top of the pile, understood?” They nodded, murmuring assent at him.
“All right. G.” After they had left, Michaels stood staring into infinity. It never rained but it poured. And it was his job to stop the rain.
Monday, December 20th, 12:05 P.m.
Toni stretched her legs, dropping into the left sempok position by sliding her right foot behind and past her left, sinking until her buttocks touched the floor, then bouncing up and across to the opposite side. A good silat player could defend or attack from a seated pose, could leap to her feet, kick, sweep, punch, or move quickly to one side. It didn’t always look pretty but it worked, and that was the point. In silat, the object was to get the job done, not strike attractive poses for anybody watching.
She looked up and saw Alex walk into the gym carrying his bag. She raised her eyebrows in surprise. She hadn’t expected him to come in for class today, not given all the crap going on with the spy thing.
“I didn’t think I’d see you here,” she said.
“Me neither,” he said.
“But there’s not much else I can do about things at lunch. Everybody I’d want to talk to will be out and I hate to interrupt somebody trying to grab a quick bite. Besides, exercise tends to clear out the cobwebs.
I’ll get dressed, see you in a minute.” He headed into the locker room, and Toni went back to limbering up. Poor Alex. He took all this so personally, as if everything that happened was all his fault. She fielded as much of it as she could, tried to take care of him, but she couldn’t shortstop all of the crap that landed on his desk.
Of course, given her choice, she would be able to make his life a lot more relaxed away from work.
He needed somebody to take care of him, to rub his back, to fix him a drink before dinner, to– –screw his brains out?
Toni smiled. Well, yes. That too. That wasn’t likely to happen.
He was still faithful to his ex-wife, at least as far as Toni knew. It was both an admirable and a frustrating trait in him.
Although she had certainly seen how he looked at Joanna Winthrop, with her drop-dead good looks and bedroom eyes, and that had made Toni’s belly knot in cold fear. How could you compete with a woman who had a face that would launch a thousand ships, a body to match, and who was as bright as a thousand-watt bulb to boot? Hardly fair, her being beautiful and smart.
Toni blew out a sigh. She could hardly blame him if he wanted to chase the beautiful lieutenant, could she? Alex didn’t feel for Toni the way Toni felt for him. She loved him, and even so, even so, she had stumbled.
Of course, that one night stand with Rusty had been a big mistake. She’d repaired it as best she could immediately after it had happened, and he was dead now, so nobody knew about it and nobody ever would. Except her. She knew. She was in love with her boss, but she had slept with another man. How could she get around that? It felt awful.