Hidden Agendas nf-2 Read online

  "I've watched you. You're good at it, that goes without saying, but you make it look easy. I was just wondering if it was. Easy, I mean."

  She thought about it for a second. She didn't want to sound egotistical, but the truth? "Yeah. I guess it does come without a lot of effort for me. Always has. I had a kind of affinity for it."

  He shook his head. "I can strip a heavy machine gun and put it back together in the dark in a pouring rain, but when it comes to bits and bytes, I'm a techno-dweeb."

  She laughed. Men so seldom admitted to their shortcomings, it was refreshing to hear.

  "I mean, I've tried to learn, but I have this block, the information just bounces off, it doesn't sink in. I tried a class recently, but I had a… personality conflict with the instructor. I think he just recognized that I was as dumb as dirt and would never get it."

  " ‘A thing can be told simply if the teller understands it properly.' "

  "Excuse me?"

  "George Turner, a writer I admired in college. You know how a computer works, basic theory?"

  "Yeah. Well, actually… no."

  "Okay. Let's say you're on guard duty, you're watching a door. You open it when somebody with the right password comes by, you close it if they don't have the password. You follow that?"

  "Sure."

  "Now you know how computers work. A door is open or it's closed. A switch is on or it is off. The answer is yes or no when somebody gets to the place you're standing guard. It happens fast, all the switching, but that's the base, and everything else links to that."

  "No shit? Sorry, I mean—"

  "No shit," she said.

  "Damn. How come nobody ever put it that way before?"

  "Because you've run into crummy teachers before. A good teacher uses terms a student can relate to, and she takes the time to learn what those terms are. When I was in college, I took a psych course. There was a story they told, about biased IQ tests for children. You know, you show a picture of a cup, and you show a saucer, a table, and a car, then you ask, what does the cup go with?"

  "Yeah?"

  "So in middle- and upper-class America, the kids with working brains all pick the saucer, because cups and saucers go together, right?"

  "Right."

  "But in the poor parts of town, cups might go with tables, because they don't have saucers. And among kids from homeless families, cup might go with car, because that's where the family lives."

  "Economic bias," Fernandez said.

  She nodded. He wasn't a dummy, no matter what he said. "Exactly. Same thing holds true for racial or religious or other kinds of cultural factors. So then everybody thinks these kids are stupid, and so they get a different level of teaching, when the real problem is on the other end, in the minds of the ed-ucators. Because they didn't take into account the students' knowledge as well as their own."

  "I get it."

  "There's nothing wrong with your mind. All you need is a teacher who can put things in terms you already know how to relate to. You're a soldier, find a soldier who knows computers, you can learn from him."

  "Or her," Fernandez said.

  "Or her." She looked at him. "Are you asking me to teach you?"

  "I would be ever so grateful if you would," he said. Kept a straight face while saying it too.

  She smiled. "This isn't some ploy to get next to me because you think I'm beautiful, is it, Fernandez?"

  "No, ma'am. You have knowledge I don't have, and I'd like very much to learn it. This is part of my job and I'm not good at it. That bothers me. I don't need to be Einstein, but I do want to understand as much of it as I need to understand. I mean, yeah, you are beautiful, but what's more important here is that you're smart."

  She blinked and looked at Fernandez in a new light. My God, if he was telling the truth, he admired her for her mind!

  "We might be able to work something out. Come see me when the holidays are over."

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "And bag that. Call me Joanna."

  "I'll answer to just about anything, but my friends call me Sarge or Julio."

  "Julio it is."

  She grinned again. Ooh, wait until Maudie hears about this!

  Chapter Eleven

  Thursday, December 23rd, 4:10 p.m. In the air over southern Ohio

  "Would you care for something to drink, sir?"

  Alex Michaels looked up from the in-flight magazine, from an article on the construction of the world's tallest building, the new twin towers in Sri Lanka. The new structure would be, when finished, seventy feet taller than the second tallest building — which was also in Sri Lanka.

  "Coke?" he said.

  "Yes, sir." The flight attendant handed him a plastic cup of ice and one of the new biodegradable plastic cans of Coke. The can would keep for ten years, as long as it wasn't opened, but once fresh air hit the inside, the plastic would start to degrade. In nine months, it would be a powdery, non-toxic residue that would completely dissolve under the first rain that hit it. Throw the can on the ground, and in a year it would be gone.

  The flight attendant moved to the next row of seats. Michaels poured the soft drink into his cup, then sat and watched it fizz and foam. He was in business class, the equipment was one of the big Boeing 777's, and he sat next to the wing door on the starboard side. He liked to get that seat when he could, next to the exit door. It always seemed that there was a little more room in the exit row, although that might have been his imagination. The main thing was, if there was trouble on the plane, he wanted to be in a position to do something.

  He'd started asking for the exit row after a flight to Los Angeles when he'd seen an elderly man who might have weighed a hundred pounds sitting next to an emergency door. Yeah, the guy might get a burst of adrenaline under stress, so he could pop that door right open if the wheels collapsed on landing or some such, but Michaels didn't want to risk his life and the lives of the other passengers on that. Maybe the old guy would get a burst blood vessel instead. Then again, maybe the old guy was like Toni's silat teacher, and there were hidden strengths there. Michaels knew he shouldn't be so judgmental. But still, better a fairly strong forty-year-old GS employee in front of that door than a seventy-year-old lightweight. Better odds for all concerned.

  Of course, he'd rather fly first class too. A couple of times, he had gotten agency upgrades on official business, and it was more comfortable, but he could never justify the expense when it came to personal flights. The way he figured it, the back of the plane got there at the same time as the front did, all things going as planned, and to cough up several hundred dollars extra for cloth napkins and complimentary champagne seemed excessive.

  There was enough time for an in-flight movie before they got to Denver, where Michaels had to switch planes for Boise. The airlines had gotten a lot better about not losing luggage, but he wasn't taking any chances. He had his single soft-side roller tucked into the overhead compartment, along with Susie's main Christmas gift, a band/vox synthesizer. Apparently she had discovered a kind of music called technometo-funk, which was all the rage among the kids. Michaels tastes ran to jazz fusion, classic rock, 40's big band, or even long-haired classical. He hadn't followed new-wave pop stuff for years. He knew he was getting old when he read the news, saw the Billboard Top Ten list, and realized he didn't recognize the names of any of the songs, or the artists who performed them. Who could take seriously a song called "Mama Moustache Mama Sister," by somebody who called himself "HeeBee-JeeBeeDeeBeeDoo?" Or "Bunk Bunk!" by "DogDurt"?

  With the synthesizer, Susie could supposedly program herself into any group, then hear and see herself performing on stage with them. It seemed like an advanced toy for somebody her age, but it was what she wanted. It had been a bitch to find one too. Apparently every other kid in the country had to have one of the things. Fortunately, Toni had found one, so he could be a hero to his daughter.

  Toni did that a lot, made him look good.

  He looked at the screen built into th
e back of the seat in front of him, a screen that could be angled for viewing so that even if the person sitting in that row decided to lean back all the way, you could still see it. No. He didn't feel like watching a movie, playing video VR, or monitoring the progress of his flight via a little animation of a jet flying along over a map. It was nice just to sit with a magazine in his lap and gaze out at the cold ground below. Fortunately, the weather was clear, and the Ohio landscape below, much of it covered with snow, sparkled white in the setting sun.

  It was going to be midnight, East Coast time, when he landed in Boise, assuming he made his connection and the flight went as scheduled. Ten p.m. in that part of Idaho. He had a rental car reserved at the airport, and a room booked at the Holiday Inn, not far from the house where his daughter and ex-wife lived. Where they had once all lived together. There was a spare bedroom in the big old clunky two-story house, two if you counted the sewing room, but Megan hadn't offered and he hadn't asked. The armistice between Alex and his ex was uneasy. She was a sniper, quick to shoot and too accurate for his comfort. Better to have a safe house where he could hole up and gather his forces for the battle. There was a lot to be said for a nice quiet Holiday Inn, with room service and a double lock on the door.

  He wondered how many other people thought about holidays in such a fashion? As an ugly guerrilla war to be waged quick and dirty and retreated from as soon as possible? Why did unhappy families gather, if it made them so miserable? A lot of people he knew would just as soon cancel the big holidays and keep their families at a safe distance…

  In his case, however, the answer was easy: Susie. Whatever else, she needed to know she had a mother and father who both loved her and wanted her to be happy, even if they couldn't be happy with each other.

  Certainly this wasn't something he had ever foreseen for himself when he'd been courting Megan, when they'd been young, in love, with the world by the tail, so full of themselves they could never envision failing at anything, much less their marriage. Ah, the arrogance of youth, when you knew everything, and didn't care who knew you knew everything, since you were willing to tell them all about it at great length if they blinked at you.

  Boy, that had been a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…

  Maybe he could get some sleep. Just lean over against that cool plastic window with one of the little puffy pillows, and turn it all off.

  There was an idea that had much appeal.

  Thursday, December 23rd, 5:15 p.m. Washington, D.C.

  The car was small, black, and looked like an old Fiat. The driver heard the siren behind him and pulled over, next to a row of small shops that appeared to be closed. There was a shoe store with a Nike swoosh on the glass, and an electronics store with small television sets in the window. The words on the storefronts looked to be German or Austrian, maybe Croat.

  The Fiat's door opened and a smallish man in a long, dark coat stepped out of the car. He had his hands up next to his shoulders, to show he was unarmed. The sun was bright, but the street seemed deserted save for him.

  A pair of policemen approached the Fiat, pistols drawn. The uniforms they wore had that Middle European look, odd-shaped billed caps with checkering on the front, leather jackets over dark blue shirts and ties, and dark blue trousers with a yellow seam-stripe on the outside of the legs. One of the cops moved to stand in front of the small man in the long coat; the other cop checked out the car.

  The first cop gestured with the gun and said something. The small man turned around and put his hands on top of the Fiat, and the cop patted him down. No weapons.

  The second cop talked into a small com, but kept his pistol pointed in the Fiat driver's direction. Second cop listened to the com for a moment. He nodded at the first cop, and said something.

  The small man leaning against the car shoved away from it, swung his elbow up, hitting the cop behind him in the face, and knocking him down. The small man ran. The second cop darted around the front of the Fiat, raised his pistol, and fired — four, five, six times. The gun belched orange fire and white smoke, and the empty shells showered the car. The brass hulls glinted in the bright sunshine like gold coins as they bounced and dropped to the sidewalk.

  The small running man fell, face-down on the street. He moved his arms and legs, as if spastically trying to swim on the concrete.

  The cop who had been elbowed in the nose recovered. He moved to where the small man lay on the street. He pointed his pistol at the back of the downed man's head. He fired. The little man spasmed one more time, then went limp.

  Thomas Hughes blew out a big sigh, then froze the recording's image. The two cops stood over the dead man — and there was no doubt he was dead, a bullet to the back of the head from three feet away sure as hell did that.

  Man. They just executed that poor sucker. And all of it caught on the surveillance cam mounted on the dashboard of the police car.

  Hughes leaned back in his chair and looked at the frozen holoprojection. He felt a flash of regret, but he buried it. The man was a spy, he had known there were risks. He'd had to know what might happen to him if he got caught.

  Of course, he probably hadn't thought his name would be stolen from a top-secret list nobody was supposed to have access to and posted to the net so anybody who bothered to look would know who he was.

  Hughes had gotten the recording from one of his spies — actually one working for Platt. And it was brutal to watch, a man getting murdered like that. It turned your stomach, made you queasy.

  But there it was. You couldn't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. It was necessary. What were a few spies, easily replaced, compared to the long-range goals Hughes had in mind? Not much, not really. The end in this case surely justified the means. People died every day. A handful more wouldn't make a difference in the grand scheme of things.

  The new Quayle addition to the Senate office building where White had his offices was nearly empty. Not a lot of people were working at this hour on the day before Christmas Eve. Hughes assumed that the other Senate office buildings — the Russell, the Dirkson, the Hart — were also, mostly deserted, save for security and cleaning personnel, with maybe a few young staff members trying to make points while everybody else was off for the holidays. Not much official work got done from early December on into the new year, but a lot of groundwork did get laid.

  White had once had offices in the Hart Building, back when they'd still had that ugly modern-art sculpture of cut-out metal, Mountains and Clouds or some such, in the atrium. The staff on the upper floors had spent a lot of time sailing paper airplanes down to land on top of the sculpture. They'd had contests to see who could get the most to hit and stay.

  He sighed again. The stakes were high, and the cards had to be played correctly or the game would be lost. It was a pity about this agent, and about the others who would be imprisoned or maybe killed, but there was no way around it. There was a lot of inertia to overcome to get something as big as he had in mind to move — a lot. This spy was the first, but he wouldn't be the last who had to die for Hughes's plan to go forward. It was too bad, but that was how it was. In this world, you could be a hunter or the hunted, and sheep were prey for wolves, plain and simple. It was the first law of the jungle — the strong survive at the expense of the weak.

  And Thomas Hughes was a survivor.

  He saved the recording into a file for White to look at later, then started to wave the computer off. He'd done enough here for the day. Time to go home, order in some takeout, and have a glass of wine and a nice hot bath. Maybe he'd lift a glass to the poor operatives who had to suffer for his scheme. Why not? It wouldn't cost him anything.

  His com cheeped. It was the secret number, rerouted though something like sixteen satellite bounces so it couldn't be traced to him.

  He checked the scrambler to be sure it was on, even though it was automatic on this number, and clicked on the vox-altering circuit, picking Old Lady for the latter. Whoever was on the other end would hear
what sounded like a ninety-year-old woman talking.

  "Hello?" he said.

  There was silence for a moment.

  "Who's there?" Hughes said.

  "I have some information concerning certain… shipments."

  Hughes knew who it was. A mid-level manager at the National Security Agency, a man with top secret clearance, but a man who had a secret gambling problem and was deep in the hole to his bookies. His voice was altered too. Hughes had been waiting for the man to come up with something for him. The gambler didn't know who he was speaking to. "Go on."

  "It concerns some volatile… minerals."

  "I'm still listening."

  "I need fifty thousand."

  Hughes could almost hear the man sweating. "How much of the… volatile substance are we talking about?"

  "Nineteen pounds. In four packages. On the same day."

  Hughes considered that in amazement for a moment. Nineteen pounds of weapons-grade plutonium was being moved at the same time? Certainly not by the same agency inside the U.S., even broken into that many sub-critical-mass chunks. The NRC and NSA would have kittens if somebody did something that stupid. But he had to check.

  "This is domestic movement?"

  "Of course not. Two are, two are foreign. Six pounds, seven pounds, four, and two."

  "When?"

  "In two days. You want the particulars or not?"

  "Fifty thousand, you said."

  "Yes. In cash. Nothing bigger than a hundred."

  "All right. I'll have somebody meet you at the place, tonight, nine p.m. Bring the information."

  Hughes broke the connection. He hadn't planned to escalate things quite this much, this fast, but when something like this fell into your lap, you grabbed it and ran with it.

  He tapped his com. Platt answered right away.

  "Yeah?"

  "Swing by here."

  Platt said, "When?"

  "Now."

  He would give Platt the money and send him to fetch the information. Anybody with access to some explosives, a good metal shop, and some electronics from Radio Shack could build an atomic bomb, but without the right fissionable material it was nothing more than a mildly dangerous science project. There were a lot of groups out there who would pay millions to get their hands on nineteen pounds of weapons-grade plutonium. You didn't need that much to build yourself a nice and dirty little nuclear bomb. It would make a helluva bang when you set it off.