Seat of Power Read online

  “Hadn’t particularly noticed,” Jack said, lifting the beer mug to his lips.

  Upper management had made an appearance in unexpected numbers, throwing out cold handshakes and synthetic smiles while waiting for the quickest opportunity to slip out unnoticed. Neville Brandon, deputy director of the Special Collections Bureau, almost never attended after-hours events. It was a given that Derek Salazar, director of the Homeland Intelligence Division and handpicked presidential appointee, made it a rule to snub desk jockeys. But many others showed up. Clyde Kelley, senior liaison officer with the CIA along with his counterparts at the FBI, NSA, DOJ, White House, and DHS. Clyde was known to be a yes man. Blake Prendergast was friendly enough, though few knew where they stood with him. Allison Dovecote was reserved and extremely private. Mackenzie Nicholson was efficient and friendly. Rebeka Venters kept her head down and her nose to the grindstone. Larry Engles was an ass.

  Aneila went on talking, barely taking a breath between sentences. Hers were sweet lips that smiled genially and giggled inwardly. Because she was sociable without being overbearing, some thought she was an airhead. She was as serious as they came. Cardigan sweaters and tailored slacks chosen from the gray end of the color spectrum should have downplayed her complexion, but the neutral hues brought out the loveliness of her skin tone, the grace of her figure, and the pride of her bearing, bubbling with enthusiasm. Younger than Jack by several years, she hadn’t hesitated bringing him under her wing when he came onboard, briefing him on who the good guys were and where the bodies were buried.

  “Ah, here comes the Bitch Brigade.”

  Camilla Howden, Janey Matheson, and Angie Browne, respectively the high-powered deputy directors of the usual mundane departments of all organizational charts, kept to themselves, huddling together like co-conspirators, speaking in confidential tones.

  “Angie’s been having an affair with Salazar for years. They have lunch every Tuesday and Friday, except holidays. She’s his eyes and ears.” She craned her head. “Liz said she was coming. I don’t see her. Held up, I guess.”

  She prattled on, gabbing about this one and that one, and relating more gossip than any one woman should have at her fingertips. Matheson was smarter than she looked. Howden had a strategic brain. And Browne was politically astute. “Too politically astute, if you ask me.” She bit her lower lip, deliberating on whether she ought to voice what had been bothering her since leaving the office. This usually shy woman whose unassuming beauty stood out above the rest was after something, and Jack knew what it was.

  “So ...,” she said expectantly, “what do you think?”

  “About what?”

  “The security breaches. It’s all very need-to-know, except everyone does. Or soon will. I’m surprised you don’t. Or do you?” Her eyes flickered with several thoughts. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

  She nodded toward two additional deputy directors—John Sessions and Chris Cameron—engaged in an intense exchange, both staring at the floor instead of each other.

  “Okay, so I’m going to tell you what I know. It looks like those security breaches crawled into everything. Databases. Emails. Everything. Went undetected for months. One of Chris’s guys discovered the hack.”

  “Do they know who did it?”

  “If they do, nobody’s saying. Everyone’s in panic mode.” She looked around. “Have you seen Harry?”

  Heading the Special Collections Unit, Harrison Tobias was one of Jack’s lunch buddies. Every couple of weeks, his wife invited him over to the house for some good home cooking. Their boys liked to roughhouse with Jack, who was more like a kid than their disciplinary parents.

  “Said he’d be here later,” Jack said. “Something about picking up Annie’s car at the shop.”

  Sessions moved away from Cameron and drew Angie Browne into an intimate conversation. She had direct access to the alphabet agencies: CIA, FBI, NSA, DOJ, DHS, ICE, as well as POTUS and the Pentagon. It was a high-profile position filled by a high-profile lady of admirable qualities, from her brown-haired and long-legged attractiveness to her acute intelligence and political awareness. They traded quick questions and quicker responses.

  “Wish I could read lips,” Aneila said.

  “How did you find out about the breaches?” Jack asked.

  “Just someone,” she demurred. Since Aneila was tuned into more tittle-tattle than anyone Jack had ever known, she was being modest.

  Though working for the Firm less than a year, Jack had formed friendships easily enough. He was liked for his offhand sarcasm and practical jokes, but mostly for his skills. Colleagues jokingly referred to him as the hacker of hackers even if he called himself a lowly data analyst. As a cybersecurity expert, he had the talent to hack almost anybody and any organization. Corporations, crime syndicates, terrorist groups, lone wolves, political operatives, and when called upon, leaders of other countries. All were all grist for his talents. He was good at it, but he never boasted.

  Aneila leaned closer. “You and Liz. Were you ever ...?” She rocked the flat of her hand, implying the obvious.

  Laughter echoed around them like pebbles being shaken in a glass jar. Hearing the person sitting next to you was passable, but listening in on other people’s conversations next to impossible. Jack was a very cautious man. Treat your enemies like friends, your friends like strangers, and above all, don’t let anyone know what you’re thinking. Outwardly affable but inwardly secluded, he had been told often enough that he was remote. He took it as a compliment.

  “Old friends. We met in college.” It was his pat answer whenever anybody asked about Liz.

  “Friends,” Aneila repeated with a mocking tone.

  When you signed on with the Firm, you did it with stars in your eyes and dreams of being a modern-day spy, everything accomplished from the comfort of an adjustable armchair and padded cubicle, your efforts focused on supporting, planning, and carrying out electronic snooping, data collection, video surveillance, data mining, and when called upon, covert operations. You were forbidden to talk to outsiders about your work, including close friends and family members. You bottled everything up: the good, the ugly, and the unconscionable. You tried not to think about the downsides. You weighed good against evil, security against danger, them against us. It was a simple equation though not always easy to calculate.

  Aneila’s dark eyes darted around the tavern with more than a casual raking, every so often becoming intrigued by who was talking to whom before moving on. She studied people the way others studied butterflies or orchids, like curiosities to be collected on a memory board. “She’s nice,” she said offhandedly. “Liz. As bosses go. I just didn’t know she was that nice.”

  “Like I said, we’re friends.”

  “Friendly enough to bring you into the Firm.”

  Those who worked at the Firm were very ordinary people, attracted by generous pay grades, meaningful work, perceived glamour, and the patriotic notion of doing something important. Protecting the homeland wasn’t just a motto. It was a duty, something they could be proud of. Managing the stress of sixty-hour workweeks was the price paid for the privilege. With the holiday weekend ahead of them, they could throw off their inhibitions, drink liberally, eat ravenously, tell tall tales and bad jokes, laugh and banter, and let off steam on the nearby dance floor.

  “Let’s say she convinced me signing up was the opportunity of a lifetime.”

  “Still convinced?”

  “I’m a true believer.” He nodded toward the crowd. “Like everybody else.”

  “Oh, please. None of us are true believers. We may salute, but it’s just for show. But you? I don’t know about you. You act like one of us, but you’re not one of us, are you? Sometimes I think you’re playing by a different rulebook. You seem to take it seriously, but you really don’t. What you do here is game to you, isn’t it?” She stared at him before going for the jugular. “Exactly why did Liz bring you in? What makes you so special? Ot
her than being brilliant at what you do. Don’t look surprised. I can recognize genius when I see it. But I just keep thinking there’s something going on. Something you haven’t said.”

  He never noticed before, but her eyes were flecked with gold and green specks. Hers were intense eyes, probing eyes, and slightly unnerving. “On the org chart, I report to Liz. Unofficially, she leaves me alone to do what I do best.”

  “Hacking.”

  “Systems network security.”

  “Reverse hacking.”

  “Cybersecurity.”

  She swept her hand aside, dismissing all those inconvenient technical terms. “Have you done well at being a hacker? On your off-time, I mean. Do you have outside clients? Do people seek you out? Or the other way around?”

  “Oh, Ms. Chowdhury, you’re wasting your talents. You should sign on with the CIA.”

  She was still staring at him. “Or should I mind my own business?”

  He looked around the room, anywhere but into her inquisitive eyes.

  “Let’s try this,” she said sunnily. “Do you and Liz still see each other? Outside the office, I mean?”

  “Are you putting yourself up as a candidate?”

  “You are an asshole.” She had a temper. Jack supposed all women had tempers hidden beneath their lowered eyelids.

  “We’re just friends. Like you and me.”

  “Are we? Just friends?” Her hands fell into her lap and gripped each other, shoulders rising stiffly. “Maybe I misread you. You’re very private, aren’t you? When I think about it, I really don’t know that much about you.”

  He ran his eyes over her face, taking in the narrow brow, the delicately formed cheeks, the nose rounded at the tip, the lips made for kissing, the graceful throat rising from the hidden depths of her sweater, the pink and bronze complexion that married the hues of her Pakistani ancestors with those of their British overlords, and finally the sparkle in her eyes, hidden behind squared-off glasses, eyes that always seemed to be laughing even when her lips were not. The combination fashioned a worthy woman, someone who could steer him in the right direction and keep him from wallowing in the filth of his childhood, a filth he could never scrub away no matter how hard he tried.

  Drawing her sweater together as if suddenly chilled, Aneila absorbed his smoldering stare, a slight twist to her mouth and a tilt to her head as if she didn’t quite know what to make of his smoky gaze. Then she quietly excused herself to the powder room.

  5

  Chicago, Illinois

  Thursday, July 3

  NICK BALL LIVED in a world of listening devices and electronic gadgets. Telephone bugs, room transmitters, and tracking devices. Recorders, decoders, and voice changers. RF, UHF, and microwave transmissions. Hardwired, miniaturized, and long-range cameras. He fed on hi-tech fantasies. Thrived on adrenaline rushes. Relished getting inside people’s ugliest thoughts and discovering their darkest secrets. And pinned his ambitions on the big score, the brilliant swindle, or the windfall opportunity dropping out of the sky. His were unseen handicaps and hidden addictions.

  He took the off-ramp and waited for the traffic signal to change. In the reflection of the rearview mirror, he saw what he had become, a man abused by whiskey nights and nicotine days. His scowling lips hadn’t laughed for months. His milky eyes mirrored more treachery and artifice than any scoundrel of eighty-six confined to a broken wheelchair. Religion gave up on him years ago. His father gave up on him when he turned sixteen. His mother never cared what the middle child of her five sons was up to. He was a sorry excuse for a man. He had known it for quite some time. He just didn’t want to face the truth. The decisions he made over a lifetime of duplicity had changed him. But he kept on doing what he was doing. Trespassing into other people’s lives. Altering destinies. Putting wrinkles into tissue-paper faiths. Trouble was, he could do it in his sleep.

  A year ago, he decided to opt out. The decision sneaked up on him by degrees, like mercury rising in a thermometer over months and years until finally the glass shattered. He despised every one of his aliases, each an exact replica of himself, shallow and self-indulgent, even if they went by different names and were born under different signs of the zodiac. When this latest opportunity came along, he didn’t hesitate taking the job. He acted first and considered the consequences later. Impulsive decisions had always gotten him by. His latest was about to catch up with him. There was no undoing his involvement. He had put himself in a tight box. The dimensions were roughly the size of a pine coffin.

  Brenda met him at the front door, arms crossed and mouth stern. She was in a foul mood. She had been in a foul mood for ten years. They owned a bungalow on the north side of Chicago. It needed a rehab, something they often talked about the way husbands and wives often do but put off just as often. They met in grammar school, became sweethearts in high school, went their separate ways after graduation, and came together a third fatal time. They never should have gotten married or made babies together. A real family needed loving parents, certainly not reluctant inmates forced to sleep under the same roof because of vows and obligations. The boys were different. They ran to him, hugging his legs and crying out, “Daddy, Daddy!” It was exactly what he needed. Since it would be his last such welcoming home, he might as well savor it. Brenda stood back and watched, her manner detached, her expression sour. He visualized the carefree girl in fourth-period history class, her silken hair parted down the middle and framing a pretty face that was always merry. That girl was gone.

  “How’s he doing?” he asked, patting her belly.

  “She is doing fine.”

  “What should we name her?”

  “After your mom?”

  She died last year after a long battle with cancer. “Your mom?” he suggested.

  Brenda beamed. Then the fleeting smile disappeared as if it had never been. Over the years, she had changed from that vivacious teenager into a stubborn woman who spent her days raising the kids and her nights worrying about the future. Wrinkles fanned the outer corners of her eyes. Creases furrowed her neck. Fatigue dulled her once rosy complexion. At the age of thirty-six, she looked more like his mother than his wife. And that carefree girl? Only a distant memory. He suddenly resented her. For raising their sons during his absences. For running the house and paying the bills. For sticking by him, even if he was a bad provider and a worse father. She shouldn’t have put up with him. For this, he resented her most of all.

  She knew the routine. Wordlessly she followed him out to the street. All she knew was that he had been out of town on a job, she didn’t know where and didn’t know for what. Having put up with her straw widowhood, she asked how long he would be home this time.

  “I’m leaving tomorrow.”

  “So soon?”

  “Only if you want the kids to have a roof over their heads.”

  She mumbled a few choice words but dutifully helped him upload his gear from the van. Over a spaghetti dinner, Brenda became sullen while the boys babbled. She knew something was up but didn’t ask what, the same way she hadn’t asked why Nick quit his job at the phone company to start a consulting business that took him out of town two hundred days out of the year.

  Like a good wife, she laundered his clothes, put the kids down for the night, and serviced him in bed. Then she wept at the edge of her pillow. After drying her tears, Brenda went to check on the boys while Nick tucked an arm beneath his head and stared at the ceiling. The whirring blades of the ceiling fan sliced the nighttime darkness into overlapping shadows. Crickets sang a lullaby outside the window. Thunder rumbled in the distance. Rain fell gently onto the pavement. And Nick justified his actions with mental acrobatics.

  His most recent assignment was an underhanded and nasty bit of business. He had probably broken a dozen federal laws. The sting was risky, and the sad sap targeted for the fall hadn’t deserve his fate. But this was Nick’s one-way ticket to a mountaintop retreat, hand-fed by nubile virgins, respected by his elders, and bowed dow
n to by his inferiors. Only one glitch remained. Four to be exact. His lady, their twin boys, and another surprise on the way. He could have taken Brenda with him, but it wouldn’t have worked out. She was too attached to her family. It was better this way. Make a clean break, take a new name, find a new woman, make babies to safeguard his legacy, and leave any regrets behind. Brenda would be better off without him. When the deposits started appearing in their joint checking account, she would never again have to worry about money. Eventually she would forget him and find a good man, a better man than Nick could ever be.

  The team rendezvoused in June. Nick took a cheap room at the outskirts of Washington. The remaining operatives arrived under similar protocols. Everyone went by code names. Alpha was the ringleader. Nick was assigned the handle of Delta. Beta, Gamma, and Epsilon made up the rest. Alpha knew each by name, but none of the operatives knew the identities of their counterparts. Voice changers and two-way radios arrived via prearranged mail drops. They only met over mobile frequencies. Their interactions were sharpshooting and vitriolic. To say they were backbiting livewires who would turn in their own mothers for a bounty was putting it mildly.

  Brenda came back to bed. They made love a second time. The sex act had gotten too routine, too mechanical, like brushing your teeth or remembering to lower the toilet seat. Sometimes impotence reared its head, but not tonight. Tonight he had to get something out of his system. Tonight he had to leave Brenda with a keepsake, even if it was only a tarnished memory.