‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I never did have the smooth-talking gene.’
She was still smiling and she reached across and put her hand on his arm. ‘That’s OK’, she said, ‘to be honest I’d rather be with someone that feels comfortable enough to speak their mind. I don’t like to be fed lines, so you passed muster soldier. And yes, to answer your question, it does still fit.’
The food platter arrived and it was enormous. Ben took a bite of the bruschetta and it seemed to melt in his mouth, a perfect blend of olive oil, garlic, basil, and tomatoes on a crispy ciabatta. He couldn’t help but let out a small moan of delight. ‘Have you ever been to Italy?’ he asked.
‘I joined the army after leaving college because I wanted to see the world and boy did I see the world. I spent nineteen months in northern Italy, moved around a fair bit. I often thought of moving there permanently, apart from the fact my Italian was lousy; I loved the culture, and the weather. But if I ate like this all the time, I’d need to spend twelve hours a day in the gym. I don’t know how the Italian girls do it. Amazing food, but they all seem so thin.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I spent some time in Florence and I must have put on about twelve pounds.’
They finished the platter between them and Ben ordered another bottle of wine. The waiter brought their meals out and Ben felt pleased he’d picked this restaurant, the food was amazing. Margot wasn’t looking at the food, instead she was staring at him.
‘You haven’t asked,’ she said.
Ben smiled, ‘I know,’ he said. ‘It somehow doesn’t seem important right now.’
‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’
‘You should. But since you brought it up?’
Margot laughed. ‘I knew it. You only want me for what’s in my head.’
Margot pushed her plate forward and took her wine glass. ‘OK,’ she said, ‘here’s the thing. I tried to pull the records for our friend John Amosa. You were right there’s not a lot there and there definitely seemed to be something missing. Usually we keep pretty good records of those who serve, but for John there’s a big hole for the last six years.’
Ben continued to eat and nodded to show he was listening. Damn this food was good.
‘I looked for classified ops, special assignments, that sort of thing, and believe me I’ve found them before, but there was nothing.’
Ben finished his mouthful and took another swallow of Chianti. ‘Is that it?’ he asked.
‘It is for now. It’s going to take some time to find out what this guy’s been up to but one thing’s for sure, whatever it was it was code word, or higher.’
‘How do you know he didn’t just drop out for a while? Bum around?’
‘Sure we get people that do that, but there was something about the hole in his records that didn’t seem to add up. Leave it with me, I’ll see what I can find. I’ve got a few favors I can call in.’
Ben started to think about the case again, which was a shame because he had genuinely forgotten about work for the first time he could remember.
‘You seem disappointed,’ she said.
Ben pushed his thoughts on the case to one side. ‘No, no, don’t think that. It’s just…’
‘It’s just you’re wondering why you’ve blown all this money on an expensive dinner for no real info?’
Ben looked serious, ‘Look Margot, this is the most fun I’ve had in, well, in a long time, I don’t know how long, but I’m pleased I called you. To hell with the case.’ He raised his glass and she clinked hers against it.
‘To hell with work,’ she said.
They finished their mains and Ben was feeling quite full and more than a little drunk.
Margot said, ‘I don’t really feel like going to the movies now.’
‘Oh.’
‘What do you say we have dessert at my place?’
‘What have you got?’
‘I thought you might like to see my cheerleaders outfit?’
They laughed again. Ben put up his hand to catch the eye of their waiter. ‘Check please,’ he said.
Chris decided to keep running on to the campus at Foggy Bottom so he could grab a spare headset and pack which would allow him to work from home. He always kept a change of clothes at the office for those occasions when he’d work through the night. He’d grab a shower at the gym and call Michelle. Hopefully she’d pick him up and take him out to lunch.
Chris was surprised to find the door to his office open, he was sure he’d locked it, but there was no one inside. Probably the cleaners. He’d have to talk to them about that again. He used his desk phone to call Michelle. She sounded a little down, but soon brightened when he suggested a lunch date. She agreed to pick him up in half an hour.
He grabbed his clean clothes and headed to the gym. The George Washington campus was never really deserted, but on a Saturday the place was buzzing with sports teams either competing or running drills. The boys were on the basketball court practicing hard. It had been a good season for the Colonials and if they kept playing as they had, they’d be making the playoffs again this year. The shower rooms were empty and Chris took a long hot shower and changed, then went back to his office to grab his things and wait for Michelle.
Joshua stood at the head of the large table in what was often referred to as “the board room”. It was the largest of the six meeting rooms in their facility but the concept of a board of directors seemed almost comical given the line of business they were in.
‘I’ve decided what I’m going to do with Mr. Sanders,’ he said. The other two men in the room sat in expectant silence. They knew Joshua well enough to know that this was a monologue and not a discussion.
‘Mr. Sanders will be coming to work with us directly here at our facility.’
The two men looked at each other hoping the other would be the first to speak but knowing that one of them needed to, if nothing else but to show they were listening and understood what they were being told.
Maynard was the first to open his mouth. ‘How exactly do you plan to make him do that?’ he said.
Joshua smiled; he was hoping someone would ask. ‘Mr. Sanders is going to hunt us down and then, when he finds us, he’s going to come to me and ask for a job.’
Silence from the two again.
‘I need you two to get this place cleaned up. Remove all references to Chris in the system. He mustn’t find out about our contacts. Don’t worry about what happened to his young assistant, I’ll take care of that.’
The two men figured the meeting was over and stood to leave. There was a lot of tidying up to do. They couldn’t help but wonder how the hell Joshua intended to pull this off, but they had ceased being surprised by his Jedi mind tricks. If Joshua said that Chris would be applying for a job, they knew it would happen.
Chris was waiting outside when Michelle turned up in her Mercedes SLK. She had the top down and was wearing a headscarf and sunglasses. Chris thought she looked like Grace Kelly. He walked around to the passenger door and let himself in.
‘You look nice,’ he said, ‘where are you taking me?’
‘I thought we could grab a sandwich and visit my dad, is that OK with you?’
‘Sure, drive over to GW Deli and I’ll order as we drive. What do you fancy?’
‘Something light, maybe a salmon and cream cheese bagel.’
‘Hmmm,’ said Chris, ‘maybe not GW then, it’s more of a bacon place. Where can I find a good smoked salmon and cream cheese bagel near here?’
Michelle was confused by the question, and then she realized he wasn’t talking to her at all. ‘You’re doing that thing again aren’t you?’ she said. ‘I’ve told you if you keep talking to yourself and waving your arms around in public, you’re going to get locked up.’
‘It’s the way of the future honey, you’ll see. A little voice told me to try Brueggers on L street, take a right here.’
Before she knew it Chris was ordering. She knew he was using the technology built in to his sunglasses, but anyone else would think he was just talking to himself. She’d try to tell him this was a big problem with his technology. At least with a phone in your hand people knew you weren’t crazy as you chatted away. Maybe Chris was right, maybe in the future everyone would talk to themselves and wave their arms around in the air. Maybe people would steer their cars by holding their arms out in front of them and pretending to drive. Chris had explained to Michelle that most modern cars had no physical connection between the steering column and the wheels, so who’s to say there’s anything wrong with that? Still, it scared the crap out of her and she’d feel much safer holding on to something. Chris ran in to grab their takeouts and they headed off to the hospital.
After driving for a few minutes and tolerating Chris’s silence Michelle finally said, ‘Do you want to know the worst thing about your headset Chris?’
‘No, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me anyway.’
‘The worst thing is, I never know if you’re really with me. I mean you’re here, and you appear to be listening to me, but for all I know you could be working, or watching the Nationals, or even surfing the net. You need to build in some kind of indicator that shows you’re not really listening.’
‘Aww honey, where would be the fun in that? Besides I plan to make my millions by providing guys the ability to watch their favorite TV shows while pretending to listen to their wives. That gives me an idea. I’ll have a new voice command of “are you listening to me?” that triggers a transcript of the last received conversation with a summary of the important points to be displayed on the heads-up display. Oh and maybe it will pause any live TV playback at that point too.’
‘You’re a shit, did I ever tell you that? You’re a misogynistic pig.’
Chris grinned. He took his shades off as a peace offering. ‘I’m all yours baby,’ he said.
Chris said a quick hello to Bob and gave Susan a big hug. He hadn’t seen Michelle’s mom for a few days and she seemed pleased to see him.
‘How was London?’ he asked.
‘Oh you know,’ she said, ‘overcrowded and overpriced. Still, my conference went well, and I even managed a little shopping.’ She turned to face Bob, ‘Until this great lug decided to go and blow a fuse.’
‘I was missing you,’ said Bob, ‘It’s the only way I could think of getting you back in a hurry.’
‘And how are you?’ asked Chris, looking at Bob.
‘Feeling better with each day. The doctors say I’m going to be out of here soon.’
Chris chatted for a while and then excused himself to get on with his work quietly in the corner. He was sure Bob understood and Michelle was doing enough talking for both of them. He was pleased he’d brought the spare headset with him. He decided to use the “look to select” mode where he only had to stare at options to activate them; he didn’t want Michelle telling him how crazy he looked again. It took some getting used to and was slower than voice control and hand gestures, but it had the advantage of not disturbing the others, particularly Michelle who he was sure would tell him to leave the room, or probably worse.
He accessed his recording of Jasmine’s last days and resumed playback. Once again he was watching Jasmine’s computer screen, she was disassembling the code she had copied, a process of turning the raw low-level machine language, understood by computers, back into a higher level language that could be more easily understood by programmers. The disassembled code still didn’t make much sense as whoever had compiled it had used a special routine designed to stop people from doing exactly what Jasmine was trying to do. He figured she was probably trying to steal from a major corporation if they were protecting their work in this way.
The code made no sense and from watching the playback he saw that Jasmine quickly gave up looking for whatever it was she was trying to find. She eventually logged off and Chris fast-forwarded the playback.
The next session started on the following day, Jasmine was doing her usual admin, replying to emails, checking the bug report from the previous night’s build routines and looking at her to do list. Chris sped through a lot of footage of standard, and quite uninteresting work until much later in the day when she would be alone and would maybe start hacking again.
Had Jasmine stolen from the wrong people
, he wondered.
Was that why she was killed?
He probably needed to go back a week or so and try and figure out how all of this started. A few recognizable character sequences flashed up on the screen and Chris slowed the playback to normal speed. There she was, hacking her way into the remote site again, but this time she was using a different set of anonymous internet routers to hide her location. She was being very careful, not using the same access route twice.