Authors: Greg Krehbiel
"Did you?" Hanna asked.
"No. Or, ... I suppose I should have guessed," he said. It was standard procedure for the agency to monitor its agents in the field. "Certainly you don't believe I came here to spy on you," he protested. "I was trying to meet you in the cafeteria."
Hanna shook her head. "No, Jeremy, we don't. But you have to remember that you're on the other side now. We have to be cautious. And so do you."
"Yeah," MacKenzie added. "They're sure to notice that your bug went black. You'd better have a good cover story for them."
"Once you're out of here," Hanna added, "you'll need to put it back. We found it under your collar, right here." She indicated the spot on the back of his neck where the bug had been located, and Jeremy realized that Lenzke wasn't just giving him a fatherly pat when he let him go that afternoon.
*
*
*
"So did it work?" Duncan asked. "I took a big risk letting you girls try this." MacKenzie bristled slightly at being called a girl, but it was better than "lasses."
"I think so," MacKenzie answered. "But relax, Duncan. We didn't tell him anything the agency doesn't know already. Even if he talks, we haven't lost anything."
"Not true. If he talks, it's likely that I'll lose a promising young computer scientist." He smiled at MacKenzie, but she didn't like the idea of anybody owning her.
As Duncan was speaking, his administrative assistant, Levi, came into the room and whispered something to him. Duncan's usually stern demeanor turned positively grave. He nodded to Levi, who immediately left the room. Duncan remained silent for a minute.
"It seems my computer work for the doctor has been a little too comprehensive," he said, looking up. "We keep an eye on your friend Dr. Berry from time to time, to make sure our cover is safe," he explained. "She and her staff have been re-evaluating all the data on Jeremy ever since he disappeared. It looks as if she's beginning to suspect what's really going on." He shook his head. "She's not stupid, you know," he said with a wry grin. "In fact, she's a very good scientist. And her assistant, Dr. Jenkins -- he's even better. He's almost at your level, MacKenzie."
Duncan shook his head again. "This really messes up my time-table."
*
*
*
Half way through dinner, Jeremy got a call from the agency and had to excuse himself. Hanna and MacKenzie ate in silence, then had a de-briefing session with Duncan. He expressed concern about Jeremy. Could they trust him to keep quiet? Did their security hold up, or might he have learned things they couldn't afford to let out?
He seemed even more nervous when Hanna and MacKenzie said they had to go back to their dorm room and take care of odds and ends at the university.
"Duncan, you're getting paranoid. We're not spies, but we do have clothes and things we need to get, and we have classes, and all that."
He tried to smile, but the stress on his face turned it into a grin.
"Of course. And I won't keep you here. You have to make up your own minds. Go ahead, and borrow one of my hovercars if you like."
When they left, none of them were sure they'd see each other again.
*
*
*
Did they hide the thing to keep it from me, or so that I couldn't reveal where it was to anyone who captured me,
Jeremy wondered as he took the pin-sized listening device from the "black box" and stuck it back in his collar. At the same time he realized that this kind of suspicion was a part of agency work. You never knew who to trust, or whether you were really serving the purpose you thought you were. Agents were cards in Peter's hand, and the cards didn't know what part they were playing.
Jeremy checked the readout on the hovercar's status board. He would arrive at the address Lenzke had given him in ten minutes. He used that time to perfect his alibi for the last few hours. He also wondered if he wanted to tell Peter what Hanna and MacKenzie had told him. But that was a big decision. He had to think it through.
The hovercar made its final approach to the pre-programmed coordinates as Jeremy did a few breathing exercises to relax. He was under orders to come with the windows darkened, so he had no idea what to expect when the doors opened. When they did, his initial reaction was confusion. He seemed to be in exactly the same reception area of the agency office that had been torn down just several hours before. The same man in the same concierge-like uniform greeted him and asked if he needed anything, in almost the same voice.
"Nothing, thanks," he said, just to be certain that something was different.
"This way, sir," the man replied. Jeremy followed him out of the reception area and saw the first hints that this was actually a new location. Teams of workers scrambled down the unfinished hallways, pulling optical cable, touching up the paint or arranging the flowers on a walnut desk. Jeremy glanced through open doors on the right and left and saw workers spraying carpet on concrete slab floors. This office was being put together as quickly as the other had been taken apart.
"This way, sir," his guide instructed him. They slipped behind a wall of plastic sheeting and the noise and dust of construction was gone. Everything was immaculate on this side of the barrier, but there was a faint hum. The ventilation system was running at full strength to get rid of the smell of paint, wood stain, carpet, and wall-paper glue.
"Come in, Mr. Mitchell," Lenzke said as soon as they arrived at the door. The hallway, the door, and, Jeremy saw when he went inside, the office itself, were almost exactly the way they were in the other office.
"It's SOP, Mr. Mitchell," Lenzke said. He saw that Jeremy was still looking around, comparing what he saw with how he remembered things. "We have regional offices all over the globe. It makes no sense to have to learn a new office layout each time you move, or each time we have to move an office. This way, every worker always knows where his office is and what it's going to look like."
Jeremy nodded, and then noticed that there were two technicians in the room with Lenzke. Both of them had "sweepers," which is what the technicians called their all-purpose scanning devices. A sweeper consisted of a series of broad-range, powerful transceivers that could detect and locate any communications device.
The technicians scanned Jeremy, quickly discovered the bug, removed it and placed it in a small, silver box, similar to the "dark box" MacKenzie had used.
"One M23 bug, sir," one of them reported to Lenzke. He waved them off and they left. Jeremy had anticipated this.
"A bug?" he asked. "Do you know anything about this?"
"Don't worry, son," Lenzke said. "You didn't do anything wrong. It's ours. It's one of our ways of protecting you when you're out, but we lost contact with you for a while. Where were you?"
"I'm afraid I disobeyed orders, sir," he said. "You told me to have fun. I went looking for two girls I know, but I couldn't find them. I was a little tired, so I took a nap."
At least that will explain why my eyes were closed,
he thought.
"Two girls?" Lenzke laughed. "You can tell me about it later. Right now, we want a sweep of this whole complex. Look it over as carefully as you can, round-the-clock, until further notice. And by the way, Mr. Mitchell, that ploy you used last time to explain your wanderings was good thinking. Figure out some kind of follow-up on that."
"Yes, sir. Thank-you."
"And Mitchell," Lenzke said as Jeremy was turning to leave. "Where did you sleep?"
"I ate at the Capitol University cafeteria and then went to a grassy spot just outside. There were lots of college kids resting there, and I lay down on the grass and just dozed off. "
"Did you happen to catch the name of the building you were next to?" Lenzke persisted.
"No," Jeremy said. "But it was the only one I saw that had painted, white walls." MacKenzie had told him that the computer lab sometimes interferes with communications. Since the bug operated on very low power, sitting on that side of the building, where the park was, could easily explain the black-out.
"Okay," Lenzke said. "There's one last thing. Later this week we're going to put you through a series of tests to find out why you can see the net spies," Lenzke continued. "It's nothing invasive or painful, just some neurological tests. If you have any questions about it, you can contact the chief physician. She knows all about your case."
Jeremy nodded and left.
Chapter 16
Attached to the back of Duncan's warehouse was a series of dilapidated row houses that, from the outside, looked as if they were uninhabited. Duncan had converted the houses into living quarters for his staff and had made a passageway from the back of his warehouse into the row houses. From the inside, they were quite nice, but they had no windows. Because of the possibility that the agency would try to take some action against Hanna and MacKenzie, Duncan had insisted that they stay in the living quarters until they decided either to join up with him, or to take their chances some other way.
"I feel so silly wearing this thing," Hanna said. MacKenzie glowered at her. They were supposed to be quiet until MacKenzie was done checking the room for bugs. They had both put on their eye patches as soon as they entered the living quarters. The security protocols that Duncan used to protect the warehouse from intruders were down temporarily for maintenance, so they had to wear their patches. MacKenzie took out the gadget Duncan had given her to search for bugs and got to work, meticulously sweeping every inch of the room.
"All clear," she said after three minutes of searching. "I know it's a pain, Hanna, but we've got to check, and we've got to wear the patches while the protocols are down. As long as we're wearing them, they can't see what we're doing: with these patches on, an intruder could sit right here in the room with us and not know we're here because we're depriving it of updated visual input."
Hanna thought about that for a minute. "So what would they see? Nothing?" Hanna asked.
"No. The computer stores the most recent visual information it has on the room. So let's say you left this drawer open," MacKenzie said, opening the top left drawer of the dresser, which they had agreed would be Hanna's, "and then looked away," she turned her head to face Hanna, "and then closed it without looking back." She closed the drawer, still looking at Hanna. "If we were to get in one of those VR tanks and come here, we'd see your desk drawer open, because that's the last visual input the computer has."
Hanna nodded.
MacKenzie sighed and looked at Hanna seriously. "So what am I going to do, Hanna? Duncan wants me to take the rest of the semester off and work with him. He says he has enough pull with the department that I won't even lose my credits."
Hanna shook her head sadly. "Credits seem like an odd thing to be worried about. Duncan says our lives might be in danger."
"I've been trying to forget about that part," MacKenzie said impulsively. "I am a little scared," she admitted, "but if you're concerned about safety, we should just leave -- get away from here."
"No we can't, MacKenzie. Something's got to be done, and Providence has dropped us in the middle of it. We'd be cowards, or worse, to back out." She stopped and stared into nowhere -- an expression MacKenzie recognized as Hanna's thoughtful pose. "There's something else, too. I haven't told you everything I saw in that computer lab before Jeremy showed up.
"I couldn't be positive," she continued, "but it looked like they were monitoring some of the presidential candidates." She looked up with a worried look. "These people are getting their hands into everything. Somebody's got to stop it, and you've got the ability to make a real difference. You have to help Duncan."
MacKenzie turned away and looked up at the wall for a minute. "We don't both have to stay with Duncan," she finally said, as if she was speaking with difficulty. She turned toward Hanna with a pale, frightened look. "It's likely to be dangerous. I don't imagine the conspiracy will play nice if they find us out."
"'Wherever you go, I go.'" Hanna said, to MacKenzie's great relief. "Besides," she said in a lighter tone, "I'm already involved. If they get to you, they're sure to get to me sooner or later."
MacKenzie nodded. "You're probably right." They were both silent for a minute as they realized the seriousness of their predicament. The conspiracy was trying to control the country, if not the world, and from what Duncan had shown them, they had already directly murdered hundreds of people. They wouldn't think twice about snuffing out two young women who got in the way.
"I don't see why we just can't go public with this," MacKenzie said, exasperated. "I mean, aside from the fact that we promised not to."
"No," Hanna said. "I think Duncan's right. We have to find a way to shut them down. You could never predict how the public would react if they were told. Duncan thinks the markets would collapse and we'd all get blown back to the 19th century in about two weeks. He also thinks that if we had some kind of national catastrophe like that, China would take advantage of it and do something stupid."