Dark Secret (DARC Ops Book 1) (5 page)

She'd been smiling since his first mention of their shared hobby. Maybe he was a nerd, after all. Mira delighted to imagine this sexy military bad-boy billionaire hunched over the same lame crossword that she brought into bed with her every night.

“Alan Turing. World War Two cryptanalyst.” Jackson cleared his throat as if it would camouflage his lightning-quick glance to the shiny Rolex peaking out past his shirt-cuff. “Anyway, back to your document.”

“Oh sorry. Yes, the document.”

“Yes, you were just about to tell me your story,” said Jackson. “And could you tell it loud enough so our mics can pick it up?” He flashed her a quick grin. There was that urge to roll her eyes again.

There wasn’t much of a story, really. She’d found a document. Live-decrypted it. And now she was in the statement room of a company with an ominous-sounding acronym, sitting with the owner, a covert crossworder , who was also a total hottie.

She left out that last part, and the next part about her wanting to feel up his chest a little bit, her reaching behind his tie to undo a few buttons, her hand sliding through... It was superfluous information that would hinder the case.

“It's what I'm best at,” Mira said, sensing that she'd somehow lost his confidence in her. “That's all I do, decrypting text, languages. I don't even have to think about it.”

Jackson remained quiet, his eyes seemingly observing the tiniest micro-twitch and mannerism of Mira's face. After a while he looked down to his lap where he causally brushed away some stray lint or strand of hair. “But what did it say? I mean, specifically.”

Mira drew a green leather notebook from her purse. “I wrote down a few fragments, whatever I could remember after I rushed out of there.” She flipped through a few pages before looking up at Jackson. “I was pretty nervous. I'm not, um... I've never really, uh...”

“That's completely understandable, Mira. But you're handling it better than most people would. You're
here
aren’t you?”

She nodded and looked down at her page of notes. The penmanship was scraggly, the work of a nervous hand. She remembered the exact feeling, the hollow shakiness. And she remembered sitting that day at her cubicle, waiting for someone to come by and finally let her in on the joke and it would all be a hilarious relief. Just a little office joke. No need to worry. No need to seek out someone like Jackson.

“Can you read some of it?” he asked.

“DGH, thank you for assurances... Mr. K. is very close to agreeing and moving into action regarding the new toys. Kilaguni airport is preferred.”

Jackson took a deep breath before exhaling with an, “Okayyy... Well, it's interesting, certainly. I wouldn’t say it's a smoking gun just yet. But, there really is no good reason for a senator to have such material on his computer. And the way it was encrypted... That in itself is very suspicious. You don't think he's a cryptogram hobbyist or anything, right?”

Mira thought of the stuffed big game animals that hung like garish war prizes in Langhorne's office, and the muscle car YouTube videos, and then she answered Jackson with an emphatic, “No.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“There was nothing hobbyist or amateur about the encryption.”

“Then how could you crack it?”

She felt mildly insulted. Although it was true. She was an amateur.

“You even cracked it on the spot,” Jackson added. “And to be perfectly honest with you, Mira, I'm still not sure what to make of that.”

Mira sighed and looked back to her scribbled transcript. “Me neither, I guess,” she said quietly. “But, like you said, it is what it is.”

“I said that about the name of this room. What you're bringing up here are some very serious allegations. Maybe deathly serious. Do you understand that?”

“I'm here, aren’t I?”

Jackson nodded as if to say “Yes, there certainly is a crazy woman in my office.”

“Okay, fine,” Mira said. “Let's pretend for a second that I
did
make this whole thing up.”

Jackson barely raised his eyebrows.

“What would be my motivation? What's the payoff?”

He began to say something but stopped himself, opting for a simple, non-committal shrug.

“Basically, why the fuck would I do that?”

Jackson sighed and tapped a few fingers against the table. “Can you show me some of these symbols? Have you sketched any of them in your book?”

Mira gladly produced a full page of sketches which Jackson quietly stared at. It was almost a blank, dead stare, save for a faintly twitching left eyelid.

She couldn’t wait any longer. “What do you think?”

Before he could answer, someone knocked very lightly on the door. Jackson, after excusing himself to answer it, spent a half minute murmuring to someone through the slight gap he'd cracked open. When he returned to his seat, he was shaking his head.

“What is it?” she asked. “Something wrong?”

“It's just... a little... incredible.”

“What is?”

“And I mean incredible in the bad way. I'm sorry, Mira. I am. I like you, and I'm not trying to be rude here. But it's just really difficult for me to believe that you've live-encrypted this code, this language that you've never seen before. It's even new to
me
. And this is what I do.”

Going into the meeting, Mira had felt a slight nagging suspicion that it would—despite what Lashay kept insisting—be a complete fucking waste of time. Turns out she’d been right.

“You can understand that right? I
want
to believe you. And I'm going to look into this and get to the truth, and—”

“You think I really want to believe that a United States Senator is making deals to arm children soldiers in Kenya?”

“I'm sorry to inform you, Mira. But that's just a drop in the bucket. And it's a big bucket. Welcome to your real country.”

Another soft knock at the door.

“Later,” Jackson growled.

The knocking stopped.

“Look, I'll have my guys poke around and—”

“We don't have time to poke around. Jackson, the weapons fly out in six weeks.”

“But it'll only take me a few days to know if you're paranoid delusional.” Damn, he said that with such a straight face. “And when I verify that you're
not
, because you seem nothing but intelligent and logical and just a charming, pretty young lady whom I've enjoyed talking with, then we'll get together again, in a nicer room, and you'll sign some papers and we'll plan our attack.”

Mira was suddenly acutely aware of how awful she looked, how tired and lonely she felt, and how long and dark and quiet the night ahead was going to be for her.

“Hey, it'll be alright,” he said, getting up from his chair. “You did the right thing. You’re here. That's the most important part.”

“
O
f course
I don't believe her.” With a quick stab of the accelerator, Jackson's black Mercedes powered up the incline of his building's underground garage. Three seconds later, the car was bathed in the orange glow of streetlights as it crawled along a congested Connecticut Avenue. The road shimmered black from a brief afternoon shower, the rain having arrived right around the time his security alerted him about a woman named Mira. He distinctly remembered the darkening approach of rainclouds as he stared out of his corner office window, him saying “Thanks, let her in,” in his most bored, slow-workday drawl. He also remembered how his workday was suddenly filled with interest at the sight of a petite blonde who, despite her adorable nerdiness—or maybe because of it—looked, sounded, and moved just like the type of woman he'd find himself naturally gravitating towards in dimly lit cocktail lounges or someone's latest crowded banquet for this or that D.C. vanity project charity. The only problem was that she was batshit crazy. Or, at the very least, harboring a borderline personality disorder. Sad because he loved the smart ones. And Mira was definitely smart. Why were all the smart ones crazy?

Now, the weather and workday having cleared, Jackson sat in the plush leather seats of his car, debating with his passenger, Matthias, about how seriously he should handle Mira's case. Or if he should even handle it at all.

“She's too pretty,” said Jackson.

“So?”

Jackson remained quiet. There was no need to elaborate.

“So now you think she's a honey pot?”

“Set up through your friend, your ex. Yes. I do.”

Matthias sighed as he thumbed through his smartphone. “Now
you're
the one sounding paranoid.”

“When haven’t I been paranoid, Matt?” He thought it was a pretty good question, one that bought a little more silence from Matthias. “Think of the world we live in. Comes with the territory.”

Jackson navigated his car around the traffic loop of Dupont Circle before turning on to Massachusetts Avenue. He'd always liked the opulent, old-world architecture of the District's premier residential street. Maybe he'd sell his suburban eyesore and move into one of its finely bricked mansions with someone like Mira—minus the delusions.

“She scares me, Matt. I don't know why.”

“Yeah you do. You don't want to go rooting around in a senator's wastebasket.”

“I don't care about that,” Jackson said. There had been a hundred decidedly less glamorous tasks that he'd been assigned as a Navy SEAL. “You know I've got a thing for destroying the lives of corrupt pencil-pushers. That doesn’t bother me. It's the girl. Who the hell is she?”

Matthias shrugged. “My ex's friend.”

“Exactly.”

“Mira,” said Matthias. “Translator by day, master cryptanalyst by night. It's no wonder you've got a thing for her.”

“Hmm, I dunno. But I'll tell you what I
don't
have a thing for. Someone's covert operative getting a little too familiar with our building and our protocols, and anything else she'll be witness to if we take on her case.”

“If she
was
sent from someone, why would she tell such an unbelievable story?”

It was a good question. Jackson had no idea of the answer.

“Look how much it got your attention,” Matthias said with a chuckle. “I doubt you'd be feeling this way if it was just another piracy case.”

Jackson was shaking his head. There had to be more to it. He'd been living in the world of dirty tricks for too long. “There must be something really nasty with Langhorne. Some can of worms. Maybe we're being tricked into opening it.”

“Yeah, which would make Mira look pretty credible. Wouldn’t you say? If there really
was
something wrong?”

“At that point, it wouldn’t really matter.”

Matthias stared at his boss. “Then what the hell are we talking about?”

“We're talking about doing a little homework on Mira,” Jackson said as he steered around another traffic circle, guiding the Mercedes deep into the heart of Embassy Row. One by one they passed the various flags. Burkina Faso, Kyrgyzstan, Madagascar, Paraguay, Malawi, Cote d'Ivoire, Republic of... “We're talking about
you
doing the homework, specifically,” Jackson continued. “Which should be easy since you already know her so well. Let's do school records, grandma-grandpa, the whole bit.”

“Alright,” Matthias muttered. “Fine.” He muttered a lot. It seemed like every day Jackson would discover a new reason why girlfriends like Lashay jettisoned his relationships. “When she comes back clean you can buy me a beer.” He was moping now.

“I have zero problem with that.”

“Which reminds me...”

“What, that you're an alcoholic?”

“Not me,” said Matthias, offering no further elaboration.

Was he starting to clam up already? Fuck. Some days it was like dealing with overgrown children. Just the toys were a little different, instead of building blocks they got guns and radar scramblers.

“Okay, well who
is
?” asked Jackson.

“Mr. Davis.”

Mr. Davis was really Tom Davison, a youngish nobody that may or may not have some useful information. He was a lower level IT guy for Osprey. In essence, he was trying to fortify what Jackson had sent Tansy to infiltrate. An air-gapped network. That was tech-speak for a system not on the public internet, but physically isolated on a secure, independent network. Tansy had been hacking on it for weeks and Jackson was getting a little impatient. Sometimes a real world hack works better.

“Think he's at the bar?” asked Matthias.

Jackson made an abrupt right turn down a tight residential lane. They were now heading in the general direction of Swinies', a neighborhood pub where Tom liked to imbibe over-priced draft beer while hitting on anything female that moved. Jackson and Matthias liked catching him there when he was at his sloppiest. Maybe one night he'd tell the bartender a secret, or conveniently lose his phone, or maybe he'd get kidnapped and then water-boarded until he coughed up some answers. In lieu of water-boarding, DARC Ops personnel were always sure to keep him well-stocked with tiny little tracking devices. After five or six beers, you could put a bowling ball in his courier bag and he wouldn’t notice.

Jackson received a call just as he parked along a curb a few blocks from Swinies'. It was Tansy.

“We're checking in on your boy,” Jackson said. “You need all the help you can get.”

As he and Matthias walked to the pub, Jackson queried Tansy for his opinion of Mira's amazing talents.

“I've never heard of her,” Tansy said. “If she could really do that, I would know her.” Tansy's modesty knew no bounds. But he still was one of the net's leading underground figures. The guy used to have LAN parties with Edward Snowden and other misguided youth who'd grow up to be the NSA's leading hackers.

When they neared the pub entrance, Tansy had some final advice that Jackson didn’t want to hear. “I wouldn’t automatically dismiss her, though. As you know, I'm somehow terrible with a Rubik's Cube. But my autistic cousin can do it in fourteen seconds. Some people just have those crazy abilities, like a savant.”

There was that word again.

“Is she autistic?” asked Tansy.

“No. That's the problem.”

M
r. Davis had apparently been
thirsty after work. Jackson and Matthias ordered drinks, found a corner booth, and began the stakeout. Across the room, their subject sat alone with a froth-laced half-glass of beer. His phone was plugged into a wall outlet. He was texting, his back hunched almost perpendicular to the table. He momentarily straightened his back to take a sip of beer.

“The connections are all there,” said Matthias, reading off the screen of his encrypted cell. “The family arms business. The big game hunting in Kenya. Maybe that's how he met his unsavory friends? Illegal hunting. Poaching. That's a big business out there.”

Jackson half-listened as he scrolled through some files on his own phone.

Matthias had more ideas. “Do you think he could be forced into it, like through blackmail? Maybe he's compromised.” He took a sip of beer and continued. “Maybe someone's threatening to release a video of him shooting an endangered elephant or something.”

“Matthias, stop making sense and just drink your beer.”

“Well, we should be doing something in case she's right about that document.”

“We are,” Jackson said.

“How? Right now we're watching some loser get drunk.”

“No, that's what
you're
doing” said Jackson, still on his phone. “Or rather, what you
should
be doing. I'm refreshing my memory about Kenya. And that airport, Kilaguni. You know I've been there?”

“I just figured you've been everywhere,” Matthias said. He glanced at Mr. Davis. “Hey, he's leaving.”

Jackson looked over to the kid. He was unplugging his phone. And then standing.

“It's perfect,” whispered Matthias.

Mr. Davis, heading for the bathroom, left his table with a phone charger cable laying across it.

“Let's do this,” said Jackson as he fought back an unprofessional, mischievous grin. He felt like a kid, savoring the rare adrenaline rush of the internet security business.

Matthias quickly strolled over to the Mr. Davis' table, grabbed the cable, and headed towards the bar. He made the switch on his way, stuffing the cord in his right pocket and then pulling a new one from his left. This was the cord he showed to the bartender, saying, “Hey, I think some guy left this.”

“No he didn’t,” called Jackson from his seat, his voice projecting across the room. “He's just in the bathroom.”

“Oh, okay, whoops,” said Matthias, the good Samaritan. “My bad. I'll just put it back.”

Jackson paid their tab as Matthias plugged the new charge cable into the outlet. And that was it. No big deal. Just someone trying to be nice.