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IT WAS STILL EARLY the next morning when I heard a soft tapping on our door.
I nudged Zander. “Hey. Someone’s knocking.”
He climbed from the sofa bed, pulled a t-shirt over his shorts, and cracked the door.
The visitor whispered, “Sorry to wake you, John-Boy, but you’re due on the roof in fifteen. Didn’t know if you were up or not.”
“Thanks, McFly. I wasn’t. I appreciate you waking me.”
“Yeah, no worries. Um, say, I thought about what you said last night. In fact, I didn’t sleep much, thinking about it. I . . . I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“Sure, man.”
Zander eased out of our apartment onto the walkway. I could have used the nanomites to listen in, but I didn’t. Instead, I prayed.
Lord, your word goes out like bread upon the water. It goes out to accomplish your purposes, and it does not return empty or fruitless. I ask that you have your way in McFly’s heart this day. Like you wooed me, please draw him by your Spirit. I’m asking in the name of Jesus that you bring him into your kingdom.
***
THE WOMAN STEPPED OUT of her home and onto the back patio. The morning was warm and the air moist, filled with the scent of pine sap and flowering shrubs as were most summer days in Virginia. She walked to the edge of the patio and gazed across the expanse of lawn to the thick woods bordering her property. Out there, among the trees, her personal guards were patrolling the fence line, vigilant to protect her.
She began to walk a path that wound around the house. She did her best thinking on her feet, on the move, and the question that was on her mind this morning had preoccupied her for the past four days: How had the President come into possession of evidence that implicated Danforth in the elimination of that meddling fool, Overman?
Furthermore, how had Danforth’s situation so degraded over the course of one night that, according to her unimpeachable source in the White House, Danforth had thrown himself into the arms of the Russians?
A rash move, Lawrence, but you were no fool, she reminded herself. After many years in my acquaintance, you knew when your usefulness to me was at an end. To save your worthless skin, you attempted to put yourself out of my reach.
The former question remained: How had President Jackson found Danforth out?
It had to be Gemma Keyes—or whatever she calls herself—Gemma/Jayda and the nanomites.
The woman paused her pacing. Danforth was right to be concerned. Jayda and Zander Cruz moved here the last weekend in May. Conceivably, they could have been in the White House for weeks, deactivating listening devices, sickening the Secret Service agents loyal to our cause, even informing the President of their progress.
No wonder her operatives had been unable to locate the Cruz’s loved ones in New Mexico: Jayda and her husband had warned them to hide.
“We have been behind in the game for months, while Jayda and her husband have systematically stymied our progress and every move we’ve made against the President.”
She began walking again. No, not every move. Not all our progress. They cannot know all.
Few people knew that the woman had served in America’s intelligence community in her early years. Those who did know had no inkling that she had served her own needs concurrently, acting the agent provocateur—double agent and even triple agent when it suited her objectives or paid well enough.
When she retired from covert work, she had accumulated substantial wealth and had turned her intellect to other disciplines: engineering, physics, chemistry, and the behavioral sciences. She relished and ingested knowledge much as a predator does meat, snapping up what satiated her hunger, what appealed to her senses, what informed her interests and needs.
The nanomites were of such significance to her, both intellectually and politically. She had devoured the reports Cushing had pushed up the chain to Harmon; she had foreseen the vital role the mites would play in their plans. But the behaviors she had witnessed when Jayda and Zander Cruz had defeated her task force’s attack on Malware, Inc.? Those powers were beyond anything she had envisioned—and, oh! How she lusted to acquire and wield such abilities herself.
Jayda and Zander’s demonstration had opened the woman’s eyes. By studying the helmet videos of their second attack on Malware Inc., she had construed how the nanomites worked through the couple and, more importantly, what was required for the nanomites to do so.
Four days ago, she had tasked a trusted security company to construct a room to her precise specifications. She had expended a great deal of money and personal “persuasion” to speed the construction and stem the crew’s curiosity. The room was not yet ready—but it would be soon. In the meantime, other activities associated with their advancing plans intruded upon her.
I shall greatly dislike leaving this house, this refuge from the world, but leaving it is, after all, a necessary evil.
She walked on. The woman knew the path around her house by heart and did not need to watch her steps. Head down, eyes closed in concentration, she continued to probe for her adversaries’ weaknesses.
They may have warned their friends and relatives in New Mexico to hide, but I must assume that they have made friends here, too, she reasoned. I must explore a little deeper and probe their personal interactions since moving to Maryland.
Nodding to herself, she thought, No, Jayda and Zander Cruz, you do not know everything. By this coming weekend, the jaws of my pincers will be ready to clamp down. I need only to acquire the appropriate bait for the trap.
~~**~~
