May 1
1322 Avenue of the Americas
Midtown Manhattan
CIA Station NYC
New York City
3:42 P.M. EDT
Katie Casey again frowned, again glanced at her wristwatch.
Dad, you’re doing it again. ‘Late lunch’ indeed. We’re already closing in on ‘early dinner’ parameters. And if you’re going to be late, how is it that a double PhD apparently never heard of a brand new invention called a ‘text message’?
Katie had walked—briskly, afraid to be late—from her temporary abode at Trump International Tower registered to “Beck Casey” and shared—even more temporarily, I hope! We need to find a place of our own, her mind added—with Jeffrey Connor, FBI Special Agent and her newly minted husband-to-be. One look at the snarled traffic had confirmed the wisdom of eschewing a taxi, even if the sidewalks were only minimally less congested.
Six angling blocks and a quarter hour later, even in newly purchased heels, Katie had pushed through the tall glass doors of her destination: precisely on time, predictably the only one who was.
So she waited. And waited still more.
Katie studied the lobby, noting the more obvious changes that had taken place there since her most recent visit—her first, actually—early the morning before.
At that time, a weary Katie—one of the less-exalted refugees from the Washington disaster—had been hustled to the modernistic, faceless Midtown office building where her father had awaited. She had seen the “BUREAU OF WEIGHTS AND STANDARDS” designation in the floor’s reception area, had briefly wondered why her father had apparently been installed in an office there, much less in any government office, where semi-retired academics with advanced degrees in history and sociology presumably would carry little weight and hold in common even fewer standards.
Katie had been exhausted, and in the joy of the unexpected reunion she had had little energy, less time, and no immediate inclination to pursue the question further.
But she was rested now, had nothing but time in her growing impatience—and the incongruities that had been buried by more pressing events resurfaced as she surveyed her surroundings.
To a disciplined mind—Katie was, or had been until the day before, a successful D.C. attorney—those surroundings seemed, for as mundane a facility that housed bureaucrats dealing in poundage and related criteria, just a little…
… well, tense. Not that I mind—much—having to go through metal detectors, or have my driver’s license numbers keyed into a computer, or explain—three times!—why I’m here and who I want to see. But it’s a little unnerving to have to sit under the gaze of a guy the size of a linebacker with some kind of machine gun hanging off his shoulder…
Still, Katie reasoned, with THE ATTACK a raw wound, the less-than-subtle armed “escort” for all lobby-waiting visitors in any government office building was probably prudent.
But other changes had been made in the hours since her initial visit: some equally as obvious as automatic-weapon-wielding guards, others far more subtle and intentionally covert.
Among the latter were marvels of technology: hidden cameras that, among other tasks, had scanned Katie’s features and compared them to facial-recognition databases with an efficiency that made the license check a mere confirmation; sensors that had electronically bathed-and-frisked her person, providing security technicians in a cramped backroom office a detailed body image that would have made a stripper blush; even an arguably illegal digital “hand” that had reached into her cell phone and downloaded the cache of her contact list, recorded phone messages … and yes: also including the stored text messages that her father knew to studiously avoid sending.
Additionally, voice-stress analysis software had patiently eavesdropped on the thrice-repeated “why and who?” interrogations of their human counterpart, comparing the various levels and finally providing the security techs with a “no deception indicated” verdict.
All decidedly prudent, in the wake of a devastating terrorist attack and the justifiable fear of another.
Especially here, in the erstwhile clandestine New York City CIA field office, which—unknown to Katie—had overnight become the designated nerve center: in effect, the “new” Langley of her nation’s global intelligence operations.
Blissfully unaware of all this, Katie fumed at her tardy pater familia as she toe-tapped with a growing impatience she recognized was likely unfair.
Not that Dad being late, or absent entirely, is anything new. Like Mom used to say, ‘Dad’s a professor, has to travel a lot’ … Heck, he was out of the country when she died, even … and it’s not like I don’t—didn’t, I guess—put in a lot of overtime hours at the firm … and Mom was a partner there, a darned good lawyer herself … so I guess I take after her … Oh my God, am I really like my mother?
Katie’s eyes widened in alarm, her mind flitting to theories of nature-or-nurture that were as ancient as Eve and Norea. The still-active sensors passed along the heightened stress-indicator levels to its human partners and its databank.
The future “Mrs. Jeffrey Connor” exhaled audibly and tried to reassure herself.
No. No way. And anyhow, Jeff’s as bad as any of us. Okay, I knew about his job, the hours he has to spend at work. It’s not a 9-to-5 kind of thing, hunting terrorists for the FBI.
He’s gone a lot too. And come to think of it, he’s as tight-lipped as Dad about what he does…
For a moment, as mathematics unconscious and even unbidden flashed through her mind, the backroom sensors twitched.
Then Katie snorted, scoffing, and the sensors scanning her also relaxed.
No. We’re all peas in a pod. That’s all it is. Jeff’s not my dad, and I’m not my mother…
… and for darned sure I’m not trying to marry my father. What do they call it, the ‘Electra Complex’? Baloney…
Still, her mind riposted, Jeff and Dad are kind of alike … not in that way, Lord, that’s ridiculous! … but there are some similarities … and yes, there have been a few things that seem a little goofy lately … maybe more than a few, in fact.
Katie made a decision, fueled by a mix of impatience and introspection.
Okay, let’s examine this head on. We’ll call it an ‘academic exercise,’ and that will teach Dad to leave me waiting in a darned lobby chair … start with a premise, even if it’s silly … say that Dad is not a college professor, or not just one … dumb theory, but that’s what a ‘what if’ exercise is all about, right? … certainly, the places I know he’s been over the years aren’t exactly vacation destinations … or most of them, not hotbeds of Higher Education either…
Mentally, she ticked off a few of them: the Middle East, Russia—that was a long trip, she remembered, and the car wreck he was in over there left him in the hospital for months—and a whole Cook’s Tour of venues in Latin America.
And that doll he brought me from … I don’t remember, one of those Asian countries … well, it’s still on a shelf in my D.C. place, probably as radioactive as everything else there.
Katie chuckled aloud.
Okay, where am I going with this? My father (a) isn’t an overly talkative guy, and (b) he’s traveled a lot. Pretty circumstantial stuff; yeah, I could sure go to court with that ‘evidence.’… not. So maybe I just have a vivid imagination and a rich fantasy life, right?
Again, she looked around at the lobby.
And yet. All of a sudden, he’s working in a federal building. A place where the concierge is a machine-gun-toting guard. After a terrorist attack … and after turning up in Washington, right before all heck breaks loose … so, okay, he’s a consultant of some kind, maybe? Has a study grant from the Department of Defense, or Homeland Security, or…
Her mind clicked, to her an almost audible sound, and the sensors peaked again as it did.
CIA?
Silently, Katie repeated the acronym—this time, trying it without the question mark.
CIA. Yeah, right. So all these years, Dad was some kind of … what? James Bond? A spy?
She stifled a sudden laugh.
No, that would be ridiculous.
Wouldn’t it?
Unbidden, like a collage of video clips, various scenes and events flickered across Katie’s memory: childhood and teen-year incongruities, most of them. Each dismissible, or at minimum logically explained away as part of the routine chaos of any family’s life.
But taken as a whole, they spun and merged into a recognizable pattern: a jigsaw puzzle when a missing piece is found and fitted, and a picture takes form.
Incongruously, the first picture was of her mother.
Mom would have known; she’d had to have known, right? She never said anything …
… still, there were all those times she acted very … odd. Angry, as well as scared about something?
Katie frowned. Her mind ticked off vaguely remembered places and dates: birthdays missed, her father’s penchant for unexpected “business trips” and equally unexpected returns, even memories of hushed conversations between her parents that ended abruptly when she entered a room.
That time they separated … almost a year, and it only ended when I sneaked off to Florida and got so sick … we were fighting too, Mom and I, before I went … and what was that cryptic remark of hers? She screamed at me—what? Something about being tired of living with lies and secrets…
The sensors noticed, and spiked in intensity.
And at Mom’s funeral … all those very polite, very quiet strangers who Dad seemed to know so well … come to think of it, none of them were like any college professors I’ve ever known.
For a moment, she wished Jeff were here; he was more or less in the spy business, at least the part of catching them. Even better, he was good at puzzle-piecing, could help her think through this train of thought, could shortstop her flight of wild fancy—
If he didn’t simply break out laughing.
‘Oh. So your father’s a spy, huh? What’s your guess: ours or theirs?’
Katie’s lip curled, wanting to join her fiancé’s presumed skepticism, wanting to ridicule her own hypothesis.
And failing in the attempt, the scanning sensors informed the watchers.
She heard herself arguing the point with the phantom-Jeff.
Oh, really? Because you know so much about my father, and—
Katie blinked.
I’m FBI, Katie, she imagined Jeff’s reply. Maybe I do.
The sensors did not like that at all.
There’s a lot of weird tension between the two of them, Dad and Jeff … I thought it was just that ‘protective father’ nonsense … but what if Jeff knows about it too, like some kind of damned secret-handshake fraternity … and he and Dad just decided to keep it from poor dumb little—damn it!
Despite herself, Katie seethed; the backroom sensors were going wild now.
Across the lobby, unnoticed by the object of all this electronic scrutiny, the owner of the machine gun raised his hand, cupped it against his earwig-receiver, stared hard in Katie’s direction.
He murmured into the microphone concealed in his shirt cuff.
Katie heard her name spoken, abruptly breaking into her now-infuriated thoughts. She looked up, her face an angry scowl, as a familiar figure half-jogged across the lobby expanse toward her.
“Katie, I’m so sorry,” Beck Casey said, a mix of emotions on his own face. “But something terrible has happened. The President is dead…”