Operations Center 2, CIA Headquarters
Langley, Virginia
Leroux watched the footage from the restaurant showing Kane and Katz taking out a Secret Service team, thankfully with non-lethal force, then hauling a terrified Vice President out of camera range. Morrison charged into the Operations Center, his eyes immediately on the looping footage. He faced the room.
“The identities of those involved in the Vice President’s kidnapping are classified. No one, and I mean no one, will speak of this outside this room until I give the okay. Understood?”
A round of affirmatives was murmured.
Morrison stood beside Leroux, lowering his voice. “What the hell is going on?”
Leroux shook his head. “No idea. He clearly participated, though she took the first shot. He requisitioned the stun weapons before they left, so I think he suspected something like this might happen.”
“Thank God. There’s no way I could protect him if he killed Secret Service agents just doing their job.”
Leroux nodded. “Could the Vice President be a member of the Assembly?”
Morrison frowned. “I doubt it, but then, you never know. We know the former Secretary of Defense was involved, but he shot himself before we had a chance to find out the extent of it.” He tapped his chin. “But he could be. It would make sense. Like they say, only a heartbeat away from the presidency.” He sighed. “No matter what the reason, Dylan Kane has just made himself the most wanted man in the country.”
“If they can identify him.”
“I’ve already talked to the President, and a lid is being kept on this. The White House is going to keep this quiet for as long as they can, otherwise the panic could spread further. Hopefully, by the time it breaks, we’ll have some answers. Maybe Dylan will have already released him.”
Leroux nodded. “Katz must have told him that the Vice President knew something. Once they get that intel, I’m sure they’ll let him go.”
Tong interrupted their hushed conversation. “Sirs, I’ve got Special Agent Kane on the line, asking for Mr. Leroux.”
Leroux adjusted his headset and Morrison held out his hand, another handed to him. Leroux nodded at Tong. “Put us both on.” Tong tapped a few keys. “Dylan, it’s Chris and Director Morrison.”
“Umm, hello, sir. You might not want to listen to this. Deniability, and all.”
Morrison glanced at the footage. “Special Agent Kane, I’m watching footage of you and Nadja Katz kidnapping the Vice President of the United States. I trust you have a very good explanation for your actions?”
A burst of static indicated a deep sigh from the other end. “Sir, Vice President Vance was a member of the Assembly. Number Seven, to be exact.”
Leroux and Morrison exchanged stunned looks. “Are you sure?” pressed Morrison. “This isn’t just something Katz told you?”
“Yes, sir. He admitted it. We have it on tape. He also named six more members of the Assembly.”
“Give them to us.”
“Umm, that won’t be necessary, sir.”
“Why?”
“Katz sent them the video. All six should be dead shortly, if they aren’t already.”
Leroux’s heart was pounding hard. With half the Assembly dead or soon to be, they just might accomplish their goal—or rather, Katz’s goal—and free Sherrie and Fang.
“Where’s the Vice President?”
Leroux could hear the trepidation in Morrison’s voice, and he understood it. If the Vice President were a member of the Assembly, then in order to fulfill Katz’s demands, he’d have to die. And as far as Leroux was concerned, he deserved to.
“He’s dead, sir.”
Morrison sighed and closed his eyes. “Please tell me—”
“Katz killed him, sir. It’s all on tape. I’ll have it sent to you, just a second.” There was a muffled conversation before Kane returned. “It’s on its way now, sir. It will confirm he was a member of the Assembly, give you the other six names, and show his death by Katz’s hand.”
“Where’s the body?”
“In a facility in DC. It’s probably long gone by now. I’ve been told I cannot give you the exact location otherwise Fang and Sherrie will be terminated.”
Leroux’s eyes narrowed.
That’s odd. Why would knowing where the Vice President’s body is, compromise Katz’s leverage?
Morrison sat in an empty chair. “Where are you heading now, Special Agent?”
“Nowhere. I need your help.”
“What do you need?”
“I need you to find Roger Croft for me.”
Leroux’s eyes narrowed. “Croft? As in the CEO of Croft Technologies?”
“Exactly.”
“Why?”
“Well, I’ve got a bit of a Kobayashi Maru situation here, Chris. I can’t tell you that. I just need his current location, and I need it ASAP.”
“Okay, can you tell—” The line went dead and Leroux spun toward Tong.
She shook her head. “Sorry, sirs, it was terminated at the other end.”
“Comms failure?” asked Morrison.
“Negative. He hung up.”
Leroux frowned and sat at his station. “Should we action this?”
Morrison nodded as he rubbed his eyes, the man clearly exhausted. They all were. They were running on little sleep, nobody wanting to leave their posts during this crisis, or as long as their boss’ girlfriend, and one of their own agents, was missing.
Leroux spun in his chair to face the room. “Okay people, I need everything we’ve got on Roger Croft, CEO of Croft Technologies, and I need his current location, ASAP. Sonya, you coordinate it for me.”
She beamed. “Yes, sir.” A huddle quickly formed at the back of the room and he could hear Tong handing out the assignments, keyboards and phones attacked within moments.
Morrison looked at Leroux. “What did he say there? He had a kobe something?”
“Kobayashi Maru. It’s a Star Trek reference.”
Morrison rolled his eyes. “Okay, you better explain it to me.”
“Not to get too geek on you, but it’s a reference to a no-win scenario.”
Morrison nodded. “And this is well-known?”
“Among sci-fi fans, yes.”
“Is it a message?”
Leroux paused as he thought about it. He had never known Kane to use Star Trek references, but he knew he was at least a passing fan of the franchise, the two of them having watched the original movies on DVD when they were in high school, though Leroux was pretty certain Kane was merely indulging his friend as opposed to genuinely interested.
He was a good friend even back then.
He looked at Morrison. “It has to be. There’s no reason for him to say that particular line. He could have just said ‘no-win situation,’ but he must not have wanted Katz to know what he was talking about.”
“Risky. For all we know, she’s a Star Trek fan.”
Leroux shook his head. “I doubt it.”
“You sound pretty sure of yourself.”
“I am. Think about it, why do you watch television?”
Morrison’s eyes narrowed. “Umm, escapism. Winding down at the end of a long day. Enjoyment.”
“Exactly. Entertainment.”
“Okay, entertainment. So?”
“So, Katz doesn’t enjoy things, she’s not wired that way. She’s not going to watch movies and television for enjoyment, she’ll only watch them as a means to an end. Research, perhaps. She might even watch comedies or dramas so she can better mimic the human condition for when she’s on a job. But science fiction, set in the future? That’s of absolutely no use to her. The people in Star Trek don’t represent our present, so there’s no benefit to her to study them.”
Morrison’s head bobbed slowly. “Makes sense. So it’s a cultural reference obscure enough that dinosaurs like me don’t get it, and emotionally stunted killers like her would have almost no chance of having heard.”
“Exactly.”
“Okay, then it was a definite message, directed at you, that Katz wasn’t meant to understand.” Morrison stared at him. “Then what the hell does it mean?”
“I’m not sure. He said it when I asked him why he wanted Croft.”
Morrison jabbed the air in front of him. “That’s right. He said he had a bit of a Kobayashi Maru situation, and he couldn’t tell us why. So his situation must be related to the question, or more accurately, the answer to that question.”
Leroux straightened in his chair. “Right! So it has to be related to Croft in some way.”
Morrison sighed. “But how? Is he trying to tell us that he’s a member of the Assembly? Or that we should find him first?”
Leroux shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. Us grabbing him first would put Sherrie and Fang at risk, and he won’t let her kill him unless there’s a valid reason, and the only reason I can think of is that he’s Assembly. Either way, Kane needs to get to him first. But he was trying to send us a message, something about Croft, something he couldn’t tell us about.”
“But why couldn’t he tell us?”
Leroux leaned forward. “For the same reason he couldn’t tell us where the Vice President’s body was. Because Katz told him he couldn’t.”
Morrison leaned closer. “That makes sense. So that means it’s something important to her. It’s some piece of information that she doesn’t want us to know, because if we do, it compromises her goals.”
Leroux stood, pacing, his arms folded, his fingers rhythmically tapping on his arms. “What’s her aim? To eliminate the Assembly. So whatever piece of intel Kane wants us to know, would jeopardize that.”
Morrison turned in his chair to follow Leroux. “Doesn’t that bring us back to him being a member of the Assembly, and us getting to him first, screwing up her plans?”
Leroux shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.” He froze as a thought dawned on him, a smile breaking out. He spun toward Morrison. “He’s afraid that if we know what it is, we’ll want to get to him first.”
Morrison’s eyes narrowed. “You mean if we knew what he was hiding, we’d want to pick up Croft ourselves?”
“Exactly!”
“Why?”
“Because whatever it is, is serious enough that we’d want to arrest him, not protect him!”
Morrison’s jaw dropped slightly. “Now that makes sense. Kane doesn’t want us interfering with Croft, but he wants us to know that Croft is important somehow, so important, we’d be tempted to arrest him, or at least pick him up to interrogate him.” He stared at Leroux. “Thin.”
Leroux shrugged. “Absolutely.” He turned to his staff. “What do we know about Croft?”
Marc Therrien raised his hand slightly. “He’s the CEO of Croft Technologies, a company he established twelve years ago. They’re a major player in corporate and government security, over thirty thousand employees spread across the world, with annual profits of—”
Leroux cut him off. “Forget about the financials. He’s a one percenter, we know. What’s he done lately?”
Therrien’s eyes scanned his screen then his jaw dropped. “There’s nothing confirmed officially, but CNN and Fox are reporting that Croft Technologies has been given a contract to install their system nationwide on every government server in the country. Installations have apparently already begun!”
Morrison rose and headed for the door. “I have to call Washington and have this confirmed. If this is true, DC might have just handed our entire security apparatus over to the Assembly.”