‘By the time you pull that trigger, you’ll be dead, Agent Byron,’ Spencer Arthur, the firearms instructor, muttered with heavy disdain. He was leaning over, and had lifted the earmuff from Holland Byron’s right ear. She was crouched in a firing position and knew his thick, twisted lips were inches away. His hot breath washed over her earlobe and cheek, and her stomach churned with revulsion. He had breath that reminded her of sour milk.
In fact, everything about the man revolted her. Spencer Arthur was gnome-like, with small hands and a large head thatched with thin, dull brown hair that looked like it had been combed with a tiny garden rake. Never having served in the field on a regular basis, he was relegated to training and maintaining the firearms skills of special agents. Ironically, he was one of the bureau’s expert marksmen, which Holland attributed to his bird-like, bulging eyeballs. He had the vision of a hawk. Rumor was he was lent out and utilized from time to time to perform secret sniper actions, both domestically and internationally. Spencer Arthur was just the type who would kill with a sense of anonymity and enjoy the god-like power of life and death, she thought, to compensate for his ugly physical being.
‘I’m trying to improve my accuracy,’ she replied dryly, unable to cloak her condescension in a phony smile.
‘Accuracy without speed is worthless in the field,’ he insisted and put her earmuff back.
She sensed he was still standing behind her, probably studying her rear end more than he was studying her pistol performance. It unnerved her and she cursed herself for letting it happen. No one was a more severe critic of Holland Byron than she was of herself.
She fired faster and surprised herself with how well she did. It was probably because her adrenaline had been stirred. Small white patches of rage had emerged like tiny bubbles at the corners of her mouth.
‘That’s better,’ Spencer shouted and touched her just below her right breast, actually grazing it with his stumpy fingers. She spun on him and he smiled through his saffron-tinted teeth. He lifted his hands in a gesture of surrender and backed away. ‘Please,’ he pleaded with exaggeration. ‘No sexual harassment charges. I have a wife and three children.’
‘I feel sorry for them all,’ Holland quipped and Spencer laughed.
She watched him walk off to observe another agent who was refining his shooting skills.
Before she could finish her target practice session, she was interrupted again. This time it was Bruce Hardik, an assistant to Landry Connors, the Executive Director for Criminal Investigations.
‘Mr Connors needs to see you immediately, Agent Byron,’ Bruce said in his crisp, officious voice.
Sometimes, Holland couldn’t help feeling some people here took themselves too seriously and believed in their own public relations imagery. She hoped to hell she would never become like that. Something of their humanity was traded off and to her that meant they could slip into ‘I’m just taking orders’ too easily. Bruce had the military posture, the whole demeanor. She half-expected him to snap his heels together. When he looked at her and spoke, she had the sense he was looking through her.
‘Immediately? Can’t I finish here? I only have a few more rounds.’
‘Immediately means immediately,’ he replied. He didn’t smile as much as tuck in the corners of his lips.
She holstered her pistol, put away the protective glasses and the earmuffs and followed him out of the target range.
At 5 feet 11, with rich, thick corn-yellow hair that was stunning even as short as it was, a pair of dazzling cerulean eyes and a fashion model’s cheekbones and figure, Holland Byron would have turned heads whether or not she was an FBI special agent. She knew that many in the department thought she was just too pretty, too feminine to be a law enforcement agent. Maybe she could be a spy, but an investigator who might have to confront hardened criminals, organized crime soldiers, and terrorists? No way. She was simply not the type of person one would have cast in this role.
Furthermore, despite the fact that a woman, Whitney DuBarry Hay, now served as FBI Director, there was still a feeling that women had to do more and achieve more to get the same promotions as men in the agency did. Insidious sexual discrimination still permeated much of American society.
No one gave her that feeling more convincingly than Landry Connors. Often, she caught him scowling at her and shaking his head. She didn’t have to be a mind reader to know what was bouncing about in that thick, chauvinistic skull: What’s a woman like that doing here?
Landry sat behind his desk as if he were literally steering the agency. Papers were piled neatly across it and when he decided on one course of action or another, he turned his chair in the direction of the documents in question. Sometimes, she saw him grip the edge of his dark oak desktop and use his long, thick fingers to squeeze it like pincers, the action shooting tension up his arms, through his thick shoulders and up his neck, settling beneath his chin. With clenched teeth, he delivered his orders like Clint Eastwood in one of those old movies on the nostalgia channel.
Yet, somehow, no matter how irritated Landry Connors seemed or how angry he was, his eyes remained cool grey, intelligent, scrutinizing. He could focus like no one she had ever met. In nightmares, she saw laser beams streaming out of those orbs and burning into his antagonist. To some of the agents, Landry was indeed a superhero. He had accomplished great things in the field, not the least of which was leading the investigation team that prevented the second 9/11 hours before it was about to begin. His history was almost legend.
Holland stepped into his office with an air of confidence to show she didn’t think any less of herself in his presence. She knew the director had only disdain for those who were ingratiating. He distrusted compliments, even though he expected them. This contradiction wasn’t lost on Holland. The man was a true enigma, capable of surprise. She hated him and she respected him. She admired him for his achievements, and she despised him. He could initiate the whole gamut of reactions from her. It was only a matter of waiting to see which it would be today.
Sitting back in his chair, he watched her enter, giving her the impression he was evaluating every move she made, every bat of her eyelashes. Then he put his hands behind his head and turned to look out of his window. He had a wonderful view of Washington, DC; so wonderful she often wondered how he pulled himself away to do any work.
‘How much do you know about the PJ program?’ he asked, still gazing at the scenery so that she was looking at the back of his thinning, charcoal-colored hair.
‘As much, if not more, than most people working here,’ she replied.
He spun around.
‘That’s not much of an answer, Agent Byron. Wyatt,’ Landry said glancing to his right before she could offer an additional response.
Holland turned to see a man about 6 feet tall, with light brown hair, striking green eyes and an evenly tanned complexion, emerge from the corner. She had no idea how she had missed him when she entered. Perhaps she was more nervous confronting Landry than she liked to admit. Not very observant of me, she thought. Landry had surely noticed.
The man was dressed in a tailored, dark-blue sports jacket and matching tie. The lines in his face were sharp and strong, highlighted by a firm, masculine mouth. She imagined his teeth had been bleached white. Here was a good example of sexual discrimination. People should wonder how someone who had such movie-star looks was an FBI agent instead of a male model or something. If they questioned her for those reasons, why not him?
Without hesitation, he stepped forward and began his response to Landry.
‘Congress created the Division of Professional Jurors in 2020 after the changes in the justice system were created through the constitutional amendment. The exact number of PJs is classified, but is said to be around ten thousand. PJs serve for a twenty-year term and are placed in a program that resembles what was known as the witness protection program. Successful applicants are given pseudonyms and their backgrounds are kept secret. Obviously, they are not permitted to talk about what they do for a living. The division provides them all with cover jobs: salespeople, media consultants, military positions, anything to explain why they would be away from home for weeks, even months at a time. Their children attend private schools, the tuition paid for by the division, which assumes shell limited-liability companies and the like to do its financial chores.
‘Any sort of interference with a PJ is a capital offense. They never perform their responsibilities within a fifteen-hundred mile radius of their homes and no one is permitted to take their pictures or to interview them. In many instances, spouses don’t even know what their husbands and wives really do. The same is true for their children and other members of their immediate families.
‘We’ve been entrusted with enforcement of the PJ rules and laws and the investigation of any infractions thereof,’ he concluded.
Holland stared at him. He was robotic, she thought. But then his face relaxed as if he could turn it off with the blink of an eye. He smiled at her warmly, those beautiful eyes twinkling with an impish light.
‘Holland, meet Special Agent Wyatt Ert.’
‘Ert? Wyatt Ert?’ She turned to him. ‘That’s really your name?’
He shrugged. ‘What’s in a name?’
She raised her eyebrows and looked at Landry.
‘You want to add anything to Wyatt’s description of the PJs, Holland?’ Landry asked, with a smug twist in the right corner of his mouth.
‘Most anything I know about them is secondhand,’ she replied. ‘My understanding is information about the training, the assignments. Their actual compensation is all classified.’
‘That’s true,’ Landry said. ‘It’s given out on a need-to-know basis and that’s the way it will remain. However, we have a situation that involves the bureau. You and Wyatt will be the chief field investigators on the matter, Wyatt in the lead position. Accordingly, I’ve raised your security status.
‘You two can sit,’ he added and turned his chair and himself to a pile of documents on his immediate right.
Holland glanced at Wyatt, who gestured for her to sit first. She did and then he sat, adjusting his shirt cuffs beneath the sleeves of his sports jacket.
Who does he think he is, James Bond? she mused.
‘A jury foreman,’ Landry began, ‘has been missing for two days. The problem was initiated in Los Angeles after a murder trial. We have a suspicion that someone related to the defendant in the case that this foreman just concluded might have taken some revenge.’
‘How soon after the decision did the foreman go missing?’ Wyatt asked.
‘Immediately after. He never completed his travel itinerary.’
‘Well, then the defendant would have to assume he was getting an adverse decision and make preparations ahead of time, would he not?’
‘He wouldn’t have to assume it would be adverse, but he could be prepared just in case it was,’ Holland suggested.
Wyatt smiled and nodded as if her contribution was a good one. She tightened immediately. She wasn’t looking for his compliments or approval and she wanted to transmit that in her eyes. He didn’t appear to notice or care.
Landry glanced at another paper and then looked up at them again.
‘Um,’ he murmured in response to their thinking. ‘There is also the possibility that the foreman has willingly lost himself.’
‘Willingly?’ Holland asked.
Landry turned slightly more toward Wyatt and nodded, a subtle indication from him that he wanted Wyatt to respond for him again.
‘The actual figures are classified, but the dropout rate for PJs is rumored to be significant,’ Wyatt said.
‘I thought they were well paid and cared for. Why do they drop out?’ Holland asked. ‘Isn’t it a plum position?’ She asked Landry, not Wyatt, but again Landry looked to Wyatt to answer. It was beginning to irritate her.
‘The pressures are too great, the separation from family too difficult and the secrecy component too much of a strain,’ Wyatt recited. ‘The sword above their heads, ready to be used if they should violate a rule or a code of ethics, is for many just too intimidating.’
‘I’ve never heard that. All I’ve ever heard is it’s a plum professional occupation. The government pays for all their training. They have six-figure salaries, and they work maybe twenty or thirty trials a year at most and because of the system, trials don’t last half as long as they used to last,’ she said, fixing her eyes on Wyatt, who barely blinked.
The man’s arrogant, confident manner annoyed her despite his politeness and good looks.
Wyatt smiled. ‘Precisely,’ he countered. ‘If you heard anything counter to that, it would be quite difficult to attract the highly qualified candidates the program requires.’
Holland scrunched her eyebrows and then looked at Landry. ‘You mean, all that’s bullshit, public relations?’
‘Whether it is or it isn’t doesn’t matter at the moment,’ Landry said. He slid a folder across the desk toward them. Wyatt nodded at her to take it.
Obviously, he’s already been briefed, she concluded. She leaned forward and opened it. She perused the first page, glanced at the second and looked at Landry. ‘You haven’t given us much to go on, sir. We don’t know the man’s real name. We don’t know where he lives. We don’t even have a physical description. I don’t understand what we’re supposed to be able to accomplish.’
‘The information will be fed to you as it’s required, as you move forward,’ he said. ‘We want to take every possible precaution and keep this as low profile as possible to maintain the security of our PJ. That’s the priority. I can’t stress it too much.’
‘But a juror has gone missing. Wouldn’t people just assume we would investigate?’
‘No one knows he’s gone missing except us.’
‘Does he have a family?’
‘Yes, a wife and two children. Both of his parents are deceased and there are no siblings.’
‘Is his wife one of those spouses who knows what he really does?’
‘Yes, but she doesn’t know he’s missing. At least, we think she doesn’t know,’ Landry said, shifting his eyes toward Wyatt and then back to her. ‘For the time being, she’s been told he’s been immediately assigned to a new case.’
‘I see,’ Holland said, sitting back. ‘But wouldn’t she expect him to call her?’
‘PJs are often prohibited from contacting their families until their work is completed. This individual has been in the program for a long time. His wife would understand and expect this behavior,’ Wyatt said.
‘That’s dedication, I guess,’ Holland muttered. ‘I guess Mr Ert’s correct. There are tremendous pressures on these people.’
Landry softened his lips, but didn’t smile. ‘I hope then, that you’re impressed with how important it is to keep this from the public eye. Which brings me to my most important point. Everything that has to do with the Division of Jurors has to be kept highly secret. No one must ever get wind of a problem, especially journalists. You will have nothing to do with local law enforcement either. They know nothing about the situation. The fewer people we bring into the circle, the less chance of anything adverse happening. The program is more important than any one individual. Do I make myself clear?’
‘Yes, but this is like investigating the disappearance of an invisible man,’ Holland said. She didn’t mean it to be a complaint so much as an observation, but her tone of voice was impossible to mistake.
‘Precisely,’ Landry, said finally smiling. ‘To put it another way, you two are part of a nonexistent investigation of a nonexistent person. Sounds like Mission Impossible, doesn’t it?’ he added, widening his smile.
She glanced at Wyatt. He didn’t smile. He didn’t look upset. His face was a mask.
‘Mission Impossible?’ he asked.
‘An old television program and some movies,’ Landry said with a wave of his hand. ‘As it turns out, the writers made some remarkable predictions, especially when it comes to the technology we utilize.’
‘The only difference,’ Holland replied, ‘is when you tell us about an assignment, you don’t say, “Should you decide to accept it.’”
Landry laughed, and when she glanced at Wyatt again, she saw he was smiling.
Finally.
But if he was so brilliant, why in hell didn’t he know what Mission Impossible meant?