The Backup Asset (7 page)

The sun had set and twilight had faded away, leaving a moonless night in its place. Yet the window curtains pulled shut didn’t let a single hint of light be seen from outside, despite multiple powerful light bulbs flooding the blue room with a blinding light.

The corkboard covered in images, Post-it notes, and pushpins tied together with colored yarn hadn’t changed much in the past few weeks, yet Alex studied it carefully, processing again every bit of information as if it was the first time she’d seen it.

Curled up in her armchair, legs folded underneath her and leaning against one of the armrests, she went over every milestone in her timeline, looking for anything she might have missed. Nothing new . . . nothing, whatsoever.

But there was a troublesome article in the newspaper she had just flipped through, a short entry about a near-miss incident involving a Russian military aircraft and a Canadian vessel in the Black Sea. Nothing had really happened, but Alex vaguely recalled a few of these incidents occurring in recent weeks, maybe even months.

She made a mental note to research it a little and see if anything out of the ordinary came to the surface, but it would all be speculation even if it did. There was no visible connection between any recent Russian military activity and the terrorist plot The Agency had just folded. None whatsoever . . . she was just reaching.

Her cell phone rang, almost startling her. She smiled, seeing the caller ID, then accepted the phone’s prompt to encrypt the call. Ever since she’d started working on her last case, she’d been using cell-phone encryption software on every call, ensuring that her private conversations remained private.

“Sam!” she answered cheerfully, glad to hear from him.

“How are you, kiddo?”

“Great, just great,” she answered excitedly. “I was just thinking of you. Were your ears burning?”

“Nah . . . just wanted to check on you, see how you are.”

She paused for half a minute, not sure what to say.

“Well, I’ve been thinking,” she started, “maybe there’s a correlation between our case and these Russian military incidents?”

“Ah . . . Your mind still goes there, huh?”

“Yup,” she confessed in a sheepish voice.

“Crazy wall and all that?”

“Yup.”

He let out a long sigh.

“We might never catch him, kiddo, you know that, right? We discussed it.”

“Yeah, but—”

“The
yeah buts
are not gonna cut it, you know. We talked about this. I’ve spent my entire life chasing spies and terrorists, and I haven’t caught all of them, only some. The vast majority,” he clarified further with pride, “yet not all of them.”

“But you know what I mean, right? You’ve felt this; you’ve done this too, right?”

“What? Obsessing about some anonymous face that eluded me for years? Yes, and I almost lost my mind because of that. That’s why I want you to be smarter than I was.” He grinned, and she heard the smile in his voice.

“So, if you’ve done it too, how come you expect me to not wanna do the same? How can I let go? Who’s gonna catch this guy?”

“Listen, kiddo, if anyone’s gonna catch this guy, it’s gonna be you, I promise you that much. But if you wanna have a real shot to catch this son of a bitch you have to let your mind be free of obsession, of bias and frustration. You have to be cold and factual, and see facts and data only where facts and data exist, not where you want them to exist.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“There’s no visible real, logical correlation between the Election Day plot and the Russian military incidents we’ve been reading about lately, yet you thought there might be one. Is that your gut talking? Or is that wishful thinking? Only you can answer this question. Only after you have become completely level headed and rational about this case. You need to stop caring about it from an emotional perspective, and only care about the intel—the facts, whatever the facts might tell you.”

“Yeah, but that data might tell me we’re never gonna find out who he is,” she protested angrily.

“That might be true. But imagining correlations where there aren’t any is not gonna help either.”

She swallowed hard. “Right . . . What should I do then?”

“Just keep in mind that it’s not over yet, but don’t let it ruin your life. Be ready; get ready. Watch your back. Be aware of your surroundings. See if anyone is following you. Spend time at the firing range with Louie until you’re better than he is.”

“Ha! That’s never gonna happen!”

“Are you sure? ’Cause I’m not!”

She fell silent for a minute, taking in his advice.

“I miss you, Sam. I miss your training, your friendship, your advice. I miss the life, the buzz of the action. I can totally see how someone can become addicted to this life.”

“Of course you do,” he laughed. “You’re a natural born spy; it’s in your DNA. Are you working on a case now?”

“Yeah, I’m support on Brian’s new case,” she said, letting a tad of disappointment color the inflexions in her voice.

“Is it an interesting case?” Sam probed.

“Yeah, they all are . . . to some extent.”

They both burst into laughter at the same time.

“Not nearly as interesting as our last case, Sam, not even close. Just the typical, run-of-the-mill case.”

“Just be patient, that’s all. This country has many powerful, motivated enemies. Their interests will flush your Mr. X out from whatever hole he’s been hiding in, and you’ll be right there to nail him. Just hang tight, and I promise you he’s out there and you’ll get him one day.”

“I’ll hold you to that, OK?”

“Deal!”

Minutes after they’d hung up she still stared into the cell phone screen that displayed the end message of an encrypted phone call. Just a few months earlier, she hadn’t even known she could encrypt calls on her cell. Now she didn’t conceive of making or taking a call without encrypting it.

Things did evolve, and did change. With these changes, always came a change in perspective. That’s what she needed, a change in perspective.

Quentin Hadden read his latest email, clenching his teeth. His boss wanted to see him. Not good. Lately, their relationship had turned from bad to worse, his conflicts with the idiot in charge—as he liked to think of Bob McLeod—evolving from technical disputes into full-blown arguments followed by sit-downs and feedback sessions eagerly delivered by the idiot with arrogance and condescendence.

He decided to face the music now rather than let the thought of it torment him for much longer. He walked briskly down the hall and entered McLeod’s office after a quick tap on the door.

“You wanted to see me?” Quentin prompted.

“Yes. Sit down, please.”

McLeod took his time shuffling papers, making Quentin feel how insignificant he was. Quentin didn’t matter . . . he could wait. What an asshole.

“I called you because of the installations project on the
Lloyd
. Your team has fallen behind schedule. Again.”

McLeod liked to underline the points he was making with movements of his hand, almost like an orchestra conductor, increasing the perceived arrogance of his demeanor. The man was insufferable.

“Bob, we encountered issues with the installation, and I filed the documentation with you two weeks ago. You knew about that . . . we discussed it.”

McLeod leaned back in his chair.

“I am tired, you know, tired of how I can’t get the message through to you. Not now, not ever. All I want you to do is own your issues, so we can work with them and make you and your team better professionals.”

“But, Bob—”

“You have filed the paperwork. I heard you the first time. You’ve covered your ass with paper. Do you think that’s what I care about? Do you think that’s what
you
should care about? We have a client who’s not able to deploy his vessel on time because of us, and we have a contract with the Navy that specifies penalties for all delays.”

“Bob, listen, please. The readiness assessment for the
Lloyd
was altogether wrong. The weapons control system was incompatible with this installation. I filed the findings, the change order, and the amended schedule with you and the client immediately after we discovered the discrepancy. It’s really not my fault. What was I supposed to do?”

“I’m gonna tell you again, although I can’t really figure out why I keep explaining. Quentin, you’re a smart engineer, talented, bright, yet you decide to oppose the company’s direction and mine with every opportunity. Your mind is hermetically closed, watertight even. Every piece of feedback I share, you take personally and decide to fight the change instead of embracing it. How am I supposed to work with you if you won’t accept any feedback? If you won’t make the tiniest effort to change, and if you consider your judgment to be above everyone else’s? This is a collaborative environment, we work as a team, and we care about our clients’ deliverables, not about the paper trail.”

Quentin felt the blood boil in his veins and made a supreme effort of will to not punch the idiot. Wrapping his stupidity in corporate lingo, McLeod was too much of a coward to ever stand up to someone and say he was wrong. That was, of course, if that someone was a higher up or a client. With him, and others on McLeod’s team, he showed no restraint, demeaning the value of their work with every opportunity he caught.
Small steps
, Quentin encouraged himself,
small steps.

“Bob, please tell me how you would have wanted this situation handled. What would you have done if you found the weapons controller onboard the
Lloyd
to be incompatible with the new weapons system?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve done this, but fine. I would have explored the possibility of installing middleware instead of replacing the entire controller. I would have presented the client with alternatives. One was the alternative you took, a new weapons controller, very expensive and a hefty delay. I would have added the middleware alternative, much cheaper, minimum delay, and a recommendation to schedule the controller replacement at a later date.”

“You do realize the middleware option would have sent the
Lloyd
out to sea with an unreliable weapons configuration, right?”

“You’re missing the point, again. The point is to present the client with options and recommendations, and make it their decision, not yours.”

“But the client is not technically qualified to make this decision, we are!”

“Yet it’s their vessel and their money!”

Both men had stood up from their chairs, their postures matching their escalated frustration with each other. A few moments of loaded silence ensued, each of them throwing angry glares at the other.

McLeod broke eye contact and sat back down.

“I’m done explaining, Quentin. If you don’t see the value in what I just said, there’s no point. Not now, not ever. You’re dismissed.”

Dumbfounded at finding himself thrown out of his boss’s office like a misbehaving five year old, Quentin left the room, summoning whatever shred of dignity he could find. The moment he reached the privacy of his own office and slammed the door shut, he clenched his fists and started pacing the office angrily, mumbling curses at every step.

“Motherfucking asshole, can’t believe the nerve on that guy. Who the
fuck
does he think he is?”

He felt the blood rise to his head, the pounding of his own heartbeats deafening his ears and clouding his vision. Recognizing the signs of a high blood pressure attack, he tried to calm himself down, while reaching for his pills.

“The fucking idiot’s gonna give me a stroke, while he’s gonna live like all bastards do, until he’s a hundred years old.” He settled down at his desk and took his throbbing head in his hands. “God, I need a way out of this . . . can’t take another day!”

The thought of leaving infused a little hope in his weary mind, then that hope faded away. “Who am I kidding?” he mumbled, “where the fuck would I go?”

It hurt his ego badly to find himself so vulnerable, so defeated. He was better than that.

Quentin had been born in rural Virginia and started his early life as an isolated, lonely kid. Other kids rejected him, although he wanted to engage and play with them, to belong to their group. Soon he had learned to reject them too and be comfortable in his loneliness. Aloneness, he would call it, the state of being alone but without any of the negative connotations of loneliness, of missing the presence of others.

Naturally, he hated his first seven or eight years of school, years that forced the solitary boy to be involved in activities all day long. He deeply missed his aloneness and was bored beyond his wildest dreams. That was the perfect recipe for trouble, and little Quentin got into more than his share of that. Whatever school bully had the poor inspiration to pick on him would be punished well beyond the size of the offense. Quentin’s defense was always valid in the fact that he never started those fights. Yet he finished them each time, angrily, drawing blood mercilessly, making sure everyone got the message and left him alone.

He spent his alone time reading, absorbing a variety of books at an incredible pace. A school advisor who had the opportunity to notice Quentin’s behavior conducted a few tests, and then advised his parents that he didn’t belong there. She recommended that they move Quentin to a school for the gifted and enroll him in an accelerated study program, one that would challenge the young boy’s well-endowed brain. His parents did that, despite the fact that they had to uproot their comfortable rural life and move to the city, get new jobs, and adapt to an entirely different lifestyle. They struggled, but Quentin flourished.

He loved his new school and finished one-and-a-half years ahead of schedule. Then he had his choice of colleges and soon held a master of science degree in electrical engineering, with honors.

College life hadn’t changed his demeanor all that much though. He remained isolated, focused on his work, and a bit awkward around people. He understood many things quite well. Complex mathematical models, complicated technology, futuristic concepts were easy for him to grasp; people, not so much. Finding himself aware of his limitations, he continued to study and explore science rather than relationships.

His physical proximity to the plethora of military contractors in the area offered the new graduate a career path in weapons systems. He embraced it happily and soon held several unpublished patents that bore a numeric code instead of an intelligible title.

He’d been relatively happy in his career, as happy as someone like him could be if forced to be around people for eight hours a day. He’d made a name for himself in the industry, and his achievements were numerous and well recognized. Well, that had been true for the best part of his career, until the arrogant, political, and idiotic Bob McLeod had joined the organization as technical director and Quentin’s boss.

The man had no vision and not much technical ability either, despite MIT degrees and solid credentials. Although he scored above average, he wasn’t nearly as intelligent as Quentin was, but had the talent to be political and gain advantage despite his technical limitations. In Quentin’s opinion, it wasn’t the paper that made the man; it was the work, the ideas, the solutions. But that was just Quentin’s point of view; the rest of the world believed McLeod was better, because of his highly skilled political acumen.

There was instant and sizeable incompatibility between the two men, who didn’t see eye to eye on anything of any importance. Quentin’s relatively satisfying career had turned to crap overnight, forcing him to consider new avenues.

But where would he go? He was forty-seven years old and not at all eager to start fresh somewhere else, having to prove himself again after having given Walcott twelve years of his life, the peak of his career.

He felt trapped, a victim, and deeply hated that feeling. The independent, resilient, and creative Quentin couldn’t settle for being some idiot’s bitch for a living; the thought only brought anger to his heart and the need for more blood pressure medication. It was putting his life at risk. He had to do something about it.