A Better World

CHAPTER 12

It didn’t look like much from the outside. But in Shannon’s experience, the truly scary places never did.

The first thing she saw was a low granite wall bearing the words DEPARTMENT OF ANALYSIS AND RESPONSE. Beyond that, a dense line of trees screened the compound from view. She signaled, waited for an opening in traffic, and then steered the sedan up to a security gatehouse. It was a bright fall day, and the two men in black body armor looked alien against the cloudless blue. They moved well, one of them splitting off to circle the car while the other approached the driver’s side. Both had submachine guns slung across their bodies.

Shannon rolled down the window and reached in her purse. The ID, scuffed and faded, identified her as a senior analyst; the picture looked like it was a few years old. “Afternoon,” she said, polite and bored at once.

“Good afternoon, ma’am.” The guard took the ID, his eyes flicking between it and her face. He swiped it against a device on his belt, which beeped. He handed it back to her. “Beautiful day, isn’t it?”

“One of the last,” she said. “S’posed to be colder next week.” She didn’t look behind her, didn’t check the mirror for the armed man examining the back of her car.

The guard glanced over the car roof at his partner, then nodded at her. “Have a good day.”

“You too.” She put the ID in her purse. The metal gate parted, and she drove through.

And into the lion’s cage we go.

No, that wasn’t really it. This was more like walking into the lion’s cage, strutting up to the beast, and jamming her head between its jaws.

The thought sent a shiver of adrenaline. She smiled, drove steadily.

The DAR grounds were nice enough, in a lethal sort of way. The road meandered in curves that seemed senseless, but would keep a car bomber from gaining speed. Every fifty yards or so she felt her tires hum over retracted spike strips. The landscape was green lawns and carefully pruned trees, but tall towers were dotted amidst them. No doubt snipers were tracking her progress.

The building itself was bland and sprawling, looking more like a Fortune 100 office than the nation’s largest spy agency. At the west end, a construction crew worked on a five-story addition, welders on the beams sending showers of sparks. Apparently business was good at the DAR.

Shannon found an empty parking place about halfway down a lane, turned the car off, and flipped down the visor to look in the mirror. She could never get used to herself as a blonde. Odd how many women dyed their hair that color. In her experience, being a brunette hadn’t turned men away.

It was a good wig, though, the highlights layered well to blend with a hint of root. The makeup was heavier than she preferred, but that was the point. She put on a pair of plastic-framed designer eyeglasses. An affectation in this era of easy surgery, but that was what made them fashionable.

“Okay,” she said, then shouldered her purse and left the car.

It really was a beautiful day, the air cool and tasting of fallen leaves. One of the things she loved about being on a job, it heightened her awareness of everything. Every taste sweeter, every touch electric. On the walk in, she could just make out the tips of antiaircraft batteries mounted on the roof of the building.

The lobby was marble floors and tall ceilings and armed guards. One line broke into several, each leading through a metal detector. Cameras stared unblinking from every corner. She joined the queue, looked at her nails, and thought about John.

When he had first proposed this little adventure, her response had been, “You want me to go where?”

“I know.” John Smith wore a gray suit and a clean shave, and he seemed taller than she remembered. Healthier. The benefits of not being on the run, she supposed, not having that 24/7 paranoia pressing down. “It sounds crazy.”

“Crazy I’m okay with. This sounds like suicide. Besides, I’m tasked out. All my attention is focused on West Virginia. I’ve got sins to make up for.”

“I understand,” he’d said, with that smile of his. A good smile, he was a handsome guy, though not her type. Too conventional, like a real estate agent. “But I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t worth it.”

“Why?”

He told her, and the more he talked, the more incredible the tale seemed. Coming from anyone else, she wouldn’t have believed it. But if John was right—a safe bet—then this could change everything. Shift the entire balance of power. Recalibrate the world.

Of course, first they had to find it. Which was where robbing the DAR came in. Why dig through a haystack yourself when someone already had the coordinates of the needle?

“Thing is, we can’t just hack in. The DAR knows any data connected to the Internet is vulnerable. They keep their most precious secrets on discrete networks inside the compound. The computers are connected to each other, but not to the world, so the only way to access them—”

“Is to go into the compound itself.”

He’d nodded.

“How would I even get through the gate?”

“I’ll take care of that. The ID won’t just get you in, it’ll confirm your whole life. Redundant records backfilled into their system. Payroll data, employee reviews, work history, the whole bit. I’ve got my very best on this. It should be simple.”

“If it’s so simple, why do you need me?”

“In case it turns out not to be. Look, I’m not going to lie to you, Shannon. If you get caught, there won’t be a trial. They probably won’t even acknowledge they have you. You’ll end up in a maximum-security cell where they will spend the rest of your life trying to break you, and there will be nothing I can do to help.”

“You really know how to tempt a girl.”

“But that’s not going to happen. You can do this, I know you can.” He leaned his chin on his hand, the drink untouched in front of him. “Besides, there’s more. While you’re in there, you can get everything there is to know about West Virginia. The complete security package. You’ll be able to wash away your sins without risking lives.”

She’d weighed that. “What if I say no?”

“Then you say no. It’s always up to you, you know that.”

The line moved well, and within a minute she was walking to a metal detector. She took off a delicate silver necklace shaped like three icicles and coiled it beside her purse in a bin on the conveyor belt.

The fear hit as she was walking to the metal detector, armed guards on either side, DAR agents behind and beside her. A sudden heavy thump in her chest like a double-kick drum, and a dump of chemicals into her bloodstream. It was nothing new, nothing she wasn’t used to; it happened every time. But this time the fear was sharper, more intense.

More fun.

Shannon smiled at the guard as she walked through the metal detector. He waved her along. She waited for her bin to come through the conveyor, put on her necklace, grabbed her purse, and headed into the headquarters of an agency that had maintained a kill order on her for years. John hadn’t been kidding; whatever brilliant had coded the ID truly was good.

He damn well better be.

As if in response to her thought, the glasses flickered to life. The inside of each lens was lined with a monofilament screen, the display visible only from this angle. The left showed a 3-D wireframe map of her position in the building; on the right, the words GOOD HUNTING appeared. She kept her smile internal.

Shannon strolled down the hall, the heels of her boots clicking on the tile. Once past the security, the Department of Analysis and Response resembled nothing so much as a large corporation: offices and cubicles, elevators and employee washrooms. It made sense. The department was split into two parts, and this was the analysis side. It was larger by far, employing tens of thousands of scientists, policymakers, advisors, headshrinkers, and stat-counters.

The other section was response, a different creature altogether. A creature that planned kidnappings, arrests, and assassinations. That had a governmental mandate to murder. Nick’s old department.

This facility had been his office once, the source of his power. He’d been the top gun of its most secret division. How many times had he strutted these hallways? What had he been thinking when he did? Back then he’d drunk the Kool-Aid, believed in everything the DAR stood for. She pictured him, that almost cocky calm he wore like a tailored suit.

Speaking of her type.

She’d hated him the first time they’d met. Nick had killed a friend of hers, a brilliant who had started robbing banks. A sad and damaged boy, broken by the academy, lost in the world. It wasn’t his fault that he’d gone so wrong, and while she agreed that he needed to be stopped—innocent people had been killed—that didn’t mean she was okay with his murder, or prepared to forgive the soulless assassin who had committed it.

Thing was, Nick turned out to not be that at all. He was warm and passionate and smart. He was dedicated to his children and willing to do anything for them. In truth, they were actually a lot alike, both of them fighting to make a better world. They just had different ideas of how to accomplish it.

Shannon wished she could have told him what she was doing today. His first reaction would have been fury, but once she’d explained the reasoning, she was pretty sure he would come over to her side.

Pack that all away. Telling him was too big a risk, and this place is too dangerous to be thinking of anything but the job.

She walked down a long corridor, took an elevator up three flights into a broad atrium. People passed, looking at d-pads and talking about meetings. At thirty years old, Shannon had never been in a meeting, liked it that way. An aerial walkway with glass on both sides gave her a view of the complex. Enormous, with that rabbit-warren look of constant expansion. She reached the end, turned left.

Twenty yards away, a door opened, and a man and woman walked out. She was small, maybe five-one, but strutted with a screw-you spitfire energy. The man was fit, medium height, wore a shoulder holster. She recognized him. They’d brought down a presidential administration together. Bobby Quinn, Nick’s old partner, the planner with the dry wit. A funny guy, good at his job, she’d liked him.

She had no doubt, none at all, that if he recognized her, he would take her.

Don’t kid yourself, sweetie. There’s no “if.” You think fake blond hair, high-heeled boots, and a pair of glasses is going to protect you from Bobby Quinn?

He was talking to the woman as he walked, his hands out and gesturing. He would reach Shannon in seconds, and if he saw her, she would never see another autumn afternoon.

She didn’t need to think. Didn’t need to look around. The trick to doing what Nick called “walking through walls,” and what she called shifting, was that it wasn’t about studying the world and then making a decision. The only way to be invisible was to know where everyone was all the time, where they were looking, and where they were going. Every room, every minute. On bad days she got wicked migraines from the data overload, like sitting too close to the tri-d.

Data. Like:

The analyst in the bad tie digging through a file cabinet, actual printed papers, trust the government to be running behind.

The FedEx guy pushing the trolley, whistling, the stops on his route clear to her as a diagram.

The administrative assistant stepping from the break room with a coffee in her right hand and her eyes on the d-pad in her left.

The flirting couple almost-but-not-quite touching, his hand about to reach for her arm.

Quinn turning from the woman, the trust in the move; they were teammates.

The water fountain compressor kicking on.

Shannon shifted.

Slid into the path of the delivery guy, paused, opened her purse like she was looking for something, cut across the hall past the assistant with the coffee, slipped the toe of her boot forward just enough to catch the heel of the woman’s shoe, the assistant stumbling, not falling but making a panic clench, keeping her grip on the d-pad instead of the coffee, now into the break room, opening a cabinet so her back was to the hall, the coffee cup arcing, hitting the side of the FedEx trolley just as Quinn and the woman reached it.

“Oh God, I’m so sorry,” the assistant said, as Shannon stared into the cabinet and counted seconds. On three she closed the door and left the break room, not looking at the assistant and the FedEx guy assuring each other they were okay, not looking at Bobby Quinn and his friend, already past, both of them glancing back but at the wrong thing.

Always at the wrong thing.

Three minutes and five floors later, she was in a basement hallway lit by fluorescents. The air was chilly and quiet. In the left lens of her glasses, a dot began to blink on the map. It grew larger until she stood outside a metal-framed door. A camera was mounted to the ceiling above, and there was a swipe pad on the wall beside a big red button.

In the right lens of her glasses, a message appeared. LOGS SHOW NO ENTRANCES SINCE LAST EXIT. SHOULD BE CLEAR.

Should be? That’s comforting.

There was a long pause as the machine scanned her ID. This was the real test. There were probably fewer than a dozen people with the credentials to open this door.

With a click, the lock disengaged.

The room beyond was freezing, maybe forty degrees, and packed with neatly organized metal racks, each holding row upon row of wafer servers, computers a centimeter thick, each pumping and processing terabytes of data. Bundles of wires ran behind them in clusters as wide around as her arm. The hum of unseen fans filled the air.

The beating heart of the DAR. The facts and files of every covert operation, every secret facility, every profile on every target. She was in here somewhere; the details of her life, her childhood, her schooling, the things she had done and the people she had known. Shannon followed the map down the rows, the hair on her arms rising in the electrified air. Five aisles down and four over, she stood in front of a rack just like all the rest.

Shannon reached up to her necklace and twisted the central icicle. It unlocked, revealing a stamp drive insert. She ran her fingers down the I/O panel, found a connection, and slotted the drive. Nothing seemed to happen, but she knew the program was unspooling itself, sliding down the pathways of data, searching for the files they needed. A progress bar appeared in her right lens, slowly ticking up, 1%, 2%, 3%.

Nothing to do but wait.

It was always the strangest moment of a job. The nature of her skills meant that she often had to get into position and then wait. It was tense, and yet there was also something delicious about it, like that first drag of really good dope, like bouncing a glider between updrafts in the desert, like the clenching before orgasm. Her head served up a memory of a Washington, DC, intersection, the first time she’d seen Nick, she realized, almost a year ago. The DAR had managed to flip a defense contractor named Bryan Vasquez, and Nick had sent him back out to meet his contact, hoping to scoop them both up.

John had predicted the move, of course, and had a contingency plan in the form of a newspaper dispenser packed with explosives. Shannon was the one who’d triggered it, shifting past Nick’s whole security team to stand next to Equitable Services’ biggest badass as she blew the bomb and his operation in one.

Of course, at the time, she hadn’t imagined she’d end up dating him.

Dating? Is that what we’re doing?

The progress bar clicked agonizingly slowly. 63%.

It was reckless, getting involved with him. He’d left the DAR, but now he worked for the president, which was at best a lateral move when it came to the likelihood of a happy ending for the two of them. And she wasn’t some teenage girl lost in a steamy fantasy. Two months ago, when Cooper had come after John Smith, Shannon had pointed a loaded shotgun at him, and while she hadn’t liked the idea, she could have pulled the trigger.

Of course, there was also a moment when the two of you sat in a basement bar in the New Canaan Holdfast, your thighs touching as he quoted Hemingway. There was also a moment when he trusted you with the lives of his children.

96% complete, but the bar seemed frozen, just a tiny fraction of an inch to go. She sighed, tapped her toes, and fought the urge to curse. No matter how far technology went, some things never changed.

Come on, come on.

97%. 98%. 99%. 100%.

The display vanished. Shannon unplugged the stamp drive, reconnected it to her necklace. If everything had gone as planned, the program would have downloaded every detail they needed, a mass of information on privately funded labs, underground think tanks, and black facilities doing cutting-edge research. The kind of place that didn’t have stockholders and didn’t pay an excessive amount of attention to government regulation. The kind of place where almost anything could be developed.

Even a magic potion that could change the world.

She turned and walked back to the entrance, her boots making a clonking sound on the hollow floor. Three-inch heels plus one-inch risers, ridiculous footwear, especially on a mission, but they served a purpose. At the door, she took a breath, blew it out, brushed her blond hair back, and stepped outside. She turned right and started back the way she’d come.

“Hey! You!”

The voice came from behind. Shannon thought about running, turned instead, pasting a Me? look on her face.

The guy was tall and pale, wearing jeans, a T-shirt with a logo, and a ragged cardigan. He had his ID in his hand, already stretched toward the door. A technician or a programmer. She began to audition lies, all of them thin to the point of transparency.

As it turned out, she didn’t even get a chance to speak. As one of the dozen people who belonged in this room, he knew she didn’t. His eyes widened, and then he slapped the big red panic button.

Nothing seemed to happen, but she knew alarms would be sounding all over the building, in every guard station. The whole of the DAR’s security forces would be mobilized, hundreds of heavily armed soldiers.

There were no klaxons, no flashing lights, and somehow that only made it scarier.

Shannon turned and ran.

The hallway seemed longer and narrower, and the cameras more numerous. Her mouth tasted like copper, and her heart slammed in her chest. She rounded a corner, sprinted for the stairwell. The distance between her and safety was measured not in distance but in impossibilities. She was in the heart of a militarized complex, actively hunted by enemies. Not only that, but she was racing down an empty hall, an easy target.

Okay. Start there.

She slowed long enough to reach over and yank the fire alarm.

Now came the sirens, a loud repeating whoop and bleat of danger. Doors began to open behind her. She hustled into the stairwell, ran up the steps. Paused, then stepped out. The hall was filled with people. She could have kissed each and every one of them. Without people, she was exposed. But in a milling, confused crowd?

Shannon shifted.

Slid behind and between, paused and spun and dodged. Smiled and stopped to bend down as though her boot needed zipping. Stepped into open offices on the blind side of the people stepping out of them. You move like water flows, kiddo. Her dad’s voice, years ago, talking about her on the soccer field. Water always finds a way.

Find a way.

Falling in behind a pair of burly executive types, she used a coded sequence of blinks to control the display of her glasses. The map zoomed out, then changed to a 3-D view, the hallways now laid out like one eye was playing a video game. She wished she could communicate with the handler on the other end of the lenses, could ask him—her?—to stream what she needed. But the link went only one way; an outbound signal from inside the DAR would have tripped all manner of alarms.

As if reading her thoughts, the fire alarm suddenly shut off. No surprise; security would have seen it for the distraction it was. It didn’t matter. The hall was crowded now, people milling about, starting conversations. It had bought her the time she needed. She followed the glasses, shifting through and around and behind the crowd. The cameras would catch her, nothing she could do about that, but with this many cameras and this many people, so long as she wasn’t drawing attention to herself, it would be a matter of luck for someone to be looking at just the right monitor.

There. A women’s bathroom, right where the map said it would be. She pushed open the door and stepped inside. One mirror, two sinks, five stalls, and a faint odor of shit. She went into the middle stall and locked the door behind her.

Shannon sat on the toilet, then pulled off the boots and set them in front of her. The dress followed. From her purse she took a pair of light jeans and wriggled them up over her hips. The blouse was silk and wrinkled from being packed so tight, but it was okay. The best part were silver flats, which felt wonderful after the ridiculous boots. Shannon reached up to her hair, undid the plastic clips, and pulled the wig off. The blond hair and dress and glasses all got tucked into the boots; she’d drop them in the trash on the way out.

Now for the fun part. She unhooked one of the smaller icicles from her necklace. The tip of a hypodermic needle glinted in the overhead lights. Using a compact mirror from her purse, she moved it carefully up to her eyebrow. Needles were not her thing, but she ground her teeth and went to work. There was a tearing as the point penetrated. She squeezed gently, then pulled it out, moved it over, and repeated the process. Each injection pushed a few CCs of saline into her forehead. With bone on the other side, the liquid had nowhere to stretch the skin but outward. A larger amount would have looked comical, but the tiny injections just changed the lines of her forehead.

When she was done with her right eyebrow, she moved to her cheekbone. It hurt.

She was just finishing up the left side with the second icicle hypo when she heard the door to the bathroom open.

Be an analyst needing to pee, Shannon thought. Be two assistants gossiping.

“Ma’am?” The voice was female, brusque. “I’m going to need you to come out here.”

Crap.

The good news was that it was just one guard, which meant they didn’t know she was in here. This would be a routine check, security forces sweeping and clearing the building.

The bad news was that the guard would be armed and ready. Shannon could handle herself, but going toe-to-toe with a DAR commando wasn’t a favorable-odds proposition.

Find a way, kiddo. Move like water flows.

“Excuse me?” Shannon said. “I’m using the bathroom.” As quietly as she could, she spun on the toilet seat, the porcelain cold through her jeans.

“I understand, ma’am, but I need you to come out right now.”

“Are you kidding me?” She planted a foot alongside the toilet, then another. “I’m in the middle of something.”

The guard moved to the other side of the door. Shannon could see the tips of her combat boots, and then the door banged, hard.

“Now, ma’am.”

“All right, all right. Jesus. Can I wipe?” She squatted beside the toilet, trying not to think about how often the floor got mopped, then rattled the toilet paper dispenser.

“Ma’am, if you don’t step out in five seconds, I’m kicking the door open.” She spoke from only feet away, and Shannon could picture her, standing at the ready, her weapon in hand but not raised. From that angle, the guard wouldn’t be able to see anything.

“Five.”

Shannon lay flat on the ground, perpendicular to the stall. Flexing one leg up, she hit the toilet handle with her toe.

“Four.”

The flush was immediate, the leonine rush of water in a public bathroom. She took advantage of the sound to slide under the wall to the neighboring stall, her hands and face brushing along the tile.

“Three.”

Well that was fairly disgusting. She rose silently.

“Two.”

Shannon opened the stall door and stepped out.

The woman was built, strong muscles layered in bulky body armor. She wore a ponytail and a pissed-off expression, a fully automatic submachine gun slung on a strap around her shoulder, her right hand on the grip, her left reaching for the door. She looked extremely competent, and Shannon knew she’d been right, no way she could have handled this woman face-to-face.

But from alongside and by surprise was another matter.

Without hesitation, Shannon lunged forward and slammed the icicle hypodermic into the side of the woman’s neck.

The needle was only half an inch long, and it caught in the muscle, but the intent wasn’t to kill, just to shock and distract her, which it did, the guard yelping as she spun, her left hand going to her neck instead of to her gun, giving Shannon the opening she needed to throw a roundhouse kick into the commando’s nose.

The guard collapsed. Shannon went with her, wrapped the gun strap against her neck. The woman tried to throw punches, but Shannon stayed close and kept the pressure on, twisting the strap tighter and tighter.

When it was done, she dragged the woman back into the neighboring stall and leaned her against the toilet. Searched for a pulse, found it strong. She’d have one hell of a headache when she woke up, but wake up she would.

Shannon closed and locked the stall door, slid under yet again, and then took a moment to look in the mirror. The guards would be looking for a five-eight blonde with a different outfit and a different face. It wasn’t a perfect disguise, but it would do.

She washed her hands and stepped back into the hallway.

The odds of her getting out were no longer looking impossible. But it would still be a risk—security would be checking everyone thoroughly.

A bank of clocks on the wall showed the time in London, Chicago, Los Angeles, Singapore, and, of course, here in Washington, DC, where it was 16:45.

Shannon smiled. The DAR might be the biggest intelligence agency in America, but it was still a government office. Which meant that for most of the thousands of people who worked here, it was fifteen minutes till quitting time. Fifteen minutes until they flooded the exits.

She headed for the commissary. May as well have a cup of coffee while she waited.