The Backup Asset

…42

The doorbell startled Alex a little; it was almost midnight. She thought it must be one of the guys, with something so urgent and confidential that it couldn’t be handled over the phone.

She smiled, remembering how she had sneaked in to slide a piece of paper under Tom’s door one night, and scared the crap out of both of them when she’d stumbled upon him smoking his cigar on the patio, in complete darkness. Yup, emergencies like that can happen.

She paused the TV, put on a bathrobe, and opened the door widely, without checking the peephole. She was expecting a friend, but the man standing in her doorway wasn’t one of her Agency colleagues.

“You!” she exclaimed, perplexed. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Well, believe it or not, I’ve come to apologize,” Jeremy Weber said, “and to ask you to come back to Norfolk.”

She mumbled some oaths and, after thinking for a few seconds, reluctantly got out of the way.

“Come in,” she said eventually, “take a seat. Need anything? Water? Beer?”

“Beer would be nice,” he said, sitting down on her couch, uneasy. “It’s been a long flight.”

She brought cold Stella Artois for both of them, took an armchair, and folded her legs under her.

“So,” she said, “let’s hear it. What could have possibly been so serious to make you hop on a plane and waste a whole day in flight when you’re supposed to be chasing spies in Norfolk?”

She was making him uncomfortable, irritating him, and she was doing it on purpose. He was clasping his hands together, and obviously refraining from being his usual douche-bag self that she remembered clearly from earlier in the morning. She almost chuckled; she wasn’t gonna make it any easier for the jerk.

“Walcott considers… well, actually they believe very strongly you should be involved in this investigation.”

“Huh… do they now?” she replied pensively.

“They believe it so strongly that my director was persuaded before I even got back to the office this morning. We have his approval. We’ll set you up as an FBI contractor, have you take the polygraph needed to gain full access to this case, and we’re ready. We should be ready in twenty-four hours.”

“Wait a second,” she snapped, “I haven’t exactly said yes, now have I?”

The smug asshole! That was his version of an apology? Where did the feds find these people?

“You don’t really have a choice, Ms. Hoffmann,” he replied serenely, a crooked smile showing on his lips.

“Yeah? And how’s that?” She stood and started pacing angrily, her bathrobe fluttering around her like a fuzzy superhero cape. She didn’t care if he saw her jammies; she just wanted the fucker out of her house, pronto.

“I’ve done some research on you, to find out why exactly you’re so damn critical for Walcott’s investigation.”

“And?” Alex asked impatiently, tapping her bare foot on the carpet, her clenched fists stuck firmly in her pockets.

He leaned back, looked her straight in the eye, and said, “I know what case you’ve just worked on.”

She felt a rush of blood to her head and the fist of adrenaline hit her bowel. Fuck!

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she managed to articulate, sounding calm and plausible.

“Oh, yes, you do. I’m talking about the twenty-something laws you and your team broke just by knowing about that threat and not calling us in. I’m talking about the elections case. I’d say this fact limits your options somehow, wouldn’t you agree? It should definitely improve your attitude for starters,” he scoffed.

She weighed her options quickly, then replied dryly, “Well, if you know that much, Agent Weber, then you probably must already know that the last asshole who sat where you’re sitting right now ended up dead, and my only problem with it was that I had to replace my favorite couch.”

He laughed, stood up and approached her with his extended hand. “It’s Jeremy.”

“Huh?” she reacted.

“You can call me Jeremy.”

Alex looked at him for a second, thinking. He obviously wasn’t there to arrest her for her work on the elections case, and she was interested in this challenge. Her gut was telling her that by working with Walcott she could come closer to identifying V, her elusive Russian mastermind, the mystery man taking the front and central spot on her crazy wall. That gut feeling, that thin wisp of hope was worth putting up with Agent Weber. Maybe there was room for some decent collaboration between the two of them. Maybe.

She shook his hand and replied reluctantly, “Alex.”

“Shall we start again?” Jeremy asked insidiously.

She grabbed her Stella and gulped down half the bottle, then sat back in her armchair.

“Tell me again, why do they need me? Or why do they think they need me?”

“Here’s the long story, short. Two teams of engineers used the corporate van between detailings. On Tuesday, the fleet manager found an illegally copied document in the van. One of these eleven people dropped it by accident, but that means someone made an illegal copy of a file containing critical state secrets, the laser cannon technology I was talking about this morning.”

“And?” she asked. “I still don’t follow why me.”

“You can infiltrate technical teams, that’s what you do, right?”

“Right… That’s what I do. So what’s your plan of action?”

She reached over to the coffee table and grabbed her laptop.

“What are you doing?”

“Booking us flights. Never mind me, what’s your plan?”

“Get you acquainted with the case, get you credentialized first, then we proceed from there.”

“Polygraph, huh?” Alex asked, thoughtful and a little concerned.

“Yup,” he said.

“Mandatory?”

“Gotta do it.”

“Then you better make sure they don’t ask me the wrong questions,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“About the case I’ve never worked on,” she said and winked, “the elections case.”

“I think that can be arranged,” he replied coolly. “What else would you need?”

“I need reading materials about the laser cannon. I can’t hope to infiltrate those teams without having the slightest idea of what that is and how it works. And I’ll need Walcott’s procedure manual, or someone who’ll walk me through everything I need to know about making copies, gaining access to documents, that kind of stuff. I think Mason Armstrong can take care of that.”

“What else?” Jeremy asked, taking notes.

“I need you to work with me and run background checks, people’s profiles. I need access to their files, work histories, financials, all that. Just routine for you.”

“You got it. How are we doing on flights?”

“Like hell,” she replied, frowning and slamming the laptop shut. “With these options we won’t make it to Norfolk before 10.00PM. Let me make a call.”

“It’s 2.00AM!” he exclaimed.

“He won’t mind… I hope.”

She dialed a number from her cell’s memory, and the call was answered immediately.

“Brian? Sorry to bother… I need your help badly. I need to bail out on your case, and I need to borrow your jet.”

She paused for a minute, listening to Brian’s answer, and watching with amusement how Jeremy’s jaw dropped. Then she thanked Brian and closed the call.

“Who are you, people?” Jeremy asked.