Calculated Reaction, page 7
Quinn leaned forward. “And as soon as you learn anything material to the operation, let us know. There’s no such thing as too much communication on this one. If I wasn’t benched, I’d take your place in a heartbeat.”
Alexis nodded knowingly. “Yeah, been there. We’ll keep you in the loop. Anything else?” Waffle squeaked his tennis ball a few times for good measure.
Cam stood. “That about sums it up. Oh, and you and Matt are married.”
Alexis sat bolt upright. “What?” Waffle startled, and the tennis ball fell out of his mouth and bounced along the floor.
Cam shrugged. “We keep showing up one at a time. We want to mix it up, confuse our criminals a bit. Boyfriend/girlfriend is too easy to fake. You don’t have to kiss him or anything. Just wear a ring, hold hands, put on a show. We’ll create fake records that show you’ve been married a few years. It’s the easiest way for us to create the illusion that you didn’t just drop in for the sake of catching Dmitri’s latest co-conspirator. You guys okay with that?”
Alexis drew on every ounce of her experience to maintain her poker face. “Of course. That makes perfect sense.”
“Matt?”
“No problem, Watchman. We’ll figure it out.”
“Okay. Good luck. Stay in touch. Quinn and I are going to get out of here before the sun comes up. I’ve left a couple of wedding rings and all the other tools you need in a bag by the door. Stay safe out there.”
The door closed behind them and Alexis exchanged a look with Matt. “Well. That was interesting.”
Matt shook his head. “Working with Cam usually is. Sounds like we have a full day of work ahead of us tomorrow. Night, Alex.”
Alexis closed her eyes. “Night, Matt.” She returned to her room, fully intending to go to sleep. Five minutes later, she tossed her covers off and returned to the living room with a tired but loyal explosives detection dog by her side. Waffle curled up at her feet, and she opened the file Cam and Quinn had left behind. It was a couple of hours before she got too bleary-eyed to read and fell asleep. Sometime after that, she woke up with paperwork strewn across her face and a few sheets of paper on the floor. She moved them to the table, pushed herself up off the couch, and went back to her room to sleep in a real bed for a few hours.
8
Halfway around the world, Dmitri Yeninov logged into his laptop through a secure back channel. He didn’t often use it, but it was necessary when he didn’t want a record of his actions on a government computer. He’d had to handle more things personally as he realized how few people he could afford to trust. While Andrei had procured and shipped the components necessary for this mission, he would not rest easy until the package had reached its intended destination. He rubbed a hand through his beard and waited for the machine to connect. Things had not gone to plan on the last operation. But, he’d learned his lesson and evolved his strategy accordingly.
There was a knock on his door, which opened before he saw whether his package had arrived. Dmitri’s chest went tight at the sight of the man who entered, and he quickly closed the software program. He straightened his back and managed to look annoyed. It wasn’t difficult. The head of the intelligence service sat in the chair across from him without waiting for an invitation to do so. The large man stared at him, mouth twisted into something like a snarl. “This is not how we do things. Not only did you not have permission, you got sloppy.”
Dmitri sat stone still. “I don’t know what you mean.”
A newspaper was thrown on top of his desk. An article about the World Health Organization shutting down a clinic was under the fold. Oh good. Intelligence was still chasing that story. They had no idea the true depth of Dmitri’s work. Only a few men had contracted the virus, and no one had died at the clinic because of it. Which meant that while his plan had failed, it had not done so in a way that could be traced back to him. “Your men talked. There is no question. You did this.”
Dmitri waved a hand. “People always talk. What story is someone fabricating these days?”
“I will not have you embarrass me.”
“There is no embarrassment.” Dmitri studied the newspaper for what he supposed was long enough. “A small band of men were trying to make trouble and got caught. I’m not sure what I have to do with any of this.”
“You are not authorized to conduct operations without our knowledge.”
Dmitri shrugged. “I don’t know what you mean. But if I was to embark on a project and it was to succeed, you would get all the credit.”
“You seem to have a problem with success.”
Dmitri gritted his teeth. “We will see about that.” He wished he could fling the knife in his pocket at the arrogant man’s neck, but it wouldn’t be wise.
The head of the intelligence service rose from his chair and waved a hand, as if dismissing him. “No. We won’t. There will be no more operations without my knowledge. You’re lucky no one knows but me. And I may need a favor soon.”
Dmitri said nothing, letting the burly man feel as if he had won this round. Dmitri sneered, then returned to his computer. The ultimate revenge for the man’s superior attitude would be winning a war the man didn’t even know about. And if all else failed, he could send Andrei to try to take care of him. Andrei was running out of time to be useful anyway and was starting to believe he was in charge. Once the man left, Dmitri logged back into his system. The package was on track, and no one was the wiser. Soon, he could rub his success in the face of everyone who said he was incapable.
* * *
It was still too early in the morning when Alexis opened one eye and found herself face-to-face with Waffle’s doggy smile. His tongue hung out of one side of his mouth, and his nose was approximately two inches from hers. She shook her head and laughed. He took that as an invitation to lick her on the cheek. “Really, dog? You’re supposed to be a highly-trained professional.” Waffle licked her again and she gently pushed his big head away. He stretched, then whined. Alexis rolled out of bed, found his leash, and took him to the backyard. Although she’d stayed up far later than she should have, nature called at the same time every morning for a dog. Since Waffle usually barked at anything that moved, his leisurely sniffing in the grass was a good indication that there were no other people or wildlife anywhere in the vicinity. She brought him back inside to work on his training, using his morning kibble as a reward for a job well done. While she didn’t want to get her hopes up too soon, he seemed to be fully recovered from his ACL injury. Waffle detected the training devices, just as he was supposed to, and ignored all of the tempting, but non-explosive scents she’d hidden to distract him. She made a fuss over him, and he wagged his tail happily and leaned his head against her leg. Once finished, she padded into the kitchen to start a pot of coffee and find her own breakfast.
Alexis checked the morning news on her phone – no major crises that involved her to her knowledge – then returned to the files she’d fallen asleep reading the night before. She pulled two small boxes out of the backpack that almost certainly held the wedding rings they would need to complete the ruse. She peeked at them. Matt’s would be the simple gold band, a little scratched up as if he’d been wearing it for a couple of years. Hers also had minor imperfections from regular use and was what she might pick out for herself – pretty, but not so delicate that it would be a problem if she had to throw a punch. She wiggled it onto her ring finger to give herself some time to get used to wearing it. The last thing she needed to do was fidget with it on her first day working undercover when she was supposed to have been married for years.
Alexis turned her attention back to the page where her eyelids had become heavy the night before, twirling the ring around her finger with her thumb as she read. She eventually reached the part of the report that thoroughly described the scene that had unfolded on Ree’s front porch. Even the unredacted text used code names, identifying Quinn as Falcon and Cam as Watchman. There were no pictures of the incident itself, but one image of Andrei from a traffic camera in Chicago was in the document. She compared the time stamp on the camera with the times listed in the report. Alexis rubbed at her shoulder. For a contract killer, Andrei seemed to be pretty uncommitted to making sure his target had been eliminated. Alexis cracked her knuckles. If he prioritized self-preservation over dedication to the job, they might be able to use that.
Waffle’s tail began to thump wildly against the floor, and Alexis looked up to see Matt entering. She looked down at her wedding ring then looked up. Nope, she wasn’t going to make this weird. “Good morning.”
“Morning.” Matt pointed at her ring. “Wow, in a hurry to get hitched?”
“Ha. Just trying to get used to it. I’ve never worn a wedding ring before, and I’m trying to get all the fiddling with it I need to do out of my system.”
“Alright. I better do the same, then.” Alexis held up his ring box, and he studied the ring for a moment before wiggling the gold band onto his ring finger. Closer examination of his hands didn’t show the smooth working hands of someone who sat at a desk all day. Several thin scars crisscrossed around the outside of one palm. They had mostly faded but were still visible under close inspection. Alexis looked up to meet Matt’s eyes. He smiled. “Mind if I steal a cup of coffee?”
“Not at all. I made plenty for both of us. Once you fully wake up, take a look at the intel Quinn and Cam left behind. I’m about halfway through it.”
Matt raised an eyebrow. “If you’ve made this much progress, I don’t want to know how late you stayed up last night.”
“I may have fallen asleep with a report on my face.”
He chuckled and poured himself a cup of coffee before sitting next to her. “Guess I have some catching up to do, then.” Alexis handed over a few sheets of paper, and his coffee remained untouched while he studied them. A few minutes later, she nudged the full cup a little closer to Matt, and he gave her a sheepish grin. “Sorry. I get really focused sometimes.”
Alexis spun the ring around her finger. “Happens to all of us. I say we put ourselves in the path of Lindsay as soon as possible. If she really is working with Dmitri, we’ll figure out his plan that much faster. We can find her lab and introduce ourselves.”
Matt winced. “Do you really want to jump right in like that? I don’t want to tip her off too quickly.”
Alexis rose to refill her empty coffee mug. “I like to get in, clean up, get out. She won’t know what I’m up to.”
Matt scratched the back of his neck. “I can appreciate the bias for action, but I’d rather come in slower. Or even, one at a time. I can approach her first.”
Alexis narrowed her eyes. “I’m trained for this. I can take the lead.”
Matt took a sip of coffee and they made eye contact. Like two dogs holding either end of a rope, they both refused to let go. Alexis raised her eyebrows. “Listen, this isn’t going to work if you go all German shepherd on me.”
Matt almost spit out his coffee. “I’m sorry, what?”
Alexis huffed out a breath. “Never mind. I mean to say, you’re going to have to let me take some risks, too. Since you worked with Cam, I’m going to assume you guys are similar.”
Matt shrugged. “To a point. I like to get the lay of the land before making any big moves.”
Alexis took a sip of her fresh cup of coffee. “And like Cam, you like to be the one out front, taking the risks.”
Matt quirked an eyebrow. “Like a German shepherd?”
Alexis’s cheeks heated. “If it helps, getting compared to a dog is a compliment from me.” Matt’s lips twitched, but Alexis soldiered on. “What if we compromise? Put ourselves on the same floor as Lindsay and see if she comes to us? Whoever she talks to first can take the lead.”
Matt nodded. “That seems fair.”
“Any ideas for our covers?”
“How comfortable are you faking your knowledge on renewable energy? I think I’ve settled on solar panels. It’s a non-threatening renewable, so no one looks too closely at the new researchers.”
“Ah, I’m not the only one who did some planning before I went back to bed last night. I manage when I’m faking my knowledge of black market arms deals. I can handle solar panels. Since it’s a research facility, maybe I could come in as a doctoral candidate.”
Matt considered and took another drink of coffee. “That would explain why I’m taking the lead on the project. But we’re married. That wouldn’t pass muster at most universities. At the very least, it’d raise some eyebrows. Questions about our relationship would get in the way of making progress.”
“Better promote me to a fellow professor, then, too.”
“Something tells me you’ll rise to the occasion. So, we’re a husband and wife team who made a major breakthrough in renewable energy technology. We’re developing a method of scaling up our discovery into large solar farms. How does that sound?”
Alexis tapped a finger against her mouth. “That could work. As much as I’d like to start tomorrow with that as our background, we’ll have to give Cam the time to plant some information for us online, so we come up in searches. Dmitri is a lot of things, but he’s not an idiot.”
“Agreed.” Matt lifted what was left of his cup of coffee. “Thank you for this.”
“No problem. Assuming you’re not much of a morning person?”
“I’ve gotten used to waking up early, but no, that’s not my default factory setting. How did you deduce that on day one, Agent Thompson?”
Alexis shrugged. “It’s not exactly day one.”
“Well, there was the wedding.”
Alexis cleared her throat. “I meant, we had to shift Ree’s schedule around to come in later when she started working in your lab. She’s the very definition of a morning person. Since you were in her lab, you must have arrived later than she did. Ergo, you’re not a morning person.” Alexis looked back down at her notes. “So, would we be coming to the government facility to compare ideas, see how they’ve scaled up research in the past?”
“Sure. We’ll say we’re trying to understand best practices in moving our technology from the nanoscale to the backyard.”
Alexis eyed him skeptically. “Is that something you engineers say? That sounds like pseudoscientific BS to me.”
Matt laughed. “My version still has a little bit of BS, but it’s inspired by a healthy dose of reality. I’ll think of a better tagline before we walk in the door. Saying we found a way to modify graphene for solar panels could work. I have a buddy on campus that has done some work with graphene. We could leverage his research.”
“Graphene? Like what they use in pencils?”
“That’s graphite. You can get graphene from graphite – I know, that’s a mouthful – but graphene has some seriously cool material properties. Producing it at scale can be a challenge. Pound for pound, it’s one of the strongest materials in the world. The problem is making a pound of it.”
After a quick internet search, it was clear that while Matt had come up with the answer relatively quickly, he wasn’t just shooting from the hip. Alexis looked up from her screen approvingly. See? She could let him take the lead on occasion, too. “Okay, it does sound cool. Why would you want to put graphene on a solar panel? Or is that just something you researchers do because you can?”
“Ha. Graphene is really conductive. We could come in saying that we developed a new method to coat solar panel components in graphene in a way that improves efficiency and makes them more cost-effective.”
“That sounds believable to me. If I came into your lab and told you that’s what I’d be working on, would you be convinced?”
Matt considered the question. “Sure. I’d be skeptical about your claims until I saw the evidence, but I’d believe someone would be studying it.”
Alexis laughed. “Okay. So you might think I’m on a wild goose chase, but you’d believe someone might chase this particular goose. I’ll take it. What’s my role in all of this?”
“What’s your background? I mean, when you aren’t fooling your criminal parents into thinking you are a college student. Was that real, by the way?”
Alexis shook her head. “No, sorry about that. My parents have clean records. They did recently get divorced, though.”
Matt winced. “Sorry to hear that.”
“It’s been pretty awful, honestly. You’d think that once you’re an adult, you wouldn’t be so affected by your parents splitting up, but that hasn’t been the case. They said they realized they didn’t have anything in common anymore after the kids grew up. And since we’re adults, they don’t feel the need to keep us out of their mess. They’ve been handling it poorly and dragging my brothers and me into it. I guess you could say they provided a little inspiration for my misbehaving parents story.”
“How many siblings do you have?”
Alexis twirled the ring around her finger. “Three older brothers who are relentlessly supportive but were a little wild growing up. I’m pretty sure my mom still doesn’t have anything breakable in the house, even though we’re all grown now. She still shudders when they talk about the crazy things we all did. Said she needed a punch card for the emergency room that gave her every fifth visit free.”
“Ah, you were used to a certain amount of chaos, so once you moved away, you looked for more chaos until you found a career at the FBI?”
Alexis laughed. “I guess so. My best friend would love your take. She’s a profiler. She’s a great friend but has a tendency to psychoanalyze all of us.”
Matt took another sip of coffee to hide his grin. “I bet that gets interesting. You work in the office most of the time or out in the field?”
“Mixture of both. I’ve been with the FBI since I graduated college and began working undercover as soon as I met the age requirements to be an agent. After I got shot protecting a witness involved with the bioweapon incident, I had to spend a lot more time in the office. When I started getting impatient, a friend talked me into helping with the K-9 program. When he realized I was still restless, he gave me some books about using large sets of crime data to predict future trends and direct policing efforts, so I’ve also been working on that. After the shootout on Ree’s front porch, I used some of those techniques to mine data from the past two operations and look for patterns. That’s when I realized something wasn’t quite right at the Future Energy Lab. And now, I’m here.”
