Cloak and Dagger (The IMA Book 1) Page 3

  “It must have been a very short list, then.”

  “Yes. Almost as short as my patience with you, in fact.” Richardson cocked his head. “I'm still not quite clear on what it is you want, Mr. Boutilier.”

  “I am tired of cleaning up after Ricky Morelli's mistakes. I'm tired of Morelli and Callaghan vying for power. I'm really tired of playing errand-boy — the next step, I imagine, is doing coffee runs and copying faxes.” I slipped my hands into the pockets of my coat. “It's a waste of my ability and training, and a waste of your time and resources. I am not your secretary.”

  “The only thing you have in common with my secretary, Mr. Boutilier, is blonde hair.”

  Again, he looked at me expectantly. I raised an eyebrow and hardened my expression.

  He sighed. “I want those spreadsheets, Mr. Boutilier. I will do everything that is in my power to get them back. You've raised some valid concerns about Morelli and Callaghan but they are not a priority for me right now. The weapons logs are. And if you value your job — and your life — as my senior operative you will not stand in my way in obtaining those spreadsheets. Is that quite clear?”

  “Crystal.” I stood up and walked closer to the desk. Under the overhead light his forehead was shiny with sweat. I rested my hands over the files, watching his face for any sign of weakness. One of his hands was out of sight, probably grasping a weapon of some kind. “Let me ask you this one last thing, sir.”

  I paused a heartbeat. He nodded.

  “Do you even know what Callaghan does?”

  “His job, I should imagine.”

  “I mean to people.”

  “Again, his methods may be unorthodox — ”

  “Why don't you say the words? Torture. Rape.”

  Mr. Richardson smiled. “You've become quite the human rights activist. Fine, then. Torture. Rape. I don't recall those methods being beneath you.”

  “I don't enjoy it,” I snarled. “I don't do it for pleasure.”

  “So you say.”

  “He's a powder keg doused in petrol, sir, and you're holding the match. I've seen the things Callaghan does — and what he does, sir, he does for fun.”

  “I can hardly fault him for enjoying his job. It is distasteful, yes, but at least he has an outlet for his…” Perversions? “…unique talents.” He glanced at his watch, then at me. “Is that all?”

  “He's also liability to the company. He's violent. Antisocial — a psychiatric disorder that is, supposedly, untreatable. You can try to brush him under the rug, sir, but he is not going to go away, and he's interfering with my men's ability to get the job done. I've had to intervene to keep him from killing people on our side. His results are shit. The prisoners are so broken when he's through with him, they'd tell him whatever they thought he wanted to hear in order to make him stop. Not that it would work. He destroys people, and I'm pretty sure he'd run this agency into the ground if you let him. It may already be too late — he might have too much power, as is.”

  “That will be all, Mr. Boutilier. What you are implying now is treason and unless you have sufficient proof to back your claims, I suggest you keep such idle speculations to yourself. I have to question your motives in telling me this. Especially now. The timing is convenient.” He straightened, causing his suit to stretch tight at the seams. “Too convenient.”

  “What are you implying?”

  “There are some who say you are the — what was that phrase? Powder keg doused in petrol? — of this organization. Nearly all your allegations against Mr. Callaghan are applicable to you, Mr. Boutilier. Then there is the matter of these petty squabbles which, from what you tell me, you do little to discourage. You speak of abusing power — you, yourself, are not faultless.”

  “You think I want your job?”

  “To be perfectly honest, Mr. Boutilier” — something hard pressed against my chest — “I'd rather not find out.” I waited for darkness. “That is why I have asked Mr. Callaghan to do it for me.” The pressure against my ribs disappeared. “ Think of this as an incentive to find real proof.” The gun was still in his hand, but it was no longer aimed in my direction. I couldn't imagine that was the incentive he was referring to. Even though it wasn't a joke, I almost did laugh this time.

  “I think I'd prefer a pay raise.”

  “Be content with your life.” Richardson tucked the gun back in its drawer; I noticed he didn't turn the safety back on. Was he losing it, or were his concerns valid? I was betting on a mixture of both. “Would you have allowed me to shoot you, Mr. Boutilier?”

  “That depends, sir.”

  “On what?” He looked genuinely curious.

  “Whether you intended to pull the trigger.”

  Christina:

  My cell phone buzzed inside my black leather satchel. It was Renee. “Hello?”

  “Where are you? Class is starting soon.”

  “I got into another fight with my mom.”

  She sighed. Or maybe it was static. “Again? Oh, Christina.”

  “She attacked my clothes.”

  It was definitely a sigh this time. “What were you wearing?”

  “That outfit I showed you in Cosmo.”

  “What was wrong with it?”

  “Apparently fat people are only allowed to wear sweatsuits,” I muttered. “Tell Alvarez I'm going to be late. Tell him…I had a family emergency, or something.”

  “All right. But he's not going to believe me. See you when you get here.” She hung up.

  I ran.

  Like any decent private school, Holy Trinity had a back story. It was built in the 1800s, as a mission. The original chapel remained at the heart of the heart of the school and was used for assemblies and graduation. Many people admired the sprawling stucco buildings—designed in imitation of the original Spanish Colonial Revival style — and we were reminded on a daily basis how lucky we were to attend a school with such a pristine and historical campus.

  I would have been happy to go to an ordinary public school, like the rest of my friends from Lewis and Clark Middle School, but my parents pushed me to go to Holy Trinity because private school had status and prestige. That was important to my mom and dad. Several female senators had gone to and graduated from Holy Trinity, as well as a number of female lawyers, doctors, and moderately successful business women.

  I squeezed through the door of my Spanish class, out of breath from the run, trying to keep my expensive bag from hitting against the frame and getting scuffed. More scuffed. Señor Alvarez glanced up from the role sheet as I slunk into my seat. “Late again, Parker,” he said. Across the aisle, Renee shot me an apologetic look. I tried, she mouthed.

  “Sorry, sir,” I mumbled, digging my Spanish workbook out of my backpack.

  He rolled his eyes and some people giggled.

  The uniforms were supposed to hide status, but everyone knew. These were teenage girls. My mother's name garnered prestige and a reputation, but since I didn't jibe with that reputation and wasn't the type of person to even want to, it didn't do me much good. My father was just a lowly programmer. And in a predominantly patriarchal society, it's your father's name that really counts.

  “Hoy, vamos a hablar sobre…”

  I tuned out. His accent got on my nerves. I already had a pretty firm grasp on the vocabulary, anyway. So what if I occasionally left off the odd accent mark?

  “Señorita Parker, ¿Estás escuchándome?”

  I rattled off an answer to the question he hurled at me. He seemed disappointed when I got it right. I wished I was still taking programming, which I'd been taking at this same time block last semester. I'd always been interested in computers, even though I wasn't an expert user. Partly because it irritated my mother, mostly because I found technology fascinating. Programming was a second language, a secret code. You could manipulate the code to make it do anything you wanted. Holy Trinity offered an introductory course. It was object-oriented programming, the easiest. I'd wanted more. There were no accent mark
s. No conjugation. Just commands and numbers. Once you had the framework, you could manipulate the code in different ways.

  My interest pleased my dad. Unlike my mother, who had threatened to faint dead away when I announced an interest in becoming an engineer (“why don't you just come right out and say you're a lesbian, Christina? That's what the world is going to think.”) my dad was encouraging of any sort of intellectual pursuit, especially computers. He had once said that technology was like a skeleton key with which one could open many doors. The problem, he went on, was that many of these doors shouldn't be opened so you had to be careful when deciding how and when to exert that power.

  I can still remember that conversation almost verbatim because it had made such a strong impact on me. We'd been in the kitchen. My parents were between business trips. Just one normal family, that was us. I was eating a Pop-Tart, ignoring the looks my mother was shooting me from across the room as she prepared sandwiches for lunch. I knew she wouldn't dare complain, not out loud. Not with my dad there. But at his words, she stilled.

  “Why do you have to be careful? That wouldn't be your fault. It'd be a mistake.”

  “Rubens!”

  Dad glanced at my mother. “Nothing, Sweet Pea,” he said to me.

  “I want to know.” I put down the pastry and wiped my hands on my jeans. “It'll come in handy, in case I end up working with computers one day.” I shot a defiant look at my mother.

  Both my parents exchanged a long look. “Just because you can do something doesn't mean that you should,” he said, choosing his words carefully. The fingers on his left hand drummed against the table as he sipped his morning coffee. “With great power comes great responsibility.”

  I was pretty sure he'd stolen that from a movie. “Dad, please. You work at a software firm. What harm could you possibly do?”

  “Nothing in this world is without harm.” He looked into my eyes. “Nothing. Promise me, Christina, that you will never open Pandora's Box.”

  “Um…sure, Dad. I won't open any weird boxes.”

  “That's enough.” My mother's voice was quiet, but firm. “Christina. Put down that…thing and help me with the sandwiches.”

  Then Dad went silent. I watched him as I spread the pus-colored mayo “lite” on my mother's favorite revolting whole-grain bread. He said nothing else. That was three days ago and I was still replaying that moment in my head, trying to analyze those secret looks and unspoken exchanges. What had my dad been trying to say? That he had, in a burst of egotism, opened one of those that shouldn't have been opened? Or was it one of those normal parental caveats—don't have premarital sex, don't do drugs, blah, blah, blah? But if that was the case, why wouldn't my mother let him speak?

  “Turn to página catorce,” Alvarez said. “And we will correct the homework.”

  I had already finished my homework while Alvarez had been blathering on with the lesson. As I filled in the multitude of missing accent marks with red pen, my dad's final warning ringing in my ears. It had been so strange that I'd chalked it up to parental distress and said nothing more than “Um, sure.” I wondered if there had been something more to his words than I thought. I stared down at my homework. Now it was full of cubes, all sizes, from different angles.

  Promise me, Christina.

  What was that even supposed to mean?

  “Christina!”

  I jumped when Alvarez's ice-blue eyes landed on me. “Por favor, lee numéro cinco.”

  And, pushing such concerns from my mind, I did.

  Michael:

  I bought a one-way ticket to Barton, Oregon at the airport. With the assistance of a Brooks Brothers suit, I could play the role of the successful young entrepreneur just well enough. I bought an espresso and a copy of The Wall Street Journal. “Business trip,” I explained to the attractive barista, who nodded in sympathy as she handed me my drink and my change.

  It was early. Too early for a cross-country flight. Many of the shop lights were still extinguished, and I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the dark glass of a Mexican restaurant. I looked, I decided, taking a sip of the espresso, like a man with a plane to catch. Then I winced. The coffee was bitter and tasted cheap, but at least it made me alert. I drank half before tossing the cup. My baggage went on a conveyor belt to be checked. I slipped off my loafers and put them on top of my briefcase in one of the gray plastic bins.

  “Can I see some ID?” the officer asked.

  With a polite smile, I handed her my card. Edward Collins; 6'2”, blond hair, blue eyes. Twenty-seven-years-old. None of this was strictly true.

  She glanced at the picture, a cursory scan with no real interest, and waved me through the metal detector; her eyes were already beginning to focus on the British couple behind me.

  Easy.

  Once I was on the plane, I pulled out my laptop and accessed the file I had hastily constructed on Rubens Parker during the wait in the airport terminal. It was disguised as a company report. The words of the real plan were typed in boldface font and needed to be strung together for the message to be comprehensible.

  Even though I could have recited it from memory, I skimmed through the information the file contained. The man, Rubens Parker, was a forty-six-year-old programmer possessing a high-ranking position within the software engineering industry. His wife was thirty-nine; an ex-model from the Dominican Republic. She spent most of her free time designing clothing for her fashion line. They had one child, an eighteen-year-old daughter who was attending a reputable all-girls' school and on the fast track to a liberal arts college like Reed, or Sarah Lawrence.

  What might the parents pay to get their precious daughter back? Taking hostages was messy but, if well-executed, the financial gain alone could make it worthwhile. She seemed sheltered, soft. If I were them, I thought, I would pay quite a lot.

  “Would you like anything to drink?”

  I didn't lift my eyes from the laptop. “Perhaps later.”

  “We're going to take off soon,” the attendant informed me. “You'll need to put that away.”

  I closed the computer obediently. “Do I have time to make a quick phone call?”

  “Hurry.” She repeated her initial offer to the people behind me, who took her up on it.

  There were few other passengers in first class. Two men of Middle Eastern descent were discussing the stock market, and the businessman—the one who wanted the drink—and an elderly gentlewoman that looked British were both reading e-books on their Kindles. None of these people were particularly interesting but I kept an eye on them, regardless. The IMA had many enemies, with about a thousand different faces.

  First class was expensive. But to the IMA, privacy was invaluable. I would not be bothered here. When I was certain that nobody was paying attention to me, I picked up the phone set provided in my seat and dialed the number I had committed to memory in the terminal.

  “Hello, my name is Edward Collins. I'm new at Debutech. Yes, I quite enjoy it.”

  The person on the other line was eager to strike up a conversation on this slow Friday afternoon. I listened for about a minute and then got down to brass tacks. “Listen, one of my coworkers dropped a piece of personal mail in my briefcase by a mistake — a Rubens Parker. Yes. In the break room. I don't have his address, or I'd mail it myself. It looks urgent.”

  I paused.

  “No, I'm afraid I can't bring it in. See, I'm on a flight as we speak. I'm visiting my kids in California. Yes, divorced. Tell you what, why don't you just give me his home address and I'll forward it to him myself?”

  I listened, then nodded.

  “I know. I figured this wasn't normal protocol, but the return address is smeared — must have been from last night's rain. Mailmen can be so careless. Otherwise I would have taken the initiative myself. No, it's no trouble.” I typed out the address in the open file. “I understand. It'll just be our little secret. No, thank you.”

  Too easy.

  Chapter Three

  Quar
ry

  Christina:

  “Christina? Hey — wait up!”

  Renee was galloping after me as fast as her schoolbooks would allow. I used to think her life was perfect before I learned how hard she worked to project that image of herself. She wasn't any more privileged than I and had told me things about herself that shocked me so deeply, I wouldn't believe her at first — not from somebody so strong, so flawless. I guess it just goes to show that we've all got something to hide. Like my mother pinching my stomach in an airport when I was fifteen, telling me how lucky I was that the airlines weren't charging extra for that kind of carry-on.

  “Hi.” I made room for her on the narrow sidewalk. There was barely enough room for us to walk side-by-side. “Thanks for trying to talk to Alvarez today, by the way.”

  “I'm sorry it didn't work. He said you had too many tardies. You were lucky he didn't mark you down for a cut.”

  “Speaking of which, I didn't see you in Stats. Did you cut?”

  “As if. All members of the student council got to leave early so we could plan for the dance. We've already talked to St. John's and they're co-hosting.” She flashed a quick smile. “Isn't that exciting? I feel like it's been years since I've laid eyes on a boy.”

  I loathed the St. John's boys. They hung out in front of Holy Trinity sometimes, hassling some of the younger girls as they walked home. Once a group of them had serenaded me with “Milkshake” until I'd fled to the nearest store. “How is that going?”

  “Like a train wreck. We had to postpone it for a week because the stupid orchestra has practice and needs the gym for rehearsal before the big concert, and the school is too cheap to rent out someplace nice”— she threw up her hands — “and I still don't have a date.”

  She might have been on the student council but I held that she should have gone for drama since she had such a penchant for theatrics. “It's not the end of the world.”