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Colles: “Understood. If he jumps you, some people will hang for it.” His eyes scanned the two suits, who both nodded.
“One last question,” Letty said. “If you’re so hot to get to Ordinary People, why not go after Pastek? Grind him down. If he was upset by having to pay twenty-five million, how upset would he be if you threatened to put him away for five to ten? And take his company away from him?”
“There are other issues,” the woman said. She glanced at Colles. “Having to do with campaign contributions. Pastek’s campaign contributions.”
Same old story, in certain quarters of America, like the one they were sitting in. Money bites. “Okay.”
The man asked, “So. You’ll do it?”
“If Senator Colles asks me to,” Letty said.
“I’m asking,” Colles said.
“Then I’m in,” Letty said. She turned to Colles. “I assume I’ll get a heavier briefing than this. Where and when do I get that?”
“At Homeland,” Colles said, meaning the Department of Homeland Security. “Tomorrow. Time is short. You’ll have homework to do when you’re on the road. We don’t have time to give you everything tomorrow.”
The woman said, “I’ll be at the briefing with Rod Baxter and some other folks.”
“Baxter is...”
“Your companion.”
“What’s your name?” Letty asked.
The woman had to think a moment, then said, “Mary... Johnson.”
“Who will I be reporting to?”
“Me,” Johnson said.
Letty turned to Colles and said, “Great. I’m reporting to somebody who lies about her name.”
Colles: “Yeah. That’s true.”
Letty held his eyes for a moment. “They’re lying about something else, too. Are they going to tell me what it is?”
Colles shook his head: “I don’t know about that. All I know is what you’ve heard.”
Johnson said, “We’re not lying about anything. Cross my heart. We’ll be briefing you tomorrow. Today, you need to buy clothesand get ready to fly. Like Senator Colles said, we have no time. No time. We’re posing your associate as a rogue programmer-for-hire, down on his luck, on the run from law enforcement after a ransomware attempt went wrong. We haven’t finished that cover yet, we’re putting the final touches on it. It’s not something we usually do. We’re talking to some... mmm... other people about that. But you will be his college-dropout girlfriend and maybe something a little rough... like, mmm, a barmaid. Or a scullery maid.”
“I don’t think they’re called that anymore,” Letty said.
“Whatever. You need the clothes to fit that image, that background. Get some today, you’ll be compensated later,” Johnson said. “You’ll be flying out of here tomorrow night, to Orlando, Florida.”
The man, who’d not yet introduced himself with a fake name, said, “Ordinary People are based in Los Angeles. They might be planning to attack a northern city, but we don’t know if they’ve even bothered to go to any of them. This is all computer stuff—they don’t need to go there.”
“If they’re in LA, why am I flying to Florida?”
“The Orlando stop is part of your developing cover,” Johnson said. “We’ll know more about that by tomorrow. Your partner, Rod Baxter, went to school at the University of Florida in Gainesville, which is just north of Orlando. He spent three years there, in grad school; he knows it well. You need to give it a look. You’ll be driving his truck from Orlando to LA—the truck should arrive in Orlando late tonight or early tomorrow morning; we’re having it driven down there. We’re hoping you can drive it on to Pasadena, to Caltech, in three days. The drive is part of your cover.”
The man added, “We also have a lot of material for you to absorb—your new identity, what information we have on theOrdinary People, investigative processes, your law enforcement contacts on the West Coast, emergency contacts with us... and so on. Your time in the truck will be busy.”
“Excuse me for saying this, but it doesn’t sound to me like you’re even sure Ordinary People is going to attack anyone,” Letty said. “It sounds like you’re guessing.”
The two spooks nodded, and Johnson said, “That’s fair. Let me put it this way—we know for sure that they’re researching natural gas systems. We know that a couple of years ago, the natural gas system in Aspen was sabotaged and the gas companies had a heck of a time getting it back up. We know for sure that Ordinary People has done at least one spectacular ransomware attack. What doyouthink they might be doing?”
Letty pushed out her lower lip, thought about it, and nodded: “I guess you have to look at it. If that’s not the part you’re lying about.”
