Chapter One
Kari Tomlin threw open the entrance door to the FBI building, stubbed her toe on the metal floor transition piece, then stumbled into a lady holding a cup of coffee in the security checkpoint line.
“I’m so sorry,” Kari said to the woman’s scowling face when she looked to see who had run into her. The woman said nothing, just turned. Under her breath, Kari retorted, “Well, good morning to you, too.” God, she hated being awake this early. Her brain didn’t function until after seven A.M. And that’s with two cups of coffee in her system.
She glanced at her watch. When her boss had called forty minutes ago, he’d sounded as if aliens were attacking the planet. The “Director” wanted to see her right away. Top secret information had come and they needed her.
She’d met the director once, if you called shaking his hand as he handed over her FBI certification a meeting. She’d never forget that day, not because she became an official FBI agent but because she tripped over a taped-down microphone wire on the stage and took out the podium. It was the fault of the stupid high-heel shoes she’d worn. She was more of a flip-flop kind of gal.
After getting through security, she hurried to the elevators. One started to close and she dashed between the doors and stood facing the others. There wasn’t enough room for her to turn around. She hadn’t realized how crowded it was. She barely fit, and her bag didn’t. The briefcase crunched, then the elevator doors popped open, the security feature kicking in.
“Oh, crap,” Kari said. She pulled her case toward her and turned around, which required her to move back in the cab, jostling everyone behind her. She cringed at the moans.
The last to get off at the top floor, she rushed down the hall to the director’s door. She took a deep breath and smoothed out her suit jacket, then knocked. She heard “enter” and opened the door.
Director Lancaster, the head of her division, grabbed his cup of coffee off the desk and leaned back in his chair. On this side of the desk sat two older military men in highly decorated military uniforms. She didn’t know the ranks of the armed forces, but she both men had two stars on their collars. “And here she is now, gentlemen.” Lancaster looked at her. “Come in, Miss Tomlin.” She plastered on a fake smile and reminded herself to breathe.
“Good morning, sir,” she managed to get out.
“Good morning, Miss Tomlin.” He gestured to the two men. “These are Generals Smithton and White.” She nodded and mumbled a good morning as they did the same. “Miss Tomlin, thank you for coming in early. We’ve received intel from the field we need decoded urgently. The CIA has had it for several hours and are making slow progress.
“I’ve been telling these guys for a while now,” Lancaster gestured at the men sitting in front of his desk, “that you are a miracle worker when it comes to this kind of thing.” The director winked at her. “And now we get to put our money where our mouth is, if you get what I mean.”
She had no idea what he meant, but she’d play along. “I’ll try, sir.” He handed her a sheet with “classified” stamped on it. That was normal for her. Most of her work was fresh off the press with a get-it-done-yesterday deadline. “Do we know the originating country?” she asked as she scanned the lines of gibberish.
“Russia, we think,” General White said.
“What about intended recipient?”
The director answered, “Mexico, we’re guessing.”
Russia sending coded messages to Mexico—not what she’d expected.
“Do you need to go back to your desk?” the director asked.
“No,” she said. “I have my laptop with me.” She pulled her bag around, the one crunched by the elevator. Inwardly, she groaned. Please, don’t be broken. “I just need a place to set up.”
“Go on next door to the deputy director’s office. He doesn’t get here till noon most of the time.”
“Thank you, sir.” She hurried out before she passed out. She’d forgotten to breathe, dammit. Standing in the hallway, she leaned back on the closed door and took a quiet breath. Why was she so nervous? She’d met high-ranking people without flipping out. Too badly. But those people weren’t depending on her to decipher something important enough to start a world war if she got it wrong.
Sitting behind the desk next door, she pulled out her laptop and set the paper in front of her. She stared at the strange symbols and their layout. Russian and Spanish. In her head, the patterns and similarities formed. She Googled Russian language and took a minute to look it over. It’d been a while since she’d dealt with that part of the world. Ever since she’d started, the agency had been dealing with the Middle East.
Skimming through the Russian alphabet, diphthongs, and sentence structure, facts and figures soaked into her head. She puzzled out the basic possibilities. Her mind filled in letter combinations and translated them into Spanish and Russian for decryption. She counted characters, looking for a hidden pattern. Then she saw the trick to solving the puzzle. Every letter that corresponded with a prime number was a dummy character. Removing the fake characters allowed for meaningful arrangements of other pieces.
She went through and crossed out the third, fifth, seventh, eleventh, up to the last letter. Her mind sorted and resorted. She noticed something about the structure. The words were not arranged in sentences. They seldom were. Those were too easy. After a quick mix in her brain, it was done.
Reading the message, she thought Russia was trying to get their asses in trouble. If they thought they could get Mexico to fight a war against the U.S., they had another think coming. She closed down her laptop, stuffed it into her bag, and left the office.
She knocked on the director’s door. Getting the go-ahead, she entered, trying to be more confident. She should be.
“I have the decoded message for you, sir.”
The two generals gawked, then their eyes narrowed quickly. They didn’t believe she’d done it. She got that reaction all the time. Nothing new. Ever since the childhood accident that nearly killed her, she’d been a wiz at math and puzzling solutions. She wished she had the same ability with her social and love lives, which were both in the toilet.
The director grabbed his cup of coffee and sat back in his chair. She came up to his desk and handed him the paper. When she scooted to the side, her elbow hit the picture frame on the corner of his desk. She quickly knelt to pick it up, apologizing profusely. She put her hand on the desk to help get her back to her feet and her hand knocked over a bronze flag statue, which in turn set a rubber band ball rolling across his desk.
She leaned over the desk to grab the ball and her fingers brushed over pens in a black mesh cup, sending them sprawling. Still apologizing, she scooped the pens back into their holder. The rubber band ball had rolled to the floor, so she wasn’t worried about that. Then she straightened up and her elbow bumped the same picture frame to the floor.
She sighed and the two generals gawked at her again. This time for a different reason. So much for coming across as a professional agent. That was the story of her life. Whenever she was on a roll, doing great at something, she’d ultimately end up with egg on her face.
The director leaned forward and put his coffee on the desk. “As I said, gentlemen, she’s the best there is for decoding.”
She looked at the military men. “Would you like me to explain the patterns or would you rather I just talk to your guys?”
“Just talk to our guys” was all they managed to say. Typical. Most people didn’t understand the algorithms anyway. She took the business card one of the generals proffered and walked out of the room.
The card had the symbol of the CIA stamped on it. Looked important, unlike hers. Wait, scratch that, she didn’t even have business cards. She figured someone had forgotten to order any or just deemed her unworthy of the distinction of having her name on something.
But despite all that, she was the first to know things no one else did or would ever know. The airplane crash over the Ukraine—it wasn’t caused by local dissidents as the news had reported. Nope. The world knew North Korea was working on nuclear capabilities, but had no idea about the biological chemicals the country was stocking by the ton.
And some things, she was sure the world was never meant to know. One was what really happened in the infamous Area 51 and the other about a nonhuman species blending in and living among us. What would the world be like, she wondered, if the public knew of this species? It’d probably go to hell in a handbasket quickly.
The funny thing was no one would believe her if she did tell them all she knew. That was one thing that kept her from having the meaningful relationships she craved with girlfriends and boyfriends. Her social IQ was about as low as it could go. Growing up as a freak to her peers had started it. Now knowing little of the world beyond work, she had nothing to talk with others about.
She tried to get into the TV shows she overheard other women talking about. Oprah, Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz. But a lot of the things discussed were flat-out wrong. Especially about foods. One would think organic meant coming from your grandmother’s home garden. Not the case. So much so, she ate fruits and vegetables from cans. Preservatives were better than things used in the organic world.
Once, she dared to tell a few ladies she wanted to befriend in her apartment building about the hidden aspects of the food industry. They looked at her as if she was from a different planet. Who would they trust more? Dr. Oz with all his commercial backing or a person they hardly knew who wouldn’t tell them where she worked or what her job was.
Well, piss on them. She didn’t need friends who didn’t get her. She could make it on her own. As long as batteries for her Rabbit were in stock.