The usual custom for those who dared entering Matthias' office was to wince at his incredibly loud death metal music. Jackson's custom was to go one step further, unplugging the metal-head's stereo before asking him for the thousandth time, “How the hell can you listen to this, let alone get any work done with it blaring?” To which Matthias would usually respond by keeping his head down, working away at his computer as if the music had finally deafened him completely. This response at least told Jackson that he'd been legitimately working on something. On the other hand, if Jackson had interrupted his afternoon of browsing eBay or reading through gun forums, Matthias couldn’t help wading into the losing end of an argument—which was the case today, Matthias looking at him with forced indignation.

“It helps me concentrate.”

“On what? Dismembering a corpse?”

“No, no. That’s a different group.”

Jackson chuckled and watched as Matthias scrambled to either close an eBay window, or open a work window, or both simultaneously.

“It was Norwegian black metal,” said Matthias.

“So, burning churches, then?”

Matthias rolled his eyes at his computer screen. “What's the problem? Could you hear it out there?”

“No. But that's not why I soundproofed these rooms.” Jackson had designed them to protect work-related conversations ranging from sensitive to deadly serious. Not to muffle one hundred decibels of guttural screams from some skinny, leather-clad, face-painted singer. But with the stereo safely unplugged, he no longer had to worry about Matthias' dark and deafening ambiance. Instead, there were new worries, like Matthias' college dorm pig-sty of an office. Jackson finally found a chair and brushed off the clutter from the seat, magazines and empty ammo boxes sloughing to the ground. “What are you working on?”

“Uh, stuff...”

“Like what?” Jackson sat next to Matthias' bookshelf of old laptops. The man kept his laptops on book shelves and his books in random stacks on the floor.

“Like, the stuff I had in the queue.”

“Langhorne?”

“You asked me to do that a week ago.”

“I know your pace,” said Jackson, crossing his legs. “What do you have?”

Matthias sighed. “Well, he's all over Kenya. Big ties with the government and industry leaders. Most notably, the Hazina Mining Corporation. Gold mining. And he's also working with NGOs. But it's all pretty well buried.”

“What do you mean?”

“He's keeping a really low profile in Kenya. But he's damn busy, behind the scenes. It's a little odd because he's supposed to be concerned with East Asia, while everything I'm looking at ties him back to East Africa.” Matthias started clicking around on his computer, then typing something. “Has Mira been translating a lot of Swahili lately?”

“No,” said Jackson. “Zero. Well, aside from Langhorne's secret documents.”

“See? That's what I mean.”

Jackson pulled out his smart-phone and ran an internet search on Ikenna Chidi. Before the results turned up, he asked. “Do you know who runs the Hazina Mining Corporation?”

“Ikenna Chidi,” said Matthias.

Jackson spotted a few news articles about the man, some about human rights abuses at his mine, some about his charitable donations to this or that NGO. A nice contradiction. “Who the hell is he?”

“I don't know,” said Matthias. “A friend of Langhorne's. He's also got a bunch of other friends in jail. Did you know that?”

Matthias named two people from the Mira's list of seven. They were two names that Dez had skipped over, a politician embezzler doing 15 years, and a drug-runner who died in prison under 'mysterious circumstances'. He was rumored to have been cooperating with the Kenyan Criminal Investigation Department, so Jackson didn’t think the ligature marks around his neck were too much of a mystery.

Matthias pushed back his chair and stood up. “He's full of contradictions, isn’t he?”

“Who?”

“Langhorne,” Matthias said, walking over to collect the empty ammo boxes Jackson had dumped to the ground.

“You could say that.” Jackson yawned while he watching Matthias dump various scraps of garbage into a wastebasket. “Thanks for tidying up, by the way.”

“It's hard to believe,” said Matthias.

“Yeah, I know. I'm watching you and I still hardly--”

“I'm talking about Langhorne, asshole. He has Mira translating anti arms proliferation policies for Asian countries. And then has someone else drafting up encryptions of arms deals for African countries.”

“Who do you think he's got doing the encryption?” asked Jackson.

“You'll have to ask Tansy.”

“All right. What can I ask you?”

“You can ask about the weapons.”

“Ok then,” Jackson grinned at him. “What about the weapons?”

Matthias sat and leaned back in his chair. “I came across some interesting chatter about serial numbers. There was a story last year about his family's arms company, Langhorne-Littleton, having major production problems that kept backing up their orders. It took them months to re-tool the machines, and their stock value took a really hard hit. Anyway, they somehow ended up with a surplus of LK-491s. Assault rifles. Selective-fire, detachable magazine, 45 millimeter NATO.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jackson said, nodding. He heard about the LK-491. Mainly, that it was a piece of shit M16 rip-off.

“Okay, so of this surplus, a bunch of them didn’t have serial numbers. And could you believe it? They went missing. How odd, right? It was a big scandal.”

“And I'm guessing they were never found?”

“Right,” said Matthias. “They had the FBI up their ass about it. But you know Langhorne. He's got friends.”

Friends indeed. Pilots to fly contraband. An airport owner to grant safe landings. Any number of crooked Kenyan politicians with secret affiliations with gun-hungry terrorists. And a family business to keep everyone well-supplied.

“Shady friends and shady coincidences,” said Jackson.

Goddammit...

He'd been trying hard to ignore them for Mira's sake. He even tried to quash it a few times by being the bad guy, turning her away before things with her case—and his feelings for her—ran too deep. Although he enjoyed her little office visits, he knew he'd never see her again if he'd pulled the plug. But at least she'd be safe.

In a perfect world, someone like Jaheem would have tipped him off about Langhorne. Someone he'd been paying. Not sweet little Mira who had nothing to gain but everything to lose.

In his perfect world, Jackson's own people would intercept the arms deal. Mira would be told to relax and go back to work while DARC Ops took care of everything. And the day she noticed Langhorne getting cuffed and stuffed, she'd come by Jackson's office and he'd ask her out on a date. They could do something boring and safe, like crosswords in the grass of the National Arboretum. A blanket, a bottle of wine, and a happily-ever-after.

“So what are we gonna do?” asked Matthias, interrupting Jackson's imaginary date.

“Yeah, well... Tansy's working on interrupting the deal. So we might be able to take care of all this right from our office. And then, uh...” Jackson couldn’t get Mira's pretty smile out of his head.

“Yeah? Then what? Are we using Mira?”

“Using her?”

“What?”

“We can't expose Mira,” Jackson frowned.

“I know.”

“That's the most important thing here.”

“Of course,” said Matthias.

“No. It's not just 'of course'.”

Matthias stared blankly at his boss.

“Matty, you've only been out of the FBI for a few years.”

“Huh?”

“I don't think you've really seen what can happen to whistle-blowers from the other side. Especially with arms dealers. They'll dig her up and snuff her out, where ever she is. And they won't care that she's a civilian, or a woman. It’s imperative that we do everything we can to protect her, and that starts with you doing some counter-surveillance.”

“I'm on that?”

“We're both on that.”

“Okay,” said Matthias. “Starting when?”

“Yesterday.” Jackson stood up and looked around the room. “And can you actually clean this place properly? Looks like a shit hole in here.” Jackson turned to the door and left the room without saying anything further. He was too angry. Too emotional. He marched down the east wing hallway, a vague feeling of dread gnawing at him. One way or another Mira was going to get herself—or perhaps both of them—killed. Or at least completely ruin him through some romantically catastrophic bullshit.

“Hey Charlotte,” he said, not breaking stride as he passed by the reception desk. “Have you heard anything from Africa? Any strange calls or anything? Or any strange calls from anywhere?”

She giggled at his questions.

“Yeah I know. I'm going nuts.”

“No,” she said. “It's been pretty quiet today.”

Jackson thanked her with a wink and continued on to the west wing. Although he actually was going nuts, he at least had to hide it from his staff.

Smile and wink. Everything's totally normal.

He smiled and continued down the hall to Tansy's office, where he poked his head in the doorway to see an office quite unlike Matthias' clusterfuck. It was spartan, immaculately clean. Not a single magazine or book or even paper to be found anywhere, the benefits of Tansy's work being purely digital. Best of all, no music. Just the humming of cooling fans for his multiple beefed-up processors.

“Yo, Tansy,” called Jackson. And out came a curly blonde head from behind a wall of computer monitors. “Who the hell is working with Langhorne to encrypt these things?”

“I don't know,” said Tansy, ducking his head back behind his work. “I was about to ask why they're not already on your pay-roll.”

“Maybe they are.”

“No way,” Tansy chuckled. “The work's too good.”

“It didn’t fool Mira.”

“So? I don't know what could.”

“Osprey, maybe?”

“I dunno. You're supposed to hire her so I can find out.”

“Yeah, right.” Jackson wanted to see more of the woman, but definitely not as a member of staff. He could think of far better ways of seeing more of Mira.

“We'd make a good pair, Jackson.”

“All right. Take it easy.”

“Hacker and cryptologist,” said Tansy, nodding so that the top of his head kept appearing above the monitors. “Some old-school new-school shit right there.”

“So is that how Langhorne's doing it? Using a hacker to set up the messages and a cryptologist to decode it?”

“Or it's just a program.”

Jackson laughed. “Oh, is that what I should do? Replace you with a program?”

“If all you were trying to do was send secret messages? Yeah.”

“Sounds cheaper,” said Jackson.

“And more reliable. Just get a program or a key in place. The only problem is that someone like me can come along and fuck it up.”

“Do you think that's more likely than there being some evil Kenyan version of Mira working on the other side?”

“That's what I'm working on, Boss.”

“All right,” said Jackson. “And that's why I'll leave you alone.” He slapped the side of the doorway twice with his hand as if saying, “Go get 'em,” before spinning around to the hallway and walking back to the reception area. Just as he jabbed his knuckle against the elevator button, Jackson heard the Charlotte’s chipper voice.

“Still nothing from Africa,” she said from behind her desk. “But that reporter called again.”

* * *

“What's the scoop, Jack?”

“Ah, you know, just some boring capitol news.” Jackson closed his blinds to the harsh low rays of a late afternoon sun. “Treason. Conspiracy. Illegal arms trade.”

“Go on.”

“Done by a US Senator.”

“Mmm...” The woman's sultry moan oozed out of his phone's speaker. “I like that.”

“I thought you would,” said Jackson, wondering how many years it's been since he'd looked at her face in dim light.

“I really do, Jackson. Tell me more?”

Annica was a bad girl. She was also an investigative journalist at the Washington Post and a key media contact for Jackson. It was all a matter of walking along a tight-rope...

“It's still early yet, but I might have some information about a senator working under the table to endanger US troops and allies.”

“Might?”

“Yes.”

“And how 'early'?”

“Annica, you know I wouldn’t be wasting our time with this...”

“And you know what I said I'd do to you if you made me kill another story. You remember that, right?”

“I do.”

“Good boy,” she said. “Now go on.”

“I'm in contact with a whistle-blower. One of his aids, actually.”

“And you vetted him? He wasn’t recently fired and disgruntled and—”

“It's a she,” Jackson interrupted.

“Okay. And she's credible?”

“Very.”

“Hmm...”

“We're working things from our own end to resolve it. But if she has to come forward, we need media coverage large enough to protect her.”

“Large enough? Like every other paper in town?”

Sensing the looming need for meditation, Jackson opened the lid to his Baoding balls. “You'll get exclusivity.”

“On how many news cycles?”

Jason’s jaw tightened. The nerve of her... nickel-and-diming a good deal like this. Then again, that was nothing new with Annica. “You're getting the scoop. Be happy.” He began rotating the metal stress balls in his hand, clockwise and then counterclockwise, and then clockwise, and then...

“All right, Jack. But what if she doesn’t need to come forward? What if you solve it internally like you said and there's no whistle-blower to write about?”

“You'll have a story either way. I can guarantee you that. A big story.”

“Big enough that you're worried about her getting knocked off, huh?”

“Pulitzer, baby.”

“Is that my prize for protecting your latest girlfriend?”

“It's not like that.”

“She's not your girlfriend?”

“No.”

“She will be.” Annica's laugh fluttered into his office. “After she thinks you rescued her, despite me doing all the work.”

“Hey, I'll write the damn thing if you can't do the 'work'.” He meant it. He'd done it before.

“I just want to be sure so I can start prepping the editors,” she said in a softening tone. “Just make sure it's a real story. All right?”

Jackson sighed.

“Jack? You okay?”

“Yeah, I'm good. It's been a long week.”

“I know,” she sighed too. “It's about to end in half an hour. Wanna meet for a drink somewhere to celebrate?”

“No, but thanks. I appreciate your help here.”

He ended the call, and then without putting down the receiver, hit the quick sequence of numbers for an internal call. “Swinies'?”

“Why?” asked Matthias. “Mr. Davis is out of town this week.”

“Yeah, I know... I just need a drink.”