Chapter #6Men with Multiple Faces by: Seuzz   "This is a serious breach," says Julian Dey. "How did they find out?"
Self-important twat, you think. Like he'd know enough to understand the answer even if you could give him one.
The head of Project Diana has a desk you could land a helicopter on. And a conference table. And a dedicated work station with a computer. And a mini-bar, mini-fridge, sink and counter, and a sitting area with three sofas and a glass-top coffee table in the corner. No wonder he needs an office the size of a medium-size apartment to hold all this shit. You're sure its luxury says more about Fane's regard for Diana than their regard for Julian Dey. But Dey has an ego so big he can't tell the difference between himself and the project he heads.
"Crazy Ivan was fucking with our comm systems," you tell him. "If he got in that far he might be deep enough in to read and hear what we're saying internally. Our files, our emails, our porn caches—"
"Mimir says the latest encryption regime is impenetrable," Dey says. "Except on geological time scales."
"Not if people are passing chatter through open channels," you retort. "You can have the strongest fucking safe in the world, but if you leave the money out on your desk, my sister's baby could lift it." You look over at Paige Knotts. "I don't want to start a witch hunt or anything," you tell her. "I'm not lodging accusations that people have been chatty Cathys—"
"Good," snaps Dey. "Because you don't have evidence of that."
"We've got evidence that our comm system has been compromised," you insist. "That's bad enough."
"Julian, I'm not sending my crews back out," Knotts says. "Not until you fix our boxes."
"We have jobs in the pipeline," Dey says, and reddens at her insubordination. "Every day I get calls, asking for my guys."
"Your guys aren't doing anything for anyone until you get this breach closed up," Knotts says, and tilts her chin. "So I guess you better get started on it. That, or you can burn your guys and start over with new guys, in which case you'd better get started six months ago."
Dey's lips disappear. "Take your boxes down to— No, give them to me." He taps the desk. "I'll send them to Hermod for analysis. If they find a breach—"
"There is a breach," you say. "Obviously! Or else me and my crew wouldn't have gone silent on each other."
"And if Hermod finds a breach that leads into our deeper comm systems, meaning that internally we've been breached," Dey says through gritted teeth. "Then we'll start ripping the wires from the walls. Otherwise—"
You push back from the table. "You won't find anything and neither will Hermod! Not if it was Crazy Ivan, which it was, because—!"
"Stop talking like these guys are fucking superheroes, Kipper," Dey barks. "They're not the X-Men, they're not the—"
"They might as well be! Fuck!" You clap your hands to your temples. "You're not in the field fighting them, Dey! You're not the one—"
"Kips," Paige says. "Wait outside."
You take a deep breath. "I'm sorry—"
"Wait out in the hall." Her voice is tight, and she doesn't look at you.
You swallow, and—avoiding Dey's eye—you stalk from the boss's inner office and drop into one of the chairs outside. Lucille, Dey's willowy, blonde, twenty-something receptionist, glances up at you from her monitor. "Oh, I do like a man in the throws of temper," she murmurs. "Makes me all tingly inside, thinking how exciting he must be in the sack."
"Shut it, Stoddard," you snarl. "You're not fooling anyone except the boss." You snatch up a magazine, one of the in-house glossies put out by Fane; this one is dedicated to profiling their Murray-Huemler line of jet engines. "How long's the bet for this time?"
"Three days," she says with a slight pout.
"How'd you get rid of Lucille?"
"I'm paying her to stay home. She gets twenty percent of what I win in return for not blowing the whistle on me. And the salary she'd have drawn otherwise, of course."
"She feeding you anything?"
"No." Your colleague slides the mouse around. "She demanded another thirty-five percent as a consulting fee. I told her she'd get nothing if I lost the bet because I couldn’t find my way around her desktop, but she insisted on bluffing, even after I called her on it. By the way, how'd you know it was me?"
"You're the only guy I know who'd spend his vacation at the office." You flip through the magazine, but not seeing anything except Dey's loathsome face.
"No, I mean, how did you know I wasn't—"
You touch a spot just over your heart. "You got the broach on the wrong side."
"Fuck," she mutters, and quickly shifts it over.
"Yeah, careless shit like that'll kill ya."
Fucking Dey, you fume. All he does is sit in his office, barking commands at you and your crews, schmoozing with his fellow whales, and scheming his way up Fane's secret, shadowy, parallel corporate ladder. But put him on the streets, where Greystoke and Crazy Ivan and Firecracker and the other celebrities, or even their starfucker friends, could get to him, and he'd fold like—
You fling the magazine aside and sink into your chair. Zack tried to talk you into going back to Spartacus, and then going with him down to Cabinda, but you decided life at Diana was too exciting. But lately you've been wondering how it would have worked out if you'd left. Zack is still down there, minus a leg and an eye now, and you're up here, whole and hale. But how long will that last? Fane eventually kissed and made up with Zack's boss. But everything you've heard—which isn't much—suggests there will never be a détente with the celebrities. So you're pretty sure that one of these days you'll look up from a job and there will be Greystoke looking back at you. Or Firecracker, or Elmore, or—
Or maybe it will be the face of someone else, of a friend or a lover or even of yourself, and the comedy of your existence will end inscrutably before you've even been given the punch line.
Your eye darts about the room, refusing to settle, and you slump deeper in the chair.
Or maybe that ending would be the punch line. After all, how many people have looked up and seen the face of a friend or a lover as their last sight, before you put a bullet or a knife in them, and made your escape under a different face?
You pick up the magazine again, but this time out of professional interest, glancing through the photographs for faces that might be useful on a job, or maybe just diverting on a vacation. Make believe—"Let's pretend"—isn't just your job. It's also your escape from the nightmares that chase you in your job.
Dey's door opens, and Knotts and the boss come out. "Kipper, your box," the latter says, and he makes you get up and walk all the way over so you can slap the dedicated cell phone into the palm of his hand. He only briefly returns your stare. "You're going on leave until—"
"Julian," Knotts says with a snap, and Dey shuts up. "Come with me," she says to you, and you have to hustle after her.
"Oh. Stoddard," Dey says behind you as you reach the hallway. "Be a doll and call Lucille, find out what she did about my dry-cleaning." You don't hear Stoddard's reply.
* * * * *
"You're putting me in the lobby?" you ask Knotts as you hurry alongside her. The girl, despite being a head shorter than you, can really book it when she wants to.
"Mm-hmm."
"For how long?"
"Mm-hmm."
"What does that mean?"
"It means we're on our way to Patterning."
"What for? I was there just two months ago."
Knotts says nothing.
You stop dead in the hall. "No fucking way, Knotts," you say, and she turns an inscrutable expression on you. "It's not necessary. We didn't see any sign of—"
"Don't argue," she says. "It would look really bad if you did. Cox says you were out of communication for twenty minutes, so you're going to Patterning."
"He was out of communication too!"
"Which is why he was in Patterning instead of Dey's office with us." She reaches the elevator and punches the call button.
"We saw Greystoke, that's all," you say, and try to forget the distortion in the air that bothered you just before Davenport went dark. "Survey says Crazy Ivan was there too. But we definitely didn't see—"
"Well, you never do see him, do you?" Knotts says brightly. "That's the beautiful thing about him. We'd all go mad if we ever did see him, because we'd lose forever that beautiful, beautiful thing that we never do see."
Your throat tightens, and you tense all over. "You know, I'm beginning to think Dey's right, he's just a psychological projection. There's no such person as—"
"Don't say it, don't say his name," she murmurs. "Paranoia keeps us alive, so we're going to Patterning. You don't have a problem with that, do you?"
"I never do." The elevator doors open. You start to get in with her, but she pushes you back.
"Paranoia keeps us alive," she repeats. "Which is why we ride down separately. Don't be late."
The doors close on her. You have the following choice: 1. Continue |
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