All That Mattered, Ch. 10

By the time they reached the Agency the next morning, Lee’s jaw was already set. The walk from the parking garage was short — he’d finally consented to letting her get a temporary handicapped placard — but it took more effort than before he’d been injured. Today, that showed; he was moving as though he were bracing himself for a day that was unlikely to be any easier than yesterday.

Amanda didn’t see any point to commenting about it. There wasn’t time, anyway: Douglas Trent was already standing outside the Q-Bureau door when they got there.

“Early riser?” asked Lee. He had a point; it was just now turning 8:00.

“Late night,” replied Douglas as he followed them through the door. “It’s going to catch up with me soon, but not today.”

Lee’s lips thinned. “What’s the hurry? We didn’t find anything new last night after we got home.”

“You might not have. I did.” He waited for Lee to settle into his desk chair before handing him a file. “Have a look at that.”

He opened the folder. “What am I looking for?”

“The dates,” said Douglas. “Signals was able to get access logs for another year past the six months we had yesterday.”

“So they’ve been logging in even longer than we thought. We knew that yesterday.” Lee shook his head. “I don’t understand the significance. Military intelligence plays the long game sometimes. Chances are good they’ve been digging around in here for years.”

“Look at the final page. The one from July 1986.”

Lee flipped to the back. “It’s still the same.”

“That’s my point. It shouldn’t be. Look at the intervals between access.”

Amanda opened up the file she’d carried in, the one with the access logs from earlier this year. “It’s a sequence. Logins on back-to-back days, then they skip one day, then one day again, and then two days, five days, eight days, thirteen days, eight, five, three, two…” she closed the file, desperately trying to remember. “This isn’t random. It’s — I’ve seen this on some of the boys’ math homework. Something about ratios, or patterns, or…” she trailed off. “Word problems never did make a lot of sense to me. They always seemed so arbitrary, but this one wasn’t. I just can’t remember the problem itself. But the answer was supposedly something well-known and famous for engineers. Except Joe had heard of it, because he said it also applies in business and — it had some funny Italian or Spanish name —” she stopped suddenly, snapping her fingers. “Fibonacci. It’s the Fibonacci sequence.”

“Exactly,” said Douglas. “Goodness gracious.”

“What?”

“Did you take a breath during any of that?”

Off to Amanda’s right, Lee began to chuckle. “Welcome to my world, Trent.” Then he sobered. “So you’re saying that whoever did this wasn’t logging in randomly. They were pacing themselves. Deliberately.”

“Yes.”

“Why? It can’t be as simple as not wanting to be noticed.” He pointed at the printouts. “There are better ways to pick intervals. I wouldn’t have used a known pattern for the logins at all.”

“Visibility isn’t the point,” said Douglas. “Stability is.”

Amanda blinked, and saw her confusion reflected in Lee’s expression. So, apparently, did Douglas.

“A pattern like this,” he explained, “lets activity blend into baseline behavior without drawing attention to itself.”

Now she understood. “You mean it’s like the way a borrowed word stops sounding foreign after a while. It’s not that anyone’s language changes. It’s that people get so used to it that they stop noticing.”

“In other words,” said Lee, “they’re integrating. Not concealing. Which means we’ve been asking the wrong questions about Aegis. The breach wasn’t the point. They’re not trying to steal something. They’re trying to change something. Operationally.” He frowned. “Then why the Army’s databases? Why not hit the Navy directly?”

Douglas didn’t hesitate. “Because that’s where the break happens. One system has to talk to the other. That’s the point where they’re injecting the code.”

“Like tailgating into the bull pen,” murmured Amanda. “It’s something we hear about again and again, but when it actually happens, no one notices. Unless you’re Francine.”

“Francine at her worst,” Lee clarified. “The times she leaves everyone mad, because she’s right even though she picked a terrible way to say it.”

“That’s not often very popular,” remarked Douglas.

No, thought Amanda, but it is very much like Francine. And you get used to that, too.

---

She was starting to get used to the idea that “lunch hour” was a polite fiction where Agency business was concerned. Still, as she knocked on Francine’s apartment door, Nancy hoped she might have time to grab something quickly before she was due back. If she were late, it would be noticed; if she skipped the meal, she would notice.

Francine opened the door almost immediately, ushered her inside, and — thankfully — offered her a helping of the cold noodles she was having for lunch. They sat at one end of the dining table, the other end buried beneath papers and case files.

“Do I want to know?” asked Nancy, indicating the pile of papers once she’d finished her quick briefing. There hadn’t been much to tell; the primary reason she’d come over had been to alert Francine that if Scotty had seen her still investigating, it was likely others had too.

Francine’s eyebrows went up. “I don’t know. Do you?”

She sighed. “All right. That’s about the case, isn’t it? I didn’t bring you anything significant, but it looks like you’ve found plenty on your own.”

“Wrong.” The older woman topped off her glass of water. “Knowing that I’m being seen is small, but very significant.”

“It’s also not the answer to my question.”

At that, Francine actually laughed. “You really are getting used to me. I’m not going to convince you it’s some new avant-garde filing system, am I?”

“Francine.” Any other time, she might actually have enjoyed the fact that her senior partner was apparently getting comfortable enough for wordplay. But she was on a deadline, and while the lunch helped, she’d still have to rush to get back to the Agency.

Francine shook her head. “Just working some embassy contacts.”

Nancy eyed the size of the pile. “That’s a lot of contacts.”

“I’ve been doing this for years,” was the reply. “You end up with a long list.”

“Are you calling every single one of them?”

“Is this an interrogation?”

“Francine.” Now she was exasperated. “I’m worried about you. I already told you there’s been more gossip and scuttlebutt about that visit to Langley. People are watching, and some of them are people who wouldn’t mind seeing you get taken down a notch or two.”

At that, the older woman sobered. “I know.”

“Which is why you’re letting me help in the first place.”

“I know.”

“So maybe let me help instead of posturing.” It came out sharper than she’d meant it. Were they really going to have this argument again? “How many people even know I’m your partner?”

“A few,” Francine admitted. “But I don’t think anyone knows you’ve been helping me with this, especially since it’s more or less implied that you shouldn’t be.”

Nancy nodded once. “That’s my decision,” she reminded her. “It’s also my advantage. People aren’t watching me, so why not let me do some of the legwork? I can mix it in with MELCHOIR, so that it looks perfectly logical for me to be visiting embassies and interviewing dignitaries. And that case also gives me updates I can put in a report to justify those activities to the higher-ups. I won’t have to lie about where I was or why, because I won’t be lying in the first place.”

Francine’s lips quirked. “You’re not going to get anything more out of visiting embassies than I will from calling them. No. That’s not where I need you.”

She frowned. “Where do you need me?”

“Jonathan’s apartment.”

“What? It’s sealed off! If I go in there—”

“You said it yourself,” Francine interrupted. “People know we’re partnered, and they also know I’d never put you on something this sensitive. They’ll assume you’re there for a low-level reason. Or just to take a look around. Once you’ve ID’d, nobody’s going to ask questions — which puts you in a perfect position.”

Nancy took a deep breath, letting it out through her nose. This was more than she’d bargained for — but to be fair, she had asked. “That won’t hold up to much scrutiny.”

“It doesn’t have to,” Francine said. “Especially if you make it look personal. Take Scotty with you.”

“Scotty? He’s a civilian!”

“A civilian employee of IFF,” Francine clarified. “Which makes it perfectly reasonable he’d be assigned to assist with something low-level. He does independent research work all the time, and you could simply be escorting him while he does that.” She paused. “Two people on that kind of assignment looks routine. One person alone looks like a personal vendetta. Or worse. And no one would believe I ordered you to take him, not after what happened in the bull pen the other day.”

“I don’t believe you’re ordering me to use him.” Nancy shook her head. “I’ll do it. But alone.”

“Not under my supervision, you won’t.” Francine’s expression was firm.

Nancy didn’t reply.

“You want to do this?” Francine continued. “Then you do it with backup, even if all the backup knows to do is call for help. You stay visible enough to be safe. And you walk out the minute anything feels like it’s starting to go sideways.”

“If Scotty says no?”

“Then we come up with another way to do this.” Their eyes met. “You. Do not. Go in. Alone. Full stop.”

She exhaled, slow and controlled. “All right.”

“Good,” said Francine. “Because I need to be able to tell the truth myself — that I’ve told you not to ever go into anything without backup.”

Nancy felt her lips thin, but she nodded. “Fair enough. What do you want me to look for?”

Francine pushed up and went to the end of the table, extracting a pen and a blank sheet of paper. “I’ll make you a list.”

---

Lee knew he was in trouble as soon as Monica Brown came back in carrying a list, and he craned his neck trying to see what was on it.

“Be patient, Mr. Stetson,” she told him, angling it so that he couldn’t see. “You’ll get a copy. But not before I’ve gone over some of the most important things.”

Remembering his agreement to behave during this second assessment, he pressed his lips together and sat back.

“That’s better,” she told him. “And this isn’t all bad news. In fact, most of it’s good.”

“Really?”

“Really. You yourself tell me that you stay in good physical shape, and your evaluations confirm that. It’s going to pay off for you now.” She held up a hand. “Before you ask, I can’t give you time frames. What I can say is, if you commit to it, you can make your recovery period shorter than average.” She paused. “And yes, you’ll walk again, although it won’t be the way it was.”

“What does that mean?” he asked.

“We won’t know until we get there.” She glanced over at Amanda. “You’ll be able to stay physically active, though with a few modifications. But that’s the end of things, not the beginning. I want to talk about what it’s going to take to get you on your own two feet before we talk about what you do on them.”

“I don’t have two feet,” he observed, and the bitterness hit him stronger than he’d expected.

“Yes, you do. One of them’s just shorter than the other now, which is why we’re making a plan to account for that.” It took her about ten minutes to lay out her recommended framework and the steps he would need to take to get there. It was going to take a frustratingly long amount of time, but she’d made a point of noting several milestones that could be converted into short-term goals. “And if you focus on those,” she finished. “You’ll find yourself through this almost before you know it.”

“We hope so,” said Amanda.

Monica turned the paper over, her hand dark against the white page. “Now, it’s time to talk about things that might hold you back. The first one’s big. Your wound’s not healing as smoothly as a prosthetist is going to want. How often are you cleaning it?”

He was confused. “Every day, just like they told me to. I usually do it right after I shower so my hands are clean, and I’ve been keeping an eye on it.”

She shook her head. “This is a hard part of the body to watch as carefully as you need. There’s no infection, so I don’t need to send you to anyone, but some of the edges are ragged and it looks like things aren’t drying right once they’re done. I want you to clean the wound at least twice a day, and do it outside of the shower.”

Lee frowned. “I’m already back at work. That’s not always going to be —”

“It’ll be fine,” Amanda interrupted. “We’ll figure it out.”

“Amanda,” he protested.

“Feet really can be hard to take care of,” his wife pointed out, her tone even. Perfectly reasonable. Couldn’t she understand that this wasn’t just about the wound? He could keep himself clean without help!

She had already turned back to the physical therapist. “They showed me how to clean it at the hospital, but they also said once a day is fine. What’s different now?”

Monica looked at Lee as she answered. “You’re in a different stage of healing now, Mr. Stetson, and it’s normal to have to clean it more than once a day. Your goal isn’t just letting the wound close. You want the edges neat so they don’t form ridges that can catch on the prosthetic later.” She paused, and her voice softened. “It’ll probably be easier to let your wife clean it for you, at least for right now. She can see the area better.”

He could feel heat rising in his face. “That’s — she and I work together, yes, but we each have our own duties. It could slow both of us down.”

“Lee,” said Amanda softly.

She was right, but he couldn’t keep the resentment completely at bay. “You already have enough on your plate.”

“It’s all right,” she said. “And it’ll be fine — you’ll see. It won’t slow either one of us down that much.”

He felt his hands clench into fists, but made the effort to relax them. Arguing wasn’t going to accomplish anything.

---

Giving in to emotion wasn’t going to accomplish anything. The only thing that would get her the answers she wanted was action. Act now, feel later. That was the mantra that had sustained Francine these past few weeks as her world had collapsed around her.

They’d kept her sane. They’d kept her (mostly) functioning. They’d kept all her hope and fear and pain at bay.

But when she pulled the letter out of her mailbox the evening after ordering Zeta to Jonathan’s apartment, she felt every single one of her defenses crumbling.

It was postmarked from Paris, and addressed to her in Jonathan’s handwriting.

What took it so long to get here?

She shook her head to clear it, carrying the letter upstairs with the rest of the contents she’d pulled out of her box. It was mostly ads anyway; she paid her bills quietly, on time, and with a minimum of fuss, and she kept her reading habits to herself. Federal agents learned to be circumspect about their correspondence quickly, once they’d gone through other people’s mail a few times.

Francine headed for her kitchen, throwing the junk mail away on the way to the refrigerator. She opened its door only to stare at the contents. Nothing looked even remotely appetizing.

Closing the door and then opening the freezer for ice cubes happened almost without thought.

Almost.

So did dropping the ice cubes into a highball glass.

Act now. Feel later.

Scotch, she decided. She’d managed to come by a good Macallan that she’d been saving for a special occasion. She’d stored a bar of Amedei Toscano Black right next to it. They looked good sitting side-by-side on her dining room table. Deliberate. As if they belonged.

Right next to the unopened letter.

Her hands shook slightly as she picked up the glass, but she tossed the liquor back with a single gesture. And then reached for the bottle again.

In an earlier time, she might have reached for the telephone. Dialed Lee’s number. Despite all their years of barbed banter and worse history, he’d never once walked away when she needed him — especially when she needed to be protected from herself.

But he was already facing his own uphill battles.

No. Not this time.

This time, the bottle would just have to be enough.