All That Mattered, Ch. 15

Amanda kept most of her attention on the files in front of her. Now that Douglas had identified discrepancies in the Paris stills, re-checks were uncovering dozens more, and all of them needed to be documented.

Ostensibly, Lee was working on the same thing, but he hadn’t so much as turned over a page in the fifteen minutes since Douglas had left the Q-Bureau.

She moved on to her sixth review, trying to simultaneously focus on the task while also keeping an eye on Lee. Then a detail caught her eye. “Oh. Wow.”

“What?”

“This photo description. It’s not correct at all.” She traced a finger across the caption at the bottom. “The Seine doesn’t go through there. It’s canals.”

“Well, flag it and move on.” Lee hadn’t even looked at her. “Just means this is bigger than we all thought.”

She considered her reply for a long moment, but it didn’t seem like he was quite ready to talk about anything else. “I’ve already marked it for review. But we already knew this was bigger than we’d first thought.”

“Did we.” His voice was flat, emotionless.

Amanda laid her pencil down. “Didn’t we?”

He shook his head for perhaps the fifth time in as many minutes. “There’s a lot of things we haven’t figured out yet.”

“Such as?”

Lee picked his hands up, holding them out in front of him. “I didn’t know being left-handed ran in my mother’s family. I don’t…” he trailed off. “I can’t recall ever seeing either of my parents sit down and write anything. Which is ridiculous, because I must have.”

“You were a child, Lee. And Douglas was born after your mother immigrated. He doesn’t know which hand she favored.”

He turned his over, holding the palms up. “Everyone who knew us both says I’m the spitting image of my father. But this…” he closed his eyes briefly. “I never did know if I’d inherited anything from Mum. I guess I still don’t, really. She might’ve been right-handed and just passed the gene along…” he trailed off. “Trent’s not left-handed.”

“No. But I’m sure there are other things you inherited from that side. There are ways you can get clearer answers.”

A brief flicker of panic crossed his face.

“Or not,” she continued. “You can think about it more if you need to.”

“He didn’t seem all that rattled.”

Amanda pushed to her feet and crossed to his desk, putting her hands on his shoulders. “It’s not the same. You heard him. His parents are still alive. And he grew up knowing who his family was.”

“I did too.”

“Not with that kind of clarity.”

He pressed his palms down onto the desk. “But it’s something I wanted. So why am I so…I don’t know. Why’s this getting under my skin?”

She sighed softly. “You know why. And that matters. Lee,” she continued, and she slid her hands down his arms, drawing him into a backward hug. “It came as a shock. And you didn’t get to choose the time or the place.”

He leaned his head back, looking at her upside-down. “That makes me sound like a control freak.”

One of her hands smoothed hair back from his forehead. “Only in the best way.”

“Yeah.” He kissed the back of her other hand before leaning forward. “But now isn’t the time. Or the place.”

That was true enough. “Are you actually going to look at those papers now? Or just sit here and keep brooding?”

Lee turned back toward his desk with a sound of frustration. “I don’t know what I’m looking for. I can count the number of times I’ve been to Paris on one hand.”

“I’ve never been at all. Not unless we went when I was too little to remember, while Daddy was still posted in England before we moved to Virginia. But the Agency has good maps. That’s how I caught that bit about the canals.”

He shook his head. “Not the same. We need someone who knows the territory like the back of their hand and can push things along quickly.”

Amanda sat back down in her chair slowly. “Francine would be perfect, if she weren’t still on administrative leave. But we’ll do all right without her. And I can move quickly.”

“Yeah, but she knows French. Why don’t I —” he was interrupted by the telephone ringing. “Stetson.”

Lee listened for a second.

“I’m kind of in the middle of something, Doc. Can’t it wait? Well, why not? I know you have concerns. That’s why I’ve been checking in with you just about every day. No, damn it, I’m good. Look, I just don’t have —” he cut himself off. “Fine. But you get ten minutes. That’s it.”

He hung up the phone harder than he really needed to, but not so hard that Amanda thought she needed to call him out over it. She just hoped he’d be able to keep his temper in Kelford’s office.

---

Lee felt his temper fraying as he examined the new crutches Dr. Kelford had just handed him. “I’m not going to be on crutches forever.”

“No,” the doctor agreed. “And it’s good to see you starting to put weight on your foot. You’re still going to be on those for a while yet, though, and you’ve been doing some damage to your hands.”

Lee’s head shot up. “What are you talking about?” His hands and wrists had been stiff. He’d dropped a few things. That didn’t mean there was anything wrong!

“It’s early compressive neuropathy,” said Kelford. “You’re overloading your wrists when you use the crutches. These —” he indicated the new ones — “redirect the force and spread it out so you don’t do that as much.”

“But these are for people who won’t be getting off crutches.”

“In the United States. In Europe, they’re standard. Better ergonomics.”

“Ergo — what?”

“Means they’re designed so you won’t wreck your wrists or hands. I’ll make you a deal,” Kelford continued, seeing the look on Lee’s face. “Try them for a week and see how it goes. I had to special-order them thanks to your height, so it’ll be a hassle to send them back.”

Lee felt his lips thin as he tested the forearm crutches. They did feel lighter. Steadier. Even without his heel on the floor.

“You should have asked me first,” he finally grumbled.

“You would have shut it down. One week. Seven days. If you still hate them, I’ll give you the old ones back.”

“Then I’ll see you next week.” He turned and made for the bull pen. This could have waited. There’d been no reason to call him down to the infirmary in the middle of the day. The only bright spot was that it had gotten him a little closer to Billy’s office.

---

Douglas finished pinning a diagram up behind his desk and stepped back from it. Nothing was missing, but the pins weren’t evenly spaced, and that irritated him more than he cared to admit. They would hold, though. Adjusting them would look like fussing or fidgeting. Correction: adjusting them would be fidgeting or fussing. Which was not the impression he wanted to project.

When, he asked himself, had he started caring what the American agents thought of him, anyway? This was a simple exchange assignment. Six more weeks. That was all.

Lee was a Hamilton. A Hamilton, of all things, although it was obvious his American cousin — Amanda had laughingly clarified them as first cousins, once removed — didn’t understand what that actually meant. And I don’t want to be the one who tells him.

“Redecorating, Trent? Because we have a budget for that, you know.”

Welcoming the distraction, Douglas turned to see Billy Melrose perusing the diagram.

“Just thinking on paper,” he explained. “Diagramming the architecture to see what it looks like visually.”

“I thought computers were just about zeroes and ones.”

“Not entirely. The zeroes and ones are used as the language, but language is more than just words. It’s also syntax, and structure. That’s what this is. It might even be called a grammar exercise, similar to diagramming sentences.”

“Diagramming sentences? Made of numbers?”

“In principle, yes.” Douglas felt himself warming to the topic. “A sentence can contain all the correct words and still say nothing coherent if they’re arranged incorrectly. Even worse, it might end up saying something entirely different from what you intended to say.” He tapped two intersecting lines with a finger. “Individual bits are like words. Their position matters as much as their purpose. Subject, verb, object. Cause, effect, consequence. Rearrange the structure, and you change the meaning entirely.”

He glanced over at Melrose, who was nodding.

“The critical difference,” he explained, “is that computers are far more rigid than humans. There are no context clues, no inferred meanings. They execute the structural instructions. That’s it.”

“In other words,” said Melrose, “just understanding the code isn’t enough. You have to understand the structure to get the full meaning.”

“Precisely.”

“Still looks like spaghetti thrown up against the wall to me. But what’s the sentence telling you?”

“Look here.” He pointed at several points in the diagram. “These are informational breaches — think of them as poke points in a screen, if you will. And they’re almost perfectly symmetrical.”

“Which means someone did them on purpose.”

“Yes. But the pattern’s complex enough that you don’t necessarily see it until they’ve already poked dozens of holes. Perhaps even hundreds.” He paused. “Mr. Melrose, we believe this may have been going on for more than a year. Maybe even two or three. The complexity was the reason it wasn’t detected.”

Stepping up to the diagram, Melrose ran one dark hand over it. “You know what this looks like to me, Trent? It looks like one of those topo maps from the USGS.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Sorry. Sometimes I forget you didn’t grow up here. The U.S. Geological Service puts out these extremely detailed terrain maps. You almost can’t read them with just grade-school map skills. You have to learn the maps’ own language to really understand what they’re saying.”

Douglas hadn’t thought about it that way. “That’s an…incredibly astute analogy.” He took a step back, wanting to see the whole rather than the pieces. “This might very well be a map of the database’s architecture.”

“And the breach locations?”

“Chosen for maximum information gathering.”

Melrose gave him a level look. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

“I believe so,” replied Douglas slowly. “If you’re suggesting the breaches were meant as reconnaissance.”

“They’re mapping the database.”

“Yes.”

“Like mapping terrain before an airstrike.”

Douglas startled. He hadn’t even heard Stetson come in to the bull pen, using a different pair of crutches than he had before. The new ones were far more familiar.

Melrose noticed the change, too. “Nice new hardware, Scarecrow.”

Stetson barely reacted to that. “Billy,” he said. “I need a word in private.”

“Is it about this case?”

Douglas found himself holding his breath.

“Yes. And it won’t take long.”

His breathing came back in a rush.

“Some reason Trent can’t be a part of it, then?”

“It’s…” Stetson trailed off. “It’s about internal resources.”

“All right. We’ll be back in a minute, Trent. Go grab some coffee.”

Stetson met Douglas’ eyes. “You’ll probably want to make it a double.”

---

There was no point in making a first offer, never mind doubling down. “I want Francine back.”

At that, Billy sighed. “Sit down for a minute, Scarecrow.”

“It’s a yes-or-no question.”

“It wasn’t a question at all. And I said sit down.”

Lee complied.

“I can’t bring her back.”

“Come on, Billy. Trent already told you we got good intel from her.”

“He didn’t, actually. He just said you had a confidential informant.” Billy paused. “Why do you want her back so soon?”

“I need her. Nobody can finagle with that computer better than she can.”

“Trent can.”

He tried a different tactic. “Look, she overreacted a bit, but when it came down to it, she did her job. And we got a critical clue because of it.”

“She also got us into some very hot political waters.” Billy held up a hand before Lee could protest. “Lee, I want her back too. And I’m doing what I can. But when I’ve got Smyth in here telling me to reassign or terminate her…” he trailed off. “I’ve already taken it higher up. With no guarantees that’ll work. So far the only thing that’s guaranteed is that, once he sees my name on that request, he’ll be back up here with that damned cigarette and plenty of nasty things to say.” Billy paused. “I can handle that. Done it before. I just want to make sure Francine keeps her job. Or at least can go straight into another one.”

Lee blinked. “It’s that serious?”

“It’s that serious, and I breached confidentiality even telling you that. It stays in here.”

“I know that. But since when does a single incident spell the end of an agent’s career?”

“Since the wrong people got the wrong impressions and took offense. And it wasn’t just one incident. You know that. There was also the termination last year —”

“Which Smyth rescinded without prejudice!”

“That time!” Billy reached up to loosen his tie. “This time, it’s a lot harder to argue the way it looks. Which, to someone on the outside, is not good at all.”

“Since when has that mattered?”

“Since Smyth took over this agency!” Billy exploded. “Damn it, Scarecrow, you know that! You were just about the first person in this section who got crosswise of him!”

“And I got reinstated both times!” Lee shot back. “Smyth knows where the bread is buttered.”

“My God, you sound just like him!”

Billy paused for a long moment, clenching and unclenching his fists. Lee, fuming, looked out the window.

“Bottom line,” he continued, “I can’t reinstate her yet. I don’t know if I’ll get to bring her back to the Washington office at all. It is not up to me. It never was.”

Lee inhaled through his nose and blew out through his mouth before answering. “You’re supposed to be the Director of Field Section.”

“That’s not guaranteed to continue either.”

Another deep, measured breath. “Can I bring her in unofficially?”

“No.” But Billy met his eyes. “Officially. And that’s all I have to say on it.”

He felt his hands tightening around the chair’s arms, but the action didn’t bring the same twinge it had this morning, which was perhaps why he pushed up a little too hard. The room tilted around him. He had to grab the edge of Billy’s desk to keep from going down. “Damn it.”

“I couldn’t agree more.”

Lee decided it probably wasn’t the wisest idea to ask Billy exactly what he was agreeing about.