Countermeasure (2 page)

Like a hawk, Robert turned his head toward her, raised his eyebrows, and tapped his watch. Cassandra shrugged her shoulders, flashed him a grin, and settled in to hear the morning update.

Cassandra felt a kick under the table and glared across it at Jessica Forrester, her best friend, who mouthed, “What’s going on?” She shook her head and mouthed back, “Later,” before returning her attention to the front of the room where her father was holding court.

Bob, as she liked to refer to him, hadn’t changed much over the years. At the age of fifty-five, his brown hair barely showed any signs of graying and his stern brown eyes still gleamed with energy. Today, he was dressed in a button-down shirt and khaki pants. From the cut of his clothes, it was clear that the ex-Navy Seal kept his body fit and trim.

“We have a couple of new clients,” he stated, and proceeded to describe each in detail.

As Robert continued with his briefing, Cassandra’s tired eyes soon began to close. When she shifted positions to keep herself awake, something bounced against her nose. Rubbing it, she looked around and saw a paper ball sitting on the table where it had landed. She looked across the table and encountered a smirk on Jessica’s face.
What the hell?
At her questioning look, Jessica quickly scrawled something in her notebook and, when Robert’s back was turned, pushed it across the table.

Pulling the notebook toward her, Cassandra glanced down and read, “Wake up sleepyhead!” Cassandra frowned and looked up at Jessica, who immediately dropped her head, closed her eyes, and mimicked a silent snore by holding her mouth open. Slowly, she lifted her head again and wiped imaginary drool from the side of her mouth.

Cassandra stifled a laugh and reached for the pitcher of water sitting in the middle of the conference room table. She poured herself a glass, hoping it would help keep her awake until the end of the meeting.

As Robert described the new client companies and their needs, Cassandra held back a yawn and thought about the reason for her restless night: her last mission with the Central Intelligence Agency.

She could clearly picture those four years she worked for the CIA after being recruited during her sophomore year at Stanford University. It was one of the few times that she had been thankful for the lessons Robert had taught her over the years — attack and self-defense, along with weapons and survival training. Those skills, coupled with her Political Science and Psychology focus at university, had put Cassandra on the Agency’s radar.

During her three years at Stanford, Cassandra had buckled down and worked hard to complete all competencies, which had allowed her to graduate with honors a year early. Her last year had been grueling. Between studies and the pre-qualification demands of the CIA, there were times she had thought she would crumble under the pressure. She had spent the majority of that last year juggling classwork and projects to make time for the numerous CIA interviews, months of psych tests, and thorough physical and polygraph exams.

It had also been a little disconcerting to know how deep the background checks had gone. Neighbors, childhood friends, and past coworkers had called to let her know that they had received weird calls asking about her—Did she do drugs? Was she a troublemaker?—Thank God she had been as boring as Jessica liked to tease her about in those days. Too afraid of Robert’s reaction, Cassandra had toed the line as a kid. God, how Jessica complained that last summer about her absence at parties and get-togethers, but she had been focused and determined to achieve her goal.

Cassandra’s stint with the CIA began two days after graduation. She flew through the introductory course, where she learned about the CIA as an organization and how intelligence was collected and analyzed. During that small introduction, Cassandra set her mind to being assigned to the Doctorate of Intelligence. She was intrigued by the intelligence collection process and thrived on analysis.

After doing a round of on-the-job training—grunt work—Cassandra and her fellow newbies were sent to the Farm, the CIA’s training facility located near Williamsburg, Virginia, where they spent months drowning in paramilitary training. It was there that she had gained an appreciation for the hard lessons Robert had taught her.

All of the aspects of the physical and weapons training were a walk in the park for her—she had been trained by a Navy Seal taskmaster and his buddies. On the other hand, the psychological aspects of the training, specifically interrogation, had been a hard pill to swallow. But years of holding her emotions tight to her chest had served her well. She passed the comprehensive final exam and began her career as a CIA security professional, further developing skills in personal, physical, and technical security and information assurance.

After about a year on the job, Cassandra transitioned to the position of a multi-disciplined security officer, where her skills in firearms and defense tactics were put to good use. Her assignments typically centered on the collection and analysis of security- or counterintelligence-related information, but her greatest pleasure came from supporting other US Government agencies with their security requirements, where she could use her skills and knowledge to the fullest.

Her four years with the CIA had been wonderful. She had been high on life, challenged by her work, and had forged great friendships during that first year. She had finally felt like an adult, not the little girl constantly looking for approval or attention from her father.

She was an independent and capable woman ready to make a difference. But it had all ended in a nightmare of pain and betrayal when she was shot on assignment. After she had recovered, she realized that she had lost confidence in her teammates, something vital to operations, and so she had left the Agency to take a position in her father’s security firm where she could hand-pick and surround herself with people she trusted to the core.

Robert had told her straight up that if she was going to work for him she would have to start at the bottom, and Cassandra would not have had it any other way. She worked hard and put in late hours, determined to prove her worth. Up to this point, most of her duties had been internal support to the company and she had only worked detail on one assignment under Robert’s hawkish eyes. That had also been disappointing—an indication that Robert didn’t have confidence in her skills. The knowledge ate away at her self-esteem and caused her to constantly second guess her decisions.

Sitting back and taking a sip of her water, Cassandra noticed the silence in the room and realized that everyone’s eyes were expectantly turned to her.

Robert cleared his throat, drawing her eyes to him. “Cassandra, so what’s your answer?”

She stared at him for a moment, not understanding his question. “What, sir? What do I think about what?”

Irritation crossed his face as he stared her down from across the table.
Oh hell…missed something for sure.
She looked to Jessica for help, only to see sympathy in her eyes and the shrug of her shoulders.

“Cassandra Cristina.” She winced at his tone. “I asked what your thoughts were regarding the security needs for Bristol Pharmaceuticals, our new client.”

Scrambling for an intelligent response, she hesitated, and Robert’s frown deepened when she failed to reply fast enough. “You’ll be heading the detail on this one.” He dropped the thick folder on the table and shoved it toward her. “Read through that and give me your assessment by twelve-hundred hours.”

She stopped the momentum of the folder when it reached her. Cassandra had to work hard to maintain a straight face and keep the shock out of her voice. “Yes sir. By noon.”

With one last look in her direction, Robert turned back to the room as a whole and dismissed everyone to go about their duties.

****

Cassandra stood by the door of the conference room waiting for Jessica. She hid the embarrassment caused by the verbal beating she had taken from her father and held a serene expression as the other team members filed out of the room, avoiding her eyes. The beating was a non-event for her. It had been the same story since her mother, Cecilia, had been killed in a car accident. After all those years, she had gotten used to it. What did bother her, though, was that, due Robert’s treatment of her, the rest of the employees showed no respect for her, even though she was a top performer. At James Security, she had kept a low profile to prove she was not riding her father’s coattails.

Lead on the project. Cassandra was slightly stunned that Robert had assigned it to her and didn’t quite know what to make of it—definitely not something she ever thought she would see this soon since coming to work for him.
It has to be a test,
she thought as Jessica joined her, linking arms with her before they fell in step.

“Damn, girl, this is the third time you’ve been late in two weeks,” Jessica commented as they entered Cassandra’s office.

“Don’t remind me,” Cassandra shot back, tossing the file on the desk and walking around to her chair, wincing slightly as she took her seat.

Jessica plopped down in the chair opposite and frowned at her. “The scar is bothering you again, isn’t it?” Cassandra looked over at her, and Jessica’s eyes narrowed. “Are the dreams back, too?”

Cassandra shrugged and reached for the Bristol file.

“Cassie? You have to talk about it sometime.” Jessica’s tone was low and coaxing.

She glanced at her friend. “Not going to happen, so drop it.”

Cassandra returned her attention to the file, flipped it open, and began to read through the information and photos.

Sighing, Jessica watched her friend closely. “Fine, but you know I’m here for you, right?”

Cassandra nodded as she continued to scrutinize the dossier on the company housing the data they had been contracted to safeguard.

Jessica knew Cassandra well and recognized that she wouldn’t budge. She sighed again at Cassandra’s stubbornness, stood, and paused at the door. “Lunch?”

“Yeah, Jess, that’ll be fine. Meet you at the elevators around 12:30, after my meeting with Bob.”

“It’s a date. See you later,” Jessica called out as she left.

Once alone, Cassandra focused her attention on the file and noted that Bristol Pharmaceuticals, the client, was using top-of-the-line servers for its in-house data center and a third-party provider, EXClinic, to manage their clinical trials. The servers’ security protocols were pretty standard stuff, and she skimmed over the specifications quickly.

She noticed there was no mention of what kind of drug formula they were working on, but it had to be something important for the company to have major concerns over its security, primarily that others might try to steal their cutting-edge research. Their concern wasn’t too surprising, given how cutthroat the pharmaceutical industry was.

The process of drug discovery and development was very expensive; if a drug failed part-way through the process, it incurred large costs and didn’t generate revenue. The expense of developing a new drug could range in the billions of dollars. Getting no return from such an investment could break a company, especially if a competitor released a “me-too” drug—a drug with chemically similar compounds but without the same investment behind the initial process. It would cut deep and hard into their profits.

She jotted a couple of notes in the margin and glanced at the clock. It was already close to noon—Robert’s deadline. Picking up her notebook and the file, she walked down the hall to his office at a fast but not frantic pace. When she reached his door she did a quick mental check—notebook, file, clothes orderly—and glanced at her watch: on time. She knocked on the door.

After a few seconds Robert called out, “Come in.”

Her father was standing by the window with a frown on his face. She took a deep breath as she walked to the guest chair, setting the file and her notebook on the desk before sitting with her hands folded on her lap. Some ingrained behaviors never changed.

Not knowing the first thing about bringing up the sad, lonely daughter his wife had left him saddled with, Robert, an ex-Navy Seal, had raised her on military stories instead of fairytales; trained her on survival tactics—yeah, camping trips were a blast—instead of sleepovers; and drilled her on use of weaponry and self-defense instead of playing with Barbies.

While memories of her mother had faded long ago, to this day she wondered what life would have been like or whether her relationship with her father would have been different if a woman had been in the picture when she needed a feminine touch growing up.

Some of her almost automatic behaviors, such as calling superiors “Sir” or “Ma’am,” perfect posture, perfect manners, and punctuality—all military style—made her the butt of many jokes told by her friends and team members. There were also some who considered her a “brown-noser” and treated her as such. They didn’t understand that was the behavior expected of her as a child. They always watched and waited for her to screw up, which didn’t happen very often.

Unconsciously, her hand drifted to press against the scar, which burned at the unpleasant memories. One in particular sliced through her like a hot knife through butter. She had been betrayed by one of her own CIA team members. During one job, he had withheld a critical piece of information that would have been cause to abort. They had continued with the fateful meet-and-greet that ended in her injury. It was only happenstance that Nathan Nelson, a friend since her first day with the CIA, had caught sight of the sniper.

When he had yelled the warning, she, being the closest to the action, became the shield, blocking their assignment from danger. The memories of the betrayal swirled in her mind. Lost in thought, she unconsciously continued to rub across the spot.

Cassandra could still feel the pain, the shock, and could still hear her name being called over and over before everything faded to black. It was a miracle no one had been killed. It was a miracle
she
hadn’t been killed. She knew the culprit had been punished, but his actions had killed her trust in others. Now she counted only on herself.