Life of Secrets (5 page)

Unfortunately,
the communications director was in his office.

Alyssa glanced
at her watch. It was eleven at night. This guy was a real workaholic.

She busied
herself with pretending to be a custodial worker: emptying trash, dusting, etc.
The employee gave her a friendly wave. Alyssa waved back and made her way into
the finance office instead. She rifled through the trash and found nothing
incriminating, so she emptied the garbage into her cart, working slowly to
allow for a lucky break.

She got it. The
man working in the communications office left. He waved once more and walked
out the door of the headquarters.

At once, Alyssa
sat down at the finance director’s computer. She popped in a thumb drive. Soon,
she was copying the entire contents of the computer to sort it out at leisure
later on and figure out if one of these two was the mole.

When the file
transfer finished, she shut the computer down and popped out her thumb drive.
Then she went to the office next door.

The sign on the
door read, "Communications Director Michael Vincent."

Alyssa eased
into his chair. It was still warm from his recent departure. She plugged her
thumb drive in, started the computer, and again began copying files.

"What’s
going on here?"

The
communications director was back. He was tall, with wavy blond hair that was
blow-dried perfectly into place. Alyssa’s head whipped up to meet his eyes, and
her brain began searching for an answer that might alleviate the situation.

"What are
you doing with my computer?"

When Alyssa
still didn’t answer, the man backed up, and pulled a cell phone out of his
pocket. This was unacceptable. Alyssa saw all her careful secrecy going up in
smoke with one phone call. She saw her budding career destroyed. The
possibility made her angry. It made her angry enough to do something stupid.

She vaulted
over the desk and tackled the man, quickly knocking his phone out of his hand.
She was better trained, but there was a substantial difference in physical size
that made it hard to keep him pinned down. He got an arm free and tried to
throw a punch at her. Alyssa blocked it easily with a forearm block, then
grabbed his wrist and pinned his arm back down, sitting on his stomach. He kept
trying to break his arms free.

Caught up in
the moment, mad at the man for turning a simple job into a potential disaster,
Alyssa made a fateful decision. She reached inside her baggy coveralls and
pulled out her silenced
Ruger
.22 to aim it at the
man’s face. That pretty much put an end to his struggling, but it created a new
problem.

"Never
point a gun at someone you don’t want to shoot," was the first rule of
firearms safety classes. Likewise, "Never make a threat you can’t follow
through on," was the first rule of negotiation. Since she was emphatically
not going to shoot him, she was breaking both rules. It made her path forward
rather awkward.

"Just let
me do my job…" she muttered, unsure how to solve the problem. She had no
desire to hurt the man, she just wanted to do what she’d been paid for and get
out but how was she supposed to get out when this guy was here?

"What
job?" he asked.

Alyssa growled
under her breath. She hadn’t really meant to say that aloud. Instead of a
direct reply, she asked, "What will it take for you to just leave?"

"What
job?" he asked again.

When she didn’t
answer, he said, "Is this job about me?"

Alyssa didn’t
know what to say. It might be about him, if he was the guy leaking campaign
secrets. He took her silence as agreement.

"Did
Tilman figure out I’ve been telling the press about him? He hired a private
detective to get evidence to fire me?"

Alyssa blinked.
She hadn’t expected the man to just come out and admit that he was the one she
was looking for.

Her facial
expression must have told him he’d hit a nerve. He’d given up struggling now
and simply lay there with his head on the carpet, watching her eyes.

"Look,
Lance Reeder cheats on his wife," the guy said. "And not in some kind
of one-time slip either. He goes through mistresses like an alcoholic through
bourbon. He likes them young and naive and easily impressed by a Congressman.
He uses his position of power…"

The young man
shook his head and looked away.

"I can’t
just sit idly by and do nothing about that. I don’t believe a man like that
should represent me in the Senate."

Alyssa couldn’t
really disagree. She didn’t like helping a man like that stay in office much
more than this guy did, but opportunities to get paid for work like this were
rare, and she didn’t want to blow one.

"I can see
it in your eyes. You agree with me. So why are you trying to rat me out?"

"It’s a
job," Alyssa replied, surprised to find herself talking to him.

"Yeah, me
too. I want to be in politics, and I can’t just quit this job. I need the
income, and I don’t need to get blackballed from the biz, so I sneak info to
the press in hopes of getting this dirt bag out of office without losing my
career. Not exactly brave or noble, is it? I just want to try to do the right
thing without going broke over it."

Alyssa
remembered her father’s advice and repeated it back to Vincent. "Trying to
do the right thing is a good sign you don’t belong in this business."

"I don’t
believe that," the man replied. "I get that it’s what most people
think. Just do what you have to do to win and stop caring about the details.
But that’s not how I am. And I don’t think it’s how the business should be."

Alyssa
shrugged, still holding him down.

"Doesn’t
really affect our little problem, does it? I let you go, and you can pick me
out of a lineup easy. But what are the alternatives? I could shoot you, but
that’s not a line I want to cross if I don’t have to."

"Sounds
like I’m not the only one who still believes in doing the right thing."

"That’s
different."

He only smiled
at her.

"Give me
an option – other than you dying – that keeps my secrets."

The young man
said, "Look, I told you the truth. If you’ve been hired to find out who’s
leaking to the press, I’m him. Doesn’t that show you can trust me?"

Alyssa replied,
"Trust doesn’t mix well with the ethic of doing anything to win."

Both of them
were silent for a time, in their awkward position on the floor, until Alyssa
asked, "You say you’re leaking to the press instead of just quitting
because you value your career, right?

He nodded.

"Politics
feels like I’m making a difference – like I’m changing the world."

"So here’s
the deal: if we both just walk away from here, you could identify me if you
chose. That’s not too big a deal – I’m here legally; Tilman hired me to do
this, but it’s a career setback for me. Anonymity is a valuable professional
asset."

She went on,
"On the other hand, if we both just walk away, I can ruin your political
career if I choose. No one’s ever going to want to hire a staffer with a
reputation for giving confidential information to the press. It won’t kill you,
but it’s a career setback."

"Yeah,"
he agreed. "And embarrassing. I’ve started building a good relationship
with Tilman. He’s really helping me get my career started. If he knew I was
giving away his secrets, it would ruin that."

"OK. I was
hired to stop the leak, not necessarily to turn anyone in, so let's say both of
us walk away and keep our mouths shut. You keep your career; I get to stay
anonymous. All you have to do is stop leaking and keep my secret for life. The
minute you ruin me, I ruin you. So we both keep the secret, right?"

He sighed.
"Yeah. Stop leaking. And let a womanizing, walking
wanted-for-sexual-harassment poster get into the Senate."

"Let me
give you some advice my f… my mentor gave me."

Vincent looked
at her and raised an eyebrow.

"Before
long in politics, you'll have to decide whether there are things that are
beneath you. If there are, you'll get out. If there aren't, you'll make
history."

"I don’t
think I’d like your mentor very much."

"Like him?
I don’t like him either. But that’s not relevant. Do we have a deal?"

Vincent sighed.

"Yeah. I
don’t like it, but I don’t want to get fired. I hate this. I know I’m going to
regret it. The reporter I’ve been talking to is kind of a nice guy, too.
Probably going to mess with his life when his editor discovers he can’t keep delivering
juicy insider stories about the Reeder campaign. It’s a shame. He's just
getting started in journalism. Young college kid working freelance. Probably
this’ll mess up his whole career."

Alyssa didn’t
ask. She wavered somewhere between not wanting to know and being certain she
already knew. She knew only one reporter who had just started with freelance
journalism. Matt was way too persistent, but that didn't mean Alyssa liked the
idea of hurting his career. With bitter irony, she heard the echo of the words
she had just spoken.

"You'll
have to decide whether there are things that are beneath you."

The first step
was to change her appearance. She went through three hair salons before she
could find a stylist who would take her as a walk-in. There, she met a woman
who called herself
Wynd
and who, like hairstylists
everywhere, insisted on talking as she worked.

"My real
name's Jennifer," she droned on, nodding at her license taped to the wall.
"But everybody born in the seventies got that name. It's totally boring.
So I call myself
Wynd
because I like the wind, ya
know? Only with a Y, for power to the sisters everywhere."

The stylist
couldn't possibly be as young as she acted and dressed. She wore a black PVC
miniskirt and black tank top with a studded leather belt. Her ears were pierced
about five times each. Her hair was a bright pink, and she wore far too much
blush that almost matched her hair.

Alyssa nodded
absent-mindedly in response to the prattle, flinching slightly as the scissors
brushed her ear. Silently, she wished for her normal stylist but as of now her
normal haunts were off-limits.

"You're
sure you don't want to do something a little more fun?"
Wynd
asked, snipping a bit more. "You'd look awesome
in a crew cut or maybe something spiky and a bit more punk."

Chambers was
about to shake her head when she remembered the proximity of the scissors.

"Nope,
just shoulder-length is fine."

Quite a
sacrifice, actually,
she thought, wistfully, watching locks of her flowing black hair fall to the
ground, but shorter hair would help with her disguise. So would the temporary
dye job she was getting.

"I
understand about the blonde thing, ya know? I mean, everybody's got to try
being a blonde once. But with your eyes, you would look so awesome with green
hair. I mean, we could make you seriously cool."

"I think
I'm a bit too old to be quite that cool," Alyssa said.

A little over
an hour later, Chambers was riding the Metro to a shopping mall. First, she
found a one-hour optician, where she had an exam and got a pair of contact
lenses. Tinted, they made her green eyes a dark brown.

Her next stop
was at a women's clothing store where she purchased new slacks, a few blouses,
and one suit. She couldn't get proper fatigues, of course, but cargo pants and
t-shirts were good enough.

After riding
the train back to the touristy area of Washington, she found a hotel to use as
a base of operations. Her fake driver license and new appearance, combined with
a ready supply of cash, made booking a room easy. She checked into the kind of
place in which a Chambers was supposed to stay and flopped down on the
Egyptian-cotton sheets.

She sighed
heavily and then asked the ceiling, "OK, now what?"

With her new
looks, she'd bought herself time. With her reserve of cash and falsified credit
cards, she'd probably bought an indefinite amount of time. The smart thing
would be to rent a boat, sail to someplace in Latin America that didn't
extradite, and start a new life.

But she had
spent her whole life looking for ways to prove herself. Strong people seek out
challenges, they don't run from them. There would never be a challenge bigger
than this. Never. The machinery that the FBI and Secret Service would throw
into this investigation would be mightier than anything ever seen before. And
the plot to kill West had to have come from people with incalculable resources
to draw on. To defeat
both
groups, and come out with the truth and her
name clean... well, there could be no greater challenge in her life.

Alyssa would
not walk away from that. Instead, she decided to study the situation. She
flipped on the TV to a news program.

On the screen,
she saw her old pal Mike Vincent being interviewed on one of the head talk
shows.

"Rich
could have changed things," he said. "Right now, we've got this
situation in American politics where far too many politicians promise whatever
is popular when they're running and then do whatever the establishment says
when they get to Washington. Rich West was different. He could have made our
politics great again. That's why I put my own life on hold to help his
campaign. I believed in him. He was a leader to me. More than that, he was a
friend."

The anchor
asked, "Senator Lance Reeder was Senator West's choice for Vice President
on his ticket. Do you think Senator Reeder will become the top of the ticket
now?"

On the screen,
Vincent replied with a shrug.

"It's too
early for me to think about that. I lost my best friend. I just don't
know."

Chambers flipped
through other channels, looking for news about the investigation. Political
speculation about the race didn't help her much. She wanted to know what the
Secret Service and the FBI were up to but none of the channels had that. She
could find lots of biography of Rich West and Lance Reeder and lots of
speculation about what would happen at the party convention that was only a
couple weeks away, but none of that gave her a tactical advantage.

Briefly, Alyssa
considered calling Matt. He had to be in the thick of this story. He had to
know something about what the federal agents were up to.

In the past
year or so, Matt had gotten so much easier to deal with. The prospect of
talking to him was easier now. It could even be attractive. It was possible to
hold a conversation without him hinting about wanting to date her. Oddly,
Alyssa found herself wanting to make the call.

But in the end,
she didn't. She couldn't. Within hours, she was going to be splashed all over
every TV as the accused assassin. If Matt hadn't already heard terrible things
about her past, he soon would. And Alyssa couldn't stand the thought of trying
to explain to him about that fire she'd caused – the story she'd burnt up. Just
when he was finally turning into a decent guy, if he learned that...

She clicked the
TV off, wishing she had learned more than the fact that Mike Vincent and Rich
West were good friends. She knew they were allies but never imagined they were
as close as he indicated on that interview show.

Chambers
worried her lower lip between her teeth. If Mike Vincent felt like that about
Rich West, what was he going to do when the FBI started blaming her for West's
death? Their old deal about keeping each other's secrets would go right out the
window.

All of her
anonymity was going to evaporate very fast. She knew it, and she knew that the
only way out was to attack the problem.

She saw three
different options. First, perhaps someone had killed Rich West just to frame
her. It was highly unlikely, but it had to be considered. Second, it might have
been simple coincidence that the assassin had done his work on the very night
she was stealing the files of the West campaign. Chambers was too paranoid to
believe that. Finally, and most likely, the assassin had planned his murder to
coincide with Chambers' B&E, with the explicit intent of leaving an obvious
suspect to take the heat off him.

It was the last
option Chambers liked best. It was how she would do it, if she were planning an
assassination. Always find a patsy if you can. She had done it before, though
not for a murder.

For this theory
to work, though, the assassin would have to either know when she was going in
or know someone who knew. So who knew she was going in? Well, Gunter for one.
But he had proven in the most dramatic way possible that he was not the one who
was trying to frame her.

The other
person who knew was Thomas Wheeler.

Several months
ago George Pierce, her old comrade in skullduggery, had brought along a third
person to one of their occasional meetings. He had promised a chance at the
biggest paycheck she'd ever had from a single job. And, knowing Alyssa, he'd
also promised that the task would be next-to-impossible.

That third
party was Wheeler, the Communications Director for the presidential campaign of
John Hicks. Advertising, media relations, and opposition research all fell
under his bailiwick. For the opposition research part, he hired Alyssa
Chambers.

Over the course
of the primary campaign, Alyssa had learned the secrets of many of Hicks's
opponents. One had once been in debt to a mob boss. One had had an affair. One
liked his mind-altering substances way too much. None of those candidates ever
got traction, so none of the information had ever seen the light of day. That
wasn't her concern. Alyssa Chambers got paid to learn secrets, not to use them.
Secretly, she was glad they hadn't. That was the part of her job she preferred
to keep at arm's length.

The last person
Wheeler had wanted her to find the goods on was the hardest. Hicks was running
second for the nomination – a distant second. The overwhelming favorite was
Rich West.

Bringing him
down would have taken a work of art. Trying to do it had been Alyssa’s last job
before the frame up. Perhaps her last job ever, by the looks of things.
However, if she wanted to find out who framed her, the people who sent her into
the office of the Rich West for President campaign would be a good place to
start.

So, her first
line of suspects included the people she'd worked with: Tom Wheeler and maybe
George Pierce. The latter would have to be crazy to do it, since Alyssa knew
enough of his secrets to destroy him. But paranoid was paranoid: Pierce had to
be a suspect, too.

Even so, she
planned to start with Wheeler. She changed into her new suit, left the hotel,
and again rode the Metro, this time to K Street.

What Wall
Street is to the world of High Finance, K Street in Washington, D.C., is to
politics. Lobbying firms, special interest groups, polling firms, consultants -
all of them make their home on K Street.

Alyssa went there
because the insiders played their game there.

At the Metro
station Alyssa decided it was time for an elementary bit of intelligence
gathering.

For a woman who
stole some of the most closely guarded secrets in Washington, slipping a cell
phone out of someone’s pocket was no trouble at all. She had left hers at home
that morning. Even dumb phones like hers were far too easy for the government
to trace. For the same reason, even if she had her own, she would still have
stolen someone else’s for this call.

Alyssa walked
away from the teenage girl who would soon be missing her
smartphone
and dialed the front desk of her department at the University.

The phone
picked up on the first ring. Even though she had made the call for the specific
purpose of learning this, Alyssa's blood suddenly ran cold. "Office of
Professor Chambers, who's calling please?"

The voice was
male.

Her normal
receptionist was female.

She had never
heard that voice before. Chambers hung up, threw the stolen phone in the trash,
and leapt onto the first train that went by. She hopped off at the next station
and grabbed a different train. She repeated the procedure six times.

She did it to
clear the location where she’d used the phone, as quickly and randomly as
possible. That was necessary for one simple reason: A strange voice answering
her phone could only mean someone was investigating her office.

The FBI already
suspected her. Alyssa was now a fugitive.

She led a life
guaranteed to harden her. Her work permitted few friends and even fewer
confidants. As a professional breaker of the law, she lived with the constant
threat of incarceration if she ever messed up badly enough. But as cold as
she'd trained herself to be, it still took several minutes of train-hopping
before she brought herself under control.

It's one thing
to be suspected of breaking and entering or electronic theft – her normal
crimes. But to be wanted by the FBI for a murder that would change history was
above and beyond even her daily routine. Alyssa got off the subway, found an
empty bench, and sat down to catch her breath.

She cataloged
her steps since Gunter's death. New appearance, ready cash, hidden location -
she couldn't think of anything she'd missed. But the FBI could build a case
from even the tiniest detail. If she'd forgotten anything - anything at all -
she'd be in prison in less than a week.

Again, she
weighed her options. The FBI, or secret service, or whichever agency would take
the lead on this would be watching the airports. Trying to fly out of the
country would be chancy at best. Renting a sailboat would be easier. Chambers
was a competent enough sailor to make her way to the Caribbean and, once there,
she'd be effectively out of the FBI's reach.

Yet, the same
fascination that drove her this morning still held. Surviving an investigation
into an assassination would be the hardest thing she had ever done. If she
could do this, no one would ever say she hadn’t lived up to her mother’s desire
for her to be strong.

She was going
to clear her name because her whole life was about living up to that last wish.
Be strong. Well, surviving this and proving that she hadn’t killed West would
prove just how strong she really was.