There are moments when I can hardly believe that she is gone. I knew her for such a short time, yet it feels like forever. The banality of my loss and the silly stereotype I am living right now would make me smile if it had been written in a story or portrayed on the screen. But I don't smile much anymore.
Paris has no delights for my eye. The city of light seems darkened by my presence. Even the sight of streets clear of agitators, after weeks of strikes and demonstrations against the government, does nothing to raise the idea of Spring beyond a disproved concept of rebirth after death.
The flight had only added to my depression; the smiling flight attendants, their false greetings that gave more attention to ones ticket stub than the response. My fellow passengers, mostly students able to escape from classes to begin "trips of their lifetimes" and a few business drones from the west coast, were even more annoying. Everyone was infected with the transient joy of Spring and the return of life.
I had slipped into a coma like sleep as soon as I touched my bed in a dumpy pensione, near the heart of the city, only to be awakened by the noise of my cell phone vibrating off the table and onto the floor.
A Virginia accented voice spoke the numbers of an encryption series into my ear. After pushing those numbers into my phone and hitting the send button, I heard a tone and then the voice of Gary, my boss in Washington.
"You awake yet, Jason?"
"I am now," I mumbled.
"Matt is going to meet you in about thirty minutes at a breakfast place about six blocks north of you. He said there are umbrellas out over the tables in the colors of the flag. Cezanne
coffee or something similar to that name will be advertised in the window."
"Couldn't he have just met me at the airport? Dammit, Gary, Matt is getting more an more coy each time I have to work with him."
"Don't worry, son. He has your cell number. If you miss him, just have breakfast and wait for him to give you a call. He knows what he is doing." I was finding Gary's confidence in his "field" agents harder take than usual. When I first met him, I thought Gary was so cool. First impressions ... I was getting touchy about people patronizing me, as most everyone had been doing since Maria was killed.
"Fine, I will give you a call if I need anything," I was ready to go but Gary always had to have the last word.
"Look Jason, you aren't active on this one. You are just backup. Matt is going to do the work. You understand?"
"Sure, and I will just enjoy the spring flowers and think about Maria."
Gary pressed further, "There won't be any wet work. Just follow Matt's lead. Then you are on leave for the next month. OK?"
Why did he have to say that. Now I knew I was going to kill someone here in Paris. But, I guess I had know that all along. Life was never the way it was supposed to be without the help of people tempting fate to make their worst thoughts come to life.
"I'll see you in a month, Gary," I said, and broke the connection.
I hadn't been much of a field agent until my summer in Spain. Even there, my experiences had little to do with the harsher side of what we do. The Cold War was over and nothing much had taken its place. With only a few glitches, we were all gentleman spies
now.
And Maria ... ?
Just one of those unfortunate coincidences of life they said. She shouldn't have been there and she was. Get over it, Jas.
But she wasn't even a player.
I dressed as one of my students from the trip over and started out of the pension. I could still pass for a college senior, especially on a spring day dressed in sneakers, jeans, and a
t-shirt, that unique American symbol of non conformity. Without much idea of where I was going or even if I really wanted to go, I somehow found the place Matt had chosen. I was sipping the excessively strong espresso that the French call coffee and chewing on a baguette, when Matt walked up, dressed as if for a business meeting.
Matt sat down at my table and looked at me for a moment while motioning for the waiter.
"You look like you you are ready to kill someone," he said with a smile that didn't reach his slightly concerned eyes.
"Just you, today." I tried to smile but it didn't feel right so I just took another sip from the tiny espresso cup.
"I don't know why Gary sent you over. You shouldn't be here."
"Gary is afraid that I am going to quit and then defect to Indonesia or some place equally thrilling. He wants to keep my finger in so that I will keep a taste for 'it' or some other kind of
shitty reasoning!" I was surprised how quickly my dark mood could shift from depression to rage.
"Look, I am really sorry about Maria. It was just terrible luck that she was there."
"Matt, if one more person says that, I think that I will kill them and then find the nearest postman and kill him too," I tried to make it a joke but I just sounded paranoid. "I can't take much more sympathy from people who know what really happened."
Startled, Matt's face clouded with anger, or at least most of it did. The eyes ...
"Just what the hell are you insinuating?"
I decided to push a bit; so what if this was my closest "friend?" The person I could count on most in this business? Everybody was avoiding this part of the question.
"Do you know how many people reminded me about lose lips during my tour in Barcelona?"
"Look, Jason, I don't appreciate what your implying. Maria was killed by a bomb, planted by a Basque group. That was it! Seventeen other people died. Ten others were injured. I think you need a break. I think you are too hurt to be here but we don't have
time to get someone else."
"Maybe ...?"
"Maybe what? This has to stop, Jas, or else you are going to kill someone or get someone killed and I won't be able to help you."
He looked truly concerned now. Maybe I was wrong, maybe a bomb was just a bomb.
I manufactured a look of penitence from somewhere, "OK, sorry. I don't mean anything by it, I guess. I'm just having a hard time living with random violence as an explanation. I probably am becoming paranoid," a wry smile with a bit of anguish.
"Occupational hazard, Jas. I should have given you some slack. I'm sorry too. You up to a briefing?"
A moment of fire but I decided to let the concern pass. I had been a bit out of it.
"Sure, lets get this over with."
"OK, simple setup, we go to Senda's flat. Try to make an early bid that Senda won't be able to refuse. If that doesn't work, we take the stuff and improvise a way out of the country and then we're done."
I didn't like the sound of that. It was way too simple.
Improvisation and overconfidence were the way people like us got killed or worse. I said nothing, though. I found it difficult to muster much concern for my own life or even for success in our mission.
We lingered over our breakfast and even sat for a while, each of us pretending to read a paper while we watched the other with sideways glances. Finally, Matt stood, and said, "Why don't you change into something businesslike, and I will meet you at the Metro stop in a half hour. I have to get some things we might need and then we can be off."
I sat for a moment, sipping the bitter coffee, watched him stride out into the crowds and head off toward his current place. Somehow, Matt's grace in the sidewalk traffic seemed a bit sinister, as if he moved too gracefully to be anything but deadly.
There was more going on in the City of Light than just the recovery of a stolen idea.
I returned to the pension, changed into a gray suite, strapping my pistol under my arm. I even put my mirrored glasses on for a moment to finish the cliche but decided against being that
obvious. I wasn't comfortable in the suit and wore it more like a costume than a uniform. I repacked the remainder of my luggage and made arrangements to meet it later.
At the metro stop, I waited five minutes until Matt came up carrying two slightly oversize briefcases. With one look at his face, I could tell that both Gary and he had been lying to me up to this point. Maybe what we were going to do was going to be a quick in and out but it was also most assuredly going to be wet. I looked away quickly, so that I could feign surprise when I opened the case Matt was handing me.
"Decided to bring your luggage along?" I asked quietly as we walked down the stairs into the station.
"No, just a bit of cleaning," he said with a smile as he handed me a metro ticket.
Not knowing what to say to that grin, I just walked through the turnstile after putting my ticket in the slot. The case was heavy. The job was getting wetter with each moment.
Only when we got out of the metro station, after a half hour ride, did I again speak to Matt.
"Do you have a car someplace around here?"
"Sure. Don't think I haven't put some planning into this."
He was already assuming that I knew what was in the cases. Oh well, I never was good at hiding my emotions, especially from friends.
"How do you want to do it? There are people all over the place around here."
"Simple, Senda is using a flat on this street," he pointed up the narrow street lined with row houses. We blow the front door if we can't get it open. Head upstairs and then clean out his rooms. We don't need him. There are six CD-ROMs that we want."
I had only done something like this once before and nobody had been home at the place we hit. That time, there had been a team of five of us, all armed with sub-machine-guns and stun grenades. I had of course done training or Gary couldn't have sent me. But I wasn't really ready for this though I had expected it and even wanted it at some point. Oh, well. In for a penny, in for the whole fucking pound.
The funny thing was, I had met Larry Senda. He hadn't impressed me much. Just another computer geek that the government had gotten its hooks into while still in college. There were rumors of some type of worm or virus that Senda had loosed on the Internet during his undergrad years. Clearing it had required shutting down every router on the net. This had really pissed quite a few people off, including myself, because I was at the time trying to pursue and email romance that never went anywhere and the whole net had been down for two weeks.
I tried to imagine Larry planting a bomb in a drainpipe next to a small outdoor tapas bar. I could almost see his pear shaped form and scraggly mop of hair as he struggled to hide the bomb but the image vanished as we arrived at the door that Matt had indicated to me.
With a here goes nothing shrug, Matt began to fiddle with the lock on the door while I buzzed several apartments with no response until I heard an old lady voice from behind me say, "What are you two young man doing?"
I spun around, smearing a smile across my face, and said the first thing I could think of, "We're here to kill Larry Senda. Do you suppose he might be in?"
Looking like she thought I was mad or even serious, the woman began to edge back and murmured French, the tone of which sounded like "Oh, boy, a couple of loonies are loose and on my doorstep."
Matt turned from the door, with a smile much stronger than mine, and laughed. He then said something in French like, "my silly friend is trying to be funny. Really, we were hoping to
surprise our old friend Larry," to the lady. I tried to look rueful as he continued:
"You see, we are college friends from the US, fraternity brothers. Could you let us in? We would really appreciate it."
"Well, I suppose I could let you in but your friend shouldn't have startled me like that. In this neighborhood, one never knows. I suppose letting you in wouldn't hurt, though."
To me, she said with a smile in English, "You are a bad boy."
"OuÂ’ madam," I said with a helpless gesture.
As we followed the lady up the stairs, and she began to recount her experiences with American boys, some of them going back to the war, Matt breathed, "now you're getting into the spirit of the thing."
I tried not to sneer. What were we going to do with the lady now?
The simple answer was that we were going to kill her. I hoped not but started to prepare myself for her to lurch forward spewing blood when Matt reached into his jacket. However he just drew out a business card and gave it to her, explaining that we had hoped that we could see our friend alone. Would she mind so much as to trust us and to leave us alone with Larry?
Again suspicion was warring on the lady's face but she finally decided that people who dressed like we did must be OK. Taking the card, she once again turned to me and said, "Be good, young man."
I nodded as she turned away and continued up the stairs to her own flat.
"Well, now, that changes things. Here's what were going to do. If he's home we are going to try to set up a buy. If not we will do a quick search and see what we can find without making too big a mess."
"Matt, he might recognize me. I met him once at one of his talks on his time as a hacker."
"I've heard he is so bad with faces and names that he wouldn't recognize his own mother except that he carries around a family photo in his wallet with her face circled and her name written next to it," again, that same not smile. "If he does, just say you went rogue. I am going to be buying for an unnamed but rather large and very interested party. China, say. You be a consultant or something."
For a moment, Matt looked me directly in the eye, "Stay with me now. We can make this work."
It felt almost like he could read my thoughts. I looked away, "Sure, Matt. I'm just nervous. I hadn't counted on wet work or having to be this involved, even; that's all."
Matt started to say something, almost as if he was going to apologize for lying, to tell me he was sorry about the way things worked out, about Maria. Matt was always surprising me with those little gestures. I wasn't always able to count on him, but as long as I had know Matt, no matter what happened between us, he always did something unexpected to let me know he cared.
But the moment passed and I gestured at the door. Before he could knock on the door it opened and suddenly we were other people, weapons buyers looking for the ultimate in secretes.
The man who opened the door was wearing sweat pants that the lower half of his pear shaped body seemed to fill and a t-shirt that said "Byte this." He seemed cross, "Look, do you mind having your conversations some place else. I'm trying to watch TV and trying to understand frog is hard enough without the extra noise."
Matt took this as his cue and turned to me saying in something of a "Euro" accent, "Maybe this is the wrong place. This obviously isn't Senda. I told you it was another block north of here."
Before I could reply, Senda suddenly thrust his ham like hands at us and said, "I'm Larry Senda, come in, come in. If you're looking for what I think you are looking for ..., " he took
a moment to try and stifle his glee. "I mean, yes, I am Larry Senda. Who might you be?" this time with a knowing look at both of us and the cases we carried as we stepped inside.
The makings of a stereotypical couch potato's lair were already present. Pizza boxes were stacked in one corner of the room. The carpet was littered with crumbs and wrappers. The room didn't exactly smell, but it oozed laziness and what was obviously Senda's idea of taking life easy. There was a computer sitting on one of the tables but I was slightly surprised to see that it wasn't the latest or the greatest of the machines currently on the market.
I let Matt take the initiative, while I looked around, mostly for jewlboxes that might be hiding our quarry.
"I represent certain parties, Mr. Senda, if that is who you really are," Matt was very good at oozing disdain, "who are interested in a certain product that you have made it known you currently are the possessor of."
"News travels fast in the Global village, I guess," interrupted Senda with a smarmy smile.
"Be that as it may, my employers, ...,"
"Look, Mr. X, and you too Mr.Y," he added, addressing me, "I know why you are here and frankly, I don't care much who you represent, or even who you are for that matter. As I have let it be known. I have information," he stopped and gave what he thought was
a significant look, "I repeat information that could be very valuable in the right hands. All I want is a fair, ... well, I will admit it, a fairly fabulous price. How interested are your employers?
"Very," said Matt. "However, they will need reassurances, particularly if the price is significant.
Senda became smug, "Put 250 million dollars in my account in Switzerland, and they can have all the assurances they need."
"That is your asking price, Mr. Senda? Frankly, what I have heard, doesn't merit more than a quarter of that."
Senda laughed, "Hell, that is just the fee to take a look. It will be a billion if they like what they see.
Matt seemed flustered. I decided to take a poke.
"Are you crazy, Senda. You don't have time to be making these kinds of demands. If what you stole from the US is as big as the hints you've been putting out on the net pretend, then you know that there will be agents gunning for you from nearly every major power on the planet. You have to sell and do that quickly so you can disappear before someone else does that for you."
"Look, Jas, there is no need to upset Mr. Senda. We can do this like reasonable adults."
"I think we could save your employers quite a bit of money if we just left and then told them where to find this guy. It looks like it would be pretty easy to take him apart."
Senda wasn't turning purple with anger or white with fear as one might have expected. Instead, he just smiled as if we were doing exactly what he wanted; which confirmed a hunch.
"Look, Jas, my employers, and let me remind you the decision to hire you was not supported by me, have no desire to be conspicuous."
"Oh, hey. This is just great. Mr. X and Mr. Y you two really are doing a good job. However, I do want to point out to you, as I have to numerous other Mr. X's and Y's, that the data is in a form that will be unreadable until I make it so. Eliminate me and the data is gone. Bother me and I might forget how to decrypt the data."
Having sat down on the couch during Matt's and my performance he now continued to giggle enough to make the couch squeak.
Matt flashed a "he caught us" smile at me that was more of a "that's nice to know" smile.
Matt became all business, "Fine, Mr Senda. Believe what you will. However, My colleague Jason's observations are correct. You don't have much time."
"Let me worry about that. You worry about convincing your employers to put the money in this account."
He handed Matt a slip of paper with a series of numbers on it.
"Once that is done, you can see a sample and a brief outline of what I have."
With that we bowed out as gracefully as we could. What a jerk. He was smarter than I remembered him. But also fundamentally stupid. Oh sure, his encryption scheme would be some protection but mostly it benefited the US government. Now all we had to do was get
rid of Mr. Senda, find the disks and then be on our way. Even if they were misplaced for a while after his death, they would still be relatively safe. But with enough time, mostly computer time, and some knowledge of what Mr. Senda knew, the code could be cracked and the info used.
Even if he had invented some uncrackable encryption system, most of the players in this round were quite able and willing to torture the key to the puzzle out of Senda. Some people are too stupid to live.
As we walked to the metro, again, Matt outlined his plan.
"We'll hit him tonight. I don't know if he has the disks there or someplace else but we will find out. We will go in hot if we have to. Once we know where the disks are or even if we cant find out within ten minutes, we silence Mr Senda and blow his place. We might get the disks that way and at least we will keep him from meeting with someone else.
"OK, Matt, but what about the people in his building?"
"Don't ask questions you already know the answers to, Jas. It can't be helped."
I thought of Maria, just being in the wrong place. In fact, I spent the afternoon sitting in a park thinking of all the wrong places I had been until I met Maria.
The previous summer, I had been stationed in Barcelona, working mostly as an information processor and doing just a bit of street level collecting. We were in Spain, a place we usually paid little attention to, because of mounting evidence that a couple of terrorist groups were developing links with outsiders. Possibly other terrorist orgs. or even a "large Asian" country (read China, though we never really said this as if the saying would make it so). No one was happy with the idea of a new wave of European terror, especially if it was sponsored from the outside, so we were in Spain.
I had learned quite a bit about the people of Spain, though in most ways I still knew next to nothing. Then I met Maria. She met me in a park and began to pepper me with questions about the U.S. She tried her English on me and it was much better than my Castillano. We began to have lunches together, then dinners.
I started to hint a bit about what I did. Nothing damaging, just government work, somewhat sensitive, intended to help solve both a Spanish problem and one the US was concerned about. She stopped asking me about my work, after that. She was very patriotic.
I learned that she was a teacher of English and an artist. She liked to sculpt and draw a bit. Soon I met her parents and we began to think of ourselves as a couple. Her father, Pedro, even gave me the traditional father/possible son-in law talk about respecting his daughter and treating her as a man should.
We weren't exactly planning to get married. But the thought was secretly appealing to me. Maria often brought up the subject of family, and that is when I most truly fell in love with her. She loved her family and expected to add her own part to the current one, someday.
I had begun to receive odd comments at work from my supervisors and the others. Even Matt, who was in Spain for a week in July, gave me the official, "remember to keep your work life separated from your private life" speech. It was decided that I needed to go active for a while. This was when I was sent on the raid on the suspected terrorist.
Finally, as the summer was ending, I was visiting Maria as she got ready to return back to the classroom after a long holiday break. While she worked on lessons I ended up talking
to her mother.
"You will make a fine father, Jasoncito, raise fine, brave sons and beautiful daughters."
Suddenly, I could see it, could see Maria and I, in the future, together, with kids and part of the family.
The thing that made me so angry when people reminded me to say nothing to Maria, was that she stopped asking and if it ever looked like I might say something, she would gently change the subject. She didn't want to know.
It was my fault.
As the light began to slant sideways through the fresh, slightly transparent leaves, I returned to Matt's apartment. I passed couples, old and young, but could ignore them for the
present. I needed to get ready for one last time, and then hopefully, I would be done.
I borrowed some skulking clothes, jeans, dark shirt, sweater, and a cap. Matt dressed similarly. We definitely looked rather suspicious, especially with the full backpacks we carried.
Each of us had a sub-machine-gun and several clips of ammunition as well as grenades. Matt was also carrying explosives and detonators. He seemed intent on making a big explosion. I carried some rope, some climbing gear, and a few gas grenades. I also had enough money to
get out of the country fast.
When we arrived at Senda's flat, I started to get nervous. I could see two men working desperately hard to look inconspicuous standing next to the entryway to the building. Matt and I, did our own version of this, and watched them for a while. He then pulled out his gun and motioned for me to do the same. While I complied, he drew out a silenced pistol that he stuck in the waist band of his jeans.
With hand signals he told me to wait in the darkness beside the metro stop. He would kill the two men and then I would come at a run while he opened the door.
Matt began to stroll toward the door as if he didn't have a place to go and was just looking for the least hostile front door to lean against. He had returned his gun to his pack and let his sweater hang over his belt hiding the pistol.
Matt looked so suspicious to me, I was sure our loitering friends were going to notice him and figure out that he was dangerous.
Matt kept walking though, shambling along as if he were used to living on the streets but not used to this neighborhood. He stopped and looked at one place that had a light on over its door and then turned back toward Senda's building. Finally, Matt was standing in front of the door and the two lurkers seemed to wake up. One moved toward him, in a threatening manner and the other reached for something in his coat.
Matt pulled the pistol out of his pants and fired two bullets at the guy with his hand in his coat. He shot the other one once. Both men were slammed back and down with the impacts of the shots. Neither moved but Matt bent over the one who had stayed back. He pulled something out of the man's coat and was looking at it when I walked up.
Suddenly, he started to curse under his breath and as we dragged the two bodies and propped them against the wall, I asked him to explain.
"They're French police."
"What the fuck are they doing here?"
"Who knows? Maybe they are trying to make the buy themselves or maybe Senda just didn't pay his parking tickets. It doesn't matter. Come on, We have to get inside before they realize what's happening.
This time, Gary placed a small charge of plastique against the door handle. It went off with a bang that should have wakened the dead policemen. He had his sub-machine-gun out now and I, likewise armed, followed him into the smoke pouring from the ruined door frame. As we struggled up the stairs, coughing on the smoke and dust, I heard Matt's gun bark several times. I saw the lump of a body as I rushed to follow him around the top of the stairs. The two of us slammed into Senda's door at nearly the same time and it disintegrated under us.
We both slammed onto the floor as a gun fired several times at where the door had been. I rolled to the left into a sitting position and swept the three men in front of me with my gun,
stitching red splotches across their chests. I couldn't see Senda and barely had time to throw myself forward while several guns fired in my direction. As I was reaching for grenades in my pack that had somehow landed in front of me, Matt was methodically spraying the other side of the room.
Around the crash of gunfire, I heard several French voices shouting at once. I flipped three grenades in their general direction and then a fourth into the bedroom, whose entrance was just around the corner from where I lay.
The explosions of the grenades were enormous and debris continued to rattle down on us as first Matt then I stood. I could hardly believe that I was unhurt. Matt moved toward me painfully. His gun was still in his hand though he held his side with the other.
"I think that is it," he started to say, when I heard a French voice call out for us to put our hands up. It repeated in English, "Put your damn hand up Yankee."
I scrunched back against the wall and Matt said, "Where are you, Frog?" as he went down on one knee. Suddenly a hand holding a gun lifted itself over the top of the kitchen counter that the policeman was hiding behind. I could now hear the muffled screams of what I took to be Senda.
"I'll tell you what, Frog, You come out and bring Senda with you. We don't really want to hurt you. But if you don't come out, we will just blow you out."
"It is no good, Yankee. My friend are coming."
"They won't do you any good."
A pause, then: "OK, I'm coming out."
"Throw out the gun first, Frog."
After a moment, a shoe came sailing over the counter and a small Frenchman immediately followed it, firing wildly as he landed with a sicking crunch on one knee.
Matt was down again so I shot the Frenchman. It didn't matter though, because he had shattered his knee. It stopped his groaning, though.
I knelt over Matt for a minute. He had been hit in the chest and the abdomen. He was going to need help soon.
"Get Senda. I'll set up the explosives."
"OK, Matt. Just hang on."
With a huge sigh, Matt rolled over and dragged himself to his pack. I moved to the kitchen and found Senda gagged on the floor. His eyes were wild and he failed to recognize me. I un-gaged him and then put the barrel of my gun between his eyes.
"Were are the disks?"
"I'm not going to tell you and if you kill me you still won't get them."
I stood up and asked him again, "Where are the disks?"
When he didn't answer, I shot him in the ankle. I asked again. "Where are the disks?"
Between the screams he managed to grind out, "They'll do you no good. Why are you doing this?"
I shot him in his other knee.
Almost gently, I said, "Larry, Tell me where the disks are."
After screaming enough to wake the entire city, he finally whimpered, my shoe, the left one, ... a key. Train station ... shit, won't do you any good anyway. Can't use the disks without me. ... was smarter than you think."
Finally, as if with supreme effort, he cried, "Fucker, all you will find are bunches of 1's and 0's that don't mean squat. All you can think of is in ..."
He seemed surprised that I shot him before he could finish his final words. At least that is how he looked dead.
Matt was slumped over his pack by the time I had found the key in what remained of Larry's left shoe. I wiped it on his shirt and then went to check on Matt. I thought maybe he was dead, but when I tapped him on his shoulder, Matt opened his eyes and smiled.
"You got it. I knew you would. You were amazing in there, really fucking scary," he started to laugh and then ended up coughing.
"It may have been a trick, you'll never know."
"Well, the bomb is set and we need to get out of here. This improvisation shit really sucks."
I tried to feel sorry for Matt. I really did. But somehow, though through an exercise of the imagination I could come up with an image of Larry Senda planting a bomb in a drain pipe in Barcelona, the image that came most easily, was one of Matt, dressed in workman's clothes, stooping over and fiddling with something next to a small outdoor tapas bar and then walking, if not swiftly, then at least determinedly away.
"Was Maria an improvisation?"
"What the fuck are you talking about, Jas?"
Was that fear or fear of discovery in Matt's eyes.
"Was the bomb something you thought of yourself or did it fit into some neat plan of Gary's or some other puppet master."
All he could say was "fuck," over and over. His eyes told me I was more or less right, and I know my face revealed my anger.
"Jason she was an agent. She was feeding all our data to the a Basque group with connections to the French Red Guard. Gary was convinced you had been turned but I watched you for a while and saw that it could only be her. She was using you."
"No! You and the others always miss the forest for the trees, you're so paranoid and stupid at the same time. Senda was right, linear thinking."
"What are you going to do Jas?"
"Don't ask questions that you already know the answers to, Matt."
"It won't help."
"I know, but it can't hurt either, can it?"
I shot him twice. Once for me and once for Maria. Once the bomb was set, I started down the stairs. People were screaming and the cops were coming. I killed three of Senda's neighbors on the way down to the street and then left a couple of the mustard gas grenades
that Matt had included in my pack in the entryway.
Just as I ran out the entrance to the building, the bomb in Senda's apartment exploded lifting the ceiling above it into the air and blasting through the ground floor into and through the basement. I felt myself picked up and then hurled forward into the street. For a moment I was stunned. I could feel more than hear debris falling around me.
Soon, I was able to walk and then run. People were pouring out of the houses, some screaming and injured. Others curious and angry. I slowed, stopped to look and began to edge against the crowd to where Matt had left his red Renault.
As I drove slowly out of the disturbed neighborhood, past screaming police cars and emergency vehicles, I began to cry. I could hardly think as the sobs built in my gut, swelled, and then exploded from my throat. Finally I had to stop and park.
My poor Maria, my dream family, ... Matt.
After what seemed like hours, I could think again. I stripped out of the torn and burnt clothes I wore and struggled into some slacks and a shirt that Matt had left in the car, in case of
such emergencies.
I locked the keys inside the car and then began to walk toward the lighted Metro sign I saw ahead. I tried to walk normally and pay attention to acting normal, but my face was streaked with dirt and soot. I am sure people thought I was a very strange man indeed. I didn't care though.
Down into the metro. Try to watch for people watching me. Board the train. Sit quietly, don't think about what I've just done. Don't think about what I know. About who I am.
Get up, get out of the train. I'm in the train station, good. Go to the lockers and get the key out of my pocket. Oh shit, where is the damned key. OK its in my hand. Relax. Take a deep breath. OK, try to act normally. Open the locker, there are six jewel cases. Shit, they're music CDs. No wait a second, look inside the cases; yes, these are the ones.
Relax.
I went to the ticket agent, explained that I had had difficulties with my rented car and could I please get one of my bags out of storage. Also could someone recommend a close pension where I could get a shower before I tried to get on the train.
The lady at the counter was nice and even seemed to believe my silly story. I got my bag and in thirty minutes I was undressed and in a bath trying to wash some spots of Larry Senda's blood I hadn't noticed at first off my face.
As I dressed, I unpacked my notebook computer and mounted one of the CD-ROMs. As I suspected, Larry Senda had been too smart for his own good, or maybe not smart enough to realize that he was playing with fire.
The encryption scheme was creative but in the end it was such a product of Larry's ego that if you could look at things like he did, it was nearly transparent to solve.
I hadn't been sure if he was still working on a parallel encryption scheme until our interview with Larry. I had followed Senda on the net as much as possible for someone in my position in data analysis since the Government first employed him after his jail term. At first it was just a whim, then it turned into a hobby. Senda had been a wonder boy for a time. He had new ideas about data security that seemed revolutionary. Larry managed to come up with
some math that showed his schemes were nearly uncrackable, even in geological time.
However, what he never admitted and what was finally beginning to dawn on his colleagues in Larry's last days before he made the CDs and decided to leave the US was that his system, though difficult to reverse engineer, was transparent once the principle of
parallel encryption was fully understood. Each element had to interact with every other element to produce the decrypted whole.
I had gleaned enough to have some contacts in the Basque resistance movement develop the software needed to beat Larry's system. I connected the computer to the room's phone line and dialed into a server in Alaska. I began to download each disk into the server, where a background process was already beginning to prepare the data for decryption. It would take me three hours to download all six disks. In another twenty four, my Basque friends would begin to receive the entire data set though their email. What they didn't know was that so would every other major node on the Internet as well. Within forty hours, the whole world would know all about the toxin, its effects, its production, and several delivery schemes.
It had been my fault that Maria was killed, my fault that she was suspected. Everything they saw, my spy-masters, had pointed at me, but I wasn't the type, didn't fit the profile. I had no reason to help the Basques or even the Chinese for that matter. And in that, I suppose they were right.
But I have come to see my profession, spies like us, are out of control. They kill and don't even think about why. People die because it is necessary. The greater good, security,
stability.
I could not stomach their selfish justifications of their own barbarism in the name of whatever unit they happened to represent. So I helped their enemies. And I helped myself.
But then they killed Maria.
If only I had been there that day. Or had seen Matt and been able to stop him. If only ...
I would have been a good father, her mother said. I could have believed in, fought for something like that.
But what I did, exposed Maria, so in the end, I killed her.
It doesn't help that I killed Matt; that I may have started a process that will kill millions more.
What's done is done.
Enjoy your spring Paris, for winter is coming and its snows will be deep and may never lift.
Copyright Dec., 1995, Robert G. Werner