Strategic Reversal

This NSFW (PG-13) story (18 images, 6.1 K words) requires membership in a paid tier. This is a major account of the Secrets Of The World storyline.

Laylana, in “Laylana’s Forest Nightmare” ran into trouble in the form of a woman calling herself Natasha, and readers learned some about what was going on in  “By Any Means.” In “Strategic Reversal” Laylana digs in deep to find out what happened.

 ~Ailana

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: 

Readers who look closely at the images will find subtle differences in what should be the same clothes and/or gear. Similarly, the generated faces may have minor variation (due partly to lighting, angle, and other effects). The slight variations should not detract from the story. 

~ ~ ~

Strategic Reversal

Laylana landed at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport, exited the plane and headed toward the main terminal. She had some time to pass, having been benched by the agency after the troubles in Indonesia.

Dawson met her at the airport in the main terminal. The conversation had been incidental to what was going on as they traveled from the airport to the hotel, then on to a little, nearby cafe.

After everything seemed, at last, settled, Dawson looked at Laylana and shook his head. “So, to be honest, I am shocked you actually came here.”

Laylana shrugged and looked off into the distance, then shook her head. “I was in Detroit, benched… All I was going to do there was roll around in my thoughts and worries.”

“I’m glad you came,” Dawson said. “My job is pretty routine, in a lot of ways. I get the name of a hotel and maybe one or two destinations, then my team and I do a risk analysis, best travel routes, places to avoid… Stuff like that.”

Laylana nodded. “Well, I guess I can add my eyes to the process.”

Dawson nodded. “I have a pretty good idea who I work for… I’ll not say, but every time I move to the next town, this one high-profile person shows up right where I left.”

“Good bet, she’s the one,” Laylana replied.

Dawson nodded, took a sip from his cup, and then looked up. “What can you tell me about your situation?

“Without getting into specifics, someone got my mission-send codes and sent me to Indonesia and for a hike in the forest. They gave me gear, stole it later, then faked my presence in the Jakarta embassy where they downloaded some low-clearance level satellite images of central China. They circumvented security with a valid agent ID that was not assigned to anyone, then got access to the database using my name and my biometrics.”

Dawson shook his head. “Woo… hang on… First, what’s in central China these days?”

Laylana shook her head. “Nothing that I know of.”

“Okay, back to that, then…” Dawson shook his head again. “How did they use your biometric? You’re talking face ID and fingerprints?”

Laylana nodded and told him about the woman calling herself Natasha and the comments about looking like sisters, then went on. “My handler agreed that they could get my fingerprints off the equipment they stole from me, and naturally, my hair and some skin cells…”

The look on Dawson’s face indicated his appreciation of their effort. “They had some kinda plan, eh? How’d they get a valid CIA ID?

Laylana shook her head. “I’m afraid of the only thing I can think of.”

“What’s that?” Dawson asked.

“They have someone inside the agency helping them…”

“Oh, that’s not good, is it?”

Laylana shook her head. “Not at all.”

“Vals, you are in a mess!”

Laylana shook her head. “My handler says he’ll get it worked out, but for now…”

“Benched,” Dawson replied. “But, hey… back that central China thing?”

“Trees… Forests…” Laylana shrugged. “That’s not a theater I have any experience in…”

Dawson took a long sip from his cup, then his face lit up a little. “Hey, I know a guy… Ex Green Beret… Jason Block… Now, he’s in the  French version of the CIA… Directorate-General for External Security… DGSE… He’s still all red white, and blue, and still has top-secret clearance with the USA. But he got a good gig over here. I was gonna hit him for some ideas… nothing related to his job… just for ideas about best places to eat and all that… You wanna tag in and ask him if DGSE knows anything about central China?”

Laylana laughed a little. “Why not? And worse would be learning about a good restaurant, right?”

When they were done with their tea and pastries, Dawson called Jason and arranged to meet them at a park near the Eiffel Tower. It did not take long for them to get there.

After a polite period of introductions, Dawson said, “So, listen to this… You’re not going to believe what happened to her.”

Laylana told Jason, in general terms, what had happened to her. She concluded by explaining that those who did it ended up with a few pictures from central China.” 

“Wow, that’s insane… All that effort to get some photos of… nothing.” Jason shook his head.

“There had to be something,” Dawson replied. “Anything you tell us about what DGSE knows?”

“Well, DGSE has not circulated anything that’s hit my desk,” Jason replied. “And… that team that did all that… Something about it all smells… bad…”

Laylana nodded. “They knew how the system works… I think they must have inside help.”

Jason looked down then directly at Laylana. “What if they are the inside help?”

Laylana looked at him. “What are you talking about?”

Jason smiled and shrugged. “You know… rumors and myths, and all that. But don’t they originate from something? Around DGSE, there’s an idea that the CIA has a super secret group within the agency. You ever hear anything like that?”

Dawson looked at Layalana then answered. “If she has, she can’t talk about it.”

Laylana shook her head. “I haven’t… I mean, yeah, the office myth, thing… But nothing substantial.”

Jason nodded. “Well, DGSE reckons it well beyond a myth. Nothing, like you said, substantial. But… a lot of circumstantial evidence… I sort of had them looking at me twice because of it. They call it CIA secret profond. That’s ‘deep secret.’ CIA Deep Secret division.”

Laylana shrugged and looked down. “Naturally, that could be true. We’re big and nearly no one knows everything. Two Deputy Assistant Directors might know completely different things, and it’s safe to say even the Director is in the dark on some specific details of some ops.”

Jason looked at Dawson. “Well, they had a lot of inside help, if they aren’t part of the agency.”

Dawson nodded. “Codes… protocols… procedures… And how did they find out that woman’s face matched yours?”

Laylana shook her head again. “That’s a lot to think about.”

Jason then added another thought. “That part about the systems failing to talk to each other. That reeks of some sort of hack. Cyber attack?”

His tone turned a little playful. “Don’t we have a whole organization to investigate that sort of thing?”

Dawson laughed a little. “You know the answer. NSA is all about that sort of thing.”

Laylana didn’t tell them, but she knew someone at NAS from an op earlier in her career. “That’s a lot to think about, too.”

Dawson sighed then said, “Well, the good thing, as far as I’m concerned, is Laylana got some bench time, so here she is in Paris helping me for a day or two.”

Jason smiled. “And you want to treat her to a fine dinner!”

The talk turned to the matter of good restaurants; the ones the people of Paris didn’t tell the tourists about. Jason had some really good suggestions. Jason had to get back to work, so they parted ways.

Dawson and Laylana went back to the hotel where they and Dawson’s team were staying. They arranged to eat later.

After dinner, Dawson and the team met, and Laylana joined them. He introduced them, then went over the task list for the next day. Everyone said they understood what to do.

Conversation after that became casual, mostly dealing with the earlier dinner. By then the travel fatigue was hitting hard, so Laylana excused herself and went to her room.

She closed the door behind her, mind fully consumed by a single thought.

Shower… 

After her shower, Laylana grabbed a soft, cotton tank top and put it on, then she sat down on the bed. It had been a long day, actually starting the night before when she boarded her flight. Her conversations with Dawson and Jason had reinforced ideas she already had about her situation.

However, the idea that the group that had created the mess for her were actually part of the agency was new. It had merit. To navigate through the security process was not straight-forward, even if you were doing so legitimately. This code, that code, this fingerprint, then that code, then top it off with facial identity… There were a lot of procedures and processes that had to be carried out.

Laylana thought about what happened to her from start to finish. Someone had her order codes and used them; someone who somehow knew they looked similar enough to defeat a low-level security facial recognition.

How did they… Laylana checked her thoughts. How would I…

In a flash, she had an idea. She would finish helping Dawson and head back stateside. She’d go to DC where she could visit with her NSA acquaintance, a data analyst, Julia Ryan. Laylana would ask her about insight into the computer side of things.

But while there, she had a plan. She’d try to reverse a process she believed had been used to find her. Two-edged razor blades cut both ways!

Laylana put herself to bed. After a long day, sleep came easily.

Working with Dawson for a couple of days had been refreshing. He was right. His work was straightforward. Laylana didn’t think she had added anything unique to the process, but she had a good time.

As she headed for the airport, Dawson said, “Hey… let’s stay in touch, okay?”

“Sure…” Laylana smiled. “I might need a job if this doesn’t sort out soon.”

Laylana made her way to Washington, D.C. where she had arranged to meet her acquaintance from NSA. Julia Ryan was the most unlikely looking geek in the history of geeks. She was a stunning red-head; jaw-dropping good looks, to be honest.

But at the core, she was all about everything geeky. She was officially a data analyst whose specialty was to parse long text files into organized databases that fed AI engines. She was an expert in numerous database engines.

Unofficially, she was a savage sniper in several on-line team shooters who streamed her Friday night sessions to an unimaginable number of subscribers. Known in the on-line shooter world as Deadly Red, she had quite a following.

Laylana had worked with her a few times over the years primarily digging for financial information on some cartel bosses. To say they were friends would be an exaggeration, but they were definitely on good terms.

“Meet me at National Mall on Saturday at noon,” Julia had said. “It should be a nice day.”

With a meeting set for Saturday, Layalana proceeded with her plan to flip the tables on the woman who called herself Natasha. She made her way from the hotel to a CIA field office. Her credentials and biometrics got her to a small, off-the-beaten-path workstation.

Selfie time…

She uploaded the image to the workstation then made a few edits in a photo processing application. She rounded the face a little and averaged out the shape of the nose.

Good enough…

Her first approach was to just do an image search in Google. The first returned image was a pitiful looking young man. Wow… Laylana hoped no one thought of her the way she was thinking of him.

She scanned the results and went to the next page. She had a good memory of what the woman calling herself Natasha looked like, so she kept paging through. She was just about to give up and try the second thing she had planned when she saw what looked like a yearbook photo that jumped off the page. It was part of a news article dated in the previous decade.

_________________

WEST WOODS FAMILY SLAIN—DAUGHTER MISSING

Tragedy struck Houston’s West Woods neighborhood last night as burglary gone wrong resulted in the murder of residents Roger Johnstone and wife Phyllis. Central High Salutatorian, Natalie Johnstone is missing and presumed to have been taken by the attackers. Based on crime scene evidence, the attack occurred around 11 p.m. last night.

Neighbors reported that a white van with California plates was seen at the Johnstone residence around that time. There were no sounds reported…

_________________

Laylana stopped reading. She downloaded the yearbook picture and ran it through an AI aging process. She just stared at the results. Natalie Johnstone stared from the screen just as the woman calling herself Natasha had stared from the doorway.

Laylana scanned the article again, then laughed and shook her head. Johnstone was one of the names Federal Witness Protection used for new identities. It, and the dozens others they tended to use, was common enough to go unnoticed but with just a dash of unusual.

Laylana scanned the article again. As almost an afterthought, the article mentioned that one neighbor reported that a black SUV pulled into the Johnstone driveway shortly after 11:45 p.m. They did not have any information about how long it stayed.

Black SUV… cliche… Laylana was convinced it was a failed Witness Protection event.

Laylana scanned more, looking for how the attack was discovered. There was no mention of a 911 call until the next morning when an Amazon delivery driver found the front door ajar and made a call.

Laylana could think of only one way to explain why the victims didn’t call 911 when they discovered the intruders. They called their Witness Protection contact…

Laylana opened the CIA’s first gate-keeping window and logged in. Even in an agency field office, there were layers of log-ins to go through before she could get to where she wanted to be. 

Here we go… Laylana’s plan was fairly simple, in concept. The facial recognition system worked by inputting a name and some credentials, then looking up a face to see if it matched. Laylana was going to reverse the lookup. Input a face and search for matching names.

She decided to, based on her thoughts about the article, start with a first name of Natalie. Her first query was invalid and returned nothing. Her second query, though, worked. The first results were from a Federal Witness Protection database.

_________________

MATCH:

Johnstone, Natalie

Status: Open, On-going
Location: Unknown
Assigned Agent: N/A
Notes: Diseased, Special Circumstances

_________________

That makes no sense… Open cases cannot have unknown locations. Open cases have to have an assigned agent. And… Laylana shook her head. Dead people don’t need witness protection.

She looked at the second results that came from the CIA Induction database, which had been deprecated some years before.

_________________

MATCH:

J?A%$?, Natalie

Progress: Completed Incomplete &*&v##~~~~
Assigned: Langley, Mclean, VA, Provisional
Status: Unknown, Provisional

On-board Date: N/A
Termination Date: N/A
Beneficiary: Active, Unspecified

_________________

Laylana stared and shook her head. Those words don’t fit. What is “unknown” status supposed to be?

The last hit came from a deployment report

_________________

MATCH:

?A~~$?, NAME REDACTED
Authorization: Deputy Assistant Director REDACTED

DETAILS: 

LkkSL52w8MxcHn1g6Zqvm5GNNa6bRKYE f08oWwhaZmeEKktdYRN2uYkrEIdiznWK

qUyAZP:
F3l9WxDw8tod763qUyAZPLBgWR5XBPTa

ERR CODE 18!~
ERR CODE JJm19

BATCH ERROR

SQL ERROR: No Results

_________________

That’s even worse… Laylana shook her head. 

Laylana snapped screenshots with her iPhone and made sure she had everything. 

Then, at  just that moment, the query window scrolled up and a bunch of non-displayable characters—just square boxes showing her the letter should have been—poured onto the screen as if it the system were sending a few long paragraphs. Then it stopped and the screen refreshed.

_________________

Something went wrong. Try again.

_________________

I broke the Internet again. Laylana laughed. She went back to her database query and re-entered her search.

_________________

No matches found.

_________________

Laylana checked her query. Everything looked right, so she tried again, but the results came back the same. She reworded the query, and with no change. She tried other ways of working it, moving the AND and OR blocks around. Still nothing came back.

_________________

No matches found.

_________________

On a whim, she put in the name of her handler: 

…WHERE lastName = ‘Graham’ AND firstName = ‘Mason’…

The query returned several matches, including the old induction database.

_________________

MATCH:

Graham, Mason
Progress: Completed
Assigned: Langley, Mclean, VA, Provisional
Status: Active

_________________

The rest of the data was there, too.

It just gets stranger and stranger…

She went back to and tried Natalie Johnstone again. No results were returned.

Just then, one of the techs in the lab approached. “Agent Vals, there’s a call for you. You can take it at the help desk.”

“A call for me?” Laylana looked at him curiously.

He nodded.

Laylana followed him to the help desk and picked up the phone.

A woman’s voice spoke deliberately. “Listen carefully. Alpha protocol. Leave the station immediately. If there’s anything at your hotel that you must have, get it as soon as possible. Don’t use agency payment options. Check in with Graham, but wait until tomorrow. Do you understand?”

Laylana was surprised, but she’d had communications as urgent and direct as that before, so she knew what to do. “Understood. How long do I have to get to the hotel?”

“Estimated response time will be less than 90 minutes.”

“Understood.”

Laylana thanked the man at the help desk and hurried back to the hotel. She was packed and gone within thirty minutes of the incoming call. She crossed the street to a different hotel and went into the lobby.

She ducked into the lobby restroom and changed clothes.

Once she had changed, she went back to the lobby to watch the street. There was a nice coffee shop that overlooked the street, so she ordered and sat to watch.

To cliche or not to cliche… Laylana watched for a black SUV, but also for anything else that an agency or organization might be using. She checked the time. If the informing voice was right, she should see something within the next fifteen minutes.

Ten minutes passed, then a black SUV stopped in front of the hotel. Two men got out and the SUV drove off. The two men looked so much like agents of some sort that she thought they had to be decoys. They went inside. So, cliche it is…

Laylana waited half an hour before the SUV returned and the two men got back inside and drove off. Laylana watched for a while longer, but nothing seemed anything but normal.

Turning back to her coffee, she thought about all she had learned. Most of it was confusing, but whoever it was on the phone had, it seemed, been truthful. She had a lot to think about, and almost as much to figure out.

Laylana opened her suitcase, then fiddled around until she found the opening to a space between the lining and the outer shell. From within that hidden space she retrieved what she called her ghost credentials. She had a seldom-used identity with a California driver's license, social security number, and passport. The ghost identity used the name Chloe Oakdale. Chloe would enjoy a couple of days at the hotel and around D.C. by means of a prepaid, reloadable VISA card.

She finished her coffee in no rush. Deputy Assistant Director REDACTED has some things to explain… Laylana realized that trying to clear up the mess the woman she believed to be named Natalie had made was actually clearing up nothing. Rather than answering any questions, it raised more.

What seems probable… Laylana’s face searches suggested fairly strongly that the woman at the villa was named Natalie. It seemed like she had been in Witness Protection with the name Johnstone. She had started induction into the CIA—which might be how she was able to figure out the access protocols.

At some point there was a mission; at least there was a deployment report, which had been redacted with gibberish.

It seemed also clear that whatever was going on was—going on still. Something she did at the field office triggered some sort of alert to someone. I was right about there being inside help… But, somehow, Natalie’s group knew that someone knew, and warned Laylana with enough time to allude… whatever they had planned.

Ninety minutes… Add 10 for the time between me triggering the alert and getting the phone call. Whoever was alerted had to be fairly close—or at least they had to have the cliche team close. She estimated what had happened.

Alert received. Someone notified. Call that ten minutes. Team assembled and briefed. Call that fifteen minutes. Team deploys to the SUV. That gives them only an hour to navigate DC traffic and get to the hotel.

Laylana decided that the “cliche team” in the bad suits and black SUV had to be close and at the instant disposal of whoever was giving orders. If you factor in that whoever is on the inside had to reach out to someone… maybe they only had thirty minutes to travel… Close… 

Laylana shook her head, then whispered a conclusion to herself. “I have a few small, likely details, but I’m missing the big thing. Why? What’s the motive? What is Natalie trying to accomplish?”

She rose from the table and went to the front desk, checked in. Chloe Oakdale didn’t need much, but the most basic room there had a bed, desk, and little sitting area with a sofa. It would be more than would be needed.

Once in her room, she just settled down to pass the rest of the afternoon and the night. She undressed and took a quick shower, then made herself comfortable on the sofa. She spent her time watching TV and scrolling YouTube on her personal laptop.

Once she tired of watching TV and flipping through videos, she put on a nightie and went to bed. She slept fairly sound, considering all that was on her mind. A few startles in the night interrupted her sleep, but she awoke the next morning plenty rested.

Laylana had two things to do that day.. Call her handler, Mason Graham, and meet Julia at the park. Before she did anything else, she started with her handler.

“Laylana,” Mason said from the speaker of her phone, “I was just going to call you. I mean literally this moment.”

Laylana wasn’t expecting that. It struck her as too much of a coincidence—having not spoken in days, then being told to call him only to find he was about to call her. Suddenly, she thought maybe she should hold off dumping all she had learned on Mason.

“I wanted to check in. I’ve been on the bench… too long.”

Mason replied. “I know. That business in Indonesia still hasn’t been resolved. Um… where are you? The expense ledger has you checking out of your hotel last night.”

When between missions, Laylana was compensated and had some expense provisions for room and board. It was, naturally, recorded expenses. Between Laylana and Mason, she was either “on ledger” or “on mission.” When she left Paris, she called in to the accounting department and went back on ledger. 

“Yes, I checked out late in the day. I had a change of heart.”

Mason paused, then said, “Look I gotta run out and get a coffee. I got some work coming your way, so watch for the ops details. Everything you know is there. Stay safe…”

“Will do. Take care.”

Mason and Laylana had a good working history. She knew what getting a coffee really meant. 

She went to her suitcase and turned on her burner phone. Agents and handlers generally were prepared for any number of contingencies. In the field stateside, it was possible the agent would want a once-and-done means of communicating with the handler.

Fifteen minutes later he called back from his own prepaid cell phone. “Hey, are you okay? Change of heart?”

“I… had the feeling I was catching looks. Not sure who or why…” Laylana again considered telling Mason everything, but not actually knowing anything for certain, she held back. 

Still, she knew Mason would read between the lines a little. “Are you… urban camping?”

Mason and Laylana had come up with that term to mean she was off the grid in a city. “Yeah, I’m… still stinging from being benched. Thought I’d give the bean counters less to think about.”

Mason paused, then asked, “Have we used these phones before?”

“Once. We didn’t talk about anything important.”

Mason paused again, then continued. “How was Paris?”

“It was nice. Reconnected with a guy from back in my Ranger days. He’s into private security work now. Nothing much to say about it.”

Mason let silence hang for a few seconds, then he said, “Okay, I got a call this morning. You’re off the bench for a little while. I’ll shoot you an ops overview and get your travel set up. Afghanistan… Recon and intel… The details will be in the overview…”

Laylana was surprised again. “When do I deploy?”

“Red-eye out Sunday. You’ll meet up with some army boots when you get there. I’ll have your kit waiting for you when you land at the FOB.”

“Okay, sounds good.” Laylana paused, then asked, “Anything else I need to know? Anything on Indonesia? Anything…”

Mason answered quickly. “Nothing much on Indonesia. By whatever means they managed to hack a bypass to the cross-check is a mystery. The biometrics, hair, and skin cells… your explanation that they lifted them off the gear… that makes sense… So, they didn’t have your codes to get into the building… They had codes that don’t belong to anyone, but that were valid and active… There’s going to be some fallout over this somewhere…”

Laylana agreed. “Yeah, well, I hope it doesn’t land on me… or you…”

“Agreed… For sure.” Mason went on. “Okay, this mission… I guess you might be interested to know that this mission comes sideways from a different DAD… Not our normal channel, but I checked with Winters, and he gave the all go. This mission came from Cal Davis… Speaking of your Ranger days, Davis said that’s why you, specifically, were selected.”

“Deputy Assistant Director Davis? I’ve never heard of him… or her if ‘Cal’ is a girl…”

“Cal is a guy,” Mason replied. “To be honest, he’s always just been a name on a list to me.”
Laylana paused, then spoke what her gut was feeling. “Mason… look… given all the weird things since Indonesia, don’t you think it’s odd some side-chain DAD hits you up out of the blue asking for me?”

Again she half-wanted to tell him about all she had done the day before, but held back.

“Lay… look, it’s all clear and proper, this time. You’ve been on the bench a while, so your name is sitting atop the available list… Orders, you know…”

“Orders… I know,” Laylana replied.

Mason paused and then added. “Look… keep camping out until you deploy. If I find out anything, I’ll let your cousin know, so she can contact you.”

Laylana’s “cousin” was a Gmail account she and Mason had set up a few years before so they could have off-grid discussions. They had used it a few times dealing with CIA business, but mostly as a way to have casual, “how was your day” type communications. For a few months, Laylana had thought her handler had interest in her as something other than an agent, but it had never gone anywhere.

That he suggested communicating through her “cousin” revealed something important. Mason had some concerns about what was going on that he couldn’t express openly.

“Okay,” Laylana replied. “Sounds good. I’ll deploy per ops details as soon as I get them.”

“Okay, good…” Mason replied, then added what he always added to end a conversation. “Stay safe and get your report filed on time.”

That was Mason and numerous other handler’s way of sending an agent off on every mission, and Laylana knew what it really meant: “Don’t die.”

Laylana finished dressing and planned a route to the park to meet Julia. It would be fairly routine, and she didn’t expect to learn much, but she did want to bounce the idea of the cross-check bypass hack off of someone knowledgeable about those sorts of things.

Arriving early, Laylana sat down where they were supposed to meet. It was a really nice day, and Laylana enjoyed the sun. For a brief moment, her worries were washed out by the warm, shining sun.

But only for a moment. Laylana was accustomed to living in a state of high alert. Even when she was in a relatively low-threat environment—such as a park in the middle of the nation’s capital—she kept her awareness high and her thoughts active.

Thus, she noticed when a woman approaching angled off the walking path. There was nothing threatening about it; no more so than the couple playing with their lab who had drifted behind Laylana as well. It was just the kind of thing she noticed and kept track of.

Therefore, Laylana was only barely surprised when the women approached from behind. She was slightly more surprised when the woman drew very close, leaning over her and speaking softly into her ear.

It was the voice of the woman on the phone.

“Don’t look back. Don’t look at me.”

Laylana replied in an equally quiet voice. “You know I’m going to look back, right? You know I’m going to look at you.”

“Don’t be coy. Listen. You are in trouble that you cannot imagine. It’s our fault, but we are trying to fix things. Whenever you get a mission, take your time with it. Don’t be in a rush to come back into the bright light. Stay out of sight as long as you can.”

Laylana, as was her way, processed the message as she delivered her own—a “trial balloon” of sorts to see what kind of reaction she could get from the woman. “Tell Natalie I’m sorry for the loss of her family. It must have been terrible.”

The long pause led Laylana to think she’d guessed right.

Finally the woman replied. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Don’t play games.”

Laylana kept going. “Natalie wouldn’t think it was a game at all. Tragic…”

“Look,” the woman said, “did you hear what I told you? You are in trouble. Take whatever mission you get, stay safe, file your report on time, but… don’t hurry back.”

It was obvious to Laylana that the woman knew she'd be getting a mission, so the inside-connection theory held up. That she didn’t know she had already gotten a mission suggested there was some time delay in communications between inside the agency and Natalie’s group.

“Don’t hurry back…” Laylana looked over her shoulder and recognized the contact she had met in Indonesia who had sent her on the trek in the woods. “Oh… So, I should just do some more… What did you call it? Wilderness pampering?”

“Don’t hurry back. That’s all I got to say. Me just being here has the potential to make things worse. Just don’t hurry back from whatever mission you get.”

“While I’m doing that, will I be breaking into the Oval Office or stealing launch codes from the Pentagon? I’m just asking, so I know how to prepare.”

“I have nothing else to say. I saved you from being grabbed from the hotel. Trust me… if you can… But trust or not, take my advice. They think you were the one who got the sat pics. Even though you never cleared embassy security. They don’t know how you got in, but they believe the biometrics… or at least they are not willing to wait for the truth. Take the mission you’ll get… soon… from Mason.”

The woman stood up and took a few steps away, so Laylana turned and said, “Hey… I didn’t catch your name…”

The woman stopped and came back. “Eva Clavin. You won’t find me in any database. I don’t exist.”

Laylana was a little surprised, but she managed a reply. “Natalie probably didn’t think she was in any databases. Pictures on the Internet are forever, you know… Salutatorian gone missing… Ask her about that?”

Eva didn’t reply, rather she turned on her heels and hurried away. Laylana hesitated to react, not sure what end would be achieved if she followed, and ended up doing nothing but watching as Eva Clavin shrank away across the park.

Just as Laylana reconsidered the ideat to get up and follow, Julia showed up. “There you are! Isn’t this a great day?”

At that moment, Laylana had a flash of an idea that Julia was in on it. It took her a few thought cycles to reject that idea; Laylana had reached out to Julia out of the blue after years. That she would be connected to Natalie—Laylana had concluded Natalie was the right name of the woman at the villa—and Eva didn’t fit.

Laylana smiled at Julia. “I just got her a few minutes ago. I’ve enjoyed the sunshine.”

Julia sat down and they chatted casually for a few minutes, then Laylana turned the conversation to her reason for wanting to meet. “What do you know about the biometrics system to limit access to security resources?”

“Oh, it’s a second level system. More to log who than to keep people out. The guns at the entrance do that.” Julia replied. “I think most of the intel community has similar systems.”

Laylana explained in general terms without specifics what happened in the embassy. 

“Hmm…” Julia replied. “So an agent cleared into the center using one ID and the biometrics recorded a different agent—one who wasn’t even cleared to be there.”

“Essentially, yes,” Laylana replied. “We have a cross-check function between the systems.”

“That’s actually a good idea. Makes the biometric function have some umph. But to your question my answer is a guess. The biometrics asks check-in if the agent is there. Check-in says ‘yes’ and biometrics registers and ‘all good.’ Somehow, a fake ‘yes’ got through.”

“How hard would it be to fake a ‘yes’?”

“Access. Knowledge. Coding skills. Someone had to have all that. And gaining access would be the kicker, if you ask me. This wasn’t done by some average hacker. This was top-level, if it happened the way you say.”

Laylana had confirmed what she had thought. It wasn’t trivial in any way for the cross-link to have been defeated. Julia, without a lot more knowledge about the specific coding that ran the system, wouldn’t know exactly how it was done, but her insight reaffirmed Laylana’s thoughts.

The conversation turned to Julia’s other persona—Deadly Red. They talked a while about her success and Julia had some screen-grabs on her phone that she shared.

“No wonder you have so many fans!” Laylana smiled and shook her head.

“That was a special night. ‘Get 500 new subs before 10:00 p.m. and the bra comes off.’ I dunno… it was kinda fun.”

Laylana laughed. “Maybe you need to start a stream on a different platform!”

Julia shook her head. “Hard enough to get profitable where I am. I’ll stick with it.”

They chatted a little while longer about how the platform worked and how she had built a following.

“I actually am a pretty good sniper, by the way. Teams want me just based on my stats, even before they know about the stream.”

Laylana admitted she had watched a few of Julia's streams that were curated on YouTube. “You really can shoot!”

The conversation went on a little while longer, then they said goodbye and parted ways. Aftwards, Laylana started back toward the hotel. Her head was aswim with all that had happened over the last two days. 

She took her time getting back, stopping on the way at a little pizzeria for dinner.

She enjoyed both the pizza and the venue. There was a cook singing and tossing the dough high into the air. Laylana reckoned him a cross between a street busker and a chef.

Once back at the hotel, she set her mind on the mission she had been assigned. She checked her agency communications portal and pulled the ops details down, making a copy to her iPhone.

She had, it turned out, about 28 hours before she needed to depart for the airport. That would give her some time to relax and get her mind set. It looked like she would be going into hostile territory; she would have no room in her head for ifs and whys about what happened in Indonesia. She would need to focus on the mission and the team she would join to complete it.

For the next 28 hours, she would transition into the mission mindset. She would start getting her head in the right place by relaxing.

A hot soak…