The two men departed from the storeroom. Pedro hurried to his office down the hall. Daniel went in the other direction, turned the corner and waited. After ten minutes had passed, Daniel headed for Pedro’s office. Upon his entrance the secretary looked up, an old lady whose son, Senor Franco, ran the department.
“I forgot my keys in Pedro’s office,” Daniel said. He meant the keys to his bike-chain and apartment.
Mrs. Franco indicated that he could go in and retrieve his keys.
Daniel entered the office, leaving the door ajar so she wouldn’t become suspicious. Despite her inquisitive nature, old Mrs. Franco was absent-minded and would likely forget about him soon. She was playing a computer game and she often spent hours at it, building her internet farm.
After a short wait and taking a deep breath, Daniel sat down at Pedro’s desk. The swivel chair creaked and Daniel paused, but Mrs. Franco did not come in to investigate.
As he’d hoped, Pedro’s computer was still on. Daniel pressed a key and the screen awoke. For the next twenty minutes, Daniel examined scheduled route shutdowns. Pedro was in charge of them, meaning certain routes and roads were closed to civilian and sometimes to Mexican Home Army usage. During those times the Chinese Army used the roads and routes, often for “secret” convoys.
Daniel searched, and he discovered a route from the main port at Baja Bay to the First Front on the Californian-Mexican border. The route used a code word. From experience, Daniel knew the Chinese often used the main article being ferried as the code. This route word or code was “Blue Swan.”
Daniel’s heart thudded. According to Donna, this was a secret weapon, one critical to smashing the vaunted American defenses on the border.
With shaking hands, Daniel took out a pencil and paper, copying the route information. Several minutes later, he shut off the computer, said good-bye to Mrs. Franco and headed to his office one floor down.
He would compose a carefully worded report and leave it at a letter-drop near Santa Anna Park. His control was a Swiss national in the ambassador’s office. Daniel believed the man was actually a CIA case officer. Whoever he was, the man paid well for good information, which helped Daniel buy cheap whiskey. More importantly, with this he hoped to hurt the Chinese, to strike back at the foreigners who had corrupted his beautiful young daughter.
Anna Chen rubbed her eyes. They were gritty from too much reading and too little sleep. She sat in front of an e-reader in a cubicle in the Central Intelligence Agency, one of the analysts working the night shift.
She had come down a long way in the world since President Clark’s reelection defeat after the Alaskan War seven long years ago. From working on the President’s staff Anna had fallen into unemployment. This was due to her membership in a new undesirable caste in America: those of half-Chinese ancestry. It had been a rude shock.
Years ago, she had written
Sitting in her CIA cubicle, Anna rubbed her eyes harder, blinked several times and concentrated on the reports. A lamp provided light and several computer scrolls waited for her use. If there was anything in a report she didn’t understand, Anna looked it up.
Her life had spiraled from one tragedy to another. After her mother’s death, Anna had begun a blog on Chinese affairs, winning syndication on National News Internet (NNI). The mass Chinese cyber-assault three years ago in 2036 had ended that. The nuclear terrorist attack in Silicon Valley had ripened the latent Chinese racism into ugly fruit indeed. The only bright spot had been the election of President Sims. They said he was superstitious, in a baseball sort of way. Keep everything the same, if you could, when you won the big game. She had been in the government during the Alaskan War that Sims had won. Therefore, after gaining an interview with him, Anna had received employment with the CIA, as a lower grade analyst. It was better than unemployment and she was good at analyzing and interpreting data.
Anna sipped tea and leaned back so her chair squealed. She reached up and undid her hair. It was long and dark. She opened a drawer and took out a brush, letting the bristles run through the long strands.
She was seven years older since the Alaskan War. Yet she was still slender, keeping fit primarily because of her sparse diet and her pedal-power plan. In her apartment, she supplemented the energy requirement—provided by a nearby coal station—through stationary cycling. She also practiced the martial arts techniques Tanaka had taught her, which kept her amazingly limber.
She missed Tanaka. It was a hole in her heart. Would there ever be a man like him again for her?
Her brushing hand froze. Anna sat up, removed the brush from her hair and set it on the desk with a soft clunk. She concentrated on the report.
Clicking the e-reader, going back two pages, she noticed it came from Mexico City. From the beginning now, Anna read the report slowly. Was this right? The Chinese were moving a convoy to the front near the Californian border. The convoy carried Blue Swan.
“Blue Swan,” Anna whispered. “Where have I seen that before?”
She continued reading and wondered how this person code-named “Spartacus” had known “Blue Swan” was important to the Chinese. There was something missing in the report. She could feel it. It was rated “Yellow.” That meant it was considered third class and only slightly reliable.
Anna swiveled her chair and used a computer scroll’s touch screen. America was a land of great contrasts these days. Coal fed much of the nation’s energy needs and yet some places used the latest technology. Anna put in Spartacus’ name and read other reports written by him.
Anna typed in “Blue Swan,” watching the words build on the screen. After typing the “n,” a little yellow note-symbol appeared in the left-hand corner. She moved the cursor over the “note” and clicked. Hmm, it was a reference saying “Blue Swan” concerned Chinese R&D. Where had the note originated?
She attempted to find out. Seconds later, her screen flashed red and the words appeared,
Anna sat back, picked up her teacup, sipped and grimaced. The tea had become cool. She liked hers hot.
Anna sat staring at the e-reader. Slowly, she clicked back to the beginning of the report. She wished Spartacus had been more honest and put in exactly how he’d come to suspect Blue Swan.
If it proved to be insignificant, eyes might raise and suspicions become whetted. Why did the half-Chinese woman seek higher clearance? Her position in the CIA was tenuous at best.
“I’m an American,” Anna whispered to herself. “This is my country.” Each person had to fight his or her personal battles in life. Some had physical ailments, others fought psychological problems and some had to walk uphill against racism or ageism. She had found it better to do and struggle than to accept these limitations.
Standing, blowing out her checks, Anna picked up the e-reader and headed for her boss’s office. She passed others in their cubicles, reading reports, typing or eating a snack. A few looked up. Two nodded a greeting.
Anna reached the door, hesitated and let her delicate knuckles rap against wood.
“Enter,” a man said. Ed Johnson was the chief analyst of the nightshift. He had gray hair and wore a white shirt and tie, one of the old guard. She had heard others say before that Johnson didn’t like her.
“Yes?” Johnson asked, scowling up at her.
Anna hesitated.
Johnson’s scowl grew, and he eyed her up and down.
Anna felt soiled by it, remembering how Tanaka’s killer had looked her up and down that night in the park. With the smoking gun in his hand—the one that had shot Tanaka in the back—the murderer had stepped up and snatched her purse. His eyes had lingered hungrily. She’d seen his desire to rape. It had frozen her. For months afterward, she had stood before a full-length mirror at home, practicing what she should have done.
