Chapter 2

He was here for the International Security Systems Symposium—"I Triple S.” She was here to be with him and to ‘network’ in the bar and exhibit hall. He had actually paid for the seminars, including the lectures that he had just skipped. She didn’t feel like forking over several hundred dollars, she had told him, in order to be fed information she could pick from his brain later on.

Nonetheless, she had sat up until midnight the first night reading the bound conference proceedings, while he had tried to fall asleep, totally conscious of her presence in the bed with him. They hadn’t spent that many nights together, especially lately, and this was the first time in several weeks.

The sky was nearly dark as they walked back from the zoo, he to attend the cocktail party arranged for the conferees, and she to forage for contacts at the lobby bar. They were both, frankly, looking for jobs. Each was trained as an executive protection specialist, but he no longer wanted to work in the field and she was the restless sort, not certain what she wanted to do next.

Eric hoped to add operations security—OPSEC—and espionage countermeasures to his security repertoire, either for a full-time position or as a consultant. Mostly, he wanted, at last, to have a stable home where he could bring up his son. The boy was six and lived with Eric’s sister, Katherine, in Larchmont, New York. Oh, yes, David had Down syndrome; he was developmentally disabled.

Helen, ready for something new, had latched onto Eric’s direction.

This conference focused on information security, most specifically against espionage from abroad. National intelligence efforts of the Russians, the French, the Israelis, and certainly the Japanese, were centering on industrial data, particularly high-tech research. The idea was only slowly dawning on U.S. companies that they must now protect themselves in a stringent, well-organized fashion.

Eric circulated at the party, trying to find out what companies people were with and get their cards. Too many of the attendees, however, were employed by the military or other government entities. Having spent eight years in the Army, Eric preferred to work on the corporate side. Companies had as many failings as the public sector did, but not the identical ones he had grown weary of.

Eric found himself stuck in a corner talking to a computer nerd from the National Security Agency who began to spell out the details of the agency’s Blade Runner, the latest national means of cracking encryption. The fellow rambled off on the subject of cryptoprocessors. Eric wondered why the guy was being so loose-mouthed at a security conference, but maybe it was okay, since Eric himself didn’t understand what the hell he was talking about anyway.

When finally, Eric ran out of stock phrases with which to lob back the conversational ball, he excused himself. He looked around, feeling pretty much as if he didn’t know what he was doing here.

He abandoned his club soda on a serving tray and exited Ballroom B. Well, that hadn’t worked. He’d join Helen at the bar and they could have dinner; they had passed a decent-looking restaurant on their trek back from the zoo. He brightened. At least there was that. He walked over to the bar area and looked around for her. The place was noisy and smoky and filled with men wearing tags like his own.

He didn’t see Helen. Maybe she had gone up to their room. That was even better. They could make love and then go on to dinner. He took the elevator up.

His heart beat a tad fast with anticipation, but when he opened the door, he saw that she wasn’t there. He sank into a chair. At least the room was quiet, and no one was smoking. Where was she? He looked at his cell and retrieved his single message. The caller was Helen, phoning from either the bottom of the ocean or a noisy bar, telling him to go ahead and eat; she was in the middle of something.

His cheeks burned and he sort of felt like whimpering, but he was a thirty-two-year-old combat veteran and couldn’t permit himself to react like a wounded adolescent. He tried to laugh instead and wound up smiling wryly. Some things worked for him—that was true—but some things surely didn’t.

He showered and went down to dinner alone in the hotel’s second-best restaurant. The crab cakes and homemade coleslaw were nicely done. Dinner was the most welcome thing that had happened to him all day, maybe so far this year. But this was only November. Something great could come along before the first of January.

Upstairs, he undressed and slid into bed with the conference proceedings. She had been reading this? Most of it was unfathomable. “Transmission media type and topology determine media reliability and availability,” he read. Topology was like, conditions in the field. “Media types include parallel cables, serial cable, radio, microwave, and satellite.” Fine. He guessed the NSA computer hack would understand this article. Ah, Christ, he’d better go to the transmission security seminar tomorrow.

He poured over the next day’s schedule, marking the most obscure programs as musts. But he definitely did want to hear the one about Pegasus, the Israeli software that could latch onto a person’s cellphone and take total control without the phone’s owners suspecting a thing. Although licensed to nations only, Eric had heard some of the nations it was licensed to used it to spy on journalists and dissidents. What a world.

After browsing through an almost readable article on labeling documents according to their security classification, he lay down, and let himself drift a little, rousing only when he heard the click of the door.

He sat up as she came into the room and looked at his watch. It was ten-thirty. He couldn’t decide if that was awfully late for her to be returning or blamelessly early. He didn’t say anything, for fear of sounding as if he were whining.

“Were you sleeping? I’m sorry if I woke you up.” She didn’t seem to be sorry; she seemed aglow, in particularly high spirits. She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, then began removing her jewelry. “You ate, didn’t you?” she asked. “You got my message?”

He watched her suspiciously. He could remember watching his one-time wife like this—wondering what her actual life was like, what her thoughts were at the moment. Such uncertainty wasn’t a very pleasant aspect of a relationship. That sense of suspicion reminded him of all the rotten feelings that came up when you were emotionally involved.

“Aren’t you going to ask me where I’ve been?” she demanded, hanging up her blouse and giving him a sidelong glance. Both the question and the striptease piqued his interest.

“Out with some sexy guy with plenty of money, who wants to give you a job,” he suggested sarcastically. He wasn’t going to be very well behaved this evening, he could tell. That made him feel frustrated, too.

“Bingo,” she responded. “You’re either psychic or psychotic. It’s hard to decide which. I have a job. A great job.” She was full of life, excited, fairly dancing around in her underwear. She sat on the edge of the bed to remove her pantyhose.

“Okay, go on, tell me about it.” He forbid himself to show the slightest bit of jealousy and made every effort to smile, even though she wasn’t looking in his direction. “Great,” he added. “You deserve something good.” But did she? Had she worked as hard as he had the last two months trying to land something? He didn’t entirely like himself for feeling this way, thinking these thoughts, but there it was.

“I’m practically in,” she announced, turning toward him, her eyes shining. “I know I’m going to get it. The security director at Westlake Technologies, Terry Ryan, offered me the job of information security manager at their headquarters in Westchester. All I need is a prior reference telling him that I’ve served in exactly that same position with overwhelming success.” She smiled and dropped down on the bed, scooting toward him.

At a moment like this, it was hardly his place to remind her that she had never done such a job before in her life. He was sure she realized it anyway. He smiled again, cautiously.

“Oh, don’t look so glum,” she told him. “All I need to do is call Mrs. M. She’ll have Dr. M. tell Ryan that I was information security director at MacMan and did a great job. Klein will have to agree.”

Helen was referring to Dr. Manfre, CEO of MacMan Pharmaceuticals, and his security director, Jim Klein. Helen and Eric had worked protection for the Manfres and Dr. M. would probably do anything for them—maybe even lie. The idea didn’t sound altogether savory to Eric though. He would never ask Dr. or Mrs. M. to lie for him, and he couldn’t understand Helen doing it. But that was her way, he guessed.

She gazed up at the ceiling, thinking her thoughts, making plans for her future. He could feel the heat radiating out from her, but he doubted that she was actually present with him.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re pissed because I didn’t come back for dinner.” She looked at him. “Did you meet anyone? Did you make any good contacts? I hope you didn’t have to eat dinner alone.”

He took her hand, put it on his bare chest, and began stroking himself with her fingers. When he removed his own hand, she continued caressing him. She laughed. “You’re so subtle,” she said. She rolled over and kissed him on the lips. He reached out for her, instantly hard.

Helen came up for air, still distracted. “You won’t believe the salary,” she added. “They want to pay me for my expertise.” She giggled, since she knew she had none. “There may be a lot of travel, too.” With this guy Ryan, he imagined.

He pulled her to him again and ran his hands down the muscles of her back to the perfect roundness of her butt. “Go on,” she whispered. Her hands were between them, her fingers creeping up his thighs.