“Did it what, Madam President?”
“Make a difference?” The president smiled.
KC blinked, and Yardley watched the color come back to her cheeks. “I hope so. I mean, we didn’t have a way to get a lot of confirmation our, um, seeds were planted.” KC got redder. “That’s what we called a completed mission.”
Now Atlas didn’t even try to disguise their laugh. Yardley sat back in her chair. This was getting less scary and more interesting by the moment.
“We were teenage computer jockeys, and we meant that we were planting daisies. We had no other referent. Comeon.”
“My apologies,” Atlas said.
“As time went on, our projects got a lot riskier, and we started attracting attention from environmental fringe groups. I was at MIT by then, meeting the kind of students who rented camper vans to go to anti-globalization protests over spring break. I can understand now that we didn’t have great judgment when it came to the jobs we took on. We didn’t understand the nuance of shutting down worksites and lumber supply chains.”
“So you stopped.” This interjection came from the director, McLaughlin, who’d been keeping himself in reserve.
“No, sir, we did not. Like I said, we didn’t understand the nuance. Or even the obvious implications. We took a job for a group that wanted action from the EPA on industrial pollution.”
“You and Flynn hacked into a federal agency,” the president said.
“We did, yes.”
“With what outcome?”
Yardley leaned forward, breathless to hear the rest. All she’d known was that KC went to college early. She had a general impression that KC had messed around with hacking in a recreational sort of way during the part of her youth when Yardley’s central preoccupation was the outcome of Rush Week.
“That’s how I ended up in the CIA,” KC said.
“You were offered a deal.” The president gestured to an aide standing along the wall, who handed her a brief in a leather folder.She opened it. “Immunity from prosecution in exchange for your commitment to be educated and prepared for the academy.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Yardley was astonished. She knew there were operatives who found their way to the CIA by nontraditional means, but she never could have imagined this was KC’s path to the agency. Yardley herself had competed for and won a college internship, which she parlayed into an entry-level job. Her rise to the role of field operative was considered meteoric, but it wasn’t half so impressive—or, she could admit, flashy—as KC’s story.
There was no chance she and KC were about to be fired. No, they were being conscripted. For what, Yardley didn’t know, but she guaranteed it would be the kind of operation she’d be able to tell stories about once she got declassified.
“And Flynn?” the president asked.
“I never heard from her again,” KC said. “The first time I caught a whiff of her since the EPA hack was in Toronto, when I looked at the code she’d added to the digital lock on the hotel room door. It had her signature. Impeccably clean. Impossibly efficient. It’s hard to explain, but imagine you watched someone solve a complex math problem with a single equation.” KC sifted her fingers through her short hair, her eyes on the ceiling. “I’ve come to understand over the years that she was legitimately a genius,” she said. “Obviously, she still is. The only reason I was able to unlock the door was that I knew her once, so I still know her well enough to think like she thinks. Even so, it took me hours and hours to pick apart her encryption on the thumb drive. If anyone thought the passport or ultrasound photo were a plant to frame her, the lock code and encryption would be proof Kris herself is actively involved.”
“Does she have the capability to code this device, this sequence that was used in Toronto?” The president didn’t look up from her perusal of the brief in the folder, but the rest of the room went still again.
Because it was a room full of spies.
Yardley couldn’t speak to what the director, Gramercy, and Atlas had been privy to in advance of this meeting, but she could read the way the wind was blowing here. The president didn’t like that the agency had failed to lock down this device, and she had something in mind to get the job done—a plan that included KC and Yardley.
Her guess was that whatever that plan was, it would be both as smart and grim as the mood at a shootout, because President Williams had been on both the House and Senate domestic and international intelligence committees for years before running for office. She knew what was what.
“Yes,” KC confirmed. “Kris is more than capable of making a device like this.”
The president leaned in, her attention steady on KC. “Do you think that shedidmake it?”
Oh.Oh, Yardley had not expected that, and it took her breath away for a moment. KC was swimming deep here, in ways that Yardley absolutely didn’t understand.
But she would, it seemed. Whether she wanted to or not.
“No,” KC said. “I don’t think Kris Flynn made this device.”
Her surety was utter. Nonetheless, the statement plucked the strings of Yardley’s intuition with a warning.
