had gone home for the evening. That would create an opportunity for Michael to stake out the building for signs of obvious activity – but he immediately dismissed it as unnecessarily risky and unlikely to prove or disprove anything. Sure, if they were amateurish, perhaps a cleaning crew would appear late at night, or some other sort of maintenance or emergency repair personnel would enter, and then the lights in Abe’s seventh floor office would go on. However, if they were seasoned professionals it was doubtful he’d see anything at all – and the absence of activity wouldn’t necessarily mean that nobody had breached the office – rather, it would reinforce that they were not a low-end team, which Michael was already pretty certain about, given the hardware Jim had found secreted.
His natural desire to be pro-active, to gain an advantage over the hypothesized hunters of the document, lost out to his better judgment and discipline. Harsh experience had taught him that security threats were often akin to fishing – both required patience, skill, tuned senses, observation and instinct. Impatience and succumbing to a desire to act were weaknesses he couldn’t indulge.
Michael gave up trying to finish reading the document that evening; he was in informational overload mode, and he realized he wasn’t registering the facts any more. A glance at the remaining pile of unread papers confirmed there was maybe ten percent left, at most, which he could hit in the morning. He decided to stay in the apartment rather than go out for dinner and spent his time going over his notes of the manuscript’s highlights so far.
Studying the list of underlined terms and operation names and organizations, he resolved to attempt to parallel Samantha’s efforts and do some online research. Two hours of surfing and searching for data yielded nothing, other than an appreciation for the number of kooky conspiracy theories that were now accessible with a few mouse clicks. There was a scenario for every prejudice, every level of nuttiness, from the erudite and esoteric to the banal. From flat-earth adherents to those convinced that the devil was everywhere, from modern-day Knights of the Templar scheming for Armageddon to the Tri-lateral Commission fostering a shadowy new world order, there was an ass for every seat, as they said in the car business.
The U.S. government was especially popular amongst the tin foil hat crowd as uber-villain, and one would have to believe it was astoundingly competent to pull off everything from staging lunar landings to assassinating its leaders to hiding the bodies of extraterrestrials to scheming to create a new currency in order to somehow take over Canada and Mexico.
Exhausted and overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information, Michael eventually stumbled over to the couch to rest his eyes. He was out cold within two minutes of lying down.
********
An explosive crashing jolted him awake, followed by screaming.
Michael cautiously approached the window and peeked out; it was morning – a woman in a Honda SUV had rear-ended a plumbing van on the street below. Both drivers were standing beside their vehicles yelling at the top of their lungs, berating each other for their lousy driving skills. The woman was East Indian, with a pronounced accent and a vocal range that likely had the neighborhood dogs running for cover. The male sounded Polish or Russian.
Good morning - I heart Brooklyn.
He stumbled into the shower, prioritizing his activities for the day as he stood under the tepid stream of water. Having skipped dinner, he was starving, so first order of business was to get some calories on-loaded. Then he’d move to making calls and following up on his prior day’s contacts. And of course, finish reading the manuscript. Michael figured that today was going to define whether his network was in crisis, or if this was merely a false alarm.
His Blackberry was blinking. Shit - he hadn’t even
His natural desire to be pro-active, to gain an advantage over the hypothesized hunters of the document, lost out to his better judgment and discipline. Harsh experience had taught him that security threats were often akin to fishing – both required patience, skill, tuned senses, observation and instinct. Impatience and succumbing to a desire to act were weaknesses he couldn’t indulge.
Michael gave up trying to finish reading the document that evening; he was in informational overload mode, and he realized he wasn’t registering the facts any more. A glance at the remaining pile of unread papers confirmed there was maybe ten percent left, at most, which he could hit in the morning. He decided to stay in the apartment rather than go out for dinner and spent his time going over his notes of the manuscript’s highlights so far.
Studying the list of underlined terms and operation names and organizations, he resolved to attempt to parallel Samantha’s efforts and do some online research. Two hours of surfing and searching for data yielded nothing, other than an appreciation for the number of kooky conspiracy theories that were now accessible with a few mouse clicks. There was a scenario for every prejudice, every level of nuttiness, from the erudite and esoteric to the banal. From flat-earth adherents to those convinced that the devil was everywhere, from modern-day Knights of the Templar scheming for Armageddon to the Tri-lateral Commission fostering a shadowy new world order, there was an ass for every seat, as they said in the car business.
The U.S. government was especially popular amongst the tin foil hat crowd as uber-villain, and one would have to believe it was astoundingly competent to pull off everything from staging lunar landings to assassinating its leaders to hiding the bodies of extraterrestrials to scheming to create a new currency in order to somehow take over Canada and Mexico.
Exhausted and overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information, Michael eventually stumbled over to the couch to rest his eyes. He was out cold within two minutes of lying down.
********
An explosive crashing jolted him awake, followed by screaming.
Michael cautiously approached the window and peeked out; it was morning – a woman in a Honda SUV had rear-ended a plumbing van on the street below. Both drivers were standing beside their vehicles yelling at the top of their lungs, berating each other for their lousy driving skills. The woman was East Indian, with a pronounced accent and a vocal range that likely had the neighborhood dogs running for cover. The male sounded Polish or Russian.
Good morning - I heart Brooklyn.
He stumbled into the shower, prioritizing his activities for the day as he stood under the tepid stream of water. Having skipped dinner, he was starving, so first order of business was to get some calories on-loaded. Then he’d move to making calls and following up on his prior day’s contacts. And of course, finish reading the manuscript. Michael figured that today was going to define whether his network was in crisis, or if this was merely a false alarm.
His Blackberry was blinking. Shit - he hadn’t even
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