Sixty days and counting - Kim Stanley Robinson [183]
“The GAO?”
“It’s a unit of theirs that stays out of sight and works on the black programs.”
“You’re getting your help from the GAO?”
“Yes, but we are stovepiped to the president. The Secret Service reports to him, and he is overseeing all this work now.”
“Well good.” Frank shook his head, trying to take it all in. “So what’s happening with Caroline?”
“Lots. As you may or may not know, before she disappeared, she was in charge of a Homeland Security surveillance program that combined with the unit we are worrying about, the so-called Advanced Research Development Prime. Then she came to us, or we found each other, when she got the election disks to you, and through you and Edgardo, to us.”
“So you’ve been working with her since then, is that it?”
“Yes. But we haven’t had much more contact with her than you have, from what Edgardo tells me. She’s been very concerned to be sure she is working with people she can trust, and understandably so, given what’s happened. So we’ve had to do things her way, to show her she can trust us. She’s been doing some work on her own that she’s gotten to us, some data mining and even some physical surveillance of some of the problem people, so we can make the case against them stick. And now we feel we are ready to do a root canal on these guys, or I hope we can. In any case this confrontation with you may force our hand.”
“Good,” Frank said.
Umberto glanced at Edgardo, then said, “The problem is, they’ve gone inactive since the assassination attempt. I think that wasn’t their idea, but it scared them. Now they are very quiet. But still a threat, obviously. So, we know who they are, but they’ve been clever about distancing themselves from their activities, and they aren’t doing anything now that we can stick them with. So, we think your friend is dealing with this same problem, from her side. She doesn’t have anything to use, and she wants to stay away from her husband.”
Umberto stopped then, and looked at Frank as if it were Frank’s turn to say something.
Frank said, “He came right up to me in a restaurant and asked me where she was.”
“So Edgardo said.”
“And, well, she’s not leaving anything at our dead drop.”
“Yes. But—I can get a message to her.”
Frank nodded briefly. This he knew. It was irritating that she was contacting them but not him—that he needed the black wing of the GAO to contact his girlfriend for him. And she was part of that world. “And say what to her?” he asked.
“We were thinking that, since this group wants to find her, that might be the means to pull them out of their quiet mode.”
“Make her the bait in a trap, you mean?”
“Yes. Both of you, actually. We would plan something with the two of you, because you are under their surveillance, while they seem to have lost her. So, we would arrange something in which it looked like you were contacting each other, and trying to be secret, but accidentally revealing to her husband where you are going to meet. Then if they responded to that, and tried to kidnap her, or both of you—”
“Or kill us?”
“Well, we would hope it would not start with that, because they would not want to risk such a thing, or really to draw any attention to her until they have her. We think they want to frame her for the tampering, so they don’t have that out there and hanging over them. In any case, we would have people in place such that they would be apprehended the moment they showed up. The exposure would be minimal.”
“Can’t you just arrest them and charge them with what they’ve done? Election tampering, illegal surveillance?”
Umberto hesitated. “The surveillance may be legal,” he said finally. “And as for the election tampering, the truth is, it seems as though they have succeeded in framing your friend pretty thoroughly. As far as we can tell from what we see, it all came from her office and her computer.”
“But she’s the one who gave it to you!”
“We know that, and that’s why we’re going with her. But the evidence we have implicates her and not them. And ARDA Prime is a real group, working legitimately under the NSC umbrella.