Modem Operandi - Part 2

By Fiona Robinson

(see part 1 for disclaimer)

Francine Desmond knocked on Lee's office door twice, both brief, efficient raps with her knuckles. Her blond hair twisted into a smooth pleat, her makeup perfect, Francine had changed little over the years, except to soften toward Amanda. Her promotion, which had come before Billy's retirement and at the recommendation of her Section Chief, had proven to be the job she'd always wanted. Francine loved organizing things, and people, and ensuring that her team was running smoothly satisfied her.

Lee's muffled "Come in" was signal enough for her to open the door, and she moved into the office, sitting down in one of the tweedy chairs that had been recovered for the fourth time, but always seemed to look as if they needed recovering again.

"What's this I hear about the breach having something to do with my section?" she asked, leaning back in her chair. Lee was trying to plug in his laptop, and Francine suppressed a smile as he cursed at the tangle of cables on his desk. "The gray one goes in there," she told him, watching him struggle with a port on the back of the unit.

"Dammit, I hate these machines," he muttered, giving up and tossing the cables aside, hoping that Amanda would come in and fix it later.

"I think a little Computer 101 is in order. The first step is overcoming the fear, Scarecrow," Francine said, losing her battle with the smile. Lee simply rolled his eyes. "So…what's the deal?"

"We think it has something to do with Senator Birdsell," Lee said. "It's the only common denominator we've managed to come up with."

Francine chewed on that for a moment, a little surprised. "Really. Well. What, in particular?"

"That's just it. I was hoping you could shed some light on what we've found."

Francine shook her head. "I'll run it by my team, but I'm not altogether sure they'll be much of a help."

Lee nodded. "Okay. I can't ask for much more than that."

"You know he's been really active in lobbying for legislation controlling the Internet," she said. "But I don't see how that would make him a target."

"What about the work he did with us? I don't remember the specifics, but didn't he ruffle a few feathers then?"

Francine narrowed her eyes. "Are you thinking that this is an inside job?"

"I'm thinking everything and nothing right now, Francine. We have nothing to go on beyond that they can break any kind of code we set up."

Francine nodded. An inside job made sense. And it wasn't like it hadn't happened before.

"What if the Senator is just a red herring?" she wondered. "He doesn't seem to have been involved in enough for someone to hack our system looking for information. I mean, our surveillance tells us that he fulfills his political agendas like a bull in a china shop, but he's basically clean otherwise."

Lee nodded. "It's definitely a possibility," he conceded. "Amanda suggested that this morning." He watched as Francine rolled her eyes.

"Of course she did," she said, before letting her face relax in a smile. "I should have known."

Lee grinned at her, pleased to see that the competition Francine always felt with Amanda was nowhere near as intense as it had once been. The two women had settled into a strange friendship - they weren't close, but the animosity they had once felt for each other seemed to have been replaced with a healthy professional respect.

"Anyway," he began, trying again to hook up his computer. He was distracted mid-thought as he finally hooked up his network connection, and Francine leaned forward in her chair to plug in the notebook for him. Lee powered up and sat back in his chair. "Anyway, you never know, he may be knee deep in this stuff somehow." Absently, he checked his email, his brow wrinkling as a strange message appeared in his Inbox.

"What the hell…" he muttered, leaning forward, interrupting Francine mid-sentence. "Sorry, there's something really weird here. Take a look at this…."

Francine came around his desk and peered at his computer screen. "Watch your back, Scarecrow. There are eyes everywhere…" she read, her own forehead wrinkling in confusion. "I usually just get dirty jokes. What've you been up to?"

"I don't know. I wonder who the hell it's from."

"Try replying to it," Francine suggested.

Lee shook his head. "I don't like replying to stuff like this. It's weird." They both looked up at a tap on the door, and Amanda poked her head inside.

"Am I interrupting something?" she asked, and the two of them shook their heads.

"Come here and look at this." He watched as Amanda stood on the other side of him, her reaction similar to his and Francine's as she read the message.

"Strange. Who sent it?"

"We don't know."

"Why don't you reply to it?"

"Lee isn't comfortable with that," Francine put in, and Amanda smiled faintly at the sweet tone her coworker used to taunt her husband.

"Well, maybe if you hit the reply button, you'll know who it's from. Sometimes it shows up in the message," Amanda suggested, and Lee reluctantly did so. "Hm," she said, looking at his screen.

"What?"

"It says the message came from inside the Agency. See that tag at the end of the address? And it says at the top that the mail is internal."

Lee let out a long breath, leaning back in his chair. He looked at Amanda, at Francine, then he picked up the phone and called Pete Williams.

It was two o'clock before Lee finally managed to grab a sandwich and coffee at his desk. Amanda had brought it to him, her face showing signs of concern, as it always did when he worked through meals. She had nursed him through enough colds and viruses to know that when Lee skipped enough meals, he usually caught whatever was going around.

"You're going to get run down and then what good will you be?" she asked him, neatly folding his jacket and setting it over the back of a chair.

"I know, I know…." Lee grinned at her from across the room, suddenly. "Did it ever occur to you that I might just want you to nurse me back to health?"

"Several times," she admitted. "But you're out of luck this week. I've got a caseload that even the legendary Scarecrow would have a problem with. Someone's gone a little crazy on the job board."

She gave Lee a pointed look, and he let out a long breath. "It's only because you're capable," he said. "We're still on for tonight, aren't we?"

"I'm going to be there, even if you're not."

A beep made Lee look at his computer, and he reached over to check his email as he took a bite of ham and cheese on whole wheat. "Damn," he muttered. "Another message."

"Really?" Amanda sprung up from her chair, peering over Lee's shoulder at the screen.

"He wants to meet," Lee said, scanning the message. "Nine o'clock, near the Mall." He leaned back in his chair and looked at his wife. "Are you going to be lonely in that black nightgown?"

Lee leaned back in his chair, rubbing his forehead and closing his tired eyes. It had been an incredibly long day, and it wasn't close to over. He knew that there were probably only two or three people he could trust with this investigation. He knew that Anne Hendrickson, a slight, dark-haired agent from Pete Williams' group, was new to the Agency. But he couldn't discount what she'd told him - that she was sure that Sheila Marler was involved in the security breaches in some way. When Lee had called Pete Williams into his office, the other agent had been surprised at the allegations that Lee - trying to protect Anne - had made in her absence.

The door swung open and his wife breezed in, her usual energetic self. Lee caught a whiff of her perfume as she crossed the room, and he wished again that they could spend a quiet evening alone for once.

"What time are we leaving?" Amanda asked, dropping her purse on a chair.

"We?" Lee asked, his eyebrows raised. "I don't think the message said anything about you coming along."

"Lee…" Amanda faced him, her hands on her hips. "You are not going to meet this person alone. You know you need backup."

"Amanda, I'll take backup. You can go home and dig out that nice nightgown of yours and get a fire going."

She shook her head. "I'm going to be your backup."

"I don't think so. I'll take Scott Hanson with me."

Amanda drew her brows together. "When did you get to be so difficult?"

"When did you get to be so stubborn?"

"You're impossible."

Lee grinned. "You like impossible."

"You know if you don't bring me, I'll just follow you."

Lee laughed. "Now who's impossible?"

She crossed her arms over her chest. "What time do we leave?"

Lee looked at her for a moment, shaking his head. He sighed. "Eight thirty."

"I can't believe we had to cancel another dinner," Lee muttered, pocketing his keys. "Married people are supposed to go shopping for electronic equipment or wallpaper together, not stand in a park waiting for an informant."

Amanda laughed a little. "We can still have dinner. It'll just be a late one." She turned her head as she heard a telephone ringing. She and Lee looked at each other, confused.

"Where's that coming from?" Lee asked, looking around. His eyes came to rest on a bank of pay phones near the curb.

"I thought you couldn't do that anymore," Amanda said, shoving her hands into her pockets. "Call pay phones."

"Not those ones," Lee agreed, heading toward them. "And somehow I doubt it's the Phone Company, conducting a user survey." He reached out a hand and picked up the receiver. "Hello?"

The voice that met him was strange and deep - definitely digital - but the message was unmistakable. "Back off, Scarecrow, and take the Agency with you," it warned. "We know you think you're gaining on us," the voice says, "but you and Mrs. King have a long way to go yet. And you'd better watch your step."

"Who was it?" Amanda asked, hearing a loud click on the other end.

Lee shook his head, his brow wrinkling. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say it sounded like…Stephen Hawking."

"You mean computer-generated?" Amanda asked. Lee nodded.

"Weird," he muttered, shaking his head. "It told us to back off, and it knew about the Agency…"

"Really?" Amanda shook her head, then cast a glance behind her, feeling a sudden shiver run up her spine. "I don't like standing out here like this," she said, suddenly, feeling no comfort from the pistol holstered under her coat.

Lee nodded. "Let's get out of here," he agreed, his hand at the small of her back as they walked out of the square, back toward a busy street.

"I'm getting the boys to check out the phone," Lee said, dialing a number on his cell phone as he navigated the car through the dark streets.

"I wish you'd use hands-free," Amanda muttered, turning her face away.

Lee shot her a look across the car - both a warning that he didn't want to rehash the virtues of his cell phone and an indication that he couldn't talk now. She heard him give orders to someone in Surveillance, nearly running a red light as he told them which bank of phones he meant. Amanda closed her eyes and tried not to envision Lee's car meeting the back bumper of the car in front of them. Even after fifteen years, his driving habits sometimes set her teeth on edge.

He turned off his phone and tucked it between the seat and the gearshift. "There," he said, "all taken care of."

"Hm. So what do you think that was all about, anyway?" she asked, one eyebrow raised.

Lee shrugged. "Someone's playing a little game, I suppose."

"Do you have any ideas about who it is?"

"A couple," Lee conceded. "I had an interesting chat with Anne Hendrickson this afternoon."

"Anne…" Amanda fell silent, searching for a face to put to the name.

"She's on Pete's team. I don't know if you've ever met her, she hasn't been here long," Lee said. "Anyway, she had a couple of interesting things to point out."

"Like?" Amanda prompted, frustrated with Lee's vagueness.

"Like…that the codes Pete is putting up are what Anne would consider state-of-the-art, unbreakable encryption. No one should be able to bust through them."

"So how are they?" Amanda wanted to know. "The sweeps are still going on, aren't they?"

Lee nodded. He shook his head, puzzled. "Anne thinks it's someone on Pete's team."

"You mean Anne thinks it's Pete."

Lee shook his head. "She doesn't, actually. She thinks it's Sheila."

"Did she talk to Pete about it?"

"No, she came straight to me. And I know, you don't do that unless you've got a reason to suspect the person above you. But I have a hard time believing that Pete's that good an actor."

"How are you going to check it out?"

Lee let out a long breath. "I don't know."

Amanda was waiting patiently for Lee in the passenger's side of his car the next morning. She had heard the shrill ring of the telephone as she'd opened the car door, but she hadn't gone back inside. Instead, she'd leaned her head against the headrest and closed her eyes, thinking about the quick dinner she and Lee had shared the night before, in an effort to salvage their "date". Too-salty Chinese take-out and cold green tea had made it feel like the working dinner it had been. She couldn't wait for their trip to Europe.

Eventually, Lee came out of the house, his trench coat billowing behind him in a sudden gust of wind. Amanda smiled to herself a little. Her heart still gave a little jump every time she saw him.

"What's so amusing?" he asked as he slid into the driver's seat.

She shrugged, leaning across the gearshift to kiss his cheek. "Just…thinking. Mm. You smell nice."

He smiled at her, one eyebrow raised. "You'd better not start anything," he said, starting the car. "I need a clear head today."

She laughed and settled back into her seat. "Who was on the phone?"

"Graham, from Surveillance. He said the phone checked out clean, but he wasn't surprised. You don't need a blue box anymore to tap into a phone system."

"Computers again, huh?"

Lee shrugged. "Maybe. I don't know - that's one part of this whole thing I don't understand. I've got to leave that up to the experts, I guess."

"Hm."

"What?"

"Well, I was just thinking….It's hard to leave it up to the experts when someone's pointing a finger at one of them."

Lee just nodded. He was silent for most of the rest of the drive - Amanda knew he was thinking about who was involved in the breaches, and how. She'd been doing the same thing herself for what felt like days.

He turned into the Agency parking lot and looked at Amanda. "Billy's waiting upstairs for us. Do you think the two of you could try and figure some of this out?"

She nodded. "I'm sure we can. We'll give it a shot, anyway."

Lee stopped the car and leaned over to give her a quick kiss. "That's all I ask," he said, grinning as he pulled away and opened his car door.

Amanda parked her car in the wide, circular drive at the front of Senator Birdsell's mansion and climbed a few steps to the giant oak front doors. A butler answered moments after she rang the doorbell, his voice cool and formal.

"I'm Amanda King," she said. "The Senator is expecting me."

Even as she said it, she couldn't believe how strange things still sounded coming out of her mouth sometimes. She'd been a housewife when she'd started saying them - in many ways she still was that housewife, who looked at the Senator's house and thought what a job it must be to keep all the woodwork polished.

"Agent King," the Senator's deep voice made her turn, and she nodded and smiled at the handsome, white-haired man.

"Senator," she greeted, shaking the hand he offered. She had met him during a visit to the Agency - now that she thought about it, the visit had been with Pete's group.

"What did you want to see me about?" he asked, gesturing for her to sit in a large, leather wing chair.

Amanda cleared her throat, watching her posture as she settled into her seat. "Have you spoken to Lee Stetson today, sir?"

The senator nodded. "Yes, he called me this morning, about a security breach at the Agency. What do I have to do with any of it?"

"Well, sir, it's kind of a strange thing - a lot of files have been accessed, and your name is popping up the most often."

The senator's brows drew together in a frown. "Am I a suspect?"

"No. Absolutely not, sir. We're worried about your safety. We'd like to step up security around here a little until we can figure out why they're accessing files that contain information about you."

Senator Birdsell nodded, looking a little uncomfortable. "What is it…you think they're going to do?"

"We don't know. Has anything strange happened in the last few days - have you received any strange phone calls or letters? Email?"

"No. Nothing." The senator grinned, suddenly. "I couldn't download my email if I tried. I'll check with my staff, but they inform me of things like this all the time."

She nodded, thinking of Lee. "All right, Senator. A team is on its way over right away. They'll try to be as unobtrusive as possible - we don't want to call any attention to this. And it may turn out to be nothing." Amanda didn't add that the team was also a way of keeping an eye on the Senator's activities. If he was lying to them, she had no doubt they'd find out about it soon enough.

But her gut told her the Senator wasn't the problem. He was vocal, yes, but he had always had the Agency on his side.

Amanda stood with the senator, who again offered her his hand. "Thank you, Agent King."

She nodded. "We'll be in touch, sir."

Lee stood at the coffee station, pouring himself a cup of what he knew was stale coffee. His stomach lurched at the thought of drinking it, and something told him that any fuel it would give him would be false, but he needed the ritual. He was thinking.

He felt a presence beside him, and Anne Hendrickson was pouring herself a cup of hot water.

"Hello, Anne. How's it going?" he asked, casually, stirring nothing into his coffee.

"Fine, thanks." Anne nodded, averting her brown eyes, and reached for a tea bag out of the basket on the counter. "I need to amend my theory a bit."

Lee raised an eyebrow. "You do?"

Anne nodded, dunking the tea bag in her mug of hot water, leaning one hip against the counter as if she and Lee were discussing television from the night before. "I don't think she's working alone. Someone's running those breaches from outside."

"What makes you say that?"

"She's always with someone when they happen. Pete, me…Francine once. She's never at a computer when they happen."

Lee nodded. That in itself was suspicious to him.

"Do you think it's someone else from inside?"

Anne shrugged. "If she can give them the codes, it doesn't need to be. Does it?"

Lee watched as she tossed the tea bag into the garbage and walked away from him. "No," he said to himself, "it doesn't."

Amanda and Billy Melrose sat together in the Q Bureau, hunched over files and printouts from the past couple of days, consulting the ever-growing list of files that had been accessed, and what could be in them. She had come back to the Agency convinced that the Senator had no part in the breach - but she couldn't ignore that his name had surfaced too many times to be a coincidence.

"It's ridiculous," Amanda said when she saw the pile. "There's a mountain of information here…"

"I know," Billy said, sighing. "But all we can do is look at it all." He looked at the boxes sitting on the floor beside him. "You'd think as an intelligence organization we'd do better with this," he groused. "This is the fourth time in fifteen years we think we've had a leak like this."

Amanda's mouth curved in a small smile. "I know."

"I'd like to say that when Smyth was around this was different, but it wasn't," he continued, discarding a folder and picking up another.

"No," Amanda agreed. "Well. I guess it's just part of getting a large group of egos together. We spend so much time working an angle, someone's bound to think that they can work an angle here."

Billy nodded. "Especially if the dollar figure is right."

"That's what I don't understand," Amanda said, leaning back in her chair. "If they aren't stealing any specific information, where's the incentive?"

Billy shrugged. "You've got me."

"Unless this isn't about stealing information at all. It could be about something else altogether."

Billy frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Well, we're looking for a connection here, right? And maybe there isn't one. I mean, maybe there's a pattern to the files that were accessed, but maybe it's covering up something else that's going on."

"That's a possibility. But don't get ahead of yourself, Amanda. We—" Billy paused as the telephone rang and Amanda scooped up the receiver. He watched her eyes widen in surprise, she nodded and jotted something down on a piece of paper.

"They think they know where the email is coming from," she said when she hung up the phone. "They gave me an address."

"Great. Are you going to try it?"

"Not yet. I want to see if we can figure out who it is, first." She paused, about to defer to Billy, but catching herself. He was nodding, agreeing with her, and turned back to the list of files.

Two hours later, she came back to her desk with two cups of coffee to find her mail notification blinking. She leaned over to check it, her brows furrowing as the message popped up.

"Uh-oh," she said, setting down her coffee cup. "I've got one, now."

"What, a message?"

"Yeah. Whoever it is has decided to let me tell Lee they should meet." She shook her head, picking up the telephone to call her husband. "What am I, a dating service?"

Lee was nonplused when she told him about the message. "I'm supposed to drag myself out there so that he can decide to phone me again?"

"Apparently."

"Are you going to reply and ask him that?"

Amanda laughed. "No. I don't think we should let on that we can trace them until we have a better idea of who it might be."

"Yeah, you're probably right." Lee let out a long breath. "How are you and Billy doing?"

"Okay. We haven't figured out a connection yet, but I'm sure we'll get there." She paused. "There is one thing about this message, Lee…."

"What's that?"

"He's pretty specific about you going alone."

"Well," Lee chuckled. "I guess it only takes one of us to answer a phone."

"I don't like it," Amanda said. "You shouldn't be going by yourself."

"I won't. I'll handle it." His tone said to her that she wouldn't be going with him, and she let out a frustrated breath. "I'll park a team nearby, I promise."

"You'd better, Stetson. We're planning a vacation, and you know what that means - that's just like announcing your retirement in this business, and then waiting for someone to finish you off."

Lee laughed, even though it was an unusually dark thing for Amanda to say.

"I'll be careful," he said. "I like the idea of you and me in Paris too much not to be."

Billy leaned back in his chair, rubbing his tired eyes. The Q Bureau looked as if a tornado had blown through - files were strewn over every surface, grouped in a kind of organized chaos that made him feel as if he and Amanda were treading water. Lee had come up for a couple of hours after lunch and helped them sort through some of them, and Amanda had run a search on the computer for keywords they had thought were significant. But it was five o'clock and they hadn't come up with anything yet.

Amanda sighed, leaning back in her chair and looking around the office, thinking. Billy was engrossed in the list in front of him, scanning keywords. He was so intent on what he was doing that Amanda's sudden movement startled him.

"Wait a minute," Amanda said, flipping through a stack of files in a hurry. "You know where the Senator fits in? He isn't as much of a red herring as we'd thought…."

"What do you mean?" Billy asked, rubbing a hand over his face.

"ACM. Remember ACM? He was a backer. I'm sure of it. I'm sure I've seen it somewhere…." She flipped through a file, scanning the page. "A-ha!"

"So?"

"So I think I know who the mystery messenger is," she said, turning to her computer. "Where's that address?"

"Right…here…" Billy handed her a Post-it Note from a pad near his elbow, and watched as Amanda typed the words You won this from Jamie in a craps game.

"What the hell does that mean?" Billy wondered, one eyebrow raised.

"You'll see in a few minutes. If I'm right."

Five minutes later, Amanda's mail notification beeped. Billy watched her eyes widen as a message appeared and they read two words:

His bike.