I've been mulling over these guys' misadventures for weeks, but hardly had a chance to make any progress on typing them up. Real life is a major distraction… What I am posting here is the first half of the originally planned chapter; by the time I'd written and repeatedly edited 3-4 pages' worth of it trying to kick it into shape, it was pretty clear that what I'd meant to fit into one chapter was going to make for a humongously long stretch. This bit was more challenging than the next one, for both (fake-)technology and "morality" reasons – getting Bruce and Selina to co-operate with a spy agency is not an easy proposition in today's NSA-tracked world – so I hope to get the next one up soon-ish, which is also when I hope to respond to the faithful reviewers who left thought-provoking and helpful comments on the previous couple of chapters.
By the way, thank you guys for correcting my ignorance re Douglas Fredericks and Barbara Gordon! I've changed their names in ch5 now, better late than never; at least I've done it within the 90-day editing time allowed by ffnet. And it was great getting readers' reactions to my take on Selina's family history. If I still have a pulse by the weekend, I'll (finally) reply to your comments about Selina's parents and their respective failings.
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xxx
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The beginning of a beautiful friendship is about as far from the gist of this meeting as things can get... unsurprisingly. Granted, neither side has told the other to fuck off - so far being the operative words five minutes into the meeting - but with the verbal sniping having escalated to the equivalent of a proper firefight by that point, she cannot rule it out yet.
xxx
In a blatantly purposeful gesture, the CIA had given them an appointment in an unmarked office on Park Row overlooking City Hall and what used to be called City Hall Park, and now bears the name of Batman Square. Reinforcing the crude hint, the brooding caped statue stared them down from the round lawn in the centre of the park as they approached. The early idea of keeping it in the City Hall atrium had quickly crumbled under a twin influx of Gothamites who kept bringing flowers and of tourists who kept taking snaps, to a point when city authorities saw that the modest annual expense of cleaning patina and pigeon shit off the burnished bronze was a minor nuisance compared to the visitors constantly milling inside.
For Bruce, the nuisance factor is the reverse. He would be OK with a likeness of his alter ego gracing the inside of a building he may never enter, but being greeted by the artefact as the focal point of a public park made him miss a step - and, if Selina's Ray-Bans did not deceive her, seeing the heap of flowers at its feet made him blush. Still, it would take a lot more than a statue to unsettle him enough for others to notice. Bruce might be mentally cringing, but looked glacially calm and acted completely relaxed as they entered the office complex, got directions at the anonymous front desk, and rode the elevator to the nondescript light-grey, glass-walled meeting room.
What made him scowl instead was their hosts' delayed arrival: well-schooled in power play, he knew it to be a display of tactical superiority, and was seething within two minutes. Selina passed the time scanning the room for cameras and other security equipment, but without much success: whatever there was, was likely embedded in the walls, the ceiling, the table, or the wall-mounted screen, so as to be undetectable upon casual inspection - and she lacked the tools and the time to make a closer one.
xxx
The glass wall has a matte finishing from about waist level up to six feet; thus all they see of their approaching hosts are two pairs of grey-upholstered legs and the top of a dark head with neat corn rows, an unlikely hairstyle for a quasi-military institution. But the salt-and-pepper-haired, stout character who enters the room first, ahead of the corn-rowed youngster, is every bit the picture of the old guard.
"Good afternoon." It sounds more like an order than a salutation. The younger guy limits his greeting to a discreet smile. "I am Deputy Director Charles Wrigley, of the Special Activities Division."
"Like the gum?" Selina prompts. It is the least she can do to repay him for holding the meeting next door to Batman Square.
"Exactly," is Wrigley's flat reply. "No relation."
Obviously, she thinks; or else you wouldn't have had to make a living at a spy agency.
"This is Thomas Kettering," Wrigley goes on with a fractional nod in the other guy's direction, "from Science and Technology." His voice is stuck in pissed-off mode. "They interface with the people who lost our data."
"So the famous misplaced asset is a chunk of data processed by Palantir?"
She has no idea what in hell Palantir is, or how Bruce has made the connection from hearing two vague-ish sentences, but is perversely pleased to see Wrigley take it as an offence.
"We'll get to that, Mr Wayne." He stresses the name in petty retaliation. "Anyway, thank you for coming," he adds with a hint of a sneer, the first departure from the perma-grumble. As if they had much choice.
"The pleasure is all yours," Bruce shoots back. She smirks; he narrowly beat her to saying the retort out loud. Kettering's mouth quirks up just enough for Selina to notice; Wrigley's face remains set as Bruce continues. "Provided that you refer to us coming here. If you mean back at the hotel, then I guess it was mostly ours."
Selina and Kettering let out simultaneous snorts. Wrigley's face goes red; surely more from anger than embarrassment, but this is a direct hit either way – and he totally invited it.
Bruce is not one to give away a tactical lead. "I was hoping that the world's greatest intelligence agency wouldn't be so... obvious as to bug the suite you booked for us."
Wrigley has had no time to recover; his response is pitifully lame. "It was put there as a test. We needed to see if you're good enough."
"Well, were we?" All earnest curiosity; Bruce is so enjoying this. Kettering takes advantage of his position next to Wrigley, leaning back in the chair so as to be out of his line of sight, to relish a silent chuckle. Wrigley has managed to stay stony-faced, but Selina thinks she can see the flush deepening under the leathery skin.
She has to give the man some credit for tenacity; he does his best to resume what, for him, has quickly become a losing battle.
"Whether you are or not, you're all we have to work with at the moment."
It is a less inviting target for a return salvo, but Selina won't let it slip. "What, your several thousand highly skilled agents aren't up to it?"
"We have our reasons to need... outside involvement in this case, Miss Kyle."
She keeps her voice level, but cannot keep the distaste out of her tone. "That'll be Mrs Wainwright, please. The reason, I take it, is that you need someone disposable."
"We need civilians, but we need civilians who have the necessary skills and are good at... dissembling. You, Miss... Mrs Wainwright, have spent at least ten years in Gotham successfully posing as an innocent using various identities while building a remarkable career in theft. And Mr Wayne here..." Wrigley may have given in on her name, but not on Bruce's. Presumably, seeing from the opening exchange that he may not succeed in intimidating Bruce into cooperation, the bastard now plans to annoy him into it. "...has both maintained a very... challenging double identity and has also successfully staged his own death, though I really cannot see why he did it."
"I did it to get a life," Bruce retorts. "I realise it's an alien concept to you... sir."
It is the sir, seemingly respectful but dripping with sarcasm, that probably angers Wrigley most, judging by the timing of his scowl; but once again he cannot muster a suitable comeback, allowing Bruce to press his advantage.
"It looks like you've got the wrong people, anyway. We didn't know we were signing up for an acting job. If you need actors, you should call that Chris Hathaway guy who played me in the movie."
"I probably should, seeing what you are like." Wrigley's attempt at a stinging retort comes off embarrassingly weak. "Unfortunately, he probably wouldn't know the first thing about hacking, picking locks, and other illegal activities you two are good at."
"There are any number of hackers you could have blackmailed and an equally big number of convicted criminals you could have bribed," Selina suggests. She is tempted to say that the so-called illegal activities are widely practiced by Mr Wrigley's agency and its sister institutions with impunity, but drops it, taking Wrigley's glare as a warning.
"As I mentioned," he grinds out, "we need civilians who have both the required technical skills and the... impersonation ability. Am I making myself clear?"
"Perfectly, sir." With his soothing tone, Bruce has once again managed to make a nominally deferential remark sound disparaging. Still, either because the sarcasm is lost on Wrigley or because he is getting tired of the unevenly matched verbal fight with the two of them, he just pushes on.
"Good. We can finally discuss the task at hand." He opens a plastic folder; next to him, Kettering takes it as a cue to power up his tablet. "Several days ago," Wrigley continues, "someone, likely an insider, stole a copy of a top secret database we've been working on for the past couple of years..."
Bruce interrupts him mid-sentence.
"Is this about Robert Sutcliffe?"
Wrigley may not have been alarmed by the seemingly innocent question, but Selina wonders what variation on go fuck yourself he is about to hear next if the guess turns out to be correct.
"Well..." he starts.
Bruce takes it better than she expected. Rather than responding with elaborate profanity, he simply gets up to leave. "We aren't going to help you catch him."
Selina has just got up herself when Wrigley breaks down.
"Wait!.." he snaps. Bruce may have been bluffing, but either way, the game of chicken has an instant and obvious loser; obvious even to Wrigley himself. "This is not – about – fucking – Sutcliffe." He is practically spitting out the words.
"That's a relief. I don't think he's that into me," Bruce says lightly as he settles back into the chair.
Poor Wrigley, who once again is in a sorry minority, the only one in the room neither grinning like Bruce nor snorting with laughter like Selina and Kettering. The only discernible reaction on his part is his face going a vivid shade of crimson, but his rage is impotent; by now it is clear to everyone present that he is not the one calling the shots in this meeting.
"It is very likely that Sutcliffe stole it given the timing of his escape to Hong Kong, but our priority concern right now is getting our database back. It's our database, not the NSA's," he repeats. "Naturally, if you find Sutcliffe it's your duty to - "
The afterthought was a mistake, as Bruce quickly demonstrates by interrupting him again, no apologies, not even a sir this time. "No way we'll be lifting a finger to find him. And there's not much of a chance Sutcliffe stole it, he's never worked for you."
"You know that Palantir manages both CIA and NSA data," Wrigley mutters ominously.
Kettering, seeing that things are heating up again, decides to offer a neutral explanation. "They do most data processing at client sites but we let them establish a hook-up between the temporary office we lent them at Langley and their HQ in Palo Alto to help speed up the project soon after they started this spring, or else they said the data tagging alone would take months. It was all encrypted, of course, and they've assured us it was hack-proof and insisted that they keep firewalls around each agency's material. But as an NSA contractor who also regularly dealt with Palantir, Sutcliffe may have used a combination of his security clearance and straight hacking to get access."
Bruce does not answer, but his face has don't bullshit me written all over it. Still, he decides to lets it slip. "What sort of database?"
"As I was saying before you interrupted me," Wrigley cuts in again, "for the past couple of years we've been collating an integrated database of international arms dealers. Meaning black market, not the official government sellers. Types of weapons, quantities, prices, known sources, names and details of contacts, known transit routes, known buyers. We've always kept track of such data, but until the Matrix Project it was just a mass of separate files by region or by seller, and now we've finally been able to build a, well, matrix of worldwide flows, so we can see which dealer supplies to multiple buyers and which buyers use multiple dealers, which in turn gives us much better estimates both of the dealers' procurement channels so we can catch them, and of the strength of the criminal and terrorist groups that buy from them so we can calibrate our responses. This way we've already been able to track down a number of dirty bombs, stop ground-to-ground missiles from being smuggled into the US in a mini-submarine, confiscate a number of illegal firearms shipments... Palantir also pointed to the links they've been picking up between the arms trade and drugs trade flows, so the latest stage of the Matrix Project should be integrating this database with the global database on the drugs trade that they've likewise been collating and cross-referencing for us. It was essential to use them to process these data, considering their skills, but in retrospect it exposed us to excessive risk."
"If you mean it would have been safe without their involvement... sir... you're probably overestimating your IT security."
This gets the energetic opposition of Kettering rather than Wrigley; Selina is surprised before she remembers Wrigley's introduction of the man as a techie.
"With all due respect, Mr Wainwright..." At least he does not rub in the Wayne part. "Our databases, and our systems in general, have never been successfully hacked. Unlike those at the Ministry of Defence..." He pauses, seeing Bruce's sceptical expression.
"Are you sure, Mr Kettering?" Bruce sounds unexpectedly nice, but Selina can tell that he is casting a baited hook.
Kettering chews on his lower lip for a second. "There was one isolated incident ten years ago where we did not catch the culprit, but since then..."
"Precisely," Bruce cuts in, still quietly but smugly this time. "To be exact, it was not one but four incidents in as many months starting eleven years ago. I suppose you were still at college then, so I can't blame you for a bit of confusion about the details."
"It was never known outside – " Kettering starts before his expression changes from disbelief to suspicion to something resembling awe.
By the time Wrigley has caught the drift and jumped in with a freshly-pissed-off "How do you know?" directed at Bruce, Kettering has overcome his amazement enough to say it out loud.
"You were the Shadow."
"The what?" Wrigley barks.
Kettering gives up on trying to hide his embarrassment at his superior's chronic cluelessness. "The Shadow, sir, the hacker who breached our systems between late 2002 and early 2003. The one who was never - "
Wrigley may have been bruised, but when he has a provocation spelled out for him in three-foot letters, he still comes back fighting, no matter how steeply uphill the battle - or how pointless his punch.
"Give me one reason," he growls, so angrily that he loses his voice and has to start again. "Give me one reason, Mr Wayne, why I shouldn't have you arrested right now."
Selina, excluded from the menace, feels free to retaliate on Bruce's behalf. "I'll give you two, sir," she says sweetly, taking a lesson from Bruce's book of mock politeness. "First, now that we have been admitted into the country as Swiss citizens under our new names, there are no legal grounds you can detain us on. I know you can still try to get me arrested on old charges, but there is nothing you can pin on him to justify an arrest warrant. And I promise you, the press in Europe will know about this the moment it happens." Which is a slight exaggeration, but not an unfounded threat: Theo has assured them, as a safeguard, that if they do not check in with him that evening, he will be on the phone to The Guardian. "And the breaking story they'll run will be that you detained Bruce Wayne of Wayne Enterprises in Guantanamo for the past year. Good luck dealing with the fallout. And second," she finishes, though she can see that her argument has already knocked the wind out of Wrigley's scare tactics, "you'll still need disposable assets to do your job for you. I wonder who you'll find at short notice and with a fresh scandal breaking... sir."
"It's called deniable assets... Mrs Wainwright. And what you're saying is pure blackmail."
Verbal sparring is not Wrigley's forte despite his perseverance at it, and she cannot help taking advantage. "It's called symmetric warfare, sir. And I know it should be deniable assets, but I think your concern for our well-being is limited enough to warrant my confusing the term."
Wrigley is satisfyingly silent; Bruce gives her a few seconds to savour her win before asking the next question, pointedly looking at Kettering.
"Even with the database accessible to Palantir off-site, the system access logs they've always bragged about should be enough to catch the thief, or at least put together a list of suspects. Other than Sutcliffe, who is obviously the Number One suspect for everything," he adds flippantly.
Wrigley, who she half expected to rush in again like a suicidal Energizer bunny, is still busy gathering his wits, and Kettering apparently does not have strong feelings on the subject of NSA whistleblowers, so his answer is pure business.
"That's the problem. From the log alone, there are several hundred people who had access to it. Starting from Palantir programmers and senior staff, plus our directors and managers here, staff in the operational directorates, and undercover agents. Potentially, in theory, every one of them is a suspect. Whoever did it was smart enough or had enough of a high-level clearance to be able to tweak the log to hide the fact that they replicated it, but knowing it doesn't narrow the field much."
Now this explains why they needed civilians, as Wrigley put it. "Which means that until you find the thief, you can't even trust your own people." She looks at Kettering but says it more for Wrigley's benefit, to keep his bullying in check. Wrigley keeps scowling but says nothing.
"I can see why it is urgent to find the thief," she goes on, still addressing Kettering. "But why is it so urgent to recover the database as well? Presumably the copy at Palantir..." - whatever that is - "is still intact?"
Kettering looks mortified – and when he answers, he sounds devastated.
"We still have a copy, yes. But the database itself is a huge danger to our staff and to undercover agents. You see, to minimise the risk of security breaches and guarantee platform-independent data protection, we suggested replacing administrator-set access privileges and passwords with fingerprint scans, and hard-coded the digitised scans for all authorised users into the database code. We need to add and delete users occasionally but it's updated weekly anyway so there wasn't much extra effort in terms of maintenance. It's less of an issue for headquarters staff, but puts all our field operatives - and that's a few hundred people - at a huge risk. Like I say, whoever stole it must have been really good at programming, so they'll know about the hard-coding and will use it. We've taken it offline and are rewriting the code, but it'll take..."
Selina tunes him out for a second to catch up with the meaning. Her techno-geekery, while extensive in relation to hardware, is somewhat lacking where software is concerned; but Bruce, who caught the implication the instant Kettering said "hard-coded", has been slowly shaking his head, hand over his eyes, in shocked disbelief - and by the time she has understood it too, she feels like mirroring his gesture.
So the arrogant fools have sponsored the creation of a global who's-who of the illegal weapons trade that would be a Holy Grail to any terrorist group, and in trying to make it unbreakable they have made it much more valuable by adding a collection of their agents' fingerprints as a bonus. Thus an even greater need to use outsiders for the job: any agents who had access to it, whose fingerprint scans were hardwired into the programming, would be compromised. And who knows what other means could be found to cross-check the scans against other data sources that might store them alongside photographs or names to triangulate the agents' identities. All it would take would be a good hacker or two, and as Kettering pointed out, whoever stole it must be a good hacker by definition.
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TBC
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xxx
Casus Belli is the Latin for "the case for war" which is also used to mean "the cause of war".
The beginning of a beautiful friendship is the (partial) last line in the movie classic Casablanca.
Palantir the CIA-funded data mining company is real, and I've tried to stay close to known facts in my allusions to them, including what they do and who their clients are. What I know about them comes from an excellent Forbes brief (at [http www] forbes*com/sites/andygreenberg/20 13/08/14/agent-of-intelligen ce-how-a-deviant-philosopher-built-palantir-a-cia- funded-data-mining-juggernaut/ - once you've corrected the syntax at the front); apologies for not offering more details at this point, but I hope to clear up a few things, and add a couple of curious facts, in the next chapter by way of exposition or, failing that, as a footnote (same goes for CIA departments such as the [both real] Special Activities Division aka SAD, who I owe an apology to for saddling it with a dick of a boss, and Science and Technology Division… I am too brain-dead to even type up a proper footnote for those). The "Matrix Project" database, together with its flawed coding, is, of course, imaginary… as far as I know.