“You’re the computer geniuses,” Letty said. “Why not just grab the gas-system computers before Ordinary People do? Lock them out?”

  “Because they may already be in there and they’d see us,” the woman said. “If they see us, they might pull the plug and we don’t even know exactly where they’d pull it. It’s a cold winter in Minneapolis, Rochester, Bozeman. So cold the ski trips are down in Jackson and Big Sky. It was twelve below zero at the Butte airport last night.”

  “Okay. So why not figure out who Ordinary People are and sic the FBI on them?”

  The man nodded. “The FBI is not known for its subtlety. They’d start an investigation, and about the time they interviewed their second subject, the word would get out, and OP might very well shut down a city.”

  NSA had been aware of the group for some time, but OP was not a small, well-organized cell. They were an amorphous group, with hackers coming and going. There were apparently different factions—one wing purely political, another environmental, some were anti-gun, there was a pro-choice faction.

  “We could figure out who they all are, separate the factions, if we had the time. Maybe . . . three or four months, or a year?” the woman said. “We might have a week or two . . . The current cold front is clearing out, but there’s another one behind it.”

  “And I can fix that by . . .”

  “By doing what you just suggested that we do—figure out who they are. You’ll do that by hooking up with one of our computer specialists,” the man said. “You’re his girlfriend. He drives an old, rehabbed Toyota Tundra, he has tattoos, he’s got very strong computer skills, he talks the hacker talk. We put you where we think Ordinary People might be . . . dangle him like a trout fly . . . and hope that he gets a bite. Hope you two can identify them.”

  “That sounds like a major fail,” Letty said. “I’ve had a couple courses in JavaScript and Python, but I’m no kind of programmer.”

  “We don’t want you for your computer skills. We want you for your gun skills and your believability as a very young and somewhat cheesy girlfriend. Somebody who couldn’t possibly be a federal officer,” the man said. “We want you to take care of our guy while he figures out who the Ordinary People are. If Ordinary People are planning to take down a natural gas system, that means they’re dangerous folks who are willing to kill for money. Or have become that way. Our boy is a little . . . not to say wimpy, but . . .”

  “Wimpy. Despite the macho truck and tattoos, he’s a wimp,” the woman said. “He’s agreed to do this, after some arm-twisting, but he’s scared. We need somebody to take care of him.”

  “I’m not going to sleep with him,” Letty said.

  The woman winced. “We’d never suggest such a thing.”

  She said it in a way that made Letty think they actually had thought of such a thing. “That’s good, because I won’t.”

  Colles: “Understood. If he jumps you, some people will hang for it.” His eyes scanned the two suits, who both nodded.

  “One last question,” Letty said. “If you’re so hot to get to Ordinary People, why not go after Pastek? Grind him down. If he was upset by having to pay twenty-five million, how upset would he be if you threatened to put him away for five to ten? And take his company away from him?”

  “There are other issues,” the woman said. She glanced at Colles. “Having to do with campaign contributions. Pastek’s campaign contributions.”

  Same old story, in certain quarters of America, like the one they were sitting in. Money bites. “Okay.”

  The man asked, “So. You’ll do it?”

  “If Senator Colles asks me to,” Letty said.

  “I’m asking,” Colles said.

  “Then I’m in,” Letty said. She turned to Colles. “I assume I’ll get a heavier briefing than this. Where and when do I get that?”

  “At Homeland,” Colles said, meaning the Department of Homeland Security. “Tomorrow. Time is short. You’ll have homework to do when you’re on the road. We don’t have time to give you everything tomorrow.”

  The woman said, “I’ll be at the briefing with Rod Baxter and some other folks.”

  “Baxter is . . .”

  “Your companion.”

  “What’s your name?” Letty asked.

  The woman had to think a moment, then said, “Mary . . . Johnson.”

  “Who will I be reporting to?”

  “Me,” Johnson said.

  Letty turned to Colles and said, “Great. I’m reporting to somebody who lies about her name.”

  Colles: “Yeah. That’s true.”

  Letty held his eyes for a moment. “They’re lying about something else, too. Are they going to tell me what it is?”

  Colles shook his head: “I don’t know about that. All I know is what you’ve heard.”

  Johnson said, “We’re not lying about anything. Cross my heart. We’ll be briefing you tomorrow. Today, you need to buy clothes and get ready to fly. Like Senator Colles said, we have no time. No time. We’re posing your associate as a rogue programmer-for-hire, down on his luck, on the run from law enforcement after a ransomware attempt went wrong. We haven’t finished that cover yet, we’re putting the final touches on it. It’s not something we usually do. We’re talking to some . . . mmm . . . other people about that. But you will be his college-dropout girlfriend and maybe something a little rough . . . like, mmm, a barmaid. Or a scullery maid.”

  “I don’t think they’re called that anymore,” Letty said.

  “Whatever. You need the clothes to fit that image, that background. Get some today, you’ll be compensated later,” Johnson said. “You’ll be flying out of here tomorrow night, to Orlando, Florida.”

  The man, who’d not yet introduced himself with a fake name, said, “Ordinary People are based in Los Angeles. They might be planning to attack a northern city, but we don’t know if they’ve even bothered to go to any of them. This is all computer stuff—they don’t need to go there.”

  “If they’re in LA, why am I flying to Florida?”

  “The Orlando stop is part of your developing cover,” Johnson said. “We’ll know more about that by tomorrow. Your partner, Rod Baxter, went to school at the University of Florida in Gainesville, which is just north of Orlando. He spent three years there, in grad school; he knows it well. You need to give it a look. You’ll be driving his truck from Orlando to LA—the truck should arrive in Orlando late tonight or early tomorrow morning; we’re having it driven down there. We’re hoping you can drive it on to Pasadena, to Caltech, in three days. The drive is part of your cover.”

  The man added, “We also have a lot of material for you to absorb—your new identity, what information we have on the Ordinary People, investigative processes, your law enforcement contacts on the West Coast, emergency contacts with us . . . and so on. Your time in the truck will be busy.”

  “Excuse me for saying this, but it doesn’t sound to me like you’re even sure Ordinary People is going to attack anyone,” Letty said. “It sounds like you’re guessing.”

  The two spooks nodded, and Johnson said, “That’s fair. Let me put it this way—we know for sure that they’re researching natural gas systems. We know that a couple of years ago, the natural gas system in Aspen was sabotaged and the gas companies had a heck of a time getting it back up. We know for sure that Ordinary People has done at least one spectacular ransomware attack. What do you think they might be doing?”

  Letty pushed out her lower lip, thought about it, and nodded: “I guess you have to look at it. If that’s not the part you’re lying about.”

  The man said, “About the tattoos . . .”

  * * *

  Jeff Toski was a burly tattoo artist with a full russet neck beard, peering blue eyes, and a nose that might have sniffed too much ale. He lived just east of the Anacostia River in Northwest DC, with a tattoo parlor in the front porch of his house. He put Letty in his chair and said, “I don’t fool around, I’m good at this. You’re one of the Specials, so you’ve got some choices.”

  “Like what?”

  He had three ranges of inks, he said: standard tattoo, which was permanent (“Don’t believe that Dr. Tattoff bullshit”), an ink for fake tattoos, which essentially sat on the surface of the skin, and Derma-Oil, a new ink made of a natural plant-based pigment that literally got eaten by the wearer’s body.

  “The fake will look good for up to two weeks, with a daily shower. After that, it doesn’t look so good, and with a daily shower, it’ll be gone in three weeks. Derma-Oil will look good for six to eight months, depending on your body chemistry, and not so good for another two, and then it’s gone. Not a trace. When it’s there, it’s a real tattoo: you can get in a shower with . . . whoever . . . and they can scrub your tattoo as much as they want, and it will not come off. ’Cause it’s real.”

  “I don’t want to go permanent,” Letty said.

  “Then I’d go with the Derma-Oil. I’ve done a few of these Specials and have an idea of what you guys are up to,” Toski said. “Undercover, the fakes would be kinda . . . scary. ’Cause they’re not real.”

  “Then let’s do that, the Derma-Oil,” Letty said. “Is it going to hurt?”

  “A little. Not too bad.”

  With further consultation, Letty got a pair of raven wings in black ink that covered the entire top of her back; a miniature yellow-and-black tiger swallowtail butterfly inside the point of her hipbone, which might peek out of a pair of low-rise jeans; and a Buddhist saying on the inside of her right forearm: All Wrongdoing Arises Because of Mind. That tattoo was in what Toski said was Sanskrit, and as far as Letty—or Toski—knew, it could actually say, Death to All White-Eyed Devils. But then, maybe it really did evoke the Buddha.

  The tattooing did hurt; it didn’t feel like millions of needle pricks, but more as though somebody was scraping her skin with a piece of glass. When each of the tattoos was done, Toski washed them first with a disinfectant and then with an antibiotic. When she told him she’d be doing some flying and driving, he also gave her a package of peel-off plastic sheets that combined a light adhesive with a topical anesthetic.

  “The tats will be raw for two or three days, they’ll weep some, but the sheets will keep that from soaking into your clothes and keep you from itching too bad,” Toski said. “They should be fine after that. They’re shallower than standard tattoos, so they’re not raw as long.”

  When she was dressed, Toski said, “A little advice. Come back when you’re done with the job, and I’ll make the butterfly permanent. That is awesomely hot.”

  * * *

  On most of her work for Homeland Security, Letty had been briefed by Billy Greet, a DHS executive, now a friend of hers. Greet and Letty’s frequent investigative partner, John Kaiser, had developed an on-again, off-again relationship that would have been deeply frowned upon in the halls of Homeland Security, had anyone other than the three of them known about it.

  When Letty left Toski’s shop, she found Greet on the street, waiting, hands stuffed in her jeans pockets. She was wearing a fashionable High Plains Drifter pre-dirtied jacket against the February chill, and her aviator sunglasses. Her hair was pulled back in her usual tight bun, with a few strands floating loose; she looked like a harried third grade teacher after a bad day. “I don’t like any of this, what I know about it,” Greet said. “But if you’re doing it, I need to take you shopping for your cover.”

  “Then you need to take me shopping,” Letty said. “ ’Cause I’m doing it.”

  * * *

  Greet drove them to an Arlington Goodwill store, where they spent an hour picking through, discussing, and choosing her new old clothes. They didn’t need a lot, but it had to be right. An old jean jacket, tee-shirts, much-washed bras, skinny jeans worn and holed, boots and socks, a fleece-lined trucker jacket for cool weather. A faded blue trucker hat with “USA” on the front panel.

  She bought six pairs of faded different-colored Ralph Lauren men’s briefs. The briefs rode a half-inch higher than the jeans in the back; and the jeans rode low enough in the front to allow the butterfly some freedom. They added a pair of silver loop earrings, a ring with a cracked glass emerald and a fake-gold brass setting, which fit nicely on Letty’s right index finger, and a battered REI Co-Op duffel in dog-shit yellow to carry the clothes.

  “Okay, you’re sleazy,” Greet said, taking her in. “Let’s buy it and get over to your place and sort it out.”

  At her apartment, Letty changed into the Goodwill clothes and jewelry—Greet insisted on soaking the earrings in a dish of alcohol before Letty snapped them into her ears. “That raven on your back is terrific, but a little goop is bleeding through the dressings,” Greet said. Letty was walking around in a pair of red Ralph Lauren shorts and a pinkish bra that may have become pinkish when it was washed with something like the red Ralph Lauren shorts.

  Greet helped peel off the plastic anesthetic sheets and apply new ones. “When your back heals, get yourself one of those off-the-shoulder peasant tops. It’ll be warm out in California and it’ll look cheap. That’s you. Let the raven fly.”

  * * *

  That night, Letty told John Kaiser as much as he needed to know to provide cogent advice.

  “My advice is this. Undercover guys look like everything from movie executives to street people. And housewives,” Kaiser said. He was an ex–Delta operator who’d gone undercover in several different Middle Eastern countries, as well as Sweden and Canada. “It’s not like on TV where everybody has permanent three-day beards and dark glasses and foreign noses.”

  “Foreign noses?”

  “Always. On TV. Foreign noses,” Kaiser said. “Anyway, what undercover people never are—in my experience—is gimps.”

  “There’s a choice, socially sensitive word,” Letty said. “Gimps.”

  “Okay. They’re never differently abled. If you really want to sell yourself, you could be differently abled.”

  “How would I do that in a non-fake way?” Letty asked.

  “I was hoping you’d ask. I’ll be right back.” Kaiser disappeared into his bedroom and came back with an elastic knee brace and a roll of surgical tape. “Pull your pant leg up.”

  Letty had learned not to question him on such things, so she pulled her pant leg up. With her leg straight, Kaiser put a marble-sized knot of tape behind her knee, took three wraps of the soft tape around her knee to hold it in place, then had her pull the brace over her foot, and up to, and over, her knee.

  “You were hiking, tried to jump across a creek and tore your MCL,” Kaiser said. “Pull down your pant leg and walk around.”

  Letty did; and she limped. Couldn’t help herself. “That’s really annoying.”

  “I imagine being a gimp is annoying,” Kaiser said. “But it gets you something you need.”

  “That would be?”

  “A cane,” Kaiser said. “A nonobvious weapon . . . and non-lethal, if you need it to be nonlethal.”

  “I’m not that good with a stick yet . . .”

  “You’re good enough. Way good enough. You won’t be stick-fighting somebody like me,” Kaiser said. He’d been giving her lessons. “You’ll be beating some IT nerd over the head.”

  “I’ll think about it,” she said.

  “I’ll be really disappointed if you don’t do it,” Kaiser said, settling back on his heels. “Undercover . . . you might not be able to keep your gun. But who’s going to take a cane away from a gimp? A girl-gimp?”

  “I suppose you’ve got the perfect stick,” Letty said. Then, “Wait: you were hoping I’d ask.”

  “Exactly.” He went back to his bedroom, and Letty could hear him rummaging around. A moment later, he came back with a dark brown wooden cane with knobs along its length and a right-angled steel grip that looked like an ice-climbing pick.

  “Blackthorn,” he said, running his finger down its bumpy length. “Bought it in London. Hit somebody with the stick hard enough, you’ll break his arm or kneecap, crack his skull. Hit him with the grip, either the blunt end or the point, you’ll kill him. Heavy as a hammer, with a three-foot handle.”

  “Killing is easier with a gun,” Letty said.

  “Sure. If you don’t have to drive back to your hotel to get it.”

  Three

  When Letty limped into the Homeland Security briefing room the morning after the interview at Colles’s office, she found Mary Johnson talking with a fiftyish man. He was thin as a pencil, wearing rimless glasses over a dry, narrow face, and a forest-green suit that Robin Hood might have envied; a bystander might have thought him an Ivy League professor of some archaic and useless subject near the top of an ivory tower.

  A younger man, thirtysomething and bulky, with dark loops under his eyes, and thick black hair so heavily gelled that it glittered under the overhead lights, was slumped in a plastic chair behind the thin man.

  The younger man—Letty hoped he wasn’t her new partner but suspected that he was—looked at her with a nearsighted squint. He was in shirtsleeves, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, showing tattoos on both arms. As she walked by him to an empty chair, she picked up the musky scent of a men’s cologne.

  Greet sat in a corner with her arms crossed, and when she looked at Letty, her eyes drifted upward in an unspoken “might be bullshit” signal.

  Letty nodded at Greet and said “Hello” to Johnson, who was wearing either the same, or a duplicate of, the blue suit she’d been wearing the day before.