Hidden Agendas Part 8

"Oh, boy," Jay said. "A new floor for my parakeet's cage."

"I didn't know you had a parakeet," Toni said.

"I don't, but for that, I'd get one."

"Somebody has to represent the agency at the L.A.W. convention in Kona on the Big Island in February," Michaels said.

"Me! Me!" Jay said. "Send me!"

"Catch us a crook and you can work on your tan."

Joanna chuckled.

"What's funny?" Jay asked.

"Nothing. I'm just imagining myself on that black sand beach I've heard about."

"Don't pack your bikini just yet," Jay said.

"No? Well, I wouldn't start buying Coppertone in bulk either, if I were you."

"I think that's got it," Michaels said. "Back to work."

As the meeting broke up, Sergeant Julio Fernandez arrived. He nodded at Michaels, and moved to talk to Colonel Howard, where the senior officer stood talking to Lieutenant Winthrop.

"Colonel. Lieutenant."

"Sarge," Howard said.

Michaels caught a quick glimmer of something on Fernandez's face when he looked at the young woman. Well. He could understand how the sergeant might appreciate Winthrop.

Back at their offices, Toni approached Alex. "Got a minute?"

"Sure."

In his office, she produced a small package, wrapped and decorated with a red bow. "Merry Christmas," she said.

"Thank you. Can I open it now?"

"Nope. Got to wait until Susie opens her gifts. You'll want this then."

"Ah, intrigue. All right, I'll wait. Here, I got you a little something." He opened his desk drawer and removed a flat box, this one wrapped in the hardcopy Sunday cartoon section of the Arlington newspaper.

She smiled at the wrapping, hefted it. "Book?"

"Go ahead and open it."

She did, carefully peeling the tape from the edges and unfolding the colorful newsprint.

"You going to save the paper, Toni?"

"Sorry. Old habit." She got to the book. "Oh, wow."

It was a 1972 first edition of Donn F. Draeger's The Weapons and Fighting Arts of Indonesia The Weapons and Fighting Arts of Indonesia.

"Where did you find this? It's a cla.s.sic." She flipped through the pages, again with care, looking at the black-and-white ill.u.s.trations. "I've never seen an original, only the on-demand-print and CD versions."

He shrugged. "Picked it up somewhere. I thought you might like it."

Yes, he had "picked it up somewhere," all right. He'd had a bookseeker service hunting for six weeks for the thing, and it had cost him a week's salary when they'd found it. Oh, well. He didn't spend a lot of money. Outside of his living costs and Susie's child support, his only hobby was the restoration of old cars. His current project was a Plymouth Prowler. That wasn't cheap, but when he finally finished and sold the car, he'd get all he'd spent back, and then some. The book had made a dent in his bank account, but Toni deserved it. He couldn't do his job without her. And the look on her face when she saw the thing was worth a lot too. He smiled.

Toni was about to close the book when she got to the t.i.tle page. "Hey, it's autographed!"

"Oh, really? Huh. How about that?" That autograph had jacked the price of the book up a few hundred dollars.

Impulsively, she hugged him.

G.o.d, she felt good, pressed against him that way. She could stay there all day...

Toni pulled away and gave him a big grin. "Thanks. My gift is nothing compared to this. You shouldn't have."

He shrugged. "Hey, a big meteor could fall on me while I'm taking the trash out tomorrow and what good would money be? I really appreciate all you do around here, Toni."

There was a silence that started to get awkward. He said, "So, you're going home to see your folks?"

"Yes. There'll be a big gathering, all my brothers and sisters-in-law, and nieces and nephews, the uncles and aunts. Regular army of relatives." She paused. "I hope your visit with Susie goes okay."

"Yeah."

"Well, I'd better get back to work. Thanks again for the book, Alex."

"You're welcome."

Thursday, December 23rd, 6:45 a.m. Quantico, Virginia Joanna Winthrop took advantage of the take-off-work-early offer from Commander Michaels to book a deadhead seat on an early military jet leaving from Quantico and stopping off in Denver on its way to Alaska. When she mentioned it to Colonel Howard, Sarge Fernandez had offered to take her to the flight.

"I can catch a cab," she'd said.

"No problem, Loot, I'm heading out that way anyhow, got some errands to run. I'll swing by and pick you up."

It did make it easier for her. "Sure."

So now she rode in the front seat of Fernandez's personal car, a slate-gray seventeen-year-old Volvo sedan. She smiled. "Funny, I'd have figured you for a little racier ride than this."

"It gets me there. Slow and steady. And it doesn't spend much time in the shop."

"Well, I appreciate the lift."

"No problem."

They rode in silence for a few minutes, but she was aware of him giving her small peripheral glances. Well. He was a man, and she knew that look.

He said, "You mind if I ask you something personal, Lieutenant?"

Oh, Jesus, here it comes, she thought. He's going to hit on me.

She'd had plenty of practice shutting male attention down when she wanted to. Although Fernandez had a certain Latin charm about him, it wouldn't be a good idea, a relations.h.i.+p. Even though the ranks were more quasi- than real-military in Net Force, and there wasn't a specific prohibition against against fraternization as in the Regular Army, there fraternization as in the Regular Army, there was was a difference in their respective statuses. So she could let him down gently. "Fire away." a difference in their respective statuses. So she could let him down gently. "Fire away."

"Has working with computers always been easy for you?"

Hmm. That wasn't what she expected. "Excuse me?"

"I've watched you. You're good at it, that goes without saying, but you make it look easy. I was just wondering if it was. Easy, I mean."

She thought about it for a second. She didn't want to sound egotistical, but the truth? "Yeah. I guess it does come without a lot of effort for me. Always has. I had a kind of affinity for it."

He shook his head. "I can strip a heavy machine gun and put it back together in the dark in a pouring rain, but when it comes to bits and bytes, I'm a techno-dweeb."

She laughed. Men so seldom admitted to their shortcomings, it was refres.h.i.+ng to hear.

"I mean, I've tried to learn, but I have this block, the information just bounces off, it doesn't sink in. I tried a cla.s.s recently, but I had a... personality conflict with the instructor. I think he just recognized that I was as dumb as dirt and would never get it."

" 'A thing can be told simply if the teller understands it properly.' "

"Excuse me?"

"George Turner, a writer I admired in college. You know how a computer works, basic theory?"

"Yeah. Well, actually... no."

"Okay. Let's say you're on guard duty, you're watching a door. You open it when somebody with the right pa.s.sword comes by, you close it if they don't have the pa.s.sword. You follow that?"

"Sure."

"Now you know how computers work. A door is open or it's closed. A switch is on or it is off. The answer is yes or no when somebody gets to the place you're standing guard. It happens fast, all the switching, but that's the base, and everything else links to that."

"No s.h.i.+t? Sorry, I mean-"

"No s.h.i.+t," she said.

"d.a.m.n. How come n.o.body ever put it that way before?"

"Because you've run into crummy teachers before. A good teacher uses terms a student can relate to, and she takes the time to learn what those terms are. When I was in college, I took a psych course. There was a story they told, about biased IQ tests for children. You know, you show a picture of a cup, and you show a saucer, a table, and a car, then you ask, what does the cup go with?"

"Yeah?"

"So in middle- and upper-cla.s.s America, the kids with working brains all pick the saucer, because cups and saucers go together, right?"

"Right."

"But in the poor parts of town, cups might go with tables, because they don't have saucers. And among kids from homeless families, cup might go with car, because that's where the family lives."

"Economic bias," Fernandez said.

She nodded. He wasn't a dummy, no matter what he said. "Exactly. Same thing holds true for racial or religious or other kinds of cultural factors. So then everybody thinks these kids are stupid, and so they get a different level of teaching, when the real problem is on the other end, in the minds of the ed-ucators. Because they didn't take into account the students' knowledge as well as their own."

"I get it."

"There's nothing wrong with your mind. All you need is a teacher who can put things in terms you already know how to relate to. You're a soldier, find a soldier who knows computers, you can learn from him."

"Or her," Fernandez said.

"Or her." She looked at him. "Are you asking me to teach you?"

"I would be ever so grateful if you would," he said. Kept a straight face while saying it too.

She smiled. "This isn't some ploy to get next to me because you think I'm beautiful, is it, Fernandez?"

"No, ma'am. You have knowledge I don't have, and I'd like very much to learn it. This is part of my job and I'm not good at it. That bothers me. I don't need to be Einstein, but I do want to understand as much of it as I need to understand. I mean, yeah, you are are beautiful, but what's more important here is that you're beautiful, but what's more important here is that you're smart smart."

She blinked and looked at Fernandez in a new light. My G.o.d, if he was telling the truth, he admired her for her mind mind!

"We might be able to work something out. Come see me when the holidays are over."

"Yes, ma'am."

"And bag that. Call me Joanna."

"I'll answer to just about anything, but my friends call me Sarge or Julio."

"Julio it is."

She grinned again. Ooh, wait until Maudie hears about this Ooh, wait until Maudie hears about this!

Chapter Eleven.

Thursday, December 23rd, 4:10 p.m. In the air over southern Ohio "Would you care for something to drink, sir?"

Alex Michaels looked up from the in-flight magazine, from an article on the construction of the world's tallest building, the new twin towers in Sri Lanka. The new structure would be, when finished, seventy feet taller than the second tallest building-which was also in Sri Lanka.