Poisonfeather (Gibson Vaughn #2)(7)
“Are you relaxed?” she asked.
“Is this part of the test?”
She smiled clinically at his joke and patted his arm, which didn’t help to put him at ease. He felt solidarity with the fetal pigs of the world, pinned helplessly to high-school dissection trays. Do your worst, he thought, and shifted around, seeking a less painful position in the straight-backed metal chair where he’d be spending the better part of the day. All for a job he knew nothing about. But that was how top-secret SCI worked.
SCI, or sensitive compartmented information, was a control system that “compartmented” employees, who would never have access to an entire project. An employee might be assigned to develop a particular subsystem while having no idea of the full scope of the larger endeavor. In theory, it made espionage much more difficult. It also meant that Gibson had interviewed for the job blind and wouldn’t find out the exact nature of the work until his clearance was approved. Only then would he be officially read in. It hadn’t mattered. Five minutes into the interview, he would have run through traffic for the job based simply on the hypotheticals they’d posed him. The guy who’d recruited him for the job, Nick Finelli, warned him it would be this way.
“Take the interview,” Nick had advised. “Trust me, you’ll want it.”
Nick Finelli was a buddy from his days in Intelligence Support Activity. ISA, or the Activity, as it was affectionately known, was the military’s version of the CIA and provided tactical support to the military’s Special Operations Command, particularly Delta and DEVGRU. Serving in the Activity made you mighty attractive to defense contractors, and after Nick cycled out, he’d immediately landed a job with Spectrum Protection Ltd., which specialized in computer systems and cybersecurity. Exactly the kind of employer Gibson thought he’d have lining up for his services when he left the Marines.
The Activity should have opened doors in the private sector. Gibson had been something of a star in his unit. But whatever doors it did open, Vice President Benjamin Lombard had slammed shut again. Lombard hadn’t taken it kindly when Gibson had hacked his computers and turned his files and e-mails over to the Washington Post. It hadn’t mattered that Gibson had only been sixteen at the time, or that he’d gone on to serve his country with distinction. When Gibson left the Marines, he’d learned the hard way what it meant to be on the business end of the vice president’s blacklist.
It had been a hard couple of years, and he’d had to scrounge for work. It had cost him his marriage and very nearly the dream house that he’d intended for his family. Bought at the height of the market before the financial collapse, the house had teetered on the edge of foreclosure for several years. It was Gibson’s nightmare, losing that house. He might not ever live there again, but nothing mattered more to him than his daughter growing up there. It was safe. Good schools. Pretty backyard with a canopy of elm trees. Gibson smiled. It was finally within reach. With Lombard no longer in the picture and a job with Spectrum Protection on the table, he could, for the first time since he’d left the Marines, envision a future in which Ellie’s childhood at 53 Mulberry Court was secure.
Maybe that explained how badly things went from there.
The polygraph was going smoothly in hour three. Gibson was starting to anticipate the break for lunch at noon. Ms. Gabir’s questions flowed steadily, punctuated by his staccato yeses and nos. His readings fed into a laptop, and she paused periodically to type a note, but otherwise they were making good progress until the knock at the door. Amanda Gabir excused herself and stepped out into the hall. When she returned, Gibson saw a pair of security guards behind her.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“I’m sorry. The polygraph has been terminated.”
“What? By who?”
She didn’t answer but set to unstrapping him.
“By who?” he said, voice rising.
One of the security guards stepped into the room. “Sir, please lower your voice.”
He took that as an invitation to yell. “Who?”
“At the request of Spectrum Protection,” Amanda Gabir said. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why. Please don’t ask me any more questions.”
Unwilling to sit still and be unstrapped like a child on a fairground ride, Gibson ripped the blood pressure cuff off and threw it to the ground.
“Easy there, friend,” the guard said.
Gibson chose not to be easy, and by the time he was hustled out the back into a service corridor, they weren’t friends anymore either.
“Get the hell off me,” he shouted to the empty corridor as the door slammed shut.
Traffic was a typical Northern Virginia quagmire. It took forty-five minutes to drive the fifteen miles to Nick Finelli’s offices at Spectrum Protection. Security was there waiting for him. Five of them. Solid men in matching blazers. They saw him coming and formed a wall; Gibson didn’t even get through the front door. He made his scene, and they let him rage for a while. He mistook their restraint for timidity and made a lunge for the door. They threw him to the ground and threatened to call the police.
“Go on home,” the oldest of the five said. “You had a bad day. You want to top it off with a night in jail?”
Gibson dusted himself off and thought about whether or not he did. He knew he wasn’t thinking straight, but he was in one of those states of mind in which knowing better wasn’t the same as doing better.