The Weed Agency (23 page)

Wilkins greeted Humphrey with a copy of the
Post
at the Department of Agriculture’s front door.

“Hargis blabbed!” he screamed.

Humphrey shushed him, and pulled him aside in the building’s hallway. “Yes, Jack, he’s a congressman, that’s what he does.”

“What are we going to do?”

“Nothing. This can only help our effort to create a National Center for Crop Duster Security.”

“He thinks we know that al-Qaeda is trying to smuggle invasive species into the country!”

“He misinterpreted my remarks,” Humphrey shrugged. “Despite our best efforts, miscommunications occur all the time. I can only be responsible for what I say, not the conclusions he draws from the information we provided.”

“You knew how he would react! You were deliberately ambiguous!”

“Strategic ambiguity has been good enough for our China policy for years, I don’t see why it would be a problem here and now,” Humphrey said.

The two strode until they reached the lobby outside Humphrey’s office, where the administrative director’s secretary, Carla, appeared to be trying to placate a Eurasian Wonder Woman in a perfectly tailored business suit.

“Mr. Humphrey, this woman is from … 
somewhere
and she insists upon speaking to you immediately,” Carla announced.

The Woman from Somewhere was about 5′5″, wore fairly high stiletto heels and a professional but snug business suit. She
had long dark hair and glasses. Wilkins was reminded of the female Secret Service agents he had seen, but this woman was indisputably striking—and more than a little intimidating.

“I’m sorry, Ms.…”

“Just call me Karina, Mr. Humphrey,” the woman declared with a ferocity barely chained behind sufficient formality.

“Karina …” Humphrey waited for a last name.

“That’s all you need to know,” she said curtly. “Your recent statements to lawmakers about information indicating ‘a serious and persistent al-Qaeda threat to American agriculture’ have raised some eyebrows among your fellow government employees in
Langley
. If you’ve heard something we haven’t, we would very much like you to share. If, as I suspect, you’re just hyping a nonexistent threat to grab a bit of the funding pie, cease and desist immediately. Those of us fighting a real battle don’t need to have our mission complicated by opportunists.”

She glanced at Wilkins, and he promptly succumbed to dry mouth and squeaked a hello.

“The same lawmakers that you try to con a budget out of also think they should tell my bosses what to do,” she continued, eyes flashing with fury. “So if you guys tell them that al-Qaeda’s about to launch an attack of Pod People, I will get panicking ninnies on Hipsy and Sipsy
²⁹
telling my bosses to get somebody on Pod People–watch immediately. And I don’t want to say I couldn’t stop the next attack because some idiot thought it would be a good idea to put me and my coworkers on Pod People–watch!”

To most eyes, Humphrey had little reaction, but Karina noticed a slight flutter of his eyelids, an uncontrollable twitch that confirmed her suspicion.

Humphrey fidgeted a bit as he unlocked his office door and led her in.

“Young lady, I have no idea why you would make such an accusation—”

As they entered the doorway, they were shocked to find a man behind Humphrey’s desk, having already removed most of the drawers and turned them upside down, scattering the contents around the room. As they entered, he didn’t look surprised or even embarrassed, just irritated.

“Who the devil are you and what are you doing in my office?” exclaimed Humphrey.

Karina greeted the man with an exasperated sigh. “Alec.”

“You know him?”

“Partner.”

“Husband,” the man behind the desk corrected.

“You’re going through my desk!” Humphrey realized.

“He’s observant,” Alec said to Karina, ignoring the fuming Humphrey. “That’s probably why he’s in charge. So far I haven’t found anything that corroborates what he told Congress.”

“That drawer was locked!” Humphrey roared indignantly.

“Yes, and badly,” Alec said, folding up a switchblade. Unlike the well-put-together Karina, Alec wore a black leather jacket, black collared shirt, and blue jeans.

“Very subtle, Alec,” fumed Karina. “I was just asking him—”

“You have no right to break into my—how did you even get in here, anyway?”

“I’m the CIA, Mr. Humphrey,” Alec confirmed with a particularly unclassified glee, and leaped over the desk in rather overdramatic fashion. “We blow up more before 9:00 a.m. than most people do all day. I’ve just gotten the green light to terrorize everybody who’s trying to terrorize us. I’m gonna sprinkle bacon bits on their
halal
meat, tell ’em we’ve got moles in their
networks just to freak them out and spread paranoia, hack their Web sites, and use their kaffiyehs for tablecloths. You think Spiderman-ing my way into here and finding whatever you’ve got on any al-Qaeda al-Kudzu is beyond me?” He nodded his head toward Humphrey’s office window, open for the first time in anyone’s memory.

“How did you open that?” Wilkins exclaimed. “I’ve been here more than twenty years; I didn’t know they could open.”

Karina peered out the window. Humphrey stammered with rage.

“This is … this is …”

“This is too high,” declared Karina. “He didn’t climb in here. Alec, you left early this morning. You probably demonstrated your traditional respect for cover by pulling rank on the Federal Protective Service guys at the front desk, then got the maintenance staff to open the door. Judging from the marks around the paint, you cut open the paint around the windows and then opened it, just so you could make Humphrey
think
you climbed up the outside wall and broke in here so he would think you’re some James Bond cat-burglar type instead of a hyperactive analyst itching to discover some yet-unnoticed threat. Besides being borderline illegal, I think this sort of intimidation is utterly unnecessary.”

Alec rolled his eyes. “Do you yell out how the magic tricks work at David Copperfield shows, too?” He turned to Humphrey.

“Look, Humph, it’s a whole new world and guys like me have been given free rein to go find bad people and hurt them in any way we want. All the old rules are out the window.”

“Including the Fourth Amendment, it would seem,” sniffed Humphrey.

“If you’ve got anything that points to some … invasive
locust attack or something, I’ve gotta know. And the clock is ticking, Bub. I’m a busy man, I’ve got places to be and important people to kill.”

“I’m afraid I could never share such sensitive information without authorization through proper channels.”

Alec stared at Humphrey incredulously, then looked beyond him to Karina.

“Honey, I need to smash something on his desk to make a dramatic and vaguely threatening gesture. What’s important enough, but not too expensive?”

“He’s already admitted as much, there’s nothing to the claims,” Karina sighed. “I could see it in his eyes. He doesn’t want to lie to me, but he doesn’t want to admit he’s spreading lies to Congress, so he’s stalling for time. Let’s go, Alec. Real CIA officers don’t spend their time berating bureaucrats. Only analysts who have been pressed into field duty because of an extraordinary national emergency do things like that,” she teased.

Alec rolled his eyes and pointed a finger at Humphrey, Wilkins, and Carla.

“You will see me again,” he promised.

For Ava, the job offer came through just in time.

The consulting firm, Abartmak & Associates, had been founded by a pair of immigrants and had rapidly grown in the past decade. Although still smaller than the bigger-name firms like Deloitte, Booz Allen, and KPMG, they had been starting to expand beyond their primary client base of government agencies and departments. In the past year they had picked up Oceanic Airlines and Weyland-Yutani.

“I knew I wanted to come back to D.C., and that would be
the case even if Silicon Valley didn’t have about a million people just like me looking for work,” she said. Ava sat in the office of an elegant Latina, Esmerelda Alves. The office’s occupant was technically Ava’s new boss, but Ava knew she would see her rarely.

“Our luck, then,” said Alves. “When we saw your combination of government and dot-com experience, we knew we had someone who we could instantly use in our work with government database analysis, consulting, security, and upgrade planning. We’ve had a boom since—well, you know—and obviously we face new complications in … bringing in employees from overseas.”

Ava nodded.

“With security on everyone’s mind, every government agency is rethinking things, and besides the planters and security keycards and such, there’s new focus on database security,” Esmerelda said. “Right now, we want to put you on this new contract that just came in, some small agency within the Department of Agriculture that deals with weeds.”

Ava let out a long, long sigh.

MARCH 2003

U.S. National Debt: $6.4 trillion

Budget, USDA Agency of Invasive Species: $225.4 million

Congressman Vernon Hargis of West Virginia, seventy-four and now among the highest-ranking Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee, was one of the very few individuals in Washington that had Adam Humphrey’s direct line. The era of cellular phones greatly complicated Humphrey’s philosophy of strategic unavailability.

But Humphrey understood that he needed a smooth relationship with Vernon Hargis more intensely than he needed some of his internal organs, and so he always answered Hargis’s calls immediately, on any line. Year by year, the congressman’s demands grew more insistent, and the pleasantries dwindled.

And one morning, they stopped completely. Humphrey’s direct line rang as he reviewed the next fiscal year’s budget request for the Domer’s Gulch, Kentucky–based National Center for Crop Duster Security.

He answered his phone to hear, “You tell that son of a bitch Steiner that if he doesn’t find a nice, right cushy job for my boy
Austin, that I’ll squeeze his funding so hard that his ballies will pop like grapes!” the congressman barked.

Humphrey paused, contemplating his options. The congressman, increasingly erratic, was clearly enraged; “Steiner” undoubtedly referred to Conrad Steiner, the head of the most prominent pesticide producers association in the United States. Humphrey had heard rumblings of some sort of discontent over at that organization in recent months, but nothing specific.

“Just a moment, Congressman, permit me to get a pen,” Humphrey said, ignoring Hargis’s comfort with using him as a messaging service. “The term
ballies
has two
l
s, correct?”

“I mean it, Humphrey, that little piss-ant just turned me down like I was a no-name freshman ranked last on the District subcommittee!” the congressman continued to fume. “Nobody talks to me like that! And after all these years, to just blow me off like I’m some nobody!”