"We need to make sure that we tip the big three first thing in the morning so they'll have cameras and reporters there to watch us taking her away," Hayes told them. "However, if we tip them too early, they'll start asking questions before we want them too. Those media people are helpful but they're also very annoying at times. So, until tomorrow, nobody says a word to anyone about the indictment. This is top secret stuff, okay?"
Everyone agreed to keep it under their hats for the time being. They were dismissed so they could start drawing up their plans and of course the secret leaked within ten minutes to some of the civilian staff. An agent named Skeller, who was trying to penetrate the pants of a young secretary named Darla, was the first to spill the beans. Darla asked him in her flirtatious way just what the big meeting had been all about. Since Darla was an Earthling and very loyal to the FLEB, he didn't see any harm in telling her. "We have an indictment for Whiting," he whispered in her ear. "We're gonna take her into custody tomorrow morning and send her back to Earth for trial."
Darla quickly told another Earthling secretary the good news and that secretary quickly told another. It wasn't very long until the word reached the ears of a Martian receptionist down in the front lobby of the building.
Lisa Vaughn was a fourth generation Martian who worked in the FLEB office because it was the only job that she had ever been able to get and the only thing that kept her from vermin status. She hated Earthlings, particularly the federal variety that were her bosses, but she endured this miserable employment in order to keep her child from growing up in the ghetto. Her ex-husband, the man who had fathered her one legally allowed child, was already vermin, having lost his job in a merger of two computer software companies two years before, so he was of no help to her. If she had had any other prospect of employment over the years, she would have gladly taken it. But, since jobs were few and far between she had stayed on and, some months before, a man from the MPG intelligence division had recruited her to report to him various information about the daily operations of the agency. She was, in short, a Martian spy. She received no money or anything else in exchange for the information she passed on. She did it only out of sheer loyalty to her heritage and out of sheer hatred of the Earthlings that worked in this building; Earthlings that treated her as a piece of furniture at best and with open hostility at worst. How many times had agents or civilian staff come into the building and called her a greenie to her face? How many times had they excluded her from their gossip circles, from their after work parties or gatherings? How many times had she heard them mocking her Martian accent as they talked about her? It had not taken terribly much for the handsome MPG lieutenant to convince her to pass a few things on to him.
It was as she was in the lobby level staff restroom that she first heard about the indictment of Laura Whiting and the plan to take her into custody the next morning. Lisa had been in one of the toilet stalls, relieving her bladder of the coffee she had consumed when two female secretaries for the piracy section of the office had entered to re-apply their make-up after their lunch break. For more than five minutes she sat there silently, listening to them flippantly discuss how "that greenie bitch" Whiting was finally going to get what was coming to her.
"I told you she was involved in all of the terrorism going on in this place," one said to the other.
"I never had any doubt about it," the other responded. "So they're going to take her tomorrow morning?"
"First thing," she agreed. "At least that's what I heard from..."
Soon the two women finished their work and left the room. Lisa waited another three minutes before getting up and returning to her desk. She had been briefed to keep her ears out for just such talk and to report it as quickly as possible. Of course she could not use the main terminal on her desk to make the notification. That would be madness even though the message would seem innocent on the surface. Instead she unclipped her PC from her waist and flipped open the small screen.
"Call Gina Hawkins," she told it, referring to one of the names in her address files. To anyone overhearing her or homing in on her conversation with electronic devices, it would seem she was doing nothing more than conducting a personal call during business hours, something that was against the rules but fairly commonplace. No one would know that she had no friend named Gina Hawkins or that the number she was using to get hold of her was actually a relay station for MPG intelligence.
A pleasant faced female appeared on her screen a moment later. "Hi, this is Gina," she said in a thick Martian accent. "I'm not able to answer your call at the moment. Please leave your name and number and I'll get right back to you."
"Hi, Gina," she said into it lightly. "This is Lisa Vaughn. I just wanted to see if you were interested in going out to O'Riley's tonight after work. Give me a call back if it sounds good. If not, maybe I can stop by your apartment tomorrow morning on the way to work. I have to pick up that blouse I let you borrow. See ya."
With that, she clicked off and put her PC back on her waist. She returned to her duties. At the relay station the computer terminal that took her call identified the code phrase — "Hi Gina, this is Lisa Vaughn" - and automatically sent a copy of the message through several other relay stations. Two minutes later it arrived at the desk of Major Tim Sprinkle, head of MPG intelligence. He took one look at Lisa's message and knew, just by the words it was composed of that an indictment for Laura Whiting had been received at the FLEB office and that agents were going to attempt to pick her up the next morning. Within seconds he was on the terminal to General Jackson.
Laura knew that push had come to shove when Jackson entered her office an hour later. She could tell just by looking at his face. "The indictment?" she asked him, half-fearing it, half welcoming it.
"It was issued by the grand jury earlier today in Denver," he confirmed. "I have some sources on Earth that were able to confirm this for me. Six counts, all of them high federal felonies. Just like you predicted."
She offered a weak smile, feeling her stomach knotting up. "It's not that hard to put yourself into the corporate mindset," she said. "I left them with no other option short of actually negotiating our independence. And we know they would never do that. An indictment and a quick removal probably seems like a brilliant solution to them."
"It's brilliant all right," he said. "They'll be giving us the final catalyst that we need tomorrow morning."
"That's when they're coming to get me?" she asked, impressed as always with the quality of Jackson's information.
"We have a source inside the FLEB building," he told her, nodding. "We got a message from her not too long ago. She confirms that the indictment has been received and tells us that they're planning to take you tomorrow morning."
"Does she know how many agents? How many guns?" Laura asked.
"We don't know at this time," he said. "All we have at the moment from her is a code phrase telling us that it's going down. One of our intelligence teams will meet with her tonight to try for a better debrief. In the meantime, it's time we initiated the first stage of operation Red Grab. The first elements need to get rolling as soon as possible if they're going to be in position in time."
"The special forces soldiers," she said. It was not a question. She knew almost as much about the details of operation Red Grab as Jackson himself.
"Right, I need you to give me a governor's order activating them. I'll put the call out and get them on the transports to Triad. When the time comes, they'll be ready to move."
"Will they do it?" she asked pointedly. "We'll be asking them to commit treason and murder. Have things gone far enough so that they'll do it?"