I took a few steps toward the river and casually scanned through three-sixty. I was clean.
Kurt told me that he’d read a stack of books on fieldcraft and practiced covert techniques within MMORPGs-the “massive” in Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game, he’d assured me jokingly, not a reference to his waist size. People overuse words a lot nowadays-everything is amazing, everyone’s a genius-although in his case, massive was an understatement. But as he emerged from the tree line to the south, it was still bizarre to see the new, thinner Kurt. He’d lost a ton of weight-OK, maybe not an actualton. I thought I could take some credit for him dropping so much flab. Our regular meetings not only got him out of the house, but also appeared to have given him a sense of purpose where previously, he had none.
Over the months he’d been helping me out, I’d got to know Kurt well. He’d opened up to me-probably more than he’d done with most people, I thought, given what he’d told me about his life. He hadn’t had it easy, not that I’d imagined otherwise.
Throughout his school years, Kurt had been the butt of exceptionally cruel jokes-both verbal and practical-by a clique of particularly vicious girls. This systematic campaign had stemmed from his temerity in asking one of them to a dance at their fifth grade end-of-year party, a crime seemingly so heinous that he deserved to be punished for it till the end of his schooling.
By middle school, this clique had shared their hatred of Kurt with their meathead boyfriends and his final two years of education had been off-the-charts intolerable. If it hadn’t been for his Sony PlayStation, his dial-up modem and the trailblazing Internet chat rooms he’d joined as soon as they launched, he would have put an end to his miserable existence long before he’d had a chance to think through the long-term consequences of such a decision.
As with many other social outcasts, the Internet and the rapidly growing gamer culture it fed off ended up giving Kurt a reason to live. And like most hardcore gamers, he was a neophile at heart and wanted to see what would come next. He instinctively knew that games would become better, faster and more immersive and he wanted to be around as they did so. By the time he was twenty, he was as addicted to console games and the online world as he was to food, his treatment at the hands of the witches of East Brunswick having served to confirm his withdrawal from the world of women made of flesh and his dedication to those made of pixels.
If I didn’t need Kurt myself, I’d probably have recommended him to our Cyber Division by now, but he and I had developed a routine and neither of us seemed to want to mess with it. Over the last few months, we’d worked together enough for me to mostly can my sarcastic instincts and accumulate no little respect for Kurt’s doggedness. I also knew enough about the way things were going with surveillance and data-trawling capabilities, drones, high-powered mikes and micro-cameras to understand that one day, real-world agents would be almost entirely redundant. I just hoped that day didn’t come until I had taken my pension.
Kurt was grinning from ear to ear as he ambled toward me, his gait still that of someone carrying the hundred extra pounds he’d recently shed. Maybe it was because of the holiday season. Christmas turned guys like Kurt back into Fifth Graders-happy ones at that. If it wasn’t for keeping our meetings on the down-low, I fully suspect he would have been wearing a green knitted sweater that featured a reindeer.
Glancing from side to side, he covered the final few yards to where I was standing and gave me a small bow.
“Kon'nichiwa, watashi no kunshu.”
This was another of his tradecraft obsessions: routing our phone calls through Japan-based Skype accounts that he’d hijacked and never referring to himself or to me by our real names on any calls or texts. Which made no sense at all, given that we weren’t even remotely Japanese. “Kurt, seriously. We’re actually here, together.”
“No names, dude,” he said, flinching. “Come on. What if someone’s tailing you and listening in on us?”
“I think I’ve got that covered,” I said, then added, pointedly, “Kurt.” With a juvenile half-grin.
He just brought it out in me.
He groaned, then gestured around him. “What do you think? Cool spot for a meet, no?”
“Pure genius.” See what I mean? We all do it.
On the other hand, I did resist saying “Kurt” one more time.
Instead, I said, “You sure you haven’t spent time at Quantico?” No way could I kill the sarcasm entirely. Especially when Kurt had me on a continuing tour of the myriad attractions of Essex County.
“Quantico, shwantico,” he scoffed. “I’d like to see how long you and your guys would survive in the siege of Orgrimmar.”
I ducked asking what that was-the cultural reference gap between us was beyond unbridgeable-and studied his face, then I scanned him up and down more carefully. Something else had changed, something other than the dropped weight: a general overhaul on the grooming front. Then it hit me. The Amazing Shrinking Kurt was chasing a female. As impossible as that sounded, I was somehow sure he was definitely on the prowl, and his upbeat manner made it clear he thought he was getting somewhere.
Not ideal, from a purely selfish point of view. Last thing I needed was for Kurt’s mind to be diverted from the hunt.
I spread my hands quizzically. “Who is she?”
Eyes wide, Kurt pulled back his head for a second. “What? No!”
“Come on.”
“How’d you-?” Then his grin returned and he wagged a puffy finger at me. “Oh, you’re good. You’re like so totally in the zone.”
I tilted my head, my expression egging him for an answer. “Spill.”
“You’re gonna love her. She’s great. And she’s solid, a real asset for the team. She’s going in deeper than I ever could.”
I felt a stab of bile in the back of my throat. “‘Going in?’ What are you talking about? You told her? About us?”
Kurt backed away a couple of steps. “Relax, dude. Hear me out. She doesn’t know who you are, doesn’t know why we’re looking for Corrigan. But she’s got skills, man. Real skills.”
I took a deep breath and calmed myself down. Kurt was no fool. He also wasn’t having much success in penetrating the CIA’s servers beyond what we already knew. Maybe he did need help. I was well aware that hacking government agencies had become considerably more difficult since the exploits of Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden. But this was a dangerous game to invite someone to play.
I gestured to an empty bench. We both sat, Kurt edging away till there was a couple of feet between us.
“OK, so… who is she?”
Nervously, he crossed and uncrossed his legs. “She’s called Gigi. Gigi Decker. Here…”
He took out his smartphone, swiped his finger across its screen to unlock it, and handed it to me. Its screen showed a full-figured and surprisingly attractive redhead who was-presumably, knowing Kurt’s interests as I did-dressed in the garb of some kind of World of Warcraft character.
Gigi was clearly screensaver-serious.
He reclaimed the phone. “Lady Jaina Proudmoore. Archmage of Kirin Tor. That’s her real hair, by the way.” He added this last part with genuine pride.
“I can see what you mean by solid. She seems totally… reliable.” I can’t really raise one eyebrow, but if I could, it would have been up.
Kurt looked offended. “Hey, when she’s not in Pandaria, she’s one hell of a hacker. I mean, truly outstanding. She’s hacked the CIA’s D-bases deeper than anyone I know. And the cool part is she’s ideologically neutral. She hacks because she can.”
“And to impress you, of course.”
He beamed. “What can I tell you? I’m a catch.”