A twig snapped, and this time when I turned, I caught sight of a shadowy figure among the trees. Heart pounding, I bolted toward the lights, instantly regretting the high-heeled shoes I’d chosen to wear that morning. They looked smashing with my outfit, but pinched unmercifully and were completely unsuitable for jogging. Ten steps, twenty, my feet pounded the pavement, each jarring step driving my leg bones painfully into my hip sockets.
Chest heaving, I clattered up the steps and into the welcoming arms of the Arlington Public Library. I burst through the door, leaned against the lobby wall for a moment, panting. After several minutes, when no homicidal maniac had crashed into the lobby to rape me, my heart rate returned to a reasonable facsimile of normal. I decided that my imagination (or the caffeine) was definitely working overtime. Yet, overactive imagination or not, I was reluctant to go back outside, into the dark unfamiliar streets, particularly not while the staff and resources of the Arlington Public Library System were waiting inside to welcome me. I called Paul and told him to definitely eat the leftover mushi pork and steamed dumplings. I was at the library and there was something I needed to do.
Arlington Library, bless ’em, had a Cyber Center, open until 9:00 P.M. on Sundays. Claiming that I was staying with a sister in the area, I produced my Naval Academy library card and used it to apply for one of Arlington’s own cards. Using the new card, I went to the automated sign-in station to request a terminal. Fortunately, one was available almost right away.
First, I checked my e-mail. Paul sent a silly animated card from BlueMountain, saying he hoped it would cheer me up. It did.
Moving on to Google, I was still smiling when I typed in fast tracking and learned that there was something called the Iraq Reconstruction Office, which processed thousands of fast-tracking contracts worth billions by holding what the website described as “hold-onto-your-hats” job fairs for prospective contractors in Washington, D.C. and London. What fun for them.
The General Services Administration had a “get it right” plan that purported to secure the best value for federal agencies and American taxpayers through an efficient and effective acquisition process, while ensuring full and open competition, and instilling integrity and transparency in the use of GSA contracting vehicles-blah blah blah-but that was for federal agencies, not Department of Defense.
Several clicks later I landed at http://www.defenselink.mil/contracts, where Army, Air Force, Navy, and Coast Guard contracts-if it was military, they had it-valued at five million dollars or more were announced each business day.
Now that was more like it.
A button to the right invited me to do a DOD Search, so I obliged. I typed in the largest company I could think of, Megatron Industries, and learned that the corporation had been awarded more than one thousand contracts with DOD, most of them in billions, not millions, of dollars. If I had been a slot machine, my eyeballs would have been spinning, eventually turning-ka-ching, ka-ching-into double dollar signs.
Hart’s office-Navy Weapons Acquisitions and Management-was not mentioned in the database specifically, but I could determine what was being done and for what price, where the work would be performed and by whom, the projected completion date and whether or not the contract was competitively procured. Many of the contracts, I noticed, were not. The list of projects went on and on: parachute deployment sequences, diesel engine noise suppression, midair collision avoidance systems. Who knew how many of the “contracting activities” might actually be divisions that reported to the admiral? It would take someone more knowledgeable than I, holding a copy of DICNAVAC, to sort through all the acronyms and figure it out.
I could have spent hours playing with the sophisticated DOD search engine, experimenting with various combinations of search terms-how many contracts were awarded to the Megatron subdivision in Providence, Rhode Island, in 2001, for example-but people were waiting in line to use the terminals, and Paul was waiting patiently for me at home. I jotted down the URL of the DOD website and signed off.
It wasn’t until I reached the front door that the heebie-jeebies returned. Was my stalker still out there? I loitered by the front entrance, casually reading the community notices, until a young couple joined at the hip breezed past.
I fell into step behind them and followed them onto the sidewalk. “Nice evening,” I said, thinking just the opposite.
“Yeah.”
“You students at GMU?”
They quickened their pace. “No.”
I had to hustle to keep up. “Going to the Metro?”
“No.”
Even though I was fairly well dressed, they probably thought I was one of those creepy bag ladies who seem to be drawn to public libraries the way my sister Ruth is drawn to garage sales. I dogged their tail until, with a quick glance at me chugging along behind them, they turned into the park, the guy’s arm looped around his girlfriend’s waist, guiding her along with a thumb hooked through a belt loop on her jeans. I watched until they disappeared into the shadows. No way I was going into that park, or back down the deserted street to the Virginia Square Metro station, either.
I pulled the little map out of my purse, checked it, then reversed direction and headed south. With one ear cocked for the sound of anyone on my tail, I made my way to the corner of Fairfax and Quincy, where someone, I swear, had built the next building just to creep me out: the Arlington funeral home, a two-story brick mansion with a pillared entrance and an American flag flapping away under a spotlight. I veered away from it, heading right on Fairfax, and hustled straight to the Ballston Metro Center and the welcoming lights of the Hilton Hotel.
I couldn’t get down the escalator fast enough.
Then the turnstile rejected my fare card. I swore softly and trotted back to the solemn rank of fare card machines, where I slipped it into the “Trade in Used Fare Card” slot. The card’s value-a buck twenty-five-flashed up on a tiny screen. It was off-peak hours, so I’d need to add a dollar ten before I could get me and my aching feet back to New Carollton. Still standing in front of the machine, I rummaged in my purse, but only managed to come up with two quarters, a nickel, and a Canadian dime. Why hadn’t I saved my cash by paying for my sandwich with a credit card? I was such a moron!
I rode the escalator up to street level and made my way to the Hilton, looking around for an ATM. I found one tucked away in a corner of the lobby, but it kept spitting out my ATM card. “Something wrong with this machine?” I asked a passing bellman.
“Out of order, ma’am.”
“Damnit!” I looked around until I found the tiny surveillance camera mounted in the ATM, faced it bravely and mouthed, “Why don’t you fix your damn machine?”
I turned back to the bellman. “Know of any other ATMs around here?”
He squinted up at the ceiling as if the answer was written there. “Over to Ballston Mall.”
“Thanks.”
Following, his directions, I made my way to the glass-covered pedestrian bridge that spanned Ninth Street, wound through the atrium of the National Science Foundation building at treetop level, and trotted across another bridge with colored glass insets that would have caught the sunlight in the daytime but now reflected the headlights from cars driving on Wilson Boulevard some thirty feet below.
At the mall, I found an ATM that accepted my card, whirred for a moment considering it, decided I wasn’t a deadbeat, and spit out two crisp twenty dollar bills. “Thank you!” I kissed the bills, tucked them into my purse, and headed back in the direction of the Metro.
I had almost forgotten about being followed until I heard the footsteps again, directly behind me. I stopped. The footsteps stopped.