Stephanie Doyle - Calculated Risk

With a deep sigh she shook off her melancholy and sat back down in Arnold’s chair, her eyes pinned to the screen. After a while, she didn’t know how much time had passed, one of the agents came back inside the cabin carrying wood for the stove.

She’d almost forgotten that it was still winter and freezing inside the primitive abode. She’d forgotten because she was still wearing Quinlan’s coat. And it was warm.

“We’ve been instructed to give you anything you need,” the agent told her.

“Right now the only thing I need is a pack of cigarettes and some space.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Oh,” she said as another thought occurred to her. “There are two others, right?”

“There are three of us on the island,” the agent who had brought the wood answered. “Our mission is to protect you at all costs while you work.”

“Got it. But here is the thing. I’m going to need to take a break every once in a while. You guys don’t happen to play poker, do you?”

Ten years ago

“You understand we need this code broken as soon as-”

“Possible,” Sabrina finished. “I get it.”

She was back in the Comm center. Her home away from home for the past six months. The players changed, but their roles were always the same. An urgent and edgy CIA manager. Two tech geeks who liked to fuss with the sophisticated computer. Logically, she knew they couldn’t be the same two every time, but it was impossible to tell. They all wore bad clothes, had bad hair and mumbled incoherently in Java. Sabrina wondered if there was a special school that trained them how to dress and act like complete losers.

And tonight there was a group of very serious-looking men, in very serious suits, with very serious expressions on their faces. She was told they were from a congressional intelligence subcommittee, here to study her and evaluate her progress.

She didn’t care.

The only thing missing was Quinlan. He was back in the field last she’d heard. Bitterly, she wondered if Caroline was missing her precious Jack. Maybe crying perfect tears into her pillow every night.

His replacement was her direct superior at the agency. A buffoon who was currently trying to show off in front of the politicos and another man, who she knew was the CIA director himself. Big crowd tonight.

Sabrina glanced at the wall already filled with numbers and thought about her role in this drama. She was just a tool, like any other satellite or computer or weapon they had in their arsenal.

“Do you see anything, Sabrina?”

This from her nervous boss. He was nothing like Q. She’d figured that out the second she met him. He was all spit and polish. An Ivy League ladder climber. She wondered if he’d spent any time at all out in the field, or if his rise in the agency had come purely from kissing ass.

Idiot. “Not yet,” she answered.

Stubbornly, she refused to focus in on the numbers in front of her. She thought about what Quinlan would say if he was here. He would tell her to forget about the boss she didn’t respect. Forget the higher-ups who had come to watch her perform like a trained monkey, and concentrate only on getting the job done.

Well, screw him.

Since her graduation she’d grown bored with the endless puzzles she’d been asked to solve. The point of doing any of this was lost on her. She cracked one code; there was another to take its place. There always would be.

Arnold had tried to convince her to come work with him, but her boss wouldn’t have it. He claimed that she was needed in other areas, which was bullshit. She just made him look good. She was his secret weapon, a code breaker who could perform even faster than some of the most sophisticated software programs the government had ever written.

She was sick of it. Sick of the manipulation, the politics involved at the agency, and sick to death of the expectations that were being heaped on her shoulders.

“Do you need another page?”

One of the geeks was getting antsy. Her reputation preceded her. After forty some minutes and no answer, it was clear they were worried that something was wrong.

Something was wrong.

“Hey,” she snarled. “If you think you can do this faster, by all means.”

No one bothered to reply.

Why had she come to this place? Why had she agreed to become their weapon? Answers that had come so easily a year ago, now stumped her. This was supposed to be her grand purpose, stuck in some dark room performing tricks for congressmen-the kind that didn’t involve sex?

Her father wanted her to use her brainpower for good. Well, where the hell was he? What had he ever done for her that what he wanted should even matter to her? He certainly didn’t love her as a father should.

Then there was Quinlan. He expected her to use her gifts to benefit the United States of America. How honorable. How noble. Ironic, considering he’d screwed her when he was almost engaged to someone else. In her mind that was as dishonorable a thing as a man could do.

No, nobody gave a damn about her. Nobody ever had. It was time for her to start taking her cue from them. It was time for her to stop giving a damn about anyone else. About anything else.

She needed to help herself. She had to be her first priority. Otherwise the world as she understood it would walk all over her. She was tired of being stepped on, exhausted to her bones of being used for the benefit of everyone else…but her.

“I can’t see anything,” she told them, even as the pattern formed in front of her eyes. What did it matter if she told them what it was? What would it get her, but another chance to do this all over again? And again.

“Are you sure?” her boss whined. “I don’t understand. She’s never had trouble before,” he told his superior. “Maybe you can give it another try.”

“Maybe you can shove these pictures up your ass,” she volleyed. She turned then and left the Comm center for the last time.

The next day she was called before a panel to talk about her behavior. When she failed to give them the answers they wanted to hear, she was fired.

Willful insubordination. And they weren’t wrong.

She left the CIA. Left her life as she knew it and promised herself that she would never look back.

Present

It wasn’t her record best time. It took her three weeks, two days, seven hours, fifty-six minutes and five seconds. But finally she saw it-a pattern in the seemingly endless waves of random symbols. It was like a thread that had been left loose after the final stitch was sewn.

Once she found it all she needed to do was pull. And pull. And pull. When she had a solid grasp on it, she was able to give it one final tug. The data came spilling forth from the computer like a one-armed bandit in Vegas gave forth quarters once the magic figures were aligned in the window.

Part of her, the sentimental part, couldn’t help but be sorry for Arnold. She hoped that he was in a far nicer place than the cabin she had called home for several weeks. But she envisioned him looking down on her right now and cursing like a drunken sailor that he’d been beaten. Defeated soundly in three weeks, two days, seven hours, fifty-six minutes and five seconds when it had taken him more than a decade to write the code.

Her brain against his.

It had been quite a challenge. A challenge that had left her with a severe headache, an empty belly and cramps in her fingers and arms for several days running as she began to test the limits of what she could do both mentally and physically. But she’d won. And the world would be a safer place for it. Or at least America would be. For now.

She felt really good about that.