She gave him a nod and looked away.
“Nice to see you again,” he replied.
The feeling was obviously not mutual. “Yeah, sure,” she dismissively moaned from the side of her mouth.
Russell Turner sighed with disappointment. The conversation was going nowhere. Gail was giving him nothing. Silence quickly returned to the room.
He stood awkwardly like a post holding up the awkward walls. He looked around, not knowing what direction to take. His attention drifted toward the desk near the younger man. He lumbered across the room toward the desk and grabbed the office chair parked underneath. He flashed the younger man a daring scowl and slowly dragged the office chair back across the room toward Hanna.
The chair was vintage sixties and hadn’t seen an oiling for years. The chair screamed as the four bottom wheels rolled across the hard concrete. It was worse than nails on a chalkboard. Russell seemed to enjoy the group’s suffering. Hanna would be his next social victim.
She caught his arrival from the corner of her eye. She had known men like Russell Turner her entire short career, and she knew how to manipulate them via their egos. Avoiding him would be a missed opportunity. She had a second chance at figuring out where they were. However, it was impossible not to feel uncomfortable as he sank into the rickety office chair. He leaned right into her space, an obvious display of power. She looked up and politely smiled. She was in for an earful, but she was an expert at faking interest.
“What about you, Miss Hanna?” Russell asked.
She smiled, pondering her answer carefully. This man did not know she held a higher security clearance. Her discretion was even more important. Divulging any information about her job and why she was there could get her in trouble and possibly fired. She glared around the room for a beat, silently agonizing over the response. She pivoted back up to the man. “DOD,” she replied ambiguously.
Russell cut her off with a deep chuckle, almost knowing what she would say before the words left her mouth. Something was amusing to him about her response. He had juggled his whole adult career dealing with civilian brass. He had very little respect for Washington bureaucrats, let alone women in power. He chuckled again. “What do they got you here for?”
Something. Anything boring. Her mind raced and looked for a comeback. “I’m an auditor,” she replied.
The response was close to being the truth, but it had a bit of deception. Hanna was DC’s other set of eyes. It was her job to know things the military didn’t want Washington to know. She had worked her way through law school and had found a home with the Department of Defense for the past five years. The job was arduous, and it had taken its toll on her marriage.
Russell was caught off guard by the response. Perhaps he had assumed less of her. He certainly hadn’t expected that. “What do they got you auditing? You shutting us down?” he continued, trying to phrase it as a joke.
Hanna smirked. “Not that kind of auditor. I risk assess security procedures and brief members of Congress on national security. Vulnerabilities, such as cyber threats. Pretty boring stuff.”
Russell sighed with relief and made light of the conversation. “I was going to say that I’ve only got two years before retirement. Don’t be cutting me off early,” he replied sarcastically.
“That’s someone else’s job.” She laughed and turned back toward him. “Now, if you’re a security risk, that’s another question.”
The conversation drew the younger man’s attention from across the room. All the talking was making him uneasy and agitated.
Russell slowly leaned back to his chair and plopped down with a reminiscing stare. His entire life seemed to be projected across the inside of his skull.
“I was One Hundred Twenty-Eighth Airborne Command. Actually I almost had a job with the Department of Defense. A buddy of mine was gonna get me a job after I got out, but that was when they started cutting back military…”
Russell’s speech faded with the arrival of an interjection from across the room. It was the younger man. His Eastern European accent cut through the conversation like a Cold-War missile. “Hey! Talking about our jobs and life stories…I’m sure that’s against protocol,” he said with great confidence.
Russell snapped to the comment. His embarrassment was noticeable. He wasn’t accustomed to being interrupted, especially from a man half his age. To make it worse, the young man had undermined his authority in front of the women. Russell shook off the comment as though he had been sucker-punched and puffed up his chest. He leaned forward in his chair and started rubbing his hands together, preparing for combat. “Yeah? What do you know about that?”
Hanna studied the conversation carefully. What is happening here? Who are these guys?
To her surprise, the young man didn’t take the bait. He casually walked over to the desk and sat back down, flashing an instigating smile back at Russell. Despite his disheveled appearance, the young man seemed to be the cannier of the two. He knew better than to fall into the old man’s trap.
The silence only provoked Russell further. He looked over to Gail for approval. She was not interested in getting involved. She angled back to the floor and hid her head from the others. Russell refocused on the younger man and plotted his comeback. “Where you from? That accent. Is it Russian?”
The young man knew exactly where Russell was headed with the question. As a foreign national, he was accustomed to being distrusted because of his Slavic nationality. His Armenian and Russian heritage had made him an easy target for jokes and skepticism. After all, he worked on one of America’s most top secret military bases. His employment would seem suspicious to most. But his skills in mechanical engineering were what had attracted the air force. His father was a Soviet military officer who had sold secrets to the West for decades. The young man was given his job because of his father. He was one of a very few mechanical engineers who wasn’t a natural-born citizen. His job afforded him special security clearances, which made him even more vulnerable to accusation and conspiracy gossip.
Russell leaned toward Hanna. “There’s your security risk right there,” he joked.
Hanna gritted her teeth and angled away from him. She was enjoying the sideline and certainly wasn’t to be pulled into the game. Russell smirked and returned to Dimitri. “Jump ship? Moscow too cold?”
Russell casually sat back in his chair with a redeeming smirk.
But something had still failed to unnerve the young man. He smiled and looked off. It wasn’t anything he hadn’t heard before. He kept it cool. He was in complete control, and the old man didn’t appear to know it.
Something about the young man’s restraint appealed to Hanna. As an auditor, she had learned to read people. Perhaps that was the reason she had been put in the room in the first place. Maybe one of these people is a breach. But who? The Russian? Something about the situation was suspicious, and she struggled to figure out the meaning of her intuition. She moved her attention back to Russell, who continued to toil over his next insult.
Russell slowly leaned back in his chair and stared at the younger man — from his worn boots to his five-dollar haircut. Sarcasm hadn’t worked. He needed something bigger. Something more passive aggressive. “Uncle Sam offer you something for your secrets?” said Russell.
The younger man looked up. That one had gotten his attention.
“The government will hire anybody as long as they got something to gain from it. I don’t blame you, though. I’ve been to Russia.”
The younger man sat down on the edge of the desk quietly. He looked up at Russell with a puzzled face. “That’s amazing. Is there anything you haven’t done?” he replied mockingly.