Final Winter

Despite himself, Darren enjoyed this feeling, enjoyed being in charge, knowing secrets that either the person sitting across from him was supposedly holding or had no idea existed. It made up for his lousy childhood, the way he had kept to himself through high school and college, always knowing he was the smart one, the bright one, but also that he was the different one.

Darren said, ‘I’m used to giving out information in briefings, so please bear with me, all right? Trust me. It’ll be worth your time.’

‘Go ahead.’

Darren smiled. He was enjoying this. Most briefings there was always somebody senior in rank or somewhat senior in smarts, putting on bored airs, but this guy seemed to want to know what was going on. He wasn’t going to disappoint him.

‘Information is what we play with, day in and day out,’ Darren began, sitting back on the couch. ‘Sometimes that information is dramatic, like an Order of Battle for the Medina Armored Corps of Iraq, back when they had an armored division to play with. And sometimes that information isn’t so dramatic, like that misused and popular phrase, chatter. The trick is to identify the sources of your information, and to make a best guesstimate of what it means now, and what it might mean in the future.’

Brian said, ‘I’ve heard about a dozen different versions of that little speech since I came aboard, Darren. Thought you weren’t going to waste my time.’

A nod. ‘All right. I’ll get specific, then. Since you came aboard, I’ve known from the start that one of your roles was to play…Rat Squad, I guess is the correct term… for the Tiger Team Director. The Colonel. Your job was to follow the directives of Adrianna and work for the team, but your other job was to look into the backgrounds of your fellow Tiger Team members. Correct?’

Brian’s face was colored red again. ‘How did you know?’

‘My dear boy, before I was detached to Tiger Team Seven, I worked for the National Security Agency. The biggest and baddest information-collection agency in the world. Finding out what you were doing was quite simple. The matter of finding one memo sent through the ether that should have been encrypted. There you go.’

‘And you’re telling me this… why? A threat? Blackmail?’

Darren tried to put a shocked expression in his voice. ‘Not at all. My goal is to make sure you do your job better.’

Now the confusion was back on Brian’s face. Oh, this was so much fun. Darren said, ‘Surprised, aren’t you?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Then here’s another surprise. I bet I know what was said in your report. That Darren Coover is a valued member of the team, has problematic social skills, and has one flaw. And here’s that one flaw. He enjoys viewing on-line pornography of women with large breasts. Am I correct?’

Brian said, ‘I shouldn’t be saying so, but yeah, you’re correct. That’s what the report said.’

Darren grinned, got up from the couch, went to the coffee table and spun the laptop around. Brian looked at the upright screen and then raised his head. ‘Why are you showing me this? A big titty page. So what?’

‘Ah, but watch. Tell me what’s going on.’

Brian returned his gaze. ‘The pages — they’re moving on their own. They’re bringing up photos and…videos. Quicktime videos. That’s what I’m seeing.’

Darren turned the laptop around again, and returned to the couch. ‘Delightful program that I found on the net, and which I tweaked on my own time. It’s an avatar program. Do you know what an avatar is, Brian?’

‘Enlighten me, why don’t you.’

‘Very well. An avatar is a construct, an artificial person. If you go on-line and play a computer game against somebody else, you might want to call yourself Brian the Magnificent, Slayer of Dragons and Savior of Maidens. That would be your avatar.’

Darren pointed to his laptop. ‘That’s my avatar, Brian. For somebody monitoring my computer usage — like you did, no doubt with the assistance of my agency’s Technical Security Department — would quickly determine that I was a heterosexual male with an unhealthy fascination with large mammary glands. Correct?’

Brian nodded slowly. ‘Correct.’

He reached into his pants pocket, pulled out a black and gold matchbook, which he tossed over. Brian caught it and Darren said, ‘What’s it say?’

‘It says The Wilde One. What’s that?’

‘It’s a private club outside of Baltimore. A members-only club. The membership requirement is quite simple. One has to be a male homosexual. Guess you and the agency didn’t spend any time performing a surveillance on me, tailing me to see where I went and what I did.’

Brian’s response was better than Darren had anticipated. He just nodded again and tossed the matchbook back, and Darren was pleased that he was able to catch it. Having always been bad at student athletics, it was a very small but fun victory.

‘Okay. So you’re gay. I don’t care and probably most of the team doesn’t care either. What’s the deal with the surfing of the titty sites?’

‘To prove a point.’

‘Point being…?’