The Agent's Daughter Read Online Free PDF

latches securing the elevator in place.
    The friendly synthesized voice announced the
arrival, “Basement level. Stand clear of the door.”
    The black panel slid to the side, and Evan
stepped out of the elevator into a vast open space filled with the
pandemonium of hundreds of people working at computer terminals.
Most of them were talking on their phones, so the air was thick
with the sound of jumbled conversation. The room itself was two
stories tall and was as long as a football field. One of the walls
of the room was dominated by a gigantic map of the world with each
country outlined in a different color. On either side of the map,
there was a large projection screen with each screen displaying a
view of the earth from space from a different angle. The screen on
the left was zoomed in on the tip of South Africa, and the other
showed a view of most of the mountains across central Asia. The
remaining walls of the room were covered with dozens of smaller
screens that showed local scenes and news reports from around the
world. The room had the appearance of a command center NASA would
build if it had a much larger budget.
    This was the headquarters for the Executive
Reconnaissance Agency.
    Founded during the Cold War, the agency was
set up within the Executive branch to give the President of the
United States direct tactical control over a foreign intelligence
gathering organization. This allowed a more nuanced approach to
intelligence gathering and gave the President instant access to the
exact information required based on the circumstances of the day.
Sometimes that information could be gathered with satellites or
other remote electronic means, but often that meant dispatching a
field agent directly into an area of interest to blend in and
report to the President what was going on.
    Evan was one of those field agents.
    As he made his way across the large room, a
man from the information security department approached him. The
man was carrying a sealed red folder.
    “ There you are,” the man
said anxiously as Evan approached. “They’ve been
waiting.”
    “ Good morning to you too,
Jim,” Evan said smiling.
    Jim smiled at Evan and then took a deep
breath.
    “ Okay, here are your
briefing notes,” Jim said. “The meeting is in the main video
conference room. Good luck”
    “ Thanks,” Evan said as he
took the folder.
    He sliced open the folder with his finger,
and glanced at the briefing notes as he walked toward the
conference room. He could tell it was not going to be a pleasant
meeting. When he got to the conference room, he paused, took one
more look at the notes, and then went inside.
    “ Glad to see you could
join us, Mr. Roberts,” said a man at the head of the large
conference table. He was the head of the agency, Arthur
Glass.
    “ My apologies, sir,” Evan
said.
    Evan then half-smiled to the man sitting
next to Arthur, William Mason. “Nice to see you again William.”
    Not that he meant it.
    William was the head of Hardware Support for
the agency. They were responsible for coming up with fancy gadgets
and weapons to be used by the agents in the field. They were
informally known throughout the agency as the ‘tools’ group.
William had a well-known dislike of the field agents. He considered
them simpletons and brutes, and he referred to them as “trained
monkeys” even though all of them had college degrees. The field
agents had a few names for William, as well.
    “ Evan,” William said.
“This is a new member of my group David Winfield. He just moved
here from our Seattle office. He will be your new contact within
the Hardware Support department.”
    Each agent was given a single contact within
the tools group. This streamlined the process of providing weapons
and other items to the agent as they only had to interact with one
person.
    Evan held out his hand to shake. “Evan
Roberts. Pleased to meet you, David... Seattle, huh? Did they tell
you that it gets hot here?”
    “ It can’t be