The Mask: A Vanessa Michael Munroe Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

cut, dangled over thick-rimmed tortoise glasses.
    He looked up when they approached, and seeing Munroe, he smiled.
    Smiles from men in Japan were rare and his was the first she’d been offered within the facility. Munroe couldn’t help but like him.
    He bowed first, juggling pen and paper to shake her hand, and managing to affect the same sort of sloppiness in his actions as he did with his clothes. In English chipped and halting in the way of someone who had a lot of book knowledge but not much practice, he said, “Very nice to meet you.”
    Bradford opened the door. To Okada he said, “You could have used the desk. Let yourself in next time, okay?”
    Okada nodded yes but the rest of his body said no.
    To Munroe Bradford said, “Tai’s my guy Friday. Runs interference between the departments, handles the language issues, explains the innuendo behind the corporate culture, and gets me what I need from the haters at the NSA and FBI.” Inside the office, he paused. He looked at Munroe, then at the room, and glanced at the door. “You can wander if you want,” he said, “or stay here. We’ve gotta go over some stuff. I’ll surface for air for lunch—that okay?”
    Munroe dragged the extra chair over to the corner and held up her phone. “I’ve got a book,” she said. “Don’t mind me.”
    Bradford’s focus turned toward Okada and work, as if a switch had been thrown and she’d ceased to exist. So she sat and fought the urge to listen in, her mind still stuck on what Bradford had said about Okada’s role. Information was only as good as its source, and if Okada was the funnel through which all of Bradford’s information was sourced, then on this job Okada was Bradford’s point of weakness.
    Munroe shut down the thought.
    Those were old patterns, old ways of thinking. This was Bradford’s mission, not hers, and in spite of her requests to work along with him, he’d made it clear she wasn’t welcome.
    Bradford and Okada left the room and Munroe stared at the door. After all the times she and Bradford had worked together, had guarded each other’s backs, kept each other alive, he now relied on someone else and had left her behind. It was new, this sensation of feeling useless, of feeling unneeded—unwanted.
    Eyes to the screen, she tried to focus on the book but couldn’t.
    She pulled ear buds from her purse, tamped them into her ears, and cranked up the volume. Shut her eyes and drew a deep breath, moving backward into black and nothingness, but still the tingling burn persisted.

Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent’s fate.
    —MASTER SUN TZU

    The light flashed green, the machine chimed, the arm swung open, and Nonomi Sato, in flat, comfortable, ugly shoes, walked on toward the elevator bank, invisible in the routine.
    The soft
dings
rang on behind her, right and left, layering over footsteps and hushed conversation. This was the company’s morning music, a melody of dread carried inside every employee, dread that today might be the day the corporate gestapo wanted another review.
    Dread, harmonized with fear and suspicion.
    Really, it was a beautiful song.
    Sato stopped outside the guard station that led to the elevator. The prescreening procedure only allowed for one employee at a time.
    Cameras watched, but she didn’t worry about them. They were deterrents for conformists and rule followers, an obvious announcement that the eyes were always, always recording, keeping honorable people from violating their own sense of honor. For deceivers, the threat was in what couldn’t be seen.
    And even about those Sato didn’t worry.
    She belonged here.
    She was five foot two, with shoulder-length hair pulled tight into a bun, and wearing a drab knee-length skirt and dress shirt; clothes indistinguishable from those of every other female in the building. For that matter, she was