Deep Black by Stephen Coonts; Jim Defelice Read Free Book Online

next asked a dozen questions drawn at random from the computer’s list. Most, though not all, had to do with security
     matters, but there were others thrown in to keep subjects off their guard, such as: “Have your sexual preferences changed
     in the last two weeks?”
    They hadn’t. The two men showed no emotion whatsoever; Rubens could have told them that he was a pedophile and they would
     not have cared, as long as the machine said he wasn’t lying.
    Cleared, he headed back upstairs to the eighth floor of OPS 2/A, where he had his office next to the director’s. He was running
     late—his cousin had invited him to her seven-year- old daughter’s First Holy Communion party, and while he ordinarily avoided
     such events, he had accepted this invitation partly because the guest list included Johnson Greene, a congressman on the Defense
     Appropriations Committee. The congressman was expected to run for Senate; if he won, he would be a likely candidate for the
     Intelligence Committee within two years. It was never too early to cultivate someone with that kind of potential—especially
     since he had been a critic of the agency in the past.
    A mild and uninformed critic, the best kind.
    After checking his messages and making sure his computers and office were secure, Rubens ran the security gamut and left Black
     Chamber. Traveling without a driver or bodyguard, he took his agency Malibu out of Crypto City, through Annapolis Junction.
     After a brief jaunt on the Baltimore– Washington Parkway, he turned to the west and headed toward a rather inconspicuous suburban
     enclave of yellow and white raised ranches. Rubens took a right turn past a stone fence where the words “Sleepy Hills” had
     been enshrined in floodlit mock stone; a short distance down the road he took another right and then a left, entering a cul-de-sac.
     He pulled into the third driveway on the right, where a sensor in the garage read his license plate and automatically opened
     the second bay door.
    Rubens was out of the car as the garage door came down, sidling across the narrow space at the front to a vehicle more in
     keeping with his personal preferences—his own black BMW M-5. The garage and car, and in fact the entire house and block, were
     under constant surveillance, but this did not keep Rubens from making his own discreet check, taking a small container of
     powder from his pocket and sprinkling a generous portion over the locks and handle, as well as part of the hood and the door
     for the gas cap. The powder contained a chemical that interacted with oil residues less than twenty-four hours old. When he
     was sure that no one had touched his car he used his key to unlock it, got in, gave the interior another check, then left
     the garage.
    His next stop was a car wash. The fingerprint powder supposedly didn’t harm the car paint, but Rubens didn’t trust the guarantees.
     Besides, he didn’t particularly care for anything associated with him to be dirty, not in the least.
    No one else at the NSA went to the length of keeping a safe house as a car drop. It was almost certainly unnecessary, and
     the bureaucracy’s attitude toward the arrangement could be seen in the fact that Rubens paid for the safe house himself.
    That was shortsighted of them, in his opinion. There was no such thing as too much security, especially when you were head
     of Desk Three. But then he took other precautions that the bureaucracy undoubtedly scoffed at, including not one but two cyanide
     capsules implanted under his skin, which he was fully prepared to break if the circumstances required.
    As for paying for the house himself, Rubens considered it almost an investment, given the continual rise in real estate prices
     over the past few years. Besides, he lived independently of his government salary—and in fact regarded it as something less
     than a gratuity. It did not quite cover the amount of money he spent each year on clothes.
    Car washed and