Unacceptable Risk by David Dun Read Free Book Online

commonly the SDECE, and she would hope—for without hope she would die.
     
    Grady was dressed in her gym shorts and sweatshirt and was ready to go out the door for a late-afternoon workout in lieu of a lunch break. She was taking a last look at her desk; then she looked up from her cubicle to see Sam walking toward her with a gray-haired, mustached man. Her gut tightened. Never had she met anyone inside this building that wasn't part of the company. And certainly she had never met visiting dignitaries while she wore her gym clothes.
     
    Harry growled a low growl.
     
    That was even rarer.
     
    "Grady, I would like you to meet Figgy Meeks, officially Alexander H. Meeks. One day I will have the pleasure of telling you how Figgy got his moniker."
     
    "I'll blow you to hell, Sam," Figgy said.
     
    "This is Harry, he kind of adopts Grady when I leave and he's my pal and he's smarter than most people."
     
    Figgy nodded at Harry, but Harry left the cube, most likely for Sam's desk.
     
    "Figgy here, as you can see, is a cursing, uncouth man who can't make breakfast taste good without the f word, but he helped teach me the spy trade."
     
    "The private spy trade. We could never persuade Sam to be come a government man, although it wasn't for lack of trying."
     
    "He was good enough to teach me and they don't come any better than this professor emeritus of the spy business. He's here on behalf of the French government."
     
    At the mere mention of the word "French," Grogg stuck his head up from a nearby cubicle, his quarter-inch-thick glasses hiding his eyes but not his emotions. Grogg couldn't stand the French, but his feelings were based on nothing more than a nasty divorce to a rotund and mouthy woman of French descent.
     
    "The French are the only human subspecies actually capable of fitting their own nose up their own ass," Grogg said.
     
    "This, as you know, I'm sure, is Grogg," Sam said. "He no longer drinks French wine and he's given up French women altogether." Before Grogg could say anything, Sam said, "Come on. Let's go to the conference room."
     
    As they turned to leave Grady's cubicle, they ran into Jill. "Well, well," she said. "Figgy Meeks, the legend himself."
     
    He kissed her hand, continental style, and she joined the group.
     
    On the way down the hall Figgy stopped. "That must be the infamous 'Big Brain.' " He stood at a large glass-walled area with racks of computer hardware.
     
    "Officially it's called the Common Object Repository for the Enterprise," Sam said. "And Grogg here—our expert on French ex-wives—helped me conceive her."
     
    Grogg nodded.
     
    "Bet she's some kind of memory hog, huh?" said Figgy.
     
    "Anything we download is in there forever," Grogg said. "It's amazing how much we use old stuff."
     
    "What kind of stuff?"
     
    "Oh, we have investigators trained in what to feed Big Brain."
     
    "From people's garbage cans to your computer," Figgy said.
     
    "Yep. We're good at collecting garbage and other things. But it's how you query the database that really matters."
     
    Figgy nodded, feigning interest for Grogg's sake.
     
    The conference room was large enough to seat thirty around the massive table. It was a room with character, collectors' items in a bookcase, pictures on the wall, heavy wood moldings, quite out of sync with the high-tech cubicles in the rest of the office. Sam had a cubicle like everyone else, just a little bigger. When he wanted complete privacy, he worked in the conference room.
     
    On a sideboard stood a jug of coffee, juice, soft drinks, and Danish pastries stuffed with a combination of cream cheese and blueberry preserves. Sam wanted two, but dutifully he passed on the pastries and high-calorie juices, poured himself some water, and thought about whether defined abs were really worth it. The prior day he had suffered through the sight of Grogg wolfing down a Reuben sandwich. Sam had turkey on whole wheat, mustard, but no mayo. He was still thinking about