“Yeah? I’m sorry if I scared you.”
“No,” I said, waving it off. “That I understand. What I wanted to ask you about was your work. What’s a computer engineer doing eating snakes in Eastern Europe?”
Instead of replying, Wes stuffed the envelope of snake meat into one of the outer pockets of his bag. Kneeling there, he looked lost in thought for a moment, then turned to me. “What’s your security clearance? DoD-wise.”
“The Pentagon has me rated top secret, but you know that’s only for the projects I’m cleared on,” I said. “Why?”
Wes pulled his backpack on and waited while I followed suit, picking up my walking stick. Wes started off, breaking out a ration pack from the side cargo pocket of his pants as he did. “Well, imagine if you can, a young soldier who has just left the military to go to college. He’s fit, well-trained, and has a flair for computer science, as well as a strong desire to serve his country, although not in the strictest of military ways any longer.”
“Imagine that while he’s at school, he’s approached by some gentlemen who know who he is and offer him a job. Strictly off the books, strictly freelance, his job is to hack the computer systems of other countries, gathering intelligence for certain government agencies. Most of the time, his work can be done from the comfort and safety of a normal office. But his specialty is getting into systems that aren’t linked into normal networks, isolated Intranets that are used within government facilities only, the type of data that when it has to go off-site is loaded onto portable hard drives and carried via armed courier. And finally, let’s just pretend that this person’s last assignment wasn’t so much in Eastern Europe as it was in Russia.”
I looked at Wes’s face as he kept walking on silently, studying him for any signs of deception or bullshit. He was dead serious, though, and I stopped for a moment, considering yet another change in how I saw the man that a week prior I thought of as just my handsome, yet sometimes aloof, stepbrother. Wesley Brandt, secret agent? “So, uh . . . wow. I have a Mr. Bond on my hands?”
“Great story, huh?” Wes said as we kept walking. We kept the lake on our right shoulder, the more open terrain and grassland making walking easy. “This person, if they did exist, has seen data files that makes him doubt the sanity of humanity. He’s got blood on his hands, and is getting tired of the game.”
“I could see that,” I said, keeping my mind working in the same deception he was using, even though we both could easily see the truth. “This person might be a bit lonely, while at the same time desiring isolated getaways.”
“He might.”
“What does his family know?”
“His parents wouldn’t know anything, although if he could, he’d tell his stepsister, since he’s been in love with her since they were teenagers.”
I lengthened my stride to catch up with Wes, reaching out to take his gloved hand. We walked in silence for a while, stretching at least a mile or so of lakeshore, before I spoke again. “So, this freelancer, does he make good money? Because his stepsister probably isn’t exactly having the most success in her own career. She doesn’t want to end up destitute and leeching off her parents, after all.”
Wes smiled and glanced over at me. “Let’s just say that he’s got enough of a nest egg that he could retire right now and live well for a very long time. One of the perks of his contract is that if he can hack enemy financial institutions, he’s allowed to. Right now, he owns shares under various aliases in about three dozen major corporations, as well as a decent-sized Swiss bank account.”
“Well, if such a man like that existed, I think his stepsister would be one lucky girl to have him then,” I said, giving his hand a squeeze. “And would love to be part of his life, as close as he can let her be, at least.”
In normal Wes fashion, instead of answering with words, he smiled and handed over a granola bar from the ration pack. We kept up our companionable walk for the rest of the day, giving the cryptic talk a rest. We took ten minute breaks every hour to stretch, rest and make sure we were both staying hydrated. At about four in the afternoon, the shadows started getting long, and we started looking for a place to camp. We had gotten all the way past the first lake, and were now following the river that connected it with the next lake in the chain. It wasn’t that big, maybe only about thirty yards across, but it was pretty.