Splicer by Theo Cage, Russ Smith

would be made to his department. He walked down to the employee washroom on a different floor and spent the afternoon sitting on the toilet trying to figure out how he would survive - how he would support his family without a weekly paycheck. The next morning, afraid to face the music in his department, he retired to the washroom again. Following a week of loitering around the stalls, he received his paycheck, as usual in the mail.
    For the next seven years he continued to be paid on a regular basis, not once showing his face in his department, but never failing to arrive at the office promptly at 7:30 AM. Every day he would make the washroom his center of operations. At Christmas he would join the office staff parties - in the summer his family would make their appearance at the company picnic. It was only when he succumbed to a coronary and died, in the very same washroom, that his ruse was discovered.
    Aaron Grey was reminded of this story almost daily as he made his way through the labyrinth of hallways and departments on his way to his office at CIA headquarters in Langley.  His itinerary, his sphere of attention, was so narrowly focused these past few years, that the number of fellow operatives he came into contact with on a daily basis was limited to one or two retired senior area managers. Like the guy in the story, he was virtually invisible to others he shared the building with. And that was the way he preferred it.
    Most of the men he had worked with over the years at the shop had retired or died. The ones who had passed away, did so on golf greens and dance floors, their only reminder of action on alien soil a geriatric flashback. Last year, his personal assistant of 32 years had finally sold her home and moved to a condo in Arizona. He never replaced her.
    Other departments, insulated by function of harsh security, had little interest or involvement in his territory or responsibilities. And Grey had no interest in theirs. His contacts were largely outside of the CIA – a handful of trusted field operatives, who shared his ideals and a few chosen new recruits, trained in the traditional arts.
    Grey's budget was considerable, for all intents, infinite. He currently had over fifty lawyer spotters on his payroll placed all over the country. Their job was to identify companies with cash flow or management problems. Grey’s people would then swoop down and buy the companies cheap and refinance them through a number of covert banks owned by POG. These companies would then pledge bearer bonds on the open market to raise money and then eventually declare bankruptcy. Millions were generated this way every month. All for the cause.
    His desk was old and marked - each scratch, a bookmark, a link to a case or a cause dead but not forgotten. On one uncluttered wall was a faded signed photograph of Richard Nixon and a blank spot where once was hung a likeness of Ronald Reagan. Grey took it down and trashed it the day that Gorbachev landed in New York to mark the official end of the cold war.
    His office, like his appearance, was unassuming. But his eyes, on closer inspection, were the nexus of a grim determination. Most of the younger secretaries, the clerks and the managers avoided his gaze. They were thankful he appeared only at Langley once or twice a week, making the center of his operations his home in Connecticut. Those eyes were burning now.
    What angered him was the response he was getting from the other side.
    Something had happened. The gloves were off.
    Someone in the State department had decided that the Splicer would make a very clever gift to the military. Grey was aware of a standing order made by the Army to GeneFab for several hundred million dollars. His first order of business would be to tell the hardware boys to fuck off. But they were too bull-headed to consider a simple no for an answer. They wanted the Splicer and they hated Grey's department for getting in their way. They were capable of anything