Plan B

It's me again, I've been noodling on this one for a while now, I think it's ready for you to read.

Thanks to all who have commented on my previous work. I hope this one passes muster. I have a couple more in me waiting to pop out.

Plan B

"Papa, this is an emergency! I am safe and unharmed. You need to pick me up immediately at the coffee shop at Fisher and Second Street. Tell no one, especially mom. Please hurry."

I had just missed her call; the vmail showed it was only two minutes old. So I exited my office on the run and called Julia from the car. She picked up before the first ring had finished.

"Papa! Are you on your way!?"

"Yes, sweetie. I'm calling you from my car. Are you OK, are you hurt? What's going on, what's the emergency."

"Papa you just gotta get here, I'll explain everything once you're here. Please hurry!"

"Ok sweetie, I'm about 10 minutes away now and I'm driving as fast as I legally can. You hang tight, I'll be there shortly. I'm going to hang up now so I can focus on driving. Is that OK?"

"Yes, that's fine. I feel a lot better now that you're coming to get me. See you soon."

My daughter, Julia, had never been hysterical or prone to exaggerations. She's always been a pretty good kid. At 17, smart as a whip, and just as pretty as her mom was at that age. What could be the matter? She was in a public place, but still. My heart was still racing when I pulled into the parking lot. Julia must have been looking out the window; I hadn't even finished pulling into my spot when she was getting in the passenger door.

"Oh Papa. What are we going to do?" and then she dissolved into sobs. All I could do was hug her and wait her out. It must have taken ten minutes for her to calm down enough to talk. All the while I'm imagining all kinds of crazy scenarios - pregnant, drugs, flunking, a crime? That was the worst 10 minutes of my life. Until the next few played out.

Clearly still crying with tears still pouring from her eyes Julia tried to compose herself. "I had to come home early from school because I was having bad period cramps." (Not pregnant!!)

"But when I got in the house I heard mom talking loudly up in your bedroom. I couldn't hear what exactly she was saying so I went upstairs thinking I'd get some Motrin from her for my cramps. But as I started up the stairs I could hear her clearly. Papa, mom was having sex with somebody!"

"I froze on the stairs and just listened for a moment, not really believing what I was hearing. So I turned on my phone and crawled on the hallway carpet to your bedroom door. Then I just put the phone past the door frame and recorded for a couple of minutes. It was horrible; I haven't looked at the video. I had already heard the whole thing."

"Mom and her lover were so wrapped up in fucking that I probably could have walked right into your bathroom to get the Motrin and they wouldn't have noticed me. After a couple of minutes I crawled back down the hall and quietly left the house. I hurried straight here and called you as soon as I sat down inside."

"Are you sure they didn't see you?"

"I'm sure; they were getting it on pretty heavy. Hey, you don't look surprised, or angry. What's going on, did you already know she was cheating!?" Julia went from crying to indignant in a millisecond.

"No I didn't know, but I had suspected something was going on for the last year or so. I guess you better let me see the recording, let's get this over with."

Julia handed me her phone and I hit play on the video. Yup, there was my wife, Susanna getting fucked from behind by none other than her tennis coach on our bed. Colin was in great shape, he looked pretty athletic. I turned it off after only a few seconds.

"Julia, I'm sending this video from your phone to mine. Now I'm erasing it permanently from your phone, I don't ever want you to have to see that."

"Papa, what are we going to do. Mom is cheating on you, on us. Are you going to divorce her?"

"Plan B, sweetie, Plan B. Its 2:30 now, let's drive over to pick up your brothers from school and we'll get things moving. You're going to have to trust me, I have been preparing for this for a long time. I had hoped it would never come to this, I had hoped Plan A would be the one. But now, no hesitation.

= = =

My name is Alan, 58; I'm a senior cybersecurity guy. I'm not a hacker or engineer; I'm a manager - a people manager to be precise. Which means that in the 30 years I've been working in Silicon Valley I've seen all kinds, and had to deal with a wide spectrum of bad guys. Both inside and the one's trying to break in from outside.

Plus since I've been immersed in the high-tech culture I've grown accustomed to the morally flexible jerks that run the companies around here. Oh sure, there's some good eggs here and there. But upper management tends to be only on the lookout for numero uno. Something about the Valley attracts such cretins; and of course we put out a fresh crop of CEO wannabe's from the local colleges with regularity.

Being a good guy who can think like a bad guy has given me a great advantage over the years. I've learned to plan for contingencies, after all contracts are not written for when things go well. If everything is copacetic, there's no need to invoke some clause. On top of that I'm a people person at heart. I love people; I like to watch them, listen to them, and figure them out if I can. I've actually gotten to be a pretty good observer of people. Especially those that I interact with on a regular basis.

I think one other thing about me that I should mention, my brother and I were raised by a single mother. She made a dollar stretch from here to next week. We were always clean and well dressed - she would brook no sloppiness. So she had to plan everything ahead of time. She was carful, and meticulous. Her other disadvantage was that she was not a native English speaker. My father had married her in the old country and brought here to the Bay Area. A heart attack got him just 5 years later leaving mom with 5 year old me and my 3-1/2 year old brother. So we grew up bilingual, Spanish and English.

I met Susanna 18 years ago when we both worked for the same company. She's in Finance, and has steadily worked her way up the ranks. It seems that the Valley has an insatiable appetite for Finance people. I don't know why. She's probably seen more bad stuff that I have, Valley CEO's love to play fast and loose with the numbers. But she has always been a straight shooter; I've never had reason to doubt her. At least until about a year ago.

Julia you've already met. We have two boys Jason and Jared. I know, I know. But that's what my wife wanted. And if we'd had another child I'm sure she would have found a suitable "J" name for them. The boys are 13 year old twins. Susanna asked me to get a vasectomy about 5 years ago, saying that her baby making days were over. An afternoon at the Dr.'s office and I was shooting blanks. Susanna came off birth control and everything moved to a new normal.

= = =

"Papa, what is Plan B?"

"You know your gramma was a planner; her favorite nag was no salgas al sol sin sombrero. She may have been a poorly educated peasant from the old country, but she had some great wisdom. So I have been quietly making plans, and putting in place an exit strategy in case anything ever went wrong. Plan A was going be to use all the preparations for a great retirement for your mom and me. I was going to take care of you guys too, give you a start after you finished college. Now Plan B goes into effect and all those resources will be used for something else. Which reminds me, I need to make a phone call. Hold your questions for a minute." Julia's eyes had grown ever bigger as I was telling her my tale.

"Hey, how's my favorite brother today!?"

"Alan, what's up! Haven't heard from you in a couple of weeks."

"Alfred, I'm invoking Plan B. Julia is in the car with me right now, and we're on the way to pick up the boys from school." There was a roaring silence coming from the phone.

"Alan, are you sure. There's no going back. As your lawyer I'll follow your instructions to the letter. But as your brother, I gotta ask again - are you sure?"

"Unfortunately yes, I'm sure. Julia went home unexpectedly from school today and caught Susanna with her tennis coach on our bed. She even had the presence of mind to shoot a couple of minutes of video, without getting caught."

"It's going to be really tough around here without my big brother." Alfred's voice broke and he was clearly getting emotional, which set off my tears. It's never a good thing for a child to see her father cry, but there were some hard times ahead and Julia would have to toughen up fast.

"Alan, I'll break open the documents and get prepared for the shit to hit the fan. When will you execute the Plan."

"I'm doing that now; first step is to get the kids to a safe place. Then to begin Step 1 of the plan."

"Ok Alan, I love you. Julia, you pay attention to your papa. Do exactly as he says and everything will be OK. Let me hear you say it, you'll do exactly as Papa says."

"Tio Alfred, I don't know what Plan B is. I'm scared, Papa hasn't explained anything."

"Julia you gotta trust your Papa, he has taken care of everything. You have to trust him; he loves you guys more than anything else in the world. Promise me."

"Ok, I promise. But I still don't know what I'm promising to do."

"That's OK, one step at a time. I gotta go now; there are things I have to do to prepare. Alan, mi hermano. Cuidese, que Dios los bendiga. Hasta luego."

"Tu tambien, cuidate bien. Adios."

= = =

I'll get back to the story in a minute, but first let give you the happy ending. I know, I know - it's supposed to go at the end in an Epilog. So sue me ;)

I'm sitting in my villa overlooking beautiful rolling hills. The house is decorated for an extremely happy occasion, today was Julia's wedding day. La Doctora Estrella married El Ingeniero Morales - Carlos Morales became my son-on-law today. I walked my daughter down the aisle in her white dress and said proudly when asked "I give Estrella to Carlos." Her brothers were groomsmen, and my buttons burst to see them dressed like fine gentlemen. Steven and Scott have grown into fine young men. Scott will be a lawyer soon, and Steven has decided to follow me into the cybersecurity world.

Now as I sit with my friends and new relatives drinking some very expensive hooch, I can wax philosophical. Even my brother and his wife are here. It has all been worth it. Plan B worked, these past 10 years have been mostly happy. Susanna never found us. We have sent her a picture every year at Christmas. We stand in front of the same white sheet (so as to not give any clues) every year and snap the picture. And after passing through several relays, it lands in Susanna's inbox. I always send a second picture; it's a frame capture of her and her tennis lover. I send these as a reminder of what she gave up by screwing around on us.

= = =

"Papa what is Plan B!?"

"It's essentially a witness protection program for me, you and your brothers. We are going to assume new identities and disappear off the map. Your mother will never find us." I knew this was going to be the tricky part. Julia was smart; she would quickly realize what it meant to leave everything behind. What's the big deal right? Parents get divorced every day for all kinds of reasons. I'm sure Julia had friends whose parents had split up and everybody had remained civil. I was not built that way, it was one and done for me. I needed to get her mind on the right track.

"You were going to start college in the fall, it'll just be in a different place. We'll build a new life together. I don't want to have us be split apart because of your mother's betrayal. She didn't just cheat on me, she cheated on all of us. I don't want her lying and disrespect to shatter our family."

Julia grew pensive, so I relaxed a little. If she was thinking instead of fighting me I was half way to convincing her to go along. She would be key to the plan working. I was counting on her being mad at her mother enough to get us through the first few steps.

"What are we going to tell my brothers? How are you going to explain it to them?"

Bingo, she was in. "We'll tell them that I've got a remote assignment and I'm taking y'all with me for an adventure. With enough pizza and video games they won't even know what planet they're on. Later we'll tell them the truth, when the time is right."

By now we were in the school parking lot, we still had about 15 minutes before the last bell rung. Julia covered her face with her hands and was quietly crying. I could tell she was thinking of the life she was leaving behind, her friends, her everything. She was having to grow up all in one afternoon. She'd caught her mother having sex with someone other than me, and now I was proposing we all go on the run. I was asking a lot.

I had truly hoped that all my preparations would never be needed. Plan A was to surprise Susanna with a villa we could retire to, be squires over a working winery. It would have been great, to become landed gentry with servants and everything. With enough left over to help the kids get launched properly. Sadly that would never happen now.

I won't bore you with the details, suffice it to say that good security people have always been in demand. It was an easy thing to take on side jobs and squirrel that money away off-shore. The villa had come about by accident, one of my uncles had mentioned it, and I had used a shell company to buy it. That was nine years ago, and since he had passed away no one would ever connect me to it. The offshore accounts had grown exponentially with all that extra work and a startup that struck gold while I was there.

"What about electronic tracking, and ID's. What about money, how will we live?" Yup, one smart cookie.

"I have prepared for all of that. For now I just need you to do as your Tio Alfred asked and trust me. And I'll need your help a bit with your brothers. I need you to play along, to be excited about me taking you guys on a remote assignment. Jason and Jared will be coming out soon, please get yourself together and fix your makeup. I'm going to text them that we're here and I'm going to stand near the entrance to make sure I catch them. Julia it goes without saying, you can't answer your phone for anybody; especially your mom. Just let any calls go to voicemail and we'll deal with them later."

Right on time the boys came bounding out with the rest of the kids. I got high fives from both of them and started back to the car. The boys got buckled in and immediately got their phones out. Not sure what game they were playing, but as usual they were totally engrossed. Yup, no idea what planet.

"Guys how about we go the mall and get some pizza? I just gotta stop by my office for a second and pick up some stuff I'll need for later." Grunts from the boys, Julia looked pensive.

We swung by my office and I got my travel bag, stuffed my work laptop into it. And then went into the concealed safe and took all the cash I had there, $6,500, and the courier pouch. The RF jamming courier pouch that had new ID's, birth certificates, and passports for each of us. And school and vaccination records for the kids. Plus a burner phone and a wallet with a driver's license and credit cards with my alternate name. And a couple of USB sticks with all the data, bank records, and files we would need to build a new life.

Like I said, I'm not some super sleuth cyber guy, I'm a manager. But in that capacity, and with my background as a planner, I had capitalized on the times I'd run across people or services that might help me fill out that courier pouch. Heck even knowing that such a thing existed came about on the job. There are bad guys and there are bad guys. So it was an easy thing to slip some cash into the right hands, learn some new skills myself and get all that stuff prepared. Always hoping none of it would ever be needed.

"An extra-large number 3, with extra cheese. And two pitchers of diet Coke." I paid cash. Back at the office I'd slipped my old wallet into the pouch and put the new one in my pocket. My immediate plan was to get the boys sedated with enough pizza that they would go along with just about anything. But I needed to sweeten the pot, and also cut off the electronic trail their phones were leaving.

When about half the pizza was gone I put the next step in Plan B into action. "Hey guys, Julia was reminding me that you guys haven't had a phone upgrade in a couple of years. What do you guys say we go over the phone store and get some new hardware?" Jared and Jason got the biggest grins on their faces - pizza and now a new phone! It was like Christmas come early.

Before long the pizza was gone and we were in the phone store. The earnest young sales girl was telling us about the features of the latest and greatest.

"Miss, can you please show us the model with the best performance? The kids are really into gaming and I want them to be able to play all the new stuff." Three happy grins resulted from my request, Christmas indeed.

Models selected, colors chosen and three very happy kids were holding the boxes of their new phones. I picked a black one for me. I think we made the salesgirl's quota for the week.

"Sir, would you like us to transfer the data from your old phones to the new ones?"

"Thanks for the offer, but no. I will do that later today. I'm a cybersecurity professional and there's some software I want to load first to protect their new phones. As long as the new ones are fully functional and they can immediately be able to play games, we'll be fine." Out came my wallet and I paid with my alternate credit card.

"Hey guys, let's go back into the mall and get some ice-cream. All this shopping has got me Jonesin' for some rocky road. Plus I can fix your phones real quick so they can be safe."

So while the boys were playing with their new phones, I took Julia's phone first. The software I loaded was certainly for their safety, but also so that I could monitor and block any unwanted communications. It took only a few moments to load the redirect agent; now only acceptable traffic would be allowed. This part might seem cruel, but I wanted to ensure they didn't communicate with anyone and give us away. I removed the battery from each of their old phones in turn, and into the pouch they went. They'd discover that they had all new numbers soon enough.

Since I had my work laptop out, I made flight reservations for the redeye to Dallas for the four of us using my alternate ID and credit card. All the bookings were made with our new names. Then a connecting flight on Aero Mexico to Mexico City. The Hyatt Regency reservation was also easy, two adjoining rooms, each with two beds. We were on our way; I was actually able to relax a bit and enjoy my double scoop. The boys were so engrossed in the new phones they hadn't noticed how quiet Julia had been all afternoon.

"Papa, when are you going to tell us about this adventure you're taking us on?"

"Guys, hit pause on your games for a minute so I can explain what's going on." It took a moment or two but finally they put down their phones and were paying attention.

"OK, I've been asked to go on a remote assignment to do some security work. The work itself won't be too hard, but it must be done in person. And since it's in an exotic location, I thought I'd bring you along so you could enjoy the scenery."

"When would we be going, what about school?"

"No worries, I'll send an email to the school letting them know you'll be gone for a few days. As to when, we're leaving tonight, our flight leaves at midnight out of San Jose."

"Is mom coming too?"