"I'm telling you, it was like a fuckin' movie, Spits." Expressly against stated policy, the short one was up on his elbows, leaning up against the inside edge of the security desk that commanded two thirds of the width of the boxy room they were in. F-bombs were definitely not allowed, either.
"Fuckin spooks, man. But this guy was something else."
The taller one, Spits, sat quietly and reviewed the shift change procedures for his own benefit. It was his second day on the job, so he wasn't sleepwalking or pencil whipping it yet, unlike the short one, who, Spits would learn, spent the entire overlapping hour running his mouth.
"It doesn't happen too often, but you can always tell. When I first started working here, there was this guy..."
Spits sighed. It was his second day on the job and fifth time hearing this story. He knew he wouldn't be able to concentrate because he had learned that telling this story would get Herrera so excited he would be slapping shoulders. He took a long look around the room. In the background, Herrera was telling his story. It was a typical "front desk" for a secure compartment inside a larger government building - an awkward set of rooms that had been remodeled at some point into a suite inside the building, cut off from it internally except for a single entry point - the front desk. This one had a small fortress crammed where there had at one time been a sectretary's desk, a dozen chairs, a water cooler, and a few potted plants lining spacious walkways.
Now, where there used to be a waist-high room divider between the chairs and the desk, was a grey-carpeted, Formica-topped cubicle farm-style office bubble that stretched floor to ceiling two thirds of the way across the room, leading to a blank black doors in either corner, on the outside walls - and there were no chairs in the lobby.
The sign on the building said "Theodore Roosevelt Federal Office Building", and most of the nine floors were occupied with administrative and finance offices, data centers, call centers, and HR.
The sign on the door to this compartment simply read "ADMIN STE C-305", and it was in a wing of the building that nobody was ever likely to wander by, even on accident.
Abruptly, the door rattled as someone quickly figured out that the handle stuck a little, and then opened.
The noise had drawn both guards' attention, and a man in a plain black suit walked in with a battered looking portfolio under one arm. As he approached the desk, both guards noticed that he was wearing a bright orange VISITOR badge from the building security desk, clipped to one shirt collar and dangling high over his tie.
The guards looked at each other as the man stopped at the desk and started to rustle around with his portfolio, and Herrera shook his head once at Spits - he didn't recognize him, and there was absolutely no way someone with a V badge belonged here. Herrera got ready to give the visitor directions back to the elevator. Every once in a while this happened - someone got off on the wrong floor and followed directions for some office on the fifth floor. Pure coincidence in the floor plans landed them here.
As the guards watched, the man produced a ballpoint pen and a notepad, wrote down a phone number from memory,and then held it up so the two could see it.
"Good morning," he said. "I was told to call this number when I got to the front desk."
The two men looked at each other again in silence for a moment. There was nothing in the procedure that prohibited them from doing so, so Spits reached for the phone, but Hererra took it out of his hand.
Herrerra recognized the phone number, sort of. It had the same first six digits of all of the numbers inside the building, but he didn't recognize the last four them offhand.
The phone was answered after a single ring with a simple "Hello?" and Herrera paused.
"May I ask who this is?" Herrera asked, "I have a visitor here that told me he was supposed to call this number on arrival."
"Herrera, right? This is the Director's office," the person on the other end said, "Tell him someone will be right there."
He looked at the visitor and told them someone would be right there. He nodded, stepped back, and looked around for a chair. Not seeing one, he sighed and said "Ahhhh, one of these places, huh?"
For the two or three minutes that he stood there, there was complete silence as the guards stared back.
Eventually, one of the doors opened and someone ushered the man back through it.
A little while after it closed, Herrera muttered, "Fuckin' spooks, man."