by Jan Fedarcyk
18
KAY WAS in the office early, very early, earlier than usual, with a large cup of coffee for herself, two dozen donuts for the rest of the squad, and a minor intelligence coup for the Federal Bureau of Investigation writ large. She was smiling.
Jeffries was next, businesslike as ever. She greeted Kay and went swiftly into her office. Kay waited outside for a few moments, feeling a curious sense of anticipation, childlike, as if she were back in school, about to complete an oral exam. She steeled herself and bit back her grin and got up and knocked on Jeffries’s open door. “Do you have a moment?”
“Of course, Kay,” Jeffries said, gesturing to an empty seat. “I assume you want to discuss last night’s business.”
“Exactly,” Kay said, taking the chair.
“Everything went smoothly?”
“There were no problems with my cover. I get the sense that these panel discussions are not exactly high-security events. They seemed happy to have someone to fill the auditorium.”
“I think you’re probably not far wrong. And you? Did you enjoy yourself?”
“ ‘Enjoy’ might be a bit strong. I believe that it proved . . . a valuable use of my time.”
“How so?”
“Olga Stonavich and her husband, Boris, are worried about their eldest son, Vlad: a bright young man, apparently, though he has had some struggles in school. Olga does not feel that the Russian educational system will do much to nurture his particular cocktail of ability and would very much like to find some way that he could matriculate to an American university.”
Jeffries didn’t smile but for a moment it looked like she might. “Very clever, Agent Malloy.”
“That’s why you sent me, isn’t it? To see whether I could sniff out anything new on Boris?”
“In part,” Jeffries admitted. “Of course, anything which might further our objective with Boris is much appreciated. But, more than that, I wanted to see how you’d do in a more polished environment than you might have gotten used to in Baltimore.”
“It was a test, then?”
Jeffries didn’t answer, not for a long time, just stared at Kay with her arid gray eyes. “Do you like working in counterintelligence, Agent Malloy?”
Kay swallowed nervously, wondering if she had come on too strong, if her enthusiasm to present her findings had been misplaced. “I’m not sure I understand the question.”
“It’s not a complicated one. There’s no hidden layer to it. I’m asking you if you enjoy coming to work in the morning. If you’re happy being a member of the squad.”
“If there’s some problem with my work,” Kay said, sitting up straighter in her chair, bracing for criticism, “I’ll do my best to fix it.”
“Quite the opposite, in fact. Yesterday evening was a test, as was your surveillance work the other week, and you acquitted yourself well in both. In six months or a year I believe you could be as good at counterintelligence as you ever were at violent crime and gangs—assuming, of course, that this is what you want. I’m well aware of the reputation that counterintelligence has within the Bureau, Kay, and I can even understand why. What we do doesn’t end in a perp walk, doesn’t end with drugs and money and a few AK-47s on a table for the evening news. It’s a game in which the field, the players, even the outcome, never becomes entirely clear. You pit your skills against an opponent half a planet away, men and women you will never see or know, silently going about the business of corrupting our country. Your triumphs will go quietly unreported, unknown to anyone but a handful of brass inside the Bureau. Your failures will gain infamy. It is an exhausting and thankless task whose only saving grace is that it is absolutely necessary. My program is as good as it is because everyone here wants to be on it, understands its importance. Because they put the mission ahead of everything else, ahead of career advancement and often their personal life. Because they keep the good of the Bureau, and the country, front and center at all times.”
It was far and away the longest speech that Kay had ever heard Jeffries give, and when it ended abruptly Kay was not sure what to say.
“Take some time and think it over,” Jeffries said quietly. “I think that you could be good at it. I think you could be very good. But that’s a choice you have to make on your own.” Jeffries set aside her cup of coffee and turned towards one of the folders sitting on her desk. After a belated movement Kay realized that she had just been dismissed, and she stood and left awkwardly.
It was only twenty minutes before the start of the working day, but the outside office was already filled, the members of the counterintelligence squad at their desks, munching on the snacks Kay had brought in, sipping coffee, sifting through information on their computers, continuing the tasks they had set aside the day before—set aside but not forgotten. After a long moment sitting at her desk, running through Jeffries’s unexpected challenge, Kay logged on and got to joining them.
19
SIX GIRLS raised pink-colored cocktails in the air to match Kay’s—more people than she would have imagined celebrating the anniversary of her birth into this benighted world, particularly as this was an occasion to which Kay herself did not attach any great importance. She laughed and sipped her drink through a smile that was about half genuine.
It was Kay’s first night out in a month, and she wouldn’t have had any trouble extending her isolationist streak, and quite frankly would have been fine spending her twenty-ninth birthday at home catching up on work. But Alice had been her friend since they were gawky, acne-ridden middle-schoolers sneaking cigarettes in the bathroom of their expensive prep school, and she had an app on her phone that told her anytime anyone was having a birthday. So she had called Kay the week before and all but demanded that she come out for a few congratulatory drinks, and Kay found herself unable to say no.
Which was what they were doing then, in a portion of Manhattan where a slice of pizza cost eight dollars and an alcoholic drink a grim fifteen. The last time Kay had been out celebrating something, it was her transfer out of Baltimore, and she could not imagine two less similar bars than Monaghan’s, with its chipped tables and surly staff and cheap booze, and the half club that she was now occupying, which looked like someone’s idea of a bondage dungeon: dim lighting and very loud music and a dance floor packed with what seemed exclusively lingerie models. For that matter she did not see many clear points of comparison between her Baltimore colleagues, hardened professionals, and her old friends, smiling, bright-eyed examples of bourgeois youth.
“Old friends” might be stretching the point a bit, Kay had to admit. They weren’t bad. It wasn’t their fault. Fair enough, Sandra’s hemline would have been risqué had she been a dancer in the Moulin Rouge, and Anna had, since they had seen each other frequently back in high school, picked up the unfortunate habit of beginning every single sentence with the word “I.” But that was about the worst you could say about any of them, and in the grand scheme of things these were far from cardinal sins.
No, Kay could admit it: the problem wasn’t her sort-of friends, who were basically good-humored and who seemed to sincerely wish her well. It was Kay herself. It was Kay having just endured a week of digging through strangers’ trash, trying to separate minor errors from outright evil, a week that seemed uncannily like the week before, and the week before that, and would almost certainly seem like next week as well. It had left her feeling rather nasty about the world and the species of bipeds that had come to rule it.
It was not an easy thing to turn off. The guy at the bar who had offered to buy her a drink, tall and dark and handsome and obviously, obviously married, rubbing the naked skin of his ring finger as if it were a good luck charm. In the back corner two girls were in the midst of some sort of a drug deal, probably ecstasy, although Kay wasn’t certain; and, OK, it wasn’t like she was going to run over and bust them, but for Christ’s sake maybe show a little bit of discretion.
“Kay? Kay? Are you even listening?” Alice asked.
Kay turned swiftly from her paranoia to the woman who had been her best friend through much of the formative portion of her life. “Sorry, Alice—I’m a little bit distracted.”
“I asked why you didn’t invite any of your coworkers.”
Kay stifled a laugh at the image of Jeffries out with the group of them, Jeffries having a casual drink, Jeffries flirting with someone at the bar, Jeffries relaxing her raptor eyes for a single solitary second. Marshall and Wilson were fine—she’d started to enjoy their company if not quite the way she had with Torres—but they had families to go home to, and had worked through as long a week as Kay had, or nearly, and she hadn’t supposed any of them would be inclined to get drunk on sugary cocktails.
Kay shook her head. “I’ve got everyone I want right here!” she said, feigning an enthusiasm she didn’t actually feel.
“Really, sister?” a voice from behind her asked. “You can’t think of anyone you’d like to see?”
Alice gave that high-pitched squeal, and then she was up from her chair and taking Kay’s brother in an embrace that some might have thought platonic, except that she had one hand on his ass and the kiss she gave him crossed over that undefinable boundary between cheek and neck. Alice had been carrying a torch for Kay’s brother for the better part of twenty years, and Christopher’s manifest disinterest as well as his lack of success since leaving high school had done nothing to extinguish it.
Christopher handled it with that grace that had always come naturally to him, that charm that was at once his most prized asset and the seed of his downfall, then spread it amongst the rest of Kay’s friends, winning converts left and right. Alice and Sandra would be ready to kill each other by the end of the evening in an attempt to get her brother’s attention. After all these years they still didn’t understand that he couldn’t keep himself focused on any one thing for any length of time.
But damn if he didn’t look good in his tight jeans and black leather jacket and with his eyes that seemed not to give a damn about anything. And he was carrying a bright pink teddy bear which was the size of an overweight adolescent.
“What are you doing with that?” Kay asked.
“I went to Coney Island today,” he said.
“One of the upsides of not having a real job.”
“Absolutely. Anyway, I won it with my shooting ability.”
“And what would I use that pink bear for, Christopher?”
“You could take it somewhere and use it for target practice.”
Kay laughed and grabbed Christopher and pulled him into a hug, and he laughed and returned it.
“What the hell is wrong with you girls?” Christopher said, pushing her aside for the moment. “An hour into her birthday and my sister is still sober? No one’s going to call you in to investigate a bank heist tonight, Kay,” he said, signaling to the bartender, who brought over two shots of whiskey. “Tonight you’re just one more sinner in a world full of them. So enjoy yourself.”
“That’s not my strong suit.”
Christopher raised his glass. “Fear not, dear sister: your wiser elder brother is here to teach you.”
Kay laughed and took the shot.
Christopher was a source of never-ending concern for Kay; kept her up long after her bedtime; wore lines into her face and into her heart. He could not be trusted to show up for interviews on time, to help her move, to act appropriately at family gatherings. His debts had just about risen into the five-figure range. He had more than a casual relationship with narcotics. He was selfish and reckless and foolish . . . but damn if he wasn’t good for a laugh.
20
JEFFRIES CALLED Kay into her office one early fall afternoon, asked her to take a seat, then looked at her for a long while without saying anything. Kay knew better than to break the silence: Jeffries did not waste time with banter. She would speak when she was ready to, and not before.
“You’ve been up here several months now, Agent Malloy,” she began finally.
It wasn’t quite a question, but Kay answered anyway. “Yes, ma’am.” Kay had fallen into a comfortable groove since her debriefing with Jeffries a month earlier. Her days were busy but productive, and she had started to feel she had transitioned out of her breaking-in period and was no longer figuring out the ropes so much as actively contributing to ongoing investigations. She had a better appreciation for the twilight world of counterintelligence, the feints and the trickery, the endless hidden motivations.
“How are you feeling about it?”
How to answer that question without sounding incompetent or immodest? “I’m doing my very best,” Kay said, matching her superior’s formality.
Jeffries grunted and looked down at the file on her desk. “I suppose you’ve already figured that there’s something in the offing,” she said.
That morning Kay had spent several hours taking a polygraph test, being asked innumerable questions about her work, the polygrapher in charge of giving it tracking her heartbeat, pulse and respiration to make sure that she wasn’t offering any false answers. The polygraph was a key tool in the counterintelligence arsenal, useful in ferreting out falsehoods. But it was a long way from perfect, which was part of the reason its results were not considered valid in the U.S. legal system or those of most Western countries. It could offer false positives, suggesting dishonesty where there actually was none. More important, it could be beaten, especially by those who had been trained to do so. The number of double agents who had managed to survive its stress without breaking was not insignificant. Indeed, the polygraph was something of a double-edged sword: it caught the vast majority of people who attempted to lie their way through it, but those who escaped the net were inevitably the most devious and dangerous and showed no deception on their polygraphs. Aldrich Ames, the CIA Case Officer who had been doubled by the KGB during the 1980s and remained undetected for years, had passed a polygraph test, laughing and lying through his teeth.
Although how exactly he had done so, Kay could not possibly say: she spent the entire test feeling nervous as all hell, and she hadn’t even done anything. But it ended eventually with the polygrapher thanking her for her time and shuffling her out, and Kay assumed that she had done all right, otherwise she wouldn’t be having this conversation with Jeffries.
“I had a hint of it,” Kay said, trying unsuccessfully to match Jeffries’s deadpan demeanor.
“HQ has assigned us a major case,” Jeffries said simply.
Kay couldn’t think of anything worth adding, so she remained silent.
“Looking into the identity of a possible CIA mole who’s been wreaking havoc with their Russian spy networks.” Jeffries said it like she was reciting a shopping list or informing Kay about some trivial bit of protocol, but to Kay it sounded enormously exciting. “I’ve been asked to put together a group of Agents with unimpeachable records and a hunger for the mission. I think you’d be a good addition to the squad. It’ll be a full-time assignment. We’ll have to take you off all of your current investigations. And the work won’t be easy, and it might not get wrapped up anytime soon.” There was a long and, to Kay’s mind, rather dramatic pause while Jeffries stared out the window at the city below, drumming her fingers aimlessly on her desk. Just at the point when Kay thought she was going to burst from the tension, Jeffries turned back to her and said, “That is, if you think you’re ready for it.”
It was not a rhetorical question. A challenge was being put in front of her; it was up to Kay to decide if she would accept it. What if she decided she
wasn’t ready? Would she have a chance to return to criminal investigations, work she knew herself to be skilled at, and that she had enjoyed?
The mission came first: if this was what was required of her, then Kay would not back down now. “I believe I am,” Kay said.
Jeffries nodded. “Welcome to Black Bear, Agent Malloy,” she said. “Our first meeting is Monday morning down in Washington. Come ready to work.”
21
THE FIRST meeting of the Black Bear investigation began at nine thirty sharp on a rainy autumn Monday in an unattractive side office in FBIHQ. In addition to Kay, Jeffries had selected Marshall and Wilson as part of her team of specialists, as well as a half dozen other Agents with whom Kay was less familiar but whose competence she had no reason to doubt. They had arranged themselves—perhaps deliberately, perhaps not—along one end of a long conference table. At the other sat two members of their sister agency, looking neat and serious and not altogether friendly.
One of them was Kay’s age or a bit older, with skin the color of cocoa, handsome in an unassuming way, neatly but not expensively dressed. He had eyes of indeterminate hue and wore a soft smile like he knew something that you most likely did not. He had introduced himself as Andrew when she had walked in, giving each member of the team a friendly handshake, then sat back down and returned to his attitude of quiet observation.
“Don’t bother asking for his last name,” Jeffries had told Kay before the meeting, when the two of them were alone in the office. “He won’t tell you, and if he did tell you it wouldn’t be a real one. For that matter his first name will probably be an alias too. Also, virtually everything else that he tells us will be a cover.”
“Everything?”
Jeffries shrugged, stood, slipped on her suit jacket. “Best to assume so. The Bureau trains you to investigate crimes, Kay. The Agency teaches them to lie. Remember to keep the ball in our court.”