She examined the book’s title, printed in bold elegant letters on the center of the page:
The History of the Peloponnesian War Thucydides
Up in the top-right corner were her father’s name and the date, written neatly in his unmistakable handwriting. Tom Moore 2/15/83. The bottom of the page had been stamped by the bookstore in blurry black ink.
February 15, 1983. There was something special about that date—something her father had always…
Of course. The book. Gaia was suddenly awestruck by the weathered page in her hand. She’d known there was something special about this book, and now she finally understood what it was. This was the book her father had been searching for the day he met her mother….
“The story of how young Tom met the even younger Katia,” as her father used to say. He had told Gaia the story more than a few times.
It was a cold day in February 1983. He was searching for a book for his thesis—a rare edition of none other than Thucydides—and walked into this little bookshop on Waverly. That’s when he first saw Gaia’s mother, sitting on the floor of the bookstore, surrounded by stacks of books. As the story went, all it took was for their eyes to meet and they fell in love at first sight.
For a long time Gaia believed that she would fall in love just as quickly and as simply as her parents had. That was until she got older and found out that love felt less like the story her father told and more like a story from the Bible: lots of struggles and plagues—everyone either gets punished or dies. At least in her experience. All the more reason to envy and worship her parents’ perfect love affair.
Suddenly this yellowed piece of paper had become incredibly precious to her. A page from the book that had brought her parents together. She ran the tip of her index finger gently across her father’s signature, realizing how long ago he had written it. Long before Gaia had been loaded up with heinous resentment for him. More than a year before she had even been born. Long before everything had gone so terribly and miserably wrong.
Now she understood. The mystery agent was starting her off from the very beginning. From the very first day her parents had met. And this was his first “clue.” Her heartbeat increased at an exponential rate as her eyes drifted down to the blurry stamp at the bottom of the page. The Waverly Bookshop. 16 Waverly Place.
Next stop: Greenwich Village.
History Repeating Itself
WHAT IF IT WAS GONE?
This thought hadn’t even occurred to Gaia until she’d jumped off the train at Sheridan Square. Her parents had met almost twenty years ago. What were the odds of some tiny cluttered bookshop still being at 16 Waverly?
But as she raced down the quaint little street, with its well-preserved brownstones and its well-kept trees, she discovered a tiny glass blip in her peripheral vision. She nearly fell over, slamming on her own brakes. There on her right, squeezed mercilessly between two dark town houses, down a flight of gray iron steps to the basement level, was the Waverly Bookshop. It was hidden almost completely from view by the garbage cans on the landing and the stacks of dark, aging books filling up the glass window, but it was still there.
Gaia took the iron steps in one leap and tumbled into the shop, pushing the door against a rusty jingling bell that announced her entrance.
So this was where her parents had met…. To call the shop tiny would be a little too generous. It was a shoe box.
Peering over one of the towers of books, she could see the white-haired head of the proprietor.
“Afternoon,” she heard him mutter.
“Hi,” Gaia replied, standing up on her tiptoes to see the man’s face. “Where’s the history section?”
“You’re looking at it,” he mumbled, keeping his eyes pinned to his own book as he turned the dusty page.
“Riiight,” Gaia replied, looking back toward the wall at a sea of unmarked shelves. “Um…” she began again, wondering if he would even answer two questions in a row, “do you have The History of the Peloponnesian War, by Thucydides?”
The old man’s eyes actually drifted up from his book. He stared at Gaia over the top of his glasses, which were just about to fall off the edge of his nose. “Huh…” he grunted quizzically. “You know, I just had someone in here yesterday, sold me a rare edition of Thucydides. Isn’t that amazing…? Not worth anything, though. It’s missing the title page.”
Gaia tried not to swallow her tongue with excitement. She’d picked the right clue. “Where?” she blurted, knocking two books off a stack as she leaned forward. So much for containing herself. “Where is it?”
“Third shelf up on the wall behind you,” he said.
She turned to survey the shelf. “Therman, Thilson, Thorn… Thucydides!”
She tugged the book out and dropped into a seated position against the shelf, flipping open the front cover. There was a thin strip of torn jagged paper close to the binding. She pulled the mystery agent’s note out of her bag and placed it up against the tear. The edges matched perfectly. The page had definitely been ripped out of the front of this very book. Her heart skipped as she flipped to the next page. There was a quote printed at its center.
“History repeats itself….”
—Thucydides
Again, this thing about history repeating itself. Just like the quote in his note. What was he trying to tell her? Was this supposed to be another clue? She flipped quickly through the book, looking for any other clues or clarifications, but there was nothing. If Gaia was expected to start reading through Thucydides, she would just have to shoot herself right now. She dropped the book to the floor with frustration.
But as she leaned to pick it up, she caught a glimpse of the shelf again. And that was when she saw it. There in the empty space where the book had been, peeking out from behind the row of books, was a large manila envelope.
She took out the thick padded envelope with her name once again scrawled in the center in red ballpoint ink and ripped open the top of the envelope. A small stack of handwritten pages fell into her lap.
The most gorgeous and familiar scent floated up from the parchmentlike pages. A scent that had always intoxicated her and comforted her, like rich and spicy lilacs. It was the smell of coming home after school. A real home. A home with her mother in it.
Gaia grasped the pages gently and brought them closer, letting the light shine on the smooth script handwriting. The words were written in Russian. And the handwriting was her mother’s.
Unbelievable. Somehow the mystery agent had gotten possession of authentic pages from her mother’s journal—her own private diary.
Gaia had always taken for granted that she was fluent in most of the modern languages, but at this moment she had never been so grateful for her extraordinary skills. Her mother’s own private thoughts were sitting right before her eyes… and Gaia could translate every word.
The date on the first page: February 15, 1983.
2/15/83
I wish I could find the words to describe the beauty of a glazed chocolate doughnut. I just ate two of them in about four minutes. Perhaps I have found my justification for coming to this country—Dunkin’ Donuts. The man who invented Dunkin’ Donuts should be given some kind of national award for luring impressionable young women from communist countries over to the great United States. I am not here for political asylum, Mr. President. I am here for the doughnuts. It is not your free-trade economy that interests me. It is your use of rainbow sprinkles.
I wonder how much more time I’ll spend alone in bookstores, “studying up” for a nonexistent journalism career. I mean, for God’s sake, that was the reason I came to this country. Free speech. That and the whole horrible mess back home. But I don’t know anymore about journalism—too dangerous in Russia, too uninspired here. If only my singing career would take off and I could put my dreams of becoming a journalist aside. Or maybe doughnuts are the answer…. Maybe I’ll just be known as the Russian runaway who beat the doughnut-eating world’s record in 1983.
>
I’m beginning to sound just like my mother. negative. I can’t help it. It wouldn’t be nearly as difficult if I weren’t so alone. I don’t understand it.
Where on earth are the quality men in this country? The ones with ideas and humor and… all right, at this point I’d settle for one without that horrible hairstyle worn by that poor guy from Flock of Seagulls….
And why are all these Russian men coming on to me lately? There have been five or six in the past two months or so. It’s so bizarre.
And even as I write this, another one has approached me. Another dim-witted Russian buffoon whom I have been ignoring for the last twenty minutes. He just pretends to look at books and then tries another line every few minutes. He’s already attempted such brilliant openers as, “That’s a lot of books you’ve got there,” and, “I’ve never seen a woman read so many books.” “Hmmm, that’s funny,” I want to say. “I’ve never seen a man with so few redeeming qualities.” But that would only encourage him.
Oh my God. Never mind the nitwit who won’t stop buzzing in my ear. The most beautiful man in New York City just walked in. Listen to you, Katia. You sound like an overexcited teenager.
Perhaps that’s because you are an overexcited teenager. Now, get your heart out of your throat and breathe. Don’t you look up and stare at him again.
No, I’m sorry. I have to look up and stare at him again.
Too Much Reality
GAIA FORCED HERSELF TO STOP reading for a moment. Her circulation was moving at light speed. It was too much to digest in one sitting. Too much reality flying off those old pages.
It dawned on Gaia that she was probably sitting in the exact spot where her mother had written these words. Her connection to Katia was suddenly something physical. Something palpable. Her eyes began to well up from the overflow of’ something. Joy? Relief? Some kind of raw, unpurified emotion that she couldn’t even name.
In fact, all these shapeless, overwhelming emotions were really just the by-products of one very simple revelation. For the first time in her life, Gaia had realized that her mother’ the person she admired more than any other and contemplated more than any other’ was just like her. The same attitude, the same frustrating combination of independence and loneliness, the same profound appreciation for the glazed chocolate doughnut. Gaia and her mother were related by more than just blood. And somehow, at least for one moment, that had made everything—Gaia’s past and present—so much lighter.
But that one revelation was just the beginning. She peered down at the thick manila envelope and realized that there was much more inside than just her mother’s journal pages.
She grabbed the open envelope and flipped it upside down as a veritable treasure trove of historical documentation fell into her lap. Leaning forward, she organized the remaining contents of the envelope: one fully equipped minidisc player, one blue binder, which she immediately recognized as a CIA transcript, and one minidisc. The disc was clearly meant to accompany the transcript and was titled:
Thomas Moore Incident Report—10/16/1990
CIA File # NIR-P4855J
Digital Transfer
The first voice she heard she couldn’t recognize. The second voice sounded like a younger George Niven; she just wasn’t sure. But the moment she heard her father’s voice through the earphones, she knew the mystery agent was absolutely for real.
CIA File #NIR-P4855J [Incident Report]
Rating: CLASSIFIED
Transcript Recorded—10/16/1990 16:55:57
Administrating: Agent John M. Kent
Reporting: Agent Thomas Moore
AGENT KENT: Incident report, October 16, 1990, approximately 1700 hours. This is Agent John Kent administering, Agents Moore and Niven reporting.
KENT: Tom, if you’d like a little more time’
MOORE: No, John. I’m ready to report.
KENT: All right, then. If you wouldn’t mind, based on today’s unexpected events, the Agency would like you to start with February 15, 1983.
MOORE: The day I met her.
KENT: Yes. If you wouldn’t mind.
MOORE: Mind? I could never mind talking about that day.
1983
They could have been talking about farm equipment, and it would have been just as arrestingly intense.
Dudley Do-Right student
TOM STOOD ON THE CORNER OF Waverly and Sixth Avenue and double-checked the address on the business card. 16 Waverly. Where on earth was 16 Waverly? He’d walked down Waverly Place hundreds of times before, and there was no Waverly Bookshop, he was sure of it. He scanned an entire 360-degree radius and forced himself to walk east. Tick-tock, Tom. Wasting time…
This was simply not what he should be doing, and he knew it. No offense to the academic community, but Tom’s knowledge of history and historiography had already surpassed that of most of his professors, and the thought of having to defend his thesis to those hypocritical nimrods was wearing extremely thin. He had already suffered through two inane arguments this morning with two different professors who’d failed to credit him in recent publications, and it was all getting so pointless. So painstakingly tedious. Such a waste of time.
No… that wasn’t it. That wasn’t it at all. Never lie, Tom. Especially not to yourself. The truth was, his frustration had nothing to do with his professors. The only person he was truly frustrated with was himself.
The complete paralysis of Tom’s life was no one’s fault but his own.
Fact: His brother was already a full-fledged agent, and they were the exact same age. They were twins, for God’s sake, so what the hell was Tom’s problem? That was the question. They were supposed to be working together—Tom and Oliver, in the Agency, together. That had always been the plan. But here Tom was, looking for some obscure book for a useless graduate thesis, while Oliver was already out there on the front lines doing the one and only thing Tom wanted to do. The thing he was born to do: be an agent. He knew it with every ounce of his being, even if Agent Rodriguez couldn’t see it. Which, obviously, he couldn’t.
The thing was, as far as Tom was concerned, he was already an agent. He dressed like an agent: suits that blended into the background. He stayed fit like an agent: three hours a day of martial arts training (karate, jujitsu, aikido, t’ai chi, muay thai). He studied like an agent: modern and ancient languages, international policy, mathematical properties, encoding and code breaking. But most important, he had trained himself to think like an agent.
It was a skill—a trick he did with his eyes. He could look everywhere, notice everything, and people couldn’t see him doing it. He could walk down Waverly Place right now, pissed and frustrated as hell, yet still looking like nothing other than a young fresh-faced kid, drinking in the clear winter air without a care in the world. But he was actually seeing everything. The car with the missing hubcap. The license plate of that car (Connecticut; badly bolted in). The woman shivering slightly in the cement doorway of the shabby apartment building. She was waiting for someone. He could tell by the anxious wrinkles in her forehead and the way she flicked her cigarette. She’d never remember seeing Tom, but two days from now, he would still remember her. That was the art of spying. And Tom had damn near mastered it, whether Rodriguez understood that or not.
God, who am I kidding? Tom scolded himself. That’s just a game. I’m just playing a kid’s game. He could play “spy boy” to his heart’s content, but it would do nothing to mask the simple truth.
He was, in fact, so green that he’d nearly walked right by the Waverly Bookshop twice. Oh, yeah, Tommy. You’ve mastered the art, all right. Yes, the bookstore did in fact exist, though in Tom’s defense, situated on the basement level, blocked off by garbage cans on the landing and featuring a dirty glass window, it would be easily missed by anyone.
Tom froze on the landing. He’d trudged down all this way just to get this one book, but now that he’d finally reached his pointless destination… he wasn’t even sure he wanted to go in. Did he really
want yet another book for a thesis he didn’t even want to finish? A book recommended to him by an agent who thought he was nothing more than an eggheaded academic? No. No, he certainly did not.
But he did it, anyway, of course… because, God help him, Tom was Dudley Do-Right. Whether he wanted to be or not. Duty bound, or something like that. Boring, in other words. And so, consigned to a life of banality and excessive morality, he opened the next boring door in his boring life’
And then he saw her.
She was the very first thing he saw as he cracked open the door to the bookstore. And she was not boring. God, whoever she was, she was so very far from boring. The moment he saw this unearthly, stunning, exquisite stranger, she happened to turn up and look at him, too. And when her eyes accidentally met his, he could swear he actually heard a bell ring. Was that the bell on the door, or…?
And then everything just stopped. Everything. His heart, his mind, time’ they all stopped.
Say something, Tom, he hollered inside his head. You’re gawking, for God’s sake. When have you ever had trouble talking to a beautiful woman? Speeeaak!
Nothing. Not a word. The moment was still on pause. No, not even pause. It really had come to a full and complete stop. In fact, as far as Tom could tell, once he’d locked eyes with this beautiful creature, his entire life had stopped—the life he’d been living up until this point.
And a new one had just started.
Suede Elbow Patches
YES, TOM WAS FROZEN AGAIN. HE wasn’t at all easily shocked, but today he’d just been blown away twice in only a matter of seconds. First by her eyes, and now by this man’s recognizable face.
Him. The man from the picture Tom had glimpsed less than an hour ago.
What was his name? Nicholas…? No. Nikolai.
His features were unmistakable: that bright red hair and pale white skin, that long crooked nose, the pristine tweed jacket with the suede elbow patches. Was he KGB? Wasn’t that what Tom had overheard earlier? And now, after another moment to think about it, wasn’t that just a little bit too much of a coincidence? That Tom would find Nikolai, a likely KGB agent, at this very bookstore at this very moment? There were obviously some things going on here that Tom didn’t understand.
Before Gaia Page 2