Before Gaia

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Before Gaia Page 5

by Francine Pascal


  Sighing, rubbing his closed eyes, Oliver basked in the blessed silence. As much as he wanted to see his brother, see that confident, rakish look on the face that was a near duplicate of his own, he was happy to be by himself for a moment, alone in the dark.

  Actually, that wasn’t all he wanted, Oliver realized. He wanted a drink. And given that he really didn’t drink, he was quite sure he must need it very badly. But that meant getting up off the couch.

  If I don’t get up now, I never will. He was within a few breaths of dozing off, but he knew what that would mean—he would just dream about the code. He was sure Tom kept a bottle of scotch in the house for all those wild Columbia parties Oliver avoided.

  The ice clinked as Oliver filled the glass. If Tom had been here, he would have bothered him about the ice. How can you put ice in single-malt scotch? he would ask in that scolding voice of his, but still smiling. Because I like it cold, Oliver would say back. He could almost hear the argument in his head as he padded out of the kitchen in his socks, wandering toward Tom’s desk.

  I like it cold, and it’s my drink, Thomas. Oliver was mouthing the words as if Tom were actually there. So what if he put ice in scotch? So what if it made him “look like a dweeb,” or however Tom put it? The cold-burning scotch was soothing him, finally, and getting his mind off that terrible code.

  The code. All the Agency knew was that they’d intercepted some kind of correspondence from the Organization. But that truly was all they knew. The code was driving him nuts. And it was frightening him, too, because the fact was—the fact was, he wasn’t sure he’d ever get it. No, it was worse than that. The Agency wasn’t sure he’d ever get it. He could tell. He could see it in the blank expressions on their faces, masking their doubts. He knew what they were thinking: Oliver has lost his edge. God, wasn’t that always the way it worked. You’re everybody’s golden child as long as you produce results. The second you start to slip even the slightest bit… they all start to lose faith. Was that the kind of “loyalty” they were always talking about at the Agency? If so, then Oliver would be sure to go and look up the definition of loyalty next time he had the chance.

  Sipping more scotch, Oliver pulled a scrap of paper from his jeans pocket. Maybe a drink could help him see more clearly? Maybe he was just grasping at straws. Uncrumpling the paper, he stared again at the maddening series of letters and digits. Nothing. It meant nothing. Who was he kidding? Bright, fluorescent CIA office and black coffee or dark, soothing Upper West Side apartment with a cool drink, it made no difference. Who was he kidding? He had no clue how to solve that code. Screw it, he thought, trying to inject some of Tom’s voice into his mind. He crumpled up the scrap of paper and hurled it onto Tom’s desk. It landed on a pile of other crumpled paper scraps, near a framed picture of the two of them. It was funny… Tom just loved those “fighting” pictures.

  Tom had one of their kenpo sparring snapshots framed on top of the desk. There was Oliver, at age sixteen, absolutely kicking Tom’s butt—not to mince words. It was the viper—the “slashing viper,” more accurately—the kick that Oliver had basically invented for himself, a sweet but deadly combination of kenpo and muay thai. He’d tried at least a thousand times to teach Tom the technique all through high school, but somehow, no matter how many times they went over it, Tom always ended up with his face in the dirt. The picture had captured it to a T: Olly holding his stance after executing the kick perfectly, Tom laughing as he pounded his hand down on the mat with frustration. Leaning forward, staring at the old photo, Oliver smiled. Tommy might have gotten all the girls, but Oliver won all the fights.

  Oliver looked for a place to put down his drink, but there was none. He couldn’t believe how messy Tom left things—it was ridiculous. He moved the Thucydides book out of the way—and a piece of paper dropped out of it into his lap. He opened it up… and then he stopped breathing.

  He had never seen a face like that in his life. It was as simple as that. In real life, or in pictures, or in the movies, or even in dreams, he had never seen anything so beautiful. He could feel his pulse racing as he stared at the black-and-white photograph.

  Oliver tended to keep his distance from girls—particularly pretty ones. Girls… unlike the martial arts… were not his forte. That was Tom’s department. But somehow this was just different. The feeling he got staring into this girl’s eyes was something else—an almost desperate urgency. It was a once-in-a-lifetime thing, he thought firmly, the warm glow of the scotch spreading through his body.

  And quite suddenly, as if someone had whispered it in his ear, Oliver knew what he had to do. He had to find this girl now. He had to talk to her now. This was just… She was the girl for him, there was no question about it in his mind. Oliver knew the reason he’d never gotten close to other girls. It was because other girls weren’t her.

  Katia, it said in the lower-left-hand corner. Just Katia. No last name. Well, of course. A girl this exquisite didn’t really need a last name, did she? The ice was melting in what was left of the scotch—ruining it, Tom would say. The glass was wet and slippery, printing a dark ring onto Tom’s antique desk. Oliver didn’t need a last name to find her. He had something better printed directly under her name. He had the exact time and the exact place he could find her. Just an hour from now, he thought, his face burning with the heat of the scotch and his own urgent emotions.

  Eight-thirty. At The Bitter End. That was where he would find her.

  Suddenly the code, the photographs, how tired he was, how his eyes hurt—none of it mattered. It was like the CIA had gone away to some other planet. And five minutes later, as he pulled Tom’s door shut and locked it again, racing to catch the next downtown train, it was only Katia’s luminous face he was seeing, floating before his eyes and utterly replacing the endless numbers he was so tired of.

  Powers of Surveillance

  “BUT YOU ACCIDENTALLY SHOWED ME the photo,” Tom explained. “So I recognized—”

  “‘Accidentally’?” Agent Rodriguez smirked at him. “That was no accident. A confidential surveillance photo of a KGB agent? And I’m letting some grad student catch a glimpse of it? No, that was deliberate, Tom. I’d have to be the worst CIA agent in the world to make a mistake like that. I was hoping you’d figure that out for yourself.”

  “I missed it,” Tom admitted, feeling every bit the fool he apparently was.

  Rodriguez waved a hand dismissively. “That was my intention. I had to do it that way,” he explained. “Anyone can find something if they’re looking for it. No, what’s important is what you see the rest of the time—you can live or die by the details that surround you when you’re not looking for anything. And you lived.”

  “Lived?” Tom asked. “Was Nikolai that—?”

  “Oh, there’s no evidence he’s that dangerous,” Rodriguez assured him. “Who is he? What’s he doing in Manhattan? What’s his connection to the KGB? Right now we simply don’t know.”

  “I see.”

  “And that’s where you come in,” Rodriguez said.

  Where I come in? What does he mean, where I come in? Tom knew what that sounded like. But of course, it couldn’t be what it sounded like.

  “Observation, analysis, combat, decryption…” Rodriguez went on. “You’ve demonstrated exceptional strength in all areas, and it is therefore my privilege to welcome you to the United States Central Intelligence Agency, Thomas Moore. If you agree to the terms of employment, your enrollment as an entry-level agent in training will commence immediately.”

  He had said it. Tom was sure he had heard him say it. Central Intelligence Agency… agent in training. And no alarm was going off. No static-filled music from his clock radio. No Sunday church bells. Just Rodriguez’s hand firmly shaking his own. This was real. This was really happening.

  “Thank you,” Tom said, trying to look proud and competent when all he actually felt was utterly dumbfounded. “I’m so grateful for—thank you, Agent Rodriguez.”

  “But there
’s one small snag,” Rodriguez added. He was picking up the Nikolai file, checking his watch as he did so. “A little bit of unfinished business. Your thesis.”

  Tom felt a sinking feeling. His thesis? For one glorious moment it had looked like all that was behind him. The elation faded—but just a bit.

  “We don’t hire quitters,” Rodriguez said. “You’ve got to finish it. And as soon as possible, Tom. Time spent on anything else is time wasted—and the CIA takes a very dim view of wasted time. Start tonight. And don’t stop until you’re done.”

  “Tonight?” Tom choked. He could barely get that word out of his mouth. Tonight had meant only one thing to Tom the entire day. Tonight meant when he would see her again. Tonight meant replacing that poster back home with the real thing. He couldn’t start tonight. That was an absolute impossibility. Tonight was for her—and every other night after that if he had anything to say about it. No. It simply couldn’t be—

  “Tonight, Tom,” Rodriguez repeated firmly. “When you receive an order in the Agency, you don’t question it. Just a little word of advice.” Rodriguez leaned closer and probed Tom’s eyes, like he was literally searching to see just exactly how much character Tom possessed. “We’re looking for something here, Tom,” he explained. “We’re looking to see just how quickly and consistently you respond to your directives. Honestly, I shouldn’t even be telling you that. It’s kind of like giving someone the answers to the test. But I like you, Tom. And I admire your brother, so I’m telling you. This thesis thing. This is a test. And you pass the test by committing to it completely and immediately, not halfway. Am I making myself clear?”

  Tom felt thoroughly paralyzed. He was between a million rocks and two million hard places. But he had to at least try to say something. “Yes,” he said. “Crystal clear, and thank you for your honesty. But I was just hoping that we could start the test tom—”

  “Tom, you don’t say ‘but’ in this scenario. There is no ‘but’ involved. If you say ‘but,’ it’s like failing the test. And I don’t want you to fail the test, Tom. Agents who say ‘but’… they fail the test. And they don’t last very long…. Now am I making myself clear?”

  Tom began to nod in spite of himself.

  “Whatever it is tonight,” Rodriguez went on, “however long ago you made the plan, whatever her name is… those things don’t matter now, you understand? They can matter later. Agents drop those things like rain—they drop them the second they get the call. They have to. Because they’ve been given their directives. Are you going to follow your directives, Tom? Are you going to pass the test?”

  Tom had never had a set of consequences explained to him so clearly and succinctly. And it did at this point seem to go without saying that his answer would by definition have to be…

  “Yes,” Tom said, heading for Rodriguez’s door.

  “Oh, and Tom.” Tom held up at the door and turned back. “Remember,” he said with a smile. “During this test we’ll be watching you—we’ll always be watching….”

  Tom honestly couldn’t tell if he was kidding or not.

  TOM

  It’s time to be a soldier again.

  It’s time to make a painful choice and live with it. I’d almost forgotten what it’s like to think that way. But George drilled it into my head from the first day of basic training. He said, “A soldier is a man who makes difficult choices and lives with them.”

  So now I’ve got to make the difficult choice of letting go of the greatest thing in my life… so I can have the other greatest thing in my life. Of course that would have to be the case, wouldn’t it? Life never lets you have it all at once.

  I wonder how I’ll be able to mix the two things in the future—my duty as an agent and my duty to the people I love. I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it eventually. If people just have some patience…

  That’s the life of the soldier and the spy—impossible choices with outcomes that are too grandiose to consider. But God, I hope Katia has the patience—I really do. Because if I turn away from the job, I’ll never be able to call myself a soldier again. And then I would not be able to live with myself. And I’d be absolutely no good to her.

  But I will see her again.

  Please wait for me just a little while, Katia. Please have a little patience. Because I’m coming back to you. Soon. As soon as it can possibly be.

  I promise.

  Irrefutable

  PICTURES CAN LIE, OLIVER THOUGHT.

  He was seated at a table near the front of the Bitter End, trying to stay calm. He stared at the stage in total, avid expectation. If a grenade had gone off at the other end of the room, he probably wouldn’t have noticed.

  It was eight-forty, and Oliver kept looking at his watch, reminding himself that performances always followed some strange rule that dictated they couldn’t start on time. His entire brain was consumed with the photograph of Katia. He didn’t even need to physically see it before him—it was burned into his memory, like an old-fashioned iron brand burned into the flank of a bull.

  But pictures can most definitely lie, Oliver was thinking. And it was a fact—anyone who’d ever seen a rotten snapshot of themselves or a flattering magazine cover showing a celebrity looking better than humanly possible… anyone who’d seen any photo, really, knew that they couldn’t always be trusted. Oliver kept telling himself that as he drank the club soda he’d ordered to keep himself from becoming any more intoxicated and stared at the empty stage. He wanted to prepare himself for disappointment. Because there was just no way Katia could live up to her picture.

  The long black piano stood onstage, gleaming in the spotlights, in front of the glittering curtain. Oliver tried to keep calm, knowing that she was about to appear. She was going to be right there, just a few feet away—he almost regretted sitting so close.

  And then she was there. Simply there. Almost as if by magic.

  Oliver remembered reading poems about beauty in school. Like Byron’s lines, “She walks in beauty, like the night / Of cloudless climes and starry skies.” He realized he had never understood what they really meant. He had thought he did—until tonight.

  Katia stepped out onto the small stage, wearing a white cotton dress that seemed somehow to both cling to her body and flow from it at the same time. And as she hovered closer and closer to him… well… who was he kidding? She was stunning. If anything, her picture hadn’t done her enough justice.

  “This is a new song,” she announced simply as she squinted momentarily to try and see out into the audience. Russian. She had the most enchanting Russian accent.

  And the moment she began to sing her first song… Oliver decided that he’d been wrong all his life about love. Wrong to think he could live without it. He was discovering it now for the first time, and it felt as crucial as oxygen—as the water you gulped down when you found your way out of the desert.

  Oliver had always been more partial to classical music. But from her first note on, he knew he was now partial to both classical music and Katia’s music. The lyrics to her first song were strange and smart and instantly intriguing, even though he couldn’t really make any sense of them.

  Alien Boy Wonder

  I think you’ve cut your hair too short

  And you’ve tied your tie too tightly, too

  I think I could share my history with you….

  All of her songs were like nothing Oliver had ever heard—filled with so many strange and wondrous dichotomies. Sometimes the melodies seemed so gentle, almost like children’s songs, but the words were so hard and bold, like she’d been through so much more than her innocent face and voice suggested. And then sometimes it seemed as if she were simply channeling some sweet melody that had been heaven-sent—her rich and supple voice coasting effortlessly through soaring peaks and gravelly valleys. An angelic voice with such a nakedly earthen soul. The voice cut straight through to the center of his chest and then melted slowly through the rest of him.

  He froze in generally t
he same position of awe for the next half hour.

  When he felt her set coming to an end, one thought overtook him. A thought that both thrilled and terrified him: He was going to talk to her. A lifetime of chickening out was finally going to end. Tonight. And what better time? After all of those girls he was too shy to talk to, all those dances where he’d roamed the perimeter… he was finally ready.

  He would just stand up and walk over to her and say hello, even if it killed him.

  He was a loner no more. Alien Boy Wonder… He had no idea what exactly that meant, but somehow he knew that it was someone he wanted to be.

  Three-Legged Puppy

  AS A RULE, KATIA TRIED TO FORGET the audience while singing, and focus on the song. But tonight was different. Tonight she was thinking about Tom. His face had been permanently installed in her imagination, floating in front of everything she looked at, like a slide projected directly into her eyes. He’s out there, she told herself, her voice nearly faltering at the thought. No, he’s not, she reprimanded herself. He’s not coming. He’s already forgotten.

  That was what she was worried about while she sang about love. About him. She was worried about whether she’d imagined it all. Not imagined Tom—he was quite real—but imagined the spark between them. It could happen. You just never knew when you met a stranger. Especially an American stranger, she told herself over and over. They can all be so friendly. It’s difficult to tell what they’re really thinking.

  Katia snuck a glance to her right, into the dazzling spotlights, during the last song. The suspense was killing her. Was he there or not? If he wasn’t, she’d have to immediately begin the task of forgetting him. Just to protect herself. You couldn’t fall for someone that hard, that quickly, and then wonder about it for too long. You had to get out while you still could. It was simple self-preservation.

 

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