A Dangerous Year

by Kes Trester

  “Riley Collins?” she asked in the no-nonsense tones of a native New Yorker. “I’m Karen Jones with the State Department. I’ve been assigned to check you into Harrington tomorrow, and by the look of things”—she pursed her wide lips at my travel-stained clothing while I shivered in the cold breeze—“I’ve got my work cut out for me.”

  She launched right into my briefing. By the time we reached the city, my head swam with images of Harrington’s blueprints, employee lists and backgrounds, and even the names of the VIPs who sent their kids to the school.

  “I doubt you’re going to need any of this, but you never know,” Karen said, pulling out a file marked HARRINGTON–FOOD VENDORS. Did they think Hayden was going to be poisoned by a lunch lady in a hairnet?

  We’d come straight to Beau’s, a Mecca of beauty in the heart of Manhattan. The dull roar of blow dryers, ringing phones, and people shouting over the din greeted us as we entered a cavernous room of sparkling white and gleaming silver.

  Karen delivered me into the hands of Diego, the first guy I’d ever seen in real life wearing eyeliner. His assistant, a sullen girl around my age who was dressed for a funeral, handed me a white cotton robe and ordered me to strip.

  My hair was then smothered in fragrant oils and wrapped in plastic, my skin steamed until I was ready to be served with drawn butter, and they had performed an “extraction.” In my world, that meant a black ops team going into dangerous territory to recover a lost man. Here it involved squeezing every pore on my face until I would have willingly confessed to anything.

  “Hold on, princess, this may sting a bit.” White bits of cloth were ripped from my eyebrows along with about six layers of skin. Tears sprang to my eyes as he tilted my chin to get a better view of his work. “Gorgeous,” he breezily pronounced in a Spanish accent. Reaching for a glass jar with contents the color of pistachio ice cream, he said, “This is an exfoliating mask, which you simply must have or die.”

  I supposed painfully losing another layer of skin cells was preferable to death, but not by much.

  Karen sauntered back in as I admired my first ever mani-pedi. Yet another assistant gently dried my newly lustrous ebony curls. My hair hadn’t been cut in ages, but despite the healthy trim, it still cascaded halfway down my back.

  She inspected me critically before turning to Diego. “Make sure she has all the right makeup and products a Harrington girl would have, will you? I don’t want to get sloppy with the details.”

  Someone thrust a fussy sandwich of tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil into my hand during a session with the makeup artist. Running on nothing but nerves and jet lag, I bolted it down while learning how to paint on a smoky eye.

  Our next stop was Barney’s on Madison Avenue, where a small army of clones awaited. Petite, perfect, and all dressed in black, the sales clerks marched me to a spacious, mirror-lined dressing room where a rack of fabulous clothes awaited. Tags with names I’d only gawked at in fashion magazines–Prada, YSL, Chanel–dangled from wool crepe skirts, cashmere jackets, and silk tops. In the corner towered a mountain of shoeboxes from Manolo Blahnik, Gucci, and Jimmy Choo, along with stacks of flannel-wrapped handbags from designers like Céline and Chloé.

  “Holy cow,” I said, forgetting I’d barely slept in the past twenty-four hours. This was a reality TV dream come true… until I glanced at a price tag and gasped. “This would feed a family of four in Karachi for a year!”

  “Welcome to New York,” Karen said in a weary tone, trying to make herself comfortable on an unyielding white sofa. “What a ridiculous piece of furniture,” she muttered, accepting a bottle of designer water from one of the smiling young women.

  She pulled out an electronic tablet and became immediately engrossed while one of the attendants slipped the first piece off the rack and held it out expectantly. Buying a wardrobe appeared to be a group activity. Self-consciously, I stripped down to my plain white cotton bra and underwear.

  “One of every bra and panty you’ve got in La Perla,” Karen ordered, barely flicking her eyes up from her pad.

  “Who’s paying for all this?” I whispered when the sales clerk glided off, presumably to relay Karen’s order.

  “If I drop you off in that Land’s End special you were wearing, those Harrington kids will think you’re one of the gardeners,” she said.

  I gritted my teeth but said no more, standing half-naked in front of strangers as dressers zipped and buttoned, laced and fastened. Karen signaled her approval over each purchase with a queenly nod.

  “Get the navy Louboutins to go with those jeans,” she barked. “Have you ever discharged a firearm at a human target?” Her finger hovered over the pad in expectation of my answer.

  “Um, no,” I said, whiplashed. “I did get shot at, though, when a militant made it over the embassy walls. At first I thought the thing that buzzed by my ear was one of those nasty sausage flies, but it turned out to be a bullet. Usually assassins bypass the living quarters and go right for the main offices, but this guy didn’t get the memo.” The girl returning with the requested shoes listened in horrified fascination.

  “We’ll take it from here,” Karen said to the clerk, who thrust the heels into my arms before quickly making her escape.

  I regarded Karen anxiously. “That story was on CNN. It’s not like it’s classified or anything, is it?”

  She acted as if I hadn’t spoken. “Have you been informed of your mission?”

  My job was to babysit a rich girl, sure, but mostly, as my dad kept saying, I was going to a top school and finally getting to make friends with people who didn’t carry AK-47s. “I’m supposed to hang out with Hayden Frasier. What else do I need to know?”

  She stood and checked me out in the full-length mirror, and for a surprising moment her face reflected empathy. “Are you aware of the software Stephen Frasier is developing?”

  “We were told something about spyware.” I peeled off the jeans and traded them for floral cigarette pants.

  “It’s been classified as the Rosetta project,” she said, stepping closer to zip me up. “It’s supposed to be the ultimate encryption-breaking software, able to decipher any written message in any format in less than a minute.”

  No wonder everyone was so jumpy. Whoever controlled that software would also be able to monitor every electronic communication the world over.

  “The delivery date is sometime within the next twelve months,” she added.

  The pants were awesome, but they were so tight, sitting down might not be an option. I never wore anything I couldn’t run in.

  “Okay,” I said, “so we need to keep his daughter safe for the next year. I get it.”

  “Intel says there currently isn’t any heat on the Frasier girl, but if other interested parties can’t get her father to open up the bidding, it’ll just be a matter of time.” She picked up a taffeta crop top. “Try this.”

  I eyed her suspiciously, wondering why she was suddenly being so nice. “But I’m just the babysitter, right?” I slipped the shirt over my head.

  “We’ve brought in a new security chief who has installed her own team at the school, so you’re in good hands.” She came up behind me and wrapped a Chanel belt around my waist. It totally rocked the outfit, though the girl in the mirror was a stranger to me.

  I slipped on a white leather trench coat so buttery-soft you could sleep in it. “What are you not telling me?”

  She met my eyes in the mirror. “I won’t lie to you. Every precaution is being taken to protect Stephen Frasier and his family. But keeping this technology exclusive to the United States and its allies is more important than my life… or yours.” Her gaze swept my figure. “Love the coat.”

  A knock on the door announced the arrival of a smiling woman carrying a neatly folded stack of pastel silks and boldly printed cotton, which turned out to be sleepwear. Karen directed her to the growing pile of approved purchases while I waded back into the pool of clothes and tried not to worry about what had just
been said.

  Finally, after an appalling amount of taxpayer’s money had been shelled out, they let me out of the dressing room. Leaving behind instructions on where to send everything, Karen checked me into an elegant hotel facing Central Park. She left me alone with instructions to order dinner from room service before I keeled over from exhaustion.

  Freshly showered and wrapped in a fluffy white robe, I parted the curtains on the picture windows. Evening had fallen, but the scene below pulsed with activity. Horse-drawn carriages jockeyed for position as hybrid taxis honked in annoyance. Antique streetlights of vintage milk glass illuminated the hotel doorman in his time-honored cap and overcoat as he spewed out rapid-fire directions to Arabic tourists in flowing white robes.

  It was an uneasy jumble of old and new, of tradition and trend. I’d left behind a world steeped in rituals and customs dating back thousands of years, where change could be measured in centuries rather than heartbeats. Ahead was a social media wasteland where materialism and popularity was the coin of the realm. Add in the vague warning that trouble could arrive as unexpectedly and as deadly as a sand storm, and I was as unprepared as Dorothy when she was unceremoniously dropped into Oz.

  Ten hours and roughly seven thousand miles separated New York from Karachi, but I suddenly longed to bridge the gap. I booted up my computer and put in a Skype call. It might wake my dad, but I needed the assurance only his familiar voice could offer.

  He sounded alert, though that was no surprise; he could be jolted from sleep and be battle ready in about five seconds. His image appeared at the same time his bedside lamp switched on, looking about the way you’d expect if you’d been woken at four in the morning.

  “Sorry to wake you, Dad.”

  “No, I was awake, trying to decide if I should toss and turn another dozen times, or just give in and call you.” His hair stuck out in every direction, a testament to his sleepless night. “How’s New York?”

  “Different, but the same.” I remembered the feeling of wide-eyed wonder on my previous visit. The city still had the power to captivate, but I saw it now through a grittier lens.

  “You belong there. You just need to give it time.”

  I cracked a rueful smile. “Do I look that pathetic?”

  He laughed. “No, you look beautiful. I like your hair.” He grew wistful. “You look like your mother.” He didn’t say it often, but I knew there were times he saw her face when he looked at me.

  I twisted the belt on my robe. “What was it like on your first mission?” I still hadn’t come to grips with the term, but there was no getting around the fact I had a job to do.

  “Same as you,” he said, propping up a pillow and settling in. “I was young, green, scared, and made a ton of mistakes, but deep down I could survive whatever they threw at me.”

  “What if I’m not like you? What if I’m not ready?” It had been way too long since I’d had any real sleep, and my emotions simmered just below the surface. I couldn’t prevent the tears from spilling down my cheeks.

  “Hey, hey,” he soothed, touching his fingertips to the screen. “Do you think I would’ve agreed to this if I didn’t think you could pull it off?”

  “But what if I hate it?” My second biggest fear. I’d rather crawl through fifty miles of scorpion-infested desert than be the loser no one wanted to eat lunch with.

  His smile was bittersweet. “Every time we moved you acted like it was the end of the world. Remember how much you fought me over Karachi? Give it time. Maybe we’ll find out this is where you belong.”

  My mouth went dry. “That’s just it, Dad. What if I love it?”

  Because that’s what frightened me most.

  business-like rap on the door the next morning woke me from a fitful sleep. I staggered out of bed to admit my chaperone.

  “Here.” Karen thrust a garment bag and a gorgeous Louis Vuitton tote into my hands. “Hit the shower. Breakfast will be here in thirty, and we leave at ten-hundred.”

  “Good morning to you, too,” I groused, stumbling to the bathroom. My body might be living in New York, but my internal clock insisted it was still in Karachi. Add in the fragments of stress dreams assaulting me throughout the night, and I was like the walking dead. One squint into the bathroom mirror confirmed I looked like it, too.

  The coffee from my breakfast tray kicked in about the same time I tried using a bit of makeup to stave off further zombie comparisons. The shade was pretty good, but the clothes were another story. For years my wardrobe had been chosen to hide my femininity with the pleasant side effect that everything was worn loose, so I didn’t die from being cooked alive.

  The clothes Karen dropped off were like a stage costume. The flirty wool crepe skirt made my thighs itch, the cropped sweater outlined boobs never before seen, and the high-heeled boots were like walking on stilts. If this was what the natives wore, this was a society in decline.

  I teetered downstairs to find Sutton, the black-suited driver, wrestling my duffle and the fancy new tote into a trunk already jam-packed with several expensive pieces of matching luggage. Karen looked up from the sheaf of papers in her hands.

  “Stop looking like you sucked a grapefruit for breakfast,” she commanded.

  I glared at her flowing tunic and relaxed trousers before gesturing to my outfit. “Wanna trade?”

  “Hell, no,” she retorted. “Now get your skinny ass into the car. Your new life begins in two hours.” She wasted no time. “It’s time for a final rundown of the players.”

  My father had weeks to get familiarized with the key political figures of a region before a transfer went through. A boarding school didn’t hold the same potential for an international incident—hopefully—but the blinding speed of my recruitment and deployment had the air of last minute planning.

  The car lurched into traffic, practically throwing me to the floor. Climbing back on my seat, I reached for a seatbelt.

  “The Head of School, Mrs. Gretchen McKenna, is a real piece of work.” Karen flashed me a color photo of a starched woman in her early sixties, her silver hair cut short in a style framing her angular face. “It took a mandate from Harrington’s board of directors to get her to allow the upgrade to her school’s security team. We didn’t dare tell her you worked for us. Getting you in was a minor miracle.”

  Surely McKenna had seen my excellent transcripts, which hopefully noted my fluency in Arabic and French, as well as my ability to curse in six different tribal dialects.

  “Don’t take it personally,” Karen said, catching my scowl. “When they say this place is exclusive, they mean it. Besides, McKenna doesn’t think security is a problem because no one would dare enter her hallowed halls without an engraved invitation.”

  Benson had shown me a patient and creative approach could breach even the most sophisticated of defenses. Each time we landed at a new posting, he always delighted in poking holes in the security protocols. I wondered if he realized it was his training that allowed me to discover ways to sneak out of each embassy without ever getting busted. After all, those places were built to keep people out, not in.

  We skidded to a stop, and Sutton leaned on the horn. If he ever got tired of driving limos in New York, he’d fit right in as a cabbie in Cairo.

  Karen reached into her handbag and came up with a white envelope, plain except for my name typed across it. “Here, this is your get-out-of-jail-free card.”

  I ripped it open and found an ID card bearing my name and picture. It also said I worked for the State Department. “How did you pull this off?” I couldn’t imagine too many people my age running around with one of these.

  She shrugged as if it were none of her concern. “Your father made it part of the deal. Now raise your right hand and repeat after me.”

  Something told me I’d regret this, but I obeyed.

  “I, Riley Collins,” she prompted, which I dutifully repeated, “do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all en
emies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and I will well and faithfully discharge my duties. So help me God.”

  My final words hung in the air. I recognized the oath as a version my father and his entire staff took when they entered service, but the gravity of it suddenly struck me.

  Next came a transparent zippered pouch, the kind you kept pencils in, but its contents were a whole lot more interesting.

  “There’s five thousand dollars in there, and a platinum American Express card.” She dropped it in my lap.

  “Holy shit,” I murmured.

  “Yeah, I know. I could pay my rent for almost two months with that kind of cash,” she said. “It’s for show so spend it only when someone is looking. Don’t let me find any charges for pizza delivery or Hulu, and save your receipts.” She did everything but wag a finger in my face.

  As the car swerved in and out of Manhattan traffic, she filled me in on my cover story. “Your father and Stephen Frasier are old friends. Frasier did some work for the defense department years ago, so it’s plausible. That should help break the ice with Hayden. Here’s her file.”

  I was skeptical as she passed me a thick manila folder. Opening the cover, I quickly thumbed past the photos I’d already seen online. Photographers stalked Hayden Frasier like prey, in part because she was a blonde-haired, blue-eyed clone of her famous actress mom, Tory Palmer. Like her mother, Hayden had perfected that faintly bored, untouchable look mere mortals could never hope to achieve. She was famous for stepping coolly out of a limo with the season’s must-have handbag on her arm and strolling the streets of New York as if she’d come straight from the pages of Vogue. Compared to her, with my Irish-Italian heritage, I was the guttersnipe Eponine to her angelic Cosette.

  It was in the middle of the file where things got interesting. About a dozen tabloid pages were clipped together, all stamped UNAUTHORIZED. One shot captured Hayden dancing, arms thrown out in abandon; another showed her gazing off with the unfocused look of a girl who’d had one too many. A quick skim of the other photos revealed similarly private moments showing the heiress more human and more alive than anything snapped by the paparazzi.