Sleeper Agent

by M. Anthony Harris

  I had no way to know if he was truly guilty—the evidence was purely circumstantial—but it didn’t matter to me. This was a big opportunity. It was the sort of case that could make a career. If he really was guilty and I got the conviction, then the DA post would become the first step toward a long political career.

  “Objection! He’s leading the jury!” the defense called toward the judge, who nodded his support, striking down my previous comments.

  It didn’t matter. I saw that the seeds of doubt had been planted.

  Once something was said, especially something that played on one’s notion of a person, it would worm its way into the mind and create doubt and anger, and I played upon those feelings with reckless abandon.

  I suppose it was despicable, but I comforted myself by saying I was prosecuting criminals. These were people who’d been caught by the police. I was one of the good guys.

  “I’ve already asked him to provide us with an alibi for the night of the murder, and the one he gave us has more holes than fish-net stockings. He’s either guilty, or he’s covering for the man who is, and if the latter is the case, don’t you think that he’s just as culpable? He killed her or is withholding knowledge of the killer. He should be punished to the full extent of the law!”

  As the dream continued I vehemently judged the accused. I was full of self-serving satisfaction from seeing the eyes of the jury as they listened to my accusations. I was putting on a grand performance, and the life I might ruin didn’t bother me, nor did it matter how weak the evidence was, either. It was my stage, and I was owning it.

  I fought queasiness when I awoke, sickened by who I’d become in the dream.

  “Stephen, are you OK? You seem a bit out of it; your vitals are erratic,” Safid said.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. It just wasn’t the most pleasant dream. I was a real piece of crap,” I responded and twisted my back to stretch out some of the kinks.

  “Why don’t you grab yourself a cup of coffee and meet us in the briefing room in ten minutes, and we can discuss the details of your dream.”

  I headed to the coffee table, observing what had quickly become my ritual: a large cup with two sugars and generous helping of milk.

  “So, newbie, who were you this time, and what did he do to put such an ugly look on your face?” Sasha said as she sidled up to me and poured an ungodly amount of hazelnut creamer into her coffee.

  “You know that no matter how much sugar you put in your system it couldn’t possibly make you any sweeter? In fact, I think I’m getting cavities just being around you; I actually feel my teeth rotting,” I teased her about her sweet tooth.

  Within the first two weeks, we’d made a game of trying to outdo each other in giving backhanded compliments. It served as a source of entertainment for not only us, but also for any who were close enough to hear the banter.

  “And to answer your question, I was some sort of lawyer this time, and let’s just say, if my dream were anything close to reality then I might have to start holding them in even lower esteem than I already do.”

  “Hey, you two, it’s about time for the debriefing,” a dirty-blond man said as he poured himself a cup of black coffee.

  I wish I could remember his name. I think it’s something with an M. Mitch? No. Marvin? No. Wait…was it Mark?

  “No problem, Mike,” Sasha saved me from embarrassment. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

  I gave her a smile of gratitude and mouthed a silent “thank you.”

  “You owe me,” Sasha whispered and shot me a playful wink coupled with a mischievous grin.

  “OK, everyone, let’s take a seat. Safid and Mike, be sure to take notes,” Helena said as we entered the lush conference room where the daily debriefing always took place. “Stephen, let’s have it.”

  I stood to address the small crowd, a habit forced on me years ago by my father. “This time I was a lawyer—I know that you said to be an athlete, but I remembered my speeding ticket right before I fell asleep so that got me thinking of the courtroom. Anyway, I think I was on my way to being in the DA’s office. I couldn’t tell you where I was, or what city I was in, but it was a murder trial. There was no real evidence against the accused, but I didn’t care, I just wanted to ruin him.”

  “Can you give us a couple of the details? The more you remember, the more data we have, and the more data we have, the better,” Mike interrupted.

  “Yeah, no problem,” I shrugged. “I remember that it was all circumstantial evidence: He worked at a call center with the lady who was murdered. Also there seemed to be some drugs involved in the murder, and he used to be a low-level dealer—he’d done some time in juvie for it—and apparently had been the go-to guy for some “stress relief” at the center. Anyway, they found his drugs on her body, and witnesses said that they argued before she was murdered. The thing is that it was a small amount of weed, not nearly enough to kill for, and his defense said that it was actually a legal amount in their city. It didn’t make sense as a deal gone sour. Plus other witnesses said that they’d patched things up. It didn’t fit with the brutal nature of the murder that I ranted about,” I scratched my head. “I mean, why would a low-level dealer brutally murder a friendly customer like that? The evidence was weak, but I pounced on anything and everything. I painted him as the worst kind of monster. Such as the one time he’d got in some trouble while he was in juvie, I painted him injuring the kid who tried to shank him as a deliberate thing. The way I described it you’d think that he cut the guy apart and danced naked in his blood or something. But he was just a scared kid who happened to accidentally shove the guy down the stairs. I don’t ever want to dream up another character like that. I don’t like the thought that there are real people like him out there.”

  The briefing lasted another thirty minutes, and the team seemed encouraged with my memory.

  Before I’d always remember the main ideas and occurrences in my dreams, but under their training I was able to recall the minutia. This last time I was able to remember the color of my tie and the expressions of most of the jury.

  I must admit that I used my newfound skills of observation to make me a quick dollar doing party tricks. The admiring look in the eyes of the young ladies I wowed were a nice bonus. But I found those smiles getting emptier as I found myself caring about catching the eyes of only one person.

  4

  The knife grazed across my brow, drawing a line of blood that quickly started to blur my vision.

  As he attacked with a series of calculated swipes, I felt a wave of relief. He was trained in blade work. The hardest thing to defend against is someone who doesn’t know what they are doing. Their attacks are wild and random, not meticulous and measured.

  When everyone you practice with is skilled, you learn to predict patterns and read your opponent’s stance and predict movements by the positioning of their body. A skilled martial artist is deeply ingrained with reactionary movements. They train hard against the best to be the best, and they learn to expect smart and skillful attacks from their enemy. A beginner doesn’t do that. They don’t think. They’ll throw attacks that a skilled fighter would balk at, and I’d seen more than my fair share of black belts laid out because they reacted as if they were facing a peer. Beginners are often more dangerous than someone who’s highly trained.

  He drove forward with a fluid downward slash that flowed from the swipe that opened a gash on my forehead. Seeing an opening, I stepped in and raised my forearm to slam into his knife hand while simultaneously catching his face with my right hand. I quickly slid my lead leg behind his support leg and shoved him downward. He slammed into the concrete with a dull thud. A bag of garbage cushioned his head from the impact that surely would have busted open his skull.

  His hand quickly replaced the dropped knife with an empty beer bottle. He flung it at my face. It slammed into my shoulder as I twisted to avoid serious injury. I used the momentum to fling myself at him but was met with an up-kick to the jaw th
at staggered me. He used the time to get back to his feet and attempt a tackle.

  As I felt him slam into me I shot my feet backwards and jammed my elbow into the base of his skull. He fell face first into the concrete with a wet crunch. Who sent him? How’d they find me? I thought as I unfastened my belt and tied up his unconscious body.

  My wake-up call was anything but cordial as I slammed the stiletto knife into the meat above his knee. He woke up screaming into the hand that covered his mouth, and I quickly retracted the knife from his leg and placed it on his inner thigh, jabbing it in just enough to draw some blood.

  “You’re professional enough to know that the knife is hovering right above your femoral artery, and you know what happens if I decide to press any harder. So here’s the question: Who are you more scared of? Your employer, or me?”

  “Holy crap! That was an awesome dream!” My hands danced as I spoke to Sasha at the coffee station.

  We had grown closer over the last couple of months, and our little coffee chats had quickly become my favorite part of the workday. I just hoped that she didn’t notice how many glances I stole in her direction. She was one of those rare people who were not only beautiful on the outside but on the inside as well, and I don’t think that she knew how many people saw that.

  “I dreamed that I was an analyst or something…. Anyway, when I was walking back to work from my lunch break I noticed a guy following me. I took some back roads to lose him, but I couldn’t, so I ducked into an alleyway, and I thought I lost him but he found me and then the dude came at me with a knife!” My eyes gleamed with excitement and my pitch rose. “Anyway, I barely backed away in time, but I still got nicked on the forehead, right above my eye. The weird thing was that I actually remember feeling the pain. I swear that I felt that knife digging into my skin! After that he went for another attack, but I think I must have been in the military before my analyst career because I went all special ops on the guy and knocked him out and then interrogated the dude like you’d see in one of those action movies. It was intense!”

  “Wow, so you were some sort of spy or something in your dream?” Sasha nearly spit out her coffee as she listened to my story.

  “Why d’ya say that?”

  “You said you were some sort of analyst with some amazing martial arts abilities. I read somewhere that spying nowadays isn’t like the movies. It’s more offices and bureaucracy than martinis and lost memories. You know, you should keep dreaming along these lines. I’ve always thought about being a writer, and if you keep this up I wouldn’t have to do any of that tedious research; I’ll already have my own personal assistant doing research for me,” Sasha’s finger grazed my chin, and I quickly found some spot on the wall to look at as a deep blush crept up my cheeks.

  “Wow, look at the time! We should probably get going if we want to make it to the restroom before the meeting. I know all this coffee and sleep is a recipe for disaster during a long meeting,” I mumbled like a lovestruck idiot.

  “He lunged at me with the knife, and I remember thinking that he’d been trained in some sort of Filipino martial arts. Whatever he was trained in, though, I can tell you that he was good. I’m just glad that I was better because I was able to knock the knife out of his hands and get him tied up. I didn’t get away unscathed, though.”

  “Would you mind elaborating the damage that you took while you were fighting your assailant?” Safid, the Pakistani researcher, asked.

  “Of course. I think I might have gotten a couple of bruised knuckles or something, and I took a solid kick to the jaw. Anyway, it was mostly minor, but I did get a nice gash over my right eye. It bled enough that I could barely see out of it in the couple of seconds it took me to disarm and knock the guy out,” I answered. “The weird thing’s that I remember actually feeling the pain. It burned like hell. It was really strange. I mean, I remember feeling some small pains in my dreams, but I just assumed that it was a crick in my back while I was sleeping or something like that, but his was different. It was almost like I was actually there. It was really strange.”

  My comments earned a collective raising of eyebrows.

  “That’s quite interesting. Would you mind telling us what happened next, after you subdued your attacker? I think you left off around the part where you were able to knock the knife out of his hand?” Arthur asked in his thoughtful way.

  “Yes. He came in for a swipe, and I was able to hit him in the wrist and knock the knife out of his grip.”

  “Now, for the sake of clarity, and of course so our research is better, can you tell us what kind of knife it was? The more you can remember, the more progress we can make.”

  “OK, sure. It was a long, thin-bladed knife. It looked similar to a butterfly knife, the blade that is. But this knife was on a fixed handle. It has the same name as some kind of shoe, but I can’t remember off the top of my head,” I replied.

  “Oh, that’s a stiletto knife!” Sasha shouted with excitement, drawing all eyes her way. She blushed. “What? I know my shoes, OK? If there was a knife that sounded like a shoe, it would be a stiletto.”

  “Yeah, stiletto sounds right.”

  I grinned when I saw Sasha send me a “thank you” in sign language.

  “Anyway, I knocked him on his butt, but he was a good fighter, so he kicked and knocked me back a couple of steps. Then he tried to tackle me, but I saw it coming, and right as he hit me I elbowed him in the back of the skull and face-planted him into the concrete. After that I took off my belt and tied him to the dumpster. My wake-up call to the dude wasn’t the most pleasant either. I found his knife and stabbed it into his thigh then threatened to kill him if he didn’t give me the name of the guy who sent him.”

  “What happened after that Stephen? Did he tell you who it was that sent him?” Helen asked as she leaned in, hands interlaced under her chin and eyes gleaming with curiosity.

  “No. I woke up.” I answered.

  5

  “OK, buddy boy, it’s time for you to go get some sleep. I would tell you to have sweet dreams, but those are boring. Have an exciting dream about espionage and danger for me, will you?” Sasha, whom I was constantly amazed by—she’d graduated with her masters at twenty-two, and even at her young age was considered a leading voice in the field of sleep research—winked at me.

  “Your wish is my command, milady,” I said in my best English accent, took her hand, and lightly kissed it. She turned crimson, to the delight of the small group of researchers gathered nearby.

  Helen’s voice echoed through the speakers as I laid down and pulled the covers over me: “You’ve read the outline? Let’s see how well you’ve developed your dreaming skills these last few months. I’m looking forward to your debriefing.”

  This promised to be an exciting session. They’d recently asked me to start dreaming of homegrown terrorist organizations. This time I was supposed to try to dream of myself as the leader of one such organization. I was more than happy to comply as it seemed that I was able to recall details with more ease when the dreams had elements of danger to them. It was like watching an action movie. The more exciting the dream, the more I wanted to share it.

  I recalled Sasha’s embarrassment moments before falling asleep. Her cheeks were so red. I would love to see that more often. Really, though, I’d just love to see her more often.

  “Gather the men,” I ordered my second in command. He was a grizzled man in his late forties who was built like an ox and sported a salt-and-pepper crew cut.

  “Sir!” He replied with a stiff salute. Ten minutes later everybody had gathered on the firing range.

  “Men! You know why you’re all here. We’re patriots! We fight for our country! Not the sad, disgusting mockery that it has become, a sick, twisted perversion of its former greatness! A nation that spies on its own. A nation that imprisons its own. A nation that fosters resentment and suspicion of its inhabitants as if it were some sort of virtue! We are here to raze that nation, and on its ashes we will re
build it to its former greatness!” My hands fluttered with conviction. “They take our children and send them to war! They lead them like lambs to the slaughter! And for what? To line their pockets so they can live off of our misery. They rape our homeland so they can have their six-figure salary with a luxury car and a mistress! This isn’t what we are supposed to be. We are better than this! We’re a nation born on the back of war and adversity, and that is how we will restore our America!”

  I continued to lay out my ambitions and desires, and as I watched I saw the startlingly large crowd nodding with every point. I had them thinking that I was speaking their ideas. I was putting words to what they themselves could not voice. I owned them. It was chilling to watch.

  After I finished and dismissed the crowd, I called for Peterson, my second in command, and Walsh, another of my most-trusted lieutenants, to stay behind after everyone dispersed.

  “Walsh, you will work directly with Peterson on this op,” I said to the younger of the two.

  Walsh and Peterson were almost complete opposites. The latter was built like an ox and was a brilliant tactician. Walsh, in contrast, was wiry and hawkish with a sharp nose and piercing eyes. Walsh didn't like to think too much, but he inspired loyalty in his followers with his charismatic personality.

  “They’ve taken so much from us, now it’s time to make them pay. We’ll become their nightmare. We’ll unleash terror upon them, and should anybody stand in our way, we will kill them and their families. They don’t deserve to live in our paradise!” I hissed. My eyes blazed with deep conviction.

  “This guy is a psycho!” I said to myself.

  “Who’re you!” someone shouted back at me.

  “Whoa! What the— What just happened?” I awoke with a start.