“What are you doing right now, pudding pie?” he asked.
She shrugged her shoulders.
“Do you want to go out for a date with me?”
“She nodded her head up and down,” she answered playing their usual game.
“I was thinking that maybe we’d go to Del Frisco and have a steak this thick,” he held up his hand and separated his fingers a couple of inches.
“She shook her head back and forth.”
“Hey, I have an idea, let’s go to McDonalds for an ice cream.”
Carly smiled.
“McDonalds, you’d rather have ice cream than a Filet Mignon?”
She gave him a big hug and whispered in his ear, “I like McDonalds.”
Jonathan looked over at Mary and said, “Can you believe it, I want to take my date out for a $100 meal and all she wants is a 50 cent soft serve.”
Mary gave him a disapproving glare and said, “It’s the third time this week. That food isn’t good for her.”
“And neither is staying around here.”
.”I’m going back to work next week and I’m afraid that you two are going to blow up like a couple of zeppelins.”
Carly looked at her father and asked, “What’s a zeppelin?”
“It’s a big balloon, your Mommy’s saying that we’re going to get fat.”
“Will we float away?” asked Carly.
“Ask your mother,” returned Jonathan. “Why are you going back to work so soon?”
“Soon? I’ve been out for 6 weeks and I’m all out of leave, besides don’t you think it would be good to try to get our lives back on track.”
Jonathan nodded. He knew that Mary was very unhappy and needed to re-engage, and was hopeful that she would snap out her depressed funk, forgive him and bring things back to the way they had been. It certainly wasn’t happening with her at home all the time.
All intimacy had left their relationship and he could tell that she was using all her energy struggling through the pieces, determining if there was anything left that could be rebuilt. Carly didn’t make matters any better and seemed to harbor some deep seated resentment toward her that neither Jonathan nor her therapist could figure out. The agency had recommended professional marriage counselors who would work with them in the privacy of their home, but Mary felt that it was too soon to talk and time was needed to first stop the bleeding. Jonathan had no choice but to comply with her wishes.
Chapter 7
It was 4 months before Jonathan returned to work at the CIA and he was happy to be out of the house and away from the doldrums of despair that made him as listless as a sailboat with no wind. Mostly he was frustrated! His mind raced continually, but he was completely constrained by the rules of the CIA and his inability to use any of the tools he needed to move away from his misery. He beat his body with physical exercise to overcome the depression and self pity threatening to engulf him over the loss of his son and his failing marriage. Every hour turned into a bitter rage. He obsessed on the people who had brought this suffering to his life and he woke every night, tormented by violent thoughts of revenge. He had become addicted to a couple of soap operas, and he watched his mind atrophy to the point where he wondered if he was still capable of the highly technical work he had once done. Apart from news reports that claimed the arrest of 6 operatives, he was clueless about the investigation into the July 15th attack. Mary had been back to work at her laboratory for over 2 months and she remained silent on her daily activity, leaving him only Carly and their after-school nanny Gretchen to talk with. Carly was getting better, speaking mostly to Jonathan, but she would occasionally shock him with gruesome questions about death.
Jonathan visited a psychiatrist once a week and a physical therapist three times a week and finally, he was cleared to return to work. A week later, the long awaited call from PD McVay came.
PD spoke with the warm voice of a friend, “Jonathan, this is PD.”
“It’s good to hear your voice.”
“Yours too, are you ready to come back?”
“I’ve been ready for a couple of months. Been going a little stir crazy, if you know what I mean?”
“Well we have a cure for that. I guess the Director told you that your new job would be a little different and why.”
“Yes sir I’ve been around long enough to know the process.”
“I’m detecting a little cynicism in your voice.”
“Sorry, but it’s been a tough couple of months and I sorta know what’s coming and it’s not exactly my choice.”
“You need to have a little more confidence in us than that. We’ve created a new position, Director of Special Operation Programs for you and I think it’s something that you’re going to like. It’s a promotion with nearly a $10,000 a year raise and your new pay will be $134,856.”
“Thank you sir.”
There was a slight hesitation. “Jonathan, the only issue is that the job is at Langley, so you are either going to have to re-locate or commute for the work week and be home on the weekends. We’ll support you either way. Of course if you decide to move, we’ll give you a nice relocation package, so there’ll be no hardship for your family. In the interim we’ll get you a government apartment and car so that you can commute home on the weekends.”
“That’s very generous, thank you sir.”
“No Jonathan, thank you! I’m not giving you anything that you haven’t earned many times over. Is Monday too soon to start?”
“I’m ready this afternoon.”
PD chuckled, “I’m glad you still have your sense of humor. I think you’re going to like what we have for you.”
Jonathan hung up the phone and smiled.
Mary seemed indifferent to the news that Jonathan was going back to work and that they might be separated for a while. Carly absorbed the situation and was noticeably saddened. In his excitement Jonathan hadn’t realized the sensitivity of his little girl until her tears began to flow and she quietly disappeared to her room. He caught up with her in her bedroom and sat next to her as she lay face down on the bed with a “death grip” on Bruiser” and her head buried in her pillow. He sat and started rubbing her back. She twitched and moved away.
“Are you okay sweetie?”
She started to sob.
“Daddy has to go back to work. I’ll be home every Friday night and we’ll spend the weekend together.”
She lay quiet and listened and then convulsed every few seconds, just to make sure he understood that she was upset.
He tried a different angle, “And you can come see me.”
She turned her head sideways so that he could see only half of her face. Her eyes were red from crying as she answered, “Bruiser and I want to come with you.”
“Sweetie, you can’t. You have to go to school. Besides, then you’ll miss Mommy and Gretchen.
“I won’t miss mommy.”
Jonathan was stunned at her bluntness.
“Sweetie, your mommy loves you very much. You will be able to spend more time with her when I’m gone.
“She’s different.”
Jonathan ran his hand through her red hair, “She just misses Matthew like you and me.”
She sat up and threw her arms around him. “I’m afraid daddy, I don’t want you to go. You promised that you would stay close.”
“Your mommy will be close and will keep you safe.”
“Please daddy, can I come?”
“No, there wouldn’t be anyone to watch you during the day and Mommy and Gretchen would miss you.”
“How about if we all move?” asked Carly.
“I don’t know, maybe. Mommy works close to here so we would have to work something out.”
“She won’t miss me if I go with you.”
“Will you give it a try? And I promise if it doesn’t work, I’ll bring you and Mommy with me.”
She turned her head face down into the pillow not liking his answer.
“I’m going to tickle
you,” he said as he grabbed at her ribs.
“Stop it,” she screamed.
“Do you want to go to McDonalds?”
“No.”
Jonathan was shocked, Carly always wanted McDonalds. He sat there for a minute, waiting for her to speak.
“Daddy, could you stay in here and play with Bruiser and me?”
“Sure sweetheart.”
*****
As he suspected, his new position was a technical job, far from the public eye and deep within the bowels of corporate headquarters. Jonathan’s body was mostly healed from the explosion, but he would always have as a reminder the scars of surgery on his left arm and the 2 pins and 1 surgical screw in his elbow. The cast had been off for 6 weeks and he had worked hard in therapy to rebuild the strength in his left arm, but he still had a lot of work to do, and he knew that one of his first priorities was to find a new gym and continue his rehabilitation.
The first day back to work was very awkward, because he was never comfortable with praise and everyone treated him as a hero. When PD introduced him to his new group, they all applauded, making him feel terribly uncomfortable. He was assigned to a group of 16 highly technical programmers who managed the databases containing all information on the “field training” programs. He was amazed at how far the agency had come in 3 dimensional virtual reality. He was impressed by one program in particular that used computer simulations written in CBL1, a program specifically developed and written for the CIA. He learned that the CIA technical staff was the co-developer of this programming language, together with MIT, working under a grant from the US Government. The program allowed the creation of 3 dimensional holograms that simulated people, vehicles, buildings, even entire cities. The holograms projected a high density laser from a moving pedestal less than a centimeter square and capable of moving across the ground with a natural fluidity on a cushion of a self-generated electromagnetic force. He watched in awe as a group of agents tried to stop simulated terrorists who were attempting to hijack a Delta 767 on a routine Gatwick to JFK flight. The beauty of the programming was that the programmers could create scenarios which included bombs, nerve gas, automatic weapons, multiple hijackers, the pilot being part of the conspiracy….etc. The holograms were so life like that he could not distinguish illusion from reality. As he watched he saw that the terrorists were both intelligent and brutal. It was funny, because he saw that the training had turned into a competition between the programmers and agents. In the competition he was watching, the terrorists were winning most of the time. He asked if he could be the agent in a simulation and the programmers laughed, but grew painfully quiet when he single handedly killed the hi-jackers without losing a passenger.
For Jonathan, getting lost in managing these databases was therapy for him as the hours and days drifted by. Often he would start at 6 a.m. in the morning and watch the sun rise and set before going back to his apartment at 10 p.m. During the day he made sure to call Carly when she got home from school. She was always excited to hear his voice and tell him about her day.
“When are we going to move?” she would always ask.
“Soon pumpkin.”
Jonathan asked his supervisor if he could work with the programmers to upgrade the hologram program and was excited when he was given permission. Unfortunately, his programming became so aggressive that he created a super terrorist and was told to “lighten up” and not make the programs so difficult, because it wasn’t good for the terrorists to win and the agents to be killed every time. Soon he received a reputation with all the agents and there was a new level of competition to see if anyone could beat his simulations. No one ever did. They gave him the nickname “Nordero” after a famous bull on the rodeo circuit that retired without ever having a cowboy ride him for eight seconds.
Slowly, bits and pieces of July 15th returned to him and he often lay in his bed in the early morning hours trying to recall any detail of the day of the explosion. Each piece he categorized as if he was working on a jig saw puzzle with a million pieces. He knew there were emails, but he was always working on emails and wished that he could gain access to his job stream from that day and felt it a cruel misfortune that he was locked out. Every time he tried to talk to someone about it, they told him that it was classified information. In the evening he logged into his personal Yahoo account waiting for his mysterious new friend to email him again. He wondered about that odd email, the one that told him that his country would not stand behind him. Struggling for any thread that would take him back to that day, he acted against his normal judgment and replied to the email.
“What do you mean?” he answered. “Do I know you?” He stared at the computer for nearly an hour, got up and fixed himself a cup of tea and when he returned there was an answer.
“You need to remember, before they remember for you. You are the center of this storm. Go to instant messenger.”
Jonathan flipped to instant messenger.
Jetsource86: Hello Jonathan
Jonathan’s tag name was F15Flyboy.
F15Flyboy: Do I know you?
Jetsource86: That has no relevance.
F15 Flyboy: Do you know what happened on July 15th?
Jetsource86: Yes, but I also know what didn’t happen.
F15Flyboy: Were you involved?
Jetsource86: That too has no relevance.
F15Flyboy: What didn’t happen?
Jetsource86: You were not connected.
F15Flyboy: Of course I wasn’t connected. Do they think I’m connected?
Jetsource86: Guilty, until proven innocent, we will talk tomorrow, open an Earthlink account and I will find it. Also, register for a different IM name.
Jonathan now knew for certain that it was someone within the agency. “The person has encrypted his name and probably his messages, so they can’t trace him, only someone on the inside could do that. Who could it be?” He started going through the names and faces of his department, but there were too many, and most of the agents he didn’t even know. “Let’s see, he can find me, even if I don’t give him my username. They would have to have access to a program like our Blue Herron program or else they would never be able to trace me through the Earhlink and AOL servers. It would have to be someone inside my group.”
The next day Jonathan studied the people around him, to see if anyone acted differently or gave anything away with non-verbal communication, but everyone went about their daily tasks and no one acted any differently. He struggled with what to do and decided that he could trust PD McVay so he called and scheduled an appointment. PD was after all the Senior Executive in charge of Human Resources and had been a close friend over his career with the CIA. PD was there for him when he came home a wounded POW and helped transition him into his position at Blue Herron. And now he would call on his old friend once more. If he was being investigated by the agency, PD would share it with him.
The CIA headquarters at Langley was a vast complex of buildings and PD resided in the Southwest corner of the main building known as “Executive Row,” which was really a misnomer because there were no rows at Langley. Rows assume symmetry and all the hallways at Langley were rounded with mirrors and cameras, so that no one could hide around a corner. Executive row was a series of offices that housed the entire Senior Staff of William Reed. Jonathan walked across the grounds and passed “Interrogation Hall,” an infamous high tech facility used to question suspects with the most advanced methods known to man. Only once had he been through those doors and it was enough for him to know that he never wanted to go back. Although there had been some advancement in the methods of retrieving information, the procedures of breaking a person were basically the same as they’d been for all ages and were administered in 4 phases…polygraph, brutality, terror, and drugs. He knew a few of the agents that worked in “Interrogation Hall,” and they were little more than executioners, the worse being an interrogator named Harry Davidson, a little bald man who had allegedly killed 6 people in the name of Hom
eland Security at Guantanamo Bay, before being reassigned to Langley and acquitted without a trial. There was also an interrogator named John Burton, a Harvard educated man, who was a former Federal Prosecutor. Jonathan met Burton when one of his close friends, George Hawkins, was being investigated after a botched assassination attempt on Saddam Hussein. Burton was convinced that George had purposely revealed the mission, in exchange for a cash payout. Even though the suspicions were never proved and ultimately dismissed, Burton ruined George’s career, by making certain facts known to the entire agency which somehow leaked to the newspapers. The Washington Post printed a front page article CIA Agent Acquitted But Questions Still Remain wherein the agent’s every mistake and act of indiscretion, including a tryst with an Israeli prostitute, was printed. The source was listed only as a high ranking CIA official. After the humiliation from the newspaper article, George Hawkins shot himself in the head with a government issued Glock 9mm, leaving behind a wife and 3 young children. In earth’s hell, Harry Davison and John Burton were both ranking members in Lucifer’s cabinet.
Jonathan scanned his badge at the checkpoint outside of “Executive Row” and was met by a guard who escorted him past the office of the chief Legal Officer, Bob Kohn, past the Chief Financial Officer, Don Taylor, past an open bay of administrative assistants, busily answering the phones, making schedules and reservations for their kings and finally to the large office of the Senior Executive of Human Resources.
Perspectives, An Intriguing Tale of an American Born Terrorist Page 6