Loose Lips

by Claire Berlinski

  “Thanks, Mark. You too. Congratulations.”

  “Great to be done, isn’t it?”

  “I feel sad for Iris,” I answered.

  He looked surprised. “Don’t worry about it. She wouldn’t want you to let that ruin your evening.”

  The Director of Central Intelligence arrived and handed us our diplomas, which were given to us in alias and taken away immediately for storage in a secure facility. The auditorium was filled with Agency brass—the Deputy Director for Operations, the executive director, Betty Argus, Hal Hertz. They sat on the dais before a row of flags—the American flag, of course, and a flag with the Agency seal, and a few other flags of indeterminate provenance: One seemed to be from the Department of Energy. The executive director was wearing his military regalia. I noticed a run in my nylons during the ceremony. I tried to scrunch it inside my shoe.

  The speeches involved a mixture of bromides and congratulations and many descriptions of the Agency as the finest intelligence service in the world, and a family. The Deputy Director for Operations told an anecdote about a case officer who had run over a bandit in Zimbabwe with his Range Rover.

  All I wanted was to go home.

  At the reception afterward, the Director of Central Intelligence shook my hand and clapped me on the back. “Well done,” he murmured through an unlit cigar, his florid skin creasing, his face at once avuncular and vaguely voluptuarian. “We’re expecting great things from you. You’ve got a lot of talent, that’s what I hear.” Gliding on his heels, he passed to the next student and said precisely the same thing.

  Of course Stan had also passed. His adviser had told him he was the most talented student the instructors could remember. He had reached his lowest weight in five years. Catching a glimpse of him as he strode into the auditorium wearing his best single-breasted suit, I realized with surprise that he looked handsome.

  We found each other after the ceremony and went back to his dormitory room. “It’s an anticlimax,” he said.

  “I can’t believe what they did to Iris. I can’t believe she didn’t graduate with us.”

  We lit a scented candle, and I lay in his arms quietly as the smell of freesia filled the air.

  We’d had so many plans, but we were too tired to realize them. We’d given up on the idea of a Caribbean vacation a while ago. Now, we admitted to each other that we didn’t have the time or the energy to drive to Kentucky, either. We spent the weekend watching television in bed. We ordered in Chinese food and pizza. I slept most of the time, wearing Stan’s T-shirt and his underwear, because I hadn’t done laundry in almost two months. I was anxious about my Monday-morning appointment at the Special Investigations Branch. Stan thought it was probably nothing, but I had a bad feeling about it. Stan watched reruns of Red Dwarf and Deep Space Nine. We let the take-out boxes and cartons stack up at the foot of the bed, like Aztec ruins, and stepped over them gingerly when we got up to use the toilet.

  CHAPTER 7

  The receptionist at the Special Investigations Branch placed me in a waiting room with three steel folding chairs and a small utility table. An old copy of Newsweek, coffee-stained and coverless, lay on the laminate tabletop. A framed award plaque hung at a skewed angle on the wall. MERITORIOUS UNIT CITATION, it read, and listed six unfamiliar names underneath. I studied it for hints but found none.

  A middle-aged woman walked past the door, acknowledged me by name, and told me to wait another minute. She slipped off and I heard low voices. When she returned, she told me to follow her. Frayed posters on the corridor wall recalled the need for vigilance. YOU HAVE ACCESS, read one. YOU COULD BE A TARGET.

  INTERVIEW ROOM was written on the door. The woman opened it and stepped aside so that I could walk in. The small room was air-conditioned to a light chill, bare but for four metal folding chairs and a long wooden table. A small hole in the wall, concealing a camera, pointed toward my chair. The woman carried a thick dossier and a notepad, both held at an angle so I couldn’t see the writing. Her name was Janet, and crow’s-feet serrated the skin around her eyes and mouth. Her pale foundation makeup collected in those creases and absorbed the fluorescent light of the room.

  “You’re probably wondering why you’re here,” she said.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Why do you think you’re here?” She had very pale eyes, with pinprick pupils.

  “I have no idea.”

  Janet cleared her throat and reseated herself, smoothing her suit skirt. “I will begin by explaining what this office does. This is the Special Investigations Branch of the Central Intelligence Agency. By statute, we hold the authority to investigate Agency employees when their behavior raises concerns relevant to national security.” She pulled a leaflet of Agency regulations from a dossier she had carried with her into the room and opened it; she thumbed to the middle and pointed with her pen to a subsection highlighted in yellow. She showed me the words she had just used, verbatim.

  She continued: “If concern were to arise over an employee’s loyalty to the Agency, for example, or substance abuse, or unreported contact with foreigners, the investigation of these allegations would fall under our purview.”

  I nodded, and felt spiders of anxiety crawling up my back.

  “We have sources and informants throughout the Agency,” she said. “We have many methods of getting information.”

  I anchored my hands on the chair so that I wouldn’t fidget. The instructors had advised us to do this in our classes on interrogation.

  “We have several concerns to discuss today,” she said. “At issue are your security clearances. As you are certainly aware, security clearances are granted only to men and women of unquestioned integrity and allegiance to the United States. Lack of loyalty to the United States, inability to protect classified information, or unwillingness to do so would be grounds for their revocation.” She leafed through the booklet and found this stipulation there as well; it too had been yellowed with a highlighter pen; it read exactly as she had said.

  “Selena, the Special Investigations Branch has received a report from an informant that you are sympathetic to Jonathan Pollard.”

  “That’s ludicrous. Who said that?”

  “Our sources are confidential.”

  “Your sources are wrong.”

  “Can you explain why this has been brought to our attention?”

  “Presumably because I’m Jewish.”

  “I was unaware that you were Jewish. This has nothing to do with that. This is about whether you admire the actions of a convicted traitor.”

  “No. I don’t.”

  “Could you state, for the record, whether your loyalties lie with the United States?” she asked.

  “Yes. For the record, my loyalties lie with the United States. Entirely. I believe in the principles upon which the United States was founded. I believe in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. I am completely loyal to the United States.”

  Janet took notes on a sheet of yellow legal paper. “What about your loyalty to the Central Intelligence Agency?”

  “Yes, I am loyal to this Agency.”

  She took more notes. I couldn’t see what she was writing.

  “I have noted for the record that you dispute this allegation against you.”

  “Good. But be careful to note that the suspicion I may be a Jew is correct.”

  She looked at me sharply, her face frigid. “Selena, the Special Investigations Branch has received another very serious allegation about you. We’ve received an allegation that you have deliberately compromised classified information.”

  Keep still, I told myself. I felt a blush of anger and confusion reddening my face. Keep your hands on the chair. A light sweat moistened the small of my back despite the chill of the room.

  “That’s crazy too. Who the hell is telling you this?”

  “Our sources are confidential.”

  “Your sources are full of shit.”

  Her pale blue eyes iced over and her small
pupils shrank until her eyes looked like glassy buttons. “We cannot work together if you use profanity.”

  “It’s completely untrue, and it’s absurd.”

  She took more notes, “I have noted for the record that you also dispute the allegation against you.”

  Acid rose in my throat. “I do not know what the allegations against me are.”

  Janet cleared her throat again. “We have evidence that you have placed classified information on an unsecured computer system.”

  For a second, I had no idea what she was talking about.

  And then I realized

  —oh, shit—

  that I was in big trouble.

  She was talking about the e-mail I had sent to Mom and Lilia.

  I had no choice but to admit it immediately: If she knew enough to ask, she knew enough to demand to see my computer, and if I refused, she would have it subpoenaed. I figured this out in seconds. I could only make the situation worse by lying. At the Farm, we had been taught to survive a hostile interrogation: Admit nothing, deny everything, make counteraccusations. In training, I never gave anything away, even when they chained me to a tree for days without food and threatened to put a bullet in the base of my skull. That’s the difference between training and real life.

  I told Janet what I could remember; she took more notes. She said to wait for her while she spoke to her colleagues and left the room. I sat in view of the pinhole eye, my stomach churning. To stay composed, I tried to count backward from a thousand by sevens. The sweat on my back dampened my blouse, sticking me to the chair. Janet returned with her partner, a gray-haired, plump bird of a woman in a calico-print dress. Granny glasses hung from a chain around her soft neck; she had a round, pink face. “I’m Nancy,” she said. “I’ll be working with Janet on this investigation.”

  “We need you to bring your computer to us before Wednesday at noon,” Janet said.

  “What will happen?”

  “I can’t say anything about that until this investigation is concluded. There are a number of serious issues here.”

  Nancy spoke; her voice was gentle and sweet. “I understand you’ve been very cooperative. That’s encouraging to us. Your cooperation works in your favor. We do want to help you get through this, Selena. We want to help you resolve these issues.”

  My eyes began to glisten; it was the kindness in her voice. I knew it was a good-cop-bad-cop routine, but it didn’t matter. Knowledge of an interrogator’s methods is no proof against them.

  “You can go home now. We know this has been a rough morning for you,” Nancy said. “But I want you to be careful driving back. The weather’s awfully bad out there. In fact, I want you to call me when you get back to let me know that you’re all right. It’s my Mom instinct. I worry about these things.”

  She looked like a Mom, too, as if she might have pictures of her children, in graduation capes and prom dresses, on her desk in a heart-shaped frame. I knew what her display of solicitude meant. I’d been trained to behave the same way. Build rapport with your subject. Give to get. We practiced down at the Farm, with the instructors dressed up as defectors from North Korea and Iraq. Remember his humanity, the lecturer said. This is a disturbed human being. He’s scared. He doesn’t know if he can trust you. Express concern for his welfare. Offer him a beverage. I knew what Nancy was doing, and it worked all the same. I wanted her to help me resolve these issues. Someone in trouble is like a baby duck. He’s vulnerable and lost. Baby ducks imprint on the first thing they see. He’ll look at you and think: “Are you my mommy?”

  “I appreciate your concern. I’d like to discuss this with my family. Is that permitted?” I asked.

  “No.” From both of them at once. Emphatically.

  “Why not, exactly? Is the fact that you’ve opened this investigation in itself classified?”

  “Yes, of course,” said Janet. “You may not discuss this with anyone. That’s how an investigation becomes contaminated.” She spoke as if my life were a urine sample.

  “Can I discuss this with my boyfriend? He’s Agency too—he’s cleared as high as I am.”

  “No.” Janet answered. “We are very serious about this. You may not discuss the details of this investigation with anyone.”

  “What can I say to him? He’ll notice that something’s wrong. I live with him.”

  “You can say that you are under investigation by the Special Investigations Branch but are not at liberty to discuss the details.”

  I shook their hands and thanked them for their time.

  Nancy was right—it had begun to pour. I lit a cigarette and drew on it so hard that I choked. I looked for my cell phone and burned myself on the lit cigarette. I pulled out past a mist of security guards in yellow rain slickers, then dialed Stan. For a second I was unable to speak the first word.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Come home right now. Drive carefully.”

  I crawled through Beltway traffic in the blinding rain. My idiotic confessions to my mother whirled around and around in my mind. Mom, I missed an entire surveillance team and led them right to our asset.

  Stan was waiting for me downstairs. He rushed to me and grabbed my wrists. “What happened?”

  “I can’t discuss it.” Despite everything, I took a small pleasure in having a secret.

  We took the elevator up to the seventh floor; he protected me with his arm as if escorting me from the scene of an accident. I put my bag down on the couch and asked him to pour me a drink.

  He poured me a tumbler of scotch and then another. I sat on the floor. Outside, the Beltway sounded like a mosquito’s drone. Within two hours I had told him everything.

  “Calm down. Deep breaths. Calm down. It’s going to be okay,” he said. I searched his face for assurance.

  “How could they have known?”

  “It could have been anything. Maybe the FBI pinged on the word surveillance while they were scanning your ISP looking for a terrorist. The NSA has hundreds of analysts whose job is to go through that stuff. The Agency has all sorts of ways of finding things out. It’s the most powerful intelligence apparatus in the world. Maybe someone who visited you looked on your computer.”

  Stan shook his head, and I could feel his disappointment in me and his frustration. I had let him down. I was too sloppy, too careless, too immature. He seemed somehow much older than me now, and formidable. He sat across from me on the floor, lowering himself into my field of vision. He placed one hand on each of my shoulders and looked me directly in the eye, his expression grave. He dipped his chin to magnify his gaze, then squeezed my shoulders like a captain bracing a terrified new recruit for his first descent into the combat zone. “It was a stupid thing to do. Dead stupid. But they’re not going to fire you. You were a trainee. You made a mistake. Everyone makes mistakes, and at least you made this mistake in training and not out in the field.”

  “How should I handle it?” I asked.

  “You’ve got to cooperate with them completely. Don’t try to cover anything up. The cover-up is what gets you into trouble in this town, not the crime. You need to be absolutely contrite and humble. You need to tell them you fucked up, and you need to take responsibility. You’ll be disciplined—they’re going to slap you, hard, but you’ll get through it.”

  I asked him how he knew.

  “I know this place. What exactly did you put in those letters?”

  “I told you—that I’d flunked surveillance. I think I said I’d probably get all my assets killed—”

  “Oh, for God’s sake. Why didn’t you just take out an ad in the paper saying ‘My name is Selena M. Keller and I work for the Central Intelligence Agency’ while you were at it?”

  My eyes filled with tears; he looked at me and sighed. “These things happen around here—it’s the CIA. Calm down. You’ll get through this. We’ll get through this together.”

  I put my head between my knees. Stan reached o
ut for me; he took my head in his hands and pulled my body against his chest, then folded me in his arms. He stroked my hair gently. “It’s gonna be okay, baby. It’s gonna be okay.”

  We both fell silent for a minute. I felt woozy from the scotch, as if all the blood had drained out of my body, leaving nothing but my crumpled skeleton. My stomach was on fire with acid. I took his hand and pressed it against my cheek. “Fuck,” I said to no one and nothing. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” Feeling ashamed that I had dragged him into this along with me, I said, “Thank you for being here for me.”

  Why did I write those letters? It’s simple: I just didn’t think. Screwups always say that. “You drank eleven margaritas and then you tried to run that dang chain saw?” I just didn’t think. “You put your hand in the polar-bear cage and tried to pet all that fluffy fur?” I just didn’t think.

  There’s a special hell reserved for people who do something stupid. Your mind traces and retraces the moment you did what you can never take back, no matter how much you will it. If only you could reverse history by replaying the scene in your mind, over and over again. Each time you give the story a different ending, and each time you realize the ending will never change. How many times did Bill Clinton think how it might have been: No, Monica, absolutely not. I’m a married man, I’m twice your age, and I’m the president of the United States. How many people before me, how many after, have rued a carelessly whispered word, an indiscreet letter, a confession in a moment of passion or tenderness?