The Unexpected Spy

by Tracy Walder

  Amelia easily agreed to the early morning runs.

  “But hey”—I had to say it or I’d resent the offer—“I don’t like to talk when I run. I just run.”

  “Totally on board with that,” Amelia said. And she was.

  At five thirty the next morning, in the damp, cool air, Amelia and I took off into the woods of Quantico. There was a double heartbeat now, her shoes slapping against the ground, just a few steps behind mine. I trusted her, was comfortable with her, and was easily able to float off into that empty headspace that brings me peace.

  We did this run every day for the next two weeks. Amelia increased her running time, and we both felt confident that she would easily pass the PFT.

  But before we were required to take the physical test again, Amelia quit.

  “I can’t take another minute.” Amelia folded a shirt that was turned inside-out and shoved it into her bag.

  “I get it,” I said. “But if we stay, we’re the people who could change this.”

  In the past few days, Bart, Ted, and Marge kept a sharp eye on Amelia and me. Everyone in the academy had to perform everything well; there was no slacking off. Amelia and I had to do better than that. Way better, lest we be called out, pointed out, mocked, and humiliated. In law class, each time Marge asked a question, she called on me to answer it, whether my hand was up or not. I loved reading about law and continually had the highest test grades of this class. This seemed to drive Marge mad as she threw trick questions at me, or questions from the chapter that hadn’t yet been assigned (and yes, I always read ahead). When I answered correctly, Marge appeared distraught. The one time I got an answer wrong, Marge thumped her hand on the desk and said, “See, Schandler! You’re not as smart as you think you are!”

  It went beyond small insults like that. There was an emotional aggression directed toward us by the supervisory special agents that made their feelings clear. We were disliked and unwanted. And maybe mob mentality took over, or it might have been a life-saving effort by the others to stay in the good graces of those in charge, but soon enough almost everyone—including three of the four other women (Josie still expressed nothing)—seemed to loathe me and Amelia. The two people who did not join in this gang hostility were Darren and Jake. They happened to be the only African American people in our class. Were people being hostile to them, too? I didn’t catch it, though it’s highly likely that I was so caught up in my own nightmare, I was unable to see theirs. Either way, we had two sympathizers who never jumped on the dog pile and who always extended a hand of friendship.

  In addition to having to endure the mass wave of people who appeared to dislike us, Amelia was also uncomfortable with the gun training. Just that morning, she’d been mocked by Bart for not having enough enthusiasm about hitting the cutout man straight in the head.

  When her suitcase was packed and zipped, Amelia unlocked the dummy gun from the holster on her hip and laid it on the desk.

  “I can’t be a part of this gun culture,” she said.

  I didn’t want Amelia to leave, but I had to agree it was best for her. Guns—the assembling, disassembling, cleaning, handling, and shooting—were an enormous part of our training. I’m all for greater gun control, but I do think guns should be in the hands of law enforcement. If there’s anyone I trust with a gun, it is an FBI agent who has undergone months of daily practice with the weapon.

  Once Amelia left, it felt like all that fury was trained on me with the pinpoint of a laser. I didn’t attempt to fight it. And I refused to try to make them like me. I simply retreated to my head, worked at my highest level—including being a total and complete team player when necessary—and looked toward the endgame: graduating, being placed in an office, continuing the work of tracking terrorists. And, maybe just as important, creating a stronger, smarter representation of women in the FBI. As I’d said to Amelia, it wasn’t anything like prison. It was like junior high school. But this time, the bullying started with the teachers rather than stopped there. And I refused to collapse into victimhood.

  * * *

  The FBI at Quantico maintains that people are in or out, pass or fail. But, really, there is a sort of forgiveness offered to some people some of the time. That is, if you don’t quite pass the academy, you can have a certain amount of do-over and can join the class behind you. This is how I got a new roommate when Amelia moved out. Brandy moved in with the grace of a bulldozer. Her husband was in the FBI so she was already inculcated into the agency point of view. Brandy was small and flailed her forearms as she spoke in a way that made me think of T. rex dinosaurs and their disproportionately tiny, grasping arms. She talked rapidly and continuously about everything, ranging from how to properly make a bed to how to properly load a firearm (even though she had previously failed firearm tests) to how to properly relate to Bart, whom she adored and had witnessed belittling me (“Schandler, just because you’ve already been trained in firearms doesn’t mean you’re any better than anyone here! You’re not even good when I only compare you to the girls! In fact, you’re worse—you have confidence where you shouldn’t!”). Brandy had no interest in what I had to say, or what I might know, or how I might help her. She viewed herself as the authority. The right side of everything. The final word. And she conveyed this authority in a twittery little chipmunk voice with her arms flapping and a tense, false smile. If you’ve ever read the book or seen the movie Election, think of Tracy Flick. That’s who I was dealing with. Only Brandy was armed. And dangerous.

  * * *

  With the exception of law, most classes at the academy were taught both in the classroom and through acting out scenarios. After many classes on psychology, manipulation, and reading body language, we were each sent into a room to interview one of the instructors who was playing the part of a suspect. For this exercise, and others like it, we were to dress in the clothes we’d wear to work. I put on the one suit I’d brought to Quantico, something I’d often worn into the office at Langley. The pants and jacket were black with a tiny, almost-invisible red stripe. Beneath the jacket I wore a red ribbed shirt, my holster, the orange dummy gun, and my cuffs. On my feet were the same black peep-toe pumps I’d been sporting to work the past four-plus years. I had stayed up late the night before, closely studying the case material. I wanted to be exact, demanding. I wanted my questions to encircle the suspect without his knowing it, like a lasso that cinched tight before he even felt the rope at his side.

  I strode into the room with my notepad in hand and took a seat across from Bart, who was playing the part of a white-collar criminal. I spoke calmly and with a certain friendliness intended to put him at ease so he’d open up. I pretended to know more than I did so I could instill both fear and a way out of that fear by presenting myself as the person who could save him from his predicament. I did everything exactly as it had been taught, and when I walked out of there, I felt secure that I had nailed the interview. No matter how much he disliked me, Bart—and whoever was observing the interview through one-way glass—couldn’t find fault with my methodology.

  I was so happy with how the interview went, I could barely be bothered by the intrusions of the day, such as Betsy approaching me in the shower (blue eye shadow intact; it must have been waterproof) and saying, “So, like, why do you even keep up the charade that you were in the CIA? Everyone knows you weren’t.” It was so odd, so immature, as to be more baffling than insulting. I turned my back and continued to wash my hair.

  At dinner that night, I sat alone, as I had every night since Amelia left. This always gave me time to think and to go over what we’d learned during the day. Marge, one of the instructors, approached me at the table. She stood still and stout as a fireplug.

  “Schandler,” she said.

  I looked up, as if to ask what she needed.

  “I need to see you in my office. ASAP.” The way she said ASAP made it sound like Aesop, the man who wrote the fables.

  “Should I just come now?” I looked down at my plate of
food, barely touched.

  “What exactly does ASAP mean to you, Schandler?”

  “Okay.” I picked up my plate, dropped it off at the busing station, and then walked to Marge’s office, where I waited for her for at least 15 minutes.

  When Marge finally showed up, she said nothing about having made me wait. She simply opened the door, walked in, and sat behind her desk. I sat at the chair across from her.

  “We had a problem with your interview.”

  “You did?” I had felt so confident in my performance, this was almost as baffling as Betsy asking me to stop pretending I’d been in the CIA.

  “Bart found your suit distracting.”

  “Distracting?” It wasn’t ripped, dirty, or wrinkled. Yeah, it was a few years old, but it was still fine as far as fashion and fit went.

  “It was too tight. It distracted him.”

  “My suit was too tight?” I still wasn’t getting it. Was Marge saying my suit was too small and that clothes worn in the FBI should fit exactly right? My weight had barely changed a pound since my senior year of college. “But the suit is exactly my size.”

  “Schandler!” Marge’s face pulled into a focused pucker; I could see what she’d look like as a very old woman. “Your suit was distracting. It showed too much of your body. You need to wear larger clothes. And you need to write an apology to Bart.”

  It felt like a snowstorm was blowing through my bones. I was chilled. “You’d like me to apologize to Bart for the fit of my suit?” My voice was calm. I needed to be certain that what she was saying was what I was hearing.

  “Special Agent Smith to you.”

  “Sorry. To be clear: you’d like me to apologize to Special Agent Smith for the fit of my suit. Correct?”

  Marge rolled her eyes and shook her head. “How many ways can I say this, Schandler? Don’t be the dumb blond everyone thinks you are! Your suit was distracting! Apologize to Bart or leave the program! If you want to be a team player, if you want to succeed as an agent, you need to learn Aesop how not to make your coworkers uncomfortable. Got it?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I smiled. But from behind that smile, my eyes were raining bullets.

  That night, I opened my laptop and composed an email to Bart.

  The first draft read:

  Dear Asshole,

  I’m sorry you got off on my four-year-old CIA suit, the sight of which never appeared to ruffle the composure of both men and women from nations all over the world.

  The second draft read:

  Dear Pervert,

  I apologize for triggering your pervy impulses in the face of my old, black suit.

  The third draft read:

  Dear Tiny, Afraid, Scared, Little Boy in a Man’s Body,

  I’m sorry that the power I wielded in that suit made you feel impotent and worthless. I’m sorry you are so afraid of women that you need to dominate and belittle them whenever possible.

  The email I sent read:

  Dear Special Agent Smith,

  I’m sorry my suit made you uncomfortable. I drove to the Walmart after dinner and bought a new suit in a larger size.

  Sincerely,

  Tracy Schandler

  * * *

  Hand-to-hand combat was always fun. How often do you get thrown together with people you don’t particularly love with the instructions to beat the breath and blood out of them? Usually we wore punching gloves and padded headgear. The exercise that seemed to mirror how I felt in the academy was Bull in the Ring. Each person was weighed, and then we were sorted into four groups of ten divided by weight. The women all weighed less than the men, so my group was always the six women and the four lightest men. One by one, each member of the group would stand in the center of a circle and fight for 60 seconds straight with each of the other people in the group. In other words, it was nine minutes of fight-for-your-life battle with nine different people coming at you in sequence. What I didn’t have in skill, I made up for with determination. We were filmed in many exercises, and when I watched the footage of myself in hand-to-hand combat I thought of wild kangaroos, or the Road Runner, just keeping at it no matter how many anvil weights and bundles of dynamite get thrown in his way. I was a punching machine, and that kept my ribs, teeth, and nose in place while others had theirs knocked loose.

  I’m too self-critical to ever be proud, but when I watch the footage of myself at the daily shooting practice, I’m always surprised by my skill with the 9-millimeter Glock. I was so continuously criticized during target practice that I never realized that I wasn’t bad at it. We were assigned particular shooting patterns: three shots with your right hand, three shots with your left, one with your right, one with your left, and so on. With the ear protectors and goggles on, I was sealed off from the world outside my head. As I single-mindedly focused on the targets, I was able to flow with the shooting rhythm in the same way I performed dance routines all throughout school.

  We practiced with shotguns, too. They were just as fun, and my scores were even higher, as it’s much easier to hit a target with buckshot than with a 9-millimeter Glock. The only person who didn’t use the Glock was the former professional football player. He was issued something more proportionate to his frying-pan palms and baguette fingers.

  * * *

  Hogan’s Alley is a dummy town built at Quantico over 30 years ago with the help of Hollywood set designers. It’s named after a comic strip of the same name from the 1890s. The comic was about mischievous kids from the wrong side of the tracks in New York City. The FBI-created town looks more like suburban Maryland than New York City. Hogan’s Alley features apartment buildings and tract houses with garages and sidewalks. There’s a quaint downtown with a bank, doughnut shop, drugstore, diner, bowling alley, and more. There’s a trailer park at Hogan’s Alley. And naturally, there’s a motel, as who could imagine crime without thinking of some motel by the side of the freeway with bloodstained carpets and a bedspread you’d never touch without wearing gloves? If aliens ever landed in Hogan’s Alley in the middle of the night, they’d be utterly confounded by this complete little town, mostly furnished, but with no money in the Bank of Hogan, no hot doughnuts in the doughnut shop, no running water, and no living human inhabitants.

  With outside actors hired to play criminals, we conducted raids and takedowns, and negotiated for hostages in Hogan’s Alley. Each scenario enacted was taken from an actual FBI case. We wore plastic face masks and bulletproof vests and were armed with guns that looked and felt real but shot only paintballs (which hurt when they hit and can easily take an eye out). Lined up outside the bank—or bowling alley, motel, wherever—an instructor talked us through exactly what we should do, step by step, person by person, shot by shot. The goals were always the same: don’t get hit; disarm and capture the suspect.

  Brandy claimed her heart was banging with fear, that it felt like a real raid every time we got out the guns and went to Hogan’s Alley. I found it to be a foggy imitation of the actual experience. It was more like being fifteen and driving in a car with one of your parents in the passenger seat continuously snapping at you, “Stay away from the curb! Put your blinker on! Not that blinker, the other blinker! Slow down! Speed up! Right lane, right lane! You can’t make a goddamned right turn from the left lane!” When you first drove without a parent, you could still hear them saying those things. It took a few months for the correct moves to become instinct. The same was true for FBI raids.

  Forensics class occupied the two hours before lunch. I often wondered whose idea of a joke that was, as the images we saw in forensics were enough to make most people ill. After the severed heads in a trough that I’d seen in Africa, though, there was little that could spoil my appetite. Brandy’s chattering voice carried above the crowd murmur, and every day as we walked from the forensics room to the cafeteria, she yammered on about how her stomach was tumbling. Even if I was ten people behind her in the food line, I could hear her claim she could never eat a thing after forensics. I’d pop my head o
ut to look, and sure enough, her tray was always piled as high as mine.

  The forensics teacher, Special Agent Kotter, had wild curly hair and a mustache. He came across as more of an intellectual than a law enforcement official, and this offered some relief from the ways and manners of the rest of the trainers. Kotter had done some of the forensics on United Airlines flight 93—the one that heroic passengers had crashed into a Pennsylvania field on September 11. What he found, and how he pieced together information from the wreckage, fascinated me. The appearance alone of the wreckage conveyed useful information: the giant dismembered tail the shape of a fish fin that lay in the field behind the blackened, ash-crumbled body. It was as if some enormous animal had chewed up the plane and then spat out that chunk of tail. I found the image of the plane gruesome but forced myself to take it in, and particularly to acknowledge those brave passengers who chose to crash into a field rather than into the U.S. Capitol, as the terrorists had planned.

  Kotter was fond of throwing slides up on the projector as he spoke. There were often autopsy photos, bodies dissected with the exactitude of frogs in a science lab. And there were bodies prior to the autopsy: people who had been shot, knifed, bludgeoned, poisoned, burned, drowned, or run over. And then there were the many who had been strangled to death, their hyoid bone broken. The hyoid bone is unique in that it’s the only one in the body that isn’t attached to another bone; it sort of floats in your neck, glued to muscle. It’s easy for a man with large hands to surround and then crush it. The bruising and red marks left behind, the way a neck looks after a strangulation, make the human body seem frail and light. When I looked at those images, I felt grateful for my beating heart, my legs that could run, my lungs that took in air.