They began to move toward the hotel exit. Michael held the lobby door open for her as she sailed through into the parking lot, still talking. “And some people think that part of the reason the CIA doesn’t release employee statistics is so that it doesn’t have to obey federal guidelines regarding the hiring of women and minorities.”
“Which way’s your car?” Michael asked, trying not to sound as if he were interrupting. They hadn’t made much progress into the parking lot yet, and though he found what she was saying intriguing, he wasn’t sure he wanted to talk about the politics of the CIA right in front of the doors out of which all the G-men might come flying any minute. “I’m Michael Vaughn, by the way,” he said, sticking out his hand for her to shake.
She had an incredibly strong grip. “I’m Akiko Schwartz,” she replied, pumping up and down so firmly Michael could barely hide his wince. “Are you offering to walk me to my car? That’s very thoughtful.”
“I was trying to be,” Michael said, rubbing his just-released hand with relief as they set off in the direction she had pointed. He couldn’t believe how much pain his right hand was in. “But Akiko, seriously—if anyone bothers you, just offer to shake his hand.”
Akiko turned back and saw Michael still rubbing his knuckles, then let out a loud burst of laughter. “I’m sorry,” she said, although to Michael she sounded more merry than apologetic. “It’s the new reps I’m doing. My husband says I’m getting the arms of a steamfitter.”
Michael didn’t know what a steamfitter’s arms looked like, but he figured they must feel like bunched balls of iron to crunch his hand like Akiko just had. “You got that strong just from weight training?” he asked. They’d reached her car, a small red hatchback, and she waited a moment before inserting her keys in the door.
“Well, I’m a black belt in Aikido, too,” she said, shrugging as if it were nothing. “And I like to do a little Ultimate Fighting on the side.”
Michael had seen Ultimate Fighting matches on TV, where boxers and Greco-Roman wrestlers were smacked off their feet by wiry men using jujitsu or tae kwon do. He’d never seen a woman fight in one of those matches, but he was willing to bet that Akiko could kick some serious butt. “That might have something to do with it,” Michael commented dryly.
Akiko got into her car and rolled down the driver’s-side window. “Good luck, Michael,” she said, suddenly looking serious. “You seem like a nice guy—I think you’d be good to work with.”
Michael was struck by her directness, and also pleased by it. There was no explanation for it, but he found that he was feeling the same way, and strongly—as if they’d known each other for years instead of minutes. Maybe it was like the bonding old veterans said wartime foxholes produced.
“Good luck to you, too,” he said. “And all my best to the wife.”
Akiko grinned and started the engine. She stuck her head out her window for one last comment. “If I don’t make it, they’re going to have a big problem,” she said, smiling widely. “In my day job, I’m a civil rights lawyer with the justice department.”
Michael laughed with her and waved his non-sore hand as she gunned the motor and drove off. He set off toward his own car, his energy somehow restored by the brief encounter. He thought about Akiko’s firm manner, her interesting factoids, and her killer grip.
If every recruit’s that impressive, he mused, I might have a harder time making it into the CIA than I thought.
3
THREE WEEKS LATER, LES called and gave Michael another date and time to show up at the hotel. “They’re not going to make me hold my breath underwater again, are they?” Michael asked. The test during which he and ten other recruits had been forced to descend to the bottom of the pool holding bricks bars and bring them up and down as many times as they could in two minutes had been one of the more unpleasant of his experience.
“The whole interview’s underwater, kid,” Les said gruffly, then signed off. Something must be happening with my application, Michael thought as he put down the receiver, because Les is definitely loosening up. Let’s just hope it isn’t that they’re about to drop me and he doesn’t care what he says.
This time Michael found himself alone in the lobby, and he was called into a private room, not a teeming conference room. Five people he’d never seen sat in leather executive chairs behind a large glossy table, and he sat in front of them on a simple four-legged steel seat, without even a side table on which to place a glass of water.
They introduced themselves as CIA officers, and their questioning began simply. “Do you feel that you have any impediments to serving the American government honestly and truthfully?” asked a man with a salt-and-pepper brush cut and a habit of spinning his pencil between his thumb and forefinger.
Instead of giving them the stock answer he’d used in all the previous sessions, Michael found something different flying out of his mouth before he could stop them. “Are you asking that because of my father?” he asked.
Michael was momentarily terrified at what he’d said, then glad. After all, my father did work for them until he died, he thought. It seems silly not to bring it up.
The man sitting at the center of the table flipped his pencil over and stopped. He looked to the woman on his left. She was solid and tall, in her fifties, with long, graying brown hair, and looked like an aging folk singer. She cocked her head to the right, a move so slight Vaughn almost missed it. Nora always told me that’s a typical sign your opponent is getting his dander up, he thought, remembering her lectures to him on body language.
“Do you think that’s why we’re asking you?” she shot back.
Michael had to stop himself from laughing out loud. He thought again of Nora holding the soup spoon and giving him the psychologist’s stock response to all questions. Clearly, this lady was willing to volley questions with him until he ducked for cover.
It was time to come out with his guns blazing.
“What can you tell me about my father’s service?” he asked, looking at each of the five assembled officers in turn. It was the first pointed question he’d asked during the entire recruitment process, but it was starting to seem that he might benefit from a little dose of Akiko Schwartz’s directness.
None of the officers looked away, but the female officer’s face closed like a door. “That’s classified,” she snapped.
Michael was afraid he’d blown it, but a few days later, he got another call from Les. It was the call he’d been waiting for all year, and Les had to repeat himself five times before he believed it. Les was calling to give him his EOD—Enter on Duty—the date on which he was to report at CIA headquarters: Langley.
“Congratulations,” Les said once he’d finally managed to convince Michael he was telling the truth. “They said you held your breath pretty well,” he joked.
Michael hung up the phone, the words echoing. Held your breath. That was exactly what he had been doing for almost a year, and now he didn’t have to anymore.
Michael looked around at the dingy brown-and-beige hotel room that had been his temporary home during his interrogation period. A long rip cut through the pilled and yellowing curtains, and a leak had caved in the portion of the ceiling over the bed almost to the breaking point.
He felt a surge of joy. He hadn’t noticed how crummy the room was before this moment. Maybe he’d been scared to look at it too closely before he’d known for sure that he’d be leaving it soon.
Let’s hope my powers of observation seem a little bit better to the folks in Washington, he thought, a wide grin cracking his face. He picked up the phone and set it on his lap, clenching the receiver between his ear and shoulder. His fingers hovered over the grid of buttons.
Who was he going to call first?
Slowly he felt the grin leave his face, and he returned the receiver to the cradle and the phone to the end table. I can’t tell Mom, he thought, something closer to misery edging out the happiness of a moment before. And I can’t tell Nora. He lo
oked up at the water stain above him, the bowed ceiling suddenly seeming prophetic. The only people in the world I can tell what just happened to me are the ones who already know.
Michael leaned back on the bed, smacking his head on the headboard for good measure. It seemed like someone driving the point home for emphasis.
This is the way it’s going to be from now on, that person would say. He’d be in a gray suit, strictly no-nonsense, and he’d dole out his smiles like a miser with a pocket full of pennies.
So get used to it.
Michael’s EOD was the day after the next: Once the CIA made a decision, it seemed, they didn’t waste any time. After he’d settled his plane tickets to Dulles, Michael swung by the strip-mall post office where he’d been forwarding all his mail. He hadn’t bothered to check the box since he’d gotten it, sure it was crowded only with credit-card offers. Still, there was a chance that there could be something important in there as well.
Like a letter from Nora, possibly.
She’d be writing you in Geneva, dude, Michael told himself, pulling neatly into a parking spot. Not to your old college address. Get a grip.
But what if Nora had tried to write him in Geneva? he wondered suddenly. He hadn’t made any arrangements for his mail to be forwarded from there. If she had written him care of the university, then received a “No such person exists at this address” message from the incredibly efficient Swiss mail, what would she be thinking now?
Stop driving yourself crazy, he cautioned himself. First of all, Nora wouldn’t write you in another country until she’d gotten your correct address. Second, if she called the university and couldn’t find you, she’d just figure that they had screwed up.
Still, the upsurge he’d felt after leaving his depressing beige cell had positively soured. He was feeling almost nauseated by the time the man behind the counter emerged with what looked like a year’s worth of catalogs, plus a bulky brown package.
Michael handed over the new change-of-address form for Langley he’d just filled out and took the package, flipping it over. In her typically ornate script, his mother had addressed it to him care of the economics department at the University of Geneva.
Michael let out a low whistle. It was exactly the scenario he’d just been worrying about.
Michael began to retrace all the steps he’d taken to tie up his loose ends before leaving town. He’d informed the school that he was taking another semester to think over his options, and they’d agreed to hold his position for half a year. The department must have just sent it to my old address, Michael realized with relief. And it got forwarded here.
But when he turned the package over for the telltale yellow forwarding strip, there was nothing but smooth brown paper.
In fact, the package was oddly free of marks. Usually when something got sent back from abroad, it was practically covered in PAR AVIONs and other stamps. But this only seemed to have the stamp of the local post office.
Is the CIA monitoring my mail? Michael wondered. The thought was a little scary. If they were, he hoped that didn’t include reading it. He didn’t care if they flipped through a J. Crew catalog, but it was against the law for them to read his letters, wasn’t it?
Maybe the law was different for CIA recruits
“When did this come in?” Michael asked the man behind the counter, holding up the package.
The man shrugged. Michael had become so used to providing specific dates and circumstances, he’d temporarily forgotten how the real world ran. Clearly, they were a little more laissez-faire about such things as dates and times at Stamps “R” Us.
The man had roused himself, though, and was flipping through some pages on a clipboard. He looked up, surprised. “There’s no record of a package at all,” he said slowly. For a moment, it seemed like he was going to take the package back. “It’s not for you?” he asked.
“It’s for me,” Michael answered, feeling more and more panicked by the minute. If the CIA was already monitoring and controlling his mail, did that mean they were listening in on the phone, too? What if he had called Nora, or his mother, and told them what was happening? Would their offer have been revoked?
But maybe he was just being paranoid. “You don’t keep any other records?” Michael asked hopefully. All this prying and poking could make anyone see conspiracies in coincidences. Maybe he had filled out a forwarding order for the Geneva address and just forgotten. Maybe all the stamps had fallen off. Or maybe this was all the result of the post office’s Byzantine record-keeping policies.
The man shrugged. His previous languor crept back across his features like wine spilled onto thirsty fabric. He was content, it seemed, to chalk up the omission to the realm of eternal mystery.
“Forget it,” Michael said, and left.
Back at his hotel room, Michael turned the parcel over and over. Finally he convinced himself that he was just being silly. You filled out that card for Geneva, too, he told himself. And you’re acting like your mother never writes you, when she sends you at least two or three letters every year.
Just not usually packages, he thought, trying to force the thought back down even as it asserted itself more vigorously. He didn’t know what he was scared of. Certainly the CIA would have no reason to send him anything weird or dangerous in the mail—and they wouldn’t need to pretend to be his mother to get him to open it, either.
That thread of logic finally convinced him that he had nothing to worry about. He steeled himself and ripped the paper straight from end to end. A notebook held together by a rubber band with some kind of note clipped to the front spilled out onto his lap.
He breathed a sigh of relief. Idiot.
He slid the note out from under the rubber band and unfolded it. It was his mother’s writing, but it was uncharacteristically brief. In fact, it wasn’t even addressed to him. His mother also had left off her typically flowery signature. At first glance, it was just three lines on an otherwise empty page.
Some men came to see me about your security clearance. You must be working on some interesting things in Geneva, yes? And the Swiss are as thorough as they’ve always been.
The fourth line was so faint he almost missed it. It was in a spidery, crawling hand that looked like it had been almost erased or rubbed out—but not quite.
I thought you might be interested in this
Michael turned the contents of the package over in his hand. It was an ordinary ruled notebook, somewhat worse for the wear, small enough to almost fit in a jacket pocket. The spiral had come apart from the top half of the pages, but someone had recently made an effort to keep them together. The rubber band was clearly new.
He gently pulled the rubber band off and let the notebook fall open. Unsure what to think, he stared at the contents. Each line crawled with a series of numbers in an unfamiliar hand. They were written with a black ballpoint pen, by someone who had pressed heavily enough to make an impression on the pages on both sides. There were no discernable spaces between the numbers, but it seemed probable—even to Michael’s untrained eyes—that they were some kind of code.
Michael flipped back a few pages, then looked quickly and carefully through the whole notebook. The pen sometimes changed from black ink to blue, but otherwise the blocks of numbers marched steadily toward some unknown destination.
What in the world was this notebook, and why had his mother sent it to him?
Michael’s first instinct was to just call his mother and ask her. Something stopped him, however—the same thing that had given him pause at the post office.
If the CIA knew about the notebook, maybe he wasn’t supposed to talk about it. In fact, maybe it was some kind of test.
And if they don’t know about it, Michael thought, I’m not really sure I want them to.
The last thought came out of nowhere, and Michael couldn’t say what filled him with such certainty. He just had a strong hunch that whatever it was, he should keep it to himself for a while.
And
if they ever ask about it, he thought, I’ll know it’s some kind of test.
Michael hated the trips and turns his mind was suddenly taking. He felt as if he were in some cheesy spy flick instead of getting ready to join one of the most effective and honorable government institutions in America—one that had taken on an even deeper significance in recent years. Stop getting all Tom Clancy, he badgered himself. Government work is serious, and it’s purely analytical. It has nothing to do with stupid feelings that come up out of nowhere.
By sticking the notebook into the bottom of his backpack and finding the silliest comedy on TV he could locate, he managed to settle his feelings of disquiet. The next morning, only the faintest ghost of his thoughts the night before remained.
You were just being stupid, he told himself on the way to the airport. I bet it even has a name, like pre-CIA jitters. The same as medical students who think they’re getting every illness they study. But in the case of CIA recruits, you start seeing conspiracies in all the ordinary things going on in your own life.
By the time he returned the car to the rental agency, he’d regained most of his excitement. You’re going off to the CIA! Everything you worked for is finally happening! And instead of being ecstatic, you’re worrying that someone is tapping your phone or sending you notebooks under your mom’s name.
It wasn’t until he was up in the air somewhere over New York that he was finally able to put his finger on what had been bothering him.
While it was true that the note wasn’t that different from his mother’s usual letters, it differed from them in one major respect, something far more obvious than its lack of a proper greeting or sign-off. It was so obvious that he’d missed it completely.
His mother had grown up in France, and while she could converse perfectly well in English, with Michael—avec Michel—she always spoke in her native tongue: on the phone, in person—really any time except when they were joined by someone who only spoke English.
The Pursuit (Alias) Page 3