The Pursuit (Alias)

by Elizabeth Skurnick

  “Barry, how could they be ready?” Elena said, moving in front of him and snatching the second camera. “You haven’t explained what this is.” She turned to Akiko and Vaughn. “This is the UAV we’ve been developing for the past year. Remember those old model airplanes you could fly around the yard?”

  “My daughter has one,” Akiko said.

  “Well, the technology on this baby is a little more complicated, and we hope it’ll stand up to windows and trees better. But basically, you buzz it over the structure, and it’s able to send a sound wave that sees through walls. I don’t want to get into specifics, but you’ll be able to tell how large the structure is and what’s inside. It doesn’t do color, but we’re working on that.” Elena looked at Akiko and Vaughn expectantly. “No laugh. Well. Just kidding. But Steve’s familiar with the equipment—he should have no problem getting you up to speed.”

  “You skipped the best part,” Barry said, looking over at Elena with a sullen expression.

  Elena groaned. “Fine. Barry, do you want to tell them?”

  Barry shrugged. “Why? I mean, you’re doing such a good job and everything, I wouldn’t want to—”

  Elena threw up her hands. “Fine. Now, this looks like an ordinary film container, right?”

  “Sure,” Vaughn said, wondering whether Barry and Elena were actually going to come to blows.

  “But it’s not,” Barry said, coming forward with a triumphant grin and snatching the container from Elena. She sighed and went back to her gray steel stool, where she spun around disconsolately. “You’ve seen all those movies where the goons come in and take the film out of your cameras and unwind it in front of your eyes?”

  “Barry,” said Elena exasperatedly.

  “Well, they can do that all they want,” he said, his eyes gleaming behind his lenses. “Because the real camera is your film cases.” He handed Vaughn the device, which looked like an ordinary film black container. “See? Nothing out of the ordinary, right?”

  Vaughn inspected the cap and plastic tube. “No. But where’s the clicker?”

  “Here’s the beauty part,” Elena said. “You put the cap on and click to get your photos. So if anyone sees anything, you’re just loading your camera and putting the film case neatly away.”

  Vaughn put the cap on the container and heard a faint click. Elena turned on the monitor, where a picture of the room was loading. Vaughn was amazed—even though the container couldn’t be more than an inch or two wide, it had taken a wide-angle photo of the room, catching all its elements and inhabitants in clear focus. “Ugh,” said Elena. “I gotta do something about this hair.”

  Vaughn handed the container to Akiko and she clicked in his direction. Another picture appeared, this one including Vaughn.

  “Okay. Got it,” Akiko said, turning to Vaughn. “Are you ready?”

  Vaughn couldn’t wait. “I’ve never been more ready for anything in my life,” he said.

  The C-130, a military cargo plane, took off into the sunset, setting all the assembled duffel bags and steel compartments askew. As soon as the rattling had died down, Vaughn headed over to the bucket seats where Akiko was wisely catching up on some sleep in preparation for the hours they’d be spending in the field.

  “Akiko,” he whispered, gently nudging her shoulder. “Akiko!”

  Akiko woke with a start, then gave Vaughn a look of horror. “Vaughn—what is it? Has something happened?”

  Vaughn took a seat next to her. “No. But there’s something I’ve been trying to tell you for a while.”

  Akiko gave a massive yawn. “Vaughn, only you would need to talk about something personal when we’re about to head into a nest of terrorist thugs,” she said. “All right, I’m all ears. Tell me.”

  Vaughn took the tattered notebook and the letter he’d retrieved from his apartment out of his pocket. “Okay, see this? This is a letter my father sent me when I was seven and in hockey camp.”

  “You went to camp when you were seven?” Akiko asked, taking the envelope with its faded script across the front.

  Vaughn smiled. “I didn’t really go away—it was just a day camp. But I wanted to be a big kid and get mail at camp so badly, my father sent a letter to me to our house asking how it was going.”

  Akiko smiled. “That’s cute. Did you write him back?”

  Vaughn laughed, remembering. “I must have written him about thirty letters that summer,” he said. “Even when camp was over, I still wrote him and told him what I was doing every day. Sometimes he’d even take me to the mailbox on our corner to mail the letter.”

  Akiko raised her eyebrows and handed back the envelope. “Vaughn, that’s a beautiful memory, but is this why you woke me up out of a very happy, deep sleep?”

  Vaughn opened the notebook and placed the envelope next to it. “Okay. Would you say that this is the same handwriting?”

  Akiko looked briefly, then more carefully. “Yes. You’ve got the repeating break in the twos—that’s odd. And the same downward left stroke through the seven. Your fives are identical, too—this writer does his in two steps, and he rarely connects the final stroke to the first one.” She looked up at him. “Vaughn—what does this mean?”

  Vaughn looked down at the notebook and the envelope, clenching his fists. “Right around when I got recruited by the CIA, this notebook got mailed to me at an unpublished address. I thought it was from my mother, but now I’m not so sure.”

  “Did you ask her?” Akiko asked.

  Vaughn shook his head. “I got worried—I thought it might be some security test the CIA ran on recruits. Then I got worried it really was from my mother and she had sent it because there was something she needed me to know about the CIA.” Vaughn kicked the seat in front of him. “If she wanted it to be a secret, I didn’t want them to find out about it if they were tapping the phones or anything.”

  Akiko nodded. “When I first got recruited, David used to make jokes all the time about how they were tapping our phones and how all they’d get were Blanche and Eugene talking to my mother. The security clearance checks they run are pretty intense—I don’t think it’s out of the question. But since every recruit’s convinced they’re tapping the phones anyway, it’s probably not necessary for the CIA to go ahead and actually do it.”

  Vaughn held the notebook up in front of Akiko. “Does this look like any of the standard codes we run?”

  Akiko ran her hand over the notebook. “I’d have to look at it more carefully,” she said, turning a few pages. “But what do you think is, anyway? What do you think your father was doing?”

  Vaughn looked Akiko full in the face. “I think this is my father’s diary from before he got killed at the CIA. But first of all, I don’t know how my mother got it, and second of all, I’m worried about why she sent it to me.”

  “Maybe she thought there was something in it you needed to know,” Akiko said.

  “Maybe,” Vaughn replied. “But what?”

  9

  TEN HOURS LATER, WHEN the plane finally touched down, both Vaughn and Akiko had been able to catch up on most of their sleep. Vaughn woke refreshed, recharged, and half convinced that all that nonsense about a meeting with Betty, Triple Threat, and setting off on a mission to São Paolo had just been a beautiful dream.

  From across the aisle, holding a tin cup of water and a toothbrush, Akiko smiled over at him. “You didn’t imagine it,” she said. “You’re still here!”

  Vaughn stood, trying to shake out the pins and needles in his feet—the accommodations on military planes were practically lethal to a body’s circulation. “I hate it how you always know what I’m thinking,” he complained. “Next you’ll tell me that I’m dying for some pancakes and coffee.”

  “We’ll have to investigate breakfast options in São Paolo,” Akiko mused.

  Those options turned out to be dry rolls and watery coffee from the airport as they sped toward the safe house in a very shaky cab. “This is not exactly what I was hoping for,” Va
ughn said. “Let’s hope there’s some more options at the safe house,” Akiko said, turning to the driver to let loose a burst of Portuguese that he responded to with vehement gestures.

  “We’re lost,” Akiko said blandly, leaning back to sip her coffee behind sunglasses. “The driver also very nicely told me what he thinks of tabloid reporters.”

  “Tell him we’ll feature him with an alien baby if he doesn’t get us there in one piece,” Vaughn said, looking with trepidation at the floor of the cab. He could almost swear that he saw the ground through a widening rust hole at his feet, rushing by at close to seventy miles an hour.

  About twenty minutes later, they’d reached the safe house without incident. As Akiko paid the driver, he exploded in another burst of Portuguese, peeling off in an angry squeal of tires and noxious exhaust.

  “Portuguese is an amazing language for telling people off,” Akiko said, pushing her glasses up on her head and smiling. “Untold creative possibilities.”

  “You’ve got to let me know some of the juicier ones sometime,” Vaughn said with a grin. “Or maybe I’ll take a refresher course myself.”

  “Let’s just say this: I wouldn’t be surprised if that guy really did have an alien baby at home,” Akiko laughed as they went up the walk. They were in a neutral, almost suburban district on the outskirts of the city, with rows and rows of unassuming houses and almost no people in sight.

  “I’m thinking this probably isn’t one of your more luxurious safe houses,” Vaughn groaned, hefting his pack firmly up on his shoulders and fumbling for the keys.

  “I hear there’s one in Paris with two Jacuzzis and a steam bath,” Akiko offered unhelpfully.

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Vaughn said as he swung the wrought-iron outside door open and pushed his key into the lock of the wood-paneled interior one. “Give me a hand with this, will you?” he asked, thrusting his pack onto Akiko and giving the door an extra shove. “It’s stuck or something.”

  Vaughn fumbled with the knob of the door for a moment, then tested it with his full body weight. He’d just pulled back to give it a full-throttle shoulder-shove when the door was suddenly pulled open from the inside. Vaughn went careening into the dusty hallway, slamming his shoulder straight onto the parquet floor and giving his knee a good whack on a side table for an extra measure.

  “Ouch!” he bellowed, staring up at the figure that had just released him into extreme pain. Framed by the sunlight of the doorway, the man was an unreadable silhouette, but as he leaned down to give Vaughn a hand, the light from the window struck his face and his features came into shocking focus.

  From ten feet away on the floor, Vaughn could hear Akiko’s gasp of surprise. He himself could barely speak.

  “You gotta be kidding me,” he said, still unable to believe it. “Nick?” Nick Pastino grinned and dropped to a squat beside the prostrate Vaughn. “Golden boy,” he said heartily, leaning over to slap Vaughn on the shoulder. “You always have to make the big, dramatic entrance, don’t you?”

  Moments later, Akiko and Vaughn were sitting on the beige couch in the nondescript living room, and Nick—whose real name was Steve Rice, Vaughn had learned—was puffing away on a cigarette and bringing them up to speed. “So I’m sure you wondering who in the hell I really am, and what I was doing at the Farm with you,” he said, a cloud of smoke surrounding his square jaw and five o’ clock shadow.

  With his easy manner, quick laugh, and dry wit, Steve Rice barely resembled the ludicrous hothead they’d detested almost a year ago, Vaughn realized, still amazed, almost trembling from the brief confrontation. As Steve continued to speak, Vaughn kept seeing his face shift from Nick to Steve and back to awful Nick again.

  “We’ve been looking into Triple Threat for some time,” Nick said, tapping his ashes into one of the Coke bottles that seemed to double as ashtrays scattered all around the living room. “When you met me, I was at the Farm on a tip that Triple Threat had squirreled a mole into the facility as a CT.”

  Akiko shook her head. “So let me just get that straight—you were not a trainee, right?” she asked, waving away the cloud of smoke that was coming her way.

  Nick looked at the burning ember he was holding aloft, then smiled apologetically. “Sorry about this—it’s the job. One thing you learn down here: Everyone smokes. And that goes double for journalists.”

  “I hope that doesn’t mean we have to pick it up while we’re down here,” Akiko said, going into a violent coughing fit.

  “Nah,” Steve laughed, trying to wave the smoke away from Akiko. “I think for twenty-four hours you’re safe. But if I hadn’t picked these up,” he said, gazing at the withered brown filter held lightly between his yellowed fingers, “I would have been found in a ravine a long time ago.”

  The smoke didn’t bother Vaughn—his mother had smoked two Gauloises every evening until he was around five, when his father had insisted that she stop and she’d switched to chewing gum. He still associated the smell of smoke with his happy childhood, when they had all been together as a family. It was endearing him to Steve, somehow. “So how long have you been looking into Triple Threat?” Vaughn asked him.

  “Ever since they started,” Steve replied. “Ever since I started at the CIA, actually. About ten years.”

  Vaughn couldn’t believe it. “How old are you?” he asked. He started to feel a little bit better about his and the team’s performance in relation to Nick’s—Steve’s. They hadn’t been facing off with a newbie, after all—they’d been working against a CIA veteran of nearly a decade.

  Steve grinned, taking another drag of his cigarette. “That’s classified,” he said. “But let’s just say I was reallllly struggling to whip you all on those five-K runs, all right?” He ground out his cigarette in a plastic lid coated with some unknown moldy substance, frowning. “The wife’s going to kill me if I can’t give these up after this mission,” he said, shaking his head sadly. “Can’t have them around the kids, you know.”

  “You bet!” Akiko said, smiling with a look of surprise and pleasure. Vaughn found himself grinning too. Now he really couldn’t believe it—not only was jerky Nick Pastino actually charming Steve Rice, he was a married man with children!

  “Wonders never cease, huh?” Steve said, reading their expressions while he leaned back to unscrew the cap from one of the few Coke bottles that seemed to have escaped the ashy fate of its partners. He took a long sip, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “Oh—hey, I can’t offer you guys a drink or something, can I?” he asked. “You must be totally tired out from the flight.”

  Vaughn and Akiko glanced around the room, which looked a lot like the living rooms of frat houses Vaughn remembered from college, filled with empty cans and bottles, dirty plates, forks, and socks, with a thin layer of dust all over everything. He didn’t even want to think what the kitchen might look like.

  This new Nick might be a great guy, Vaughn thought, but cleanliness is definitely not one of his virtues.

  Steve read Vaughn’s mind. “Sorry about this place, bro,” he said, finishing off the bottle, tossing it on the floor, and letting out a loud burp. “The cleaning lady who usually does the place has the mumps, and we don’t like to change personnel too often, you know?” A mischievous sparkle came into his eyes. “Hey, Akiko, maybe you could get on it while you’re down here, huh?” he asked.

  Both Akiko and Vaughn were about to rise up in mutual indignation when they suddenly got it and looked at each other, grinning sheepishly. “How long did it take you to perfect the personality of Nick Pastino, anyway?” Akiko asked.

  Steve pounded his chest and let out another huge burp. “No time at all, really. I just looked at every disgusting, sexist, aggressive, moronic male trait I saw around me and combined them in one convenient package,” he said proudly. “The burping was all me, though—you can ask my wife.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” Akiko replied.

  Steve laughed. “My wife says I’m still slip
ping into Nick a little too often for her comfort,” he said.

  “I can imagine,” Akiko said dryly.

  Vaughn was fascinated by what Steve and Akiko were revealing about their marriages. Evidently, they’d been able to work their private lives into their public personas so that the double life an agent led didn’t make their relationships suffer. If he could crack the code in his father’s diary, maybe he would find out that his parents had shared something similar. I shouldn’t throw everything away with Nora, Vaughn suddenly thought, picturing her long hair and cowboy boots and dazzling smile. Maybe it would be possible for me to make it work if I just told her enough about this crazy job.

  But he still had some questions for Steve. “I guess I understand why you went undercover as Nick,” he said, feeling a shudder of dislike even as the name passed his lips, “but what was going on with all the physical stuff? Why’d you tackle me that time, and what was going on with your behavior toward everyone else?” Despite the fact that he now knew that the man he was angry with didn’t even exist, Vaughn still felt a hot surge of rage at the thought of the sweep-kick that had left him on his back and the public fight that had left him vulnerable to more self-doubt than he’d ever experienced in his life.

  “Sorry about that, buddy,” Steve said, giving him an honestly apologetic look. “But to let you in on that, I’m going to have to explain some things about Betty first.”

  “Someone should,” Akiko said testily. Even though Vaughn was sure that they had both done a lot of rejiggering in their opinions about Betty on the flight to São Paolo, he knew that he still hadn’t quite forgiven her for all the hell she’d put him through, and from her burning expression, it was clear that Akiko hadn’t, either.

  “Well, you know it’s typical for the instructors to put the CTs through all sorts of psychological testing and crap,” Steve began. Vaughn and Akiko nodded. “Well, not all the testing is out in the open, exactly.”