Gated

by J D Ventura

  That’s when she saw it. The dog. It was sitting in the middle of the street, two houses up. It was completely motionless and staring right at her. Claire walked quickly to the door, afraid to turn around. She fumbled with the keys and dropped them. “Shit!” She picked them up and jammed the right one into the deadbolt. As she pushed her way in, she took one last look at her front yard. The dog had moved even closer and was now sitting under her mailbox, motionless. She screamed and slammed the door shut.

  This time she didn’t call out for Sam. She knew he wasn’t there. Sam walking down the stairs fresh from a shower, a glass of wine in his hand, was too easy. It wasn’t going to happen. She knew this. Nothing would be that carefree and innocent now. Maybe never again. She walked from room to room, through the cavernous house that had never been home. Had it all been a lie? If it wasn’t the dementia that prompted Sam to come here, then what was the real reason? For the first time in their marriage, she felt as if she didn’t know Sam Sturgis. She had only felt this alone once before, as a teenager throwing a single white rose onto her sister’s coffin.

  Her Xanax stash was right where she had left it, in the trusty coriander bottle, as was the half-drunk bottle of chardonnay in the wine fridge. She downed two of the little oval pills with a generous pour and plopped down on her sofa. She soon fell asleep.

  She initially wasn’t sure what woke her. Claire sat upright on the couch for at least a full minute before she understood the doorbell was chiming. She stared blankly at the front door. Just be yourself, Claire, that’s what Summer had said. Act normal. Answer the flipping door and be normal.

  “Claire? Are you in there?” It was Stephanie.

  She went to the door, fixed her hair, wiped the sleep from her eyes, inhaled and opened it. Stephanie was standing under the porchlight, wearing running shorts and a tank top, a pair of white earbuds around her neck. “Hey, you’re back!” she said happily. “I was out for a jog and I saw your SUV in the driveway.”

  Claire stared back at her friend blankly.

  “Can I come in?”

  The trance had been broken. “Of course, I’m sorry, Stephanie, yes, yes, come in, sorry, sorry,” said Claire, opening the door all the way and stepping aside to make way for Stephanie’s entrance. “How, how are you?”

  “I’m good.” Stephanie said, noticing the empty glass of wine on the end table near the sofa. “Are we drinking?”

  “Oh, I was just having a nightcap,” Claire said. “I just got back from D.C. a little while ago. Do you want a glass?”

  “Yes, please,” she said. “I just jogged off at least a glass of wine.” Stephanie followed Claire into the kitchen and Claire retrieved a stemless and poured the rest of the chardonnay into it. Stephanie took the glass from Claire and hoisted herself onto one of the barstools running alongside the kitchen’s island. “So, how was D.C.?”

  “Oh, fine, it was, you know, D.C. I just visited my friend Jess. Caught up. You know.”

  “Well, you were missed here. By me anyway. Marc and I were just binge watching that show Nighthawks. Have you seen it? It’s amazing. There is this one character, the lead character…”

  As she was talking, Stephanie reached into her fanny pack and retrieved a pad and a pen. She kept talking, going into great detail about the television show. Claire had no idea where the conversation was going or what the pad and pen were for, but in between talking Stephanie held her index finger to her lips and gave Claire a very serious look. “And by episode two, well, that’s when it really takes off and you really begin to know the characters…” Stephanie wrote on the pad: We implanted a tracking and listening device in your inner ear. At the party. I need to remove the microphone they put in your mouth.

  She went to say something but Stephanie put her hand over Claire’s mouth and shook her head violently. “I think Marc has a crush on the lead character. I have to admit she is pretty hot…” She continued writing: I can take you to Sam. You have to trust me. Nod if you agree.

  Claire nodded. The grogginess of the pills and the wine were replaced by raw adrenaline. As it had in the car, her knee began to shake and she felt as if she could crawl right out of her skin. “And I was like, what? Marc, you already ate an entire pint of ice cream! Can you believe it?”

  Point to the device.

  Claire pointed to the cap on her molar.

  Say you have to go to the bathroom.Bring back some tweezers.

  “Well, it does sound like an incredible show. Maybe I can get Sam hooked on it. Hey, Case, I have to go to the little girl’s room. Be right back.”

  If you alert them, you will never see Sam again. Be sure to actually pee.

  Claire came back a minute later with the tweezers. Stephanie started talking again, this time about travel and a trip her and Marc were planning to Ireland. She motioned for Claire to open her mouth and, using the tweezers, gingerly removed the bug. She carefully placed it on the counter. Still talking, she pulled out a small round metal disk from her fanny pack. She put the object on the counter, concluded what she was saying, and then waved her flattened palm twice over the device. The object lit up with a blue light and immediately began playing a conversation between Claire and Stephanie – a chat that Claire had never even had with her. Yet, there it was. The recording sounded just like her, carrying on the discussion about Ireland and their shared enthusiasm for world travel.

  Don’t say a word. We have to go. Follow me.

  Claire grabbed the pen.

  Where?!!

  Stephanie grabbed the pen back from her and wrote:

  To see Sam.

  Chapter 16

  They left out the back door. Stephanie walked briskly in front of her and Claire struggled to keep up. “Wait up, Stephanie, Jesus! Can you tell me what the hell is going on? Where are we going?”

  Stephanie kept up her rapid pace and didn’t look back at her. “To the Murrays’ house. But we don’t have a lot of time, Claire. That digitized conversation will run for two hours and then start to repeat. Your friends will then come looking for you.”

  “They’re not my friends, Stephanie, they’re goddamn CIA agents. And what was that conversation? It was me, but we never had that discussion.”

  “We sampled your voice the night of the party. I doubt you remember much of it.”

  “Yes, because you freaking drugged me,” growled Claire. “That wasn’t Molly you gave me.”

  “We had to. We needed your voice, a blood sample and we needed to implant a tracking and listening device.”

  “A blood sample? Tracking? What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Claire, Sam will explain it all. Pick up the pace. I am taking you to him. I promise.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  They were making their way up the hill now. The steep incline made her legs ache and she was breathing hard. Her trust in Stephanie felt like a classic case of the devil you know. Maybe she was a Russian spy. So, what now? Were they going to reunite her with her husband and then shoot them both? That didn’t make a whole lot of sense. If they wanted her dead, Stephanie could have pulled a gun out of her fanny pack. There was no need to reunite them, unless…Sam was, in fact, working with them. But what did that mean? Would they have to go into hiding now? Or was Sam going to suggest they seek asylum in Russia? Her dream came to her then in a flash. She and Sam wandering aimlessly through the snow-covered streets of Moscow. What the hell did he discover that was worth throwing their lives away? Why was he cooperating with the Russians?

  The only answer Claire could come up with was the dementia. She thought back to the night she’d found him crying and vulnerable. She remembered his panicked eyes in the car that night when he drove them off the road on the way home from the restaurant. The disease was regressing him back toward childhood. He was an easy target and they had capitalized on his weakness. As she climbed the long st
aircase leading to the Murrays’ front door, she thought of all of this and her anger swelled. If she’d had a hammer in her hand, she might have lifted it high above her head and knocked Stephanie right off her feet. Stephanie? Is that even her real name? It’s probably Svetlana or Anastasia or Valentina.

  Her cell phone was vibrating in her pocket. She pulled it out and looked at the text from Martin. “Enough with the small talk. Tell her you’re worried about Sam. Play on her sympathies. She likes you.” She slipped it back in her jeans before Stephanie turned around to let her in the house. Here we go.

  The house seemed familiar and yet very different. It was still full of the Murrays’ things, but it felt different, empty — staged, like a furniture showroom. The grandfather clock she noticed the night of the dinner party stood quiet, its pendulum perfectly vertical and still. The door leading to the once busy, bustling kitchen, was open. The room’s interior was immaculate and abandoned. Dust floated like snow in the sunlight, refracting off the hanging copper pots. As Stephanie shut the outer door behind them, Claire noticed the Hershel’s dog at the top of the staircase.

  “What the hell is that dog doing here?” she said, frozen in her place with fear.

  Stephanie looked at her the way a parent would look at a child declaring their fear of a thunderclap. “You don’t need to be afraid of it,” Stephanie said.

  It? WTF?

  Stephanie looked at Claire, eyebrows raised as if she had read her mind, then turned to the animal and said, “Report. Target location.”

  The animal walked slowly down the stairs, its movements more like a cat than a dog. It heeled before Stephanie and opened its mouth. It held it open and a human voice emitted from it.

  “Acquired targets, CIA group, motel, no movement since 13:40. Acquired target, Sturgis, Claire, immediate proximity.”

  Claire stood motionless, not sure what to do. She looked at Stephanie, her face clearly asking for explanation. “It’s a drone, Claire. Under all that fur and synthetic skin, a machine. Made primarily for reconnaissance. It’s not a combat unit, although it’s combat capable. It won’t hurt you.”

  Claire backed up a few steps and reached for a leather armchair behind her. She fell backwards into it and just stared at Stephanie. So, it was true. Stephanie was a spy…with a robot dog. Sure, because that makes so much sense. Just a Russian robot dog that has been watching me for weeks. The crow! Of course, the crow, too. It all made sense now, and yet it made no sense at all.

  “And the crow? I saw a crow-”

  “Yes, an aerial drone. We have a variety-”

  “Stop, just stop!” Claire screamed, burying her face in her hands. “We? Who is ‘we?’ What in the hell is going on? Are you Russian spies? That’s what they think you are. And they’re planning on coming in here with guns, Stephanie, if that’s even your real name. And those guards, are they with you? Because they kidnapped these kids and they vanished.”

  “Claire, I know you’re frightened and confused. Those kids are fine. We just scared them away and gave them something to make them forget the encounter, like the drug we gave you. We couldn’t risk them telling others about the canine drone. I really like you, Claire, but I had a job to do here and we were trained not to get too close. Do you understand? And I would just prefer for Sam to explain some of this to you. Let me take you to him, okay? We don’t have a lot of time.”

  “And the strange calls from Sam?”

  Stephanie pushed a button on her digital wristwatch and responded…in Sam’s voice. “It was me. We just couldn’t let you talk to Sam at that point. He was still being debriefed and psychologically screened.”

  “Fuck me,” was all Claire managed to say.

  She held out her hand and Claire stared at it for thirty seconds before taking it and pulling herself upright. Stephanie gave her a satisfied look and turned to walk down a long, white hallway leading away from the living room. The memory of it flickered like a broken fluorescent light, twitching into focus in her mind’s eye. There will be an elevator behind a wallpapered panel. A nauseating déjà vu crested over her, a wave of dread, a palpable feeling her life was about to change forever.

  Stephanie removed a key card from her fanny pack and waved it over the wallpapered surface at the end of the hall. The wood paneling slid to the right, revealing a set of elevator doors that opened almost simultaneously. The interior was bathed in a soft, blue light, its walls and floor made of some sort of industrial strength material. At first, Claire did not recognize. It was smooth and opaque, something stronger than glass, but harder than plastic. But when she looked closer, she realized it was the exact same type of surface that covered her kitchen counters.

  Every fiber of her being was telling her not to get on the elevator. In that instant, she felt right out of central casting in a mob movie. The snitch is taken on a drive out into the country. Everyone knows what’s about to happen. They ride in silence. The woods approach. The informant knows what’s coming. It’s not about survival at that point, but rather the retention of dignity and a resigning to one’s fate. She stepped in, and as she turned around, the doors shut automatically. They rode downward in silence for several minutes. Her ears popped.

  The doors opened to a corridor constructed of the same foreign material, frosted and durable. Like the elevator, it was lit by soft blue lighting coming from behind the walls and ceiling. There were people walking around in white uniforms. Both men and women were dressed the same: white shirts with a gold crest above the heart, white pants and blue shoes. They walked to-and-fro with purpose, some carrying transparent computer tablets, some with briefcases made, again, with the ubiquitous glass-like substance.

  She followed Stephanie down the hall to a doorway. Once again, Stephanie waved her card and the door opened.

  The room inside was spare. Blue-lit like the hallway, it had no furnishings in it, save for a white sofa and a white chair facing it. A man sat in it, his back to her. Her eyes flooded with tears and she gasped.

  Sam!

  As if hearing her mental scream, he turned around and got to his feet. His broad smile and outstretched arms pulled her to him. She fell into his open arms like a baby tossed from a burning building. The tears came now, hot and furious. She sobbed into the white fabric shirt of his uniform. It was the most delicate fabric she had ever felt, softer than the finest silk. He smelled clean and the heat of his body enveloped her as he cradled the back of her head with his hand.

  “Baby, don’t cry,” he cooed into her hair. “We’re together now. This must be quite a shock. I’m so very sorry.”

  “I’ll leave you two alone to talk,” Stephanie said from the doorway. “But Sam, dust-off is in 30 minutes, okay? And we need to prep you both. The work up on her blood indicated she can travel with the right amount of medical preparation. If it’s what you decide. And, of course, we’ll need the code, while we’re still in range.”

  Sam just nodded at Stephanie. The door whooshed open and closed behind her with a barely audible click.

  Claire broke her embrace and wiped her runny nose with the back of her hand. She looked up at him with eyes that pleaded for the truth.

  “Prep us for what, Sam? Why, Sam? Why are you working for the Russians? I’m not defecting to Moscow!” The tears started again but she was determined to get answers and struggled to regain her composure and keep talking. “I was abducted by CIA agents, Sam. Drugged – once by the Russians and then the CIA -- and then goddam kidnapped! And they are preparing to arrest you, and Lu. And they’re looking for Gunderson. They’re at a motel not far from here and they are coming for you. With guns, Sam! Why, baby? Why are you working with them? Why did you steal those files?”

  “Claire, sit down, okay,” he said, his own eyes filling with tears. “First, I localized those files because I thought Gunderson was maybe a foreign agent, and it turns out I was right. But it’s more complicated than that
and you deserve to know the truth. About the project.”

  She broke eye contact with him and looked at the couch, hesitating, as if she had forgotten how to sit. I think I’m in shock. Real shock. Pay attention, Claire. Pay attention to what he’s about to say. Focus on the words. No more pills. No more booze. You must face this sober and clear-headed. This is not a dream. She sat on the couch and he took a seat on the chair.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’m going to guess our CIA friends told you a little bit about the project.”

  “Some,” she said. “A satellite project you revived. And you discovered something and then you stole the data and sold it to the Russians. That’s what they think, Sam: you sold secrets to the fucking Russians.”

  “Okay, right, so, it’s so simple, it’s almost silly. But what I discovered was an encrypted transmission hidden in the binary data beamed back to Earth about 30 years ago. It sat on a server for decades and nobody had ever reviewed it or even accessed the data, for that matter.”

  “English, Sam. English! I don’t understand. What was this, this transmission? Was it something important to the space program? Something the Russians wanted?”

  Sam laughed and she stared at him as if he truly was losing his mind. He kept laughing until he realized she was not going to join in. The anguish on her face sobered him into continuing.

  “I’m laughing because what the satellite intercepted was a television show,” he paused, gauging her face for reaction. “A game show, actually.”

  Now it was her turn to laugh. She stood up and started pacing the room, laughing so hard she had to hold her side. He began laughing with her until she pivoted on one foot and pointed her finger at him, her mood swinging into fury.