Gray Day

by Eric O'neill

Our first debrief had a single positive note. I hadn’t screwed up. Hanssen had come to the office, met his new staff member, and hadn’t yet detected that we’d built an extraordinary mousetrap. Mission accomplished, but I’d have to do better.

  Kate drove me to law school, listening silently as I detailed each of my few interactions with Hanssen. As I grabbed my books and stepped out of the car, she said, “Great job, kiddo. Put it all in your log.”

  Kate wanted written surveillance every day. That meant memorizing everything Hanssen said and did so I could type it out later. As soon as I settled into the last row of my Corporations class, I turned to the back of my notebook and scribbled down everything I could remember. What Hanssen said, whom he met with, what he ate, how he dressed, where we went, and what meetings we set up. Anything he mentioned about computers, or old cases. All his hopes and dreams and past indiscretions. At least the ones I could pry out of him—which, at the moment, numbered zero.

  If Professor Wilmarth happened to glance toward the back of his lecture hall, he might have thought I was riveted by his lecture on corporate transactions. I wrote furiously in a black-and-white composition notebook, but not one word was about piercing the corporate shield or forming subsidiaries. I lost myself in the minutiae of my day, dumping my carefully hoarded memories onto the college-ruled pages before time could steal them. I prayed that Wilmarth didn’t call on me.

  Turley’s Criminal Law class followed a short break spent exchanging a few pleasantries with fellow students at an enterprising coffee shop that stayed open late for the future lawyers. When finally the clock stuck nine and Turley rested his case for the evening, I trudged to the Metro to catch Juliana before she turned in for the night.

  I would sometimes find Juliana studying at my desk. She would spread out her books in a small clearing of computer parts and floppy disks. As an evening student, I had time for two classes a semester. Juliana was taking six classes across town at American University with an eye on a business degree. She had rounded out courses in reading and writing with Macroeconomics, Psychology 101, and Russian Studies. Knowing law classes would keep me out late, she also continued her lifetime study of the piano with a private instructor.

  “Russian?” I leaned over her shoulder and glanced at the textbook cracked open in a pool of lamplight.

  “Da,” she said.

  “Almost done?”

  “Maybe enough for tonight.” She craned her neck for a kiss. “I’d love a bath.”

  “I’ll heat up some water.”

  “Spasibo balshoye.”

  Juliana yawned and left for the tiny bathroom. I filled our biggest pot with water and put it on our two-burner stove. By the time I changed out of my suit into comfortable clothes, the water had boiled.

  “Scootch back.”

  Juliana moved to the back of the tub and shivered in the lukewarm water. The building’s pathetic boiler never had enough hot water. Showers required speed and dexterity before the water turned to ice, and warm baths demanded multiple trips to the stove.

  Juliana sighed as I poured boiling water at her feet. She stretched into the now-steaming bath and purred her thanks. “How was work?”

  I set the heavy pot out in the hall and peeled oven mitts from my hands. “Okay. I met my new boss.”

  She turned to look at me. “Was he nice?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “We barely spoke two words. I’m not even sure what I’m expected to do.”

  “Ask him about the Redskins.” She laughed. “All you American men love talking football.”

  “Maybe I will.” I picked up the pot.

  “Honey,” Juliana said, stopping me. “You’ll be fine. You always are.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  She pretended to shiver and made big eyes at me. “Maybe another?”

  I laughed. “Anything for you.”

  “Good boy,” she said.

  I closed the door behind me and quickly set another pot of water to boil. While I waited, I unlocked a drawer in my work desk and removed a laptop the FBI had issued me. I set the blocky netbook on Juliana’s Russian textbook and fired up the boot sequence. Before the ancient machine could finish booting, the water boiled.

  I donned oven mitts, made another trip to rescue Juliana from hypothermia, and promised her another pot. While the third pot heated up, I snatched my composition notebook out of my shoulder bag and turned to my work. The following evening, I would need to provide a surveillance log to Kate, and I couldn’t very well write it and print it out with Hanssen looking over my shoulder.

  I slotted a 3.5-inch floppy disk labeled LAW SCHOOL NOTES into the laptop, opened up a Word document, and started writing.

  “Eric!”

  Juliana’s shout nearly made me fall out of my chair. I slammed the laptop shut and spun around in time to catch her dash past me in a dripping bathrobe toward the kitchen. The forgotten pot bubbled scalding water over the stove and onto the floor.

  Juliana reached for the pot and then cursed. She glared at me and then at the oven mitts in my hand before thrusting her hand into a stream of cold water from the kitchen sink.

  I spared a moment to slip my composition book back into my shoulder bag before rushing the three steps it took to reach the kitchen. The oven mitts hung useless from one hand. As little and late as my apology.

  “I’ll be fine,” Juliana said. “What were you doing over there? Playing video games?”

  “I wish,” I said honestly. “I wanted to type up some law school notes.”

  She pushed past me to the freezer and cracked an ice cube from its tray. “On that laptop? When did you get that? We can’t afford…”

  I took the ice cube from her and wrapped it in a paper towel, then took her hand gently and examined the red burn across her palm. “The FBI issued it to me. I’m only supposed to use it for FBI memos, but didn’t think anyone would care if I wrote a law school paper on it.”

  I held the ice against her hand as I told my lie. She leaned her head against my chest. Her wet hair chilled my skin where it soaked through my hoodie.

  “I’m going to go get my pajamas on,” she said. “Tuck me in.”

  She left wet footprints in her wake as she retreated to the bedroom. I hid the laptop under the couch and followed more slowly. When I got into the room, Juliana had curled up into a ball under the comforter. I quietly slid in beside her and lent my warmth to hers.

  When she relaxed into the measured breathing and tiny movements that told me honest sleep had come, I slipped out of bed and took all four steps to the living room and the laptop under the couch. I typed up my notes, encrypted them, and saved them to the small floppy disk. The following night, I would hand the disk to Kate on the way to law school and she would give me back another one, blank. Each night this would become my routine.

  My father used to say that sleep was a weapon. For me, sleep was an adversary.

  CHAPTER 6

  THE WORST POSSIBLE PLACE

  January 17, 2001—Wednesday

  “Wake up. It’s a new day.”

  Thoughts of murder fled before the smell of freshly brewed coffee. I cracked my eyes to find Juliana smiling at me over my favorite mug. Tendrils of steam curled lazily above a golden FBI seal. I’d bought the mug for myself from the FBI gift shop after receiving my badge and credentials. The fact that a highly classified undercover operative sipped his morning coffee from an official FBI mug was a joke I shared with myself.

  Juliana was already dressed in jeans and a startling red blouse. She woke with the sun. I preferred that the sun be in its proper place in the sky before I fell out of bed.

  “How is your hand?”

  She wiggled her fingers. “Better this morning. Nothing serious.”

  “I’m sorry.”
/>   She smiled. “Get dressed. Breakfast is ready.”

  We didn’t have a table, so we ate on our couch with plates perched on laps. Juliana had woken me up an hour early so that we’d have time together. I couldn’t tell her that I’d slept less than four hours. By the time I got my surveillance log finished and skimmed the cases I’d need to know for class, midnight had come and gone.

  “The Hello Lady was at it again last night,” Juliana said.

  I took a bite of my scrambled egg on toast. “She’s completely crazy.”

  “It’s a bird. I’m sure of it.” Juliana’s smug grin made me laugh. “Wanna bet?”

  “How can we ever know?”

  “Aren’t you some sort of FBI investigator?”

  I set my empty plate on our tiny coffee table. “The FBI didn’t train me to spy on our neighbor!”

  “But aren’t you curious? You got onto the roof.”

  I shushed her. I’d picked the lock on the padlock leading up to the roof so we could install a satellite dish and watch more than five TV channels. As far as we knew, no one in the complex knew that I’d dropped a cable over the side of the building and in through one of our windows.

  “I only use my powers for good.”

  She snorted. “Good like fifty-five TV channels we never have time to watch.”

  “I won’t be in law school forever.”

  She glanced at our clock. “You’ll be late for your second day at work. I’ll drop you off at the Metro.”

  * * *

  A beautiful blonde had woken me up with a cup of coffee, I didn’t get lost on the way to 9930, and I’d beat my boss to the office. Not a bad start to the morning. It could only go downhill from here.

  The combination lock confounded my first few tries. I hated those locks. So did most FBI personnel. It wasn’t uncommon to see a whole squad standing out in the hallway in the morning, waiting for the one guy who knew how to open the thing to arrive. I was not that guy.

  “Need help?” Garcia grinned under his thick mustache. As he reached for the combination dial, his blazer gaped, and I saw a holstered gun at his hip. Most veteran agents locked their guns in desks when they arrived at HQ. You could always spot the newbies because they walked around heeled. Garcia was anything but a newbie. It was clear the investigation had us all on edge.

  “Open Sesame,” he said. The lock clicked and I heard the deadbolts slide home. “You can do the rest. The last number is sticky.”

  I thanked him and completed the security sequence to enter the SCIF. I felt like the dumb teenager who returns to the haunted house while the audience is screaming for him to run.

  “I’m right down the hall,” Garcia said, and walked away.

  I left everything unlocked and paced the Spartan room. Blank walls and boring furniture. Thin carpet that would set your hair on end if you walked around in socks. Zero windows, one door, baffles on the vents to prevent noise from escaping. Harsh overhead lights beat down relentlessly. A massive whiteboard dominated the wall that Hanssen’s office door shared. On a whim, I picked up a black marker and wrote “Information Assurance Security Team” in big letters at the top. Then I underlined it.

  The door beeped. Here we go.

  Hanssen plowed into the room clutching a small cardboard box with one arm and dragging an exercise contraption behind him with the other. He paused and peered past me at the whiteboard.

  “Do you want help with the, um, exercise machine, boss?”

  “It’s a rowing machine,” Hanssen said. “I row.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so I took a page from Hanssen’s book and said nothing. Hanssen set the machine down and strode past me to the whiteboard. He thrust the box at my chest, snatched an eraser from the whiteboard tray, and attacked my markings. He then wrote “Section” after the remaining words.

  “Information Assurance Section,” I read, and immediately regretted opening my mouth. “Boss, aren’t we a security team under Garcia’s operations section?”

  His withering glance nearly made me drop the box. “We are deciding who we are and what this section will accomplish. Not those paper pushers out there.”

  “Understood.”

  “We’ll see. Your first task is to define ‘Information Assurance.’ We need to know what we are doing before we start doing it.”

  “I’ll get right on that.”

  He peered at me just long enough to push me from uncomfortable to concerned, then took the box from me. “My office.” He paused. “Bring the rowing machine.”

  I followed Hanssen from the bright halogen lights of the main pit area of the SCIF into his gloomy cave. He paused before slumping into the executive chair to pull a thick gray device from his back pocket. My eyes tracked his hand.

  “It’s a Palm Pilot.” He froze, watching me watching him.

  I stared at the thick digital assistant and caught the label on the back. A Palm IIIx. “I have a pager,” I said through a mouth dried out by my pathetic joke.

  He slipped the Palm into the blue canvas bag beside his desk. “And that’s why you’ll always be a worthless clerk.”

  The desk lamp illuminated half his face and left the rest of the room adrift in shadows. The analytical part of me wondered if the technical team had tested the hidden camera under low-light conditions. The rest of me stood like a chastised student before a very angry principal.

  Two leather seats waited before my new supervisor’s desk. Without asking, I sank into one as a long, uncomfortable silence stretched between us, interrupted only by the machine-gun click of Hanssen’s ballpoint pen.

  I could see the suspicion on his face. Go find your nearest friend from the military, police, or rescue squad—or anyone doing intelligence, special ops, or high-stakes investigative work. Any of them will agree that their work requires them to balance on the razor’s edge that separates suspicion from paranoia. Suspicion is healthy. It guards your back, keeps your eyes up and open and alert to signs of danger. Paranoia is suspicion’s ugly younger brother. Paranoia paralyzes decision-making, invents threats out of thin air, and crushes all confidence beneath a heavy boot. Right now, Hanssen was suspicious. But any mistake I made—an errant word, a stray slip of paper, a phone call, a feather’s touch—could push him over the edge. If this guy really was a spy, he would, at best, cut and run. At worst, he might shoot me on his way out the door.

  “So what do you think of the Redskins?” I asked.

  There are many ways to unnerve someone. Long periods of uncomfortable silence will often prompt random forays into conversation. I didn’t want to talk about the weather, so I took Juliana’s advice from the night before and chose my favorite football team. In 2000 the Redskins had fired their coach after winning six of their first eight games. Everyone was still talking about it.

  Not Hanssen.

  “Football is a gladiator sport,” he said with a wave of his pen. “Only idiots and brutes play. You’d have to be just as much of an idiot to watch it.”

  I hunched back in my chair. My first attempt at conversation had flamed out as spectacularly as the Redskins’ season. Hanssen clicked his pen and glared at me.

  “Tell me about your wife,” he said.

  Saying something unexpected in a conversation can also unnerve someone. I didn’t want to speak about my personal life with someone who’d done something to get on the wrong side of the FBI. But alone in the room with Hanssen, I didn’t have a choice.

  “She’s from Germany,” I said. “We were married in August.” I forced a smile. “It’s all very new.”

  “Where in Germany?” His voice sounded less robotic, more pleasant.

  “The far east. You wouldn’t know her hometown. I couldn’t even find it on a map.”

  “You’d be surprised what I know.” Hanssen sat back. “Does she speak Russian?”
>
  “Yes.” I wanted to lie, but how much did he already know?

  “Interesting,” Hanssen said, leaning back, his stare unmoving.

  Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Allied Forces controlled the west side of Germany and built it into a country of peace, democracy, and prosperity; Russia, however, controlled the east. The machine-gun turrets on the east side of the Berlin Wall had faced inward, toward their own population. Russian socialization began as early as possible, and every child learned Russian as a second language. Juliana’s English schoolbook was filled with anti-Western propaganda. Although churches speckled the countryside, the Socialist Party frowned upon religion and reached the barest accommodation with the dominant Protestant faith. Each house in Juliana’s village was a compound. High walls and wooden shutters blocked neighbors who might report to the local Stasi. The government stole acres of land from Juliana’s grandfather, and neighbors hesitated to accept her half-Polish mother.

  When the Berlin Wall finally came crashing down in 1989, and David Hasselhoff united the east and west in song, Juliana had just turned twelve. By 1994, under the “Two Plus Four” Treaty signed by East and West Germany and the four Allied Forces, all foreign troops had to depart the now-unified country. Russia shuffled more than 485,000 soldiers and dependents, along with thousands of tanks, armored personnel carriers, artillery pieces, planes, and helicopters, back across the Russian border. Germany’s two halves might have reunited, but the east suffered a recession that sparked a migration of young professionals to the west. Juliana left her small village the moment she could. Her first job was in Aachen, Germany—over 800 kilometers directly west from the town of her birth. A year later, she found a program that would take her to the United States, farther west than anyone in her village had ever traveled.

  Hanssen clicked his pen, his pupils as round as bullet heads in the dim light. “Do you know what we are doing here?”

  “Protecting information?” I ventured.

  Hanssen sighed with disgust. “Where on earth did they find you?”