American Spy

by Lauren Wilkinson

  “So you threw me under the bus.”

  “That wasn’t my intention.”

  “What does it matter if you meant to do it? That’s what happened.”

  He shook his head. “Fight the suspension. I’ve never seen anyone get sidelined for so long over something this minor.”

  The elevator dinged and the doors opened. I didn’t step inside. My anger had ebbed, and I was suddenly very tired. I turned back toward Gold’s office, leaving Mr. Ali behind me at the elevator bank. My SAC had left. I closed the door behind me and asked Gold why he was gunning for me.

  “Gunning for you? Don’t flatter yourself.”

  “That’s what it looks like. Seems like you want me out of here.”

  “Let me ask you a question. When the CIA came here, sought you out for your help, why didn’t you give it to them?”

  It was an impossible question to answer. He spoke into my silence. “I’ll tell you why: You don’t play ball. If I don’t think you fit in here, it’s only because you refuse to try.”

  I was too tired to defend myself. I took in the smug look he was giving me, took stock of the scorn I felt, and wondered why I was holding on to a relationship with that place. They hated me for thinking I was fine the way I was. I’d been so afraid of repeating my mother’s mistakes that just leaving had stopped feeling like an option.

  But it was. I sat across from Gold, pulled the disciplinary report toward me, and signed it.

  “Good,” he said as he watched. “That makes it easier on everyone. If you want my advice, take some time to figure out what you want. Whether or not you want to be at this field office. If you do, see if you can find a way to be more approachable. It wouldn’t kill you to have a smile on your face sometimes. You don’t have to act like you hate everything about this place.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” I said, and if he didn’t hear my sarcasm, it was because he chose not to. I stood and left his office.

  14

  I TOOK A SEAT AT THE BAR in the Lenox Lounge, and as I waited for the bartender, glanced at my face in the mirror above the line of bottles. I looked tired.

  He came over, called me by my alias, and said it was good to see me. After my suspension I’d gone there almost every evening—without being asked, he poured me some of my brand of whisky. I’d been spending too much time at the lounge, but it beat the doom-filled quiet of my apartment. Given my suspension, because I couldn’t distract myself with work, the fact of my deep loneliness had come into sharp focus. I was already too familiar with the regulars there. I thought sometimes about drinking at home to avoid having interactions at the Lenox, but that impulse was a depressing one.

  The photo I’d taken of him and Thomas had been framed and hung on the wall beside the mirror. I kept gravitating toward that place—the good feelings associated with the time I’d spent with Thomas must’ve outweighed what came after.

  The lounge was most pleasant when it was almost empty, as it was that evening. There was only me, the bartender, a pair of old-timers in driving caps who’d both greeted me when I’d walked in, and a woman in a shiny wig and skintight dress, who sat alone in one of the red booths, already drunk.

  I lifted the drink to my lips; the copper bangles Thomas had given me fell down my arm with a jingle. I wore them almost every day and smiled as I put them on, even though I found it more than a little mortifying to be a woman in her thirties wearing jewelry given to her by a hopeless crush.

  The bartender started to tell the old-timers about Thomas playing the guitar, embellishing in parts; they’d heard the story before but smiled and pretended they hadn’t.

  After that, and serving another round for them, the bartender went back to reading The Devil’s Alternative. I glanced at my watch. I was supposed to be meeting Ross, who’d called and said he wanted to talk to me. Because of how our debriefing had gone, I’d been surprised to hear from him again.

  It was with a measure of perversity that I’d insisted he meet me at the Lenox Lounge and was surprised when he’d agreed. I’d grown up feeling like whenever I left my neighborhood in Queens, or my grandfather’s in Brooklyn, or the East Village, I was entering hostile territory. It wasn’t until college that I started going into those parts of the city that didn’t belong to me, and then only because I was compelled to do so for my classes. Maybe part of me had insisted Ross come uptown because I hoped he’d experience that feeling.

  Finally, the blood-red door to the lounge swung open in my peripheral vision, and Ross appeared. He sat down on the stool beside mine. “Nice place you picked here.”

  The bartender came over, and Ross ordered a drink. When it came we moved to a booth. He asked how I was doing.

  “Not too bad.”

  “Really?” The question was pointed. He must’ve heard about my suspension.

  “Really,” I said, lying. I was upset. The worst thing was that although Mr. Ali had been instrumental in my suspension, Pop wouldn’t take my side over his. So the way he’d betrayed me had also managed to tarnish my relationship with my father.

  “How long are you out for?”

  “Forty-five days.”

  He nodded. “You don’t deserve it. What they’re trying to do to you.”

  “How do you know about it?” I was wary of him. The last time we’d seen each other, he’d revealed a poisonous side to his nature.

  “I make it my business to know things.”

  Anger flared up in me then. I was furious at everybody, and that kind of vague answer wasn’t going to improve that state of affairs. “What do you want, Ross?”

  “I’ve been thinking a lot about that conversation the three of us had—you, me, and Phil. About the agency’s blind spots. It does us a big disservice not to give female officers a fair chance, because there are so many places in the world where it would never occur to the locals that there are women working for us. There’s no better cover than one that depends on someone else’s prejudices. I know that from personal experience.” He paused and sipped his drink. “One place that might be a great example of that is Burkina Faso.”

  I’d been wondering if he was working to a point, but when it arrived it still managed to surprise me. “You want to send me out there?”

  “Dan does. He asked me to reach out to you. He wants you to contract for us again. He’s in the field in Ouaga.”

  “So I’d be working with him.”

  “Yes.”

  I tried to disguise my excitement.

  “We give female officers a hard time,” he continued. “We hold women to an unfair double standard. The bureau probably does too.”

  “Yeah. No shit.” Hearing him explain it in theoretical terms when I’d lived it caused me a specific type of maddening anger.

  “CIA policy reflects a lot of fear. The administration is afraid of female officers finding husbands and leaving, which would be a waste of the money it costs to train them. The bigger waste is dismissing effective personnel for made-up reasons. They’re too old-fashioned. And they’re overlooking the potential advantages of female officers.”

  “This is all very progressive of you.”

  “That’s not what I’m trying to get at. I’m just pointing out that the CIA has its weaknesses. More modern-thinking, nimbler firms are possible.”

  I nodded, even though I had no idea if he was talking specifically or in general. He said, “We’d treat this like an extension of your previous contract. The terms are the same. We’ll pay you the second installment when you get back.” A few moments passed. “Well? What do you think?”

  I looked around me. The woman in the booth was drunkenly laughing to herself, and one of the old-timers had his head propped up on his hand and was starting to nod.

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll go.”

  I wanted to see Slater. And I wanted to work. I needed
to.

  “Fantastic,” he said, drawing out the word. “Come by the office I have up here on Thursday, so we can talk about the logistics of the assignment.”

  I agreed.

  He said, “Back to Africa. You excited?”

  I frowned. “I’m not going as a tourist.”

  “Still.”

  “Ross, come on. Black Americans don’t have a great track record with going to West Africa to push neocolonialism.”

  “What do you mean? Liberia?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that how you see what we’re doing? Pushing neocolonialism?”

  “Well—”

  “You’re a very cynical person, aren’t you? Which isn’t a bad thing, by the way. No, that’s not what we’re doing. Get that clear in your mind. With everything that’s happening in Iran right now, the way that country is exporting terror, the United States can’t just sit by. We have to be proactive and prepared for what’s coming.”

  “I thought it was Communism that we’re fighting.”

  “What?”

  “Not terrorism.”

  He frowned at me and spoke slowly, as if he believed I’d been struck suddenly with stupidity. “It’s both of them. It’s everything. That’s the world we live in today.”

  He paused, struggling. “For me—listen, it doesn’t matter. I’ll be fine. I’ve spent my whole life compartmentalizing. But Phillip. One of the things that scares me about the Soviets is what they would do to him if they got the chance.”

  “Fair enough.” I sympathized with how he felt: He was saying Phillip couldn’t pass and it frightened him. But I couldn’t be bothered to hide how skeptical I was about his ideology.

  “Marie, I’m going to put my cards on the table.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Let me ask you something.”

  “Okay.”

  “One of the things I love about Phil is the way he cuts right through the bull. He really knows how to ask the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.”

  “That’s not a question.”

  “Why did you become a Fed?”

  I’d become a Fed because of my sister, which made it a shame that I’d realized too late that from a certain angle, it looked like I’d greedily mined my life out of her death. I’d felt bad at my first posting in Indiana when I’d liked my job too much. After Helene died, it was impossible to escape my gutting, awful sorrow; there’s a year of my life that I lost to it, which I’d rather not detail. Sometimes I felt like I deserved to feel as bad as I did then. In a certain sense, the New York office was better for me because it was so punishing.

  “I’m very excited,” I answered with a sigh.

  “What?”

  “To visit Africa. It’s going to be a lot of fun getting back to my roots.” I raised a fist.

  “Okay.” He nodded, having understood that I wasn’t going to answer the question. “Well, it’s definitely an experience.”

  After that we moved on to more general conversation about politics. I had the sense he was probing for something about my perspective, information that I instinctively didn’t want to give. By the time we left the bar, the night had come on in earnest. He strolled out of the lounge before me, as at home as he’d been in Midtown.

  “Want a ride?”

  I looked off in the direction of my apartment. “I’ll walk.”

  “You sure that’s safe?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t get mugged.”

  “Have a good night, Ross.”

  As I walked home I thought about Daniel Slater. I wanted to talk to him about my sister. I thought of Helene, how she’d wanted to travel with the CIA. And now I was going to do precisely that, and I couldn’t help feeling like I’d taken something from her.

  When I was sixteen, I couldn’t understand that desire of hers as more than a whim. I’d thought: What would it have earned her? Pop had defended American interests abroad. He’d been in the air force, had flown to the other side of the planet to fight for our country and come back to his base in Biloxi, where they’d made him sit at the back of the city bus in his uniform. He’d expanded himself to come back to a place full of small people with rules that could run him over. How much smaller must they have looked to him then; how ridiculous and arbitrary those rules must’ve seemed. And how much more dangerous that place was for him once he was fully aware of its pettiness.

  * * *

  —

  THE ADDRESS ROSS HAD given me belonged to a nondescript office building in Midtown. Inside, I found a deserted lobby that only featured ways out of it: an old menu board that listed the firms in the building, a door that was propped open to reveal a staircase, and an elevator with stainless steel doors.

  I rode the shuddering elevator up to the fourth floor, toward Helene’s dream of heading into a CIA office, and stepped out into a hall with a single door at its far end. There was an intercom there, and when I pressed it, a security camera swiveled toward me. I held up my credentials. After a few moments, a startlingly loud buzzer sounded, and I let myself into a little antechamber with a shabby gray carpet where an officer was sitting at a small desk beside another door. Young, white, and fair-haired, he was exactly what you’d expect.

  He stood. Stuck a perforated card into the slot, pressed his finger against a reader beside the door, and after a much more subtle beep than the one out in the hall, pulled open the unlocked door. He led me down a quiet hall. At the end of it was a small office, and inside I found Ross speaking Arabic into a beige phone. He gestured for me to sit. I did. I looked around. There was a grime-covered window behind him and fluorescent lighting overhead. A flimsy bookshelf stood in the corner, gasping under the weight of dusty binders. In other words, it looked like what it was—a government office. I should’ve known better than to expect something out of a movie, but I admit I was disappointed that the design was not at all futuristic and there were no high-tech gadgets lying around.

  “Sorry about that,” he said as he hung up the phone. “Want some coffee?”

  I told him I did and he left me alone for a moment, then returned with two cups. As he handed me one I looked around and asked what exactly this place was.

  “Just an off-site. One of the Company’s satellite offices. They let me use a desk and a phone here when I come up from Langley.” He sat. “So. Let’s talk about your assignment. Have you been keeping up with news from Burkina Faso?”

  “A little bit. Only what I’ve seen in Le Monde.”

  “Sankara’s becoming more of a dictator every day.”

  I nodded. The news wasn’t plentiful, but there’d been enough to make me aware that the CNR was flailing. To combat the push for multiparty elections, it seemed like Thomas was relying on increasingly authoritarian tactics. A few weeks after returning to Ouagadougou from New York, he’d fired hundreds of striking teachers in the country because, encouraged by the ULCR, they were trying to unionize. There were already too few teachers in the country; the termination of so many would have a serious effect. He was also being accused of suppressing a free press.

  “Well. I guess it was inevitable.” I said it lightly, although inwardly, I was disappointed to hear Ross confirm what I’d been reading.

  “It always happens this way with Communist governments. The quick pace though, I’ll admit that surprised me. Communism is just like a disease. Luckily, I think we can handle this outbreak before it gets out of hand.”

  “Why this one? Isn’t Ghana the bigger problem? Rawlings’s government has a lot more money.”

  “Rawlings is also a problem, sure. We’re running operations in Ghana designed to keep him in check too. But don’t underestimate Sankara’s appeal. His government may not have much financial influence, but he has a lot of political power, especially considering he’s only been president a few years. The
y already love him in South Africa. And in Angola, which is a resource-rich country that we can’t afford to lose to Communism. Imagine the economic disaster and the humanitarian crisis that Angola would face if they nationalized their mines. Imagine it under a socialist regime, with a heavily centralized state-run system. It would fall to ruins.”

  I nodded, hoping to hurry him along. His ideological stock phrases were having the opposite of their desired effect. I kept informed enough about global politics to know that Angola wasn’t a good country to use as an example of the gloom and doom Ross was describing. They were already facing a humanitarian crisis—civil war had been raging there since the mid-seventies, and I understood it to be a proxy war between the Soviet Union and the United States. I assumed he knew the situation was more complicated than how he presented it, but was banking on my ignorance of the rest of the world to make his point.

  But I wasn’t as uninformed as he’d hoped. I knew we’d been fighting the Cold War in Africa since I was a child. In the Congo, in the 1960s, Patrice Lumumba was assassinated by firing squad. Both the Belgians and the CIA were in on the plot —there’s a rumor that Eisenhower signed an order for a scientist to slip him poisoned toothpaste, which sounds so ridiculous and far-fetched that I’m sure it happened.

  After a brief détente in the seventies, Ronald Reagan took office, and expressed a set of foreign policy goals that seemed ludicrously improbable at the time. Not only did he want to turn the Cold War around in our favor, he wanted to win it.

  In the pursuit of that goal, he’d returned us to an era of fear and vitriol. Reagan wasn’t nearly as sneaky as Eisenhower had been—his presidency was characterized by open hostility toward the Libyan president, Muammar Gaddafi.

  Personally, I thought Gaddafi was an unhinged maniac, but in everything I’d read about Lumumba, he emerged as sensible and thoughtful. He believed Communism and colonialism were equally destructive, which I agreed with in theory. Still in practice, I thought Ross was correct when he’d said that Thomas’s government would eventually run out of money and his socialist policies would come to an end. And what after that? He’d fall back on retaining power like a tyrant. We were seeing that happen all over the world.