Another possibility: Maybe Dave Randall was telling the truth, and Caroline really did tell someone she’ll be home on Wednesday. Maybe, despite the coincidences of time, place, and poor academic performance, Caroline’s disappearance is unrelated to Gray Stafford and the Lamey twins. Just because two things seem connected doesn’t mean they are.
I’m deep into research when I hear footsteps on the stairs. Mister Fancy and I both turn. “Rory, what are you doing up?”
“Can’t sleep. I was thinking about what you said about the lacrosse team. Caroline hates the whole jock thing. I’ve never seen her talk to any of those guys.” His hair is sticking up in the back where he slept on it. I feel a gut punch of love for this kid who has changed so much in the last year, who will change so much more before I send him off to college.
He plods into the kitchen and peers over my shoulder. “What’s this?”
“I asked a friend to run a phone number on someone I think was involved in Gray’s disappearance. It’s a long story. She located him, or at least who we think might be him, in Guerneville.”
He sits at the table opposite me, stroking Mr. Fancy’s fur. “You don’t believe Caroline is on a Norwegian cruise with her parents, do you?”
“I don’t think she is, no.”
“You think this guy took her?” he asks, panic rising in his voice.
“We have zero evidence of that, but I do think he was involved with what happened to Gray.”
“Can’t you call Caroline’s parents?”
“I tried. They’re impossible to find.”
“They must be somewhere. They can’t just fall off the map.”
“That’s the thing, Rory. People like them are extremely good at falling off the map.”
“But you don’t disappear without your kid knowing where you are.”
“I’m afraid people do.” I don’t tell him about the times I did it myself. But I always knew if something happened to me, Rory had Fred, and as long as he had Fred, he would be okay.
Rory reaches across the table, pulls the laptop toward him, and types. “Ninety-seven point four miles to the Russian River,” he says.
“It’s not that simple.”
“Why not?”
“If I had my squad here, or even one colleague I know and trust. Or even Kyle. But this isn’t the kind of situation you go into without backup.”
“Do you have a better idea?”
Before I can reply, he’s heading up the stairs. “I’ll be ready in ten minutes.”
Mister Fancy sits there gazing at me. “The boy’s right,” he seems to be saying.
“I’ll go alone,” I call up the stairs. “It’s too dangerous.”
But by the time I get dressed and brush my teeth, Rory is already standing at the front door, backpack slung over his shoulder, holding the car keys, waiting.
“No, Rory. You’re not going.”
“Yes I am.”
“You’re not.” I reach to grab the keys out of his hand.
But Rory is quicker. He darts out the door, gets in the passenger seat, and slides the keys into the ignition.
It’s cool outside, dew on the ground. I stand in the doorway and call to Mister Fancy. In no hurry, he slinks past me out the door, and I shut it behind me. In the car, I try to reason with Rory. “You can’t go.”
“She’s my girlfriend.”
“Having you there will change things. I’ll be too worried to do what I need to do.”
“If I don’t go and something happens to her, I’ll never forgive myself.” He glares at me, a teenager who has made up his mind.
“Fine,” I relent. What the hell am I doing? No parenting handbook in the world, no agent, no expert, would say that bringing your teenage son on surveillance is a good idea. “You might want to bring a book, some music. These things can drag on.”
He holds up the CD folio Fred gave him on his twelfth birthday. Every time I see the case, it brings back a flood of memories, all of those nights after Rory had gone to sleep when Fred would retreat to his computer. He burned him eighteen discs, counting down the three hundred best songs he believed Rory needed to know. The case holds all eighteen discs, plus a notebook with Fred’s personal thoughts on each song.
As we pull down the driveway, I’m searching my brain for any other option. Yet I know if I leave Rory behind, it will cause a tear in our relationship I might not be able to repair. His girlfriend is in danger, and he won’t be satisfied until we find her. The hardest part of parenting is the gray area that falls under the heading of “trust.” I want my son to trust me, and in my eagerness to make that happen, maybe I don’t always make the best call.
Rory opens his CD case and asks, out of the blue: “Do you think Caroline knows her parents are more than diplomats? Do you think she knows they’re in your line of work?”
“Caroline is smart. I’m sure she does.”
He slides a disc into the player. We’ve listened to all of them so many times I know the songs by heart, Fred’s notes too: “Disc 7, Track 1, Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul, ‘Inside of Me’: So many words here and not a single one hits a wrong note. Little Steven never made another album like this, but he didn’t have to.”
We pull onto 280 North. By the time Lou Reed’s “Halloween Parade” comes on, I feel so guilty I’m tempted to turn around and go home. This world I know so intimately is exactly what I’m supposed to protect Rory from. But then, when Lou Reed gets to the colorful verse about the girls from pay dates, I realize Fred and I were never that protective. Maybe we both could have been more vigilant about insulating Rory from this dangerous world.
44
You are twenty-eight times more likely to be killed by a dog than by a shark. Explain why, and then rank the following states in order of likelihood of being killed by an animal, insect, arthropod, or human: Texas, Wyoming, South Dakota, Florida, and Oregon.
“I need to ask you something,” Rory says as we drive toward the city. “Why did we really come to California?”
“Because of Grandpa. To get his things in order.”
“You could do that this summer. Why now? Why did we have to leave New York in the middle of the year? Why did we have to give up our whole life?”
“You know Dad always wanted to move here. He loved Northern California, the clean air, the big beaches and hiking trails, this whole other life we couldn’t give you in New York City. He thought our noisy apartment with the crazy upstairs neighbor and the cramped little rooms was too stressful.”
“I liked our apartment. I liked my school. You loved your job. All those years, Dad wanted to leave, but you talked him out of it, so why now?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Really,” Rory insists. “Why did you leave your job?”
“I had to.”
“Why did you have to?”
“I made a mistake. A big one.”
“Did you get fired?”
“No, no, nothing like that. After I made this mistake, I couldn’t trust my judgment.”
“Mom, I need more than that.”
I’m thinking about how to word it and, of course, how to say it in an unclassified way.
“I had this friend,” I begin.
“Friend, or”—Rory raises his fingers in air quotes—“‘friend’?”
I smile sadly. “He was a ‘friend’ who became a friend.”
“So what happened?”
“The night after the funeral—”
Rory flinches. I’m not sure I’ve said the word “funeral” aloud to him in all these months. “When you dropped me off at Marcus’s house?”
“Yes. I had to go meet my friend at a hotel.”
“Which hotel?”
“Doesn’t matter. He was in town for only one night. He came specifically to see me. I sa
id I couldn’t get away. I told him that we’d buried your dad the night before, but he still insisted, so I knew it was an emergency.”
“So you went.”
“Yes.” The memory resurfaces in my mind, images I don’t want to see. “A long SDR—”
“Surveillance detection route?”
I nod. “Up to Yankee Stadium, down to the village, around in circles, and then to the hotel.”
“What did he want?”
“He needed to tell me he might have been compromised.”
Rory sits up straighter, frowning, trying to follow. “Compromised? Like he thought his people knew he was your friend?”
“Yes.”
“And a friend to America.”
“Exactly.”
“How did he end up on our side?”
“It’s my job. Making friends. Believe it or not, sometimes I can be pretty persuasive.”
“How do you persuade someone to do something they don’t want to do?”
“You listen to them, you pay attention, you put yourself in that person’s shoes. You figure out what they want or, more importantly, what they need, what motivates them. The most successful people in the spy game are the ones who don’t just exhibit empathy but actually feel it. Empathy is something you can’t fake.”
45
“The more identities a man has, the more they express the person they conceal.”
—John le Carré
Part 1: Address the tradition of split identities in literature.
Part 2: In order to succeed, should one strive for an attitude of concealment or of exposure?
I arrived late to the meeting with Yellow Beak at the Lucerne. That was a first. I’d never been late. It was raining, and I was sick with a fever and terrible cough, in no state to meet a source.
I had dozens of questions for him, questions prepared by a twenty-four-year-old analyst from the DI who didn’t have a clue about the nuances of source recruitment. I had a wad of cash. The room was too hot. Normally, I would have booked a suite with a separate sitting area, but because of the funeral, I had asked a new agent on the squad to get the room and leave the key at the desk under my undercover name. He tried to get a suite, but none were available, so he booked a deluxe courtyard room. He didn’t know about my friend’s claustrophobia. That’s on me. I should have told him.
Yellow Beak was waiting in the corridor outside the room when I arrived. Big mistake: He knew it. I knew it. But I wasn’t there when he arrived, and he didn’t want to miss me. We slipped into the room, and as soon as he saw the courtyard through the window, he stiffened. I apologized for the room and for being late, but he just waved off my apologies. “I am very sorry to interrupt your—”
He didn’t know what to say. My grieving? My postfuneral funk? His English was spotty but I don’t think the right words exist in any language. He put both his hands on my shoulders, looking into my eyes. He never did that. Usually, he gave me a quick cheek kiss at the door, a hug at the end—“in case we never see each other again,” he always said—and nothing more. This time was different. “I am worried, Lina,” he said. “I am nervousing.”
So we sat, me on the foot of the bed, him in the uncomfortable chair. Although we discussed a few things, the main reason he had called was to tell me about a penetration. A man from his internal branch appeared on a delegation list for a trip to the US the following week. Yellow Beak was familiar with the man’s work, so when he saw the itinerary, he knew something was wrong.
I told him I would handle it. That’s what pushed me to go into the office and upload the write-up the night after Fred’s funeral.
The memory still pains me. After the meeting, I picked Rory up from his friend’s apartment. We went home, and I heated up a dish of chicken and rice that had been left by one of Fred’s coworkers. We sat face-to-face at the table for the longest time, saying nothing, listening to music. I wished Rory would fall asleep, because I needed to get this done. It sickens me to think of it now. We had buried his father the day before, and I just wanted him to go to bed, so I could go to work.
Finally, about half past eleven, he did. I heard him brushing his teeth, changing into pajamas, plugging his phone into the charger. Then I heard him crying. I went into his bedroom, sat on the edge of his bed, brushed his hair from his face, and asked if he wanted to talk, but he turned away and said, “I just want to sleep.”
“Do you want some milk?”
“No,” he said, his voice collapsing in grief. It was Fred who offered Rory milk every night before bed. Sometimes he accepted, sometimes he didn’t, but the offer itself was part of the ritual, had been since Rory was small.
“I love you.” I wanted to say so much more: We’ll be okay, we’ll get through this. But I didn’t, because I didn’t know that we would be okay. I didn’t know how we would get through this.
I went back to the living room, waited half an hour, then checked on Rory again. He was curled in a fetal position, blankets pushed to the foot of the bed. I kissed his cheek, pulled up the covers. Then, feeling like the worst mother in the world, I left a note on the kitchen table. Had to go out for a bit, I’ll be home before you wake up. If you’re reading this, sorry, you already woke up
The Wonder Test Page 20
