Red Swan

by P. T. Deutermann

  “Never a dull day with Preston Allender,” Carol said. “You want to put your clothes on now, dear? And if it makes you feel any better, I was in the room the entire time that you were, um, déshabillé.”

  “Oh, great,” Sloan said, hustling back into her clothes with as much grace as possible, which wasn’t much. “That’s truly comforting. Stereo voyeurs. And how many cameras, I wonder.”

  Carol ignored the sarcasm, went around Allender’s desk, and sat down in his high-backed chair. “No cameras, Ms. Sloan,” she said. “And it’s Doctor Allender, not Mister. He is actually a medical doctor, and, for what it’s worth, I’m not much interested in seeing you or any other woman naked. I don’t think he is either, although no one is too sure about that.”

  “What kind of medical doctor?” Sloan asked, tugging her skirt up around her hips.

  “He’s a doctor of psychiatry. He also happens to be the assistant deputy director for psychological assessment for the entire Clandestine Service directorate.”

  Sloan blinked. “Assistant deputy director? That’s pretty senior, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is,” Carol replied. “So you might want to rein in that ‘what the fuck’ tone of voice. You do not want to get on the wrong side of Preston Allender.”

  “Oka-a-y,” Sloan said. “But you have to admit: ‘Hi, there. Nice to meet you. Strip down.’ Seriously?”

  Carol sighed. “Ms. Sloan,” she said. “You’re new to this intelligence game. You’ve been through basic training and one overseas assignment. In the Agency’s view you’ve just finished your apprenticeship. I’m not privy to whatever operation Doctor Allender is staffing but I can guarantee that there will be a significant psychological dimension to it, as well as some real danger for the operative. He needs to know what you’re made of, and that doesn’t involve voyeurism. And, for what it’s worth, you do want to think long and hard about acceding to any mission Preston Allender is supporting.”

  “I see,” Sloan said, visibly taken aback.

  “I doubt it,” Carol replied. “Look: I’ve worked for him for fifteen years, and there are two things about him which I’ll share with you. First: People think he’s a mind reader, and while I think that’s a carnival delusion, when he trains those dragon eyes of his on you and begins to ask questions, you’re soon going to realize that he seems to know the answers right about the time you frame them in your own mind. On three occasions in the past fifteen years he’s uncovered people in the training directorate who were playing for some other team.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “Each one was taken to a special facility here on the Farm where Doctor Allender himself trains senior operatives to conduct interrogations. They got to spend several hours with him, one-on-one, in what’s called a ‘quiet room.’ In terms of optics, that’s a cross between a sensory-deprivation chamber and a fully staffed surgical suite. Of the three, one hanged himself rather than face Allender again. Each of the other two are currently in federal institutions with a diagnosis of profound protective catatonia.”

  “Je-sus,” Sloan breathed. “How—”

  “Think of him as the high priest of mind fuck in the Agency. In the entire Agency.”

  “Tell you what, lady,” Sloan said. “You guys are starting to scare me.”

  “Well, good,” Carol beamed. “Thought for a moment you weren’t getting it. Ready to go back to your day job? That would be my recommendation, you know.”

  Sloan’s eyes narrowed. “What was the second thing?”

  “Ninety-nine percent of the Agency’s missions in the world of human intelligence involve fairly straightforward tradecraft. You remember: informed patience, planning, intense attention to detail, dogged persistence, and the ability to convince people from other nations and cultures to tell us what we need to know.”

  “I think I knew that,” Sloan said.

  “Well, that last ‘thing’ is called recruiting, and if you can recruit, you are considered unusually valuable to the Agency. Your record says you have the makings of a recruiter, which is one factor that brought you to Doctor Allender’s attention. That and your physical appearance.”

  “The world’s second-oldest profession,” Sloan said. “And the other one percent?”

  “The other one percent are the intelligence games played at the nation-state level in what’s called informally the serious-shit arena, where mistakes cost agents their lives and senior Agency officials their jobs.”

  “In that order?” Sloan asked. “Somehow I don’t see those as entirely equal consequences.”

  Carol sighed. “They aren’t, Ms. Sloan,” she said. “We can replace inexperienced agents fairly easily.”

  “Hah!” Sloan exclaimed. “Somehow I knew that, too.”

  “We have four years invested in you. That’s trivial when compared to senior people with decades of experience in intelligence and counterintelligence. It’s just that the big dogs don’t take prisoners when things get dicey. It’s a pretty simple calculus. Shall we continue?”

  Sloan shrugged and made a “sorry I asked” face.

  “Okay,” Carol said. “Doctor Allender is not an operational player, but when he gets called into that arena, anyone working for him or under his control had better be damn good. That’s the bad news.”

  “There’s good news?” Sloan asked.

  “Yes,” Carol said. “For the really consequential missions, there’s a two-hundred-fifty-thousand-dollar bonus for the operative. Tax-free. As long as the mission succeeds, which really means if you both succeed and survive.”

  Sloan sat back in her chair and adjusted her skirt. “Well, now,” she said. “And when it’s all over, what happens then?”

  “Because you will have inflicted grievous damage on our opponents, you will have to begin a new life, most probably with a new and improved face, and maybe even a new profession. You will no longer be able to assume duties as second cultural attaché at one of our embassies because there will probably be an entire foreign intelligence service looking to T-bone you with a cement truck at the nearest intersection.”

  “Wow,” Sloan said, and this time the sarcasm was gone. “And if I don’t succeed?”

  “You won’t care,” Carol said. “Because you won’t be with us anymore. You want time to think about this?”

  “If I say yes, would that disqualify me?”

  “Absolutely,” Carol said, approvingly.

  Sloan obviously didn’t know what to say, or do.

  “I was kidding,” Carol said. “You’d be a fool not to think and think hard about whether this is something you want to get into. As I said—you’re new. That’s an advantage. Doctor Allender likes that because his team won’t have to purge you of operational bad habits. Plus, with any luck, the opposition won’t have noticed you yet, especially in a quiet station like Lisbon.”

  “May I ask who the opposition is?”

  “Not yet,” Carol said.

  “And how will Doctor Allender know if I’m the right candidate?”

  Carol smiled. “Shrewd question,” she said. “But I have no idea. That’s his specialty. Tell me something: Why did you want to be an operative in the first place?”

  Sloan sighed in frustration. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But that sort of stuff’s all in my record, from applicant to candidate to intern to first posting—what part of all that don’t you have right there in that folder?”

  “The part about your weekends with Mark Hannigan, for one,” Allender said from the back of the room.

  They both watched Sloan’s face go bright red. Allender came back to his desk and Carol got up to leave. “I’ll take it from here, Carol,” he said, sitting down.

  Once Carol had left, he leaned back in his chair. “I called Mark. Asked him about you. He parroted the praise he’d put in your performance evaluations. I let him blather on for a full minute and then asked him if you were a good lay or a great lay. The silence on the line was palpable.”

 
“Oh, shit,” she whispered.

  “To your credit, he finally said, ‘great’. He then asked me if he could know what had happened to you. I told him to buy his wife some flowers and to forget that I had called.”

  Sloan swallowed and then looked away.

  “Did you seduce him or was it the other way around?” Allender asked.

  “It was sort of mutual,” she said, finally recovering her composure. “He was the station chief. The boss. I was a newbie. He took me under his wing. He was nice. He was acting as a mentor, not like a—not like a married man looking for something on the side.”

  “So: Who made the first move?”

  She thought about that for a moment. “You know?” she said. “I think it was just mutual. He’s an attractive man, as you must know, and I … well, strange town, new job, first real assignment … I was lonely, and hanging out in Lisbon bars was out of the question.”

  “How long did it go on?”

  “A few months,” she said. “Then something happened—I’m not sure what, but he told me we had to stop.”

  “How’d you feel about that?”

  “Just fine, actually,” she said. “I’d never expected there to be any kind of future in it. Saw lots of Portugal. It was nice, but nobody got his heart broken.”

  “You don’t know that, do you,” he said.

  “You mean Angela, his wife? The only thing she cares about is her show dogs. She and that bratty daughter of hers. Twenty-four seven, dogs, dogs, dogs. Training, showing, feeding, grooming, even breeding, I think.”

  “What breed of dogs?”

  “I don’t recall. It wasn’t something Mark wanted to talk about, ever. They seemed to lead entirely separate lives.”

  “Refresh my memory—you’ve not been married, correct?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Marriage not for you?”

  She sighed. “I’ve lived and worked in academia, the sweaty halls of Congress, and the so-very-precious world of the State Department. I didn’t see many marriages that seemed worth the candle along the way.”

  “And you came to the Agency later in life than most applicants. Get bored with regular civilian life?”

  “Pretty much. I started with a professional lobbying firm after getting an MA from the Fletcher School. Two years of that and I began to feel like my work was sticking to my clothes, so I moved over to State and got a staff slot in INR. Enjoyed the work and some of the people, and met several Agency staffers over the next four years.”

  “Would you call yourself an adrenaline junkie?”

  “No, not really,” she said, giving him what looked a lot like a challenging glare. “But I don’t mind being on the edge occasionally.”

  “Did one of us recruit you or did you just apply out of the blue?”

  “I met Mister McGill at a diplomatic function. He told me that with my background in congressional relations and INR I could probably get into the really interesting side of intelligence work if I cared to apply.”

  Allender smiled inwardly. Carson McGill was the current deputy director for operations at the Agency, known as the DDO. Twice divorced, he was also a well-known ass bandit, which was almost comical, given what he looked like.

  “There was no quid pro quo, at least not that I was aware of,” she said, mirroring his smile for just a brief moment. “Not quite my type.”

  “The exception that proves the rule, I suppose,” Allender said, smoothly, declining to follow up with the question that usually followed that assertion. “You came down here from D.C., what, two weeks ago?”

  “Yes. I have two weeks to go and then they’re talking language school, once my next assignment reveals itself.”

  He thought for a moment, and then asked an important question. “Was your relationship with Hannigan known within the embassy? Or even just within the station?”

  “I don’t think it was,” she said. “We kept it professional during the working week and at functions. Lisbon isn’t a big operation, as I’m sure you know. I went out with the assistant defense attaché a couple of times, but he was a colonel and rather too full of himself.”

  “You make it sound as if your relationships run more along the lines of a sporting event than a search for a soul mate.”

  She shrugged. “That’s pretty much true,” she said. “I’m not against marriage or anything, but I wasn’t cut out for the wife and kids role.”

  “Very well,” Allender said. “Thank you for coming back in. I apologize, a little bit, anyway, for putting you through the disrobe routine. Your womanly attributes are vital to what’s being planned. I had to see if your interest in doing something unusual, even for us, could overcome your outrage. If we decide to bring you onboard for this operation, I promise not to embarrass you like that again. Now, having said that, I need you to have dinner with me in town tomorrow night.”

  Her eyebrows rose.

  “Specifically, I need you make an entrance, wearing something sexy but stylishly sophisticated. I will be at the table before you get there, and I want to see what the reaction is when you walk across the dining room. The place is called Opus Nine. The clientele is upmarket. If nothing else, I promise you a really good steak.”

  She gave him an appraising look. “Will I have to disrobe?” she asked, finally, with a perfectly straight face.

  “No,” he replied. “If you do the strut right, every man in the dining room will be doing that for you in his mind’s eye.” He passed across a card. “Call this number in the morning and ask for Twyla. Think of her as the Agency’s version of Angels Costumes out in Hollywood. She’ll have makeup artists, a hairstylist, and a selection of clothes that may surprise you. We’ll even provide a car and driver.”

  “Is there going to be someone important there?”

  “Oh, yes,” he said. He paused. “Me.”

  She tried not to roll her eyes.

  TWO

  The following evening, Melanie Sloan found herself in the backseat of a large, silver-colored Mercedes sedan, headed for the Opus Nine restaurant. Her driver was an equally large man decked out in the traditional black uniform of a chauffeur, right down to his black cap. She’d recognized him from her training days as one of the scarier hand-to-hand combat instructors at the Farm. When he’d come to pick her up at the operatives’ billeting building he’d been completely in character, insisting that she ride in the back when she’d reached for the right front door. She’d wondered what the desk people in the lobby must have thought, having seen her come back with the garment bags from the session with Twyla’s costume people wearing shabby jeans and a sweatshirt, but made up like a movie star.

  Now she was decked out in a high-thigh-slashed dress from Alexandre Vauthier with net stockings and a black waist sash, with makeup, jewelry, and a hairstyle to match. She felt hugely self-conscious. On the other hand, she thought, this was a whole lot better than sitting bare-assed naked in a straight-backed wooden chair in front of Dragon Eyes. She hadn’t recognized him until he’d taken off those French movie director’s glasses. The instructors on the newbie courses had told stories about the doctor who could purportedly see into people’s minds. Their description of those penetrating eyes hadn’t done them justice. She shivered despite herself.

  She forced herself to sit perfectly upright so as not to disturb her elaborate costume or her hairdo. With her left hand she held some slack in the shoulder strap of the seat belt to keep it from mashing the dress’s delicate if daring lace bodice. As she thought about her séance with Allender yesterday she mused on her life and career with the Agency so far.

  She’d grown up in Boston, the only child of two extremely successful parents who’d married later in life. Her mother was an eminent cardiologist at Mass General, specializing in women’s coronary care. Her father was a professor of molecular biology at Harvard Medical. Both her parents had been fully booked and professionally self-absorbed while she was growing up, leaving Melanie eventually to feel more well-polis
hed than cherished as a child. Loving and doting parents they were not. They had, however, done their duty with regard to her education and appropriate social grooming in the rarefied atmosphere of Boston’s academic universe. It hadn’t hurt that she’d inherited her mother’s good looks, and she herself had managed an undergraduate degree from Boston University and a master’s from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

  “Almost there,” the driver announced.

  “Right,” she said, taking a deep breath. Now she was wearing a few thousand dollars’ worth of clothes and shoes, not to mention jewelry. While it all felt wonderful, she still wondered what Allender wanted her to do when she did The Walk across the restaurant. And how was she supposed to know where he was seated?

  She needn’t have worried. The maître d’ and a waiter were standing at the restaurant’s front entrance when the big Merc came swooping up. The driver got out and hustled around to open the right rear door, and then the maître d’ was making effusive greetings as the driver handed her out of the car. With the maître d’ leading and the waiter in tow, they made their way into the main dining room and then turned to head for a curved upholstered booth just beyond the piano, where Allender was sitting in isolated splendor. He was wearing a luxurious-looking dark burgundy smoking jacket over gray slacks, and instead of a shirt he wore what looked like a silk turtleneck sweater.

  Melanie concentrated on not tripping over those incredibly narrow heels she was wearing and looked straight ahead with as regal an expression as she could manage. She saw Allender incline his head in an approving nod and then start to get up as she approached. If other people were watching, she didn’t see them, because Allender had now removed his shadowy glasses and was giving her the full-on dragon-eyes treatment, but with a wholly different blaze this time, one of visible admiration. She found herself mesmerized for a moment by those amazing eyes, and then the maître d’ was pulling the table to one side so she could sit beside him in the plush enclosure while the waiter fussed with the glasses and cutlery.