by Diana X Dunn
Jake frowned. “I’m not very patient. I’d really like to get to know you better.”
“I’m sure we’ll all get much better acquainted as the months go by,” Sara said.
Jake took a step closer to her and then another. He leaned down and whispered in her ear. “I want to sleep with you,” he said as if he were confiding a secret.
“I don’t get personally involved with work colleagues,” Sara replied.
He looked as if he wanted to argue, but after a moment, Jake shrugged. “I’m sure the students will be more forthcoming,” he said before he turned and walked out of the room.
“Robert, that man should not even be joking about having intimacies with students,” Ethel said sharply. “It was bad enough he was harassing Sara. I’m quite sure she’s more than capable of taking care of herself. He must not behave that way with your students.”
“I’ll talk to him,” Robert promised.
“He needs more than a talk,” Dr. Freeman interjected. “I’m sure I could help him, if he’d give me a chance.”
“Yes, well, that isn’t likely, is it?” Ethel said. “Hopefully, the risk of losing his job will be threat enough to keep him in line.”
“It probably will be when he’s sober, anyway,” Sara suggested.
“Yes, I’ll talk to him about his drinking, too,” Robert said. “We’ve been through a lot together, me and Jake. I’m sure he’ll be a valuable member of the team, once he settles in. Leave it to me.”
Ethel looked as if she wanted to argue and Sara could tell that Dr. Freeman had more to stay on the subject, too. After a minute, Candie stood up.
“Are we done? It’s just that I have to finish all of the travel arrangements for the students. They’re all meant to be arriving on Wednesday and I still haven’t been able to confirm transports for a few of them.”
“We’re done,” Robert said, sounding tired. “You go and get back to work. I’ll tidy up in here.”
Ethel was already loading glasses and mugs into the sanitizer. Dr. Freeman stomped out behind Candie as Sara got to her feet.
“It was nice meeting you,” she said to Ethel.
“Indeed. Now I’m going to curl up with my new M-ped and learn everything I can about our students. Would you care to join me in my suite to discuss them?” Ethel asked.
“I’d love to,” Sara said quickly. While she was only mildly interested in the students, she was incredibly curious about Ethel and what had brought her to this school in the middle of nowhere.
“I just need a quick word with Robert,” Ethel said. “Meet me in my suite, number one, in half an hour, if that suits you.”
“That’s great,” Sara replied. “I’ll see you then.”
She made her way back to her own suite and shut the door. The school had far fewer teaching staff than she’d been expecting. Considering the number of subjects she was required to teach, she really should have guessed that there weren’t going to be many other instructors.
Her first impressions of Jake Brown and Slade Freeman weren’t favorable, but she was willing to give them a chance to change her mind. Having the opportunity to work with the legendary Ethel Bell was a bonus she hadn’t been anticipating. She nibbled her way through a FADS bar and then freshened up before heading down the corridor to the first suite.
Chapter 4
“Ah, Sara, come in,” Ethel said when she opened the door to her suite.
Sara walked into the room and took a quick, but comprehensive, look around. Everything in the suite was of much better quality than the things in her rooms. That was interesting.
“Have a seat,” Ethel invited.
Sara sat down on one of the overstuffed couches. It was even more comfortable than it looked. “Thank you.”
“Have you looked at the students at all yet?” Ethel asked.
“No, I wasn’t sure I wanted to bother.”
Ethel chuckled. “I want to be prepared.”
“You’re right, of course. I’ll be better off knowing what’s coming.”
“You mean who’s coming.”
Sara grinned. “Exactly.” She tapped on her M-ped and then swiped through the various data files. The files on the students were together in a directory, in seemingly random order.
“Let’s start with Tamara Moss,” Ethel suggested.
Sara clicked on her name and stared at the woman’s photograph. “She looks young, maybe twenty-two,” she said.
“According to her records, she’s twenty-one. From the looks of it, she hated high school, tried three different universities but didn’t like any of them, and now she’s decided she wants to be a spy.”
Sara read through her application. “She thinks it’s going to be glamorous and exciting like you see in the movies or on television,” she sighed. “She’s going to be very disappointed in the realities of the job.”
“I suspect she’ll hate my class.”
“Code breaking? I loved code breaking. There’s nothing like matching wits with another person or a computer to try to solve a seemingly impossible cipher.”
“I believe that a person must actually have wits of their own before they can match them against a code.”
Sara laughed. “You’re suggesting that Tamara is witless?”
“Of course, we mustn’t prejudge the girl, really. I suspect she’ll be very effective in certain areas, anyway.”
“And Jake will love her.”
“Yes, that, too.”
“My only question, then, is how is she affording the school? Ah, there we are,” Sara said as she found the answer. “Daddy is footing the bill, just like he paid for her private education from the age of five and years at university where she seems to have never bothered to attend classes.”
“Do make her run a muddy obstacle course, won’t you?”
“Oh, definitely,” Sara laughed.
“Donna Rushen,” Ethel continued. “She’s thirty-something and from the looks of it, has already had more than adequate training.”
Sara whistled. “She has some very impressive credentials, including a year with one of the top French agencies out there. Why is she here?”
“Read her essay. It seems she made a few key mistakes on a job. It reads as if this course is something of a bid to rehabilitate herself.”
“I can’t see how retraining here will help her, and I wonder where the money for the course came from, as well.”
“If I were the type to bet on things, I’d wager that she’s been sent here by some agency or another that’s willing to take a chance on her. They’ll be footing the bill and using the course as an excuse to put her on ice for six months.”
“That makes sense.”
“Next is Lacey Cotton.”
“Which has to be a made-up name,” Sara said.
“It seems it is, but that it was made-up by her mother, rather than her.”
Sara read through the file. “She looks bright and motivated. She has a university degree in criminology and she’s done graduate work, as well. Her application makes her look like a good candidate for many of the more established schools out there.”
“Indeed, which suggests that she’s hiding something in her past that could be an issue if it were known.”
“Aside from the fake name.”
“As I said, that seems to have been her mother’s doing. From what I can see here, her mother, the rather less interestingly named Susan Davis, got pregnant at sixteen. She seems to have worked hard to raise her only child under difficult circumstances, but Lacey appears to have done her mother proud.”
“But she’s hiding something. No offense to Robert, but this school won’t be anyone’s first choice. Not yet, anyway.”
“You’re right, of course. The school may well be a huge success, but students in this first class are taking a sizeable risk in coming here. I’m going to have to do some digging into Ms. Cotton’s background, I think. Robert may know why she’s here, but I’d like to know, too.”
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“Her school performance was good enough to get her into a fully covered university program, all the way through graduate school. I wonder how she’s paying for this course, though.”
“Something else to find out,” Ethel said. “I’ll let you know what I learn.”
Sara nodded. “That brings us to Mark Allen. He was with the police in Santa Fe, New Mexico. According to his application, he was let go due to budget cuts.”
“Could be true, or could be an excuse. He got a payout when he left that has enabled him to pay for this course, anyway.”
He was almost handsome, but rather ordinary looking. “He looks as if he’ll be good at blending into crowds, anyway,” Sara said under her breath.
“Luke Nolan, another former cop,” Ethel said.
Sara blinked and then clicked on his name. The face that stared at her from her video screen made her heart skip a beat.
“He worked in Chicago until his partner got killed in the line of duty,” Ethel continued. “Then he worked for SunInc for a while. Things look a bit murky after that.”
Sara clicked through his profile, taking an extra second to be certain of what she said. “He’s better looking than Mark, anyway. I wonder why he left SunInc. Working on a tropical island must be amazing.”
“I’d be bored, but I’m not the type to sit in the sun all day.”
“No, I’m not either,” Sara agreed. “Maybe he got tired of seeing women in bikinis all the time.”
Both women laughed and Sara was relieved when Ethel moved on to the next student. She was fairly confident that Ethel hadn’t been able to tell that she knew Luke.
“Jeff Gates is former military,” Ethel said. “His background is classified.”
Sara frowned. “That’s slightly worrying.” She looked at the man’s picture and shivered. “I’m not afraid of anything, but he’s slightly scary looking.”
“His eyes are dead. No doubt he’s seen horrific things.”
“He’s only twenty-five. He can’t have gone to war.” Even as she spoke, Sara knew she was being disingenuous. While the Wars of Religion and the Eco-Wars were long over, there were battles being fought all over the planet every day. Terrorist cells sprang up and were destroyed almost weekly. Criminal organizations built their own armies as they worked to take over streets, towns, cities, or even entire countries. Islands like SunInc, which were owned by massive corporations, had their own private armies and often paid huge sums to nearby governments to retain the services of larger military forces that could help provide self-defense. Even in peace, the world was at war.
“This one looks interesting,” Ethel said. “Lloyd Moore is a forty-five year old accountant. I’m not sure this school is going to be a good fit for him.”
Sara read though his profile. “He wants to investigate financial crimes. He’s really coming to the wrong place.”
“Robert has me teaching a small section on the financial sector,” Ethel said. “Only a small section, though.”
“I wonder if Lloyd is fully aware of what he’s getting into.”
“I’m sure Robert explained everything to him.”
Sara wasn’t as certain, but she didn’t argue. “Bill Berman seems more like the sort of student I was expecting. He sounds far too excited and eager to me.”
Ethel looked up from her screen. “Yes, he’s clearly been reading spy novels and watching thrillers on video since he was a child. He’s going to be difficult to keep under control, I fear. He seems the sort to go rushing off without the slightest idea what he’s doing.”
“It seems he’s been saving up to pay for spy school since he started working at eighteen. It’s taken him seven years to save up enough to pay for this course. I don’t know what Robert is charging, but I’m willing to guess that it’s less than the larger schools charge.”
“Yes, it is, although not all that much less. Still, young Bill would have had to save up for longer to be able to afford any other schools, assuming any of them would have accepted him, of course.”
Sara nodded. She had her doubts about nearly all of the students. If she’d been running the school, she didn’t think she’d have accepted more than one or two of them. “What an interesting bunch of people,” she said eventually.
“Indeed. I’m not sure that Robert made the smartest choices, but we’ve no option now but to do our best with the students once they arrive.”
“I shall be very surprised if they all make it through the entire course.”
“Robert won’t mind if they don’t. They’ve paid in advance. Once they arrive, they won’t be entitled to a refund, even if they quit on the first day.”
“You know a lot more about the school than I do,” Sara said.
“I was the first instructor that Robert hired. I’ve been working with him for a few months now. He’s bounced a lot of ideas off of me along the way.”
“Why are you here?” Sara asked the question that had been bothering her since she’d been introduced to the woman.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re a legend in international espionage. You’ve worked for just about every agency out there during your career. I would have thought your services would be in huge demand. I also would have thought that you’d be ready to retire.”
Ethel chuckled. “I actually did retire, about ten years ago. It was the most boring week of my life. I was hired by the FBI when I was eighteen and I’ve worked in covert operations ever since. I was happily working for a small agency that specialized in data decryption when Robert messaged me. I’ve done a lot over the years, but I’ve never actually taught students. He made it sound interesting and like the perfect way to spend my retirement years.”
“You may change your mind after the students arrive.”
“I just might,” Ethel agreed. “But why are you here?”
“I left my former agency and had trouble finding the right place to go,” Sara said, trying to keep things vague. “I’ve never done anything else, really.”
“No, of course not. You were an F, one of the elite, trained from birth. I can’t imagine how much pressure that put on you.”
Sara shook her head. “I’m not sure where you’re getting your information, but that isn’t right.”
“My information is accurate. Please don’t lie outright to me. I know you were an ex-utero baby who was adopted by a certain agency before you were even born. I even know that you were F6, the sixth baby adopted into the program. Let’s not waste our time arguing about those facts. I’m genuinely curious as to what it was like being raised in that environment.”
Sara stopped to think for a few seconds, but quickly decided it was easier not to argue. “It wasn’t that bad, really. The real pressure didn’t start until we were older, maybe ten or eleven.”
Ethel laughed. “Ten or eleven isn’t older. You were still a child.”
Sara shrugged. No one who hadn’t lived her life could possibly understand. Having no experience of anything else, she found it difficult to explain, as well. “It was all that I knew.”
“And now you don’t know what to do with yourself.”
“Something like that.”
“And where does Rex fit into all of this?”
Sara needed all of her training not to react. “I’m not sure what you mean,” she said.
Ethel waved a hand. “I may be teaching classes at a second-rate school in the middle of nowhere, but I still have connections everywhere. When you applied for the job, I did the background work. I didn’t tell Robert that you were an ex-utero baby, and I didn’t tell him that you’re the agent that Rex is stalking. I thought those things were best kept as quiet as possible.”
“I wish I knew what you were talking about,” Sara said calmly.
“You’re good, but you’re wasting your time. You can trust me, even though I’m sure you don’t believe me. What shall I tell you about Rex to convince you that I know everything?”
“I’m not interested in
whatever you think you know.”
“My dear girl, you’re putting this entire school at risk, just by being here. I’m sure you’re aware of that, of course, but I must insist that you take someone here into your confidence. You may chose to talk to Dr. Freeman or Robert if you prefer.”
Sara laughed. “Or Jake?”
Ethel made a face. “I’d rather no one talked to that man ever again. He’s utterly incapable of keeping a secret. If he knew that Rex was looking for you, he’d probably go straight to the press with the news.”
“Rex being the super criminal that everyone is talking about in whispers only.”
“Yes, exactly,” Ethel said, patting Sara’s hand. “As I said, I already know a great deal. I know, for instance, that he leaves you little notes on very special stationary. Sadly, while it’s expensive and unusual, it’s too readily available to be used to track him. Additionally, I know that he had you chase Morris Munroe all the way across the country, only to kill Munroe before you could question him.”
Sara didn’t change expression as she tried to think. The things that Ethel were telling her were meant to be highly classified. If Ethel had discovered them, maybe she had a connection to Rex, rather than within the intelligence community.
“And before you start thinking that I’m working with Rex, you should know that Mr. Smith and I are old friends,” Ethel said.
“Mr. Smith doesn’t have any friends,” Sara shot back. A man called Michael had been Sara’s immediate supervisor at the agency. Mr. Smith was Michael’s boss. He was completely anonymous, moving through the world as a cipher. He had a great deal of power and responsibility and Sara believed that he ran the agency working toward a greater goal that was known only to him.
Ethel nodded. “It’s important that people believe that, of course. I know better, because I’ve known Mr. Smith for nearly all of his life.”
Sara shrugged. “I should go and get those lesson plans written.”
“You should tell me why you’re really here. Do you think you can hide from Rex here? How good is your Sara Weber identity?”
“It’s very good. I know what I’m doing.”
