Sleeping With the Enemy

by Adaire, Alexis

  “Without a trace?” Thomas asked skeptically. “Fingerprints? DNA?”

  The butterflies in my stomach fluttered maddeningly. There was no point in hiding it from Thomas; it was obvious I’d had sex with Dante. “Only in places that he’s probably disposed of or showered clean by now,” I said. “I was very cautious.”

  He sat across the desk, carefully appraising me. Thomas was a consummate professional and in the four years we’d worked together, I doubt he’d ever imagined me having sex. Now I’d forced him to do just that, and I don’t think he appreciated being in that position.

  “You put yourself in tremendous danger last night, Anna. What the hell were you thinking?”

  I began to apologize, but before I could even form the words I felt a wildly different sentiment take over. “I knew what I was doing, Thomas,” I said. “Between my military upbringing and my eight years with the Agency, I was calm and in control the entire time. And I have to say, it was the most exciting thing I’ve ever done. I honestly wish this kind of chance came around more often.”

  Thomas looked me in the eye as he considered my words. “You probably won’t find out much about what happens next,” he said, deftly moving on. “The DEA will give me bits and pieces, but your intel will become part of their investigation. I’ll pass on anything I do hear.” So much for that commendation.

  “This conversation will be part of your permanent Agency record,” he went on. “I’ll sanitize it to leave out the parts you’d probably want kept private.”

  “No need,” I said, suddenly proud of what I’d done and how I’d done it. Hopefully my actions would lead to a slightly safer country and maybe even save a few lives. “I’ll be glad to file a full report if you’d like.”

  “If you were to do that, there would be evidence of you having gone beyond the limits of your job description. We both know where that could lead. You’re too valuable and I don’t want to lose someone of your talents. I’ll file the report myself in a manner that will protect you.”

  I sensed Thomas was wrapping up our conversation and rose to leave. No sooner had my hand touched the doorknob than he said, “And Anna?”

  Turning to face him, I feared a lecture.

  Looking at me over the top of his glasses, Thomas said, “Leave the spy stuff to the actual spies.”

  I gave him no indication one way or another that I intended to follow his advice.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  As I stepped out into the hallway, I realize my pulse was racing crazily.

  Three

  Three months passed without my hearing a single word about Dante Gutierrez or his infamous boss, Aniceto Arambula. Thomas never mentioned it again, and despite knowing what I’d done to procure the intel on Dante, he never treated me as anyone other than the competent technician he knew me to be.

  I buried myself in my work in the Office of Technical Service, which was easy because I’d received an overseas assignment out of the blue, the first time the Agency had ever sent me out in the field for any reason. I, along with a handful of experienced OTS field-support agents, had been tasked with helping to exfiltrate an at-risk source out of Syria. This man, a major general in the Syrian Air Force, had long been a fountain of information for our side. Lately, though, he had reason to believe his role as a spy had been uncovered, and we had seventy-two hours to devise and execute a plan to get him, his wife, and two teen children safely out of the country. If we failed, he and the wife would definitely be executed for treason. It didn’t help that of the four, only the father spoke English, and poorly at that, so pretending they were Americans and getting them out via a commercial airline would be near impossible.

  My colleagues and I disguised four CIA agents to look like the family and sent them on a weekend vacation to Zarzar Lake while we moved the actual family in secrecy to the American embassy in Damascus. Although I was by far the least experienced of our group, with no time to spare I rose to the task and, through makeup, clothing, and forged documents, was able to transform the Syrian spy into a British surgeon working for Doctors Without Borders. The documents I’d helped to create detailed the family’s recent arrival in the country from the Ivory Coast in Western Africa. I also managed to turn the Muslim wife into a British nurse and the two teen children into Ivory Coast medical students. With the right makeup, the kids looked like West Africans and the parents looked like typically pink Brits. The narrative we designed said that the surgeon had been exposed to ebola while in Africa and though he hadn’t yet shown any symptoms, Doctors Without Borders thought it prudent to send him home for observation. This gave us an implicit reason to transport them out of the country as soon as possible, and the surgical masks we had the family wear ensured their identities remained safe, since no one wanted to get anywhere near them.

  The private jet, fictitiously chartered by Doctors Without Borders for the sole purpose of transporting this dangerous threat out of the country, was given unusual leeway by the military stationed at Damascus International Airport. The excavation was not without its harrowing moments, the most anxious of which occurred when our major general had to walk right past men who were under his direct command and would have known him instantly were he not disguised. We finally managed to get airborne — the four of them, as well as three CIA agents including myself, also posing as British citizens affiliated with Doctors Without Borders. As soon as we were out of Syrian air space, word was sent to the agents posing as the vacationing family. They staged a boating accident that afternoon, then each managed to disappear back into the spy underground. Intel we procured later told us that as far as the Syrian government was concerned, Major General Bashar Qabbani and his entire family had drowned while on vacation, their bodies never to be recovered.

  I received a commendation for my part in Operation Ebola, then returned to my boring desk job and waited for the next time I would be needed to help support actual spies in the field.

  During that time, I thought about Dante Gutierrez often. He’d been a good lover, but when I reminisced about that night it wasn’t his abilities in bed that I remembered fondly. Instead, it was the excitement I’d felt from the moment I realized my “spy brain” detected something was amiss about him. My decision to investigate on my own and resourcefulness in finding a way to obtain the important data on the Los Alfas cartel kept the blood pumping in my veins. The sex had been merely a nice bonus.

  Though I never returned to Dave’s Hardtail, and in fact curtailed my monthly one-night stands for a while, I regularly brought myself to orgasm thinking about the events of that night. And my climax usually occurred when I got to the point where I dropped the folder on Thomas’s desk that Saturday morning.

  * * *

  I knew something was up when Thomas called one Monday morning before I could even set my things on my desk.

  “Anna, could I see you in my office immediately, please?”

  As I walked down the hallway, I tried to parse his simple request. It had been a question, which was good; a demand might have meant I was in some kind of trouble. Since Thomas had never said another word about the DEA, Dante Gutierrez or Aniceto Arambula, I thought that perhaps he’d finally heard something he could pass along to me. When I entered his office and saw a middle-aged man I didn’t recognize in a standard-issue Agency black suit and tie, I assumed my guess had been correct. This would be interesting.

  “Anna Mercer, this is Malcolm Sills,” Thomas said. The man stood as I shook his hand and Thomas gestured for me to take a seat. Sills shamelessly looked me up and down, making me feel uncomfortable even though I was wearing my typical slacks and button-down shirt. “Malcolm has been sent by Daniel Braunfield to speak to you.”

  The startled look on my face must have been obvious. Daniel Braunfield was the head of the entire Agency — the Director of the CIA.

  Thomas rose from his desk and crossed his office to the door, saying, “Well, I’ll leave the two of you to it then.”

  My nerve
s suddenly buzzing, I turned to Sills, who once again ran his eyes over my body. It was weird, though; he seemed to be studying or assessing me, not fantasizing in that way men do when they gawk at women.

  “Anna…” he started, “may I call you Anna?” I consented immediately. This man was obviously a few levels above Thomas. “First of all, Anna, everything we discuss today is absolutely confidential. Your job depends on your discretion regarding this conversation. Do you understand?”

  What the holy hell? “Yes, sir,” I said with a lump in my throat.

  “Good. I’m the head of an Agency department about which you have likely only heard vague rumors: Extracurricular Affairs.” I had heard the name before, but knew almost nothing about what it did, apart from being part of the Agency’s overall intelligence-gathering efforts. “I report directly to Samuel Nguyen, the head of the National Clandestine Service. Extracurricular Affairs, or EA, as we call it, oversees a very specific type of mission. We deploy covert agents and monitor their progress on missions that are next to impossible for even the most skilled agents to execute.”

  Sills paused, then smiled for the first time. He was solidly built and had a thick shock of salt-and-pepper hair and when he smiled he was attractive in an important-man kind of way. “Are you following me?”

  I nervously said, “I think so, but I don’t understand what this has to do with me.”

  “You’ll understand soon. Bear with me,” Sills said. He turned his chair slightly so that it faced me directly and continued. “Among my responsibilities in Extracurricular Affairs is to locate and recruit potential agents and train them for field deployment. That’s where you come in.”

  My first thought was that my years of experience with the Agency, and my recent involvement in the daring and successful Operation Ebola in Syria, had brought me notice to my particular skills. I was being considered for a position having to do with identifying or recruiting potential covert agents for the CIA. This could be exciting.

  I had no idea how exciting.

  Sills continued. “Anna, you first came to my attention some months ago when word filtered up about your rogue mission to gain intelligence from a member of the Los Alfas drug cartel.”

  The blood rushed from my head. So CIA brass was aware of what I had done? That means they surely knew I’d had sex with Dante Gutierrez. My mind reeling, I imagined meetings in which the head of CIA’s Clandestine Service Division told the director of the CIA about the low-level technician who had somehow managed to screw her way into important intelligence about one of the world’s most wanted men.

  “Although that was not a prudent thing to do, it did demonstrate a certain uncommon initiative. That’s what landed you on our radar. Since then, Mr. Nguyen, Mr. Braunfield and I have been keeping a close eye on you.”

  The director of the entire CIA was “keeping a close eye on me”? What the hell was all this about?

  “That’s why we had you assigned to the field operation in Damascus last month, and that mission showed you to be more than merely impulsive,” Sills said with a smile. “You handled yourself in an exemplary manner under extreme duress and were instrumental to the success of that operation.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said. It was a complete surprise that anyone so high-ranking had requested that I be included on that mission. If Sills was trying to get my attention, he had succeeded. I was absolutely riveted at that point.

  “You’ve been with the Agency for nearly a decade and we feel you’re ready for a promotion. Would you like something more interesting? We have an intriguing position we need to fill and we think you may the perfect fit.”

  So it was a promotion. I tried to relax.

  Sills leaned forward in his chair, his face just a couple of feet from mine.

  “Anna, we want to train you to be a covert operative, a core HUMINT collector.”

  Me, an actual covert field agent, gathering human intelligence? My mouth hung open. This had to be a joke. Thomas was obviously punking me. I instinctively looked at the office door, then back to Sills, who wasn’t smiling.

  “There are certain situations that call for a woman agent,” Sills said, “and that agent must be willing to do whatever is necessary to ensure a satisfactory outcome for the mission.”

  He paused for effect, or maybe to let his words sink in, but I was so stunned at the idea of my being a covert agent that his meaning had flown right over my head.

  “Let me be clear,” he continued. “This position is based upon using physical and/or emotional intimacy as a tool to extract information from high-level targets.”

  I finally understood, or thought I did. Was Sills actually saying what I thought he was?

  “You would need to make certain important people relax around you to gain their trust, and physical intimacy has proven to be the fastest way of accomplishing that.”

  Well that certainly answered my question. Any doubts I may still have had were erased when Sills added, “So there will be sex involved. Often. In the majority of assignments, in fact.”

  He stared hard into my eyes.

  “Does that idea bother you, Anna?”

  How could I answer that question? I quickly tried to imagine myself having to seduce a man in order to get information from him. Would I have a problem with that? I didn’t know. It would be like… like… like sleeping with Dante Gutierrez had been. It would be much like one of the most exciting nights of my life.

  Or I could decline, and likely remain in my current usually boring position.

  Sills waited patiently for my response.

  Could I do it? I didn’t know, but I was definitely interested in finding out.

  “I would do anything my country requires of me, sir,” I said.

  “Without limitations?” he asked.

  I paused, then replied, “Without limitations.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” Sills said. “I’ve recruited dozens of agents over the years and I know a thing or two about the personality that makes a person right for this sort of work. I think you’ll excel at this job, Anna.”

  I gulped. “I appreciate your confidence, sir.”

  “This particular approach is nothing new. History is filled with famous women spies who did whatever it took to accomplish their missions, so you won’t be the first by any means. In fact, there are other female agents currently in EA.”

  “Are all the EA agents women?” I asked.

  “Not all of them. But you will fill a specific niche for us,” Sills said. “Anyway, as I said earlier, this entire conversation is considered confidential. If word were to get out about our methods in EA, the entire operation would be threatened. You can imagine that this sort of thing wouldn’t play well in the media.”

  “You can count on my discretion,” I said, trying to sound reassuring. A thought suddenly occurred to me and I asked, “How dangerous are the missions?” I realized it must have seemed like I found physical danger less disconcerting than using my body.

  “Aside from the physical intimacy, there is some degree of danger involved, though your training and our field assistance will mitigate that to a great extent,” Sills said. “These missions are nearly always of short duration. In most cases, whether you succeed or fail at winning a target’s trust, you will be in and out of their lives within a few days.”

  I nodded. Sills stood up and offered me his hand. As we shook, his eyes again quickly roamed over my curves. At that point I understood that Sills was appraising me with the skilled eye of a master spy, trying to see me as a target might see me, deciding if I was enticing enough to lure a man into my trap. Whatever he saw must have convinced him.

  “I’m going to give you one week to consider what we’ve spoken about today,” he said. “You are on paid leave until next Monday. Feel free to take a short vacation if you’d like. If you decide to accept the position, your training will start immediately upon your return.”

  Sills handed me a business card. “If you have any questi
ons at all, don’t hesitate to call me. This is my private direct line.” Then he escorted me to the door and remained in Thomas’s office when I left.

  Back at my office, Thomas confirmed that I had the week off, though he didn’t seem to know exactly why. I went back home in a daze and spent that afternoon and night imagining myself in all sorts of compromising situations, extracting intelligence for the country I loved with every fiber of my being.

  The following morning, I picked up Sills’s business card and dialed his number. He answered immediately.

  “Anna, what can I do for you?” he asked.

  “Mr. Sills, do you honestly think I’m the right woman for this job?”

  “I can say with all confidence that, given proper training, you’d be excellent at it,” he said.

  “Then I don’t need more time to think, sir,” I said. “You’ve got your girl. How soon can I start?”

  “Be in my office first thing Monday morning,” he replied. “Welcome aboard, Agent Mercer.”

  Four

  Less than a week after my first meeting with Malcolm Sills, I found myself sitting in a conference room in the Clandestine Service Division of the CIA. The CSD was located in the the NHB, or New Headquarters Building, at Langley. This was a wing I’d never been in, despite having worked in a branch of the same division for years. Mr. Sills was seated with me, along with three women and two men, none of whom I’d ever seen before. One woman was my age, about thirty, while the other two were both at least a decade older. The men were typical Agency types: thirtysomething and clean cut, one white and one black.

  “Anna Mercer, let me introduce you to the five most important people in your life over the next year,” Sills began. “Dr. Janice Morello will be overseeing the psychiatric aspects pertaining to the types of missions you’ll be undertaking. She will help you to understand some of the situations you’ll likely find yourself in and will assist you in dealing with the side effects inherent in your new line of work. You’ll be required to speak to Dr. Morello weekly. A troubled or disturbed agent is of little use to us.” Dr. Morello smiled sweetly at me as we shook hands. I already felt I could trust her.