Loose Lips

by Claire Berlinski

  This time, Nancy, not Janet, called me from the Special Investigations Branch and requested that I come in that afternoon.

  She was right on time. She met me in the waiting room with a motherly smile and accompanied me to the interview room, holding the door open for me. “How are you, Selena?” she asked.

  “I’m fine. Thank you.”

  “Let me explain what happens now. The Special Investigations Branch has concluded its investigation.” She paused and took a deep, sighing breath; the corners of her mouth twitched. She opened the file before her and read from the page at the top: “The investigation team has established that Caesaria A. HESTER placed classified information on an unsecured computer and used this computer to access the Internet. Caesaria A. HESTER communicated with, and disclosed classified information to, members of households where foreign nationals reside. This has raised serious questions about her judgment and suitability for access to classified information.”

  “I’ll say.”

  Nancy looked as if she didn’t quite know how to reply to that, so she continued. “In and of itself, Selena, this is a serious matter. We had been prepared to recommend that you be placed on disciplinary probation for two years, and barred from consideration for overseas assignments or promotion during that time. However, another matter has come to our attention.” I expected her to tell me that squealing on Stan—my patriotic gesture—had militated against such a stern punishment.

  “Selena, we have received information that you have discussed the details of this classified investigation with at least three other people, one of whom is no longer an employee of this Agency.”

  And for the second time

  —oh shit—

  I found myself sitting in that interview room, completely unable to figure out how they knew.

  I didn’t have time to think it through. Nancy continued, “Selena, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but in light of this information, the investigation team has no choice but to recommend that your security clearances be withdrawn.”

  “I see.”

  “The investigation team does not have executive authority. This decision must be formally adjudicated by an Employee Review Panel. You have the right to appeal any decision it makes to the Deputy Director for Operations. You may submit a statement on your own behalf to the panel. You have five days to do so. You must compose your response on a computer in a secure facility.”

  “Can I see the team’s report?”

  “No.” I wasn’t surprised.

  I could fight it. I could respond. I had five days to respond.

  I think she was expecting me to cry or plead or ask to be excused so I could collect myself in the ladies’ room, but I didn’t feel like doing any of that. I had done it all before; I was all out of tears. I smiled gently at her. I wanted to let her know that it was all right.

  A calm came over me. I had been outwitted, I suppose, but somehow that seemed inessential. I considered what I had become—or what I had been all along, perhaps, but hadn’t known about myself: I had betrayed my lover, I had betrayed my best friend, I had manipulated earnest Brad like a lab animal. For a moment I had a vision of Brad behind the bars of a cage, waiting excitedly for me to bring him a banana. “Well hello, Bright Eyes,” I imagined myself saying, then turning to Bob, my supervisor. “It’s amazing, isn’t it? When you look into his eyes, he almost seems … human.”

  I remembered Ned, the man who drove us to Headquarters on our very first day, and the way he’d looked at me with hollow eyes, saying, I wish I could start all over again. I thought of RAINBOW, haunted and destroyed, and the Mikko Hinhalla. I thought of PINEAPPLE sadly waggling his head. I thought of malignant Nathan telling Stan that I was sleeping with Kirk, and Jade, alone in her bedroom, composing mad letters denouncing herself. I imagined Stan turning me in; I remembered turning in Stan. I thought of my mother wondering what had become of her daughter, and of my sister, to whom I’d not spoken in months. I thought of that night train to Marrakech. I no longer wanted to ride it.

  “I’d like to resign immediately,” I said.

  “That’s the right decision, Selena.”

  “What will happen to Stan?”

  “I’m not at liberty to discuss that,” she said. “I’ll go get the papers for you to sign.”

  She left me in the room with my thoughts. I suppose if this were Russia she would have left me in the room with a revolver. I wondered what I would do with myself now. I could go back to studying Sanskrit, I guessed. I imagined various careers. Could I run for Congress? Write a novel about what life was really like at the CIA? If they ever watched the tape from the camera on the wall, I wonder what they made of my expression.

  She came back, and I signed the documents. They were much like the ones I’d signed at the beginning. I was to protect forever the secrets I knew, report prying inquiries, remain vigilant. The resignation notice itself was the simplest form I had ever seen at the Central Intelligence Agency. It said that I resigned from my employment and relinquished the Agency from further obligations. I signed that one last, then handed her my badge, and it was done. For a moment, we both just sat there.

  The discussion was over. I picked up my bag, put on my sweater, shook her hand with an odd composure, a serenity almost, and walked out of the Central Intelligence Agency forever.

  EPILOGUE

  He who thinks he knows, doesn’t know. He who knows that he doesn’t know, knows. For in this context, to know is not to know. And not to know is to know.

  —Kena Upaniñad

  Noise, dust, light, heat, motion, the smell of mold, bullocks pulling carts, men pulling trishaws, cows wandering the streets, Sikhs, Jains, Parsis, bodies everywhere, arms outstretched. Every one of the bustling, humming, noisy billion people around me, like me, convinced of the centrality of his own existence, the inherent importance of his own life.

  When I left the CIA, I had a little more than four thousand dollars in my savings account. I left my car with Iris and asked her to sell it for me and send me the proceeds. I took the train from Washington to New York, where I saw my niece for the first time. Then I flew to Amsterdam, and from Amsterdam to Bombay.

  I will never know the truth.

  I’ll never know who told Security that I had been sending indiscreet e-mail. All the evidence pointed to Stan, but all the evidence was circumstantial. Only Stan had the motivation and the opportunity. The timing of his visit to the authorities was too much to be a coincidence. I remembered the expression on Janet’s face when she said “You don’t owe him any—”

  Moreover, Stan had access to my computer. It made no sense to imagine that the NSA or the FBI were monitoring my e-mail. Why would they bother? I marshaled the evidence against Stan every morning, and all day long the jury deliberated.

  The lawyer for the defense offered alternative explanations for the evidence. Stan had been involvd with something, something he couldn’t tell me about. Janet had asked me questions about Stan. Perhaps Security was after Stan, not me. They were watching me only because I was with Stan. Perhaps Stan had been in the Security office that late spring weekend because he was under investigation, not me. That would also account for the evidence. The defense proposed wilder hypotheses. Could someone else from my class have gone to Security and said, “Take a close look at this one. I don’t trust her”? Perhaps it was the same blistering cretin who believed I was an apologist for Jonathan Pollard? The defense insisted that reasonable doubt remained.

  Every day I argued the case, only to conclude once more that Stan had snooped through my mail because he was jealous, because he was suspicious, because where women were concerned, he’d long ago learned to cut the deck before he played. In a moment of rage, he had gone to the Special Investigations Branch—while he was sharing my bed—to report what he had found.

  But what if I had been wrong? What if he had done nothing but love me with all his heart, supporting me when I needed it most? Maybe I had treated him abominably
, abandoning him without cause, accusing him of an egregious betrayal he had never committed, whistling up the hounds of the CIA’s security apparatus to chase him like a fox.

  Stan was a spy, and I knew he lied for a living, but so did I, and I trusted him. I thought he loved me. Perhaps I was wrong. I thought he would never harm me. Maybe I didn’t know folks.

  I arrived in Mysore at early dawn. An impulse. I’d been there once before; Mysore University has an extensive Sanskrit manuscript collection. Mysore isn’t big, but it is more than big enough to lose yourself in.

  I had brought only a small backpack with me, with some toiletries and my wallet. Everything else, I had given to Iris or Goodwill.

  I walked slowly from the train station to the market, feeling the heat.

  It smelled of spices. Limes and apples were stacked in pyramids; outraged chickens clucked in their cages. Women in saris haggled with the squatting merchants, joining in the chorus of clucking: pineapples, pineapples, two rupees. I bought tiny bananas, like the fingers on my hand, from a man in a dhoti, then hot golden chickpeas scraped from an earthenware pot: mangoes a thousand kinds mangoes a thousand kinds. Children hawked garlands strung with jasmine by vats of powdered bindi dye—turquoise and fuchsia, ocher and crimson, teal, the colors bright as a sharp slap; the air wet and fragrant, heavy with sandalwood and incense, the smells intense and penetrating, as they are only in the tropics. The vendors sold small sacks of rice and potatoes, and spices, and huge bottles of coconut oil; they stared at me without apology and shouted, come see come see best price. Children followed me, hoping for sweets. Thin stray cats with rheumy eyes begged for scraps.

  It was a universe far easier to understand than the one I’d left.

  I would never know what Stan was talking about when he told me he was different from the other trainees. He boasted that he had designed operations so secret that only four people knew about them. Could those have been unauthorized operations? Illegal ones? Were the lawful appointees of our democratically elected government unaware what Stan was doing? Was that what the Special Investigations Branch really wanted to know?

  Perhaps Janet and Nancy had set a trap for me, blackmailing me with my indiscreet e-mail so I would be forced to tell them what I knew about Stan. Had I walked right into it? My cooperation certainly hadn’t worked in my favor in any way I could see.

  I had no idea. I had no idea who Stan was. I knew he could lie and keep secrets so well that I would never have guessed, even had he been working for the Russians.

  Perhaps Stan was working for the Russians. Perhaps that was why he had turned me in—to deflect attention from himself. I shook my head sharply when I thought this and told myself not to be insane. But then another voice inside my mind replied: That’s not insane. If you work at McKinsey & Company, it is insane to suspect that your lover is a Russian spy. If you work for the CIA, it’s not. Bank robbers rob banks because that’s where the money is. Russian spies work at the CIA because that’s where the secrets are.

  A thin, filthy barefoot boy ran behind me, asking if I had seen the Mysore Palace and whether I knew Malibu Beach. I thought of the boxes of Cap’n Crunch I had pouched to poor PINEAPPLE, and wondered what had become of him. The boy trailing me would have happily committed espionage for a box of Cap’n Crunch if the chance had been extended him. I bought him a few chapatis and an onion bajhee at a stall by the dusty red road. He shoveled them down his throat rapidly, using both hands.

  I found a primitive but clean hotel—squat toilet, bucket bath, a mattress not visibly full of bedbugs, a merry proprietor with a Buddha’s belly and a satyr’s face.

  In the mornings, I took my breakfast of yogurt and papaya and drank milky tea with cardamom at one of the cafés, reading the Indian newspapers, with their unrelenting tales of catastrophic accidents, burning brides, corruption, misery, and scandal: Mysore, October 15. The mention of the word donkey led to a heated debate among the rival political leaders in the MUDA meeting, here this morning. The trouble started when MLC Mr. Y. Mahesh (JD) objected to MLA Mr. A. S. Guruswamy (Congress) who repeatedly asked the Commissioner Mr. Jayaram whether the tenders pertaining to consultant agency would be finalised within a month. Mr. Guruswamy strongly reacted saying that the JD MLC had challenged his common sense. Without a common sense, more than two-and-half lakh voters would not have elected him to the Assembly. MLC Mr. Mahesh added fuel to the fury when he said that “people vote even for donkeys in democracy.” This led to a furor with MLA Mr. Shankaralingegowda and MLC Mr. Ramesh joining Mr. Guruswamy to demand an apology from Mr. Mahesh for calling elected representatives as donkeys. Mr. Mahesh argued that the MLAs, instead of demanding apology, should clarify whether the “common sense” was an unparliamentary word.

  Everyone in India, like me, the star of his own drama.

  In the afternoons, I read novels and napped.

  I passed day after day like this in the peculiar and uniquely Indian timelessness. I began doing yoga in the morning, at the little school on Hospital Road. There was a famous yoga school in Mysore too, but I avoided it. It attracted all the Westerners who had for some reason dropped out of life, and I didn’t want to hear them talk about the Eightfold Path, and I didn’t want to answer questions about how I had joined their ranks.

  How did they know that I’d contaminated the investigation? They knew that I’d spoken to three people. One of them must have betrayed me. Or had I been under surveillance that whole time? God knows, I wasn’t gifted at spotting surveillance, but there was no one but Iris, me, and the teapot in that room. Was the Mongolian waiter an informant?

  Had Iris told Stan what I’d said? Had Iris told Brad? Had Iris told Janet and Nancy? But why? Why would Iris betray me, her best friend? Iris had a grudge the size of the Annapurna against the CIA—why would she inform on me? It wasn’t possible that Iris was still working for them, was it? That she hadn’t really been fired? I thought about it: Coca-Cola’s headquarters were in Atlanta, not Washington. A year of training, then off to Europe—perhaps it was all an elaborate scheme to put Iris under deeper cover? I’d never really understood why they fired her. She was a good spy.

  Could Stan have been the one who told them I had contaminated the investigation? He had the motivation, of course. After I left him, he could have gone back to Janet and Nancy and told them that I had spoken to him. Had he made a lucky guess in assuming I had spoken to Iris? Had he recruited Iris to his side? Had he recruited Brad? How did he know about Brad? He couldn’t possibly have known. But Stan always knew about things—he knew all the gossip about the Agency’s senior ranks, who was up, who was down. He had ways of finding things out. Had someone seen Brad and me together? Had Stan’s paranoia been aroused when I told him I was off to play a game of soccer? I’d wondered why he didn’t seem suspicious; it wasn’t like him.

  If he had figured out what I was doing—my God, he was good. He deserved to work there. If he still did. If I hadn’t succeeded in destroying him.

  I thought about trying to restart my career in Oriental studies. I bought a notebook and took a few desultory notes about the gopuram of the Shweta Varahaswamy temple. I spent a few afternoons in the manuscript room of the Oriental Research Institute.

  Sometimes I wandered to one of the luxury hotels in the center of the city and sunned myself by the pool, where questions of my entitlement to do so were never posed, because I was white. I met a South African backpacker by that pool, another impostor, young and vital and hard-bodied, muscles rippling over his perfectly flat abdomen. He was only nineteen. He was driving a motorcycle through India and had nothing interesting whatsoever to say and no anxieties about anything. He was serenely confident in his youth and beauty, untroubled by any incertitude about himself or anyone else, devoid of deviousness.

  He took me to the Mysore wildlife sanctuary on his motorcycle. I rode with him through fields of sugarcane, my arms around his waist, hands on that hard young stomach as he flexed and eased around the turns. We arrived and
it was beautiful and savage; great plumed egrets rose on the tips of their feet from the mist and ferns, spreading enormous ivory wings and beating them gently against the hot, perfumed jungle air. He told me that he had “never been with an older woman before,” and I told him nothing at all.

  At first I thought about Stan all day, every day, wondering what had really happened and where everything had gone. I turned it over endlessly in my mind, examining it from every angle. I would come back to the place I had started: Even if it hadn’t been Stan, I knew it could have been: Stan was capable of such a thing, and surely that was the essential point. And then, my emotions reversing midcourse, I would be consumed with uncertainty and regret and shame for judging a man who had loved me so much with no evidence beyond a coincidence of dates and the expression on a bitter woman’s face.

  I missed him. I missed him for longer than I had ever thought I would. I missed watching him take careful pride in his fish tank. I missed him holding me in the morning as we lay sleepily under the covers for just five more minutes. Despite everything, in the end I loved him.

  I wondered if Brad had informed Janet and Nancy that I had contaminated the investigation. Could I have so misjudged him? Was Brad a double all along? The idea seemed ludicrous. I thought about his open, trusting face. I had approached him, not vice versa. But perhaps, as a security officer, he had been trained to recognize a pitch and he had seen right through me, gone right to Janet and Nancy, and cooperated with them. Brad knew that I had told Stan. He was close to Iris. It was his job to keep CIA employees on the straight and narrow.