by Chris Hauty
“Are you being obtuse on purpose, Mr. Wilde?”
He smiled with real affection for Hayley, having developed that affinity for her long before this day, while being one of several individuals working up her background dossier. There was much to admire in what Wilde discovered about Hayley, and even more to inspire a rooting interest in her. “Let’s meet again, dinner off base perhaps might be best, and I’ll explain more completely what I’m proposing.”
“I’m busy, sir.”
“Get unbusy. This is important.” Not even with her years in the military had Hayley been addressed with such command.
Wilde selected a Red Lobster in Round Rock, fifty-three miles to the south of Fort Hood, as a venue for dinner. Their privacy was reasonably assured. Both Hayley and Wilde ordered seafood salads and sparkling water. Wilde, or whatever his real name was, did almost all of the talking. First he laid out the general outlines of the group he represented, describing a loose affiliation of individuals who shared lifelong government service and extreme patriotism. Most were retired from those official offices, which included former presidents, Supreme Court justices, NSA and CIA directors, senators, and military brass. None maintained those powerful positions at the present time, thereby guaranteeing their motivations were pure and absent the typical self-serving incentives of their active counterparts.
There was no name for this group. Nor was there a leader or hierarchy. Few of them had ever met one another, their identities hidden behind avatars and pseudonyms. Communication between participants and conferences in general were facilitated by ultra-secure, cloud-based intranet run from a server farm in north central Canada. Membership to the group had been closed for more than two years, coinciding with the rise of Richard Monroe’s political career. Though the group had no name, Wilde and other members referred to themselves as Publius, a nod to the Federalist Party formed by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay in support of the not-yet-ratified US Constitution. The essence of their effort and entire reason for being was the protection of the historic document and its tenets, no matter the origin of any threat to its preservation.
Hayley did not ask what all of this background information had to do with her. Wilde moved quickly on to that topic without her prompting. She had been prescreened and selected for inclusion in a corps of similarly capable individuals who could be called on to act, always covertly, as agents of Publius, operatives to combat current and future threats to the nation and its Constitution.
“I’m not exactly sure what it is you’re asking me to do, Mr. Wilde.”
“Put in your papers immediately. Your discharge will be approved within thirty-six hours, I can tell you with complete certainty. You’ll then join other agent candidates at a facility in the Northwest, where you will undergo extensive training to prepare you for future operations. I’m afraid that’s all I can really tell you right now, Hayley.”
For several moments, she said nothing in response. Then she asked, “How soon do you need an answer, Mr. Wilde?”
“Now. Tonight. If you say no, you’ll never see me again. We have confidence in your discretion should you decline to join us.” He paused long enough to take a drink of water. Then he carefully placed the glass on the table again and locked his gaze on her. “Is that your preference, Hayley? The army? No doubt you can and will do great things there.”
“Less great things. Less vital service.”
“Yes.”
Her answer was firm and immediate. “I will put in my papers first thing tomorrow, sir.”
If he was surprised or inordinately pleased by Hayley’s decision, Wilde did not betray it. He merely nodded and gestured to their server for the check. “A taxi is waiting outside to take you back to Fort Hood.” He stood and very nearly departed without further word or a goodbye. But then he thought better of it and stopped, hands gripping the back of his chair as he looked down at Hayley across the table.
“I told you that you’d never see me again if you chose to stay in the army. I didn’t tell you the same would be true if you chose to join us. Publius has no face. We have no names or positions. For obvious reasons, the entity, such as it exists, is diffuse and rigorously compartmentalized. My job as agent recruiter takes me all over the United States and overseas. Consequently, I’m perpetually on the move. Remember always you have joined an extensive network of citizen patriots whose power lies not in their positions but in their beliefs. America as an idea can be weakened but never defeated. I’ve very much enjoyed getting to know you in this brief time. It’s been my honor to do so. Your efforts on our behalf, while never to be officially recorded, will have every bit the impact of the country’s greatest heroes.”
Somberly, Hayley nodded in acknowledgment. “Thank you, sir.”
Wilde turned and strode out of the restaurant. Hayley watched him go. Visible just beyond the glass doors, a yellow cab idled at the curb. The server came to clear the table and informed Hayley the bill had been settled. On the hour-long taxi ride back home, the West Virginian briefly wondered whether she had made a mistake. How could she ever be certain the shadowy organization she had agreed to join actually shared her same values? How could she perform any due diligence if the individuals giving the orders were hidden behind virtual personae and aliases? Whatever the training she had just agreed to undertake in order to become a covert agent for Publius, Hayley decided an additional priority, of equal importance, would be investigating the identity and true motivations of those individuals she was now obligated to serve.
* * *
NINETY-SIX HOURS AFTER pulling out of the bus station in Killeen, Texas, a different Greyhound bus drops Hayley off at the depot in The Dalles, Oregon, one of the more charming bus stations she has seen in her transcontinental trip. A black passenger van is waiting to collect her. Climbing into the rear of the van, Hayley is gratified to discover she is the only passenger. The driver, a young black man roughly her own age, doesn’t say a single word to her. Road weary, Hayley welcomes the lack of conversation over the course of the eighty-minute drive south.
The landscape in eastern Oregon is dry, brush-covered rolling hills and rugged. In slightly under an hour, the van leaves the two-lane state highway 197 and heads east on an unmarked, intermittently paved road. After seventeen miles through a desolate moonscape, they arrive at what is clearly a recently constructed training camp, complete with prefabricated barracks, classrooms, fitness center, and mess. Firing range and athletic-training fields have been constructed by leveling out a few of the surrounding hills and ravines. There isn’t a proper tree for thirty miles. Any available shade is provided by awnings or hoisted tarps. The date is September 3. The heat is sharp and piercing, totally unlike the soft, moist sauna of Texas. In the days, weeks, and months ahead, a new Hayley will be forged in the furnace of this brutal geography, creating an alloy stronger than its components. Only later will she learn the name given to the spot by state maps is Bakeoven.
Hayley meets the other agent candidates in the mess hall at the evening feed. Thirteen males and females, between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-six, sit at three cafeteria-style dining tables. Similarly recruited from various military and intelligence agencies, they all share an intense idealism for country. Like military pilots in the 1960s chosen for the Gemini space program, the Publius agent candidates are driven by an acute desire to push the envelope, however vaguely their superiors have described that mission. Leaving all notions of military-themed teamwork behind them, competition between the agent candidates is keen, a fact Hayley discovers before she has taken a seat in the mess.
“Sorry. You can’t sit there,” an athletic, female agent candidate tells Hayley as she is about to sit at the only place available at all three tables. Since the earliest days of the training camp’s existence, April Wu, a computer science major who graduated from West Point near the top of her class, has enjoyed an undisputed domination over the ranks. The other candidates continue to eat but watch the unfolding exch
ange with mild interest.
“Why not?” Hayley asks.
“Because you’re new and you don’t know shit.”
Hayley, holding her meal tray out before her, considers the other agent candidate’s statement for a brief moment and then starts to sit anyway. April slides over, effectively taking up two places.
“Uh-uh,” she tells Hayley. “Prove to me you know shit.”
“I don’t have to prove anything to you,” Hayley says.
“Proof positive you don’t know shit.”
Hayley looks to the other ACs seated around the table, their mildly interested expressions clinical and waiting to render judgment.
“Don’t look to them for help. They don’t know only a little less shit than you.”
Hayley turns her gaze back on her tormentor. “Move before I shove this tray up your ass.”
“I’m definitely intrigued to see you try,” April tells her.
Hayley walks to the end of the table and places her tray on some open space there, returning to where April sits. Her nemesis has casually resumed eating her vegetable stir-fry as if having nothing to fear from Hayley’s impending attack. Hayley reaches to haul April off the bench seat from behind and, with seemingly no passage of time, finds herself on her back with the other AC astride her in a shockingly painful submission hold.
“Like I said,” a grinning April whispers into Hayley’s ear. “Doesn’t know shit.”
Hayley grits her teeth against the pain.
“Tap out,” April orders her.
Hayley isn’t about to do any such thing. “Ever hear a pencil break?” she asks. Before the other woman can answer, Hayley wrenches her right hand free, grasps the index finger of April’s left hand, and yanks back hard. The metacarpal bone fractures with an audible crack that causes everyone at the table to wince and groan.
April rolls off Hayley, grimacing against the pain but refusing to so much as whimper. “Sounds pretty much like that,” Hayley tells the other agent candidate before standing to her feet.
* * *
HAYLEY SITS IN the air-conditioned prefab building kitted out as a classroom. An instructor leads the agent candidates through intensive Russian language instruction. Seated at a desk beside Hayley is April Wu, whose index finger has been in a splint for the past two weeks since being fractured. Both women, like the other agent candidates, are completely focused on their instructor. In addition to physical fitness and combat training, other class topics in the coming weeks and months ahead will include criminal law and procedures, advanced criminal investigation, human psychology, interrogation techniques, criminal profiling, and presentations on government and federal policies and procedures. The rivalry between Hayley and April that commenced in the mess hall continues in the classroom. Only one candidate will be selected for the first mission, and the competition for that honor is intense. Five of the ACs have emerged as clear contenders, including Hayley and April, of course. Their grasp of the Russian language is already better than all of the other agent candidates. When the instructor asks for someone to read out loud, in the original Russian, a difficult passage from Mikhail Sholokhov’s And Quiet Flows the Don, Hayley and April vie strenuously for the instructor’s attention. In this case, Hayley is selected to read the passage, and her recitation seems flawless, winning the approval of the class instructor.
When the class ends and the candidates head for the door, however, April gives Hayley a personal critique on her reading. “You’re heavy on your reduction of vowels in the unstressed position, dumbass. Unstressed ‘o’s are pronounced either as ‘a’s …”
“… or as a very weak reduced sound, depending on the position in the word,” Hayley finishes for April. “What you’re failing to acknowledge, hotshot, is that Muscovites tend to reduce their ‘o’s even more. I’m guessing our potential contacts will be something more urban-centric Russian than the average provincial schoolmarm.”
April isn’t about to give up so easily. “You’re a lost cause, Chill. I locked this up the day I arrived. They recruited me out of West Point, second in my class. Face the facts, mental case, I’m simply a higher-caliber human being than you.”
Hayley isn’t rattled. “And here I thought you were going to thank me for being considerate enough to break the finger on your left hand.”
April responds by shooting Hayley’s legs, lifting her up and then slamming her down on the floor of the mobile classroom. They grapple furiously there, the few candidates still in the room continuing out the door because this sparring between April and Hayley is a regular thing. The West Virginian finally gains control of her rival, who stops trying to pass her guard. Both of them are winded from their exertions. “Are you trying to fight me or fuck me?” Hayley asks between gasps for air.
“Is there any difference?” a winded April asks in response.
“Hate to break it to you, baller, but I’m straight.”
“Then I guess it is fighting that we’re doing here.”
Hayley smiles at that one. She releases her submission hold on April and helps her rival to her feet. The two young women continue out the door. April is in a more conciliatory mood. “You’re not a half-bad ground fighter. And maybe you know how to reduce a fucking vowel in Russian, I’ll give you that much,” she tells Hayley as they walk across the sunbaked grassless quad surrounded on all sides by prefab buildings. “But I’m still coming out on top. Whatever the mission, I’m their operative.”
Hayley grins and gives her new friend a wink. “Second at West Point, second at Bakeoven.”
It’s the middle of September. There isn’t a cloud in the pale blue sky. The temperature is ninety-four, with low humidity and even lower wind speed. Hayley has been on-site for two weeks. In response to Richard Monroe’s official nomination to be his party’s candidate for the president of the United States in late August, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped more than five hundred points. Three dozen major newspapers have run editorials condemning Monroe’s nomination, but during the same twenty-four-hour period, in more than ten thousand “news” stories hosted by the complete spectrum of social media platforms, his opponent is accused of crimes and misdemeanors ranging from Satan worship to child murder. Very few Americans, whether civilian or within the government, realize it, but the country is under attack in a manner far more profound than at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
* * *
AFTER SEVERAL MONTHS of intensive training and instruction, as well as continuous physical and psychological evaluations, only six agent candidates remain of the original fourteen. Three males and an equal number of females comprise an accomplished corps of prospective covert agents ready for assignment. April and Hayley stand out even among this elite group, excelling in every single quantifiable aspect of physical and psychological evaluation. Their intense rivalry continues albeit under friendlier auspices. In fact, Hayley has grown as close to April Wu as anyone in her entire life. Though the other four agent candidates continue to strive for selection in the first mission, each knows they are really competing for third position.
Indications that a facility-wide meeting is afoot are apparent from the earliest hours of the first Monday in March. Winter in central Oregon is every bit as harsh as summer, with relentless winds and freezing temperatures. An unmarked helicopter lands just after dawn, not a completely unusual occurrence at Bakeoven, but the presence of several armed private security guards is remarkable. The six agent candidates assemble in the classroom just after ten in the morning. Moments later, facility personnel enter the room as well and find a seat. Instructors, analysts, facility supervisors, and medical staff are all present.
Soon after the facility’s entire resident population has gathered in the classroom, the door opens, and two men and one woman dressed in business clothes enter the room, somber as undertakers. The older of the men, introducing himself with the obvious pseudonym of “Mr. Jones,” starts speaking, focusing on the agent candidates. He has their full attenti
on. The young people realize their moment has come. One of them will be selected for a mission destined to be of enormous national importance. Jones gets directly to the point, informing the assembled recruits that a high-ranking figure in Washington has been determined to be a Russian mole. He will not identify the individual to the group; for obvious security reasons, only the agent candidate selected for the mission will be briefed with that privileged information. Mission details are also left unspecified, with Jones stating merely that the newly minted agent will be tasked with the difficult job of “turning” the Russian mole into an intelligence asset for the United States.
The reaction in the classroom to these frustratingly vague assertions runs the gamut, from irritation to stunned disbelief. Some of those present, both candidates and staff, raise their hands to request more details, particularly regarding the identity of the Russian mole. Having anticipated their frustration, Jones deflects their demands by driving home his primary theme. “Make no mistake, ladies and gentlemen, we are at war. And it is a war we are losing. Our enemy is relentless, brutal, and will not stop its attack until he has utterly destroyed us. We must not lull ourselves into the false belief the Russian Bear can be reasoned with or is capable of mercy. The Bear only knows one thing: to kill his prey and feed off its carcass. He is a vicious, remorseless beast and one which we have every reason to fear. But, with guile and cunning, we can prevail against the Bear. We can fight him, blow for blow, if we employ the same weapons he uses to undermine us. We can win this war.”
When Jones finishes speaking, the rush of questions resumes. Who is the mole? Is the Washington heavyweight an elected or appointed figure? Is he or she in the military or a member of the intelligence community? Jones deflects all of these questions, with the firm conviction he has told his audience all they need to know. Some of the agent candidates betray their irritation with Jones but then back off, not wanting to hurt their standing with the organization. Hayley has remained quiet through the entirety of this question-and-non-answer period but raises her hand after the others have expended themselves and grown compliant.
