THIRTY
Before he became president, General George
Washington was said to have warned his countrymen about a great
menace to its freedom in the coming years. A “shadowy angel”
allegedly visited Washington at Valley Forge, and told him of a
“dark cloud” that would envelop “America in its murky folds. Sharp
flashes of lightning passed through it at intervals, and I heard
the smothered groans and cries of the American people.” The omen is
generally meant to warn Americans that the country can never be
defeated by outside threats, but could be destroyed by an enemy
within.
—Presidential Secrets: Offbeat Facts About
America’s Founding Fathers
Helen got to work at nine, red-eyed and
surly. She passed through the regular corridors of the Federal
Building on Wilshire, on her way to the conference room. People
smiled vaguely at her, like any coworker they only sort of
recognized. She’d been based here for a year, but was still
invisible.
Her creds said DHS, but her agency had long ago
dropped off any official organization chart or government budget.
The highest-ranking official in the building didn’t even approach
her security clearance. With a phone call, she could order anything
short of a nuclear strike.
Cade thought she was CIA. That was true, a long
time ago. Now she was something else entirely.
She’d heard rumors about an agency behind the
Agency, doing the jobs that couldn’t be exposed to the light.
Black-budget, black ops.
But she had no idea of the size or scope.
When the CIA fought the Cold War, Helen’s employer
ran guns and drugs and laundered money to pay for it. Nazi
scientists got safe passage in exchange for their discoveries.
Mouthy foreign leaders ended up dead, and friendly dictators were
installed.
The official leaders of the CIA appeared before
congressional committees and denied any knowledge of
assassinations, torture or bribes. The president could hold his
head up high while he defended the United States.
In the meantime, her bosses did the real work, the
stuff that could never be exposed, and descended further and
further into the dark. Even the conspiracy theorists would have
been stunned to realize what the Company had actually done over the
years. All those half-baked ideas about JFK and Roswell and AIDS
were nothing compared to the truth.
In time, her employer had evolved into something
else, like those fish turned into eyeless horrors by centuries in
underground rivers. It grew new appendages, developed different
organs and, eventually, became totally separate from its daylight
ancestors. It no longer answered to any elected official. It made
its own calls, and forged alliances with other things, out there in
the night. . . .
Until it stood tall on its own legs, and started
carrying out its own agenda. The Company still believed in American
supremacy, but only as long as it didn’t interfere with the
Company’s supremacy. The War on Terror was the perfect cover.
Operatives who hadn’t been seen in years were suddenly back in
their old offices, giving orders and taking names.
But, like Helen, no one really knew who was in
charge.
It had no official name, but everyone called it the
Shadow Company. Helen liked it. It fit.
They were simply there, right next to the other
government agencies, using them as cover, always in step. Just like
a shadow.
SHE ENTERED the conference room, then unstrapped
her 9mm SIG Sauer pistol and set it on the table.
“What do we have?” she asked.
Her two Shadow Company operatives looked back at
her from across the table. Shadow Company units operated like
terrorist cells—small and mobile, hidden within the larger
structure of other organizations.
To her right was Ken. He was as blandly handsome as
the doll that shared his name. He’d joined the CIA at the same time
she did, went through training with her. She’d been recruited to
the Shadow Company long before him, but when she was given a chance
to bring him aboard, she didn’t hesitate. She knew he’d do anything
she told him.
She remembered back at the Farm, the CIA training
program, someone had called them Ken and Barbie the first time they
were paired for an exercise. During hand-to-hand practice, she
punched that guy so hard he lost a tooth. The nickname didn’t catch
on.
The other was assigned to her without her input.
The Company, she was reminded repeatedly, was not big on democracy.
They gave her Reyes because they wanted her to have someone who
knew the area.
Pushing forty now, he was local, a former cop who
had been bounced out for massive corruption. Raised in East L.A.,
it turned out he’d never given up his gang affiliation when he put
on LAPD’s uniform. You could see the beginning of a prison tat
under the collar of his button-down shirt.
“How are you feeling?” she asked him. His arm was
in a sling, a souvenir from last night’s encounter with Cade.
“Fine,” Reyes said.
That was the limit of her concern for Reyes. “And
we delivered the package to the new address?” she asked.
The men looked at each other. By some unseen
referendum, Ken was elected to speak.
“We had some concerns about that,” he said
carefully.
Helen frowned. Both men held their breath. She was
not someone you wanted angry.
“What concerns?”
“This is going to cause some blowback. Are we
prepared for that? We’re risking some exposure.”
Helen’s face grew tight with rage, but her voice
was still controlled. “Are you telling me we did not deliver the
package?”
“No, no, that’s not what I said. Not at all,” Ken
said. “The package was delivered. Checked everything twice. It’s in
place. Ready to go.”
“You’re sure?” Helen asked.
Furious nodding.
“Okay,” she said. “As long as it was delivered.”
The anger drained away, and the men relaxed.
“You can go,” she said. “I have things to
do.”
They rose and moved to the door. “Keep an eye on
Konrad,” she said. “I don’t want him left unguarded.”
“But . . . it’s daytime,” Ken said.
“Thanks for the update,” Helen said. “Tomorrow
we’ll work on basic math. Until I say otherwise, you stay on
Konrad.”
The door closed. Helen savored the peace and quiet
that only came in the complete absence of stupid questions.
HELEN HOLT’S CIA training officer said this in her
final evaluation: “If I had just a dozen more recruits with balls
like Holt’s, we could rule the world again.”
She would have had that framed, if it wasn’t
classified.
The CIA put her out in the field almost
immediately. She excelled out there. She was smart and ambitious.
Nobody really knew how ambitious. Or even how smart.
Helen had flown past all the usual checks and
balances for a CIA operative. She knew the right answers to give on
the personality tests, had in fact taken the MMPI until she could
deliver whatever score she wanted. The CIA likes a little
viciousness in its recruits, but just the right amount. She was
within all the right tolerances.
It wasn’t until two years into her career, when she
came back alone from a four-man mission in Montreal, that she
raised any warning flags for anyone in the system. The other three
operatives on her team—all senior to her—had been killed while
watching a radical Muslim cleric believed to be a recruiter for
al-Qaeda.
They put her in guest quarters at Langley—not a
prisoner, not exactly—while they debriefed her. Different men
questioned her, over and over and over, checking her story for
holes.
She wasn’t afraid. She told herself this was
standard agency procedure whenever anyone died in the field. But it
was exhausting. Fifteen, twenty-hour sessions, the same
mind-numbing interrogation the entire time. Fifteen minutes here
and there for a break. Then back to the questions.
That night, like every other night, she was out as
soon as her head hit the pillow in her antiseptic dorm room.
And then she was standing, naked, in a pool of
harsh light in a dark room.
She could barely see anything outside the glare of
the uncovered bulb over her head, but she knew someone was out
there. In the shadows just a few feet away, a group sat behind
desks. Watching her. Examining her body in a curious, sexless
way.
It had the unreal quality of a similar dream, the
one where you show up at school for finals, only you’re not wearing
anything, and you haven’t studied, and you can’t find your
classes.
But this was worse somehow. Her feet were cold. She
wanted to retreat from the light, to cover herself, but she
couldn’t move. She looked down and saw she was standing in a circle
of painted lines on the stone floor. It was made up of odd
symbols—like an alphabet of a language she’d never seen
before.
One of the people in the shadows spoke to her.
“We’re considering you for a very special program, Helen,” he said.
She was pretty sure it was a he. She still couldn’t make out faces,
but when he leaned forward, she saw the dull white of the collar
and cuffs of his oxford shirt, underneath his black suit and tie.
Dim light reflected off his wire-rimmed glasses.
“We’re impressed with what we’ve seen so far,” he
said. “But we need to ask you a few questions.”
“Who are you? What’s going on?”
She heard paper rustling. The man in the shadows
continued as if she’d never spoken.
“When you were four years old,” he said, “you
stayed with your grandmother. She had a bird she named—rather
unimaginatively—Petey. What happened to Petey?”
Helen laughed. This had to be anxiety, mixed with
too much fast food and coffee. She didn’t remember any damn—
And then she did. It came back to her as vividly as
daylight.
“I don’t know,” she said.
Her right arm suddenly sang with pain, like a razor
blade slicing cleanly up to her shoulder. She gasped for air, and
would have dropped to her knees, but something held her in place.
It didn’t stop the tears from rolling out of her eyes.
You weren’t supposed to be able to feel pain in
your dreams, Helen thought. She was sure of that.
“Please don’t lie to us again,” the man said
mildly. “Now. What happened to the bird?”
“I killed it,” Helen said, and it all came blurting
out. “She loved that goddamn thing more than me. It bit me, and all
I wanted to do was pet it, it bit me, and she wouldn’t do
anything about it, so I got one of the little green pellets out of
the rat poison box, and the greedy little shit took that
right out of my hand—”
He cut her off. “Thank you. That’ll do.”
But the memory stuck in Helen’s mind: the stiff
little body of the bird on the bottom of the cage, her
grandmother’s tears, her mother taking her home early.
Her grandmother never had her to stay again.
“Next,” the man said, and the images vanished.
“What happened to your first lover?”
Helen didn’t try to lie this time. In fact, she was
still a little proud of how she’d handled herself back then.
She was a freshman in college, saving herself for
the right guy, he was a TA, and it was all so predictable. She was
in love, she thought, or something close to it, until she saw him
exit another dorm room one morning, still wearing yesterday’s
clothes. She went to a lawyer, the dean and the department head, in
that order. In the space of two days, he was fired and expelled,
and facing the threat of criminal charges. She didn’t have to pay
another dime in tuition.
“Thank you, Helen,” the man said, stopping her
again. “I meant, what happened to him after that?”
“He killed himself. Pills.”
“Are you at all sorry?”
“No,” Helen said, and felt the same flush of
triumph she did when she’d heard the news years before. “He was
weak.”
“I see.” The sound of a pen, scratching notes. “So,
what really happened in Montreal?”
Helen knew she couldn’t tell the truth. Not to this
one.
As if sensing her reluctance, her arm began to
throb with pain again.
Helen’s mouth was dry. She swallowed hard. “Start
at the beginning,” the man prompted.
“We were there to watch a target named Khalil
Haj-Imad. He’s gotten a little following in the past couple years.
Young Muslims. Kids, really. Six months ago, some former members of
his mosque turned up in pieces in Iraq, after they strapped on
suicide vests and tried to get inside the Green Zone—”
“Yes, yes.” Impatient now. “So what did you
do?”
“I wasn’t given much to do,” Helen said, unable to
keep the resentment from creeping into her voice. “I maintained
communications while the senior members of the team”—arrogant
pricks, she thought—“tracked the target’s movements and evaluated
the chances of removing him from the field for questioning.”
“You disagreed with that?”
“I felt I could convince him one-on-one. He liked
blondes.”
“I see. Continue.”
“Then our cover was blown. All three of the other
field agents were killed.”
The images came back to her, in brilliant detail.
Corman, the lead operative, half his head blown away, his brains
all over a wall in a coffeehouse. Marta, her throat slit, her body
found in an alley ten blocks from the mosque. And David—whom she
kind of liked, actually—dragged from the wheel of his van, later
found beaten to death on a back road.
They didn’t get her, because she was safe in their
rented room, behind a wall of computers and surveillance equipment.
She was on a flight out of Canada, back to the U.S., when her team
failed to check in. The worst she’d had to face was a cranky
Customs inspector.
“How was their cover blown?”
“I don’t know . . .” she began, and this time the
pain did drop her to her knees.
She woke a second later—she’d never passed out in a
dream before—with drool strung from her mouth.
“Strike two, Helen,” the man in the dark said.
“There won’t be a third. Do I need to repeat the question?”
“I did it,” Helen said. It almost felt like a
relief to get it out there. “I was sick of being stuck in the
background. I thought I could move out front if Marta’s cover was
compromised.”
“How did you do it without your superiors finding
out?”
“That was the easy part.” A stupid surge of pride
here. “I snapped a quick shot of her in the street with a
disposable cell phone that had a camera. Uploaded that in an
Internet café on a lunch break. Sent it through an anonymizer in
Finland, bounced it back and forth through some message boards, and
then made sure a Jihadi website picked it up. She was blown. Never
even knew it.”
“Why would you risk another operative’s life like
that?”
Helen considered lying again and then decided fuck
it, it’s just a dream, right? And it would feel good to say it out
loud, finally.
“I hated that bitch,” she said, her lips pulled
back in a snarl. “Just because she had dark skin, they put her in
the mosque, make her out like she’s Marta Fucking Hari and
had me answering the phones, for Christ’s sake. I knew I could have
gotten him. We’d seen him go to the strip clubs. He would have
followed me anywhere.”
“So you got her killed.”
“I didn’t think the entire team would get
blown.”
“Still. They did. Three people dead. Because you
felt . . . what? Professionally slighted?”
She looked down, feeling the eyes on her again.
“Yes.”
“Last question, then,” the man said. “Are you
sorry?”
She looked up, defiant. “No,” she said. “They
should have listened to me. None of it would have happened if they
had just done what I said.”
Another image flashed in her mind. Helen herself.
In junior high. Alone, as she was every day, despite her clothes,
her hair, her family’s money, her shiny good looks. As if the
others could sense the hole inside her, and they stayed well clear,
afraid to fall.
The man looked at the other figures in the gloom,
then nodded. “Thanks for your time,” he said. “We’ll be in
touch.”
Helen woke up immediately, still in her bed in
Langley.
She turned on the light and examined her arm. There
wasn’t a mark on it, but it hurt like hell.
They came for her the next morning, right after the
final Board of Inquiry. The man with the wire-rimmed glasses, the
one she would come to call Control, gave her a new set of
credentials.
Then her training began for real. Her new job
turned out to be far more demanding than the CIA. And far more
rewarding.
It only took her a little while to realize what
happened in Montreal wasn’t a black mark to her new employers. Far
from it.
The Shadow Company liked survivors. That was really
the only reason they recruited her. They didn’t care about her
schoolgirl crush on fascism, or the twigged brain chemistry that
made her believe other human beings were expendable. Those were
bonuses, yes, but they weren’t essential.
Bottom line, they wanted Helen on their side
because she would do anything to gain what she wanted. And she
hated—absolutely hated—anyone or anything who got in her way.
They could use that.