“Well, he did single-handedly destroy diplomatic relations between the United States and Tanzania.” Erica broke into a new fit of giggles.
“How?” I gasped.
“He was trying to give the president’s wife a compliment, but he botched his Swahili and ended up telling her she smelled like a diseased wildebeest.”
That was just the beginning. Now that Erica finally had someone to confide in, the stories poured out of her: how Alexander had almost caused the political collapse of Thailand; how he’d triggered a tribal war in the Congo; how he’d come within seconds of initiating a nuclear strike on France. Each tale of his incompetence was more shocking than the last, and yet, through it all, we couldn’t stop laughing. (Erica did dead-on impersonations of Alexander, the principal, and everyone else in the intelligence community.) After half an hour I hurt more from laughing than I had hurt after being attacked by ninjas.
I could have happily spent the rest of the night up there, listening to Erica’s stories, but sadly, duty called. After relating how Alexander had once lost a briefcase full of military secrets in a Tokyo karaoke lounge, Erica glanced out the window and immediately shifted from being a normal fifteen-year-old girl to the Ice Queen again. “Looks like they’re admitting defeat. It’s time to go.”
The enemy teams had regrouped on the eastern side of the Reflecting Pool by the World War II Memorial. Even I could see them now. They weren’t making any attempt to hide; they simply milled among a few other tourists willing to brave the cold. Erica whipped out a pair of binoculars, but they were of no use; the frigid weather gave our enemies an excuse to wrap their faces in scarves.
A van pulled up at the curb. The men jumped in and sped away.
Erica turned to me. “By the way, everything I’ve told you tonight is completely confidential. Say one word of it and I’ll destroy you.”
She started for the stairs. But while she was trying to be her usual, distant self, I’d noticed a hint of regret in her eyes. As though she’d wished she could have stayed up there, dishing dirt on her father and laughing for the rest of the night as well.
I followed her down into the dark shaft of the monument. “Have you ever thought of telling all this to someone important?” I asked. “Someone who could take Alexander out of circulation before he does any more damage?”
Erica shook her head. “They’d never believe it. My father has covered his tracks too well. And he has friends in very high places. They’d just dismiss it all as the ramblings of a teenage girl with daddy issues. And then I could kiss my career good-bye.” Erica grew so downcast as she said this, it seemed as if it wasn’t mere speculation on her part, but as though she spoke from experience.
“Maybe you wouldn’t have to share the information,” I offered. “Maybe it could come from another source. Like me.”
Erica gave me one of her rare, unexpected smiles, but she shook her head. “I don’t think it’d work out so well for you, either. Besides, we have bigger fish to fry for now.”
I nodded, although with every step toward the bottom of the monument, I grew more reluctant to leave it. First, there was a decent chance the enemy had only pretended to leave to lure us out of hiding. But perhaps more significantly, this was the one place Erica had ever felt comfortable opening up to me. I had little doubt that, once we left, she’d shut me out again.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Back to campus.”
I froze halfway down the stairs. “I was just abducted from campus! From the safest bunker there!”
“That’s exactly why we’re heading back. You think the director of the CIA would let that happen twice? You’re gonna have more security than the president.”
“Then maybe we should go to the CIA directly. To see the director himself.”
“No,” Erica said. “We’re going to see the one person we can trust.”
IMPERSONATION
CIA Academy of Espionage
Faculty Housing
February 10
0200 hours
It took us a long time to work our way back to the academy. We returned via an extremely indirect route, zigzagging back and forth across the city, using the subway, cabs, and our feet, constantly checking over our shoulders to see if we were being followed.
When we were finally only a block from the campus, I saw to my relief that there were CIA agents posted everywhere around it. Three manned the main gate, still alert despite the late hour, guzzling coffee and blowing into their hands to keep warm.
I started toward them, but Erica held me back. “Not so fast.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked, concerned. “They’re on our side, aren’t they?”
“Don’t look so worried. They’re safe. But the moment they see you, they probably have orders to whisk you right off to the principal’s office for a debriefing—and all they’ll do there is pump you full of lies. If we want the truth about what happened tonight, we’ll have to get it ourselves.”
We rounded the campus until we came to a bank on the far side of the street. We entered the ATM kiosk, and Erica typed a PIN on one of the machines. Steel curtains instantly dropped over the window, obscuring us from view, and then the ATM swung free from the wall, revealing a hidden staircase beyond. The most surprising thing about this was how unsurprising I found it. At this point, I would have been shocked to enter a building with Erica and not find a hidden passageway.
The stairs connected to the maze of subterranean tunnels under the campus, only there was another security door to pass through to access it. “This is the only route from the tunnels that goes off campus,” Erica explained. “Thus, it’s extremely classified.”
“So, of course, you know about it,” I said.
Erica only smiled in response.
She led me through the underground maze without hesitation, as though she’d committed every hall and intersection of it to memory. Eventually, we climbed a staircase and emerged from behind the snack machine in a building I’d never been inside before. We were in the main lobby of what appeared to be a dormitory, only nicer. The room was cozy and inviting, if a bit threadbare. Leather couches were arranged before a still-smoldering fire. The walls were lined with books. It had the comforting smell of pipe tobacco and weapon lubricating oil.
“Faculty housing?” I asked. Many of the professors still lived at home, though a few were known to have residence at the academy.
Erica nodded, then led me up another flight to a short corridor with only four doors off it. She used her own key to let us into one of them.
The faculty apartments were much nicer than our dorms—although that wasn’t saying much. There were prison cells nicer than our dorms. This one was a well-appointed single bedroom with a living room and kitchenette. It was tremendously messy, however, with newspapers strewn everywhere and half-drunk glasses of water teetering on any available surface.
Professor Crandall was asleep in an easy chair in front of the television, wearing a moth-eaten terry-cloth robe over striped pajamas, a racing form across his lap. When we entered, he snapped awake with a start and looked about, disoriented. “Is that you, Thelma?” he asked, sounding more than a little senile. “Back from Tuscaloosa already?”
“You can drop the old coot act,” Erica said. “Ripley’s cool.”
Instantly, Crandall became someone else entirely. His standard slightly confused gaze sharpened, his posture straightened, and he seemed, for the first time in my experience, to know exactly what was going on around him. “Right. I suspect you’re here to find out how mucked up everything is, then.”
This surprised me. “Hold on,” I said. “Your entire personality—the whole doddering professor thing—is an act?”
“Of course.” Crandall sounded slightly offended. “The best way to stay in the loop is to let everyone believe you’re totally out of it. You have no idea how much information people spill right in front of you when they think you’re a drooling idiot. Plus, it throws off
your enemies too, and I’ve racked up my share of those over the years. They tend to underestimate you when they think you’re not playing with a full deck.” He tossed aside the racing form, revealing the cocked and loaded semiautomatic pistol that had been resting in his lap. “Would either of you care for some tea?”
“I’d love some Orange Zinger if you’ve got it,” Erica said.
“Make it two,” I said.
Crandall hopped out of his chair and scooted to the kitchenette. Now that he wasn’t putting on an act, he moved like a man fifty years younger, as spry as anyone in my class. “Erica, I assume from your presence here that you’ve cleaned up after your father again,” he asked.
“Yes,” Erica replied. “Did anyone important notice?”
“That he royally screwed up?” Crandall said. “Certainly not. He’s got the big boys eating out of his hand. One of the agents from the secure room got a bit suspicious, though—Fincher, I think—so your father pinned the blame squarely on him and came out looking pristine, as usual. They’ll probably give him another medal for it . . . once they learn Ripley here is alive, of course.”
“But they don’t know that yet, do they?” I asked.
“No, they don’t.” Crandall chuckled. “I suspect the higher-ups are all really freaking out right now.”
“What’s the fallout?” Erica asked.
“Pretty heavy.”
Crandall plopped tea bags in three mugs. “There’s never been an abduction here before. At least three separate internal investigations have been ordered already. And platoons of agents have been mobilized to track down Mr. Ripley. It’s like D-day. The head of the CIA bought your little ruse about Jackhammer whole hog and is terrified of what would happen if it fell into the wrong hands. I quite think he’s forgotten it was his idea to falsify Ripley’s crypto credentials in the first place.”
“Then maybe I ought to let them know I’m all right,” I said.
“In a rush to be interrogated, are you?” Crandall poured hot water into the mugs. “Because that’s what will happen the moment you show your face. You’ll be tossed in a holding cell and grilled six ways from Sunday.”
I frowned. “Couldn’t they just ask me nicely?”
“Perhaps, but this way lets them cover their asses,” Erica explained. “The last thing the administration wants is for you to show up here looking like a hero for escaping the enemy and then telling the whole student body the truth about what happened tonight. They need time to do damage control and establish their own version of the story, one in which they don’t seem like such idiots that they needed a teenaged girl to rescue you.”
“So why don’t you rest up first?” Crandall handed me the tea and proffered a plate of homemade chocolate chip cookies as well.
I sampled one. It was easily the best thing I’d eaten at spy school. “This is delicious.”
“The secret is, I add a pinch of coconut flakes,” Crandall said proudly. “Now then, it probably behooves us to do a bit of interrogation ourselves. To get an idea of whom we’re dealing with here. Can you tell me anything about your abductors, Benjamin? What they looked like, sounded like . . . even smelled like?”
“Not really,” I admitted. “I was unconscious with a hood over my head most of the time I was with them. All I know is, they were listening to sports radio. In English.”
Crandall cocked a bushy eyebrow, intrigued. “The prevailing theory right now, based upon the chatter that was picked up, is that our enemy is Arabic. Are you suggesting that might be erroneous?”
“Possibly,” I said. “Though it’s possible that my abductors just like sports. There’s not many radio stations here that broadcast in Arabic. And right after Erica jumped on the roof of the van, one of the bad guys spoke in a language I didn’t know.”
“Could it have been some form of Arabic?” Crandall asked.
“I can’t say,” I admitted sadly. “I didn’t get to hear much. Erica knocked them all unconscious pretty quickly.”
“She tends to do that.” Crandall gave Erica a pleased smile and seated himself back in his easy chair with a cup of tea. “What about you, dear? What were your impressions?”
“They certainly looked Arabic,” Erica said. “But I was kind of busy trying not to get killed by them to ask where they were from. Ben’s point about the radio is interesting. Maybe they were merely trying to look like Arabs to throw the CIA off their scent. Same goes for broadcasting the chatter in Arabic.”
“Why’d they even broadcast the chatter at all?” I asked.
Crandall looked at me curiously. “Do you find something odd about that?”
“Yes,” I replied. “Why alert the CIA to the fact that they were coming after me? If they knew the campus so well, why not just sneak in and grab me in the middle of the night?”
Crandall turned to Erica and arched his brows again. “He’s smarter than you thought,” he said.
Erica shrugged. “He’s getting better.”
Crandall returned his attention to me. “You make a good point. But consider this: The campus was already crawling with agents. The enemy had a limited amount of time to get you, and they couldn’t be sure where you were at any given moment. But with the tip-off, they knew exactly where you’d be: Inside the security room.”
“That still doesn’t take care of all the agents,” I said. “Not unless the enemy knew there was going to be a diversion, and they couldn’t have possibly known Mike was coming here. I didn’t even know he was coming.”
As I spoke, however, something occurred to me. I didn’t do a very good job of hiding it. Crandall and Erica both sat forward.
“What is it?” the professor asked.
“Do you still have that Post-it note?” I asked Erica.
She withdrew it from her utility belt, still in the plastic evidence bag. “This is from the van they used to abduct Ben,” she informed Crandall.
I took it from her. There on the Post-it was the number 70,200. Exactly as I’d remembered. I’d simply needed to see it again to make sure my mind wasn’t playing tricks on me.
“They did know Mike was coming,” I said.
Erica sat down next to me. “How can you tell?”
It was the first time I’d known something that she hadn’t. I probably should have milked it, but I was in too big of a hurry to impress her. “It’s a time. Though, instead of writing it in hours and minutes, they wrote it in seconds. Probably to keep anyone from realizing it’s a time. Seventy thousand two hundred seconds after midnight is seven thirty in the evening.”
“Exactly the time your friend arrived on campus.” Crandall slapped the arm of his chair. “You’re positive about that?” He started to do the math on a piece of paper.
“No need for that,” Erica told him. “Ben’s cryptography skills might be fake, but his math skills are the real deal.”
Crandall set down his pencil. “So they plant the chatter and get the CIA to put you right where they want you. Then they tell your friend to come see you at exactly seven thirty to divert the CIA.”
“How?” I asked.
“Figure that out and you might just find our mole,” Erica said. “We need to talk to your pal.”
“Wait. Where is Mike?” Even as I asked it, I was angry I hadn’t thought of it long before. I’d been so wrapped up in my own plight that night, I’d completely forgotten that my best friend had experienced some terrifying things as well. The last I’d seen of Mike, he’d been staring down the barrel of fifty guns at once. Mike was no stranger to run-ins with authority, but this one still must have scared him stiff.
“Last I heard, he was incarcerated,” Crandall said.
“They put him in jail?” I asked, upset.
“No.” The professor raised a hand, signaling me to relax. “They’re only questioning him. But given the circumstances, I’d say it’ll take him quite some time to prove his innocence. For all we know, they’re still working on him.”
I shuddered, figuring th
at wouldn’t be fun for Mike at all. “And then what happens to him?”
“Probably a full-scale whitewash,” Erica said.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“They lie to him,” Crandall replied. “The most elaborate lie he’s ever encountered, to allay any suspicion he has about this place. They’ll tell him it really is a science academy, but it was being leased to the Marines for practice and he stumbled across their exercises . . . or there was an FBI sting operation taking place . . . or who knows what. They’ll do whatever it takes to sell the story, even drag in the chairman of the armed forces in if they have to.”
“And if Mike doesn’t buy it?” I knew my best friend well. No one had less respect for authority than he did. I was beginning to think that was a pretty healthy belief system.
Crandall frowned. “Let’s just say it’s in his best interests to buy it.”
I sat forward, worried. “They’ll kill him?”
“No,” Crandall said. “The people who run the CIA might be incompetent, paranoid, and borderline insane, but they’re not psychotic. They’ll simply do whatever it takes to make him forget what he’s seen. There are several different methods, but none of them is a day at the beach.”
I slumped back into my chair, wishing I’d never heard of spy school. It was bad enough that I’d ended up in serious trouble, but at least I’d volunteered for service. Now my best friend had been drawn into danger simply because he wanted to take me to a party at Elizabeth Pasternak’s house. He’d tried to do something nice for me—and was suffering for it. I began to understand why Erica kept all human contact to a minimum; her family had been spies long enough for her to know that, if you got close to someone, they could get hurt.
“So the enemy is running circles around the CIA,” I said, “And instead of doing something about it, they’re busy working over Mike.”
“Oh, it’s worse than that,” Crandall said. “They’re considering initiating Project Omega.”
I had never seen Erica look truly concerned about anything until that moment. She wheeled on Crandall, eyes wide. “Because of this? Why?”