Brendan DuBois - Final Winter

‘Excuse me?’ Adrianna said, fork held in mid-air.

‘You heard me. You’re not very talented as a chef.’

‘I’m not?’

He was enjoying the expression on her face but decided to take a bit of mercy on her. ‘No, you’re extremely talented. This is the best meal I’ve had in a long while.’

‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I think.’

‘No, I’m not being a jerk,’ he said. ‘I save that for other times. After a while, Adrianna, Red Lobster or Chili’s or any other variation of a chain restaurant gets to be boring. This is a treat.’

Now Adrianna smiled. ‘Okay, thanks. This time, for real. No thinking.’

‘Very good.’

They ate for a while longer and she said, ‘Ask you a personal question?’

‘Go right ahead.’

‘Why did you become a cop?’

Brian smiled at her. ‘What makes you think I had a choice?’

‘Hmm?’

‘Sorry. Old and no longer so funny joke. You see, being a cop was the family business. Dad was a cop, granddad was a cop, both uncles and a number of cousins were cops. There you go. I got out of high school, worked a couple of jobs here and there, and took the test. There was no real thinking about it. I just did it. That’s all.’

‘Uh’huh.’

He took another bite, chewed and swallowed. ‘All right. That was my boring story. Now it’s your turn. How did you end up being an officer with the CIA?’

‘Very good,’ Adrianna said, rewarding him with another smile.

‘How’s that?’

‘Most people call us agents. We’re not agents. We’re officers.’

‘Yep. And I’m not most people, as you’ve noticed. So. On with your story, boss.’

She shrugged. ‘Not much to it. Went to college after high school — Northwestern. Majored in medieval history. Got good grades but towards the end of my four years came to that chilling conclusion: what use was a medieval-history major? Only thing ahead of me was grad school, and I was getting tired of the school routine. Then the student newspaper ran an advertisement, saying the CIA was recruiting college grads, and I went in for an interview, did an okay job, and got a follow-up phone call a couple of months later. That’s it.’

He shook his head. ‘No, that’s not it.’

‘What?’

‘Good try, boss, but that’s not it. There’s a hell of a jump from being a medieval-history major to entering the CIA. It’s not like dumping all that book learning about the Middle Ages to become a lawyer or an accountant. That’s not it. So. What was it?’

She toyed with a piece of pasta with her fork, looking down at her plate, and then she looked up. ‘Nicely done, detective. Nicely done. You still looking for an answer?’

‘That’s what I do. Ask questions and look for answers. Go on.’

Adrianna carefully put the fork down, like it was a move she had practiced by herself. She dabbed at her lips with a napkin and said, ‘Remember what it was like in the early ‘90s?’

‘Sure. I was there.’

‘Uh-huh. The collapse of the Soviet Union, China coming around to a market economy, peace even breaking out in Central America and parts of the Middle East. It was the “end of history” — remember that? Everyone was going to play nice and everyone was going to adopt the Western ideals of democracy and freedom. Yeah. Right. That’s when I looked at my history and remembered the last time this old globe had a solitary hyperpower, around the time of Christ.’

‘The Romans.’

‘No gold star for that answer, detective, because it was an easy one. So there I was, looking at my beautiful country, and I got scared. I had a sense that history hadn’t gone away, was still out there, ready to bite our ass. That while we were obsessing over who controlled Congress, who got a blow job in the Oval Office, and how many stock options certain dotcommers were getting, serious men with serious grievances were getting ready to do us harm. That was when I decided to respond to that CIA advertisement, and I’ve never regretted it, not once.’

‘And when was this?’

‘A few years before 9/11.’

And what were you doing then?’

‘Classified.’

That made Brian smile, ‘Please, boss…’

Adrianna laughed. ‘Truth be told? Your basic research analyst. That’s all. Then after 9/11… lots of things changed at Langley. Stuff that still isn’t known publicly.’

‘Like to share?’

A small shrug. ‘You know what’s the biggest problem the CIA faces?’

‘A good dental plan?’

Again, he was pleased to see her smile. ‘Actually, we have an excellent dental plan. No, the problem with the CIA is that there’s a huge gap between the management and the officers, whether those in the field, in embassies or in Langley. Whatever work the officers did… we called it the silo effect. Information from different departments and groups would go up to supervisors, without cross-checking, without cross-referencing. Like grain silos on a Kansas plain, reaching up, inaccessible to each other. And that was within the CIA. Within the so-called intelligence community — more like a dysfunctional family than a community, if you ask me — it was even worse, with silos marked NSA, CIA, FBI, National Reconnaissance Office, so forth and so on, reaching up. Before 9/11, I was tasked to an inter-agency group that recommended breaking barriers, designing small, mobile intelligence teams that would have maximum authority and minimal oversight. When our report was done, it was filed and forgotten, and I went back to analyzing crude-oil output in Kazakhstan. Then the planes hit, my name and others were pulled from that group, and there we are. Hopefully, problem solved.’

Brian eyed Adrianna curiously as she talked, sensing something was going on behind those quiet brown eyes. This was the longest he had ever spoken to her, face to face, and he was surprised at how much he was enjoying it. He said, ‘Seems like lots of problems yet to be solved.’

‘Yeah, ain’t that the truth.’

They ate in silence for a while, and he helped her bring the plates and silverware and glassware into the kitchen when they were done. The crockery was rinsed and placed in the dishwasher, and from outside he heard the yelps and squeals of children playing. Through the large living-room window he could see three or four boys and girls on a grassy lawn, playing with large plastic balls and bats. Adrianna stood beside him and folded her arms, watching with him. Something felt out of place inside Brian as he thought about his son Thomas. Growing up without having his boy near him, not being able to teach him those one hundred and one important things — how to play basketball, how to rollerblade, how to correctly hate the Red Sox — sometimes made him clench his fists in anger at the oddest moments. Like right now. He shouldn’t be in Maryland with this attractive and odd woman. He shouldn’t be working with the Feds. He should be home where he belonged, working out the difficulties of his new relationship with Marcy and seeing Thomas as much as possible.

Adrianna said, ‘You know how many places there are in the world where this can’t happen? Where children can’t go outside and play without fear of being shot or bombed or stolen? Plenty of places. Plenty.’

She motioned to the lights coming on in the surrounding condo units. ‘There are people out there who have put their trust in us, Brian. Who trust us to protect them and their children. Trust us so that they can wash up their dinner dishes and send their children out to play without worrying that they will be kidnapped, or blown to pieces by a suicide bomber, or die choking to death from something invisible dropped upon them from the sky.’

Brian said, ‘I guess the time for shoptalk has arrived.’