Obstacle Course
CIA Academy of Espionage
February 11
0900 hours
I didn’t hear back from Erica about the photos I’d sent her until the next morning. That was unusual. Erica wasn’t a big fan of human contact, but when she had a mission, she never wasted any time following a lead. In fact, there had been several occasions when she had felt it was perfectly reasonable to wake me in the middle of the night to discuss something, rather than wait until the morning. However, there had been only silence from her until she caught up to me on the school obstacle course during PE.
At my old, normal middle school, physical education had generally meant running laps around the school track. At spy school, we ran a gauntlet of potentially harmful obstacles, pitfalls, and booby traps that our sadistic trainer, Coach Macauley, regularly altered for maximum torment. The administration claimed this was to prepare us physically and mentally for the strenuous and unpredictable demands of being a field agent, but I was quite sure that, in reality, the administrators simply enjoyed watching us get pummeled. Quite often, I caught glimpses of our professors laughing at us from the sidelines.
To make matters worse, PE was always the first class of the day, when it was freezing outside. This was a major concern, as a large number of the obstacles on the course involved mud. Crawling through mud at two in the afternoon on a sunny day was bad enough; doing it at nine a.m. in the winter was repugnant.
All classes had PE at once, although Coach staggered our starting times for the obstacle course so that no one got trampled—and so he had plenty of time to enjoy each student’s humiliation. When Erica found me, I was scrabbling through one of the course’s many mud wallows on my hands and knees with Zoe and Warren. The mud was the consistency of slightly melted ice cream, which allowed it to ooze into our clothing and refrigerate our various body parts. Our dull gray academy tracksuits were now stained brown—as were our faces. As if this weren’t bad enough, Coach had rigged a devious set of sensors only two feet above the pit; anyone who raised their head too high and tripped one would be immediately blasted with a paintball gun. The entire experience was awful—and I wasn’t the only one who thought so.
“Honestly, what is the point of this?” Zoe was griping. “The CIA does most of its work in cities. I don’t know of a whole lot of cities with mud pits in the middle of them.”
“There’s a pretty big mud pit in the middle of downtown Mogadishu,” Warren pointed out. He was so covered with mud that he was camouflaging himself without even trying. I could barely see him except for the whites of his eyes.
“Maybe so,” Zoe said, “but the Mogadishans still don’t crawl through it. They go around it. We ought to be learning useful stuff, like how to do car chases on city streets and have knife fights on the tops of speeding trains, not this garbage.”
“No CIA agent has had a knife fight atop a moving train since Kennedy was president,” Erica said, catching us all by surprise. As usual, we hadn’t even known she was near us. She was simply there beside us in the mud, as though she’d spontaneously popped into existence. “And it wasn’t even a speeding train. It was only a freight hauler moving at five miles an hour.”
Zoe, Warren, and I turned to Erica, stunned by her sudden appearance—and by the fact that she was engaging in normal conversation.
“I need to talk to you,” she told me.
“Now?” I asked. “Here?”
“National security is at stake,” she said.
“It was at stake this morning, when I was having waffles in the cafeteria,” I pointed out. “We couldn’t have discussed this then?”
Erica didn’t answer me. Instead, she turned to Zoe and Warren and said, “This is a sensitive issue. Could you two give us some space?”
Zoe and Warren didn’t look pleased to be cut out of the conversation, but they understood Erica’s reasons and obediently squelched toward the far side of the mud pit to let us talk in peace.
Erica and I continued wallowing through the muck. Erica lowered her voice to a whisper and said, “I looked at those photos you sent me last night. The sketchy businessman you were suspicious of? He’s Vladimir Gorsky.”
I hesitated before responding. I had no idea who Vladimir Gorsky was but was worried that Erica would judge me harshly for this gap in my knowledge.
Unfortunately, Erica knew exactly why I’d hesitated. And then she judged me harshly for the gap in my knowledge. “Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of Vladimir Gorsky.”
“I haven’t,” I admitted.
Erica sighed disdainfully, like I’d just told her I didn’t know the capital of America. “Really? Because he’s only one of the world’s most powerful men.”
“Oh!” I said, trying to cover. “Vladimir Gorsky! Of course I know who he is. I thought you said Vladimir Borsky. . . .”
“Stop trying to cover,” Erica told me.
“Okay.” I grimaced, not merely because of Erica’s curt tone, but also because frigid mud had just seeped through my sweatpants and into my underwear.
“Gorsky is a Russian arms dealer,” Erica explained. “He’s made billions funneling weapons to pretty much every war waging in the world right now, often to both sides at the same time.”
“And he’s meeting with the president?” I asked, incredulous.
“First of all, his being at the White House doesn’t mean he’s meeting with the president. A thousand other people work in the West Wing and the EEOB. Second, just because he’s an arms dealer doesn’t make him a criminal. No one has ever been able to prove that he’s done anything wrong . . . yet. There are plenty of reasons someone in the administration might want to be meeting with him. We might want him to arm some rebels who support a cause of ours—or to stop arming some rebels who are fighting a cause of ours—or heck, maybe we even want to buy some weapons from him ourselves.”
“So, then, you don’t think he’s working for SPYDER?”
“I never said that. Gorsky’s as sleazy as they come. Grandpa’s pretty sure he’s a front man for Paul Lee.”
I grimaced once again, only this time it had nothing to do with the mud in my underpants. I knew the name Paul Lee. “The guy who sold SPYDER the missiles they tried to blow up New York City with?”
“The guy who allegedly sold them the missiles, yes.”
“And the guy who sold Leo Shang the nuclear bomb we had to defuse?”
“Ditto.”
“This guy Gorsky’s working for him?”
“That’s what Grandpa suspects, at least. No one has ever confirmed Lee and Gorsky are connected, but if it’s true, then you can easily connect Gorsky to SPYDER.”
We finally reached the edge of the mud pit. To get out of it, we had to scramble over a ten-foot-high wooden wall while Coach Macauley and some other professors took potshots at us with paintball guns. Erica vaulted over with the ease of an Olympic gymnast, landing gracefully on her feet.
I vaulted over it with the grace of a diseased elephant. I tried to stick the landing but lost my balance and face-planted in the dirt.
I still did better than Warren, though. While clambering over the wall, he caught his pant leg on a shard of wood, leaving him at the mercy of the paintball brigade. His rear end might as well have had a target painted on it. The professors shot him again and again before he finally managed to free himself—although to do it, he had to wriggle out of his pants altogether. He landed with a painful thud on our side of the wall in only his tighty-whities.
“Reeves, that was pathetic!” Coach Macauley shouted. “Do that in the real world and you’ll get your legs blown off! Put your pants back on and start over!”
Warren whimpered at the mere thought of having to go through the mud patch once more.
Zoe hopped down from the wall and handed him his pants, which she’d dislodged. “It’s not your fault,” she said encouragingly. “Exactly when in real life are we ever going to exit a mud pit by climbing a wall? Even if there was a wall next to a mud pit, wouldn’t we just go around it? The whole concept for this course is preposterous.”
“Maybe, but I’m still flunking it.” Warren glumly took his pants from Zoe and slouched back toward the starting line.
Erica proceeded onward. The next obstacle was a three-inch-wide balance beam that stretched over yet another mud pit. The beam was covered with a slick of grease. Almost everyone who’d gone before us had slipped off and splatted into the muck. Erica calmly sauntered across it, as though it were a city sidewalk. Under most circumstances, she probably would have darted across it in seconds, but she took her time because I was following her and she still needed to talk to me.
At least, I was trying to follow her. The best I could do was edge slowly across the beam, desperately windmilling my arms to keep from toppling into the mud.
“So you think Gorsky’s the one targeting the president?” I asked.
“It’s possible. Or maybe it’s one of the underlings who accompanied him yesterday.”
“But they were there yesterday. If they’re targeting the president, they kind of missed their chance.”
“Not necessarily. Maybe yesterday was the setup for a Bombay Boomerang.”
“A what?” I asked. The Hale family often dropped arcane spy jargon into conversations as if everyone in the world knew it.
“It’s an old espionage ploy,” Erica explained. “You don’t schedule only one meeting with your target; you schedule several over a few days. The first time you come in, the Secret Service is really on guard around you, because they don’t know you or trust you. So they go over you with a fine-tooth comb, scrutinizing everything you’re carrying, everything you’re wearing, and so on.”
“Right,” I said, recalling how aggressively the Secret Service had gone through my coat the day before.
“But then you come back again and again. By the second time, the Secret Service isn’t quite as concerned about you, and by the third or fourth, it’s getting routine, so they drop their guard around you. . . .”
“And that’s when you can sneak in a weapon?”
“Exactly. You convince someone that you’re not dangerous—and then you hit them.” Erica stepped onto the solid ground at the end of the balance beam.
I still had a few feet to go.
Behind me, Zoe was also edging her way along, muttering sarcastically the whole time. “Balance beams. That makes sense. I’m sure our guys in the field confront greased balance beams every day.”
Erica checked her watch impatiently, as though I were going slowly for no good reason.
“There’s one big problem with Gorsky,” I said. “Why would he do this? You said he’s a billionaire. Going after the president inside the White House is practically a suicide mission. What could SPYDER possibly offer him to get him to do that?”
“Maybe he doesn’t care about the money,” Erica replied. “Maybe he’s willing to do whatever SPYDER wants. Or maybe they can make him do whatever they want. He could be a sleeper agent.”
“You mean, someone who doesn’t even know he’s working for SPYDER until they activate him somehow?”
“That’s right.”
“Those really exist?”
“Yes. Are you ever going to get off that balance beam, or should I have your meals delivered there today?”
“I’m almost done.” I finally sidled off the end of the beam. “What about those other two people I sent you pictures of? Who were they?”
“Only aides to the French ambassador. They’re nobodies.”
“So? SPYDER likes nobodies. They don’t draw any attention. I’ll bet those guys are in and out of the White House with the ambassador all the time. Don’t you think SPYDER would rather pick them than some sketchy billionaire arms dealer?”
“It’s possible.” Erica set off on the course again, and I followed her. A narrow trail plunged into a thick copse of trees. “But I think there’s something significant to the fact that SPYDER’s plotting a hit on the president exactly when Gorsky shows up.”
“It could be coincidence.”
“There’s no such thing as coincidence.”
“Speaking of which, I happened to notice you in front of the White House yesterday.”
Erica gave me a sidelong glance as we darted through a maze of undergrowth. “You didn’t ‘happen’ to notice me. I wanted you to notice me.”
That explained why she’d been right out in the open. “Why?”
“So you’d know I was keeping an eye on you. In case you ended up in danger.”
I was quite sure that wasn’t the whole story. Knowing Erica, she probably thought I couldn’t handle the mission on my own. Even though I wasn’t sure I could handle the mission on my own, I still felt insulted, and this combined with my annoyance at having to run through a dangerous obstacle course with frozen mud in my underwear. Before thinking better of it, I said sharply, “You mean, you were keeping an eye on me in case I screwed things up.”
“No. I was there to protect you.”
“I was inside the most secure building in the United States! I had the entire Secret Service there to protect me.”
“The job of the Secret Service is to protect the president, not you. If anything goes wrong on this mission—and when SPYDER’s around, things always go wrong—the Service won’t give you a second thought. Heck, they’d throw you on top of a bomb like a human blast shield if they thought it would save the president.”
I clammed up, realizing Erica was probably right—as usual. Although I still wasn’t completely convinced she believed I could handle the job. “Does Cyrus know you were down there?”
“No. And you’d better not tell him I was.”
“Why not?”
Before Erica could respond, we exited the copse of trees to find the final obstacle on the course. It was a doozy. Yet another balance beam stretched over a watery pit, only this time Coach Macauley had rigged six enormous logs to pendulum back and forth across our path. Not one student had made it to the other side safely. As we watched, my friends Jawa O’Shea and Chip Schacter, both among the better athletes at school, got clobbered by logs simultaneously and went flying into the water.
Even Erica seemed daunted by this. She actually appeared to forget about my question so she could focus on navigating the obstacle. Or maybe she was simply using the obstacle as an excuse to not answer me. Whatever the case, she cautiously headed out onto the beam, ducking around the first swinging log.
Zoe emerged from the woods behind me and gasped in dismay. “Okay, this is completely ridiculous! There is no possible scenario where we are ever going to have to face giant pendulums! What’s Macauley think, someday we’ll to have to fight the enemy inside an enormous cuckoo clock?”
Below us, Jawa and Chip scrambled out of the pit, shivering from the glacial water, then staggered across the finish line and raced for the locker room, where they could towel off and change out of their soaking tracksuits.
I summoned my courage and set off after Erica.
The obstacle was even more terrifying than I’d expected. The logs were the size of tree trunks and whizzed past with surprising speed. There was barely any room—or time—to rest on the beam between them. I dodged the first with an inch to spare, then slipped past the second with even less leeway.
Ahead of me, Erica was being careful but still exuding incredible calm, as though she were merely avoiding feather pillows, rather than hurtling tree trunks. She strolled casually past one pendulum, paused briefly, then ambled past the next and reached the end of the obstacle course.
“Nicely done, Hale!” Coach yelled.
There were no other students at the finish line. Erica was the only one who’d made it through the entire course unscathed.
Erica looked back at me. There seemed to be a challenge in her gaze, as though she didn’t believe I could make it through the final obstacle on my own. The same way she didn’t believe that I could handle my mission without her. I steeled myself, determined to prove her wrong on both counts. I watched the pendulums carefully, using my gift for mathematics to assess the exact speed each was moving and deduce the timing I’d need to get past them. Calculating quickly, I realized that if I waited six seconds and then ran full out, I’d be able to avoid the remaining four pendulums without even having to stop.
I counted the six seconds, then bolted down the beam. The first pendulum whooshed right behind my back as the second swung out of my way. I squeaked past the third, then ran for the finish line.
And tripped over my shoelace.
My calculations had been perfect, but they didn’t mean squat if I couldn’t stay on my feet. I stumbled, nearly pitched off the beam, struggled mightily to regain my balance—and found myself directly in the path of the final pendulum as it raced toward me. It nailed me dead-on, sending me pinwheeling off the beam and into the icy water.
I emerged stunned, sputtering, and chilled, but surprisingly all right.
At which point, Zoe—who had also been clobbered by a pendulum—fell right on my head.
Zoe wasn’t that big, but she came in fast, driving me so far down in the water that I hit the squelchy, muddy bottom of the pit.
We both resurfaced, gasping for air, and floundered to the edge of the pit. As I clambered up the side, someone reached out to help me up.
Mike Brezinski. He, too, was at the end of the obstacle course, only unlike Erica, he was completely clean, unsullied by even a drop of mud.
“How . . . ?” I gasped. “How’d you get here?”
“I ran,” Mike replied, helping me out over the edge.
“Through the course?” I asked.
“Of course not!” Mike laughed. “I went around it. Why on earth would I go through the course? It’s dangerous.”
“But . . . ,” Zoe said, as startled as I was, “that’s what our mission was.”
“No,” Mike corrected. “Our mission was to get to the end of the course. No one said how we had to get here.”
“That’s not true!” Coach Macauley stormed over, looking extremely peeved at Mike. “This is my class, and I gave everyone a direct order to do this obstacle course.”
“Well, those orders were questionable,” Mike informed him. “If this were a real mission and our lead agent told us to take an incredibly dangerous route to a destination when there was a perfectly safe alternative, that agent would probably get booted out of the Agency for recklessly endangering our lives. Following orders doesn’t do us any good if they’re going to get us all killed. I realized there was another way to achieve the objective without putting myself in harm’s way, took the initiative to act on it, and successfully completed the mission.”
“Yes, but . . . ,” Coach began, but then seemed unsure how to argue his point any more. “You can’t . . . I mean . . . The whole point of this class is to get some exercise!”
“Oh, I did,” Mike said. “I had to run at a good pace to circle all the way around the course. I got my heart rate up and my endorphins flowing. Nice work.”
“Er . . . thank you,” Coach said, and then, not knowing what else to do, he wandered back to the obstacle course to yell at some other students who’d actually followed his orders and been knocked off the balance beam.
“Interesting thought process,” Erica said, and gave Mike one of her rare smiles.
I was instantly overcome with jealousy again. On Operation Snow Bunny, Erica had definitely been intrigued by Mike, and now it appeared to be developing into something more serious. I had just done everything I could to impress her and ended up looking like a nincompoop, while Mike had simply broken the rules and won another compliment and a smile. It didn’t seem fair. I found myself shaking violently, although I wasn’t sure if it was anger or hypothermia kicking in: I was soaked to the bone and it was below zero outside.
“Uh, Ben,” Zoe said. “You’re turning blue.”
Apparently, it was anger and hypothermia.
“You’d better go dry off,” Mike told me. “You too, Zoe.”
Zoe raced for the locker room before her fingers and toes froze off. I probably should have done the same thing, but I didn’t want to leave Mike and Erica alone together. Instead, I turned to Erica and said, “You never answered my question.”
“What question?” she asked, even though I was quite sure she knew exactly what I was talking about.
“The one I asked you right before the final obstacle.”
Erica weighed her options for a moment, then grabbed me by the arm and marched me toward the locker room. The moment we were out of Mike’s earshot, she lowered her voice and said, “I don’t want you to tell Cyrus I was at the White House because Cyrus doesn’t want me on this mission.”
“Why not?” I said, my teeth beginning to chatter. “He thinks you’re a way better spy than I am. He could have just as easily sent you in instead of me. He could have arranged a playdate between you and Jemma Stern. . . .”
“He thinks it’s too dangerous,” Erica said coldly, like she was offended.
“Too dangerous?” I repeated. “For you? Cyrus thinks you can handle anything.”
“Not this. Ben, Cyrus believes this mission is far more dangerous than he told you. He’s pretty sure you can handle it, but if you can’t . . . Well, you’re . . .” Erica turned away suddenly. “You’re expendable.”
Even though I was desperate to get into the warmth of the locker room, I stopped walking and stared at Erica. “You mean he thinks I could die?”
“Yes.” Erica seemed to realize how upset I was and made an attempt to comfort me. “Look, it’s not like he wants you to die. And if it happened, he wouldn’t be happy about it. . . .”
“Gee, that’s reassuring.”
“It’s the nature of the business. This mission is crucial to national security.”
“But not so crucial that Cyrus is willing to risk your life?”
“I’m his granddaughter,” Erica said bitterly. It was probably the first time I’d ever seen anyone angry about having their life not be in danger. “He’s always told me to never let emotions cloud my decisions, and now he’s doing it. I’m completely capable of handling this mission, but he’s refusing to activate me.”
“So you’re activating yourself? Without authorization?”
“I’m not sitting on the sidelines while you get all the glory. Now go inside and warm up, will you? You’re not going to be any use to this mission if you catch a cold.” With that, Erica shoved me through the doors into the locker room.
It was blessedly warm inside. In truth, it probably wasn’t really that warm at all—the heaters at spy school were barely functional—but it was still considerably warmer than it was outside. Plus, steam from the showers created a nice humid fog. Jawa and Chip were already cleaned up and happily swaddled in their school clothes.
I still felt chilled, however, and in a way that had nothing to do with the cold weather outside or my wet clothes.
The revelation of how dangerous the mission was had clarified things for me. What had seemed like the biggest flaw in Cyrus’s plan suddenly made sense. Cyrus had never suspected that I could actually move about the White House without SPYDER’s man inside noticing. In fact, he was probably counting on my being noticed. If SPYDER’s agents tried to get rid of me, then they’d reveal themselves.
I was being used as bait to flush out the enemy.
And bait was usually dead meat.