CIA HEADQUARTERS
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
TALIA MADE TWO STOPS on her way to the Directorate of Operations, deep in the bowels of the New Headquarters Building at Langley. The first was not by choice. A set of turnstiles straight out of a New York subway barred her entry. She scanned a temporary ID card across a black panel on the center turnstile. It answered with a sharp buzz and a red octagon.
Before Talia could try the turnstile next door, a contract guard in a black uniform pushed out through a panel in the wall, one hand on the 9mm at his side. The safety was off. “Good morning, Miss Inger. I’ll take that temp from you. Turn and face the camera, please.”
She handed over her badge, looking in the direction he indicated. “What cam—”
A bulb flashed.
“That’ll do. Wait here.”
The security protective officer, known as a SPO, vanished into the wall and returned moments later with a new badge. He also brought out a stack of forms big enough to put all other stacks of forms everywhere to shame. “First-day paperwork. Tax forms, emergency contact, living will.”
“Take it up with legal.” The SPO swiped the new badge on the turnstile, slapped it down on top of the forms, and waved her through. “Ops. Sublevel 3.”
The conversation was over.
She walked on, reading the top form through the curled purple ribbon of the lanyard. The second line listed her supervisor.
FRANK BRENNAN, DIRECTORATE OF OPERATIONS, RUSSIAN EASTERN EUROPEAN DIVISION.
Talia’s second stop fulfilled a minor fantasy. Farm students, with their futures still in question, had no access to the New Headquarters Building. They could only gaze up at its impenetrable green glass walls from the garden of the Old Headquarters Building, wondering what treasures lay inside. Talia had seen evidence of one such treasure in the hands of officers and analysts wandering the grounds. Now, having entered Aladdin’s Cave, she could smell it.
Passing beneath a model of the A-12 OXCART, the forerunner to the SR-71 Blackbird, she followed the scent of roasted coffee beans to a sun-filled atrium. There, surrounded by storefront café tables, she found the CIA compound’s most infamous and alluring feature—its very own top-secret Starbucks.
“One venti white chocolate mocha, please.”
“Skinny?” The barista, a black woman with the name LUANNE printed on an extra-large green apron, looked Talia up and down and added just enough inflection to the word to leave Talia wondering whether it was a question or an indictment.
Talia took it as a challenge. She dropped her stack of forms on the counter with a heavy thwap. “No.” She checked herself a moment later. “But no whip.”
Luanne turned her body toward the coffeemakers, letting her head follow half a second later. “Your funeral. First day, honey?”
“Those forms you so loudly dropped on my counter. I seen ’em a thousand times if I seen ’em once, along with that deer-in-the-headlights look in your badge photo.” She placed a hand on her hip, glancing over her shoulder. “You have any idea where you’re goin’, rookie?”
Agency employees were never supposed to talk about their positions, even on campus, unless the other party had a need to know. Exactly what sort of background check did a CIA barista get? “I can figure it out.”
Luanne returned to her work, lowering a steamer into a steel cup. “A’right.”
The coffee took far longer in coming than Talia anticipated, and by the time she had paid for and accepted the overlarge cup, she felt the morning closing in on her. She swept up her stack and walked off.
Luanne whistled. “Nope.” She pointed the opposite direction, toward a passage intersecting the main hallway.
“How do you—”
“Your badge. That purple outline around your photo tells me you belong to Ops.”
Talia nodded and reversed course.
“And you’ll want a lid for that coffee.”
“I’m fine, thanks.”
Luanne did her little turn—body first, then head, raising a hand. “Like I said, rookie. Your funeral.”
The doors in the hallway to which Luanne directed Talia had numbers but no labels, and each was painted a solid color. Most were single or double doors, but in one alcove was a set of elevator doors—painted purple, the color Luanne had noted on Talia’s badge.
The elevator, of course, required a swipe of her card for access, and two failed attempts loosened her tenuous hold on her forms. The third swipe succeeded, and in her hurry to step inside, Talia caught the corner of her stack on an opening door, ripping the whole mess from her arms.
Papers flew.
Hot, sugary mocha splashed on her wrist, soaking her cuff.
Somehow this was all Luanne’s doing.
Half of the forms fell inside the elevator and half out. Talia knelt and gathered what she could, but a small platoon of drenched papers clung to the floor. The elevator let out a ding. It wanted to leave, with or without her. She stood and stomped on the stragglers, dragging them across the threshold as the doors slid closed. Another patron with a purple lanyard hurried toward her, hand outstretched, but she gave him a helpless shrug. “Sorry!”
Could her first day get any worse?
Dumb question.
Sublevel 3, that’s what the guard had said. She hit the button, and thankfully the elevator did not stop at any other levels on the way down. She passed six in total. Thanks to the varied terrain of the hilltop compound, the main entrance was on Level 4. The long descent allowed Talia to regain some dignity. By the time the doors opened, she had picked up the rest of her papers and assembled them into a semi-chaotic pile.
She ventured out into an incongruous blend of black marble columns and acrylic offices. A sign hanging from the ceiling read RUSSIAN EASTERN EUROPEAN DIVISION. “Frank Brennan?” Talia directed her gaze at a passerby wearing a black far-too-tight-for-arms-like-that golf shirt. “I’m looking for Frank Brennan.”
Tight-Shirt Guy looked sidelong at her coffee-stained forms and walked on.
Talia tried again, calling after him and reaching out with the now half-empty coffee cup. “Excuse me. Where can I fi—”
He disappeared behind a marble wall.
She lowered the cup. “Never mind.”
Brass plates identified the first few acrylic-walled branches as BALTIC STATES, FORMER YUGOSLAVIA, UKRAINE, and RUSSIA. Each plate also identified the branch chief—none of whom were Frank Brennan.
The denizens of Sublevel 3 drew diagrams on their clear walls, tapped at computer keyboards, and argued across conference tables. Not one soul made eye contact with Talia, and she wasn’t about to go around reading ID badges to find her boss. She took a deep breath, marched to what she decided was the intersection of the two main aisles, and raised her voice. “Does anyone know where I can find Frank Brennan?”
The buzz of conversation slackened. A few dozen eyes turned her way. Then they all went back to work.
“Talia?” Eddie Gupta popped his head out from behind a column. “Together again, huh? I’ve been waiting for you. Our section is this way.”
He walked past her, heading the way she’d come, and Talia assumed she’d simply missed the correct office. She was wrong. The buzz of activity fell behind. The two walked past the elevator and down a dimly lit hallway to a dented gray door.
Eddie bowed, gesturing with both hands. “After you, m’lady.”
“Here?” She couldn’t keep her expression from falling. “This looks like a utility closet.” The door had its own brass plate, like the acrylic partitions. But while those plates were bolted in place, this one was pasted on, one corner a nanometer south of level, and it listed no region name or branch chief.
The brass plate simply read OTHER.