Dai Stihó

I remember seeing Langley for the first time — the OHB and the NHB, Kryptos, the Museum.

You've heard of Kryptos, I'm sure, but it's even more magnificent in person, a living testament to the fact that there would always be codes that we were unable to crack, always challenges to overcome. He explained to us the process to find the sculptor — Jim Sanborn — to create the work, and how three of the four panels had been solved in the years that the sculpture had been revealed, but the fourth panel eluded us — and the world — to this day.

And then we visited the Museum — or as it's officially known, the National History Collection — and we were treated to a walkthrough of the history of the agency. A lot of the stuff — microfilm, hollow coins, a working Enigma machine — we had read about through our research of the Agency, but there was one item that we hadn't known about, an item that we all stopped in front of for a long couple of minutes: Osama Bin Laden's AK-47.

It was a reminder of the work that we could do, and we all felt it. Of course, there weren't daring raids on 'high value targets' every year — and even if there were, fresh recruits weren't going to be the ones going on them; that was a job for the Special Activities Division Special Operations Group. Statistically, our class wasn't ever going to contribute anything to the museum.

But it didn't mean that we couldn't play a part, getting the information, vetting it, passing it on to the right people. Being in the room when the shots were called, even. Answering questions from the Commander-in-Chief.

Oh, what it was to be bright-eyed and young.


It wasn't until the sixth that I realized what a joke it all was. Before then, I always had the burning desire to prove myself, you know? You want to hone your talents, recruit one more agent, have one more piece of information to send to headquarters, knowing that it'll help State with their negotiations the next day, knowing that it makes a difference for the good ol' U. S. of A.

But somewhere down the line, it changed.

Shit, if I'm being honest with myself, I know the exact stop where I got off.

You know, I remember all the missions I've been on, both under diplomatic cover and non-official cover — the latter one's the dangerous one, where they shoot you, usually after torture, and Uncle Sam denies your existence. But the reality of the situation is that most of the Agency's actions are mundane and ritualistic — boring, almost.

But there was a case where I was working in a foreign country — Asia, but you'll understand if I'm not more specific — and I was being a good case officer, angling for a promotion, working four or five people from an opposing embassy. It's not that difficult, really; there's a playbook, and you follow the playbook, meet with them on alternate nights at social locations, always have a pretense for the meeting, you set up dead drops and emergency contact lines for when things get hot, and—

And none of this matters. Sorry, I still have lecturing habits from my time training.

What happened was that I had an agent who had some really good information. It was big — something more than just what the opposing ambassador wanted to trade, or was willing to concede in a trade. It was a new stance from a frenemy relating to national security, as soon as it got out, the agent was going to need to be hustled the hell out, because the government would instantly come down on him like a sack of bricks. They never did take traitors well.

We have a process for this type of information, too — we set up an exit, get the guy and his family out, and everyone goes home happy.

This time, though, we got the information, and it was a veritable gold mine: it was a new tact that the country was going to take with our allies to apply some pressure on us, and a new couple of agents they were going to try and seed one of our three-letter-agencies with. Every bit checked out when we cross-referenced our own records for entries and applications. Everything looked good.

And then we burned the informer, at the last second.

Instead of taking him in, the brass told us that they wouldn't ever stop hunting him, and our agents would suffer retribution for it. Better to let him — a foreign national — die, they said, than have our own agents possibly pay for it.

So they hung him out to dry, and the last time I saw him, he was being bundled into a windowless van, with the stock of a rifle striking the back of his skull out as we drove away. We could've saved him — we could've warned him, at least, but instead, we did nothing. I followed orders. I did nothing.

I found out shortly that his family didn't make it — they were shot at the dining room table, execution style.

But him? He's still alive, somewhere, living in a very small jail cell, all because he trusted a country that was about truth, justice, and the American way.


That was the end of my fieldwork career.

I put in for a transfer back to the States the next week, and there were so many paperwork positions to fill that there was only the obligatory protest from the station chief before I got shipped back to a comfortable office in Foggy Bottom, helping State with their agricultural position questions. High tension and high impact stuff, naturally.

After a few years, a teaching position opened at Langley, training the new recruits on fieldwork. I wanted to get back into it, and so I applied; it certainly helped that I was bored out of my mind writing dispatches to political-favor ambassadors about how Spain wasn't going to lower the tariff on American corn. I got the teaching position, apparently due to a good word from my former boss, and ended up spending sixth months with every new class that came in.

At first, I wanted to tell them, insidiously, perhaps even traitorously, how terrible the Agency was: how we didn't keep our promises, how there was politics at every level, how we compromised and used individuals. I was curious how long it was going to take the Agency to fire me.

But seeing the first class come in — seeing their bright-eyed and bushy-tailed eagerness at helping the country that they all grew up in and loved — well, I saw a lot of myself from a decade ago in them. They were willing to do things for the service, because their country needed them, and in a lot of ways, they were what we were defending. They each had different stories of how they had come to understand that, yes, America is flawed, but even flawed it was better than so many of the other countries out there that actively hated America, that wanted to kill Americans for sport or for pride.

And they were right. Their country did need them, and these young men and women were sometimes going to be the only line of defense between our enemies and our civilians, sleeping safe in their beds every night. So they changed my mind, and I taught them to the best of my abilities.

But I never forgot about the man that we burned — that America burned, that the Agency burned, and that I burned.

Every class, around the end of our time together, asks me what the worst thing that I saw in the field was. They've gotten some experience that this point, but they don't really know what it's like — and won't, until they go into the field themselves. And there are more than enough stories to choose from, more than enough comfortable lies that would settle their consciences.

But I've never been here to settle their consciences; I'm here to train them to be the best in the world at what they do.

So I say that the worst thing that I've seen is turning my back on a man that believed that America was the best country in the world, that it would save him and his family when he took a grave personal risk, when he went against his home country. I tell them that the worst night I've ever had is the night we failed him. That the worst thing to do is to break a promise.

And I think they appreciate that in a career of telling lies, this is an absolute truth.

I had been watching the target for weeks now, watching as he stole and lied and charmed his way through the nights, and I was reasonably sure that I knew his path, style, and dealings. Tonight was my chance to put what I knew to the test.

I’d been following him almost every night, the same repetition of events with only backdrops changing. Last week, it was a high-profile dinner, a late-night soiree, and then the afterparty at a producer’s mansion every single day. Last week was New York, the week before that Paris, and I had seen more people on the Fortune 100 and Who’s Who of Hollywood than I ever thought I’d meet. But it was worth the time; I had stayed anonymous and figured out the alpha and omega of his modus operandi, and fuck, he was slick.

Slick enough that he never made a bet he couldn’t win, slick enough that even if you hated his fucking guts, you had to give him credit for pulling off things you could never pull off. Maybe if our positions were different, I would’ve appreciated him more, but I’ve never been in the business of giving people credit.

Come to think of it, I wasn’t much in the business of righting wrongs either, but ask any one of us and you’ll hear of a case we’ve taken outside of our normal affairs. It’s not about money, or righting wrongs, or anything as obnoxious as what someone considers legal; for me, it was getting a chance to go up against Goliath — and more than that, knowing I would win.

How often do you get to bring down a giant?

Tonight’s party was at the Burj Al Arab. Yes, that one, where Federer and Agassi played on the helipad a thousand feet above Dubai, the five star hotel that’s shaped like a sail. Twenty third floor, suite of a well known actor, known for a few indie films he did in his younger years and his strong male leads that tend to sweep women off their feet. Happily married now — or at least, that’s what the papers say. This party would give them something to think about, if only they could get in.

Here the target comes, striding through the room like he owns it, and I know, know, he’s looking for the next target. The next conquest, a word he’s used once or twice while joking with the guys, but the word isn’t a throwaway phrase for him. I watch as his eyes slide down necklines and around hips, and finally settle on a friend of mine. It surprises me; I thought he’d go for one of the bigger names. She doesn’t notice him, unfortunately, and he’s forced to walk over to her and slip into the conversation, which he does, smooth as butter, bringing out laughs from the two ladies she’s with.

If only we had got to him first, I think. Then maybe he’d be my partner instead of my target, and we’d be somewhere else. Kabul, maybe, or Beirut, or—

I watch as he casually touches her arm and asks if she wants another drink, and I have to marvel, even if it’s just for a second. Honeypot, I almost whisper, and I wonder if she’ll fall for it. She smiles, that small purse of the lips and crinkle of the eyes, the half-blush, and I can see him adjusting, changing his tone, altering himself to suit her, to win her. There’s no dallying around when he gets the drinks, just a quick order and he’s making a beeline back for her, and she’s gotten rid of the others.

She asks him for a toast, and I can’t help but wonder what he’ll come up with and sidle a bit closer.

Never lie, steal, cheat, or drink. But if you must lie, lie in the arms of the one you love. If you must steal, steal away from bad company. If you must cheat, cheat death. And if you must drink, drink in the moments that take your breath away.

Of course. A natural. And I watch her eyes soften, as she smiles and whispers into his ear, and I can’t hear what they’re saying, but I don’t need to. He chuckles quietly, letting his hand smoothly rest on the small of her back, and as they talk, you could be forgiven for thinking that they had known each other all their lives. 

She says something else, a few minutes later, and you can see it on his face and leans in to kiss the corner of her mouth before he leaves and she turns to find her friends, tell them where she's going, no doubt.

It's a few minutes after that, after I'm sure he’s waiting for her in a suite somewhere, that's when she comes over to me, my friend, my colleague, my black widow, and she pouts ever so prettily, and says, “Do you think we have him?”

Whether he’s an actor, a professional con-man, or whatever else, he can’t hold a candle to the training she has. We’ll know all about him soon enough, and our work here is just about finished. All I can say is this:

“Don’t have too much fun, Delilah.”

This was a world of microphones and pinhole cameras, dead drops and double intelligence. It was a world and a time where a single person behind enemy lines could be worth more than five battalions in front of it, where one intercepted dispatch could save thousands of lives.  It was the world of Sidney Reilly and William Stephenson — the world that James Bond would have thrived in.

But it was also a world where both sides were more than eager to get information from the other and would pay handsomely for it; it was also the world of moles and double-agents, where even the most trusted agents could be working for the enemy, where betrayal was significantly more common than loyalty to one's nation.

Jack Abbott was a thirty-one year old British scholar of German literature that had been a friend of the Viscountess Astor; he had gone to Germany in 1933 on her recommendation, to 'see how the Germans were rebuilding', as she put it. It was only later that he learned that the Viscountess and her friends — the Cliveden set, as they become later known — wanted to keep friendly relations with Nazi Germany, and intended to use him to communicate to the leadership — Hitler, Hess, Goering, and the others.

It was an experience that he cooperated with, at first; it filled him with a sense of importance when he met these powerful leaders at state dinners. It perhaps helped that he fit the Aryan ideal, with his wavy blonde hair and sky blue eyes, his non-threatening manner but close ties to British leadership, they spoke to him of their designs to bring a new age about, one where the two great nations of Britain and Germany could together exert influence over — not 'rule', of course — their neighbors.

One day, he met a William de Ropp, another British national, at a private dinner with the Führer. It was a short dinner, and few words passed between them, but there were few enough British in Berlin that Abbott invited him over the next day for tea. As they chatted, he felt that de Ropp was appraising him — and indeed, at the end of the afternoon, de Ropp mentioned something about serving the British Empire, and that someone would be in contact. Abbott was pleased — it was a chance to serve his country, but more importantly, to earn honor and fame.

Someone did contact him the next day, a man who called by phone and identified himself as codename 'Intrepid'. That was the beginning of Abbott's training. The next weeks were a whirlwind of activity as various MI6 agents stepped in to teach Abbott the basics of spycraft — the art of covert exchanges, of where the points in Berlin were that he could drop information to make sure it got back to the Home Office, of the bugs that he could use. Above all, though, they taught him one lesson — make sure he stayed connected with those that he needed to, and when in doubt, risk nothing. Risk nothing, they said, because it could be his life on the line. But all he remembered were the ways to hide cameras in regular objects, the ways to use the exciting secret code to transmit information he found.

His objectives came in, two months later — stay close to Hess and Goering, and Hitler if he could, and continually promise that  the British were interested in peace, and that they were just waiting for a sign from the Germans. As he was doing that, use the system of dead drops to alert the Allies of any significant military movement. It seemed fairly simple, as the leadership still hosted soirées and public gatherings, which Abbott was invited to and always attended.. but the intelligence was slim.

Two months of training didn't make a regular civilian a spy, and Abbott didn't realize that much of a mole's job was simply to wait until an opportunity fell into his lap. As the weeks passed and he heard of German victory after victory, he fought to contain his impatience, his dreams of being a hero slipping away, and started asking about how the military was doing — subtlety, of course. At least, it was subtle to him.

He opened his mail several days later and found a letter which said that the Germans would be moving towards the Maginot Line with fifty tanks, and that they would be striking from Alsace. It was signed 'a supporter of the allies', and Abbott believed his break had finally come, that his time to shine was then. That afternoon, he set off directly towards his closest dead drop location, and passed the message on — except that he felt it would be better if he embellished a bit, to make sure that the Germans would be crushed and that he would get credit for it. So he put that there would be 100 tanks, imagining the honors he would be given for his services as the Allies swiftly crushed the German incursion into France and Germany surrendered the next day. Abbott would be made a Lord — or perhaps even given some land in Germany to watch over. It would be perfect.

-

A week later, the Germans overran Belgium and crossed into France, and the tanks never materialized at the Alsace section of the Maginot Line. Abbott didn't have too much time to ponder this, though, because he was met by Hitler at his door, who had taken time out of his schedule for a personal house call.

His last words to Jack Abbott were, "We almost missed the fact that you were the mole because you had exaggerated so much, my friend."