‘My aunt,’ Adrianna announced, coming into the living room. Gone were the charcoal-gray skirt and black pullover, replaced by dark blue sweat pants and a white sweat shirt that said NAVY in big blue letters. The ponytail was gone as well. Now her hair hung loose, and she suddenly looked smaller and younger.
‘Nice photo,’ Brian said.
‘Thanks,’ she said, reaching up to gently stroke the frame. ‘It was taken right after I graduated from high school in Cincinnati. Auntie Elyse raised me after my parents died in a car accident. She was the only real family I had, and I splurged some money to have this photo taken. Auntie Elyse said no, I shouldn’t spend the money, but I did. And I’m glad I did…she passed away soon after the photo was taken.’
‘Sorry to hear that,’ he said. ‘Sorry, too, about your parents.’
‘Oh, it’s all right,’ she said. ‘I lost mom and dad when I was five years old. Don’t have many memories of your parents when you’re five years old. And I was fortunate — well, if that can be said — I’m fortunate that I got to stay with Auntie Elyse. I couldn’t live in our old house — and she was a good mom to me, as good as a woman could be, taking care of her niece.’
Adrianna turned to him, still looking small and young. ‘Now it’s just me.’
Brian didn’t know what to say. She shrugged and said, ‘And I know it’s been a while, too, but I’m sorry about your dad.’
The beer bottle felt slippery in his hand. ‘Thanks. And thousands of other people lost loved ones that day, too. I’m no different.’
Adrianna said, ‘All right. We drifted into shop talk and that was my fault. I’ll get dinner going, if you promise to take off that jacket and try to relax.’
Brian raised the Heineken bottle to her in a toast. ‘That’s a deal.’
The coat did come off, and Brian debated for a moment about taking off the shoulder holster. What the hell, it was dinner — the holster and the pistol came off and he put the rig on one of the living-room chairs, draping his coat over it. He then joined Adrianna in the kitchen. She worked well and efficiently, defrosting and then heating up some alfredo sauce, quickly stir-frying some chunks of chicken and pieces of vegetables, boiling some pasta, and within a half-hour they were seated at the round table, eating the fettuccine dish and drinking glasses of a Californian pinot noir. A few minutes after he started eating, Brian said, ‘You’re not very talented, you know.’
‘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.’