Undercover by Alec Ross

“The child is a liar, pure and simple,” said Mrs. Lansdale to the tall, elegant man standing at her desk. “No matter what assignment he is given, he fails to do it and then comes up with some fantastic story about why he was unable to do the work. His grade so far is an unequivocal F. There is no way he can salvage his record for the semester. He will not be promoted to the next grade.”

Robert Burton listened to the words the fourth grade teacher was saying, but his mind wasn’t really on the situation of his son’s academic failure. It was not that he didn’t care about Charley. A man’s son is, after all, a man’s son. But fourth grade? Failure to do homework? Not an important enough issue to waste time on. The child was going through a stage or a phase or whatever. He would grow out of it in time. There were more important things for immediate consideration.

“I will talk to the boy. Rest assured, Mrs. uh — Lansdale, I will deal with Charley. In the meantime, if he must repeat the fourth grade, then so be it. It will undoubtedly be a lesson for him.”

Mrs. Lansdale, who had been prepared to defend her grading policy with everything in her extensive teacher’s arsenal, was somewhat irritated. She thrived on parental confrontation, and to be denied a challenge to her experience was a major disappointment. Still, her authority had not been threatened. Perhaps this Burton individual was simply wise enough to recognize educational power when he encountered it. Yes, that was the way she would read the situation. Dealing with mothers was really more rewarding, but the occasional father she ran up against provided the variety she probably needed.

Robert Burton made a note to talk with his son the next time they met. That would probably be after dinner. When he was at home, as opposed to traveling, he did try to arrange a few minutes daily with Charley. The encounter provided no pleasure to either man or boy, but both recognized it as something that was expected. Under most circumstances they were able to limit their meetings to under fifteen minutes. Burton hoped that the present school crisis would not unduly prolong this evening’s session.

Ordinarily, Charley’s mother would have borne the brunt of Mrs. Lansdale’s displeasure, and Robert Burton would have heard, without listening to, his wife’s account of the situation. But these were not ordinary times. Alma Burton, always frail, had died some five months ago. She was sorely missed by her doctor, who recognized an annuity when he saw one, but her passing was not particularly noted by her husband, who had not been overly aware of her when she was alive.

Charley, however, did miss his mother. He missed her very much indeed. While she was a rather vague lady to others, she did have one wonderful quality that meant the world to Charley. She could tell a story. Lord, how that woman could tell a story. Everything she encountered was a takeoff point for a story. Her imagination never flagged. And best of all, she could tailor a story to the mood of the moment. Charley’s mood for the past year had been centered on spies. The hardest word he had ever learned to spell was espionage, and he lived in secret delight of someday daunting Mrs. Lansdale with the word, letter by letter. He longed to see her jaw drop and her eyes fill with wonder when she recognized that he, Charley, knew such a word. For that knowledge and all the stories that went with it, Charley thanked — and missed — his mother.

The loss of his mother represented Charley’s first encounter with death. Oh, he had met the idea, of course, in his stories. Spies were always being threatened with death or even actually dying, but that was part of the game. Espionage was a game to Charley, who was a totally solitary fourth grader because his classmates preferred ball games and running and jumping. They easily grew bored with the idea of playing custodian of secrets to Charley’s spy. But a spy was never bored. A spy was always spying even while other things were going on. The spy was always undercover, and that was where the excitement was. Being undercover. Pretending to something that wasn’t. Making others believe that what wasn’t really was.



From the moment of his mother’s death, Charley had convinced himself that she was still alive but undercover. She had obviously told too much in her tales of spies in the night and had been called back to headquarters — there was always a headquarters somewhere — to go undercover until the other side, whatever it was, was taken care of. Charley recognized that it could be a long time before he saw her again. But a good spy, he had learned at his mother’s knee, knows how to wait. So for the past five months he had been doing his best to protect his mother’s endeavor. He no longer told the truth about anything. He, too, was undercover, and while his identity changed from day to day, his purpose was ever steady. The whole key to being undercover, as Charley saw it, was to bypass all things that were normal. So he couldn’t do much of his homework for Mrs. Lansdale. She might see him as a fourth grader, but he knew he was an agent. His book report couldn’t be done because an exiled Indian prince was depending on Charley to seek out the jewels of Ranchipur. His arithmetic had to take second place to his search for the space shuttle’s blueprints. He did try to do his geography because a good spy has to know where he is every minute, but he didn’t have time to learn the raw products of Brazil when he was busy trying to steal the secret minutes of the Security Council.

“I would appreciate it if you would try to do better in school,” Charley’s father said to him that night. “I had to meet with your Mrs. Lansdale this morning, and she said that you would not be promoted this term.”

Charley looked at his father with unblinking attention. He didn’t really care about not being promoted, but he had to make his father believe that things were normal. What good does it do to be undercover if your own father thinks you’re up to something?

“Yes, sir,” he managed. “I’ll try to do better.” Not caring about school but making someone believe he did — that was a good undercover exercise. Of course, it was easy to deal with this semistranger who headed the household. They got along well enough. There were never any disagreements, never any harsh words or punishments. But if things were not as they really seemed to be, Charley realized, then perhaps his father did care for him deeply. Maybe he, too, was undercover. He thought about that for a while and then rejected the idea. While he really didn’t know what his father did do, it certainly couldn’t be of any importance. After all, he was practically always home working on stacks of papers in the room called the study, the room that was always locked whether his father was in it or not. Occasionally his father would go away on business for a couple of weeks at a time, but the housekeeper saw to Charley, and there was no sense of loneliness or isolation.

Both father and son retreated into after-dinner silence, each glad that the other had not tried to extend the conversation. School, after all, was not a subject that appealed to either of them. Their relationship was not endangered by Mrs. Lansdale’s pronouncement. Their disinterested camaraderie continued as before.

Charlie found the fourth grade a lot easier the second time around. Because he knew what the assignments were going to be even before Mrs. Lansdale made them, he was able to get most of them done in advance whenever he managed to have a spare hour or two. After all, even James Bond had to take time out for something other than spying. And in spite of himself, he did get turned on to reading. Missing his mother’s storytelling art was a problem at first, but when he discovered that the library was full of books on espionage, he was able to please his teacher and his imagination at the same time. Mrs. Lansdale was won over completely to Charley’s chosen field of interest when he pronounced his admiration for Nathan Hale, whom he discovered in his history lesson one day. Strange, Charley thought, that he had missed the great American spy the first time around.

“I’m pleased with your report card,” his father said one night after dinner. “Your teacher says that your reading is definitely superior now. Congratulations.” He had known Charley would grow out of his troublesome stage. It’s best, he told himself, not to make a fuss before it’s called for. Besides, it was undoubtedly the loss of his mother that had slowed the boy’s academic progress. Mr. Burton was quite satisfied with his analysis, but he didn’t discuss Charley’s mother with the boy. Cut your losses, he would have said if he’d said anything.

Charley wasn’t quite certain when he decided that his father was a spy. Not Charley’s kind of spy, of course, but a spy nevertheless. “I deal in commodities,” Robert Burton told his son in answer to a question one night. “You’re too young to understand that, of course, but when you are older you will realize just what is involved.”

Commodities didn’t sound too exciting, but that was probably just some grownup word for secret weapons, Charlie decided. In his imagination he now sought to discover where the commodities were hidden, and they sounded much more exciting than guns or bombs. When Mrs. Lansdale asked him one day what he wanted to be when he grew up, he impressed her no end by saying that he wanted to deal with commodities just as his father did. Mrs. Lansdale even made a mental note to ask Mr. Burton for some market advice at their next conference. She began treating Charley with a great deal more respect than she had in the past. After all, a good commodity analyst doesn’t grow on trees. For all she knew, Mr. Burton might someday say something to Charley about pork bellies or cocoa that could be passed on. There is no law, Mrs. Lansdale decided, that says a teacher has to retire to genteel poverty.

Because his father was a spy, Charley decided, he would have to be given very special affection. Spies evidently didn’t last too long once their cover was broken. His mother was the prime example of that. Of course, Mr. Burton couldn’t be a very good spy, not if a fourth grader could find him out. The only thing that Charlie wasn’t quite clear about was for whom his father was spying. It would have to be the good guys, he knew, but when it came to commodities he wasn’t At all sure as to just exactly what was involved. The dictionary was no help. The entry was too long and complicated for a small boy, so Charley was going to have to go undercover again to find out what he had to know.

The first step, Charley decided, was to get into that locked room, the study where his father spent most of his time.

“I keep the room locked to avoid having my papers disturbed,” his father said one night at dinner. He was always very courteous about answering his son’s questions. “Every housekeeper we’ve ever had has insisted on straightening out the papers on my desk. But then I can’t find anything. I am a creature of routine.” He let a smile play around the corners of his mouth, wondering if Charley as yet had developed a sense of humor. “I am quite capable of dusting my own desk if it ever needs dusting. Someday you too may discover that you prefer to have your work left alone by people whose goals are different from your own.”

His father did tend to speak in rather formal sentences, Charley thought, but as he mulled over this conversation in his room later that night, he realized that he had stumbled on the key to the whole spy situation. “I am a creature of routine,” his father had said, and that of course was the problem. No wonder Charley had recognized his father as a spy. Spies were not supposed to be creatures of routine! They were supposed to vary their activities, and never, never, never were they to become creatures of habit. Of course a fourth grader, with a full knowledge of espionage techniques, could recognize a faulty spy when he saw one. Obviously the thing to do was to get his father to vary his routines, avoid his habits, present an image unlike his usual self. Charley was quite sure he couldn’t discuss such actions with his father. It was too personal a subject, and he had already learned that personal matters were best kept to oneself. Not that his father was ever cruel, Charley hastened to reassure himself, but he was not a truly friendly person, not at all like his mother had been when she was in the middle of one of the stories he loved.

Getting into the locked study shouldn’t present any great difficulty to someone versed in the techniques of spying. All one had to do was to pick out the correct key from the key board in the housekeeper’s pantry off the kitchen. A quick check showed all the keys were labeled with little tags. The study key had a note pinned directly above it: Do not use. Charley felt no compunctions about taking the key. The note was for the housekeeper, after all. It was not that Charley was going against his father’s dictates. The subject had simply never come up. “I do not want the servants in the study,” his father had said. Well, even Charley knew that he wasn’t a servant, so he could go in the study any old time. This was undoubtedly sophism, but Charley wouldn’t know that word until he got into college. In the meantime, he took advantage of his chance while he could, and that afternoon when Mrs. Hilton, the housekeeper, was doing her thing in the kitchen, Charley lifted the key, let himself into the study, and closed the door behind him. Quietly. Very quietly. The way spies were supposed to do it.

Getting in proved to be the easy part. Now that he was here, what was he supposed to do? Well, a good spy would check out the material on the desk right away. Charley knew that, and he headed for the desk, which occupied the area in front of large windows that let the light stream into the room. If the whole point of this exercise was to prevent his father from being a creature of habit, then something would have to be changed. As he was looking over the neat papers on the desk, two folders caught his eye. The first one was labeled copper, a word Charley was familiar with from studying the raw materials of Chile. He removed two sheets of paper, one headed Zambia and the other headed Zaire. That ought to make some difference in routine, he thought. He folded the papers and put them in his pocket and then reached for the second folder that had caught his attention. It was labeled PALLADIUM, a word Charley sounded out carefully. He didn’t know the word, but he liked the look of it. He rolled the word on his tongue and tasted it — “palladium.” It sounded like something a spy would be concerned with. He felt comfortable with the familiar “copper,” but this new word was exciting. From the folder he took two charts that seemed to be full of numbers and added them to the store in his pocket. He took a quick look at the rest of the materials on the desk, but the headings on various sections and folders that read SWISS FRANCS and DEUTSCHEMARKS meant less than nothing to him. He thought carefully for a few minutes and then turned two of the folders upside down. There, that should do it. Whatever his father’s habit pattern was, it was broken. His father could not be caught now the way his mother had been. Being undercover is a tremendous responsibility, Charley realized as he locked the study door and returned the key to its appropriate place. Now he was going to have to figure out how to get the papers back to his father’s files but in a way that the bad guys could not anticipate. He thought carefully, and then remembered his current homework assignment involving a report on the postal system. Of course, he thought triumphantly. He could mail the papers back to his father. That way the chain of habit was broken, his father’s work was restored to its original location, and anybody who was expecting his father to be caught spying was doomed to disappointment. Charley nodded his head enthusiastically. It had been a long time since he had felt this good, in fact, not since his mother had gone away. He, Charley Burton, had done an important thing to save the good guys. Being undercover was not only challenging, it was fun!

But now came the hard part. It should have been the easiest, and it would have been for just about anyone other than Charley, who was, after all, only a fourth grader. He had never mailed anyone a letter in his whole life. While he thought he Understood the process of writing to someone, he had never practiced the procedure. He knew he had to have an envelope, he had to address the envelope, and he had to put a stamp on the finished product. But he didn’t have an envelope, he had never written an address on an envelope, and he didn’t have a stamp. He didn’t even know if one stamp was enough. He thought and thought about it for a long time. He rejected the idea of sneaking back into the study and stealing an envelope. That would be a dead giveaway if one of his father’s own envelopes was used. Charley knew he was helping his father in his work, but he didn’t want him to know the source of his variation in routine. One of the primary things his mother had drilled into him in her tales of spies was the idea of keeping one’s identity a secret. You can’t very well be a spy if everybody knows you’re one, can you?

When inspiration struck, Charley was really quite proud of himself. One of his mother’s frequent reminders about the duties of spies was that they often found it necessary to improvise. There was an interesting word, and Charley knew precisely what it meant. To improvise, to take advantage of existing situations — these were things spies did as a matter of course. So when Charley approached Mrs. Lansdale after class the next day, he had a well-rehearsed story to tell.

“It’s about my report on the post office,” he began.

“The postal system, Charley. Always be precise. Now, how may I help you with your report?” While she was an authoritarian, Mrs. Lansdale really was a concerned teacher, and if her student needed some help, well, she was going to be right there to see that he got it.

“Yes, ma’am,” said Charley. “I want to send a birthday card to my father, but I want him to be surprised. So could you address the envelope for me so that he wouldn’t recognize my writing? And that way I can see exactly how long it takes to be delivered, and could you tell me how many stamps to put on it?” That seemed to cover all the problem areas that Charley had been able to think of, and Mrs. Lansdale was delighted to do her part in the exercise. She even congratulated Charley on being thoughtful enough to send a card. She was a great believer in cards herself, she told him. She sent dozens of them every year to former students she liked to keep in contact with. Her tone implied that Charley would soon join the ranks of those so favored.

Charley presented her with a card and envelope that he had bought at the local candy store. It was a rather fussy card with lots of toy bears on it, but he had selected it for the size of the envelope. Mrs. Lansdale made a mental note to start teaching Charley a few things about taste and design. But then there should be lots of time for that. He was still very young. She wrote his father’s name and address on it in her flowing teacher’s hand, opened her purse, and took a stamp out of her wallet. “One stamp for a card, Charley,” she said. “Let me contribute it in honor of your father’s birthday.” Commodities, she thought to herself. A comfortable retirement not too far down the road.

That evening after dinner when he was supposed to be doing his homework, Charley carefully refolded his father’s papers, put them in the stamped and addressed envelope all ready to drop in the mailbox on his way to school tomorrow morning. He was excited and quite happy. He had saved his father. He had made it impossible for the bad guys to catch him because the poor man didn’t know enough to vary his routine. Somehow he was going to have to teach his father the proper way to behave as a spy, but that was a project for another day. Perhaps during summer vacation when he had more free time and less homework to think about.

Nothing Charley could have anticipated — in fact, nothing in any of the stories his mother had told him — was like the reality of what happened two days later at Charley’s house. Swarms of men were all over the house checking doors and windows. Both Charley and Mrs. Hilton were asked dozens of times to try to remember if any strangers had been seen around the house. Mr. Burton looked tense and worried and didn’t seem to have time for meals or for keeping his usual hours in the study. Charley wasn’t quite sure just what was going on, but he was sure of one thing. There had been a break in his father’s habit pattern. Charley smiled and chalked one up for the good guys.

When the mail was delivered that day, there was a sudden shout from his father, and all the strangers clustered around the hall table where Mr. Burton had just opened a large envelope to reveal his missing papers. Charley stood quietly in the corner watching all the activity. He had guessed right, he thought. His father would have to be a spy. All these strange men looking around the house, asking questions, and now being all excited by the papers in the mail — these were the good guys, he knew, helping his father to discover if anything was missing.

Nobody seemed to pay much attention to the small boy who wandered through the house all weekend. Nobody felt it necessary to lower voices when discussing the handwriting on the envelope, how it was not known to anyone, did not appear in anyone’s files. Two clear sets of fingerprints were on the envelope, aside from the mail carrier’s, but no records of them were in any files that were checked immediately.

“It’s got to be a foreigner,” said one of the tall, quiet men to Mr. Burton. “Note the handwriting. No American writes that way. You can read every letter.” Mrs. Lansdale, one of the last practitioners of the Palmer Method of penmanship, would have been thrilled to hear her work so described.

At dinner that night, Mr. Burton felt obligated to explain to Charley something about what had been going on. “Some of my papers have been mislaid, and these men are helping me find them.”

“Didn’t they come back in the mail?” asked Charley. “I heard one of those men say that they had.”

“Yes,” his father said. “But we have to know who saw them. It’s important for my business,” he added, recognizing the confusion in Charley’s face.

“Commodities?” asked Charley.

“Yes. Commodities.” He took a long look at Charley, put down his fork, and asked quietly, “Do you know what commodities are?”

“No,” said Charley. “But you said I would when I’m older.”

“Well, commodities are things that are grown, or mined, or made, and I buy them for my company.” He resumed eating, but then took pity on Charley’s lost look again. “My company makes things like satellites and communication systems.”

Now Charley was on firm ground. He knew all about satellites and communication systems. They were the things that spies spied for. He was finally able to relax. He was sure that he had done the right thing. Now that his father’s work was out in the open, his position as a spy was clear. But now was the time to stop the conversation. A spy wasn’t supposed to let anyone know what he did, not even his family. So Charley knew that he had to change the subject before his father gave too much away.

“I have to make a report on the postal system for my class project,” he volunteered.

“That’s nice,” his father said. “Perhaps you would like to visit the main post office some day next week. I go there frequently to check on shipments, and it might help your report to see something of the duties that are performed there.”

“I think I have enough information,” Charley said. “But thank you anyhow. Mrs. Lansdale helped me with the hard part already.”

Driving to his business headquarters the next day Mr. Burton kept finding a nagging thought poking at his mind. He couldn’t quite get a handle on it, but in time he would. Funny about Charley, he thought. Making a report on the postal system. Well, it was probably just as well that the boy didn’t need to go to the post office for a tour. The post office would be a very busy place for the next several days while Mr. Burton’s fellow workers tried to trace that envelope. Strange the way that material had disappeared and then turned up again. It wasn’t important material, but it could have been. He would have to be more careful, would have to do more of his work at his company’s headquarters and less of his work at home. Security would have to be shored up. He would have to try harder. He would have to go deeper undercover to look more like an ordinary businessman. It was back to the old rigid rules again. He shook his head in irritation as he passed the signpost bearing an arrow and the words LANGLEY AIR FORCE BASE. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

A vision of Charley’s puzzled face came to him as he pulled into his usual parking space. Poor kid, he thought. What a shame to see him so confused about things. But he was much too young to talk to about, well, spies and such. The little guy wouldn’t even understand what the word undercover meant. Well, thank goodness the boy didn’t have to worry about such things. It must be easy being a fourth grader, Mr. Burton thought. It would be so easy going through life without any worries at all.

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