Splinter Cell

3

I live in a townhouse inside the triangle formed by I-695, York Road, and Dulaney Valley Road in Towson, Maryland. This suburb of Baltimore has a reputation for being “hip” since Towson University is located here. I guess it’s hip. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just not very hip. I’m not a social guy. I don’t date, I don’t go out, and I stay pretty much to myself. When I’m not on an assignment for Third Echelon, I lead a relatively boring existence. I have no friends to speak of, my neighbors probably think I’m some kind of recluse, and the only shops I frequent are the nearby grocery store, a liquor store, and the dry cleaners in the strip mall over on York Road.

I like it that way.

The townhouse is much too large for a single man in his forties. I have three floors in which to spread out. I indulge myself in simple pleasures such as a supersize flat-screen television, DVD player, and a surround-sound system. I keep a library of reference material in the lower floor, and that’s also where my home office is. If someone were to look at the books in my library, they’d think I was a geography professor or maybe a history lecturer. For my work I study the countries of the world. I try to keep abreast of everything that’s happening politically and economically, especially in the so-called hot spots. Sometimes a single bit of knowledge about an unusual item that exists only in a given country can save your life. Knowing who’s really on your side and who’s not is of primary importance when you’re in the field. So every day I try to learn something new about a place. It keeps me sharp.

I live near Towson Town Center, a huge indoor mall that attracts all the beautiful people in the area. I avoid it like the plague. I detest shopping malls because they’re all the same. Same shops, same franchises, and the same ignorant people going about their daily business of spending money — usually someone else’s. When I need something, I go to out-of-the-way mom-and-pop shops. I can find clothes anywhere. If I want DVDs or CDs, I buy them online and get them mailed to me. In fact, I do an awful lot of online shopping. It keeps my personal interactions to a minimum.

I want to remain as anonymous as possible.

I cook my own meals. I’m pretty good at it, too. That’s one of the things that Sarah appreciates about me. She visits infrequently, but when she does she always wants me to cook for her instead of going out to a restaurant. That’s fine by me. Being able to cook is yet another valuable skill that’s helpful in my profession. You wouldn’t believe the number of strange and inhospitable places I’ve been where I’ve had to whip up a meal from whatever I could find around me. I’ve learned to eat some pretty disgusting stuff in my time, so being able to cook a decent gourmet meal on my own is a gift.

Although I don’t go out much, there are a couple of places I frequent. One is a gym that’s farther south on York, past the university. It’s actually just over the line separating Towson with Baltimore. It’s a funky little gym that appeals to minority toughs. Only a few white guys go there. It’s mostly Hispanics and African-Americans who are into boxing or weight lifting. I imagine a lot of them are in gangs, but they don’t bother me.

The other place I go, and on a much more regular basis, is the Krav Maga studio that’s in the same strip mall as my dry cleaners. It’s close enough that I walk there from the townhouse. And that’s where I go today after breakfast.

I put on my workout clothes — a jumpsuit, really — and make sure the security system is on. I leave the house and begin the ten-minute walk to the strip mall. It’s a fine day outside — spring has come early this year and we didn’t have a bad winter. Of course, I was gone most of the winter, so it didn’t matter. The assignment in the Far East took nearly three months. I was in Hong Kong for most of that time doing the preparation for the job in Macau. The assignment also involved a couple of trips to Singapore. Tracing the Shop’s arms pipeline in that area turned out to be more difficult than was originally predicted.

I received mixed reviews for the Macau job. Lambert was pleased with all the stuff I got out of the casino’s computer, but he wasn’t happy about the killings. Kim Wei Lo was indeed a very bad man and probably deserved to die, but Lambert felt we could have gotten more information out of him later. He would have gone down in the subsequent arrests that the Chinese government will surely initiate once the NSA provides them with the proof of the Shop’s existence in their country and territories. Hell, I didn’t set out to kill him, it just happened that way. It was either him or me. Lambert understands that, but he was still perturbed. He’ll get over it, though.

As Splinter Cells go, I’m pretty lucky that I’m not assigned to a static location. Dan Lee, the agent who was killed in Macau, lived and worked in the Far East territory. Of course, the guy was Chinese, so that made sense. But there are other Splinter Cells stationed in parts of the world where I certainly wouldn’t want to stay all the time. I like coming back to the States between jobs, even if it’s only to hip Towson, Maryland. I guess I have a special designation within Third Echelon. Being the first Splinter Cell and an agent who can adapt easily to just about any place they send me, I’m more useful as a “contractor.” In the old days, spies were often diplomats or embassy intelligence officers stationed in the country where they did the spying. I guess that still goes on. With Third Echelon, though, the Splinter Cells are guys that have no affiliation with the U.S. government — at least, they don’t in a public sense. I’ve used numerous cover identities when I’m on a job and I have to sometimes learn trades and skills to make the cover more legitimate.

I was in the CIA before I became a Splinter Cell. I hated it. Too much bureaucracy. Too much in-fighting and not enough cooperation between the other big agencies. In the CIA I had to spy in the traditional way — usually posing as a diplomat or someone in an official capacity. I had to be in more social situations than I cared for. I’m not good at entertaining some prime minister and his wife and talking about the local politics. Later on I moved to a stateside job in weapons development. I thought I came up with some pretty good theoretical work on information warfare, but the bureaucratic machine hampered my creativity. It was extremely frustrating. I’m a man of action and that’s why I left the CIA when Colonel Irving Lambert asked me to join Third Echelon.

I was reluctant at first, but Lambert did a pretty good job of flattering me. He told me I was the only man for the job. I was a “rare specimen,” he said. I was a spy who had never come close to being caught. I had a lifetime’s worth of espionage experience (I’m four years older than Lambert!), but I haven’t left any fingerprints on the intelligence community. He told me I knew how to survive and stay invisible. He knew I could keep a secret. So I joined.

The Macau job was pretty typical of what I do. My cover in Hong Kong was that of a journalist, which is something I’ve been on several occasions. I was supposedly working on a book about the changes in Hong Kong since the handover in 1997. To tell the truth, I didn’t see that many changes. I’d been to Hong Kong many times before 1997 and a couple of times since, and I can’t tell much difference other than the fact that there are fewer Brits now.

Still, there are some British government agencies left in Hong Kong. They provided the private boat that got me to Macau and back. The rest of it I had to do alone, though. I motored around the peninsula at night and moored a couple of miles from the main port. Like the Americans, the Brits supposedly had no knowledge of my presence or actions in the area, although the U.K. is just as interested in closing down the Shop as we are. That’s why they helped.

I get to the strip mall and walk inside KM Studio, early as usual. I’m always the first one there. The instructor is an Israeli woman named Katia Loenstern. She’s thirty-something and extremely attractive. Very buff and strong, too. I think she likes me, but I can’t reciprocate. It’s just too dangerous in my business to get involved with someone. Besides, I never know when I have to leave the country, and I can’t talk about what I’m doing. It’s not the best set of circumstances upon which to build a relationship. I don’t particularly enjoy being celibate, but I’ve trained myself not to think about it. I can appreciate looking at a beautiful woman, but that’s as far as my thought process goes. I’ve been able to find the discipline to stymie it there before I allow the desire mechanism to kick in.

Katia is in the studio, limbering up on a ballet rail. I think she rents the studio to a ballet class on some days. I can’t imagine that Krav Maga classes alone pay the rent.

“Sam!” she says, obviously surprised to see me.

“Hi, Katia,” I reply.

“Where the heck you been? I thought you’d disappeared off the face of the earth.”

That’s right. I was in the Far East. I hadn’t been to class in three months even though I had paid for the whole year in advance.

“I’ve been away on business,” I said. At least it was the truth. “Sorry. I should have told you I’d be gone a while.”

She straightens out and faces me. As usual, she’s dressed in a leotard and tights for the warm-up. She’d put on a little more clothing later for the sparring portion of the class. Katia is tall, muscular, and has a nice, natural body. Her black hair comes down just past her shoulders. She has brown eyes, a long nose, and a rather pouty mouth. Yep, I would certainly jump her bones in another life.

“Just what kind of business are you in?”

“Sales. Overseas sales. I was in the Far East for three months.”

She eyes me skeptically. “You don’t look like a salesman.”

I put down my gym bag that contains a towel and an extra T-shirt and sit on the mat. I begin my own warm-up stretches and ask, “I don’t? What does a salesman look like?”

She gets on the mat near me and continues calisthenics. “I don’t know. Just not like you.”

“What do I look like?”

“You look like a soldier. Like a career soldier. Someone who’s been in the army for thirty years.”

“Thirty years? I’m not that old!”

“No, I guess you’re not. Okay, twenty years. How old are you, anyway? I forgot.”

“It’s on my application for the class, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, I could go look it up, but I’m too busy right this second.”

“I’m forty-seven.”

She makes a face that indicates she’s impressed. “Sam, you don’t look a day over forty. Maybe even thirty-eight. And that’s getting pretty close to me.”

I look at her and she smiles at me. Is she flirting? Was that a come-on?

“Why, how old are you?” I ask.

“You know it’s impolite to ask a woman her age.”

“Aw, geez, Katia. Come on, I fessed up.”

“Guess.”

I’m pretty sure what the answer is, but I pretend to think about it. “Thirty-five?”

She raises her eyebrows. “Very good.”

Two more students enter the studio. Josh and Brian are orthodox Jews who believe that “the war” will come to their neighborhood someday, and they want to be able to defend themselves. They’re big guys. I don’t think they’d have any problem defending themselves, with or without Krav Maga.

“Anyway, welcome back,” Katia says to me, ending our conversation.

“Thanks,” I say.

Over the next ten minutes the other students arrive. Out of twelve people, nine are men ranging from age sixteen to forty-something. I think I’m the oldest guy in the class. The three women are relatively young, between eighteen and thirty, I think. Katia’s a very good instructor. She starts each class with a basic warm-up that includes some kind of aerobic activity, strength conditioning with push-ups and sit-ups, and stretching. Warm-ups are usually different in each class to keep things interesting and to ensure that each student leaves with a variety of exercises that can be used to keep fit outside of class. Following warm-up, Katia leads us in hand techniques for fifteen minutes. This time is devoted to hand strikes such as punches, elbows, and hammerfists, and associated defenses. The next fifteen minutes focus on leg techniques — kicks, knees, and their defenses. The final quarter hour is spent on self-defenses, and in Krav Maga there’s a lot to learn. Katia goes through each self-defense move thoroughly, step-by-step to ensure maximum understanding. Then we practice live, with partners. The entire hour includes drills to enhance muscle strength and cardiovascular conditioning, as well as drills to teach students how to operate under pressure or fatigue, defend against multiple attackers, and keep fighting spirit high for the entire duration of a defense or fight.

Unlike the color belt system used by other martial arts systems, Krav Maga is broken down into levels. When you progress through the system, you move up in level until you reach 3B, the most advanced class that Katia teaches. That’s the one I’m in, as well as “Fight Class,” where we have the opportunity to spar while wearing protective gear. In 3B we work on weapons defenses, grappling, joint locks, spinning heel, and slap kicks, and other advanced combatives.

When the hour’s up, everyone is in a major sweat. I can’t wait to get home and hit the shower. As folks are leaving, I wipe my face and neck with a towel and catch my breath. Katia comes over to me and says, “Sam, you should be teaching this class, not me.”

“You do a great job, Katia,” I say.

“I’m serious. You’ve been doing this a long time, haven’t you? I mean, I knew you were good, but today you showed me a thing or two. Where did you study before? Are you from Israel?”

I shake my head. “Nope. Born and raised here in the States.”

“You’re not Jewish, are you?”

I smile. “Charlie Chaplin was once asked that question,” I say. “He replied, ‘I don’t have that honor, sorry.’ ”

She laughs. “Well, you’re damned good. I’d really hate to fight you for real.”

I don’t know what to say, so I shrug and mumble, “Thanks.”

“You have to rush off?” she asks. “You want to go get a coffee? Or something cold to drink? We can go to the little diner next door.”

Oh, brother. This is all I need. Damn. Part of me wants to go with her and the rest of me wants to run like hell. I just can’t get close to a woman. I know it doesn’t work. I’ve been there, done that.

“I don’t know… ” I start to say.

“Oh, come on. I’m not going to bite you. I might kick you in the groin if you don’t, but I won’t bite.”

“We’re all sweaty.”

She rolls her eyes. “What is this? You looking for every excuse you can think of? We’ll sit in the corner and no one will smell us.”

Damn, she is cute.

“All right,” I say.

She shakes her head as if to say, “I just don’t get you.” She grabs her stuff, I take mine, and we go out the door to the diner.

Katia buys a medium coffee, black. I opt for decaf. I don’t like to have to depend on stuff like caffeine. If you get too used to coffee to keep you alert, you have no business being a Splinter Cell.

Now comes the hard part. She’s probably going to ask me a lot of personal questions and I’m going to have to lie. I keep a catalog of cover stories for situations like this. The usual “What do you do for a living?” and “Where did you go to school?” and “Have you ever been married?” questions.

We sit at a table and she grins at me. “So. Here we are. See, this isn’t so bad.”

“Nope,” I reply. Maybe if I keep my end of the conversation monosyllabic, she’ll get bored.

“Now tell me again about your business. You get to travel a lot?”

“It’s nothing cool,” I say. “I sell ball bearings. I travel to other countries and sell ball bearings. It’s real exciting.”

She laughs. “I’ll bet it’s better than you say. Just the traveling part would interest me.”

“It’s all right at first, but you soon get tired of the early mornings, the crowded airports, the hassles of security these days, and the jet lag. Believe me, it’s not as exotic as it seems.”

“All right, what do you do for fun?”

“When I’m in another country?”

“No, here, silly. What do you do besides take Krav Maga classes?”

I look away. Sometimes the shy act turns off women and sometimes it makes them more interested. I’m hoping it’ll discourage her since she’s such an outgoing lass. “I don’t know,” I mutter. “Nothing much. I live alone. I’m not much of a socialite.”

“Oh, sure,” she counters. “A great-looking guy like you? You must have a dozen girlfriends.”

I shake my head. “I’m afraid not.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

Uh-oh. She looks heartened. Maybe I should have told her I had six girlfriends that live with me. Damn, this is hard.

“Well, I know you’re not gay, so what is it? Bad marriage or something?”

“How do you know I’m not gay?”

She smirks. “Come on, a girl can tell.”

“What about you? You’re not married, are you?”

“I asked you first. But no, I’m not. I was married for four years when I was just out of college. Big mistake. Haven’t looked back. You?”

I don’t like to talk about that part of my life. “Yeah, I was married once. She died.”

Katia’s smile falls. That sure put a damper on things. Maybe I should just tell the truth more often. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she says. “What happened?”

“Cancer,” I answer.

“That’s awful. How long were you married?”

“A little more than three years.”

“Kids?”

I’m not sure if I want to reveal this or not, but I do. “Yeah, one. I have a daughter going to college in Illinois.”

“Oh, wow,” Katia says. “Do you see her much?”

“Not often enough,” I say truthfully.

“Hey, you like to eat?” she asks, sensing that she should change the subject.

I shrug. “I guess. Doesn’t everyone?”

“I like to cook. You want to try one of Katia Loenstern’s specials some night?” she asks.

I don’t want to tell her that I like to cook, too. That would just give us something in common.

“Oh, I don’t think so,” I say. It pains me to have to tell her this.

She looks as if I’d just slapped her. “Really?” she asks. “You’d be missing something, I tell you.”

“I believe you. Thanks, really. But I just can’t do that. I’m sorry.”

“What’s the matter? I said I don’t bite.”

“It’s not that,” I mutter. I try to put on the introverted, scared-of-women act to dissuade her.

“Don’t you find me attractive?”

There’s my opening. “No,” I say.

I really thought that would do the trick, but instead she says, “Bullshit! You think I’m gorgeous. I can tell. Come on, what is it with you?”

I laugh and say, “Look, Katia, you’re my instructor. I don’t… I can’t get involved, all right? Let’s just be friends.”

She shakes her head but keeps smiling. “Boy, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that one. Fine. Look, we all have pasts we want to hide. Don’t worry about it. We’ll be friends if that’s what you want.”

By now we’re done with our coffees. I look at the time and say, “Well, I guess I’d better be going. I have some, uhm, sales reports to do this afternoon.”

She sighs and says, “Okay, Sam. Will you be at the next class?”

“I should be. You never know, though, in my job.”

We walk out of the diner together and she holds out her hand. I take it and give it a light squeeze.

“Okay, friend,” she says. “I’ll see you next time.”

“Okay,” I reply. And then we separate. She goes back to the studio and I begin the walk home, cursing at myself for being such a shit.

When I get back to the house, I hear the phone ringing. I keep a regular unlisted home phone line. There’s an extension in the kitchen, on the middle level, right when you walk into the house.

I pick up the receiver and I hear Sarah’s sweet voice.

“Hi, Dad, it’s me!”

“Sarah honey! I’m happy to hear from you,” I say. I honestly get a warm, fuzzy feeling when I talk to her.

“Just wanted to let you know that Rivka and I are about to leave for the airport. We’re so excited.”

I tense up and say, “Whoa, hold on. The airport? Where are you going?”

“Jerusalem, Dad. Remember? We’ve been planning this for—”

“Sarah, we discussed this at length! I told you that you couldn’t go.”

“Dad! Come on, you didn’t come right out and say I couldn’t go. You didn’t want me to go, but you didn’t say I couldn’t go.”

“Well, you can’t go. Israel’s just too volatile right now. With the state of things in the world with respect to Americans, I’m just not comfortable with it.”

Naturally, she sounds upset. “Oh, come on, Dad! I’m twenty years old! You can’t stop me now! We’re on our way to the airport as we speak! I have my tickets and everything!”

Aw, hell. What am I supposed to do about this?

“Sarah, I wish we’d talked more about this.” I try to control my anger.

“Look, I’ll call you when we get to Jerusalem. I’ll try to figure out what the time difference is and not call you in the middle of the night. I gotta go.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say except, “Be careful. I love you.” But she had already hung up. Damn it.

I guess I had forgotten all about her plans. Sarah wanted to go with her friend Rivka to Israel over spring break. I had told her I wasn’t too crazy about her going to such a dangerous location but I guess I wasn’t forceful enough. What can I do? Technically, she’s an adult.

Sarah’s a student at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, just north of Chicago. She’s a junior. I think. Sometimes I forget how long she’s been in college. Rivka is her best friend and she happens to be from Israel. They’re supposedly going to stay with Rivka’s family in Jerusalem for a little less than a week.

I glance at the photo of Sarah that’s stuck on the refrigerator with a magnet. She’s the spitting image of her mother. Beautiful and smart. A class act all the way. The only thing she inherited from me was my stubbornness.

The memory of Regan giving birth flashes through my mind. It was a difficult labor and being on a U.S. military base in Germany didn’t help. I was in the CIA at the time, working in Eastern Europe. Regan had a job as a cryptanalyst for the NSA. We met in Georgia, of all places. Not Georgia, USA, but the former Soviet state. We had a stormy affair and Regan got pregnant. The wedding was a small, quiet one on the base in Germany, and that’s where Sarah was born.

I don’t like to reflect on the three years Regan and I were together. It wasn’t a happy time. I loved Regan and she loved me, but our professions interfered. It was a distant, difficult marriage. Regan eventually went back to the States and took Sarah with her. She reclaimed her maiden name, Burns, and had Sarah’s legally changed. As for me, I dedicated myself entirely to the work, operating extensively in Germany, Afghanistan, and the Soviet satellites in the years leading up to the collapse of the USSR. Needless to say, I became estranged from Regan and Sarah.

I think Sarah was fifteen when Regan died. That was so goddamned hard. I hadn’t spoken to Regan in years, and I tried my best to have a reconciliation with her when I learned that she had less than a year to live. Fucking ovarian cancer. It doesn’t take a trained psychologist to figure out why I’m afraid of commitment now. Living with the guilt of not being there while Sarah was growing up and then facing the fact that the woman you love is dying will turn anyone off from relationships.

I became Sarah’s legal guardian, and that’s when I took the bureaucratic job with the CIA in the States, hoping I could settle into a suburban life and focus more on her upbringing. Unfortunately, I have enough trouble being comfortable around human beings in general, much less a teenage girl. It was an awkward, difficult time. I suppose, though, that it’s turned out okay. After she graduated from high school, Sarah seemed to come around and appreciate me more. I’ve read that all teenagers go through the same thing. Once they leave the nest, they become your friend. Thank goodness that’s what happened with us.

I wish I could see her more often.

I hear myself sigh as I force these thoughts out of my head. I walk downstairs to the office so I can check my other answering machine. My line to the NSA isn’t a phone at all. It’s really more of a pager embedded in a paperweight on my desk. If the pin light is on, that means I need to contact Lambert from a secure line outside the house. I don’t ever call on my home line.

The pin light is on.