Face, The Read online

  I step toward the first box and gingerly lift the lid. I expect to find pots and pans, or other useful objects Mother’s frugal nature wouldn’t allow her to throw away, but instead several manila file folders peek out at me.

  I run my finger over the file tabs, reading Mother’s neatly printed labels: Old Checks. Past Bank Statements. Utility Bills. Insurance Payments. Kevin.

  I blink at the sight of my brother’s name. Kevin has been gone more than twenty years, and the trunk containing his kindergarten art, catcher’s mitt, and college diploma is moldering in my attic. So what has Mother saved here?

  I pull the file from the box and flip it open. Inside I find Kevin’s passport, riddled with red and green stamps, his Social Security card, and his birth certificate. His death certificate, signed by a doctor in Spain. The bulletin from the memorial service where we honored him, his wife, and their stillborn child. Two photographs of the matching urns at the columbarium. A faded Washington Post article reporting that a couple from Falls Church had died in Spain. And letters, many of them on official letterhead from the Crescent Chemical Company, the firm where my brother worked. All of them dated July 1986, the month Kevin died.

  I walk to the sofa and toss back the sheet. Dust motes pirouette in the light, but the upholstered surface is clean. I settle into the corner of the couch and open the file on my lap. After holding my finger under my nose to resist a sneeze, I flip through the papers again, and this time a distinctive letterhead catches my eye. One letter, dated two days after my brother’s death, is from a doctor working for the Central Intelligence Agency.

  Why would someone from the CIA write Mom about my brother?

  Chapter Three

  Sarah

  “Hey,” Judson says. “We pulled off a flawless operation. High five.”

  He rolls over to me and holds up his large brown hand, which I slap only because I know he likes this little ritual. Dr. Mewton has headed off to her office, leaving us alone in the operations room.

  I tuck a hank of hair behind my speech processor to hear him better. “I wouldn’t call it flawless. First our contact went all squirrelly on us, then we lost the image when Hightower went into that passageway. Mewton wasn’t happy about that.”

  “Hightower can handle himself. And it’s not like we had any reason to expect an assassin to be lurking outside a stationery shop.”

  “Still, I don’t like being in the dark. Anything can happen—” I swallow the rest of my words, remembering that Judson will spend the remainder of his life in darkness. He knows all too well that life can change in a heartbeat. He doesn’t need me to tell him about the dangers of undercover work, any more than I need him to tell me about deafness.

  I place my fingers on my keyboard as the bell in the tower begins to toll. Without looking out the window, I know the sun is sinking toward the watery western horizon.

  “Maybe this accountant will be the contact that pays off,” Judson says, rolling toward his workstation. “Maybe this time we’ll give the DEA what they need to stop those murderous—”

  “Hey,” I interrupt, more than ready to change the subject. “How’s the new voice working for you? Easier to live with than the old one?”

  “Oh, yeah, much better.” Judson clicks the keyboard at his station. “I’ve named her Esmeralda.”

  “Why?”

  “Think about it, kid. The association will come to you.” In one smooth move he turns his wheelchair to face me. “That reminds me—want to check out my Close Connection account?”

  I close the uplink to the KH 12 satellite we used to surveil the streets around Hightower’s location. “I don’t know why you waste time with that site. It’s not like you’re ever going to meet one of those women.”

  “Hey—don’t deny a crip one of his few joys in life, okay? Log on for me.”

  “Don’t you hear the bell? It’s time to go down for dinner.”

  “My stomach can wait. My curiosity, however, is desperate to be satisfied.” He edges closer, his smile spreading. “Come on, Sarah, tinkle a little tune on those computer keys and hook me up with someone delicious.”

  “Do it yourself.”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, my eyes don’t work.”

  “Text-to-speech reads e-mail, too.”

  “Yeah, but text-to-speech can’t peek at a picture and tell me if a lady’s fine and foxy.”

  Mystified by the workings of the male mind, I study my friend. Despite the damage done to his body, Judson Holmes is a skilled agent, as quick with computer code as anyone I’ve ever met. Why would he want anything to do with women who advertise themselves online?

  “Why?” The word tumbles off my tongue. “Seriously, Jud, I don’t understand.”

  His smile shrivels. “I don’t expect you do.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  He hesitates. “Well…you have to admit, Sarah, you’re different.”

  “Not really.”

  “Yes, you are. You’ve spent way too much time in this place and you hang with me when you’re not working. That a useless cripple should be a young woman’s best friend—that ain’t right.”

  “You’re not useless and we’re not talking about me.” I touch his hand so he’ll know I’m not kidding around. “I honestly don’t get it. Why do you reach out to those women when your life is centered here now?”

  “Oh, Sarah.” His voice is as heavy as the brass bell tolling outside. “Smart as you are, I don’t know if you can understand.”

  “Try me.”

  “Writing to those women…makes me feel like a whole man. Hearing from them makes me feel normal, not like some freak shut away from society.”

  I sit back, smarting from the barb in his words. I don’t think he meant to hurt me, but he did.

  The tower bell concludes its ringing, reminding any fisherman within hearing distance to take time for prayer. For those of us who live and work at the Convent of the Lost Lambs, though, the automated bell has more to do with flesh than spirit.

  “Hear that?” I stand so abruptly that my chair rolls backward and slams into a filing cabinet. “It’s dinnertime.”

  Chapter Four

  Renee

  A trembling rises from someplace beneath my ribs as I study the letters in my brother’s folder. My mother has filed them in chronological order, and the first is dated the day after Kevin’s death. In it, the president of the Crescent Chemical Company expresses his condolences for Kevin’s untimely passing. “Following so soon after Diane’s tragedy, we are in shock,” the executive wrote. “If we can do anything for you, or if you have any opinion as to how we should dispose of his belongings, please let me know. Otherwise, we will donate the contents of the home to the local parish priest and have our attorney handle the estate….”

  A second letter, on the same company letterhead, is from a man who identifies himself as Kevin’s colleague and says he will be sorely missed. He was good at his job and a true patriot, John Forehand wrote. You can be proud of the work he was doing in Valencia.

  I look away from the page as confusion clouds my thinking. Why would anyone make a point of telling a grieving mother that her son was a patriot? What had Kevin been doing overseas?

  Ashamed to admit that I know so little about my brother’s last years, I flip to the page that most interests me—the one from Dr. Glenda Mewton, Deputy Director for Special Projects, Western European Division, Central Intelligence Agency. This letter, unlike the others, is not prefaced with paragraphs about loss and concern. Dr. Glenda Mewton comes directly to the point:

  Dear Mrs. Sims:

  This is to update you on the status of Sarah Jane Sims, daughter of the late officer Kevin Sims and the late Diane Sims. As you may have heard from your son, the child was born with severe facial defects as a result of Treacher-Collins syndrome. Immediately after birth the baby was transported to a field hospital, where doctors performed surgery to insert a feeding tube and a tracheotomy tube, without which the
child could not have survived. The prognosis for this patient is not good, but I need you to sign the enclosed power of attorney giving me legal authority to do what is best for this child. I have also enclosed a photo so you will be able to see the severity of this case.

  We have not been able to reach you by telephone, but must resolve this matter at the earliest opportunity. Please call or send a telegram to my attention at once.

  I search through the letters and rattle the pages, but if Dr. Mewton enclosed a photo, my mother did not keep it.

  Perhaps she couldn’t bear the reminder.

  I lower the letter as my heart leaps into my throat. This has to be a mistake. Kevin and Diane’s baby was stillborn. I know the baby was born dead because that’s what Mother told me, and my mother would sooner pluck out her eyelashes than tell a lie. At the memorial service her pastor talked about what a tragedy it was to lose father, mother, and child in the space of three days. The baby was supposed to have been cremated with Diane in Spain, that’s why there were two urns, instead of three.

  The buzzing of my cell phone breaks my concentration. I dig through my purse and snap the phone open. Becky, my friend and the receptionist at my practice, wants to know if I need to use her pickup truck.

  “No, but—You won’t believe this.” I lift the letter, my senses still reeling. “I think my brother worked for the CIA.”

  “You’re kidding.” I can imagine her astonished gape. “I didn’t know you had a brother.”

  “I don’t, not anymore. He died twenty years ago, in Spain.”

  “Twenty years—? Good grief, how old was he?”

  “Thirty-two. He died when I was fifteen.”

  “Wow.” I can almost hear her thoughts leapfrogging from one possibility to another. “Was he a spy? Oh my goodness, was he executed by a foreign government?”

  “You’ve seen too many movies. No, Kevin lost his wife and baby, so a couple of days later he drove his car off a bridge…at least, that’s what we were told. But I’ve just found this folder, and now nothing makes sense. If this one letter is to be believed, the little girl—my niece—was born alive and taken to some other hospital because she was in such bad shape.”

  Becky exhales into the phone. “What happened to her?”

  I flip through the rest of the correspondence, but none of the other writers mention a child. And none of the letters give any clue as to how my mother responded to Dr. Glenda Mewton.

  It has to be a mistake. Dr. Mewton must have received bad information. Maybe she wrote Mother about someone else’s baby.

  I hold the file by its spine and shake it, but no photograph or power of attorney form flutters out. Only Kevin’s passport and his death certificate, signed by a doctor in Spain.

  So maybe there was no baby.

  Either that, or Mom returned the power of attorney and destroyed the picture, deepening the deception.

  I lower the file to my lap. “I have no idea what happened to the little girl, but I’m thinking she must have belonged to someone else. Otherwise, someone would have followed up with us…right?”

  “I don’t think the CIA volunteers a lot of information,” Becky says. “And they were even more closemouthed twenty years ago, weren’t they?”

  “I don’t know.” I glance out the door as a pair of young boys whiz through the alley on bicycles, their hair flying. For so long I’ve thought I was the last of my family…What if I’ve been wrong?

  I could have a niece. If she survived whatever Treacher-Collins syndrome is, she’d be twenty years old now.

  I know very little about birth defects and even less about the CIA, but I’m not willing to spend the rest of my life wondering if I’ve been sold a lie.

  I’m going to learn the truth about what happened to Sarah Jane Sims.

  Chapter Five

  Sarah

  “Sarah?”

  Despite the heavy hum on the secure line, I recognize the voice immediately—it belongs to Jack Traut, deputy director of the Office for Science and Technology. Mr. Traut is Dr. Mewton’s supervisor, and he’s probably calling from Langley. But why is he calling at 10:00 p.m.?

  I roll over, sit up, and adjust my pajama top. “Sir?”

  “Catch you at a bad time?”

  I ought to remind him about the five hours’ difference in time zones, but instead I toss a guilty glance at the DVD playing on my computer monitor. I always feel as if I should be working when Mr. Traut calls, but for the last fifty minutes I’ve been watching Baby try desperately to convince Johnny Castle that she can learn to dance the merengue. I pick up the remote and press the mute button. “No, sir.”

  “Good. Listen, have you been briefed about the recent trouble in Slovakia?”

  I bend to search through a stack of folders on my nightstand. I usually file briefings as soon as they come in, because few of them relate directly to my work. Occasionally, though, I wish I’d skimmed those pages before putting them away.

  I find the Eastern European affairs folder and tug it out of the stack. “I have the briefing in front of me.”

  “Our people can’t get a clear answer from anyone in-country, but all signs point to Hungarian hackers. Whoever attacked the Slovakian Web sites did a thorough job—every government server went down in less than twenty-four hours.”

  “I see that.”

  “Obviously, we can’t have that happening on our systems. We’ve got some of our best people working on the defensive perimeter, but Dr. Mewton reminded me of your steganography project. Seems to me there has to be a way we can guarantee that the Slovakian situation can’t happen here. Why can’t we be proactive and sneak something onto the computers of whoever might be foolish enough to attack us?”

  I watch Baby step into Johnny’s arms as I consider the question. Steganography, the art of hiding a message inside pictures or programs, isn’t a new science, but I’ve never considered its potential as a defensive measure. My current project is a little program I call Mona Lisa. On the surface, it’s just a collection of screen savers, perfectly suitable for an office environment. But in reality, each of those pretty pictures could be used to send covert messages or secretly upload key files.

  I suppose I could expand the application to include a “Trojan horse”—hidden software that could do very bad things to unsuspecting users’ computers. If a hacker cracked the firewall protecting our systems, why couldn’t we let him steal something that contained a secret string of deadly code? The trick would be convincing him to steal the loaded image or document…unless, of course, we loaded all our files with an undetectable Trojan.

  “I could certainly add that dimension, sir. I think I’d enjoy the challenge.”

  “I’ll look forward to a demonstration. Let Glenda know when you have it ready.”

  “I will, sir.”

  “Fine, fine. How’s the weather out your way?”

  I glance toward the window, a star-studded ebony rectangle. “Clear and pleasant. We’ve had a lovely summer.”

  “I should get out there to check up on you all more often. Keep up the good work, Sarah.”

  “I will. Thank you, sir.”

  The phone clicks and I return it to its base. Mr. Traut is right—he should come out here more often. He says we’re his favorite special projects team, but you wouldn’t know it if you studied his calendar. He’s visited our facility only three times this year.

  I study the latest briefing. According to the classified report, the Slovakian prime minister’s Web site was hit on June 27. After the PM’s site went down, other hacker attacks came in waves, effectively shutting down newspaper offices, television stations, schools, and banks. The assault so unnerved the Slovakian government authorities that they raised the issue at a meeting of NATO officials, equating the cyber attack with an act of war.

  I lean against my pillow and push against the unruly sprig of hair that is forever falling into my left eye. Like many others in the company, Mr. Traut believes that technology has forev
er changed the face of war. Instead of fighting with large conventional armies, countries will either strike with small guerilla groups or wage cyber battles—and of the two types of attack, cyber war will be the more devastating. Because so many people rely on the Internet for banking, shopping, and communicating, hostile action in cyberspace could bring a country to its knees.

  I watch the monitor as Baby skips across a green lawn in white sneakers and cropped pants. The story is set long before people routinely had computers in their homes and carried cell phones in their pockets. I’m sure the screenwriter wanted to portray the early sixties as a more innocent era, but I’ve seen this film several times, and I know that darkness lurks even at Kellerman’s.

  I watch a lot of movies, but I hold few illusions about life. The CIA’s Convent of the Lost Lambs treats people who have been tortured and mutilated by their fellow men. Part of my job includes eavesdropping on plots and conspiracies to overthrow governments and commit murder. I know that evil lurks in every building and behind every bush outside these walls.

  Perhaps that’s why I enjoy films so much. In them I can enjoy a world where almost everyone has a pretty face and only the men and women who wear black have evil hearts.

  If pain and sadness can shadow beautiful Baby and handsome Johnny in a lovely summer resort, I know it would haunt me, if I ever leave this place.

  Not that I ever will.

  Chapter Six

  Renee

  “So?” I lower my pen to my desk, a purposeful and relaxed gesture that should encourage Nancy to talk. “Does the BOTOX seem to be working?”

  My patient, a forty-six-year-old mother in a T-shirt, shorts, and battered sneakers, crosses her legs and gives me a rueful smile. “My daughter keeps telling me that I look like I’m wearing a mask.”

  “Was this the sixteen-year-old?”

  “Brittany, yes.”

  “Did you honestly expect her to say something nice? After all, didn’t you just take her cell phone away?”