Operator - 01 Read Online Free PDF Page A

angrier than Mom when I left home.
    “How do you like your new job?” Jamie asks.
    “It’s great. Fascinating, but I’m only six months in.” That’s not entirely true. I’m not a hundred percent sure that I fit the sedentary life that I’ve worked so hard for. A suit doesn’t feel comfortable on me. But it’s the path I’ve chosen and if I learned anything in the Army, it’s how to track a path to the end.
    “And what is it that you do, exactly?” my mother asks in a tone that suggests she may not want too many details.
    “I’m an intelligence analyst for the State Department.”
    “Oh, my God! You’re a spy!” Ginny says, savoring the last word.
    I shake my head emphatically. “More like a reporter. It’s a desk job. I look at things like satellite photos and intel reports, as well as publicly available stuff from the Internet, to put together stories. I have a little area of responsibility that I follow and I write articles for some classified journals that circulate in the intelligence community.”
    “What’s your specialty area?” Jeff asks. I hesitate because I know he’s obsessed with guns. I’m weighing an offer to join him tomorrow morning for a hunting trip before I head back to Washington.
    “Generally speaking I work on arms transfers – when a country sells arms to another country through a defense contractor. I can’t be more specific than that or I’ll fail my next polygraph and lose my job.”
    “They make you take a lie detector test?” This from Ginny, who looks like she’s smelled bad fish.
    “It usually catches people who are nervous about the test…” I drift for a second, remembering the exact moment when I learned to flat-line a polygraph while telling the most outrageous lies.
    Amelia turns away from me to mother and pointedly changes the topic. “So I snuck a peek at the blanket you’re quilting for the baby. I love the pink trim!” And there it is. About six weeks ago she called and asked me to come home for the weekend. I said no. She said it was important. I apologized but held my ground. I found out later that she and Jeff announced that weekend that they are expecting a baby girl. Amelia never called to tell me. I realize that I have a lot of ground to make up with her and I think about that and being an uncle while the baby talk continues for the rest of the meal.
    Later, as we’re sipping cider and hot chocolate in the living room, the conversation turns to Mel.
    “I know she was depressed and all when she came back from Russia, but I really can’t believe she killed herself. She was always so cheerful and her kids just loved her. My friend Judy teaches in the same school and told me Mel was one of the best teachers there,” Jamie says.
    “It shocked me too, but I haven’t seen her since I left,” I reply. When Ginny called me in tears two days ago, I felt the blood drain from my head all at once. It was enough to get me to walk into my boss’s office late on Thursday afternoon and ask for the next day off. Then it took me half the day on Friday to settle down enough to start driving, which is why I’d missed my family at the funeral home.
    “Yeah, but didn’t she detest guns? I can’t believe she shot herself. That’s so creepy,” Ginny says, shivering. Mel had been the supportive older sister to Ginny that Amelia never was. I knew without asking that they’d stayed close after I left.
    “No, you’re right, she did hate guns,” I said. I remember trying to get Mel excited about a deer hunt I was going on early in junior year. Hunting was a necessity in my family, an expedient way to cut the food bill in the colder months when demand for cement waned and my father found himself seasonally unemployed. Some of my few fond memories of the man were in the woods, where he taught me how to track, to move silently and to shoot quickly and accurately. Possibly the most valuable lesson was learning to stand perfectly still – no easy task for a