Disclaimer: This story is not meant as a prequel to my other fan-fiction story, "Traveler Season Two," so please don't expect the characters or plots to follow the same (or even similar) lines as in that story.
Chapter 1:
The Mission
Staten Island, New York
Twenty-three months before Drexler Museum bombing
Today, his name was Daniel Jerome Taft. He carried a New York state driver's license attesting that he was twenty-three years old, stood five feet and eight inches tall, weighed one-hundred-and-forty pounds, and had brown hair and green eyes. Like a good citizen, he was listed as a registered organ donor.
He had been Daniel Taft before. He was glad to be him again: It beat who had been for the past eleven months.
The young man calling himself Daniel drove a rented, gun-metal gray Lexus sedan down a tree-lined street in an affluent, residential South Shore neighborhood. In two days, the nation would celebrate its independence; the impressive two- and three-story homes he passed sported American flags on their perfectly-appointed porches and professionally-manicured lawns. With the heat of the day giving way to a pleasantly balmy evening, many middle-aged couples were out strolling the sidewalks, smoke could be seen rising from backyard barbecues, and school-age children played games of tag or whiffleball in view of their living room windows.
A far cry from the slick, gaudy world of Miami's South Beach, where Daniel (he had not been called Daniel then, but J.C.) had spent the better part of the last year amongst drug dealers, gun runners and crack addicts.
Aware that he was running a little late – his flight from Paris to LaGuardia had been delayed by thirty minutes – Daniel eased the Lexus into a familiar driveway at the end of the block. Killing the engine, he grabbed a leather Coach messenger bag and matching suitcase out of the passenger's seat before hurrying up the stone porch steps.
He took a moment to compose himself before ringing the bell, a moment to recall Daniel Taft's memories, attitude, movements. Switching identities could be tricky, especially after being on a deep-cover mission for as long as he had been. Two weeks of lounging in a luxury hotel suite in Paris had hardly given him time to decompress, to snap out of being the tough-talking, dope-dealing J.C.
You can't afford to make mistakes here, so get it together. Ready – set – go…
Moments later, Sela Langdon greeted the young man with a warm, "Daniel! How good to see you again!" and a motherly hug. Daniel kissed the pretty, middle-aged brunette chastely on the cheek as she ushered him into a lovely foyer paneled in cherry-stained oak.
"Come with me, I'm working on dinner," Sela commanded, leading him down a short hallway alongside the staircase into a sunny, ultra-modern kitchen. For someone who was just cooking supper for her family, Daniel noted, Sela looked quite stylish in a coral-colored linen pants suit; come to think of it, he couldn't remember ever seeing his handler's wife in anything other than the finest clothes, although she made the glamour look effortless.
"Joseph should be home any minute. I know he was expecting you. How was Paris?"
"Hot," Daniel admitted. Dropping his bags in the hall, he settled onto a tall bar stool at the island in the center of the kitchen. Sela moved around him, taking down pots and pans and tossing ingredients into them seemingly at random. "But it was nice to get away for a couple of weeks."
"Did you take anybody special?"
Daniel shook his head, remembering to blush a little. Daniel Taft was rather shy, particularly where women were involved. "Nope. Just me and a good book and a lot of wine."
"Oh, you can't visit that city alone – Paris is for lovers," Sela remarked wistfully. "Joseph and I honeymooned there. It was amazing. A million years ago now, and we keep meaning to go back, but…" She shrugged her slender shoulders, as if to say, What can you do?
"Are you thirsty?" Sela inquired, switching topics with the careless rapidity Daniel quite liked about her.
"Parched."
"Good, because I need a beer." Sela opened the stainless steel refrigerator, popped the top on two bottles of Guinness and slid one across the wooden tabletop to him. "I suppose Joseph hasn't had the chance to tell you that Darian got caught smoking in the girls' room at school. I mean, for Christ's sake, she's fifteen, like she isn't going to rebel, you know? But the principal's making it out to be a criminal offense, practically. I spent three hours – three hours, can you believe that? – in a parent-teacher conference today."
Sela shook her dark hair back from her face, grimacing. "By the end of it, I needed a cigarette so bad I was about ready to light the guidance counselor and smoke her."
Daniel laughed, a throaty, heartfelt laugh. He remembered now why he enjoyed being Daniel Taft so much: He was able to spend time with interesting, sophisticated people like Sela and her husband, people who didn't stumble around in a perpetually drug-induced haze searching for their next hit or planning their next coke deal.
"What's going on down here?" a male voice boomed from the hallway. Turning, Daniel watched a tall, white-haired man in an expensive camel-colored suit cross the room to kiss his wife full on the lips. Releasing her, he demanded with mock severity, "Cheating on me with a younger man, are you, my sweet?"
"Well, can you blame me? Just look at what a handsome devil he is." Sela winked at Daniel as she moved to check on the simmering pots lining the stove.
Daniel stood and shook hands with Joseph Langdon, glad as always to see his primary contact within Hometown. Daniel had met the Langdons for the first time when he completed his initial training three and a half years ago; they had invited him into their home, treated him like a second son for three months while he finished the second, less arduous phase of becoming an operative. He had thought them the most amazing couple then, and he still did. The children of wealthy, influential parents, they had grown up in the same Manhattan circles and had been together since Joseph's freshman year at Princeton.
The Langdons lived the sort of life Daniel had always coveted: Joseph, a consultant for Fallbrook Dunn who worked closely with the Department of Homeland Security (and before that, the FBI), held a law degree from Harvard; Sela operated a successful, high-end catering business and looked after the couple's two children, Darian and Samuel. They owned a gorgeous house, wore designer clothes, drove expensive cars and traveled to exotic places.
Things like that – the right house, the right clothes, the right cars – mattered to Daniel. He didn't so much crave the comfort or the luxury; he was actually more comfortable in an old pair of jeans than in Armani, and he certainly didn't balk at physical discomfort, dirt, or hard work. He wasn't "soft," as his father would have said.
No, what Daniel desired weren't fine, expensive things in and of themselves; he desired the status that came from owning the right vehicle and living in the right neighborhoods and knowing the right people. He supposed that desire stemmed from spending his adolescence as the scholarship kid at an elite East Coast prep school (his name had not been Daniel then, either), where everyone around him enjoyed seemingly limitless wealth while Daniel's father worked diligently to keep them in a middle-class tax bracket.
Someday, Daniel knew, if he did his job well and proved his worth to those who mattered, he could have a life not unlike Joseph's. Then it wouldn't matter that he didn't come from quite so privileged a background.
"I was just telling Daniel about the trouble Darian's having at school," Sela started to inform her husband, but at that moment, the backdoor burst open and two squabbling siblings exploded onto the scene.
"Mom, Darian slapped me!" a wiry, dark-haired boy of thirteen shouted.
Directly behind him, a stick-thin girl who strongly resembled Sela broke in, "He was going through my purse, the little prick – "
"Hey!" Joseph's stern voice brought instant silence to the kitchen. Daniel hid a smile behind his hand; another thing he loved about staying with the Langdons was that Darian and her little brother always provided a good deal of excitement. "Language, young lady. You're in enough trouble as it is."
Darian stuck her lower lip out in a pout. Daniel observed that in the year since he had last seen her, Joseph's fifteen-year-old daughter had transformed from a quiet, somewhat reclusive kid to a sullen, angry, punk-rocker-wannabe: Her fingernails were painted black, her dark hair hung lank around her shoulders, and her almost emaciated frame was swathed in ripped black jeans and a Marilyn Manson tee-shirt.
Sam looked the same as ever – scrawny and mischievous. Of the two, Daniel had always preferred Sam.
"Darian, you do not hit your brother," Sela admonished calmly, appearing completely unperturbed by the spat. She was sprinkling paprika into a boiling pot of pasta; the aromas made Daniel's mouth water. "And Sam, you respect your sister's privacy."
"I was looking for cigarettes," Sam piped up devilishly, earning him a hard kick in the ankle from his sister.
"Well, you'll probably find some." Sela winked at Daniel across the kitchen. "Now, where are your manners, you two? You haven't even said 'hello' to our guest."
Sam's whole face lit up when he spotted Daniel. "You're back!" he cried, rushing forward as if he meant to hug the young man, yet stopping short with a kind of awkward shrug. They gave one another high-five instead. "When'd you get here?"
"About ten minutes ago," Daniel answered. "How you been, Sam my man? How's football?"
"I've been practicing. I think I can make the eighth-grade team, since I played first string last year when I was just a seventh-grader. I think I'll go out for tackle," Sam recounted, speaking rapidly in a way that reminded Daniel sharply of Sela. The boy looked to his father, his expression hopeful. "After supper, is it okay if Daniel helps me with passing?"
Joseph grinned at Daniel, as if to say, See what you're in for? "We'll see, buddy," he replied equivocally. "Daniel and I have some work to do."
Turning to his daughter, Joseph instructed firmly, "Darian, say hello to Daniel."
"Hello Daniel," the girl parroted tonelessly, already on her way out of the room. Daniel thought he saw a high spot of color on her cheeks as she marched away, and he hoped he wasn't going to become the object of a teenage crush.
Joseph rolled his eyes. "I thought about grounding her until she's eighteen just so we don't have to deal with this for another three years," he confessed, eliciting a laugh from both his wife and his guest. "Sela, honey, if it's going to be a few minutes…?"
Waving them off, Sela said, "You two go do your thing. I'll call you when it's ready. Sam," she commanded her son, "take Daniel's bags up to the guest room, would you? And do not snoop, young man, I mean it."
Quickly, Daniel mentally rifled through the contents of his bags, just in case Sam's curiosity got the better of him. He could think of nothing suspicious or unusual in either of them, nothing to indicate that he was anyone other than Daniel Taft, a junior associate at Fallbrook Dunn, the crisis management company Joseph consulted for.
How much of the truth Sela knew, Daniel reflected as he followed Joseph through the living room and into his private study, he had never been sure. She made an excellent show of buying the fiction that her husband was a lawyer whose clients included high-ranking government officials, wealthy private citizens, and powerful corporations. Yet it was not lost on Daniel that Sela never questioned her husband's activities, never seemed to find it odd that an "associate" like Daniel would disappear for months at a time, only to pop back into their lives for a few days here and there. Such a lack of interest from a clever woman who was obviously devoted to her husband suggested to Daniel that Sela knew exactly what Joseph did.
Just another way their lives are perfect, I guess – she knows who he is and loves him anyway…
"Have a seat," Joseph instructed Daniel cordially, closing the study door behind them. As always, Daniel was impressed by Joseph's home office: Built-in bookcases, filled to capacity with legal volumes and political science texts, lined three of the four walls (the fourth boasted two large windows overlooking the Langdons' beautiful backyard), a massive mahogany desk dominated the center of the room, an authentic Turkish carpet covered a large section of the hardwood floor, and, in front of the windows, an arrangement of fan-backed leather chairs provided a space for comfortably doing business. It was into these chairs that Daniel and Joseph settled themselves, Daniel quickly polishing off the rest of his beer and setting the bottle aside.
"I'm surprised you didn't stay in Paris longer," Joseph began, resting one ankle on his knee and studying Daniel carefully.
Submitting to the scrutiny – it was part of the debrief, to ensure that his loyalties hadn't changed during the deep cover op, which happened sometimes – Daniel answered honestly, "I'd rather be working than sight-seeing."
"Yes, I understand that. But you also know the time to reorient yourself is necessary after so long undercover."
Daniel nodded, hoping he wasn't in for a lengthy lesson on the evils of jumping from one identity to the next without allowing himself time to adjust in between. Whenever Joseph delivered that lecture, Daniel always wanted to say, "Yeah, but it's not like I'm 'me' in between missions, is it? I go back to being this identity they gave me when I joined Hometown – this Daniel Taft – not who I was before…"
Of course, he never did. For one thing, he respected Joseph too much to challenge him. For another, Daniel understood enough about the people he worked for to know that, for all of his outward charm and grace, Joseph Langdon was a dangerous man, not someone to be trifled with.
"Well, anyway, I guess you did take two weeks. And if I remember Paris in the summer, that was probably plenty of time," Joseph relented.
Daniel released a small sigh of relief, thankful that he wasn't going to be ordered to resume his vacation. He didn't know how much more sitting at outdoor cafes sipping espresso and nibbling croissants he could have taken before he lost his mind from the boredom – Daniel was a man of action.
"I have to tell you, Daniel, the Partners were very, very impressed by your work in Miami."
Pride swelled inside the young man. He never tired of hearing that his accomplishments had come to the attention of the people with the real power – the Partners. He had no idea who they were beyond the extremely vague category of "high-ranking government officials," but he knew they had conceived of, developed, and oversaw Hometown, the top-secret domestic espionage project Daniel had joined four years earlier. Nothing happened in Hometown that they didn't know about; nothing was done without their approval.
Which is why I have to be spot-on today, if I'm going to get what I want from Joseph and from them…
"I just received your final report this morning," Joseph motioned vaguely toward his cluttered desk, "but why don't you hit the high points for me?"
This, too, was part of the debrief. Daniel knew that their conversation was being recorded. Later, it would be played for the Partners, and (after being carefully edited if necessary) Congressional security councils, who would need to know at least a little bit about his mission in order for the Partners to get what they wanted. Whatever that was.
Daniel was also aware that, somewhere in the room, a hidden camera was recording his every movement. That tape would be subjected to computer and human analysis to determine if his body language, heart rhythm, optical responses, speech patterns or tone of voice indicated that he was, at any time, attempting to deceive his superiors.
Feeling absolutely relaxed because he had absolutely nothing to hide, Daniel launched into a recap of the previous eleven months.
"Last August, I was tasked to infiltrate a small narcotics ring in Florida with potential ties to Islamic extremist groups," he began. "As part of the operation, I was sent to a minimum security prison in Florida under the alias Jonathan Charles Moore, nickname 'J.C.' My cover was that I was in for a first-offense narcotics charge – I'd been caught selling a small amount of marijuana to spring-breakers in Orlando. It was arranged for me to be cellmates with a man named Jarrod Austin, the leader of the ring, which sold primarily cocaine and heroine in South Beach.
"I befriended Austin, as directed, and when we were released in the same week late that October, I accompanied him to South Beach. At that point, I had earned his trust enough to insinuate myself into his criminal organization. It was pretty obviously small-time stuff – I mean, these guys were their own biggest clients," Daniel noted, drawing a knowing smile from Joseph. "But they had some connections that seemed to be bigger than what they realized.
"There were these guys from Colombia especially," Daniel recalled. In his mind's eye, he saw six heavily-tattooed South American men sitting around the filthy apartment where "J.C." and Austin had lived, smoking dope and telling war stories. "They were running drugs across the Mexican border and, it turned out, also bringing in illegal automatic weapons to sell in the U.S. They basically thought Austin was a joke, but he had done some messengering for them until he got himself arrested selling coke.
"Austin really talked it up, like he was integral to their operation, but from what I could tell, his involvement with the gun-running was very marginal, really simple stuff any idiot could've done. The only interesting part was that it had put him in contact with an Islamic extremist group operating here in the U.S. Everything Austin told me about these people made me think they were looking to get their hands on some serious firepower.
"It didn't take much persuading for Austin to agree to start working more closely with the Colombians. He's a real small-time hood, Austin," Daniel observed, making no attempt to hide his disgust. Every time he pictured the pasty-skinned, greasy-haired punk he had been forced to treat as his best friend, his skin crawled and he experienced an overwhelming urge to shower. "You know the type, always looking to be the baddest bad-ass on the block even though he couldn't find his, uh, his gun with both hands."
Joseph grinned. "Yes, I think I know the type. Go on."
Daniel knew Joseph was pleased with his performance thus far: He sounded very natural, very relaxed, which was what the Partners would want – it was more convincing.
"So, like I said, Austin didn't need much persuasion," Daniel resumed his narrative. "I just sort of pointed him in the right direction, and by January, he was helping to organize arms deals. The plan was pretty simple: Some guys worked to bring shipments of guns out of Mexico into Texas, and then Austin arranged to have the weapons transported to South Beach, where we sold them out of a club owned by one of the Colombians, a guy named Pedro Fernandez."
Joseph held up a hand to stop Daniel. "When you say 'persuasion' – and I just want to be clear here – did you at any time coerce or use the threat of physical violence to compel Mr. Austin to engage in these criminal activities?"
A smile played at the corners of Daniel's mouth, though his voice remained perfectly smooth. It's all for show – got to say what the good senators want to hear…
"Absolutely not," he responded emphatically, which was the truth. "I suggested to Austin that if he were to work more closely with Fernandez's gang, we could make a lot of money and hold a lot more power in South Beach. That was basically all it took – like I said, the greatest dream of his little junkie heart was to be a bad-ass."
Settling back into his chair, Joseph nodded his approval. "Very good, thank you. Please, go on."
Coming to the end of his tale, Daniel spoke more quickly, like someone who didn't relish what was coming next. "Once Austin got involved with Fernandez, he moved up the ladder pretty quickly. By May he was pretty much in charge of most of the arms deals, even contacting buyers once we got the guns into Florida. I know, because he treated me like his second-in-command, so I helped him with most of it.
"Four weeks ago I received my final directive," Daniel proceeded. He was careful to pitch his voice so that he sounded somber, disheartened by all that he had seen. "At that time, I had reported back to my superiors, such as yourself, that the Colombian organization Austin was affiliated with had managed to bring a shipment of RPGs – uh, sorry, that's rocket-propelled grenades – across the border into Texas, and that Austin intended to sell these to a representative from the Islamic extremist group. The deal was supposed to take place at Fernandez's club in a week's time. My orders were to ensure that we had a case against Austin: I was to record the transaction on video and to put a trace on the wire transfer, so tech ops could follow the extremist group's money back to the source of their financing."
"And did you do that?" Joseph prompted.
"Yes, I did," Daniel recounted matter-of-factly. "I basically had unlimited access to Fernandez's club, so I hid a camera in the VIP room, where these kinds of deals always went down, and set it up to relay to a remote server, where it could be collected as evidence. That took care of getting the transaction on video.
"Tracing the money was a bit more complicated. I was able to convince Austin to let me be the one to check that the money had been transferred to Fernandez's account before we handed over the RPGs. Like I said, it was kind of tricky because I had to insert the tracer into the issuing account while the deal was going down, pretty much under Austin's nose, but I was able to do so without either party – Austin or the extremist group – suspecting anything."
"And then?"
"And then," Daniel shrugged his shoulders expansively, "I walked away, like I was instructed, and let the FBI handle the rest. I got on a plane to Paris and read about the arrest of some dangerous arms dealers in Florida along with the rest of France in Le Monde the next day."
His story finished, Daniel leaned back in his chair, waiting for Joseph to decide whether or not he had been sufficiently debriefed.
Just because his superiors were using this meeting partially to determine if Daniel was attempting to deceive them did not mean they were interested in hearing the whole truth, of that Daniel was acutely aware. The truth, if that was what he had been asked to tell, would have been much less straight-forward than the tale he had spun. Oh, Jarrod Austin was a worthless crack-head, no doubt about that; he featured himself the King of South Beach, when in reality, he was just one of perhaps four dozen coke dealers in the city who were so insignificant they couldn't even attract the attention of the DEA or Miami-Dade PD. When Daniel (J.C. at the time) had met Austin in prison, it had not been he who befriended Austin – it had been Austin who was drawn to someone obviously tougher, stronger, and more capable than he was.
As he had told Joseph, Daniel had not forced Austin to do anything. But if he hadn't been there pulling the strings, Daniel knew the two-bit gangster would never have stepped into the big leagues with people like Fernandez and his associates in the Colombian drug cartel. In fact, Daniel had discreetly done most of the work (Austin being too strung out on his own product to win the trust and respect of men like Fernandez) while publicly proclaiming Austin the mastermind of all their plans. If Austin had been puzzled by this loyalty from someone who could easily have ousted him and taken over his "organization," as Daniel disparagingly thought of the pathetic assortment of junkies in Austin's employ, he had been much too happy about being seen as the next Al Capone to question "J.C."'s motives too thoroughly.
What made the situation so pitiful, Daniel thought, was that Austin had been so eager to play the master criminal that painting him as such has been laughably easy.
And how is it protecting my country to serve some stupid dope-fiend up as a traitor and terrorist?
Immediately, Daniel dismissed the question. His father had taught him the importance of following orders, of respecting the chain of the command: Decisions were made by people at the top, people with the necessary information and knowledge to make those decisions, and orders were carried out by those on down the ladder, those who did not need to know the reasoning behind the decisions. The Partners understood why Austin's depiction as an American terrorist was necessary. That sufficed for Daniel.
Of course, some part of him sympathized with Austin – the guy was a waste of space, but still, he hadn't been much of a menace to anyone until "J.C." had come along and steered him into gun-running. Nevertheless, Daniel reasoned, he couldn't pretend that Austin had been opposed to engaging in more and more serious criminal activities, including selling military-grade weapons to terrorists. It wasn't like J.C. had put a gun to Austin's head and forced him to throw in with Colombian drug lords and South American arms dealers; Austin had willingly followed where his tougher, stronger friend led.
Waiting patiently for Joseph to break the long silence, Daniel admitted to himself that he didn't actually need to rationalize his behavior. More than that – he wasn't even terribly interested in the greater purpose of his mission. He accepted that one existed because he was a patriot, first and foremost, like his father. Oh, Daniel wasn't naïve enough to believe the Partners' motives were purely altruistic, yet he did believe that mixed in with their desire for personal gain was a vision for the country that would ultimately be for the greater good.
Most of the time, however, Daniel was content not knowing what that vision might be because he kept his eyes on the prize: the big house, the nice cars, the expensive clothes, the Christmas-card family. Daniel had no intention of being an operative for the rest of his life. The real wealth and power was held by men like Joseph and those even higher up than him, men who were on the inside, not confined to the edges. In their business, Daniel had accepted with few pangs of conscience, success only came to those who were willing to make moral compromises without expecting explanations.
Finally, Joseph declared, "Well, I think that covers it. You did excellent work, Daniel. The country appreciates it."
The debrief over, Daniel allowed himself to relax. Somewhere, he knew, recording devices were turning off; analysts were turning away from monitors; interpretations of his report were being formed. Confident that he had done his job well, Daniel simply put the Miami mission out of his mind. He had other things to focus on now, in the short time left before Sela called them away to dinner.
"I spoke to Alex a few days ago," he began conversationally, as Joseph crossed to his desk and rummaged around in the bottom drawer. "She says hi, by the way."
Coming up with two tumblers and a bottle of Scotch, Joseph smiled fondly. "Good ole Alex. I miss her. Did she say how she's liking her new assignment?"
"No, she was kind of evasive about that," Daniel admitted. "I got the feeling she wasn't thrilled with it, though. Thanks," he added, accepting the glass from Joseph and sipping at the smooth amber liquid.
Joseph arranged his long limbs into his chair again, self-consciously tugging his suit jacket around the pot-belly that he had, Daniel noticed, recently gained. "So what did you and Alex talk about?" the older man inquired, as if sensing that Daniel hadn't brought up his former mentor, the woman who had steered him through his first phase of Hometown training, for nothing.
Here we go, time to play again…
Choosing his words carefully, Daniel answered, "She wanted to tell me about an operation that's in the works. A deep cover op in New Haven." He paused, waiting for a reaction, but Joseph's expression was unreadable, a placid mask. "She thought it sounded like something I'd be good at."
"Well." Joseph swallowed a swig of the top-shelf liquor, considering. "I'll admit, I did think about you when the Partners outlined the New Haven assignment, but…You're just coming off a long mission, Daniel. I'm not sure it's a good idea for you to move right into another operation that could require as much as a two-year commitment."
Daniel had anticipated this argument. On the flight from Paris to New York, he had meticulously mapped out every objection Joseph would raise as well as every counterargument he would present. Most important to his success in this instance, Daniel knew, was not seeming overeager. If he appeared to want the assignment too badly, Joseph would refuse to let him have it – Hometown operatives had to be detached, totally objective, about their operations.
The challenge Daniel faced was persuading Joseph that he was ready to take on another assignment without letting on that it was this mission in particular he really wanted.
So Daniel affected an air of nonchalance that not even the best analyst would have spotted as anything other than genuine. "I hear you. I guess I just never got into the Miami operation that deeply. It wasn't like I had to put a lot of work into my cover when I was with Austin and his fellow idiots – they were all too stoned to know who they were half the time, let alone to give a shit who I was. The only time I really had to stay on my toes was around Fernandez. He was suspicious of everybody, understandably."
Joseph seemed to be softening a little. "I suppose that's true. As far as deep covers go, this mission wasn't quite so involved."
So, what'd ya say, send me off to Yale and let me live the exciting life of a grad student for a couple of years?
"Ah, Daniel, I just…I don't know." Joseph rubbed his eyes, looking rather weary. Daniel forced himself to be silent, to let his handler think. "This would be a lot different than the two missions you've done so far. You wouldn't be portraying a criminal, someone with a reason to hide his past. Your life would have to be an open book. Trust me, that's a tall order when the person you're pretending to be doesn't actually exist."
Sipping his Scotch, Daniel pretended to turn Joseph's words over in his mind. Actually, he had expected this argument as well; he was a good enough operative to have studied Joseph Langdon as carefully as Joseph Langdon had studied him. Anticipating the older man's objections had been easy.
At length, Daniel replied, with the tone of someone making an important confession, "You want to know the truth, Joseph? I'd sort of like the change of pace. I know it'll be different, and difficult, and all of that. But I'm getting pretty sick of spending day in and day out with murderers and dope dealers and junkies. If I have to pretend to be somebody else, Joe College doesn't sound so bad, you know what I mean?"
Daniel watched his words sink in. Privately, he was on pins and needles. Outwardly, he was totally calm, seemingly without a personal stake in the matter besides a desire to receive a more desirable assignment than his previous two.
"You'd have to create your cover from the ground up," Joseph warned. Daniel felt like cheering as he watched his handler warm to the idea, though he arranged his face into a serious, attentive expression. "Develop a whole back-story for yourself – a family, a hometown, girlfriends, schools. And you would really have to enroll at Yale. We would cover the expenses, of course," Joseph went on, "and your records would all be handled by us, not by the school, because there's too many possibilities of leaving behind a trail otherwise. But still, you would really have to live like a graduate student: go to class, do homework, all that stuff."
"You wanna see my transcripts?" Daniel joked. "I did pretty well in school, Joseph. I think I could handle Yale. It's not as bad as Harvard, right?"
Grinning, the Harvard alum seconded, "That's right. And I know you're more than intelligent enough to do graduate work, Daniel. I'm just saying the operation would be unlike anything you've done before."
"I'd never been in prison before, either, and I managed that okay," Daniel pointed out.
Joseph sighed. "Yes, and I can't imagine how difficult that was, giving up your freedom even for a couple of months and living in a cage…But still, I'm telling you, the New Haven op will be an entirely new ballgame. It'll be much more involved, in ways I can't even describe to you. For one thing, you would have to be much more intimate with your marks – and these people aren't dope dealers and murderers, as you pointed out. They'll be people you could probably see yourself really becoming friends with."
Daniel didn't respond. Here was an argument he hadn't expected – that Joseph would be worried about Daniel, who had shown himself time and time again to be capable of complete emotional detachment, getting too close to his targets, getting too enamored of a fictional persona.
Something, something Joseph hadn't yet revealed, was holding him back, was causing him to have these doubts. Daniel felt it in his gut. He had learned to listen to those instincts.
"This is a very, very important operation, Daniel," Joseph finally admitted, staring down into his glass of Scotch. "The Partners have made it top priority. Your work up to this point has been excellent – flawless, I should say. But your record notwithstanding," he went on, meeting Daniel's gaze steadily, "I don't know how they would feel about assigning an operative with only two years' undercover experience to something of this…magnitude."
Daniel stared unflinchingly back. "You know my work – and my limits – better than probably anyone, except maybe Alex. So what do you think, Joseph? Do you think I can do it?"
"I suppose," Joseph answered slowly, "that before I go out on a limb here for you with the Partners and recommend that they hand this mission over to an operative with, relatively speaking, very little experience, I'd like to know why you're so determined to take this on. And I suppose," he added pointedly, "that I'd like some reassurance that your interest in this assignment doesn't have anything to do with Carlton Fog."
So he knows about my father. I should have expected that.
When circumstances changed unexpectedly, Daniel's training had taught him to improvise. In this instance, an honest answer seemed like his best chance of getting what he wanted.
"Of course it does." Daniel registered the surprise on Joseph's face and knew he had made the right decision by owning up to his ulterior motives.
At the same time, however, Daniel shrugged, his demeanor suggesting that, in the end, the admission mattered little to him. "I take it Director Freed's told you about my dad, about how Carlton Fog may have had a hand in what happened to him. When Alex told me Fog's oldest son is one of the targets, of course it interested me.
"But that's not the point, Joseph." Daniel leaned forward. He hoped his intensity would cover the fact that he was now moving away from total honesty and back into half-truths, where he typically resided. "The point is, like you said – like Alex said – this is a big deal. Maybe the biggest thing Hometown has undertaken so far. I want in on that, Joseph. You've gotta know I want bigger things than to be an operative for the rest of my life. If I do this, and I do it right, the Partners are going to see that I'm more than just somebody who's good at 'cultivating assets'."
They both smiled at Daniel's sardonic use of the accepted phraseology for what essentially boiled down to framing (or very nearly so) innocent people for acts of terrorism.
Daniel was skilled enough at reading people to recognize that he had his handler on the ropes. He went in for the kill, pouring on the Daniel Taft earnestness as thickly as he dared.
"Joseph, two years ago you helped me move up from being an assassin to being an undercover agent. You gave me the assignment in Oklahoma as a way to prove myself to the Partners, a way to show them that I could handle deep cover ops. Now I'm asking you to help me again. Help me show them how valuable I really can be to this organization. Please."
"Okay, okay." Joseph shook his head and downed the last of his Scotch.
Yes! I am good…
Wagging his finger at Daniel's ear-to-ear grin, Joseph cautioned, "Don't start celebrating just yet, my boy. I still have to run it by Freed, don't forget. And he knows your history with Fog. He may say no."
If Joseph really thought that, Daniel mused, he didn't know Jack Freed very well: Personal vendettas were a way of life for that man. The promise of revenge was how Freed had recruited the young man now known as Daniel into Hometown in the first place. In all probability, Freed was already considering Daniel for this op because of, not in spite of, his reasons for wanting to make Carlton Fog suffer.
"Assuming that Freed agrees," Joseph went on, "you'll be leaving in the next few days to meet with one of our assets who'll help you develop your cover. I know you haven't done that before – you've always come up with your own covers, and you've done an excellent job of it – but we can't take any chances this time. Your story has to check out, no matter who looks into it, so you're going to have to have significant, on-going help."
Both men stood up as Sela's light, even footsteps approached the door. "That's fine with me," Daniel hurried to say. He didn't care how complicated the mission was, he was just thankful to have it – both for the opportunity to strike out at Carlton Fog and for the chance to advance his own career.
"Thanks, Joseph," Daniel said, meaning it. He extended his hand, clasping Joseph's tightly. "I know you're taking a chance for me here. I won't let you down."
Sela knocked softly on the door. "Dinner's ready," she called from the other side.
"Coming, my sweet," Joseph called back. To Daniel, he said solemnly, "It's not me you have to worry about letting down, Daniel. It's the Partners. Remember this: They're going to be watching this operation very closely. Now would not be the time to start making mistakes."
Daniel nodded to show that he understood. Inside, however, he was convinced Joseph's concern was for naught. In four years, Daniel had not missed a step. He wasn't about to get sloppy now, when everything he had worked so hard for was finally coming together.