There is more to tell about my time with the CATs. I hate thinking about this time, let alone talking about it. But it's part of my life, part of my experiences, and as much as I wish I could avoid it, or make it somehow never happen, it did. So I have to talk about it. It helps that I have already told all of this, every last disgusting detail, to my husband.
Once he realized why I hated talking about my past, he never pushed me for any details. He loved me for who I was, not who I had been. He always made that perfectly clear. It was the strength of that love, how safe it made me feel, that allowed me to tell him. He deserved to know. He had all of me, the only one who ever did, and all of me included everything in my life. Talking about the time with the CATs was the hardest part, but I did it.
You see, there was this…certain way that Chuck always looked at me. A way no one else ever had in my entire life. At the very beginning, I thought it was just because he thought I was a normal girl who asked him out, not a spy searching for information. I told myself that look was how a nice, normal guy would look at a girl he was infatuated with, and that once he knew I was a spy it would change to the way that everyone else had always looked at me. A distant, admiring eye or a leering sneer, focused on my physical attributes alone. Normal guys were never part of my world, so the look was foreign to me. I waited, and I waited. It never changed.
And when I say never, I mean never. Every day we were in Burbank, protecting him or doing missions that Beckman and/or Graham sent us on with him because of the Intersect, I was waiting. Everything I did, there was a chance that the next action would be the one that turned him, disgusted him, and changed that look. I fought that war with myself everyday–the need to be as ugly as I was on the inside to keep him safe, and the need to not let him see or know of that ugliness, and lose that look in his eyes that made me feel so…full, instead of empty, like I always had been.
It. Never. Changed. He watched me kill someone in cold blood, and also a handful of others, always because I was protecting him. He watched me kiss other spies, kiss marks, being groped by marks, and heard me lie countless times. There seemed to be nothing I could do that ever seemed to change how he felt about me. Of course, it was because he loved me. He was blatantly obvious about it, though he never came right out and said it until it was almost too late. It wasn't that I questioned his love (although I actually did, for a time, at a very low point), but that it was misguided. That there were conditions, a line in the sand that I couldn't see but that if I crossed, would change his mind.
This is the hardest thing in all of this to talk about, but, even after I threatened to kill his sister, hit him across his face with the butt of a gun, kicked him down a flight of stairs, and held a gun to his head…it still never changed.
Chuck used to do this thing when he thought he was about to die–a more frequent occurrence than it should have been–when he would close his eyes tightly and hold his breath. He always joked about how girlishly afraid he used to be, but even in the very beginning he found the courage inside to deal with threats to his life. He didn't do that when I was poised to shoot him. He kept his eyes open, actually telling me I could kill him if I wanted, but that he would never hurt me. I didn't recognize it until I remembered, but it was the same look, the one he had always given me from the very beginning.
If it sounds like I'm crying, it's because I am. Those memories are harsh, but what actually reduces me to tears is the knowledge of what that look actually was. He loved me, from the first moment he ever met me, just as I loved him almost at first sight. That look was him, mining to the very core of me, looking past all that I seemed, to know all that I was, and all that I could still be. Every dream I had ever let die, he exhumed and breathed back to life. He loved me, the me that I never let anyone see, because I was afraid. I know the gift he is, and I remind myself of that every day when I wake up beside him.
But there is still more of this sordid tale to tell before I can talk about Chuck and I together.
The Gentle Hand, in its entirety, meant the end of the CATs, though the missions were long term, and interspersed with other missions about varying issues and participants. It began almost immediately after we returned from North Korea in June of 2003. Augusto Gaez was the head of said organization—in the business of terrorists for hire. He had a hand in creating the instruments used by said terrorists as well. Their base of operations was in Central America, and most of our missions were either there or in South America, particularly Brazil.
We were primarily gathering intelligence in the beginning. Gaez was the ultimate target, but the organization was widespread. We were chopping away at the organization in our work, much like the concurrent War on Terror was hacking away at Al Queda, almost one leader at a time, even while Bin Laden remained elusive. It was dangerous, but not nearly as dangerous as other missions we were running when the CATs had down time away from the Gentle Hand. During that time I had actually been shot at, my fighting skills utilized like never before. I could disarm people, and my knife throwing skills got us out of more than one tight jam, almost always caused by Carina taking unnecessary risks and improvising beyond agreed upon plans. I threatened people with my knives, and I know I injured people with my knives, but I never killed anyone with them.
The first time I saw Zondra kill someone was on a mission to Cyprus, where we had been ordered to infiltrate an arms dealer's safe in his mansion, looking for schematics for a new type of guided missile that had been stolen from a CIA station in Rome. We succeeded with little effort to retrieve what we were sent to retrieve, however, our tampering had been discovered before we were completely clear. We fought our way out of the mansion, taking down almost ten armed men by ourselves, just Zondra and I. She shot and killed one of them, while he was aiming and ready to fire at me while I was down on the ground.
I thanked her, grabbing her hand as she pulled me to my feet. She wouldn't look at me. "Zondra?" I asked, feeling the dread, wondering if that somehow had been the first time. She was, after all, younger than me.
"You owe me, Walker," she said briskly, stuffing whatever emotion she had been feeling down inside where I couldn't see. The only indication that I ever had that hadn't been the first time was a random comment made by Carina when we were all together again.
It's supposed to get easier, but it doesn't, does it? Carina had asked out loud, meant for Zondra, posed to all of us. I knew she was talking about killing. She and Amy were seasoned killers by the summer of 2003. I never told anyone during that time that I had never taken anyone's life. It was just something we didn't talk about. When we were on a mission, we were focused on the mission. When we weren't, we were trying to forget those missions.
We had gotten used to each other, and we lived within the confines of that arm's-length type of relationship. Again, the contrast between being alone and being lonely. I was almost never alone during those years I was a CAT member, having done only two solo missions to gather intelligence in Paris during all those years. But, I was always lonely, the way Sam had defined loneliness for me. The real me was shut away, so far that not even I knew what she looked like any longer. The CIA was turning me into someone else, someone I had started to become from the very beginning. I grew into myself, instead of outgrowing that life I had growing up. The worst part was that I didn't care. There was no reason to care, nothing I could ever hope to do beyond what I was already doing. No one else to care either. For any of us.
After that ill-advised night I spent with Carina and her Air Force friend, the other girls talked. Zondra, in her crassness, blurted it out, just to be clear, that she wasn't interested in anything of the sort, perfectly content to find one guy who wanted to have a no-strings-attached night of sex in whatever random city we were in. Amy was much the same, although giggled frequently that I was ahead of her on her bucket list, whatever that meant. Saddest part was I wasn't even interested in it. Problem was, I couldn't do what Zondra and Amy were doing either. I tried.
They had no difficulty dancing with a guy, then offering to take them home, which was just our hotel rooms. All they had to be was relatively attractive and available. Sometimes it didn't even matter if they didn't speak the same language. As Carina so eloquently put, sex was its own language, and everyone knew how to speak it. I couldn't mingle well, and I always needed Carina there to ease the interactions. I was propositioned sometimes, but I would refuse, exasperating Carina after her quote unquote hard work. You know you're gorgeous, right? Every single guy in here would go home with you if you asked them. You have your pick of all of them, and you just…what? Forget about it? Sometimes I think she really believed that, others I think she was just trying to justify her own behavior, trying to prove she could do the same thing, despite the fact that she thought objectively that I was prettier. None of that mattered to me. I was competitive, but not about that. We were all superficially attractive, and hideously ugly on the inside, getting worse by the day.
It was just another cycle around the wobbly, broken merry-go-round we were all riding on that led me to the next time.
We were in Gstaad, Switzerland, due to fly back to the U.S., when we were snowed-in. The airport was closed due to a blizzard. At that elevation, it was almost always winter, and it started snowing heavily in mid-to-late autumn. The four of us were confined to the hotel and our suite of rooms. It was the absolute pinnacle of boredom for four spies–sitting around and doing nothing. We couldn't afford to sit still that long, lest we be forced to ponder our lives, or talk to each other about those lives.
So we started drinking. I don't know how much we drank. Only that once we returned home, Graham actually questioned us about the bill from the hotel, something he almost never did. The CIA was more than willing to foot the bill for any and everything we did, at tax-payer expense. We were protecting the country, after all. Apparently, we drank so much alcohol from the mini bars in the room it raised red flags for a while. Considering what we drank on a routine basis, I cannot even begin to fathom how much more we drank that night, but it was a lot. An I-don't-know-how-we-didn't-end-up-needing-medical-attention lot.
I remember more of this night than the other two, which is odd, because I was more intoxicated this time. Not all of it, but the majority. If I had to bet money, I would bet this time I actually did have sex with the guy, well, one of the guys, Carina ended up bringing into our room. I still don't remember after a point, but, well, I'll explain.
We were drunk, when Carina challenged us all to a game of truth or dare. Silly high school games, but played by spies. It was always dare, no truths available for disclosure. Most of the dares involved different shots and types of alcohol, but eventually devolved into a type of strip truth-or-dare, as Carina said she didn't know how to play poker.
Amy and Zondra had gone by this point, in search of fun in the hotel bar. Carina and I were in our bras and panties when she heard a commotion in the hallway. A duo of German tourists, skiers, both young men. I knew from my observations that they were staying in the room just down the hall from us. I spoke fluent German, Carina only a few words. She opened the door, and then just stood there, smiling tipsily at them. "Ask them if they'd like to come in for a drink," she said to me.
"Möchtest du reinkommen?" I asked, less sultrily than she would have if she had asked directly, since I was only translating for her. I had left off the drink part, though. She never corrected me.
"Sind Sie im Ernst?" one of them asked. Are you serious? He was the taller of the two, blond and blue eyed. His companion, who we found out later was his brother, was shorter than both of us, with sandy brown hair and brown eyes. Please note the disgust, directed at myself again, when I tell you I don't know what either one of their names was, or even if we at one point knew and then forgot.
"Tell them we might as well make the best of being stranded," Carina instructed me. I repeated her.
"Are you German?" the taller one asked me. I wondered why, considering he had to have heard Carina talking to me in English. "You have no accent when you speak it," he explained, leaning against the frame of the open door.
"We're American," I told him. "Aber ich spreche deutsch," I replied. But, I speak German.
"The land of beauty, it seems," he crooned, his accent a little heavier. He was flirting, I was figuring out. Two half-naked girls beckoning them into our hotel room…he still felt the need to flirt. Turns out most people do–I just wasn't accustomed to it, and I found it strange. I knew what Carina wanted, and what they wanted. Talking just prolonged it.
The problem was, in my intoxicated state, I had almost no inhibitions. She wanted it, but so did I, and the more he flirted, the more interested in having sex I became. I even remember an internal argument I had inside my head, telling myself if I wasn't drunk, I wouldn't be doing this. But I was drunk…Any logical argument was overruled by my raging hormones.
Carina pulled them inside and shut the door. She did serve them each a drink, I know that. Neither one of them finished it.
I remember the dizzying swirl of the snow, hypnotizing in the night sky as it danced erratically against the window. I know I was laughing, hysterically, silly over literally nothing, not with the slightest bit of happiness or joy. The taller one seemed to have chosen me, as he was sort of glued to my side. Carina made it a point in saying that she and I were a package deal, and did they have a problem with that?
"Wir alle zusammen?" the taller one asked me, in a whisper. All of us together, he was asking.
Carina answered him by taking my hand and walking to the bed with me. She pulled me up, so each of our heads was on a pillow. She took off her bra, and then unhooked mine. All I did was laugh, giggling until I could hardly breathe. Maybe because they were brothers, they seemed to commiserate amongst themselves first, but they didn't take long to decide. While Carina was pulling off my bra, she leaned down and kissed me. Full, open-mouthed kissing, something I had never done before, or since, with a female. I wasn't expecting it, and it was awkward. It was when she finished that she slipped it to me–MDMA, better known as ecstasy. I felt the pill on my tongue, shocked, trying to spit it out, but it dissolved too quickly and I ended up swallowing it all. That combined with the alcohol is why I don't remember all of what happened next.
I remember the taller one climbing beside, leaning to try and kiss me. I dodged it, willing to fuck him, but not kiss him. He put his mouth elsewhere on my neck and torso, a sensation I had never felt before. Falling under the effect of the drug intensified every sensation. I know Carina stopped, and told her partner she wanted to watch me first. The rest is hazy. I know I had an orgasm, screaming into the pillow, unsure if it was his hand or one of Carina's sex toys.
The next thing I remember was waking up in the morning, only half on the bed, my legs hanging over the edge of the mattress. Carina was sandwiched between both men. I would later learn this was something she referred to as a Carina sandwich, her colorful name for a disgusting type of threesome, her favorite, with her and two men, and simultaneous penetration. Vaginal sex and anal sex at the same time.
I was hungover again. Splitting headache and nausea. Only this time, my entire pelvis ached. Not raw, like it had been after I had lost my virginity, but sore, like sore muscles. My pubic bone hurt and the ligaments in my inner thighs felt strained. I remember looking out the window as I got up to move to the bathroom–bright sunshine gleaming off freshly fallen snow, so bright I was blinded, worsening my headache. I wasn't nauseous enough to vomit, so I just hopped in the shower.
Probably low blood pressure, but I ended up with the overwhelming urge to sit while I was showering. I stayed on the floor of the shower, letting the water pour over me. I wished somehow everything could wash down the drain, the remnants of the night on my skin and inside my body. Hadn't I promised no more? I berated myself.
I stayed in the shower for a very long time, until the water ran cold. Carina was alone in the bed when I emerged from the bathroom. She looked perfectly content, curled up among a sea of condom wrappers and sticky vibrators. I realized the only way I could make that statement again, and be true to myself, was to not just vow no more group sex, but also no more intoxication that seemed to be allowing it to happen again.
"Jesus, we heard you down the hall last night," Zondra chided when she saw us again. "That must have been one hell of a fuck, Walker. Ice Queen melted a bit, huh?" she teased.
"It was nice to see the other side of you, Sarah. Wasn't sure you had one. Thought maybe you were a nun or something," Carina teased. I remembered her comment, one of the last memories.
"I never knew you liked to watch," I shot back at her. "I just don't remember it, myself, thanks to you forcing drugs down my throat."
Carina winked. "It's called ecstasy for a reason. I thought it might help you, you know, let loose. No one wants a cold fish…or a librarian…to fuck them."
"What if they were spies?" Zondra asked. "Hmm? Did you ever think of that?"
"They were tourists," Carina argued.
"Exactly what they would want you to think," Zondra countered. "You can fuck whoever you want. But you bring them in here, drug Sarah without asking…if they were trying to get to you, they would have. And if you don't remember what happened, how do you know you didn't tell them something you weren't supposed to? Something that puts us in danger too? You could have been kidnapped, taken, even killed. How do you even remember if they used protection?"
I stayed perfectly silent, because she was 100 percent correct. We were playing with fire, and it was only a matter of time before we got burned.
The Gentle Hand soon became the primary focus of our days and nights for over a year. It was the last encounter I referenced, in 2004, when that fire juggling finally caught up to us.