"Melissa Baker from Little Rock, Arkansas. What's your name?"
Sydney threw her large duffle onto the floor next to the bottom bunk in the corner. The room was about the size of an average college dormitory and held three beds, two were bunked. Fortunately the other girl had not chosen the bottom bunk, leaving it open for her. She wanted to stay in the corner for better observation. Glancing over at the woman who had greeted her, she smiled. "Haskins… Sarah Haskins."
"Nice meetin' ya." Melissa grinned. "Guess we're roommates. Wonder who the third girl is. And isn't our case manager a hottie? Wonder how old he is."
Sitting on the bed, Sydney shrugged and watched as a second woman entered the room with a slightly larger pack then she herself had. It had to be Diana Louis. She was thin wiry woman who was well defined. Her dark hair framed her face and made her ghostly blue eyes stand out. She smiled shyly and nodded to them while setting her bag down on the ground.
"Hey, you must be the third girl in our triple. Melissa Baker from Little Rock, Arkansas. And that's Sarah Haskins over there. What's your name?"
"Diana Louis. Came from Raleigh, North Carolina." Diana replied letting Melissa shake her hand.
"So… this is going to be a blast. I just know we can all get along just mighty fine." Melissa was practically bouncing on the balls of her feet. Going over to the door, she shut it and grinned. "By the end of this, I think I'm going to have that Agent Vaughn eating out of my hands."
"CIA prohibits fraternization between agents in the same departments." Diana replied as if already sick of hearing Melissa talk. Throwing her bag open, she began to unpack.
Unperturbed by Diana's lack of enthusiasm, Melissa sat next to Sydney and rolled her eyes. "So I'll just move to a different department. Or I'll just get field rated. You know what I heard? I heard he got demoted from some higher part of the agency. They weren't impressed with his work after his wife died so they downgraded his security pass and made him work with new recruits. He wont know it's his lucky…"
Just then a knock made Melissa stop talking. Eager to move away from her, Sydney opened the door to find Vaughn on the other side.
"Oh we were just talkin' bout you. I was just tellin' them how you were so helpful last night. Told me exactly what to pack so I wouldn't look like no fool." Melissa pulled Sydney aside and opened the door more so that he could enter.
Vaughn nodded with a tight lipped smile. His eyes wondered over to Sydney, who looked away. CIA would kill them if they compromised the positions they had worked so hard to get… Well that she had worked so hard to get.
"Mess is in an hour. Training will begin at fourteen hundred hours. So wash up and get your gear ready. Donaldson hates tardiness." Vaughn stated also looking away and turning his attention to Melissa who seemed to be slobbering all over him. "Any questions before I leave?"
With no one speaking, he nodded to them all and turned to walk out. Melissa gazed up and down his body as he went down the hallway. She grinned and shut the door behind him. "See what I mean, isn't he just a hunk of meat?"
Sydney rolled her eyes and caught Diana's gaze who grinned knowingly at her. Sorting quickly though the clothing that they were given, she began quickly unpacking her gear. Organizing it and putting it all under her bed in the drawers was an easy task that kept her mind off of Vaughn for the moment.
The schedule told her what they needed to wear, which was their sweats. Changing into them without a word to the other women, she grabbed her hooded zip-up sweatshirt and headed out the door… She was hoping to get away from Melissa who happened to want to make her boyfriend into a food item.
She felt someone put their hand on her shoulder and she spun around to see Diana who had jogged to catch up with her.
"Sorry, just don't want to be left alone with her." Diana explained with a pained look.
Nodding, they made their way to a mess hall that had twenty other people already in line for food. Eleven or so years of working as an agent and she found herself in a mix with a bunch of recruits. She felt out of place and yet no one could find out how uncomfortable she was. They were eager to join the world of intelligence and she had spent so many years wondering if it was time to quit and find a more normal life.
"I don't think I can survive these nine weeks with her in the same room." Diana said hoping to start up a conversation.
"Yeah." Sydney smiled. "I know what you mean."
"I never got a real introduction. I'm Diana."
"Sarah, nice to meet you."
"Where are you from?"
Grabbing a plate, she took a spoonful of corn and moved down the line. "Naperville… It's a suburb of Chicago."
"Chicago? I love Chicago. Have you gone to many Broadway plays?"
Shaking her head, she really hadn't been to any plays in Broadway. "My family moved around a lot. I was born there and left at the age of two. I just moved back when I was recruited. So I guess I can't really say I'm from there."
"How come you moved around so much?"
They both sat down at a long rectangular table. She put her plate down and asked for one of the men next to her to pass a napkin down. She put it in her lap and then looked around the room. First thing she spotted was Vaughn who was sitting with the rest of the trainers on the opposite side of the dining hall. He exchanged looks with her before going back into a conversation with a man next to him. It took a second for her to see that the man next to him was her father.
"Uh… my father was in the military."
"So you're a military brat?" Diana grinned.
"I guess so." Sydney replied thinking about how she had grown up in an empty home. She had spent her life growing up in boarding schools while believing her father worked on selling airplane parts. During the summers her father hired a nanny to take care of her. It was all a front and she'd find out later that her family had a disturbing past that became stranger the more she found out about it. The fact that she had basically been trained to be an agent before she could even remember disgusted her. "My father was proud of his work."
"My grandparents immigrated here just before I was born. My father and grandfather worked as an Intelligence agent for the US government. So I guess I'm just carrying on the tradition." Diana replied as if understanding. "You'd think the government would have the decency to feed us with real food."
"You'd think." Sydney replied watching her father in her peripheral vision. He caught her eyes and nodded his head to tell her to come over. "Hold on, I'll be right back."
Going across the room, she stopped next to Vaughn and waited expectantly.
"Ms. Haskins, sorry for interrupting your meal, but I wanted to introduce you to one of the top level senior agents in one of the specialized divisions of the agency. This is Special Agent Jack Bristow. They saw your remarkable scores and wanted to meet you in person. They think that if you survive the Farm they may have a job waiting for you in their department." Vaughn informed her.
Her father stuck out his hand in greeting and she noticed a piece of paper hidden in the palm of his hand. She smiled and shook his hand. "Hello, nice to meet you."
"Pleasures all mine, I've heard all about you. I hope to hear even more in the coming weeks."
"Thank you."
"You should probably get back to eating since the hall's closing in twenty minutes." Vaughn nodded.
"Have good day sir." She turned around as she stuffed her hands into her pockets. What the hell was this all about? Her father had just jeopardized the mission by contacting her. This wasn't like him at all. Jack Bristow was a man who usually kept out of sight during missions.
Going back over to her table, she sat down in confusion.
"What was that all about?" Diana asked crumpling her napkin and putting it on top of her empty plate.
Taking her hands out of her pockets and resting her elbows on the table, ignoring all the table manners her father and the boarding school had taught her, she shrugged. "Some senior agent from the CIA wanted to talk to me about their division. They knew my father because he had worked with the CIA a couple of times in Iraq."
"I heard you got incredibly high scores on that test."
She shrugged again and shifted uncomfortably in her chair. "I didn't think they were that great. I think they just wanted to give me their condolences. But after he's dead… well nothing can bring him back."
"I'm sorry, I didn't know your father passed away… How'd he…"
"Die?" Sydney slumped in her seat.
Pushing a stray hair behind her ear, she thought about how many times people were told that their loved ones had passed away. Rarely were they ever given the full truth about their death. They were, instead, given a small piece of the truth. Their loved ones were killed serving their country, doing the right thing. They were heroic and brave.
But for her own mother, she had not died in heroics. Her father had killed her in order to save his daughter. He point blank shot her in the head. He watched her take her last breath and saw her dead eyes. No, Laura Bristow… Irena Derevko, the wife of an intelligence office and an ex-undercover agent for the KGB, hadn't died for her country.
She felt her eyes burn and she shifted them to look down at the table. Taking a deep breath, she stared back at Diana without really seeing her. "They said he died instantly when a car bomb hit their unarmored vehicle heading into Telaviv. He was taking in supplies to injured soldiers."
"Oh god, I'm so sorry."
All she could do in response was nod as she thought about her own sister who wasn't aware of the real reason behind their mother's death. Nadia had some fake impression that their mother had been killed cold-blooded by some man who had a gun pointed at her sister's head. In anger and pain, Nadia shot the man, emptying her magazine. She had no idea that Sydney's father was the reason their mother was dead. And if her father had his way, she would never find out.
"Look, I'm going to head back to our room. Do you need anything?"
"No… Thanks."
Sydney nodded and got up, rubbing away the hot tears that had collected in her eyes. She made her way out of the dining hall and went into the bathroom right outside their room. Going into a toilet stall, she shut the door and quickly fished out the note in her pocket. Opening it slowly, she recognized her father's writing:
'DKJAGVBAGNCEIAW'
Staring at it for a moment, she began tearing each letter apart and sorted the letters out to decode the message. She threw out certain letters until she finally found what she was looking for. 'NEW KGB.'
"Oh." She whispered to herself in surprise and then threw the pieces of paper into the toilet just as the entrance door creaked open. Flushing the evidence, she pushed open the stall and practically ran into Diana. "Sorry."
"Look, if I upset you in anyway…"
"No no… It's just… I'm still having a hard time dealing. My father, well he was my hero. I just miss him. That's all." Sydney told her. "I feel like I just lost him yesterday."
"Well if you ever need to talk…"
"I'm fine. Thanks." Sydney looked at her watch and raised her eyebrows. "If we don't hurry up, we'll be late."
They exited the bathroom and Sydney led the way to the main conference room.
To be continued….
More to come… Please take the time to review. Thanks!
