As it turned out, we wouldn't leave at all before tomorrow evening: a mission was called for the next morning, and Birkoff and I stayed up all night doing intel. At 0800, Birkoff went with the team again, although this time he stayed in the van to do on-site intel. I was still too new, apparently, to go out.
When the team got back in the building, I started closing up: shutting down, setting the macros to run for the rest of the night. If something went wrong, we'd know, but otherwise this could run on autopilot. I was logging out of the last station when I noticed a man--a boy, really--standing much too close. "Can I help you?"
"You must be Marin Rosenthal."
Well, I thought, I'm sure as hell not Madeline or Nikita. "That's right. Who are you?"
"Greg Hillinger." His hair had more wax on it than the bodies of most sports cars. "I've been doing some work for Admin, but I'm a techie at heart. I just wanted to compliment you on the mission today."
"Birkoff and I work well together," I answered, wondering who this trying-to-be-suave boy was and what he was doing in my personal space.
"I'd love to work with you sometime. I think our methods would mesh."
I saw Birkoff come in a few feet away. "Are you ready-- Oh, hi, Hillinger." If Birkoff had been a dog, his hackles would have been gone up. I could almost hear him growl.
"I was just complimenting your assistant on her tech, Seymour," Hillinger said.
"She's not my assistant. She's my partner."
I slipped my arm through Birkoff's and put on my best dumb-female smile. "It's been lovely talking to you, Greg, but we have dinner reservations in an hour."
To my utter astonishment, Birkoff played along. "Do you need to stop by your place first, Marin?"
I looked down at my outfit and made a face. "I really should get out of these disgusting clothes, sweetie. Do you mind?"
"Not at all. Hillinger, good to see you."
Outside, we broke into laughter. "Jesus, Rosenthal, where'd you learn to channel Sandra Dee?"
"I'm a female comp sci geek, Birkoff; you don't get anywhere if you don't learn the tricks of defusing the male ego. Do you have the apartment address?"
He fumbled a folded piece of paper from his pocket. "Yeah. You said you knew the trains?"
"My apartment's on the subway, too. You should know; you went there."
"I took a taxi," Birkoff admitted.
"You can break into any system on the planet, but you can't figure out the subway?"
"No wonder they were reluctant to let me out."
His tone was bitter enough that I took his arm again. "You'll figure it out, Birkoff; you just need some practice."
The apartment was on another line, and I made Birkoff navigate us through the station where we had to change trains. A few stops before ours, the train emerged onto street level, and Birkoff pressed his nose against the glass and watched the last of the sunset, as the sky turned the color of blush wine. We found the grocery store and stopped there (milk, juice, cereal, soup, a bottle of wine, and four boxes of Oreos), and then ran across a Vietnamese takeaway farther down the block. Birkoff looked askance at the menu, but I dragged him inside anyway, then had another argument with him when he discovered that a number of Vietnamese dishes contain peanuts, which (I never knew) he loved. I was allergic to them--not deathly, just enough that my sinuses would go into overtime production if one came near me)--and we were finally able to agree on two things with peanuts, and one without. I'd never known that Birkoff felt so strongly about them, and wondered what else I didn't know--what else, even, that he didn't know.
It was a short walk to the address he'd been given. It was near the university--a deliberate move on Section's part, I suspected, as a geeky boy living alone would be even more inconspicuous in this part of town--and we passed hurrying professors and laughing students. My own neighborhood was mostly families, and I often felt like I stood out as a single woman living alone. Here, though, we were just two more twentysomethings. For all that the passersby suspected, Birkoff was just another mathematics undergraduate and I just another master's candidate in (let's say) philosophy. We might have been dating; we might have been friends; we might have been study partners. Our history was whatever the onlookers made it out to be.
Birkoff's building was actually a converted warehouse, brick with enormous windows on each side. We directed ourselves to the second floor, as the instructions read. It took him a few minutes to find the key--it had disappeared into the depths of his pockets--and as he was trying to find it, two of his neighbors passed us. Two men, as it happened, holding hands, the taller of whom smooched the shorter before they turned the corner. Birkoff abandoned the key search and stared.
"What's the matter, boy, ain't you never seen homosexuals before?" I asked when they were out of earshot.
"No. I mean, yes. I mean, not in public!"
"You haven't seen much of anything, gay or straight or otherwise, in public since you were fourteen."
"Well, I know I never saw gay people before."
"You're looking right at me, Birkoff."
"What about Robert?"
"He was something of an exception to the rule."
"Did he know about this?"
"He knew about all my exes, genders notwithstanding."
"So you're telling me you used to do it with chicks, Rosenthal?"
"That's what I'm telling you, Birkoff."
"Section never told me that."
"Some things are on a need-to-know basis."
"Do you still have that bottle of wine?"
"Yes."
"Good. Because I'm going to need the whole thing." The key finally found, he shouldered open the door and we walked into the quiet apartment. "Wow," Birkoff breathed. It was a studio, an enormous one, one room of wood and light and windows that probably had the same amount of floor space as a two-bedroom, if not more. Copper pots hung in the kitchen to our left, while streamlined black furniture filled the living space to our right. The bed was a futon, set further to the back along with a host of electronic equipment.
"Swanky pad, Seymour," I said.
"God. I'll say. My computers are even here. Oh my God. I can leave Section and still hack. I can keep all the Oreos I want twenty feet from me. Oh my God. I am in heaven."
I rooted through his cupboards and located wine glasses. "Have some wine with me to celebrate."
"I'm old enough to drink wine?"
"You have been for quite some time."
He sniffed the c™tes du Rh™ne suspiciously before taking a sip. "Hmm. This isn't bad."
"Stick with me, kid, I'll show you the good stuff."
We spread out the Thai food on black dishes, using the angular silverware that Section had provided. We lounged on the couch, which was soft black leather, and drank some more wine. Our feet tangled comfortably. After the long day and long night, and the glass of wine, I found myself sliding into the softness, closing my eyes.
"Why is it that I inspire you to sleep, Rosenthal?"
I blinked my eyes open and laughed. "Maybe if you'd stop nearly getting yourself killed around me, Birkoff, I'd have more normal reactions to you."
"And what might a normal reaction be?"
"Whatever one's normal reaction is upon seeing a cute shaven-headed geek boy. I don't know. It's just that lately all my non-work time, including that spent with you, seems to be when I'm exhausted."
He began poking my feet with his. "Wake up. If you fall asleep, I'll be bored."
"The wine didn't make you sleepy?"
"No, I'm even more awake now. Don't go to sleep, Rosenthal." His voice was plaintive.
"Too late."
Before I realized it, Birkoff had clambered across the couch and was sitting on my stomach. "Rosenthal, you're no fun. Come on, wake up."
I couldn't help it; I started to laugh. "Birkoff, you're a really funny drunk."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I've never known you to climb on people."
"I'm not climbing... well, I guess maybe I am."
"You win, anyway. I'm awake. Move a little bit so that I can sit up."
He did move, but not very much, and when I sat up I found myself face to face with him, his eyes huge and green. "Hello, Birkoff," I said quietly.
"Hi, Rosenthal."
He was close enough that I could reach up and run my hand over his short hair, feeling it bristle under my hand, which came to rest, almost of its own accord, on the back of his neck. I moved to cradle the side of his face in one hand, letting the tops of my fingers trail over the curve of his ear. Hesitantly, Birkoff wound a lock of my hair around his finger, and when I didn't stop him, he drew his hand through it, smoothing out the tangles, brushing it back from my face. I found myself kissing him. He tasted like red wine.
"I thought I was too young for you," Birkoff murmured after a moment.
"You are."
"Is this some kind of weird game"
"No. You're not getting anything that isn't offered at face value. Take it at face value, or don't take it at all."
"You know what happened the last time a woman kissed me."
"Should we stop?"
Birkoff thought it over for a while, his hand still idly stroking my hair. I waited, and then suddenly I was on my back, looking up, Birkoff's leg in between my thighs. "No," he said. "I don't think we should."
We stayed on the couch for a while. But it was clearly too small for the activities we had in mind, and so finally, in a concerted act of will, we hauled our semiclothed bodies off the sofa and--with only a few interruptions and distractions along the way--made our way to the bed. We stayed there for a long time.
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For years, I had slept with a long, lanky heater of a man. I had been able to tuck myself around Robert, inserting myself between his narrow bony spaces. I had fallen asleep with him as my pillow, curled up around Robert while one of his hands lay on my back. I had held on to him like a tree clutching the ground during a storm, and Robert's light touch had kept me anchored during dreams.
Birkoff, though, clung as tightly as I did, and we lay in a tangle as complex as knotwork. Alone, I'd seen, he slept sprawled out, the king of his domain, but I suspected that lying in bed with someone else brought out the cravings for affection that he usually kept hidden behind tinted glasses and edgy clothes. His body stayed wrapped around mine, as though he needed my warmth as much as I needed his.
"You're awake," his quiet voice said.
"How did you know?"
"Your breathing changed."
I trailed a finger down the nape of his neck, where soft hair met soft skin, and in the intimacy of the dark Birkoff allowed the caress. He traced gentle patterns on my back, and I lay there and let myself be held for the first time since the last night--an ordinary Thursday, nothing special, I'd showered and set the alarm for 6:45 and climbed in next to him--I'd spent with Robert.
"What are you thinking?" Birkoff asked.
"I don't know."
"You're lying." Not an accusation, just a statement.
"Not as much as you think I am."
"Do you think Madeline's taping this?"
"If she is, I hope it was good for her, too."
The snort of a laugh. "Don't forget about Ops. Now they can augment their extensive Nikita-and-Michael collection."
"Is it really all that extensive?"
"It's not as extensive as either Nikita or Michael would like, that's for sure."
I shifted to make myself more comfortable, resting my head on the space between shoulder and chest, settling my leg over Birkoff's hip.
"Should I take that as an invitation?" he asked.
Birkoff's skin beneath my mouth was sweet. "If you want it to be one," I answered after I'd finished licking him.
His hands moved down to cup my ass. "What do you think?"
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"You bit me," Birkoff said, some time later.
"It's a compliment."
After another pause, "What does this mean?"
"It means you're good, boy."
I wished I could see the blush I knew was spreading. "That's not what I meant," he mumbled.
"I know what you meant, Birkoff. And I don't know what it means. I think it means that we can let it happen, but we can't get too attached. One of us might be dead tomorrow, and if so, the other one is going to have to keep on working like it never happened."
"I don't want to become like Nikita and Michael. It's stupid to pretend that--that nothing exists. Because everyone knows what's between them, and they try to act like it's not."
"For what it's worth, I don't think Nikita does. I'm not saying shut it off and ignore it like Michael tries to; I'm just saying that we lead high-risk lives."
"I know what you mean."
I kissed the declivity underneath his ear. "Maybe in another life, I'll get lucky and be reincarnated as your high-school girlfriend."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean you'll take me to the movies in your dad's car--"
"My parents didn't have cars."
"That's why I'm talking about another life here, Birkoff. As I was saying, we'll live out in the Midwest somewhere--"
"Like Manitoba?"
"Are you Canadian?"
A pause. "I might have been."
"I was thinking more Nebraska than Manitoba. But someplace with wide cornfields and bright stars. You'll take me out in your dad's old Caddy, and we'll drive down the farm roads on the outskirts of town, and you'll put your arm around me and tell me about the constellations. And you'll know about all of them, too."
"So will you."
"Yeah, but I'll let you tell me anyway. And then you'll stop talking and start kissing me, and we'll kiss in the back of the Cadillac, and I'll have to fix my hair and try to cover up my flushed face with powder before I go inside."
"You'd be wearing makeup?"
"Like I said, this is another life." I moved onto my back. Birkoff curled up against my side, nose against my shoulder, arm across my middle. Idly, he drew hieroglyphics on my skin while I talked. "So one night--it'll be right around graduation, warm outside, and we'll have had a little bit to drink at a party--we'll take each other's clothes off and have sex out there. It'll hurt the first time, and it'll be a little cramped, but then we'll get out of the car and go make love in the field between rows of corn, on soft earth.
"We'll go away to college that fall, me to Berkeley and you to MIT. We'll break up, because that's what happens."
"It does?"
"It's pretty rare for things like that to last. Yeah, we'll break up. You'll stay at MIT, doing research on cryptography after you get your doctorate. And I'll become a physics professor, and I'll stay on the west coast. But one semester, I'll stop in the hall to get a drink of water, and I'll hear an astronomy class going on next door. And I'll sit in on that class every day that it meets, and I'll stare at the star charts and think of you."
Birkoff's hand stopped moving for a while and he was quiet. "Maybe that's not such a bad life, Rosenthal," he said after a moment.
"That's going to be us in one life. Another life might be something different. I don't know. But it can't be this one. We can't afford it now."
We fell back asleep after a few silent minutes. When I woke up, it was daylight, and my cell phone was ringing for a mission.
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"Marin?" Nikita's voice made me think of a fairy tale I'd once read, about a girl from whose lips jewels fell whenever she spoke. Her voice was rich, the accent adding color like light through a gem. "Could I speak with you for a moment?"
I set the program on autorun and got up. "Sure."
Nikita was dressed in a slim gray suit, her hair pulled up elegantly behind her head. Her shoes made sharp clicking noises as she walked. I had on overalls, hiking boots, and one of Birkoff's V-necks.
By comparison, I felt like the sister who cast forth toads and snakes whenever she opened her mouth.
Nikita's smile was slight, and seemed to hold no malice. She reached out and fingered the collar of my shirt. "That's Birkoff's, if I'm not mistaken."
"Yes."
"He's young, you know."
"He's twenty-one. I'm only three years older than he is."
"You're both young, then." She paused. "Do you love him?"
"Maybe."
"Does he know that?"
"It's not the kind of thing we say to each other."
"He's in love with you, Marin."
"He hasn't told me so."
"He doesn't need to. It's clear without being spoken." Nikita paused. "He was in love with me once, you know."
"I know."
"Although I'm not sure that's really accurate," Nikita continued. "He was in love with what he thought I was. He thought I was--I don't know if I have the word for this, at least not in English. Intangible."
"Out of his reach," I said.
"Out of his reach," Nikita agreed. She looked at me directly, through crystal eyes. "He loves you for the person that you are, tangible and human. Just remember that you've had a life full of experiences that Birkoff will never have. He doesn't know a lot of the things that you do. A lot of the things you don't even know you know." A second's pause. "I love Birkoff, too, and I don't want to see him hurt."
"I would never hurt him."
The brief smile again, and a shake of the head. "Never say 'never' in Section."
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It was slightly more than three weeks later when Birkoff went missing.
"Missing" was what everyone called it, though that wasn't accurate: We didn't know where he was, true, but we knew exactly who he was with. We just didn't know where they'd taken him.
They'd wanted Michael. It was Michael, the leader, the kingpin and the lynchpin, Operations's protŽgŽ and Madeline's right hand, not Birkoff, the geek sent along for tech support. What did he know? How to program the computers, sure. How to hack the mainframe for any security agency or terrorist organization or any combination thereof in the world, sure. Section One's rubrics and strategies? Very little. We knew what we needed to know. Nothing more. If we were tortured, they would get nothing, because we knew nothing.
If we were tortured.
You bastards, if you hurt one quarter-inch hair on his head or bruise one centimeter of that perfect skin, I will take your skins off with a paring knife. I will take your eyes out with a meat cleaver. I'll castrate you with a corkscrew. Bring him back, you bastards. Bring him back.
The mission had been routine. So, so routine. Go in, steal a couple of hard drives, get out. Drunk security guard, with some Xanax in his Jack Daniels to help him along. Empty building. Warehouse district. Late at night. What could be easier? Go in, get out.
They went in, and Birkoff got out, but not the way he was supposed to.
He went in with Michael, because Michael knew next to nothing about computers. Bombs, yes. Linux servers, no. We'd scanned that building top to bottom, and the only life signs that came up were from the sluggish pulse of the drunk security guard, but we hadn't known about the subbasement. It was shielded. And it was shielded better than we could scan.
We hadn't known that you could shield a building better than we could scan one.
They started off with a rocket launcher, and when they'd reduced the guard team to smoking bits, they went upstairs. They went up one floor above the server room and came down through the ceiling, thinking they'd find Michael dismantling the machines with his clever fingers. Only Michael was standing guard by the door, and Birkoff was dismantling the machines with his clever fingers, and Birkoff threw the drives at Michael and screamed at him to run.
It was between the data--access codes and identification information for Red Cell operatives in the Middle East and eastern Africa--and Birkoff. Section had another hacker as good as the first one. They didn't have duplicates of the data.
Michael ran. Birkoff disappeared.
----------------------------------------
We heard nothing. They didn't ask for ransom; they didn't ask for the drives back. There was no point: Section wouldn't have paid, and the data was compromised now anyway. What Michael could tell them was more important.
Except they didn't have Michael.
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Still missing. Still missing, God, and he's been gone for almost three weeks now and I just want to know if he's alive or not alive and not in pain, that's all I want. They say they don't know where he is, and maybe I believe them, but Madeline always knows more than she's telling, and I want to wring her elegant--no, scrawny--neck until she talks.
Give me back to me, you bastards. Give him back.
I've done the work for both of us, and I foisted Hillinger off on Walter, who was kind enough to take him. My work hasn't slipped. If anything, it's better, because it's all I do when I'm there. I don't laugh, I don't talk, I don't throw Oreos at Birkoff. I just hack, and I watch, and our intel is better than it's ever been.
Maybe Section planned it that way.
It couldn't have been Section. They're not that stupid.
I can't keep going. I get home and I bawl. Or drink. Three glasses of wine is the only way I can sleep, and even that's getting less effective by the day. Maybe I should try something stronger. Vodka. Valium. Morphine. Cyanide.
One of these days, I'm going to crack. I'll let through some fifteen-year-old wanker from the Republic of Uzbekistan. Then they'll take me into an interrogation room, strap me into a metal chair, and shoot me. Good for them. Being shot has to be better than this.
If I can make it through tonight, maybe he'll be back tomorrow. I'll walk in the briefing room and he'll be there. Maybe he'll have a black eye or two, maybe a cut on his lip. Please God. Let that be all. I'll never ask for anything again. Just bring him back.
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That was one night, that was two, that was twenty. It had been days or weeks--I didn't really know--when Walter paged me one afternoon. "Need your assistance, darlin'."
But instead of handing me a weapon or a piece of code to look at, he closed the door and lowered his voice. "What I'm about to tell you, I didn't tell you, right?"
"Right."
"They've got Birkoff down on Level A. Found him half-dead in an abandoned mine. No one's allowed to see him, so don't ask."
He's back. Oh my God, he's back. He's back and he's alive and maybe my grandmother was right about this God business after all.
"Walter, are you sure? Are you sure it's him? There are always crazy rumors in this place. It might--"
Walter set a hand on my shoulder, light but firm. "Sweetheart, I'm as sure as I'll ever be. Saw the team come in, heard Michael talking to Ops. They got a tip, and they went out after him. I didn't want to tell you until I was sure--until I was sure that he was OK."
That he was alive.
"Is he OK?" He's alive. That's all that matters. That has to be all that matters.
"He'll live."
I threw my arms around Walter. I felt him hesitate--I wasn't sure I'd ever touched him before--and then he hugged me back. The words burst out of me in a helpless rush. "Oh my God. I'm so glad he's OK. I was so worried. Thank you so much. I thought... I don't know what I thought. I was so scared."
"When you're scared for someone you love, it's like dyin' inside."
"I didn't say I loved him."
"You didn't need to, darlin'." He let me go and smoothed my hair back from my face. It was gentle, almost paternal, the same thing my own father had done when I'd come home crying from a skinned knee or a fall off my bike. Put a Band-Aid on it, smooth down the ubiquitous tangles in my hair, and fix me a glass of juice. It was that, it was Birkoff, it was everything from the past weeks; I almost burst into tears.
"Darlin', darlin,'" Walter said. "He'll be OK, and you've got to be OK, too, until then. So dry those tears, you hear?" He took a clean bandanna from his jacket pocket, and I pressed my face into it until my eyes were clear. "Right as rain, darlin'. Now get back to work."
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Four days, Birkoff had been in the recovery rooms. It felt like four years. I tried without much success not to pace outside the unit and wait for him to get better. On the fourth day, Nikita said gently, "Why don't you go in?"
"I can't. The doctors--"
"Aren't there. Go on."
The hallway of the medical unit was sterile white walls and steel equipment. The rooms were no different. The bed was near the far wall, windowless as were the other three, and Birkoff was asleep, curled up on his side, his back to me.
I went back out. Nikita looked surprised. "Was someone in there?"
"He's asleep."
With a roll of her eyes and a click of her heels, Nikita strode into the recovery room. I could do nothing but follow. Gently, she curled her hand around Birkoff's skull and spoke quietly. "I'm glad to see you back, Birkoff."
Slowly--painfully, it was clear--he turned to look at her. "Nikita."
She kissed his forehead. "There's someone here to see you." And then she was gone, as quickly as she'd come.
"Rosenthal?"
"Hi. It's me." I sat down on the edge of his bed and took his hand. "I've been really worried about you."
There were dark circles under Birkoff's eyes and just the hint of a bruise on his lower lip. "I wanted to see you, but they said I wasn't well enough."
I leaned down and put my arms around him as best I could, one around his neck, the other on his shoulder. He moved over and pulled me down next to him, and we lay there for several minutes while I re-remembered the smell and feel of him.
"You didn't miss much around here," I said after a while, as though he'd only been away on business in Reno for a few days. "Hillinger got some Internet girlfriend. She thinks he goes to college in Toronto."
"Has she seen him?"
"No way. Michael's about to kick his ass as it is. Hillinger's just lucky he hasn't told Operations about it." We lay still for a few more minutes in the white-tiled silence. "They never told me where you were. When you came back, I mean. They never told me where you'd been."
"I'm not sure. Some safe house somewhere--well, and then the mine. I don't even know where the house was. They thought I knew a lot more than I really did. They wanted the strategic stuff, and I don't know any of that."
"My neighbors kept asking me where my boyfriend was."
Birkoff cracked a smile. "What did you tell them?"
"That you were out of town."
With no small amount of effort, Birkoff reached up to stroke my hair. "Which I was, in a manner of speaking."
"So when do I, uh, get to welcome you back?"
A faint laugh. "Anytime you want, Rosenthal."
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Three days later, a week after he'd been brought out of the mine, Birkoff went home. Operations had agreed to let him come into Section three days a week, on the understanding that he would do intel from home the rest of the time. Since Birkoff did that anyway, it wasn't a hard bargain on either side.
Madeline had, not very subtly, told me to leave Birkoff alone for a few days. And I did. I worked eleven hours a day, puttered around in my small garden, and read the entire Herald-Tribune every morning. Finally, after another five days had passed, I decided that enough time had elapsed and that Madeline could go to hell, and I took the train to Birkoff's apartment.
He answered the door looking much stronger than he had since he'd come back. I pushed him against the doorframe and we kissed in plain sight of anyone who might happen to walk by. Birkoff was as hungry as I was. I closed the door and we managed to maneuver to the bed without falling.
Birkoff had lost weight in captivity and recovery, and I could trace his ribs after I stripped his shirt from him. He took off my clothes as though unwrapping something breakable, and afterward, we lay in a tangle of arms and legs, my head on his chest as I listened to his heart rate slow. "I missed you," I said. There was more that I wanted to say, but I stopped there.
"I missed you, too." For once, there was nothing mocking in his voice.
continued in part 3