Chapter 3: Points of View
Annie and McQuaid's musings on the 14 hour plane ride enroute from Azerbaijan to DC.
Annie was unnerved by McQuaid's obvious interest in her and his attempts to get to know her. On one hand, it was a welcome change to have someone in her life who knew the truth about her condition and didn't think less of her. Someone she didn't have to keep the truth from. On the other hand, she had forgotten how to be vulnerable and honest out of necessity. In her line of work, being vulnerable and honest meant letting your guard down and doing so really was the difference between life and death. Or hurt and seriously hurt.
McQuaid understood her drive and desire to do the best she could for the sake of her missions because he was just as driven as Annie if not more. He had more than his life's work at stake, he had about a thousand employees and hundreds of clients who relied on him for their livelihood and safety. Like Annie, the source of his wiring was his patriotism and his desire to serve his great country. And so, he approached caring for his company like family and that is why he needed to find the mole in his midst or else everything he spent the last decade working on would go down in flames. Ryan, in some ways understood Annie and her lone wolf tendencies. He had given up relationships and intimacy for his work too.
Not having any ties made his life simpler so he could concentrate on growing his company. Working long and unconventional hours, having to explain his absences to girlfriends, being caught in lies and never being able to tell the truth to vindicate himself made him give up on having any meaningful or long term relationships. Instead, he went from short-term flings to short-term flings. He did enjoy his freedom, but some days, it would have been nice to go home to someone. He sometimes longed to share a meal, beer, and mindless television watching with someone who understood him and put up with his devotion to his work. He hoped that one day, he could spend time off the clock with Annie.
How could she not be wired for mission at this point, it really was all she had left. After the last tumultuous year in the field and turning 34, the idea of having children or even a husband was slowly fading for Annie. She always thought she would have had kids by now. She loved her nieces and was there in the delivery room when each of them was born. Annie spent significant time with her sister and nieces during her breaks from school and teaching abroad. She loved every minute of being Aunt Annie. She was actually very skilled at diaper changing and putting the kids down to sleep. Danielle and Michael used to call her their personal Baby Whisperer. Annie always dreamed of having children and watching them grow up with their cousins, but none of that seemed to be possible now.
When she embarked on a life as a CIA operative at 28, she was doing so to help her country and to keep doing what she had been doing which was travel and hone her language skills. She had country hopped since graduate school, teaching English and doing translation work until she met Ben Mercer. After he left her heartbroken and alone in Sri Lanka, she decided it was time to grow up. Annie headed to her last home in DC to live temporarily with her sister while she looked for her first "real" job. She began looking for work as a language teacher or translator. She thought she could possibly get a job at the UN or in the Foreign Service. Upon landing home, she was approached by the CIA to test for a job there. On a whim, she went to the testing. That led to interviews and background checks. Surprisingly despite her checkered and spotty school records from numerous moves, which included some crazy rebellious shit, she was in. She was actually in at the CIA! Annie was always competitive and in the ultra high achiever environment at the Farm, she thrived. She thought working for the CIA would give her life more purpose and make her dead father, a career army man, proud. Plus, she found it invigorating, fun, and as she gained experience she enjoyed knowing she was good at her job.
The country needed her, democracy, liberty, the ideals and freedoms America was founded upon, all fueled her desire to be the best she could be. And truthfully she did love the adrenaline rush she got from the adventure and dangers of life as a covert operative. It wasn't until she was too deep into her job as an operative that she realized there were parts she didn't like such as the blurred lines between truth, trust, suspicion and mission. It's as if she was having too much fun to realize the impact on her life as a whole. After losing Simon and Auggie, she realized that choosing her career had cost her many relationships. Her sister and nieces grieved for her and still thought she was dead. Annie thought many times about contacting Danielle, she replayed her approach and what she would say over and over. She came close a few times during her time away after she killed Henry Wilcox. But as brave and decisive as she was in the field, when it came to this point, she wavered. She didn't want to hurt her family again. How could she could return to them and face the questions, the anger, the shock, the pain, and the possibility that she could put them in danger? What if she did it to them again? By it, she meant, what if she died again? Each time, Annie ultimately decided against contacting her family. The girls were also too young to understand and could not be told that she worked for the CIA. And if she played out what it would mean, there honestly wasn't time in her life right now to spend with them. She'd have to take another leave to reacquaint herself with her family and after being gone off the grid for four months, she couldn't see the agency allowing her another few months to reunite with her family.
At the Farm, the training modules don't prepare covert operatives for how to handle a personal life. No one ever really knows until they are living the life of an operative, how they will handle a job that is built around lies with a life that is true and with real people who aren't keeping secrets. They say operatives who are married when they become operatives often wind up unmarried during their career as covert operatives. And the ones who are covert and single, almost never get married unless they find a saint who can put up with all the lies and unknowns or a fellow spy who lies as well and can compartmentalize their real life with their covert one. Joan and Arthur had their share of problems, but were still together. How can one maintain a real relationship when lying is what they do for a living?
Annie had done nothing to encourage McQuaid's advances. She had given him no indication that she was also interested in him. In fact, she had made it clear over and over that she wasn't interested in mixing business and pleasure. It was a familiar path, one she had walked with Simon and Auggie and look where it got her. Of course, there was part of her attracted to Ryan. She didn't trust his intentions completely, but she had never met someone like him. He was brash and arrogant, but also charming and so handsome. Mostly Annie wanted someone who understood her devotion to her work and therefore understood her, but she pushed all those thoughts aside and went back to looking over all the files she had gathered since the beginning of the Khalid Ansari lead and the Chicago bombing. She could not shake the feeling that the CIA had missed something critical. It wasn't over yet.
When Annie parted with McQuaid at the airstrip, she wasn't sure she would see him again. They had worked surprisingly well together in Azerbaijan to track Nathan Mueller, even when there was a point where neither of them knew if they would get out of the country alive. McQuaid maintained his composure as did Annie. Annie wasn't quite impressed by McQuaid when they first met or when they worked together to track down Borz. She found him rash and a brute. He was a cowboy and they didn't always see eye-to-eye about how to move forward in the field, but her opinion was beginning to evolve. At first, she found him shifty and sensed ulterior motives, but now that she knew he had his own mole investigation, she understood his evasive actions and his need to keep secrets.
Annie thought back to when McQuaid distracted Mueller by saying he heard the drone, Annie immediately used the opportunity to strike Mueller, they didn't need to utter any words to communicate next steps, both of them simply sprung into action. She picked up Mueller's knife to cut McQuaid's ties and those of his men. While the men rendered Mueller unconscious, she gathered as much as she could of Mueller's papers, camera, laptop and notebooks. The four of them had to leave Mueller behind in order to save themselves. Annie and Ryan jumped off the drone zone camp with seconds to spare. It was yet another close call, one of hundreds, but they made it out and that counted for something. Annie made a mental note to talk to the DPD about a new protocol for drone attacks when operatives were nearby. It seemed like an easy fix. But who knew with the bureaucracy of Langley how long and how many meetings it would take to change a protocol. That's when working for a place like McQuaid Security intrigued Annie.
Annie had begun to think a little about what she would do if the CIA learned of her condition. She thought back to Eyal's words about her condition being a gift, a reason to get out, how it was really sad if her life was the field and running missions. She did take his wisdom to heart.
Annie didn't see her condition as a gift and a reason to get out because she didn't want to be backed into a corner. She wanted to decide when she was done and she wasn't yet, but could not put off making some semblance of a plan for the day when it all really was over. The first close call was after she was T-boned by the pick up truck and thought her career was over for a few hours. She walked the mall and stared at the Washington Monument wondering if sticking it out at Langley at a desk job was really what her next career step would be. She had decided that if she was going to be rendered unfit for field work and chained to a desk, she would stay at the CIA to regroup and eventually apply for jobs abroad. With all the blood on her hands, she wanted to do good in the world, to offer atonement for the bloodshed. Perhaps she could use her language skills in war torn or disaster and disease prone parts of the world, maybe the Red Cross, World Health Organization, or the UN would take her. She meant to look into those options the next time she had some free moments at home.
For now, it was time to return Auggie Anderson's eight calls. What did the man want to talk to her so badly about?