"Oh, you gotta be kidding me," Michael muttered while looking at his phone a couple of weeks later.
"Mmmm?" hummed Fiona. She was deciding whether to devote her energy to getting up or going back to sleep.
"They're giving me Neal again."
"What? Why?"
Michael sighed deeply. "Apparently he asked to come back. And now the woman from his station who was supposed to come can't come after all, so his COS is sending him in her place."
Fiona was fully awake now. "If he touches me, all bets are off," she said angrily. "I mean it."
"My bet is he won't come within ten feet of you." Michael threw his head back and sighed again. "Why do you think he wanted to come back?"
"Because he wants to molest my perfect physique again."
He turned to her and grinned slyly. "Much as I could understand that, I don't think so. You scared the crap out of him last time."
Fiona shrugged. "Maybe he actually wants to learn."
"Guess we'll find out in a couple of hours." Michael put his phone back on his night table and sighed for the third time in a minute.
Neal has that effect on people.
"This coffee is shite," Fiona said, drinking it anyway. "From now on you're buying me real coffee. Not government coffee."
Michael didn't look up from the papers he was perusing at the main table in the classroom. "You could brew coffee at home, you know," he replied. "You have like twenty of those stainless travel mugs."
"Entirely beside the point."
He put the papers down and stared at Fiona. "So you could brew it at home; you'd just rather make me buy you coffee."
"Yes."
"Could I just give you three bucks?"
"No, you need to put forth the effort to make me happy."
"Getting coffee is a considerable waste of my talent to make you happy."
"Not all happiness leads to an orgasm, Michael. Buy me a goddamned cup of coffee once in a while."
"Fine. And on a related note, Fiona, I seem to recall making a bet with you, and the winner of the bet would get to choose all sexual acts for a month. Do you remember that?"
Fiona looked away.
"Of course you do. You came up with the bet. And then, wait. Let me think. Oh, yes, that's right; you lost the bet."
She refused to make eye contact.
"Now that we can stand being near each other again, it's time I collect. And, besides, I did buy the condoms. Shame to waste them." His voice turned serious suddenly. "Hey, how are your migraines? Are they better?"
She looked up. "Hasn't been long enough. I'm supposed to give it three months."
"So I should buy more. Is that what you're telling me?" He grinned.
"If you think you get to choose everything for three months, Michael, you're out of your mind."
"No, no, no, nothing like that. And it's like I said. Sometime my choice will be for you to choose."
Her eyes glinted as they turned devious. Michael could see the wheels in her head spinning.
"No, Fi. Your choice cannot be Neal. I'm not doing that again."
She pouted.
"Leslie, on the other hand . . . ."
Voices in the hallway caused Michael and Fiona to crash back down to Earth. A second later, the door opened. In came a guy about Michael's size with salt-and-pepper hair; a guy about six inches shorter than Michael with blonde hair; and a tall, African American woman with no hair.
And then came Neal. Still with the cherubic face and incongruous buzz cut.
He was already sweating.
Michael and Fiona greeted each of the three newcomers with a handshake and a little small talk. When they couldn't avoid it any longer, they turned to Neal.
Neal just stared at them.
"Hi, Neal," Michael said, extending his hand. "Welcome back. I confess I was surprised to hear you wanted to come back."
Neal took Michael's hand into his own clammy one and dropped it a second later. "I, uh, well, I think last time I – last time maybe didn't go so well," he stammered.
"Well, it's always good to recognize you need help," Michael replied.
"I'm not the King of Tonga," Neal said quickly.
"That's true," agreed Michael.
"I told the other guys I was King of Tonga. And then I had to sell it, you know, like you said, so, I really, uh, I – I just dug in with it, you know?"
"Go down swinging; that's what I always say," Michael said.
"So, uh, yeah." Neal broke eye contact with Michael and looked around at everything except Fiona.
Silence.
"Fi?" Michael prompted.
"No," she answered, staring at Neal with laser-like focus.
"Fi."
"Fine. Hello, Neal. Don't touch me."
"Oh, I won't, I won't. No, no, no. I won't."
She pivoted on one heel and strode across the room to where the others were sitting.
"I'm, uh, I'm really sorry about that, Mr. Westen," Neal said. "I shouldn't have hurt her."
"You didn't hurt her, Neal," assured Michael. "You did annoy her, though, which is worse."
"Oh. Uh . . . oh. How should I – I mean, this time . . ."
"Like she said. Just don't touch her. You'll be fine."
"Okay." Neal didn't seem that okay.
"And I will make sure she doesn't kill you. Now, I'm gonna level with you, Neal. She's fast. I can't promise she won't break your finger or something. But she will not kill you."
"Uh . . . ."
"So let's go meet your new classmates," Michael said, slapping Neal on the back.
Salt-and-pepper guy was Jason Colar, a software engineer based in Los Angeles. Short guy was Daniel Lagrima, a lovely Welsh chap stationed in Boston and a scholar in all things Russian. Bald lady was Melissa Fullham, who earned her Ph.D. in psychology and was now a rising star in the agency's deception detection world. Officially she worked at Langley, but really she went anywhere some deception needed detecting.
After everyone made their introductions, including Neal's painful one, Fiona spoke. "Melissa, I would like to know why you're bald."
Michael turned his head slowly and stared at Fiona. Then he hung his head and exhaled deeply.
"Sure. A friend of mine started chemo for breast cancer last week. Bunch of us shaved our heads over the weekend to support her."
"Melissa wins," Fiona announced.
"Wins what?" Melissa asked, smiling.
"Everything."
Melissa burst out laughing. "Well, thank you. One of her other friends put it together. And they got the salon to do everyone's for free. Wine and free head shaving. Can't beat it."
Fiona looked at Melissa with an admiration that, to date, she'd reserved for bomb designers and master thieves. Her mouth hung open a little.
"Indeed," Michael said, breaking the awkward silence. "All right, let's dive in. Our first topic is cover IDs. The lifeblood of a spy. You don't have a good cover, you don't come home. Or, more precisely, you don't have a good cover or you don't know how to play your cover, you don't come home." Michael his words hang in the air a moment. "So let's do this. Tell me what makes a good cover. Just call out your ideas."
The room was silent while the students waited the obligatory few seconds for someone to speak first. Then Melissa spoke. "It has to be something you could be. It can't be out of left field."
"Possible. Exactly. It has to be possible," Michael agreed. "What else?"
"It should probably be something that's likely. More than just possible," Jason said.
"Exactly again. It needs to be probable." Michael got him from his perch on the table and walked to the white board mounted on the wall at the front of the room. He wrote possible and probable with a blue dry erase marker on the board. "What else?"
"Easy," said Daniel at the same time as Neal said, "You can't be a different race."
"Can't be a different race is covered by possible, I'd say, Neal," Michael replied. "What do you mean by easy, Daniel?"
"You need a character who's easy to play. There should be a bit of truth in the character so it comes naturally. Y'know, if you're playing a bit of a bird, you should be one in life as well."
"'A bit of a bird'?" Michael asked.
"Oh, sorry. It's, em . . . how would you say it here? A man who is good . . . oh, a ladies' man! You say a ladies' man."
"I see. A bit of a bird. I like that. I was in Cardiff for a few weeks probably fifteen years ago, but I didn't pick that one up."
"Shame," Fiona said quietly.
"And yes, you're right," Michael continued, ignoring Fiona. "The more truth to your cover, the easier it will be to play. Yours is a great example, Daniel. If you're an idiot around women," and everyone in the room tried to not look at Neal, "your cover shouldn't be a Don Juan." Michael wrote easy/true on the white board.
"Believable," Jason said.
"That's it," Michael said, turning around and pointing at Jason. "That's the ultimate. Believable. I'd go one step further and say it has to be believed. The difference is, if you're dealing with Joe Schmoe, being believable is probably enough. Being believable and being believed are usually the same thing with Joe Schmoes. And you all will usually be dealing with Joe Schmoes if you're in the field. But if you're mixed up with a real pro, count on them not believing anything a Joe Schmoe would believe. For that kind of person, you've got to become your cover. Nothing less will work." Michael wrote believable + believed on the board before he returned to the edge of the table.
"All right. On to our first exercise. Fiona is a master of deception. Only in this environment is it a compliment to say she can achieve near-sociopathic levels of deception." Fiona beamed.
"Each of you is going to interview her," Michael continued, "and she is going to assume a different identity for each of you, and at the end you'll decide whether or not she was telling the truth. I want this to be realistic, so it won't be that three are true and one is false, or vice versa. No set number. Some or none or all may be true. Some or none or all may be false. You're at Fiona's mercy." Fiona beamed again.
"Now, Neal, odds are you'll know the truth of at least some of what Fi says today," said Michael. "So zip it. Study and learn instead."
"Roger that," Neal answered.
Michael shuddered slightly, a bit of PTSD from the last time Neal said roger that. Shaking it off, he said, "Okay, let's get to it. Melissa, our resident deception detector, why don't you start?"
"Sure. May I arrange how we sit?"
"You bet," Michael said.
"Great. Fiona, if you'll just pull your chair up to the table." Melissa gestured, and Fiona obliged. "Thank you. So. How are you doing today?"
"Fine."
"That's good. I'm pretty tired, myself. I woke up around four and just couldn't get back to sleep."
Michael watched and listened to Melissa watching and listening to Fiona. He was already impressed. By dictating where Fiona sat, she had both established control in the relationship and positioned Fiona in such a way to have a prime view of her physical reactions. Liars instinctively touch their bodies to soothe themselves – they rub the tops of their thighs, maybe, or stroke their cheeks. They wrap their ankles and calves around the chair, securing themselves from attack. People telling the truth lean forward on a table and expose their vulnerable torsos, because they have nothing to hide. Liars lean back and protect themselves with their own arms. And she'd built rapport by admitted a weakness – that she was tired. Impressive all around.
"I can sympathize," said Fiona. "My son has been waking up at all hours. I'm a light sleeper naturally, so it's been challenging, to say the least."
Michael's reaction was imperceptible to the class, but inside he sat bolt upright at the word son.
"I bet," Melissa nodded. "How old is your son?"
"Nearly three."
"Aww, cute. My daughter just turned six. She's a good sleeper now, but I remember how hard those first few years can be."
Fiona smiled. "What's her name?"
"Alexis. Sometimes Alex, never Lexi." Melissa laughed. "That's become my stock answer. Everyone wants to shorten Alexis to Lexi. Maddening. It's Alexis! I picked that name because I love it!" She sipped her coffee. "What's your son's name?"
"William," Fiona answered. "William-sometimes-Will-never-Willie-never-Bill."
Michael instantly found himself lying next to Fiona in bed a few weeks after they'd met, snuggled close under thick blankets on a cold, black night. "Why'd your folks call ya Michael?" she'd asked, her head on his chest.
"What d'ya mean?" he'd replied.
"MY-kull isn't Irish. Why didn't they call ya MEE-hall?"
He'd felt a surge of adrenaline as he realized Fiona, whether she realized it or not, had pulled a thread that could unravel his cover. He'd forced himself to breathe out, slowly and silently, for three seconds.
"Dunno," he'd said, doing his best to sound bemused. "I never asked."
"What'll ya call your boy?"
"Sorry?"
"Your boy. When you have a son. What'll ya call him?"
He'd laughed. "What makes you think I want a son?"
"Every man wants a son."
"You offerin'?"
She'd smacked him on the side of his head. "Feck off. No. I just wanna know."
"I honestly haven't considered it."
"Whaddya mean, you haven't considered it? You're Irish and you haven't thought about havin' kids?"
"Have you?"
"'Course I have. Everyone has."
"I didn't take you as wantin' a babby."
"I don't want one, but if I find meself up the pole, well, that's that."
He'd swallowed hard and stayed quiet as her words hung in the air. "So what would ya call your son, then?" he'd finally asked.
"William."
Author's Note: Hello, everyone, and thank you again for your kind and supportive words. I'm not an author, but it feels incredible to know that some of you think I am. So. On to the story. We're nearing the end. I've got an ending firmly in mind; I need to figure out the best way to get there. I'll be sad when the story ends, but I'd hate to drag it out and have it lose some of what makes it so enjoyable and special for people to read and me to write.
In other news, I'm thinking of ideas for a new story! It'll be Burn Notice, of course, and it will be rated T, at least to begin with. :)