Operation Brightstar

This was always how it was going to end. Somehow, in the back of my mind, it floated as a certainty. But now that it’s real, now that it’s here, I am not prepared. A person is not meant to be surprised in this line of work. Shock and other such emotions are trained out of you. Yet here I am, sitting in the office that I have dreamt of being called to, my services requested for the most important of assignments. And I know I’m not ready for what’s coming.

The office is stark. A clean blend of glass and chrome. None of the decorative fringe that I thought would come as essential for such a prestigious individual. A sidebar, two chairs, and a glass desk, topped with a computer and phone. There is a clock somewhere. I can’t see it, but its tick-tocking tugs at my mind, burrows into my thoughts, brings me closer and closer to the cliff. Pushing me into a dark future. One that I have no choice but to accept.

“You understand what we’re asking of you?” Director Shaw fixes me with his infamous stare. The one that can make even the strongest of agents crumble. Legend has it, once, when he was in the field, Shaw was able to get a foreign operative to divulge the location of four different spy cells with just that stare. For the first year that I worked for The Agency, I never once even looked at him directly, worried about the consequences.

“I do,” I say, the weight of his request suffocating my response, so that the words are only a whisper. The room has suddenly turned cold. The air vent just above me exhales an icy breath down my back. I’m wishing I brought a jacket. I’m wishing I wasn’t here at all. I’m wishing a lot of things, but all I can do is repeat myself. “I do.” Tick tock. Tick tock.

“Good. I expect you will carry out this assignment with the same precision and discreetness that you always do.” His face has softened slightly, a relief has warmed his gaze. “Welcome to Operation Brightstar, Miss Jordan.” I nod and the matter is closed. I am supposed to leave now. I know this. I tell myself to stand. To walk out of the office. Go, now.

This was always how it was going to end. Unfortunate, but inevitable.

Agent Daniels was the best on the force when I was recruited and being placed under her direct supervision was one of the more fortunate events of my lifetime. Of everyone in The Agency, she was the one to impress. An international spy with nearly two decades of highly classified achievements on her record. Highest success rate. Highest kill rate. Never lost an agent in the field. It was said that a recommendation from her would have you set for life. All the best assignments, the high price targets.

I obviously stood out in her group of advisees. Being the only woman is something I had to get used to as I rose through the ranks as I’m sure it had been for her. We had this connection from the start. Two people who had faced the same challenges, the same prejudices, the same macho man bullshit, and arrived at this single point in time together. I like to think she saw herself in me and I wanted nothing more than to live up to her greatness. Match her. Impress her.

And it’s terrible, because it’s so goddamned cliché and yes, of course I knew it was wrong. I have issues. You have to be a little messed up to pick this line of work. What kind of person would want to live this way? But the power got me, pulled me in. Daniels was nothing like anyone I had been with before. Maybe that was part of the attraction. And if it had just been looks, I could have avoided it, found that kind of gratification elsewhere. But the woman is brilliant. Everything she said pulled me closer. Made me want more of her. Need more from her. That paired with the adrenaline of our job, it was like a lit match hovering over a pool of gasoline.

And then the match dropped.

We had just returned from an assignment. Two weeks undercover abroad. It was a success. A team effort. My first kill. After a group debriefing, the two of us remained in her office and the discussion turned to our chosen profession.

“Chosen?” I wondered aloud if I actually had chosen this. This job. This way of life. This isolation from normalcy. “There were certainly a set of circumstances that led me down this path,” I said. “But it never truly felt like I was given the choice. Never a fork in the road where I made a conscious decision to go one way or another. Just the cataclysmic event of my birth with a straight road leading from there to here and…” and before I could further that thought her mouth was pressed so firmly against mine that I thought she would swallow me whole. And I wanted her to. Wanted to be consumed by her. Wanted to get so completely lost inside her. Know the very depths of her.

We moved from the office to the stairwell.

The stairwell to her car.

Her car to her home to her living room floor.

We never even made it to the bedroom.

After our first night together, I was sure I had destroyed my chances. With her, with work. This sort of thing was forbidden and I would lose everything. It would be the biggest mistake of my life. A mistake that then happened again and again. No mention of it at The Agency and no mention of The Agency when we were alone. Alone in her home. Alone in my apartment. Alone in the masses in Times Square where our togetherness was ignored by the strangers around us.

And in all this together aloneness, we each became better, stronger. She taught me everything she knew about the life I was pursuing. We each had our own missions. We did what we needed to do. But each of us would always return to the other. I opened up to her in ways I never thought I could with another person and, in return, she let me into her own world. A private life that she said she had always kept closed off. As spies, it wasn’t safe to share our lives others, it left us open. Vulnerable. In that moment, it was a risk we were both willing to take.

“Tell me about your childhood,” Daniels said. We were lying on an overly-stuffed bed in the tent of a luxury glamping site upstate. It was one of the few times were able to truly get away together and she had made all the plans. She didn’t do hotels. Everything was too close. You didn’t know who was just next door or one floor away and there weren’t enough escape routes. She was comforted by the space of nature, felt protected by the openness. But a romantic getaway still deserved some amenities. Our “tent” had plush carpeting, a fireplace, a heated shower, and a king-size bed with silk sheets.

“What?” I said, rolling over to face her.

“Your childhood. What was it like?” I had heard her the first time, I was just a bit confused by the question. Not the fact that she wanted to know, but that she didn’t know already. I figured The Agency would have done all the research. Notes about every aspect of my life would have been in my file and surely she, my adviser, would have seen it.

“I mean, what is there to say really?” I said. “Mom dead before I was two. It was just me and my dad after that. Never really had many friends. Kept to myself. It seems to be a common background for those of us who do what we do. The whole lone wolf thing. What about you? Same?” She shifted in the bed. She was thinking, preparing herself, deciding if this was a wall she wanted to break down between us. I was about to change the subject, give her an out. And then she sighed. A breath like the opening vacuum of a sealed tomb.

“It was actually quite normal,” she began. “Not spy normal, but like, regular life normal. My parents were high school sweethearts, together until the day they died. I grew up in a loving home, had everything I could want.” She stopped and in the silence, I felt the heaviness of what waited just inside her closed mouth.

“But?” I asked. She let the question hang in the air for a torturous beat.

“When I was twenty, I discovered I had been adopted. My whole life had been a lie.” And it all poured out. Her feelings of betrayal. Her inability to trust anyone since. Perfect for her line of work, but ruinous for any kind of life outside of that. She told me about the search for her biological parents. Both dead. Would never know them. About how she doesn’t speak with her adoptive parents anymore. Too much resentment, too much lost. How she doesn’t know who she truly is and how she throws herself into her work merely to escape that terrifying fact. It was the most I had ever heard her speak.

When she was done, after a stream of tears had dried on both our faces, she curled into a ball, I wrapped my arms around her, and we slept.

That weekend solidified us. We were one and I was certain nothing could break that. Somewhere over the following year though, things began to change. She began to change. She was sidelined at work and pulled away at home. And then came the secrets. We had always been open and honest with each other, but I started to notice a quieting. She wasn’t telling me everything. There were late night calls, admittedly typical of our work, but then no explanation later. No talk of assignments or travel plans. She turned inward again.

Then there was the announcement of Operation Brightstar. Everything was on a need to know basis, and most did not need to know. I assumed Daniels was one of the select few who was privy to the details. That turned out to not be the case.

“All I know is the board is keeping it all very hush hush,” she said the last time I saw her. “Only one agent will be chosen. The mission will be assigned within the next week.” I could tell that she was hoping to be that agent. As an adviser, she had trained some of the best The Agency had, but she wanted more. She wanted back in on the big action. One final achievement to cap off her illustrious career.

And then she disappeared. No goodbye. No phone call. Nothing. For a day or two I thought she might have actually been chosen for the assignment. She had been given Operation Brightstar and was off, tracking down the target. Until this morning when she sent me a text.

Sorry I’ve been so M.I.A. Back in town. Want to meet up at your place tonight? I can be there by seven.

Then Director Shaw called me into his office.

Why me?

I know all her vulnerabilities. I am her greatest one.

That’s why they picked me for this assignment and not her.

Daniels couldn’t be the agent. She’s the target.