The Agent's Daughter (21 page)

“
I am afraid she is not
here,” Angela said. “Can I take a message?”

“
This is her friend Jean.
Do you expect her home soon?”

“
I’m not sure,” Angela
said. “I haven’t heard from Melina since she and her father left to
visit her mother at the hospital.”

“
I texted her a couple of
times, but I haven’t heard back,” Jean said. “I even tried calling
Melina’s number, but it goes right to voicemail,” Jean
said.

“
I’ve tried her father’s
cell phone several times too, and there has been no answer, as
well. I even called the hospital, and they said that Melina and her
father left hours ago.”

“
Well, I’m sure that they
just stopped off somewhere,” Jean said. “Would you just ask Melina
to call me when she gets home?”

“
Okay,
bye-bye.”

…………………………
.

Evan paced back and forth across the room.
He thought about continuing to try to find a way out, but from what
William said, they were not in any immediate danger. While the
official U.S. policy was not to negotiate with terrorist
organizations, agents were a different category. The government
would do whatever it took to get agents back, so at worst they were
in for a couple of long plane rides and some unpleasant food. At
this point, he figured he should try to smooth things over with
Melina. He took a deep breath, walked over to where Melina was
sitting and sat down beside her. He wanted to put his arm around
her and give her a hug, but he was afraid that she would not let
him. He settled on just leaning against her.

“
I guess that came as a
shock,” Evan said.

Melina finally looked up at her dad. “Why
didn’t you tell me? Why did you make up a lie?”

Evan chuckled loudly.

“
What about that do you
find funny?” Melina asked.

“
I’m sorry,” he said. “I
just had a flashback to the day that I told you that there was no
Santa Claus. Do you remember?”

Melina shook her head.

“
You were in third grade.
One day, when I picked you up from school, as soon as you got in
the car, you started asking me a bunch of questions about Santa.
Logical questions. Like, ‘How does he travel all over the world in
one night?’ and ‘How does he fit all those presents in that one
bag?’ I asked you what was with all the questions, and you told me
that some of the kids had said that their parents had told them
that Santa did not exist. That it was all a big lie. You were
indignant. I knew then that I had to tell you because I did not
want you to be teased by the other kids. We stopped by the ice
cream shop on the way home, and I spilled the beans about Santa as
we were eating our ice cream. When I was finished, you were
extremely angry with Mom and me. You did not have a problem with
the fact that Santa was not real. You had a problem with the fact
that we lied about it. Just like now.”

“
I still don’t understand
why you didn’t just tell me,” Melina said.

“
Don’t you see?” Evan
said. “Parents tell you about things when it is in your best
interest for you to know them. In the case of Santa, it was fun for
you to believe in Santa until you became old enough to know better.
Then it was inappropriate for you not to know. The same is true for
my job, and that is why your mom and I kept it from you. There was
no reason for you to worry about me when I was away.”

Melina rolled her eyes. “I think that I
could have handled knowing the truth a long time ago.”

“
I work in a dangerous
business, kiddo. Few of the agents tell their kids about it before
the age of ten. Kids below that age are susceptible to being
blabbermouths. You don’t want your child blurting out to the
neighbors that Dad is a spy.”

“
I’m not ten, Dad,” Melina
said.

“
I know that. Your mom and
I had planned to tell you this past summer, and then … well … I
just never did.”

“
It’s okay, Dad,” Melina
said as she put her arm around him.

“
Look, I know you are
plenty old enough to know. In fact, you are on the high end of the
age scale for the kids that
don’t
know. I am a little embarrassed that I didn’t
tell you. Even your friend Alex found out last year.”

“
Alex?” Melina said. Now
she was mad. First, there was his lunch with Ellen and now this.
“Why would he know about you and not me?”

“
You don’t understand,”
Evan said. “His father David works with me.”

Melina stood up. “And Alex knows about all
this? Arrgh! I am so mad at him right now.”

Evan grimaced as he realized he just threw
Alex under the bus. Melina looked angry. Sorry about that Alex.

“
Calm down, Melina,” Evan
said as he stood up. “Alex was not allowed to tell you.”

“
Not allowed?”

“
There is no formal law
governing squealing about an agent’s real job, but there is an
unwritten rule amongst my coworkers that it is not done. I’m sure
that Alex’s dad told him under no circumstances was he to tell you.
It must have been difficult for him to keep quiet about
it.”

“
Well …” Melina said,
looking visibly calmer.

“
I’ve been with the agency
for a long time. I have never heard of someone’s kids being told
about their work by someone other than them.”

“
Just how long have you
had this job?” Melina asked.

“
I joined the agency right
out of college,” he said.

“
I thought that you had a
degree in Computer Science?” Melina asked.

“
I do. That’s why I chose
software engineer for my cover story. But back when I was a senior
in college, there was a job fair for potential employers to come on
campus and recruit college graduates, and the Executive
Reconnaissance Agency sent their recruiters.”

Melina laughed. “Was there a bunch of guys
in dark suits and sunglasses?”

“
Yes, as a matter of
fact,” Evan said, smiling at the thought. “As I was making my way
to the booths of all of the software companies, I walked by the
agency booth. I stopped when I saw that they were handing out these
extremely cool t-shirts. One of the dark suits manning the booth
asked me if I had considered working for the government. He said
that they had software jobs too.”

“
But you don’t write
software for them,” Melina said.

“
That’s right. In order to
get the t-shirt, you had to fill out a short, written
questionnaire. It was supposed to tell them if I were the right
person for their organization. I seriously wanted that t-shirt, and
I had half an hour to kill before my next interview, so I agreed to
fill out their questionnaire. And was it ever an odd questionnaire.
All of the questions revolved around various dangerous situations
and what I would do to handle them. Not one of the questions was
even remotely about software. After I had finished, I turned it in,
grabbed my t-shirt, and then left. About a week later, I got a call
that I had made it through the screening phase and that they wanted
to give me a more extensive hands-on test.”

“
Hands on?” Melina
asked.

“
Yeah. They wanted to fly
me to Washington and test me in some of those dangerous situations,
in a virtual reality machine called the Stress Environment
Simulator.”

“
Why would a software
engineer need to be in those types of situations?” Melina
asked.

“
I couldn’t figure that
out either,” Evan said, smiling. “At that point, I had received job
offers from several software companies, but this sounded
intriguing. And it was a free trip to D.C. I thought, heck, I could
check out the Air and Space Museum while I was there. So I flew out
there and let them hook me up to their simulator. In addition to
the virtual reality helmet, they had monitors for heart rate,
respiration, brain activity, and saliva production.”

“
Saliva production?”
Melina said, laughing.

“
I’m not making that up.
It apparently is an indicator of how nervous you are. Anyway,
through the helmet, I watched all sorts of scenes where I was in a
dangerous situation. Scenes of people with guns jumping out from
behind things. Scenes of me parachuting off of
buildings.”

“
Why would they show you
those things?” Melina asked.

“
The simulator was
designed to find out how well you performed in ultra-stressful
situations. For example, in the simulation, I jumped off a building
with a parachute and halfway down, my parachute failed. They wanted
to know what I would do in that situation. Since it was a virtual
reality simulator, it was able to translate my movements into
actions in the simulation, so they could accurately gauge a real
world response.”

“
What did that have to do
with software?” Melina asked.

“
As it turned out,
nothing. After I was finished taking the test, the head of the
entire organization was there to talk to me. He told me that no one
had ever scored higher in the Stress Environment Simulator. The
test technicians said that as the test wore on and the stress level
increased, my heart rate lowered to near hibernation level and my
brain activity skyrocketed. They had never seen levels like that
before. They offered me a job on the spot. Of course, not as a
software engineer. I have been a field agent ever
since.”

“
Wait a minute,” Melina
said. “I remember something like that simulator at your work that
we get to do every year on ‘Take Your Daughter to Work’ day. All of
the girls were asked to try on a helmet that simulated different,
dangerous situations. Then you measured our heart rates. You said
it was a computer simulation program that some of the folks in the
lab did on the side for fun.

Evan looked down, sheepishly. “Yes. That was
the exact same machine.”

“
How did I do?”

“
Let’s just say that the
head of the agency told me to have you come by and see him when you
finish college.”

“
That’s funny,” Melina
said. “I don’t think of myself as being invincible.”

“
Being an agent is not
about being invincible. It is about not being afraid. It’s about
being able to set aside thoughts that would distract you in a high
pressure environment and focus on the task at hand.”

“
Is that what you think of
when you think of me?” she said.

“
Absolutely,” Evan
said.

“
How can you be so
sure?”

“
I’m going to let you in
on a little parent secret,” Evan said. “We sometimes look at our
kids and their accomplishments through an egocentric lens. We like
to think that if they are smart, it is because we are smart. If
they are funny, it is because we are funny. We are always on the
lookout for our best qualities in our kids. On the flip side, we
also do not wish to see our worst faults show up in our kids, so we
are on the lookout for those too.”

“
This is interesting,
Dad,” Melina said. “Obvious, but interesting.”

“
One quality that I hoped
that you got from me and not from your mom was my sense of
adventure. Now, I love your mom a ton, but that woman is afraid of
her own shadow. I have lost count of the number of times I have run
into the kitchen because I heard screaming only to find your mom
standing on a chair because there is a spider on the floor that
turned out to be a piece of lint with some hair on it.”

“
How do you know that I
did not get my sense of adventure from Mom?” Melina
asked.

“
Sit down, kiddo. I have
another story to tell you,” Evan said.

Melina sat down on the floor across from her
dad.

“
A few weeks before your
brother was born, your mom sent me on some errands to pick up some
last-minute things before the baby was born. I brought you along so
Mom could get some sleep. It’s strange, but even though you were
almost three years old, it was one of the few times that you and I
went anywhere just the two of us. We had a fabulous time shopping.
I let you carry the list of items, and you checked the items off
the list as we bought them. When we had finished buying all of the
items, you asked if we could go to the fish tank store.

“
The Adventure Store!”
Melina exclaimed.

“
That’s right,” Evan
replied. “The giant camping supply store outside the mall. You used
to love to go there because there is an enormous fish tank in the
middle of the store. We didn’t need anything from there, and it was
clear across town, but that day you could have asked me to drive to
Oklahoma and I would have. We drove over there and spent some time
looking at the fish. Then, after we were done, you wanted to check
out the boats.”

“
Boats?”

“
Yes. The store is
massive, so inside the store, right next to the fish tank, they
have several new boats on trailers for sale. We went over to where
they were, and I lifted you up into the driver’s seat of one of the
boats. Then I climbed into the passenger seat. You sat in that seat
and pretended to drive the boat for twenty minutes before I finally
said it was time to go. I left you in the driver’s seat, and
instead of using the stairs to get down, I climbed up onto the bow
of the boat and jumped the five feet to the ground. As I turned
around to lift you out of the driver’s seat, I saw you jump from
the same spot that I had just jumped. I quickly thrust my arms out,
and I caught you just inches from the ground.”