D.C. in the Spring
A Thriller Story
The sun reflecting off of the sidewalk and the white stone buildings made the April day seem far warmer than it was, and it was a relief when the two men stepped onto the escalator leading down into the dark cavern beneath the streets. As they descended into L’Enfant Plaza, walking down the left side of the escalator to bypass the people standing on the right, Birch said, “You know, in every other city I’ve been to the metro stations are well-lit and they’re tiled with white or yellow or some other color like you’re inside a bathroom in a house from the ‘50s. And here in D.C., they’re just pitch-dark cement caves in the ground.”
“How many other cities have you visited where you rode on the subway?” asked Angelo.
“Well… at least a few.”
“But not enough to really get an accurate sample?”
“Hey I have Uber.”
“Why are we taking the metro then?”
“You know why.”
They fell silent as they approached the turnstile, melded into two lines of swiftly-walking riders, pulled out their farecards, swiped them at the RFID scanners, and walked in parallel through two adjacent faded-orange turnstiles as the light briefly flickered between green and red before holding on green. As they stood on the platform, waiting for their train, staring at a billboard where an advertisement for marijuana had replaced one for a defense contractor, Birch said, “You know, the D.C. metro is like a perfect metaphor for this country. For this city, too, for that matter.”
“How’s that?”
“Look over there. L’Enfant has always been like a gigantic, mechanical abyss, but it used to be clean. Look at that. McDuncan’s wrappers and empty Chicken Filet bags and a beer bottle. And I can see a used needle over there. Maybe a condom, too.”
“You’re lying about the condom. And that’s a pen, not a needle.”
“Uh! I rest my case,” Birch said, pointing to the electronic sign. “Delayed! The metro was never delayed when I was a boy. Never. Back then, this place was cool. Those faded orange-yellow seats in the cars are the same seats that were there then. Never been replaced. In 2002, it all seemed so exotic and advanced. The idea you could ride around underground in a pneumatic tube.”
“It’s not pneumatic.”
“Yeah, but try explaining that to a nine-year-old.”
“You were nine in 2002?”
“I turned ten that August. You know how old I am. Besides, I was ballparking it. You know, back then, there was this eccentric electronic voice that said, ‘Doors closing. Step back to allow passengers to exit.’ And you know what? That doors-closing voice – it’s the same damn voice. The same voice for the entire almost thirty-one years I’ve been alive.”
“You remember being one and listening to the voice on the metro?”
“Well, it’s been there as long as I can remember. I can’t say it didn’t start in 1994 or 1995, but it was there when I was in elementary school.”
Their train finally came. They boarded and moved to a deserted corner of the relatively empty car. As they sped their way down the tunnel, passing underneath the long avenues and the sprawling offices of government agencies and K Street lobbyists, the topic turned to the news, which was, as it so happened, also business.
“You heard they arrested the leaker?” Birch asked.
“Of course. As soon as it happened.”
“Who would have thought it was going to be some punk kid?”
“There’s more to the story.”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t know enough to know, but I know.”
“Figured it was something like that.”
“Heard a little chatter. That’s all.”
“It didn’t implicate any of our stuff.”
Angelo smiled. “No,” he said. “He may have gone deep, but not that deep. There are some things even the SecDef doesn’t know.”
“Including our existence.”
“Including that. Precisely that, in fact.”
“Still, it’s disheartening. It’s a setback.”
“Not as much of one as we’re pretending, but more of one than we’d like.”
“I’ll admit, it’s getting to me a bit.”
Angelo looked at his friend. “Is it?” he asked.
“Yeah. You know, it feels like all our efforts have been failures recently. I mean, there was the thing… but I don’t just mean me. You know what I mean. The U.S., the intelligence community, the military. This is just yet another frustration, I mean, another thwarting of our efforts… so to speak.”
“You mean it’ll hurt our cause in some corners of the world and it’ll impact our operations in others.”
“And it’ll set back the Ukrainians. And China’s got to have learned a thing or two about Taiwan from it. And it’s probably already meant the deaths of some of our guys inside the Kremlin.”
Angelo smiled. “Perhaps not,” he said.
The electronic voice announced that they were entering another station. The two men quit speaking. The train stopped. The voice announced that the doors were opening. They did. A couple teenagers got on and an attractive woman in her mid-30s. An overweight tourist at the far end of the car got off. The two men were quiet until the next stop, where they disembarked.
As they left the station, Birch asked in a low voice, “You mean you know something about our guys in the Kremlin?”
“Steps were taken to bring them in as soon as word of the leak spread beyond Discord. Their families were extracted and waiting for them in safe havens around Europe. We’ve isolated our moles and given them protection as well. Soon, they’ll be out of Russia, too.”
“But won’t that mean we have no eyes on the inside anymore? We’ll be blind. I’m glad they’re not being tortured as we speak, but we’re still left without any…”
Angelo smiled. “Perhaps,” he said.
Birch smiled, too. “Perhaps indeed.”
“You know,” he added, “I’ve often wondered how you stay so magnanimous.”
“Me?”
“Yeah. You’re not exactly the optimistic type, but you seem to approach all of this with such an air of, well, detached bemusement.”
“Detached bemusement?”
“Yeah. You seem genuinely not to be bothered by all the failures.”
They had exited the station now and were out on the street.
“You worry too much,” Angelo said. “You want control.”
“Control?”
“You still think, or wish, that we control what’s going on. I realized long ago that it was okay that we weren’t in control.”
“But if we’re not in control, who is?”
Angelo smiled. “Nobody,” he said. “That’s the thing. I learned long ago that it was a futile errand and the control that was sought by all was impossible to attain. There exists no world in which our agency, or any such agency, can predict events, let alone influence their outcome beyond some limited degree. It’s out of our hands. Everything is. It was hard to reconcile that at first, but once I did, I found it gave me tremendous peace. I would say that it will be alright, but I don’t know that. Instead, I simply say that it will be what it will be.”
Birch looked at him aghast. “And that makes you feel better?” he asked. “I mean, what you’re saying is that it calms you down to think of events, just, swirling around and ricocheting off of each other, entirely independent of any manipulation or design?”
“Pretty much. Things just happen.”
“Wow. That scares me. I can’t fathom how you can be so sanguine.”
Angelo looked at him and smiled. “You realize that you can worry less. There’s no point in worrying because it won’t do anything,” he said. “But actually there’s no point in worrying if you can’t do anything either way. If you aren’t in control, you are remarkably free and peaceful. Things generally work themselves out without your or my direction. Sometimes they work themselves out for the better, and sometimes it is for the worse, but either way it isn’t up to us.”
“But what if something bad happens?” asked Birch. “I mean if nobody is in control, who’s to stop everything from going to hell?”
“Who’s stopping everything from going to hell even when we try to control things?”
“Fair point.”
They walked around a corner and a boulevard opened up before them. They could see trees and green spaces ahead and far in the distance was the white spire poking out above the marble office buildings.
“You remember it got a crack in it ten years ago? Longer maybe. There was an earthquake.”
“Yeah. Looks as good as ever though, now.”
Angelo looked at his friend and smiled. “Precisely,” he said. He held his hands up and gestured at the sunny day, the taxis zipping through the street, the headphone-wearing passersby on the sidewalk, the old stone buildings and the new glass ones. “This is still a beautiful city.”
“Those scooters are ugly,” remarked his companion, pointing at a bank of electric scooters.
“Yes, but they can’t detract from the cityscape. Not really. Despite our best efforts to mess it up, it is still quite stunning. Where else? Where else in the world?”
“Where else in the world, what?”
“Where else in the world could plausibly challenge this city for its preeminent position? Paris may be more beautiful, and London may be richer, and New York may have more exciting night life, but Washington is the center of the world. It was when you and I were coming up. And it still is. What other city could possibly lay claim to that?”
“Is it, though? The center of the world?”
“D.C. is still the capital of the United States of America. It is the most powerful city in the world. Certainly, Beijing isn’t, and I don’t know what other city could possibly be in the running.”
“Hmm,” his companion replied. “But for how much longer, I wonder.”
“Iain,” Angelo said, “People have been saying for our entire lives that America’s enemies were going to overtake her. That her best days lay in the past and that we were entering the final twilight years. In 2023, Russia is losing a war it should have won in a matter of days. China’s population bomb is exploding. And we still stand alone unparalleled. The metro is a good metaphor for D.C., but so is the Potomac River. When I was born, it was filthy and filled with trash. Today it is picturesque, and every spring weekend, kayakers and yachters can be seen in every direction. Beautiful couples stroll along its banks. Packs of runners dart along the paths that parallel it. They used to find bodies in that river. Now, you’re more likely to find a swimmer.”
By now, they had walked quite a distance from the metro stop where they’d disembarked. Birch let a pause open up in the conversation, as if to give his friend this one. Then he said, “I’m not sure I agree entirely with you, but we can leave it for another day. What do you want to do about our tail?”
Angelo smiled again. “He’s a professional. This isn’t his first job tailing a pair of intelligence officers,” he said.
“No. You think we should kill him and dump his body in the river?”
“No. Too blunt.”
“Confront him and see what he wants?”
“Same problem there, just in reverse.”
Without communicating their intention to turn, the two of them wheeled and veered right, down a narrow street heading towards Navy Yard.
“We’re getting further afield,” said Angelo.
“Which is good if we’re going to lose this guy somewhere.”
They made a left turn. Their tail followed. Neither man looked back or made any indication of being aware they were being followed. The man following them stayed two dozen yards back, occasionally sliding up a few yards or back a few yards, to give the impression that he wasn’t keeping pace with his quarries. Like them, he made as if he were out for a stroll, not paying attention to his surroundings. Multiple times, he pulled his phone out and stared at it as he walked, as if he were engrossed in something and entirely unaware of the men up ahead.
Without any warning, Birch turned into a coffee shop and Angelo walked into the bar next door. Each walked to the back and waited to see which their pursuer would choose.
He didn’t. Instead he walked straight on, passing both the bar and the coffee shop, looking at his phone. He had a dark suit and dark sunglasses, and he was in good condition, but that didn’t mean anything because everyone wore dark suits and dark sunglasses in this city.
Angelo was the first to leave. He crossed the street and walked up the block and back, and by the time he passed the coffee shop, Birch had come outside and crossed the street to meet him.
“Did you get a good look at him?”
“Maybe. Hard to say much. Maybe forty-five, maybe fifty. Five-ten, maybe five-eleven. No facial hair. He could be anybody.”
“Yeah.”
They looked up and down the street. There was no sign of the man, although there were many parked cars with dark windows and he could have been hiding in one of them.
“Let’s go to the safehouse.”
They made their way to a nondescript office building via a circuitous route that involved doubling back multiple times. Once inside the office building, they took the stairs to the seventh floor, got off and headed to a door without any sign or peephole. Angelo produced a key, unlocked it, and stepped inside. Birch followed him.
They stopped up short. The man who had been following them was sitting in one corner watching them, hands on his thighs, sunglasses raised to his hair.
“Agent Angelo. Agent Birch. You’ve been reassigned,” he said.
“Who are you?” Angelo asked.
The man smiled. He pointed to a small table where an identity badge was lying open. Birch walked over carefully and looked at it.
“You’re the Director,” he said with a start. The man smiled again.
“But what was that game all about? Why were you following us? Don’t you have better things to do with your time?”
“I wanted you to come here, instead of to the dormitory. We’ve got to be extra cautious after that leak. We can’t be sure our system isn’t compromised in some way and that includes the intranet in the dormitory. And, besides, I like to do that kind of thing every once in a while. You get rusty sitting in an office all day.”
“Sir, what is it we’re being reassigned to do? What would merit being briefed by you? We’re just a couple of field agents and you’re the Director.”
The Director smiled one more time. “Sit down,” he said as he indicated two other seats. They sat.
“What I’m about to tell you,” he said, “will change everything you’ve ever believed about the world.”