The Wonder Test Read online

  “There’s a bench on a path behind the Embassy Suites in Burlingame,” his message says. “Meet me at noon?”

  George and I were in the same class at Quantico. Later, we spent eleven months together on a major case in the woods of North Carolina. It was George who recruited me to the BAP team. We’ve worked together off and on for my entire career. We’ve always liked similar locations—off-the-beaten-path towns where the best motel has a “6” in the name and you’ll miss Main Street if you blink—so when a case comes come up in, say, Big Spring, Texas, we often end up working it together.

  There’s one unspoken rule in this organization: when a colleague asks for help, you show up. See you then, I text.

  I find George on a bench behind the Embassy Suites wearing a sweaty Seahawks T-shirt and green running shorts. His black hair is damp, his face flushed.

  “How far?”

  “Eight miles,” he says, rising from the bench. I’ve spent so much time with George driving around in cars, every time he stands to his full height—six foot four—I’m surprised by how tall he is. At five foot five, I have to crane my neck to talk to him. “Felt amazing. Weather has been shitty in New York.”

  “Meeting someone?”

  “Airport at three.”

  “Shall we walk?”

  We stroll along the path toward the abandoned Burlingame drive-in. The flat, gray water of the bay stretches toward the city skyline, blanketed in fog.

  “Who’s your guy?” I ask.

  “Eurasian diplomat coming in through Luxembourg. We haven’t seen each other since an awkward pitch at the UN seven years ago.”

  “Must not have been too awkward. He’s meeting you again.”

  “He doesn’t exactly know he’s meeting me. Hopefully, this time it won’t turn into an international incident.”

  George bounces some ideas off me, and we talk about the best way to draw the guy in—how to make the approach, what to say and how to say it.

  “I sense that’s not the only reason you’re here,” I say after we’ve hashed the whole thing out.

  “Come back to work. Things are heating up with Russia. We need you.”

  A plane comes in low over the bay, drowning out our voices. After it passes, I stop and turn to George. “I can’t.”

  “Why?”

  “If I had a clear answer, I’d tell you. It’s just . . .”

  “Just what?”

  The wind picks up, small waves slapping the silt and rocks. “How much do you know about Yellow Beak?”

  “Enough to know you’re not to blame.”

  “You heard what happened?”

  “Lina, it wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t even your op at that point.”

  “That’s the problem. I shouldn’t have passed it off.”

  “I don’t know a single agent who would have made that meeting under the circumstances. And you somehow managed to follow procedures to the letter. Jesus, you wrote up the 1023 and the USIC referral the day after you buried your husband.” Another plane passes overhead, causing the ground to vibrate beneath us. When the noise subsides, George puts his hand on my shoulder. “We all want you back.”

  “Thanks, that means a lot.” My eyes water. George squeezes my shoulder and gives me a tender look. “Damn salt air,” I mumble.

  I get the feeling they’ve been talking about me back in New York, and everyone decided George would be the best person to approach me. I appreciate the effort. I’ve been feeling so isolated out here, so far from my friends and my normal life, it’s comforting to know someone still has my back.

  I point out an abandoned boat several hundred yards out. “That was a fish restaurant in the late seventies. My parents used to bring me here after the school talent show.”

  “How was the food?”

  “Terrible. But it was dinner on a boat!”

  I loved those evenings with my parents—the thrill of going out to dinner on a school night, the Naugahyde booths, the little red candle, the squares of butter in waxed paper, our discussions of the more questionable talent show acts. My dad used to make my mom laugh so hard she’d have tears pouring down her face. It was the best part about being an only child: the complete attention my parents gave me, the way they included me in their conversations, as if I were their equal.

  That was before my mom took off, before my dad moved up the hill. When I became a parent, I tried to emulate that model threesome with my own family, the way I remembered it from the best years, at least. And it worked. Rory enjoyed being an only child. He never once expressed the desire for a sibling or asked why he didn’t have one. But two isn’t the same as three. Two is a straight line, not a triangle, as I know so well from my own adolescence. With Fred gone, the balance is off. If I’d been able to see the future, I would have had another child.

  “How’s Rory?” George asks, as if he can read my mind.

  “He kind of amazes me.” I smile. “He’s made a good friend already. Her parents are in the French foreign service.”

  George raises his eyebrows in surprise. “That’s random!”

  I give him a guilty look. “Not really.”

  We turn and begin walking back toward the hotel. “I’ve got a puzzle for you.” I tell George about Kyle and the case of the Stafford boy.

  George is intrigued—not just by the disappearance but also by the way the local cops are handling it. After college and before his master’s in psychology at UW, George worked as a police officer in the Northwest, so he understands small-town department politics. He asks me twenty quick, intuitive questions about Greenfield, Kyle, Crandall, Gray Stafford, and the Lamey twins. The efficiency of his questions, the way he gets to the heart of the matter so quickly and precisely, brings me back to my former life.

  I miss the collaboration, the way the back-and-forth helps me put words to ideas that have been subconsciously percolating. George narrows in on the fact that the Stafford boy had no hair and may have come out of the ocean. “The baldness seems related, somehow, to the lack of smell, the rash on the twins,” he says.

  “I thought so too.”

  George nudges me with his elbow. “Only you could step away from the job and find yourself embroiled in a triple kidnapping case with a side of the seriously weird. I think you might have a professional on your hands.”

  “Yes, but—”

  George finishes my sentence: “A professional who kidnaps kids never gives them back.”

  16

  Columbus discovered the New World in 1492. What is wrong with this statement? What is right?

  Before going into counterintelligence, agents spend six weeks at Quantico in BCI, the basic course. It’s mostly legal training, surveillance detection, and case studies, along with hours of filler. When I was in BCI, the instructors were an eclectic mix of veterans who wanted something slower, SWAT guys angling for more workout time, or agents on the bricks spending time in the penalty box.

  Sometimes, they surprised us with something more interesting. One afternoon we came back from the cafeteria to find an agent I’d seen around the New York office. A funny guy with a pronounced Southern accent, he was there to talk about a Russian recruitment he’d pulled off years earlier. An analyst who had never spent a moment in the field had made a name for himself by writing a book about it, then hiring himself out as a consultant on cable news. I’d read the book, which reeked of self-promotion, as those books by “former agents” and “former analysts” so often do. The presentation was much grittier than the book. The agent pulled back the curtain and showed what the case was really like from the inside.

  At the end of his presentation, he said something I’ve never forgotten. “Because success in this job is rare and fleeting, agents who achieve something noteworthy are usually remembered only for that one success. People call me the Nine Fox guy, because it was the code name of t
hat case. But when I think about my twenty-year career, Nine Fox is only a small piece of the pie.” Then he listed more than a dozen espionage cases in which he failed. “Those are the ones I remember,” he said.

  At the time, I thought he was just trying to make the new agents feel better about how little we had accomplished, how much we had to learn. But over the years, I’ve realized how honest his words were. When people see me in the hallways at 26 Fed or down at HQ, they often just refer to me as the agent from Blue Squared or the Cuban thing or Rocky Asphalt. “Hey, it’s Blue Squared,” they’ll say, giving me a smile and a nod.

  Yet those aren’t the cases that stick out in my memory. I think only of Yellow Beak. And not even all of Yellow Beak. I don’t think of the recruitment, the hotel room meetings in Panama and Finland and Kishinev. No, I think of one decision I made just after Fred died. It’s there in the file, though you’d have to read all the way to volume eight to find it. Somewhere among the write-ups, the records checks, the travel vouchers, and the gift reimbursements is a long 1023 about a surprise meeting at a New York City hotel.

  When I reflect on my career, I am haunted by the decisions I made that day. Everything I did was proper, legal, exactly what regulations required. One hundred percent by the book. Yet, even then, I knew I was doing everything wrong.

  17

  Is artificial intelligence truly artificial? Is it intelligence?

  I arrive ten minutes early for the quarterly budget meeting at the school and wait outside for the auditorium doors to open. It’s not the sort of event I’d normally attend, but Brenda’s text this afternoon intrigued me: You don’t want to miss it. I glance around, looking for Brenda, but I don’t see her. Tina Rennert and Elaine from the lunch at Brenda’s house are standing in a foursome with their husbands. I try to catch their eyes, but they’re busy talking. I’m relieved when the doors finally open and the crowd filters in.

  A PowerPoint presentation is projected on a big screen at the front of the room, the title slide declaring: “Excellence + Empathy = Extraordinary!” I take a seat at the end of the last row and unlock my phone, only to realize I intended to compose a text for Fred. We used to text a dozen or more times during the day—little stuff, gossip, jokes. It was such an integral part of my daily life, I still get that gut-punch feeling every time I start to text and realize there’s no one there to receive it. I should remove Fred’s number from my phone. And of course, I should give up the cell phone number he had for almost two decades, remove his phone from our family plan, but I can’t stand the idea of Rory dialing his dad’s phone one day and hearing a stranger’s voice.

  By the time the lights dim, it’s standing room only, so I move over to free up the end seat. The guy to my left is talking loudly to a man two rows ahead, something about their upcoming trip to Palm Springs to golf with the lieutenant governor. The crowd is noisy and jovial, lots of air-kissing and firm handshakes. It seems everyone is happy to be a part of this exclusive club.

  “Mom,” Rory said last night, when I remarked on the slick patina of wealth that coats everything in this town. “We inherited a mansion from Granddad. I looked it up on Zillow. Do you know how much it’s worth? You don’t get to play the working-class card anymore.”

  “Shut up and eat your mac and cheese,” I said.

  A woman in a maroon suit sits down next to me, placing her Louis Vuitton bag on the floor at her feet. I’m certain I’ve seen her before, but I can’t place her. Sleek blonde bob, pearl drop earrings, and Botox that makes her look shiny and surprised.

  “Hi, I’m Lina.”

  She glances up from her phone. “Laura Crowell.”

  “What grade are your kids in?” I ask.

  “No kids. I’m with the Davenport Team.”

  Ah, now I remember: her face graces the shopping carts at Safeway, an ad for her real estate group. She must be Harris Ojai’s competition. “Where do you live?”

  “Betancourt Drive.”

  She turns off her phone and turns her attention to me, suddenly friendly, her broad smile revealing a gap between her front teeth that makes her look vaguely glamorous. “Oh, the Pellner house!”

  “Pardon?”

  “Your father’s place. The five bedroom, four-and-a-half bath with the glass-and-steel breezeway designed by Stuart Pellner. I’ve been meaning to get in touch with you.”

  This town is way too small.

  “Good light,” she continues. “Odd embankment in the back. The flat properties are more desirable, as you know, but your canyon and bay views compensate for the hillside location. When you decide to sell—” She reaches into the front pocket of her blazer and pulls out a business card, which she thrusts into my hand.

  At that moment, the room goes dark. A spotlight swoops overhead and finds the stage, illuminating a tall, striking man in a well-cut black suit.

  “Welcome.” Kobayashi speaks into the microphone, his baritone voice echoing off the walls. “I think we all know why we’re here, but first we have a few housekeeping items.”

  The housekeeping bit is an update on surplus funds this semester. Apparently, there has been a debate about whether the money should be invested in new laptops or an additional language teacher. I’m preparing to vote—language teacher, obviously—when Kobayashi announces that there will be no need for further discussion. The pledge drive has exceeded all expectations and the school’s investments and endowment have enjoyed a banner year.

  “I’m pleased to announce that we will be able to procure new laptops and not one but two full-time language teachers.” A murmur of appreciation goes through the crowd.

  “Based on parent input, research, and district needs, we have reached a conclusion. Special thanks to the Davenport Team for funding an exhaustive study.” The Davenport logo appears on the screen above Kobayashi’s head. “Extra special thanks to parents Dave and Celia Byrnes from Intel for donating the code to crunch the data. The Byrneses could not be with us this evening, but if the members of the Davenport Team will please stand—”

  Laura Crowell is quickly out of her seat, followed by three other women in identical maroon suits. The room erupts into applause again.

  Kobayashi continues, “The two new languages we will be offering, in addition to our current Mandarin requirement for all incoming freshmen, will be Ruby, of course, and Hungarian. Simply put, Hungarian has been proven in longitudinal studies to enhance key neurological connections, thus complementing students’ preparation for the math and analogy portions of the Wonder Test.”

  Approving murmurs go up from the crowd, despite the glaring absence of Spanish in the curriculum. I lean over and whisper to Laura Crowell: “Ruby?”

  “The programming language!”

  Kobayashi makes more announcements. He seems miffed by the fact that Miss Townsend has gone and gotten pregnant, creating “continuity issues” with the freshman Rhetoric for Testing program. The talk goes on for another fifteen minutes.

  I’ve completely zoned out by the time Kobayashi takes a deep breath and declares, “The time has come.” The air buzzes with excitement. A drone’s-eye view of Greenfield is projected on the screen, and rousing orchestral music emanates from the speakers. Laura Crowell edges forward in her chair. Palm Springs man pounds his feet on the floor, and a drum roll rises up as others join in.

  “And now,” Kobayashi announces, “I am honored to share with you the results of last year’s Wonder Test.”

  The principal appears from stage left, clad in a tailored black dress and knee-high boots, carrying a silver tray. She lifts the tray, from which Kobayashi plucks a red envelope. He takes his time opening the envelope, holding it in front of the mic so we can hear the paper tearing. He lifts the flap, gazes at the audience. “Before I announce the results, I want to thank the students, the parents, the community, and our amazing teachers for so willingly adopting my vision: Prepared for the test,
prepared for life, every student counts.”

  The motto appears in bold black letters on the screen, imposed over a photograph of students sitting in a classroom, faces aglow in the light of their computer screens. People in the audience mumble the line with him, not fully committing.

  Kobayashi raises his eyebrows in mock surprise. “I can’t hear you.”

  The audience chants the lines again, louder but still tentative.

  Kobayashi smiles coyly, leaning toward the audience, his hand cupped around his ear. “What’s that you said?”

  “Prepared for the test, prepared for life,” the audience says, more confidently this time. “Every student counts!”

  It feels more like a Tony Robbins seminar than a budget meeting. But when I look around, everybody seems to be taking it in stride. I can’t tell if they’re just accommodating Kobayashi, having a bit of fun, or truly indoctrinated.

  Amid the pandemonium, Kobayashi stares directly at me. He appears to have noticed that I’m not joining in. He makes a small waving gesture with the envelope. Laura Crowell turns to me and whispers, “Just say it.”

  “What?” She’s not kidding. Kobayashi is still looking at me, and several audience members have turned in their seats, following his gaze.

  “Just say it,” Crowell whispers again.

  “Every student counts,” I mumble. Not for my sake but for Rory’s. If there’s one thing I know about school, it’s that you don’t want to attract any attention to your kid. It’s better to flow with the stream than to block it, even if the stream is flowing in the wrong direction.

  A tiny smile from Kobayashi, a nod, and then he breaks eye contact with me.

  He holds the silence for several moments, palms out, messiah-style, and leans into the microphone. “Every student counts,” he whispers, more seriously this time. “They say, ‘Oh, it will all average out.’ They say, ‘Oh, what does it matter?’ They say, ‘In every district, in every school, a few kids are bound to have a bad day. In every district, in every school, a few kids are bound to be off their game, behind the curve. Perhaps they’re sick or unfocused. Perhaps they just don’t care.’ Am I right?”