Root and Branch Page 11

  Nagy nodded and went on chopping parsley. He was accustomed to walking on eggshells when Carol visited. She often arrived appearing jumpy and on edge, as if she were low on sleep or nursing a hangover. But tonight she seemed more relaxed. Soon he managed to steer their conversation back into neutral territory.

  That is, until they sat down for dinner. Shortly after serving the food and refreshing their wine, Nagy asked if Carol had done anything exciting over the weekend, and she mentioned joining a demonstration on the National Mall.

  “Oh, really? What were you protesting this time?” he asked, not wanting to show his disapproval, but realizing at once that he had.

  “We were demonstrating against the arrests of Muslim students at GW and Georgetown. ICE has been storming into dorms and classrooms and hauling Muslim students away in handcuffs. Kids with valid student visas, many from friendly countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Not radicals at all!”

  “That seems odd,” Nagy replied as he picked at his salad. “Are you sure they hadn’t overstayed their visas and were hiding out with friends on campus to evade deportation?”

  “Oh, Dad, you’re always so suspicious!”

  “No, really. Visa overstays are a huge problem. Not all illegals sneak in over the Mexican border, you know. Every year, nearly a million foreign nationals come into the country on temporary visas and never leave.”

  “If you were a Muslim student and you watched American bombs and missiles hit the Middle East while our warships blockaded their ports, would you want to go back?”

  “Of course not, but why hang around in the country that’s dropping the bombs?”

  Carol’s face flushed and she put down her wine glass.

  “Look, we all have to respect the law of the land,” Nagy went on with a shrug. “Tell me, would you fly to Paris and overstay your tourist visa without making an effort to get legal?”

  “Of course not, but it’s not the same…”

  “That’s exactly my point. It’s a double standard. Americans aren’t allowed to break other countries’ laws, but somehow it’s okay for other people to break ours.”

  “But, Dad, ICE’s tactics are right out of Nazi Germany! They send guys into college dorms with black uniforms and helmets and body armor and submachine guns! It’s scary! The university never let them come in before to round up people. We have to call public attention to it!”

  “So tell me, who organized this demonstration of yours downtown? Actual students like you, or outside agitators?”

  Nagy lifted his glass and awaited a reply.

  “We call them community organizers, Dad, not agitators.”

  “Okay, but who are they and who funds them? My guess it’s probably some dot-com billionaire anarchist from Silicon Valley. Look, Carol, it costs big bucks to stage a large-scale demonstration. The organizers try to make these things look as if they’re spontaneous and grass roots, but they rarely are. You might want to look into that.”

  He drank and put his glass down again.

  “And since when have you become an expert on marches and demonstrations, Dad? I think I’m a lot closer to the protests than you are,” Carol protested, her dark eyes aglow.

  “I may be a retired old fogey, but I still have my sources on the street. Believe me, going out on the National Mall and blowing off steam isn’t what it used to be when I was your age. Today it can be damned dangerous. Listen, Carol, DHS is monitoring those demonstrations with undercover people and all kinds of technical means. It’s no longer possible to be an anonymous member of the herd.”

  “I highly doubt DHS is interested in someone like me. I’m not one of your professional agitators, as you call them.”

  Carol’s pronunciation of “agitator” dripped with sarcasm and she gazed at her father as if he had two heads.

  “Carol, listen to me. It’s not just the professional anarchists that the government is going after these days. They’re cataloguing everybody who shows up for these events! They use the same data-mining techniques the Pentagon developed for the war on terror. It’s all about relationship mapping. DHS has contractors out there with hidden cameras, facial recognition software, and cellphone tracking devices. And in some cases, they send in contractors to collect fingerprints and DNA from discarded water bottles, coffee cups and cigarette butts. There’s just no way you can hide from that.”

  Carol went pale, as if she were hearing about these methods for the first time. Now it was her turn to drink deeply from her wineglass.

  “Well, then, shame on our government,” she hissed. “But that won’t keep me from going out and exercising my free speech rights!”

  “I get that, Carol. But it could cost you. Big time.”

  “What do you mean, ‘cost’ me?”

  “Look, if they’ve captured your face at even one of those rallies, DHS will have a file on you. It’ll be linked to your fingerprints at FBI, your passport at State, your college loans at the Education Department, all the way down to your unpaid parking tickets. At the moment, they’re focusing on hard-core Antifa and social justice warrior types, putting them away for long sentences on felony rioting charges. But it’s just a matter of time before they go after rank-and-file activists. Believe me, Carol, you don’t want to get caught up in that. Once they have you in their crosshairs, these people won’t stop until they’ve destroyed your life.”

  Carol put down her fork and gave her father a searching glance. Her olive complexion was ashen.

  “Don’t worry, Dad,” she assured him with a weak smile. “I don’t go to as many demonstrations as I used to. And when I do, I stay in the middle of the crowd. I just thought this particular demonstration would be an important one.”

  “Okay, I hear you. But please, Carol, promise me you’ll stop with the demonstrating. And if you’re tight with any of those hard-core anarchists, drop them now. No phone calls, no email, no texts, no social media. Go dark. A single text is enough these days to land your name on a terrorist watch list.”

  Carol picked up her wineglass and swirled the inky liquid around for several seconds, staring at it hard before speaking again.

  “It’s not easy to cut yourself off from your entire social network,” she told him with a downcast look. “Nearly everybody I know, and especially anyone my age, is against the president and supports the intifada.”

  Nagy winced, all at once fearing that her radical politics might have gone further than he realized.

  “If you can’t bring yourself to sever contact with your activist friends, then transfer to another school. Get out of Dodge! Forfeit the semester’s tuition if you have to, but drop out of sight. Don’t be the next one they pick up.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not possible,” she muttered, slumping in her chair.

  “Of course it’s possible. I have cousins in Toronto. They could help you get into a school up there. I’d even cover the semester’s tuition and your relocation costs. You could land on your feet.”

  “Dad, stop it! Just stop it!” She threw up her hands. “D.C. is my home! All my friends are here. And you and Mom, and my little brother.”

  “That’s just the problem!”

  Carol threw down her napkin and leapt up from her chair.

  “There you go again! Trying to pry me away from Mom, any way you can. I won’t have it! We’re finished here. Don’t call me. I’ll call you.”

  Nagy said nothing, hoping his daughter would calm down and return to the table. But she didn’t. The moment the front door slammed shut behind her, he stepped back onto the deck and watched Carol stalk off to her parked car. She was halfway there when he noticed two men parked in a black SUV across the street, its engine idling. When Carol pulled her Corolla away from the curb, it pulled out behind her. And then a second SUV slipped in from around the block. Nagy ran back into the kitchen, found his mobile phone, and dialed Carol’s number. It went immediately to voicemail.

  “Hi, Sweetie,” he said in as cheery a voice as he could muster when
the cue came to record his message. “Please call me when you get this message. I think you may have left something important here at the house. Love you lots!”

  He followed up immediately with a text message that said the same thing and sat back at the kitchen table with what remained of the Bordeaux. Five minutes. Ten minutes. No answer. It was too late now to drive off after her, even if he knew where she was headed. He would have to wait and try again later. And pray that she made it home safely.

  Carol noticed the first black SUV the moment it pulled out behind her. Though she had a vague idea that something like this might happen, she hadn’t believed it until her father told her about the facial recognition software and cellphone tracking devices being used to monitor pro-intifada demonstrators. So now they were onto her. But that didn’t mean she had to give herself up. She was prepared to go underground if it came to that.

  Beside her on the passenger seat, she saw her cell phone light up with a call from her father, and then a text message. She reached across and powered off the phone. Removing its SIMM card would have to wait. First, she had to throw off her surveillants. And, having practiced for just such a situation, she knew exactly how she would do it.

  An hour after Carol left the townhouse, having received no response from his daughter, Jack Nagy rose from the kitchen table, cleaned up the remains of dinner, and retreated to his bedroom to change into a jacket and tie. Though he worried about his daughter being followed, he had good reason to doubt that the men in the SUVs would much do more than record her movements for the file. If she were nonetheless pulled in for questioning, maybe it would knock some sense into her. Maybe it was just what Carol needed to drop her political activism before she risked more serious consequences. In any event, all he could safely do now was wait for her to return his call.

  Meanwhile, the reason for Nagy’s change of clothing was that he’d arranged to meet an old Agency colleague in Arlington for a drink after dinner, and soon it would be time to get going. Traffic would be light on the Dulles Access Road around this time on a Sunday evening, but he wanted to allow plenty of time for the drive, especially should any of those black SUVs have stayed behind for him.

  But Nagy didn’t see anyone at all in the rear view mirror when he left his garage, or when he stopped at the traffic light in Reston Town Center, or when he entered the Dulles Freeway entrance ramp. Upon exiting at Rosslyn, he made two circuits around the maze of one-way streets there, as if he were having difficulty with directions. But he probably needn’t have bothered trying to spot anyone trailing him, because his Nissan Rogue was one of only a handful of cars on the road at that hour. Nagy was quite alone when he pulled into the Hyatt hotel’s underground parking garage.

  It was a few minutes after nine when Roger Zorn entered the Hyatt’s elevator and pushed the button for the lobby. He had eaten a leisurely room service dinner while watching the first period of that night’s post-season NHL hockey game. Now he hoped to catch the score from time to time while having a nightcap in the bar with Jack Nagy, a former classmate in the CIA’s operations course back when he was a junior officer some forty years before. Nagy had sent Zorn a handwritten note after reading the latter’s op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal. His note had praised the article and mentioned in passing that, after their intelligence training together, Nagy had served several tours of duty with the Agency in France. In closing, he had offered to buy Zorn a drink while he was in town and included his contact information.

  As for Zorn, this was now his third weekend in a row spent alone in Washington, and each one seemed to pass more slowly than the last. So on a whim he accepted his former classmate’s invitation to meet for drinks, even though he had only a vague recollection of the man and ran the risk that Nagy might be a bore, a job seeker, or worse.

  Zorn had taken a seat at the bar in front of a television that was tuned to the hockey game and hadn’t yet ordered a drink when a lean man in his early sixties with a weathered olive complexion and wavy dark hair approached out of the shadows and stood beside him at the bar.

  “Roger?” he asked with the relaxed smile of a veteran case officer. “It’s Jack Nagy. My god, you’ve hardly changed.”

  Zorn held out his hand. Nagy’s face looked familiar, and he vaguely recalled having performed training exercises with him years ago during the ops course. But today the man carried an indefinably shopworn look. Perhaps it was his scuffed shoes, or the lint on the shoulders of his blue blazer, or the slightly too-wide tie, that made Zorn feel sorry for the fellow, and at the same time self-conscious about his own expensive made-to-measure shirt and jacket.

  “So pleased to see you again,” Zorn replied, gripping Nagy’s elbow with his free hand as they shook hands. “I’m sad to admit that I haven’t kept up with many people I worked with in those days. Haven’t been back to Washington very often in recent years.”

  “And it’s too bad I didn’t think to look you up in France during my last tour of duty there. I used to travel to Toulouse pretty often then. Sometimes my wife and I would stay for the weekend to visit tourist sites around Carcassonne and the Languedoc.”

  Zorn broke off eye contact for a moment to catch the bartender’s attention.

  “Is that so?” Zorn continued. “When were you last posted there?”

  “We returned six years ago.”

  “What a pity! Kay and I left New York in 2013 and settled down near Carcassonne. We would have loved to have you stay with us. So, were you home-based in EU Division then?”

  “Oh, yeah,” the retired spy answered. “We traipsed all over Europe while the kids were growing up. We also did one tour of duty in Tunisia. Did you ever serve in North Africa? You were based in the Near East Division, weren’t you?”

  “Heavens, you’ve got a good memory,” Zorn noted with a relaxed laugh. “Yes, I spent a year in Tunis for Arabic language training.”

  At that moment the bartender approached and asked Nagy what he would like to drink.

  “Scotch and soda,” Nagy replied without hesitation.

  Zorn ordered the same and went on speaking while the two men took seats at the bar.

  “But I resigned after nine years overseas. I was still a wild bachelor then, and I felt I was becoming a caricature of myself. So I decided to go back to business school and start a new career. Kay and I met in Philadelphia while we were students. But how about you, Jack? Are you still with the government?”

  “Lord, no. I retired five years ago. After that, I stayed on as a contractor for a while but got the heave-ho last year. Didn’t know quite what to do with myself at first. The Agency was like family to me. It was harder to let go than I expected.”

  “Still, it must be a relief to be yourself again after all those years under cover, no?”

  “I suppose,” Nagy replied. “But I do still miss it now and then.”

  Their drinks arrived and the two men each took a swig of the amber liquid. Zorn set his glass down with a wistful smile on his lips.

  “You know,” he said, “all of us who were stuck on the night-soil circuit used to envy our buddies who were posted to Europe. We imagined them eating at fine restaurants, going to concerts and the theater, sightseeing on weekends. Were we right? Was that what Europe was like for you back then?”

  “At first it was just like you said. For a single guy like myself, life couldn’t have been better. But things changed once I got married and we had kids. I mean, a lot. At that time, stations in the big European capitals were heavily staffed and very bureaucratic. No matter how hard I busted my butt, promotions came slowly. I learned too late how important one’s pedigree was in the EU Division. I kept on getting journeyman-level assignments. Not even a section chief slot or deputy chief of a small station. It seems that division management had pigeonholed me as a field operator and ‘not management material.’ I probably should have realized it sooner and requested a transfer to Africa Division. I think my fluency in French might have done me a lot more good down
there.”

  Nagy took a long pull from his drink and looked like he needed it. Zorn detected sadness in the man’s voice but not a trace of self-pity.

  “Kind of tough on families in Africa, though,” Zorn remarked, aiming to steer the conversation in a more positive direction. “In the Middle East, we had quite a few hardship posts and assignments apart from wife and family. Many a marriage broke up over it. After watching it happen to friends, I decided I didn’t want to go that route.”

  “Neither did I, but that’s where I ended up,” Nagy confessed, still smiling but with the sparkle gone from his eyes. “Not once, but twice.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it.”

  To Zorn’s surprise, Nagy went on, all the while staring intently into his drink.

  “My first marriage was a stupid mistake. Fortunately, it didn’t last long. Which is why the failure of my second marriage hit me so hard. Two months after we moved back to the States and I announced my intention to retire, my wife filed for divorce. She took the house, both kids, and half my pension. Now my son won’t talk to me, and my daughter barely returns my calls.”

  Nagy paused for another sip before taking on a brighter tone.

  “So how about you, Roger? Any kids?”

  “Two,” Zorn answered, meeting Nagy’s gaze with an upbeat smile. “A boy in college and a girl studying medicine.”

  “You were smart waiting to marry till you got out of the government. Kids get expensive pretty fast on a government salary. So long as we stayed overseas, we lived pretty well, with Uncle Sam covering rent and the kids’ tuition and a second car. But back in D.C., we could barely afford a dumpy little house an hour’s commute from work. Looking back on it, I can’t really blame my wife and kids for being dissatisfied.”