The Operative by Andrew Britton Read Free Book Online Page A

mission.
    Unquestionably, there was concentrated pressure on being a teacher, and after considerable reflection, Kealey just wasn’t sure he was ready for that sort of pressure test yet. He had put the world’s humanity on the front line for years, and he didn’t think he could manage to “phone it in” for another 180-day school year, at least not as capably as the students really needed. Instead he booked some guest lectures on global issues at the University of Virginia. That was where he’d met Allison’s nineteen-year-old nephew Colin, who happened to attend school there.
    Kealey was better adjusted than most special agents, but there were times when the deaths he’d caused and the risks he’d taken gripped his soul. He had said it himself once: “My life is like the old joke about the waiter who serves a matador burger at the restaurant in Vera Cruz one day apologizing to the patron, saying, ‘Sometimes the bull wins.’ ”
    Thinking of Colin became an act of synchronicity. Allison reached into the small leather purse under her arm and pulled out her cell phone.
    “Hold on a sec,” she said. “I want to see what’s going on with Colin.”
    “Didn’t you just talk to him a half hour ago?”
    “Yes, but I want to check his posts.”
    “He’s blogging?”
    “Blogging? You’re so twenty-ten,” she said as she browsed down her queue of updates. “He’s tweeting from the convention center for his student newspaper. It’s called ambient journalism.”
    “I see. And how’s that different from reporting?”
    “Anyone can do it,” she said.
    “So the difference is it’s for amateurs.”
    “That’s harsh.”
    “Not at all,” Kealey said. “Where’s the editor, the veteran eyes?”
    “It’s the public, Ryan. The process has been democratized.”
    “Cheapened—no offense to Colin.”
    “You’re wrong,” she said confidently. “The good journalists get repeated hits. The bad ones are relegated to Facebook. The worst ones are left to comment on what’s relegated to Facebook.”
    “No fair,” Kealey said. “You lost me at ‘repeated hits.’ ”
    “It’s no different than all the civilian eyes being used in the war on terror, watching for something unusual. Isn’t that how we recruit in Afghanistan, Iraq? Find the people who have a knack for observing, blending in, collecting images on cell phones?”
    “It’s a good thing I’m retired,” he said, shaking his head.
    “Why? Technology doesn’t scare you. You’ve used portable uplinks—”
    “It’s not the technology,” he said. “It’s the lack of privacy. The exponential noise. What spy would welcome that?”
    Allison smiled at something she read on her display. She started pecking out words of her own. “Sorry. As much as I’m enjoying your ‘poor us’ monologue, I have to respond to Col’s latest tweet.”
    “My point is made,” he said confidently.
    “Your point is beside the ... ,” she said, typing slowly with the sides of her thumbs, pausing once or twice to check for misspellings before she returned the phone to her purse. “Done,” she said.
    “What’s the word from the front?”
    “The red carpet is lined with local paparazzi and ready for the glitterati to begin arriving.”
    Kealey glanced at his wristwatch. “It’s a quarter to four,” he said. “Why don’t we take a leisurely walk back to the car, get my sports jacket and your high heels, and head over to the center?”
    “Sounds good.” She hooked her arm in Kealey’s and gave the creature in the tank a final look as they strolled away. The medusa tumbled through the water on an internal current, bumped up randomly, briefly, against another jellyfish, then spiraled away. It was a beautiful, functional life.
    But hollow, she thought. You could sum them up in a brochure. They weren’t conflicted, the way Ryan Kealey was, yearning for peace but missing the thrill of the hunt, walking chastely beside her yet caring deeply and wanting