0062120085. (C) (10 page)

S
HORT JENSEN’S SECRET AGENT OFFICE WAS BIGGER THAN
his teacher office. And it felt a lot bigger because unlike his teacher office, which was cluttered with all kinds of instruments and sheet music and junk, this office was sleek and clean. There was a small metal table with four chairs in the middle of the room and then two larger walls covered with touch-screen glass computer monitors that looked more expensive than my whole house. Most of the computer screens were turned off but a few were on, displaying photographs of people, large blocks
of text, and a huge global map with all sorts of symbols displayed on it.

It was basically exactly what I would have expected a secret government agent’s office to look like: high-tech and expensive.

“Wow, how can the school not know this is here?” I asked.

“Why would they ever suspect it to be?” Short Jensen asked. “You’d be surprised what sorts of things the truly unsuspecting mind is capable of overlooking.”

He had a point. Why in the world would anyone even guess that this was here? I never in a million years would have believed that what I was seeing existed if I wasn’t actually seeing it in person at that very moment.

“Have a seat, Carson.” Short Jensen motioned toward the metal table in the middle of the office.

Tall Jensen pressed a button on a computer pad just inside the office and the metal door slid shut. Then both Jensens sat down opposite me at the table.

I looked around at all the insanely expensive-looking computer screens covering the walls. There must have been dozens of forty-inch glass monitors.

“The government paid for all of this?” I asked. “I thought our government was almost broke? My social
studies teacher said our national debt is like a gazillion dollars.”

“The government didn’t pay for this,” Short Jensen said. “The Agency has a collective of private financiers. To be frank, even I don’t entirely know where all of the funding comes from. But I do know that the Agency can’t be funded by the government directly. Because then that money has to be accounted for or reconciled in some way. By filtering its funds through private investors, keeping it off the books, the Agency can stay covert.”

While Short Jensen answered me, Tall Jensen opened a large black binder sitting on the table. He took out a tan folder stuffed neatly with papers and smaller file folders. He handed me a packet with about twenty pages inside.

“We’re just going to start with a brief history of the Agency,” he said. “Then we’ll talk more about your specific mission. Read this. We’ll wait.”

I read through the pages. I think it was a brief history of the Agency. The problem was that about 80 percent of the words had a black bar over them so they couldn’t be read. I looked up at the Jensens, but they were now shuffling through some other papers and not really paying attention. Were they serious? How could I read a document so redacted that it looked more like a referee’s
striped shirt than it did a document?

Even the official Agency name on the document was censored, so everywhere it appeared was simply listed as: The
Agency. But anyway, here’s what the rest of the document was like: