I Am an Executioner (18 page)

The woman, that is, 243-66328’s wife: Sometimes she came out of the house with the child, as the subject was leaving in the morning. Neither she nor the child was under surveillance, at least not by me, not per my directive. I would therefore prefer not to share my observations on the wife and child at this time. Again, neither of them was under surveillance, officially.

My impressions of 243-66328 are detailed in my reports. He is a middle-aged man: about forty-two, forty-three. Light skin, dark brown hair, healthy teeth. Just about five foot ten, roughly one hundred eighty-five to one hundred ninety-five pounds, depending on the week. Balding in a horseshoe pattern. A tendency to wear dark colors: black suits, navy suits, probably wool blend. Owned one brown tweed sport coat. His bow ties were colorful: pink, red. My guess is that he did not pick them himself. His wife on some days tried to fix his tie for him at the door, or to smooth his hair, whereas he never attended to such details, at least not during that interim journey from door to corner. And always he wore the same pair of black oxford-style shoes, as far as I was able to tell. I suppose his wife had given up where the shoes were concerned. Again, that’s just idle speculation. At any rate, his outfits each day are carefully detailed in my reports. Sometimes they kissed, but it was not a usual thing.

He carried a briefcase, small black briefcase. It was an old briefcase. The leather was visibly worn and scratched. And he wore glasses. Thick glasses. Brown plastic frames. Carleton was the make. Thick lenses. And he had a slight accent. It is, honestly, hard for me to say what his accent was, because he would not talk much, walking from his house to his car. Sometimes, he would turn and yell something to his wife. Such as:
Please don’t forget to pick up my shirts
. He said that periodically, as he was running out the door. Referring to the cleaners, I would guess. Or,
I love you
. If his wife or his child had called out first, then he would say,
I love you, too
. This is all meticulously logged. So I can only say there was some discernible inflection, but I would be hard pressed to say what. I think it was foreign, but whether [redacted], or [redacted], or something else, I’m not sure. I have not completed the module on accent recognition. I applied for it once but my acceptance was deferred pending a referral.

When he reached the corner, he would often turn and wave once more to his wife—who always stood watching, with the child, at the door—before the train arrived and he boarded it and was out of sight.

I do not know what the investigation of 243-66328 was about. “The Agent does not try to understand what he is seeing”—second Precept. That is a job for the Analyst. So I tried not to speculate. Except to the extent that it seemed clear he must have been up to something bad. I thought this because the Agency parceled the investigation so carefully. The clearances were top. The lines were divided. Every little thing was “to be known only if necessary.” I hardly knew anything. I mean, I was told to go to the location and observe the subject. And that was all I was told. So all this made me think it was fairly significant.

I have of course had plenty of other cases that were at a similar level of clearance. I have even served as a liaison for and helped to organize investigations where I did not know, strictly
speaking, who the subjects of the investigation were. That is, in some cases, I was not a field Agent, but instead was stationed at [redacted] helping to direct the field Agents. Sometimes I was not even provided numbers of either the field Agents or the subjects of the investigation, much less names. In a couple of cases, I did not know what the subjects looked like or any biographical information but purely location coordinates. In yet other cases, it was set up somewhat differently. Each investigation was different. Theoretically, I suppose it could have been anyone. I suppose I could have been unwittingly directing an investigation of someone I know.

At about 1830 or 1900, 243-66328 would return home. Between the time he left and the time he returned, I would have logged my observations on the quarter hour. He was gone for a stretch of roughly ten hours. As there was no subject activity during that time, my observations were often limited to the number of neighbors who happened to pass by on the sidewalk; the registration plate and description of any vehicles—trains, phaetons, or sedans—in the vicinity; changes in the light and weather; the activities of various squirrels, starlings, and blue jays that lived in the oak tree in the subject’s front yard. On a few afternoons, a group of children played stickball in the street in front of his house, which made things relatively lively.

I did this every day, for over six months, ending just about a week ago. I took notes every fifteen minutes, at a minimum. At the end of the day, I compiled my daily report, using my portable Teletype. I submitted my daily report to [redacted], and then I went home, arriving at my residence at about 2230. I live with my husband [J], as the Agency is aware.

[J] would be awake typically, waiting up for me, when I arrived home. We would talk, of course—I was usually exhausted, but
I would make the effort. I wasn’t used to coming home so late, but it happens on some cases and we tried to make the best of it. We might open a bottle of wine and share stories about our day. Rather, he would tell me stories from his day and he would ask me about mine. And I would tell him stories, too, but, of course, I was careful that he could not—based on my stories—come to a real sense of what I had done. I have a cover, devised with the guidance of the Agency. My cover is that I work as [redacted]. Which of course I actually sort of do, when I am not on assignment. [J] also certainly understood—he understands, that is—I have a job that I can’t talk about. He knows the general nature of the job, but not the specifics. He knows it can be taxing. My classification is Red; it is not White. Therefore I am permitted to give certain limited details to my spouse. If he were to press me on any detail—which he knows better than to do—but if he did, I would know exactly what to say. I’ve been well trained. I am mindful of my training.

[J] believes my cover. Or rather, he believes and he does not believe. Meaning, he knows I have assignments that I cannot discuss; and that sometimes, therefore, what I’m telling him about my day and my activities is just a story. That’s for his protection, for my protection, for the integrity of the investigation, for the integrity of the Agency, and ultimately for the security of the City. He knows exactly as much as the Agency has permitted me to tell him.

To elaborate further on this salient point: When I tell [J] about my day, or about what happened in my life as a so-called [redacted], he believes and he does not believe. Like when you are reading a book or watching a movie, perhaps. He suspends disbelief: that’s the phrase. He’s tacitly participating in the fiction. But, unlike a movie, he doesn’t know where the story ends and the real things begin. He trusts me to make those edges seamless. I would say that requires a lot of trust on his part. I admire that about him. It certainly makes things easier for me.

I wouldn’t say I was lying to him, no, because he has agreed to it; he understands what’s going on. Even if sometimes he might forget that he understands. Maybe you could say he doesn’t know how much to believe, so he simply believes all of it.

Sometimes, when I’d traveled for an assignment, or I was on a particularly stressful investigation, I had a kind of game. [J] would say, “So what did you do today?” And I would say something as bland as possible, like, quite often, “Spent all day on the phone with the Mechanisms Department trying to fix the oscillator in my radio,” something bland like that. “Didn’t get any work done. And you?” This was a game, or a running joke, I suppose, primarily to amuse myself.

In all our conversations—I want to state this clearly—I never revealed protected information.

[J] is a consultant to the [redacted] industry, as the Agency is aware. He is currently posted at [redacted]. He has passed each of the Agency’s periodic character investigations, which have typically been conducted without his knowledge. We love each other. There are no serious problems in our relationship. We have never been separated; we have never been unfaithful. We have been together for almost four years and are planning to have a child in the coming year.

Our last fight—to keep you perfectly up to date—our last fight was about eight months ago. I suppose it is a little embarrassing. I realize I don’t have much of a private life that is secret from the Agency, but in any case: [J] was upset with me because I had failed to notice his new tattoo. He already had a couple, but this was a new one.

He is a little rough around the edges for a [redacted], I suppose. He used to serve in the Municipal Navy, if that explains anything.

And yes, I am trained to be observant, but I think it is precisely because I am so alert all day at my job, that when I get home, I sometimes simply turn it off. I have a strong desire to
relax. The tattoo was on [J]’s forearm. And it was my name. My first name, in elegant script. He’d had it for about two days before I noticed it. Like I said: embarrassing.

He was very upset. He would barely talk to me for a week after that. “I notice absolutely everything about you,” he told me, with some indignation.

When I was younger, before I was involved with [J], I would periodically engage in close work. It is something that is sometimes asked of Agents who are unattached romantically: to use emotion as a tool, to use sexuality as a tool. We are trained for it.

My shortest such investigation was, well, a few hours. The longest was about five years, but that was an exceptional case. It was the investigation of [Subject N]. For five years, I was seeing the subject—that is, carrying on a relationship with the subject—purely for the purpose of surveillance and accessing information. It was intense. It was a challenge to maintain distance, to continue observing for that duration. It took me a little while, of course, to get in the rhythm of it. I struggled at first, as the Agency knows. But it was also rewarding; I improved very much in my discipline and focus during that time, and I believe it showed in the quality of my later reports. And [N] was such an interesting subject, as I came to find out. It was on one level a relief when the [N] investigation ended, but on another level, as I have discussed before, it was traumatic.

In my view, such work is deception in the service of truth. I have always believed that anything I have done while with the Agency, anything that might have given me pause in a different context, was in the service of finding the truth. I do believe in the importance of finding the truth. Information adds up. It paints a picture. Any detail—every detail—can reveal so much. I believe
in the importance of collecting information. And it is humane. I am attending to them—I mean, attending to my subjects in the sense of paying attention to them—more carefully than any normal lover. [N] will never again in his life have someone pay such close attention to him. I can almost guarantee that.

I care about the subjects of my surveillance. Yes, that is a fair statement. I don’t think they would necessarily see it that way, of course. But I wouldn’t do it if I thought it was harming people. It is helping people. In the long run, it is even helping the subjects of our investigations. It is ensuring that we see them more clearly, as it were.

I joined the Agency at the invitation of a friend of mine, [Agent S]. Again, of course, this is in my files. And surely in her files, for that matter.

I knew [Agent S] from university. I did not know back then that she was an Agent—if indeed she was, back then. We had been good friends. As a matter of fact, she later introduced me to my husband, but that is a different story. [Agent S] and I had both lived in the [redacted] and were spending a great deal of time together, socially. She knew a lot about the frustrations I was having in my previous career as a [redacted]. I used to confide in her to some extent. She is a little older than me. Very accomplished, very polished. I looked up to her. She was good with advice, a great listener, easy to talk to.

[Agent S] is the very Agent who later herself became the subject of an investigation, unfortunately—an internal investigation, you could say, although we don’t of course have a separate division for that. To me, [Agent S] never actually said she was part of the Agency. She never out-and-out said it, until after I accepted the invitation to join. She was extremely discreet.

To this day, of course, she is—as far as I can be aware—the
only Agent whose name and identity I know, whom I have touched and seen, with whom I have talked face-to-face. All communications with other Agents or with the Agency itself, communications such as this, have been masked. That is, they have been conducted via Teletype or document drop or by means of blinded chambers at [redacted].

[Agent S] simply said to me, “Have you considered joining the Agency?” I was surprised. I thought she was joking.

I was suprised because, while it was plausible, in retrospect, that [S] might have been an Agent, I just did not think that I fit the profile. I was a bit disorganized. I was a very open person, by nature an open book. [S] had known me in university, which, as the Agency knows, were perhaps not my finest years. My grades were average. I did my share of drinking. I was not known for my discretion. So for someone to ask me with a straight face if I wanted to join the Agency—it seemed like she was trying to play a joke.

But when she convinced me that she was in earnest, I was taken aback. And then, as it sank in, I was thrilled. I was thrilled because, like any child, I had fantasized about being asked to join the Agency. I’d never imagined it could be more realistic than any other childhood fantasy, like becoming an astronaut or marrying a prince. My mother—like many parents, I’m sure—used to tell me the stories about it.