Ana Was Late Coming Home

Ana was late coming home. She was looking at a major promotion that would mean moving from head of the Cuba desk at DIA to directing the entire Latin America operation.

I sat down with my coffee and looked over my notes from the last class, checking over the assignment my Urdu tutor had given me. With only one page in my notebook left, I snagged a black notebook from a stack of four off Ana’s desk in the bedroom.

There was writing on the first few pages. I immediately shut it. I would never intentionally read her journal.

The writing looked odd, though. I sat there for a moment. What was it? No, just put it back. But what was it?

I couldn’t help myself and I opened it again. Neat little columns of capital letters in no discernible order.

Neha was calling so I shut the notebook. I did my best to focus on the lesson, but those columns of letters were stuck on my mind.

Just as we were wrapping up. I heard Ana’s keys turning in the front door. The notebook was still on the coffee table.

She came in and waved, seeing I was with my tutor. I caught the half breath of a moment where her eyes marked the notebook on the table and returned to meet my gaze. I saw the briefest of shifts in her expression, the nanosecond of a glower. Her smile returned and she mimed that she was going to take a shower.

After I got off the call with Neha, I listened for her to get in the shower. I took the notebook back into our room and put it back on the stack and took one of the blank ones. I confirmed it was indeed blank and put it on the table where the other had been. I waited in the living room, doing that night’s assignment.

“How was your lesson?” Ana came into the living room, drying her hair, dressed in a pair of pajama pants and a paint-stained Berkeley sweatshirt.

“It was good. I’m still struggling with the past tense, but I think I’m getting better. I grabbed one of your notebooks, by the way! I hope you don’t mind.” I opened it to show her my childishly scrawled sentences in Urdu. An almost imperceptible relief crept across her brow. “How was work?”

“Nightmare.” She collapsed into the couch. “They’re riding me into the ground. I better get the position or I am done.”

“I can’t imagine anyone else getting it. Who in the department knows the region better than you?”

“I just have a feeling. Something in my gut tells me it’s going to that ass who just parachuted in from the China desk.”

“Do you want a glass of wine? I’ll let you pick what we watch.”

I got up and poured each of us a glass. She had settled on the French thriller we’d started the previous weekend.

“Next episode?” she asked, taking the glass of wine.

“Sure.” She curled up under my arm. “What would I do without you?” she asked, almost as if to no one.

“You know, if you do decide to leave the government, we will make it work. Just imagine. You could teach at Georgetown. You’d have summers off. We could travel, but for real. And together for once.”

“That is the dream.”

“But you’re going to get it.” The dampness of her hair was just beginning to seep through the sleeve of the arm behind her head.

As we got ready for bed, I glanced over at Ana’s desk. Only two notebooks remained in the stack.

“Good night,” she said, switching off the light.

“Good night,” I said, staring up at the dark ceiling.

***

Immediately when the door shut behind Ana, I went hunting for the notebook. Respecting privacy was one thing. But she was actively hiding something, and I needed to know what.

On her desk were the two remaining notebooks, scattered pens, some tax forms, an insurance letter and a photo of us. It was taken when we went to Mallorca to meet her extended family, whom it slipped her mind to tell I was a woman. It ended up being quite the trip, and while I was angry that she subjected me to a lot of unnecessary drama, it was on that beach where the picture was taken that I knew I would marry her one day.

I began going through the drawers. Papers, more papers, mostly our finances that she kept up with. I was exceedingly bad at money. In one drawer was all of our personal documents – birth certificates, social security cards, passports – two US and one Spanish. Ana was born in Puerto Rico to Spanish parents.

The book was not in her desk. I slammed the drawer shut in frustration. Checking under the bed, I pushed up the mattress to look under the slats. Nothing.

In the bathroom, I pushed on tiles, and even climbed up onto the toilet to check the drop ceiling. As I was climbing down, it leapt out. I lifted the lid on the back of the toilet and there it was secured to the underside with medical tape. If she had gone to these lengths to hide it, this was more serious than I had thought.

I sat on our bed and pored over the columns of letters. I wasn’t going to figure it out just staring at it, so I tried typing in a few of the sequences into Google to see if anything came up. Nothing. But when I searched for six letter sequences, I got a site about ciphers. It looked like a rail cipher, but I would need the key to decipher it. The nature of the text itself, though, was highly alarming.

I took some pictures of the first few pages and carefully retaped the book under the toilet lid.

My brother worked in counterespionage at the FBI and so I thought I would ask him.

“Hey Jack, I have a question. Do any agencies still use ciphers internally?”

“Not really. That’s some pretty Cold War shit.” He insisted we always communicate on Signal. “Why?” he asked, after a pause.

“I was just reading about them. Curiosity.”

The three dots indicating he was typing appeared then disappeared then appeared again. “Just, if you know something, you know you have to report it right?”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing. Just, if you know of a leak or something. Someone taking information out, and you don’t report it, they will bury you alive.” I didn’t respond.

“Be careful, sis. If you’re in trouble, you can tell me. Xx” He filled the silence.

It didn’t seem possible, but the answer was obvious. Ana was a mole. What information she was taking out of the agency, and for whom, wasn’t clear, but there was no other possibility than this.

So many thoughts were running through my mind that all coalesced around the central wound that she had lied to me.

“What time are you coming home?” I texted her.

“Not sure. Everything ok?”

“Not really. We need to talk.”

“What is going on?” I responded with the photo I’d taken earlier. No response.

Shortly she came barreling through the door. “Nathalie! Nathalie!”

“I’m in here,” I called from the bedroom. She hadn’t even taken off her coat or put down her bag, her keys were still clutched in her fist.

“You weren’t supposed to find…I didn’t…I was going to…”

“Stop!” I cut her off. “Just tell me if it’s what I think it is.”

Her eyes darted across my face, distraught and imploring. She parted her lips but no words came. “I…” she started.

“Yes or no, Ana.” My rage had swelled to a size I’d never known. I could feel my pulse throbbing up my throat.

“Yes. It is. I couldn’t tell you,” she finally said. “It’s not how it looks, though. Let me explain.”

“Who are you talking to?” I bellowed.

“Shh, stop. I’ll tell you everything. Follow me,” she went into the bathroom and turned on the shower and sat down on the closed toilet, beckoning me to follow.

I closed the door behind me. “The Cubans,” she finally said.

“Are you fucking kidding me? You’re a fucking Cuban spy? How many people have you given up? How many of OUR people, or I guess I should say my people, have you betrayed? How many people are dead because of you?”

“None!” she lunged to her feet, swelling with defiance. “Millions of people are alive because of me! I run both sides and keep them at arm’s length from one another. And for twenty-five fucking years I’ve kept us out of a goddamn way, Nathalie!”

“Twenty-five? You’ve been doing this since before we met? What have I done?” I slipped from her. She suddenly seemed grotesque, dangerous.

“Please listen to me, Nathalie. I have everything how I want it. We’re so close. There are plans to reopen diplomatic channels, and once that happens, I’ll be done. We’re so close. I wanted to protect you!” she had fallen to her knees on the bathroom tile, wailing inconsolably. There was real fear in her eyes.

“I don’t know what to do,” I said.

“Don’t do anything! Just forget about it. All I do is keep the Americans in the dark about what Cuba is capable of. I make them seem like they’re not a real threat. And I tell the Cubans that the Americans aren’t interested in them. That’s all I do! They’re both paranoid and capable of so much, but I keep the excuse to go to war out of reach.”

“How am I supposed to believe you?”

“There’s so much about both of our jobs we could never share with each other! It was always part of the deal. Please believe me! Once the embassy is reopened, I’m going to retire. I’m going to take the money they’ve given me and we’ll buy a house. In Spain! Like we said.”

I wanted to believe her. The thought of not believing her was too painful. No one had ever meant so much to me, and to not believe her meant throwing everything we had away.

“Ok, fine. But then you’re done – we’re leaving and you’re never contacting your handler, or runner, or whatever it’s called, ever again.”

“Agreed. I have an exit plan in place. Just trust me.”

“Please don’t say ‘trust’. At least not for a while.” We looked at each other for a moment, as if sizing the other up. “How much?” I finally said.

“How much what?”

“How much did they pay you? The Cubans.”

“I have about $900,000 tucked away here and there. Different accounts.”

“That’s it? They paid 900 grand for nearly three decades of work?”

“Nine hundred is what I’ve saved. But 20,000 went to pay for your student loans, just so you know.”

“Can you show me?”

“Show you what?”

“All this money.”

In a false bottom in a desk drawer were the statements for accounts in 7 different countries.

***

When I got home the next day, Ana was still at work. Our plan had its appeal. I could wait. But I found myself drawn to the desk drawer.

I pulled the papers out and pulled out my phone.

It rang twice.

“Hey Jack, how’s it going? … I, um, have something I want to talk to you about.”

***

It was a crisp autumn morning. I walked to the realtor’s office to sign for the apartment I’d just bought on the Plaza de Olavide. Ana had figured out I drained the accounts and ran around the same time the FBI show up. A part of me regretted it, but this place did have a balcony.

Arriving at the realtor’s office, I noticed the headline on the paper a man was reading at a café. “HAVANA UNDER SIEGE; US FORCES LAND IN CUBA”