MICE

The last 10 days of my career as a CIA Case Officer were among the most fulfilling of my life - professionally rewarding, filled with adrenaline-charged excitement, and even a budding romance. Ultimately, these halcyon days ended in the most disappointing and heart-breaking way possible. I wish that I could turn back time, but time no longer means much where I am now. These recollections haunt me still, whether they last 10 seconds, 10 days, or even 10 years…but their duration is immaterial now. 

As is often the case, the relationship between an agent and his or her case officer borders on intimacy due to the shared confidences. My last such relationship began, like most secret agent-CIA case officer relationships, with identifying and then exploiting the agent’s financial and emotional vulnerabilities. As the Case Officer Handbook explains, the motivation to become a secret agent is based on deep-seated need which may be practical or emotional. The Case Officer may offer money, make an appeal to ideology, apply coercion, and promise excitement/ego fulfillment – known to CIA members by the acronym “MICE.”  

For what it’s worth, our Republic of Malthusia Station in their capital city of Malthus had watched our prospective agent, I’ll call her “Maria” for over three months trying to figure out which lever to apply. It all started when one of our locally-engaged female agents with a need for money (due to a messy divorce) had provided the initial tip about Maria – and daily surveillance - in return for a cash bonus. Our agent “Natalia,” (now a forty-something single mother), was one of our most peripheral agents in our web of agents in the capital. Natalia held a cashier’s job in the basement cafeteria of her nation’s Ministry of Defense. Not close to anyone of any influence, but close enough to see many of the senior generals and defense bureaucrats on an almost daily basis. Natalia had been working with us for almost a year and we had nothing of real value to show for her monthly stipend. Rumours overheard in the Malthusian Ministry of Defense cafeteria “amounted to the square root of squat” according to the Station Chief. Natalia had leaped at the chance to provide information that would result in her retention on our payroll.

Natalia had overheard Maria mentioning her worries about her brother Ivan to a male colleague from her office. Ivan had been conscripted to undergo his national service, and he had recently graduated from his military police security guard course. Natalia had no ideas where Maria worked or what she did in the Ministry, but noticed she often absent-mindedly let her security pass fall out from behind her chic jacket or sweater. One glimpse of the red cross-hatched border of the pass on the necklace chain was enough to tell Natalia that Maria worked on a high security floor, and that she was worth watching. 

“My son is in the service now too,” she proudly told Maria, as Maria flinched with the shock of letting her personal troubles be overheard by a cashier whose security access was limited to her place of employment in the basement cafeteria. 

 “It’s no matter,” replied Maria as her cheeks reddened, “thank him for his service.”

Over the next two months Natalia used every occasion to greet Maria in the lunch line up at the cashier’s till, ensuring that she heard about discounts on soup or salad, and which deserts were the freshest. Natalia gradually gained Maria’s wary trust, and after three weeks they were on a first name basis. 

That Friday Maria let slip that she was excited that her brother was being assigned to the Presidential Guard unit at the palace. At that point, Natalia left a pre-formatted message at one of our rotating dead drop sites – and our Station began to “develop the contact.”

This is where my life took a decisive turn from humdrum routine in a relatively quiet CIA Station into exciting, and ultimately deadly chaos. The Station Chief called me into his office and invited me to sit down behind the small coffee table. On the table was a manilla folder with the double red band indicating Top Secret contents.

“Here’s your next case assignment Jake,” he murmured with a small smile. “Should be pleasurable, I hope.”

I opened the file, noting the colour photos supplied by our surveillance section. 

“She’s cute, isn’t she?” intoned the boss, “and single as far as we can tell – maybe a bit lonely.”

I noted her petite athletic figure, her reddish hair, and the purposeful set of her jaw in each of the 10 photos. Whether getting on a crowded bus, shopping, or leaving her Ministry Building “Maria” always looked like she was in a hurry to be somewhere else.

“She looks a bit preoccupied,” I said as non-committedly as possible.

“Maybe you can help her relax,” replied the Chief, “starting this weekend. Surveillance tells us that she shops at the green grocer’s market on Place de la Republique every Saturday morning. Be there tomorrow. Sign the document routing slip once you have read the file and return it to the classified files clerk. As per SOP, ‘Eyes Only,’ no notes.” 

“What harm could possibly come from this” I thought as I leafed through the sparse file, wishing that our agent had been able to obtain more personal information on Maria.  

Maria arrived at the market at about 1000 hours the next morning looking as purposeful as her photos predicted. She was dressed in slacks, flats, and sunglasses with her auburn hair pinned up in a ponytail. Maria wore minimal makeup, which indicated a degree of pride in her appearance without excessive vanity. I watched her movements around the market discreetly for five minutes before I made my approach. My mouth was dry, but I was up to the challenge of striking up a conversation with a pretty girl – slight nerves always belied a good performance I told myself as I sidled up beside her at the imported fruit table. 

« C’est beaucoup très cher n’est pas ce pamplemousse mademoiselle? » I murmured as non-chalantly as I could. I hoped that she could not hear my heart thudding against my ribs.

“Perhaps, but grapefruit come all the way from China,” she replied with slightly accented English. I had assumed that she would have spoken French, which was the second official language of Malthusia. My cheeks burned as I mentally kicked myself for such an amateur faux-pas. 

“We grow them in the United States as well,” I replied, “and Mexico.”

“Well sir, I think by your accent that you must be an American to know that,” she responded, joining the verbal rally with a shy smile.

“Guilty, I replied, and extended my hand. “Jake Johnson, Press Attaché at the U.S. Embassy.” 

“Maria Popov” she answered with that beautiful lilt and a light pressure in her handshake. 

“How long have you been here Mr. Johnson?” 

“Please, call me Jake - just under a year,” I lied. This was only my second foreign post, and I had only been in country less than six months.

We talked about benign subjects for a few minutes, with me ad-libbing about trying to get to know her capital city a bit better. A predictable pitch, but one designed to elicit a degree of empathy from the natives.  

“I wish that I had hired a tour guide when I first arrived,” I complained looking hopefully wistful enough to gain her sympathy.  

“Not to worry Mr. Jake, I can provide a late orientation to our beautiful capital, and I think that I have a few spare tourist maps.”

We exchanged cell numbers and parted with a brief wave. I noted how symmetrical her hour-glass figure appeared as she walked along the vegetable stalls toward the south entrance.

“This could be fun,” I thought, then grimaced and reminded myself to retain the Case Officer - Agent distance needed to function effectively.  

Monday morning I recalled her file and re-read it, trying to commit every detail to memory. There were a few other observations regarding her place of employment and assumed function on a high security floor, and the mention of a younger brother named Ivan. I saw nothing on education, although surveillance section provided an apartment address above a boutique shop on Place de la Republique.

Maria and I met for coffee au lait and tarte aux pommes that first Monday evening at a French restaurant not far from her apartment. By the time we had drunk our second digestif I was able to discern that an ideological approach was suitable after hearing a few comments on her unhappiness regarding her younger brother’s national service commitment. Money was apparently not an inducement, and I didn’t think that coercion was necessary in her case as she seemed to be genuinely concerned by her nation’s gradual drift into a quasi-totalitarian state over the past decade. 

“Odd that she would work in the Ministry of Defense” I thought to myself as she divulged her hope that her brother Ivan would return to university after his national service ended and become a lawyer. Maria seemed genuinely relieved to have someone to confide in. 

“This relationship is developing quicker than I anticipated,” I thought, “perhaps I should flag this to the Chief?” However, I pushed the thought away. “How could someone with such a sweet demeanor be anything other than sincerely lonely and frustrated?”

By the time the evening ended (after the third digestif) I figured that I had this one hook, line, and sinker. “Who knows what contacts she might have?” We made a date to meet Thursday evening at the cantina for dinner – when I intended to find out. 

In the interim, our daily 30-second telephone calls on single-use phones lent an air of excitement as I poured on the charm and became a little flirtatious. Our bond grew, and by that weekend our passive “dead drops” of purloined documents from her Defense Ministry office grew into covert operations against her government.

The next Monday night, she sobbed softly in my arms after helping me to plant a bomb that killed four palace guards. The handsome guard from her village was the last to die, moaning and trembling in shock, until there was silence as his life blood ebbed away. 

Tuesday night we met at our restaurant rendezvous, signaled by the “Sale, ½ Price,” sign in the window of her apartment above the Place de la Republique boutique. After dinner, her fear and my physical hunger had coalesced in a passionate kiss on Boulevard Principale. 

I brought roses and vin rouge to her apartment the next evening. I took appropriate precautions to ensure that I had lost any vehicle or pedestrian surveillance, and I arrived 15 minutes early, both to surprise her, and to possibly throw off any coordination with any counter-intelligence “watchers” in her building. She was still in her work clothes preparing goulash soup, my favourite. She chased me into the sitting room so as to not ruin the “surprise.” She went to take a quick bath before putting on her best dress.

I could not resist a clandestine taste. The soup was delicious, but “What was that spice?” My head whirled as I staggered to the bathroom and half fell through the door. She was sitting on the tub using a hair dryer, the cord stretching across the room. 

“You ruined the surprise,” she smiled.

“Why?” I croaked, my knees buckling. 

“That guard was my brother.” 

I vomited and fell to my knees, my world turning grey. Through the haze I could see her pursed lips – and a steely purposeful, and somewhat contemptuous gaze. 

“My colleagues in Counter-Intelligence have been monitoring you ever since you arrived in country, Mr. so-called Press Attaché. We deduced that your ego and a desire for excitement was your principal vulnerability. Who would have thought that my dangled security badge would flush you and your amateur network out into the open.” 

 The last thing I ever saw was her smile as I collapsed against her. The last sound she ever heard was the sizzle of the hair dryer hitting the water.

As I said, “Time means nothing where I am now” – purgatory for secret agents who failed the MICE test. I truly hope that I can avoid Maria's contemptuous glare for the next century or so.