Recruit

God, I hate this exam hall. Up above the dark-panelled walls, the ceiling is so high, it makes me giddy. It smells old. How many years have people like us been filing in here, scared half to death of failing and flunking out? Floor polish mingles with stacked generations of anxiety, ineradicable, immediate, terrifying. I don’t even have Tracy for company now. My room-mate of two years, she suddenly dropped out to take a gap year in The Gambia after her interim exams, last summer. Next day, she and her stuff were gone. So I’m on my own. She never even texted, can you believe, except to say she was changing her number and she’d get in touch. She hasn’t. I worry about her when I have time to. I hope she’s OK.

Snap out of it. Here’s my desk. It has my name. I sit down. I swallow. It will be OK. I check my pen has ink. All is good. I studied hard. Philosophy, politics and economics. I’m ready. My heart rate is up. I can feel it. My breakfast is half-way up my gullet. Shit, why didn’t I bring a discreet plastic bag? Where’s the rest room? I see the sign, over in the corner. The examination guidelines say we have to raise a hand and wait for an invigilator if we need to be excused. Fat lot of good that will do, if I have to throw up.

I really have no option but to make the cut. My teachers say I can get into Oxford if I can prove what I’m worth. I can’t let my parents down. Even though they’re dead. It’s their trust fund that has kept me here since I was eleven. It’s almost like they saw the car crash coming. Them and my little brother, gone, in a moment, wiped out by a man three times over the limit. I need to do it, for them. And for Tracy, wherever she is. It’s OK. I’ve gotten used to losing people. I can do it. I’ve got this.

Time to turn the paper over. The start time is on the LED board, the finish time just below. Here we go. I’ve prepared well. I rewrote every paragraph of my notes unseen. They say girls make better students than boys. I don’t know if that’s true. If it is, perhaps I have an unfair advantage. Boys have more distractions. Watching them, I think they are too busy chasing us to focus on their studies. Maybe that’s a sexist viewpoint. What right have I to assume anyone’s interested in chasing me? I mean, I’m not really anyone. Nothing special to look at. My grades are good but I have to work hard to keep them up. I’m no genius. That’s why I have doubts about Oxford being in reach. I’ll give it my best shot.

Answer all questions. That’s the best kind of exam paper. No danger of wasting time choosing questions, nor of starting one, aborting and switching to another, wasting Lord knows how much time.

The last three hours are a blur. It sort of almost felt too easy. I mean, I have cramp in my right wrist, but I’m fairly sure I aced it. Pretty much bang on forty-five minutes on each of the four questions. All my cramming paid off. I was on song about communism and capitalism, talked Socrates forwards and backwards, expounded monetary theory with passion and gave a competent commentary on the current geopolitical situation. It’s in the hands of the gods now. Time to wait my turn, to hand in my paper. When the guy in front of me stands up, I can follow him. Here I go. My paper on top of his, on the pile, my name on every sheet, all tied together with the fasteners they gave us. I’m free to go. Wait till I’m out of here. I shall quote H.G. Wells when I get outside. “Oh, the sweetness of the air.…”

Wait, what’s this? She wants me to step aside with her. I haven’t seen her before. Must be one of the invigilators. I glimpsed the blue of the sky just now but I can’t see it any more. We’re away through a side door, into a bare corridor. Stairs leading down.

“Where are you taking me?” My own voice, a strangled cry. I’m near to tears. “Did I do something wrong? I swear, I didn’t cheat.”

Then, what’s this? Like a subway station but shorter. There’s a train here. She steps aboard and I follow. Not many options, because she has an iron grip on my hand. She says nothing. Her eyes are steel blue, unblinking. The train moves off and gathers speed. We are the only passengers, as far as I can see.

A short, fast, rattling ride, then we stop. She leads me off, into an elevator. The door closes behind us. There’s a rush of weightlessness, then heaviness and the doors hiss open. We are in another brightly-lit corridor. We march past stainless steel walls, then turn sharp left into a large, airy room.

The layout is like the living area of an expensive hotel suite, yet I know this is not a hotel. That elevator took me down, not up. We are unimaginably far below street level, in some kind of bunker. Probably secret. If not, why all this strange behaviour? But what takes my breath away and almost stops my heart dead is not that. It’s the person I see, sitting on the sofa across the dark mahogany coffee table. My old friend and trusted confidante, my room mate, Tracy DeBarge.

“What the fuck…” I cannot stop myself.

Tracy smiles. “Gerda, you can stand down now. Thanks. Can you bring us a couple of iced lattes?” She gestures toward an armchair and I sit down.

My mind is a whirl. Tracy. Gap year. The Gambia? She’s been here all along. I believe her because the cover story fits. Black African herself, there would have been every reason for Tracy to take up voluntary work on her home continent. I want to slap her and hug her at the same time.

“Carla, I’m sorry to muck up your day like this. Thing is, I’ve been asked by my line managers to offer you a job. I think you’ll find the work interesting, and the package competitive.”

My mouth opens and closes like a fish. The questions log-jam in my throat. Job? Package? Tracy must have been working for the intelligence services, this past year. She recommended me to her handlers as a potential new recruit. There can be no other explanation.

Tracy continues. “The official story to your classmates will be, you had an anxiety attack after the exam and were taken home. As it’s your final year in school, no-one will question why you’re not there next term. Your emails and social media will be diverted; we will send replies based on an accurate AI profile of your likely responses.”

I gulp and find I am lost for words.

“Some of the work will be dangerous,” Tracy goes on. “Don’t worry; we are a strong team and we have one another’s backs. My bosses tell me we haven’t lost a field operative in ten years. It’s up to you, of course. No compulsion. Think it over. You don’t have to give me an answer straight away.”

The door opens, to admit Gerda, with the coffees. Iced lattes used to be our beverage of choice, hanging out between lectures.

When we are alone again, I speak. “Tracy, what if I say no? I guess this job will mean being away for weeks or months at a time, infiltrating terror groups, gathering intelligence and feeding it securely back to handlers, living different identities with full immersion to cement credibility.”

Tracy nods. “Yes, you can say no. But I wouldn’t recommend it. If you do, you will simply wake up tomorrow in hospital after your anxiety episode, with no credible memory of this meeting. Gerda’s people-management skills are not limited to initial recruitment and iced lattes.”

My eyes flash. What would they give me? Scopolamie? Ketamine? They have no right. I could have them in court. I could…

“I know your concerns,” Tracy says. “We all had the same reservations, or similar. We overcame them. And you are right, more or less, about the demands of the job. I’m sorry I have to ask you for an answer now. Are you in?

“I’m in,” I reply and, with a boot-marching hiss, the room is suddenly full of Gerda and what seems like four or five others. Tracy stands and smiles. “Welcome to the team,” she says.