nuts are the only ones who would use a term like ‘shadowy government entity,’” I pointed out.
“That’s why I use it,” he retorted. “I don’t want anyone to take me seriously, it would get in the way of my efficiency if people were paying attention to me. Here’s what we need. Tell me if you’re interested. We have a bunch of very old documents—cuneiform, in one case—and we need them translated, at least roughly, by the same person. You’ll be paid very well. But I can’t tell you where we got the documents, or how we got them, or why we’re interested in them. And you cannot ever tell anyone about this. You can’t even say to your friends, ‘Oh, yeah, I did some classified translating for the government.’ Even if we publish your translation of it, you can’t take ownership of it. If you learn something extraordinary from translating the material, you can’t share it with the world. You’re a cog in a piece of machinery. An anonymous cog. You’d have to agree to that before I say another word.”
“That’s why Blevins threw you out,” I said.
“Yes, he’s strongly committed to academic freedom.”
Dear reader, give me credit for not going LOL on mocking him. “No he isn’t.”
This startled Tristan, who looked at me like a puppy after you’ve stepped on his tail. On second thought, given his ROTC bearing, let’s make that a mature German shepherd.
“He was pissed off that he’d never get any glory or royalties,” I explained. “But he knew he couldn’t say that. So, academic freedom or whatever.”
Tristan seemed to actually think about this as we crossed Temple Street. His type are trained to respect authority. Blevins was nothing if not authoritative. So, this was a little test. Was his straight-arrow brain going to explode?
Through all the bustle, in the golden light of early autumn, I could see the entrance to the Central Square T stop. “What’s your position?” he asked me.
“On academic freedom? Or getting paid?”
“You haven’t kicked me to the curb yet,” he said. “So, I guess we’re talking about the latter.”
“Depends on the paycheck.”
He named an amount that was twice my annual salary, with the caveat “. . . once you convince me you’re the right person for the job.”
“What will the translations be used for?”
“Classified.”
I tried to think of reasons not to pursue this lucrative diversion. “Could they somehow be justification for unethical actions, or physical violence, on the part of your shadowy government entity?”
“Classified.”
“That’s a yes, then,” I said. “Or at least a possibly. You’d have just said no otherwise.”
“That amount I just mentioned? It’s for a six-month contract. Renewable by mutual agreement. Benefits negotiable. Are we having coffee together or not?” We were nearing the turn to the Apostolic Café.
“No harm in coffee,” I said. Stalling for time, trying to wrap my head around the math: four times my current take-home pay, which would never include benefits. Not to mention that I’d be trading up in the supervisor department.
We entered the café, a beautiful old desanctified brick church with high vaulted ceilings, stained glass windows, and incongruously modern wood tables and chairs sprinkled across the marble floor. There was a state-of-the-art espresso station to one side and—most disconcertingly, as much as I’d overcome my upbringing—a counter set just about where the altar would once have been, and a complete wet bar curving around the inner wall of the apse. The place had only recently opened but was already very popular with the techno-geek crowd from both Harvard and MIT. It was my first time in. I felt a brief pang of envy that there weren’t enough linguists in Cambridge to warrant a designated polyglot-hangout as lovely as this.
“What’s your pleasure?” asked the barista, a young Asian-American woman with interesting piercings, tattoos in place of eyebrows, and a demeanor that blended I’m sooo interesting and this job sucks with I have a really cool secret life and this job is an awesome front. Her nametag read “Julie Lee: Professional 聪明的驴子•双簧管” (which I understood, roughly, as “Smart-ass Oboist”).
We ordered drinks—Tristan, black coffee; myself, something I would never normally have, a complicated something-latte-something with lots of buzzwords I picked out at random from the menu over the bar, and which prompted a brief smirk from our barista. The agents of shadowy government entities, I reasoned, were likely to be trained in psychological evaluation of potential recruits, and I did not want him getting an accurate read on me until I decided whether or not I wished to pursue his offer. (Also he was rather handsome, which made me jittery a bit, so I decided to hide behind an affected eccentricity.) The result being that he sat down with a lovely-smelling cup of dark roast and I sat down with something almost undrinkable.
“You ordered that to try to throw me off the scent, in case I was doing some sort of ninja psych-eval of you,” he said casually, as if just trying the idea on for size. “Ironically, that tells me more about you than if you’d just ordered your usual.”
I must have looked shocked, because he grinned with almost savage self-satisfaction. There was something disturbingly thrilling about being seen so thoroughly, so quickly, and so stealthily. I felt myself flush.
“How?” I demanded. “How did you do that?”
He leaned in toward me, large, strong hands clasped before him on the café table. “Melisande Stokes—may I call you Mel?” I nodded. “Mel.” He cleared his throat in a very official-sounding, preparatory manner. “If we’re going to pursue this,” he said, “there are three parts to it. First, before anything else, you have to sign the nondisclosure form. Then I need you to do some sample translations so we can get a sense of your work, and then we have to run a background check on you.”
“How long will all that take?” I asked.
Four times my salary. With possible dental.
And no Blevins.
He had set his backpack on a chair beside him. Now he patted it. “Nondisclosure form is right here. If you sign it now, I can text your name and social to DC.” He paused then, and reconsidered. “Never mind. They already know your social. Point is, they’ll have finished the background check before you’re done choking down whatever the hell it is you ordered. So it’s just how long it takes you to translate the test samples and have our guys look over your translations. But”—he waved a warning finger at me—“no fooling around here. Once you sign the form, you’re committing to do this. Unless we reject you. You can’t reject us. You’re stuck with me, for six months minimum, as soon as you sign the form. Got it? No half-assedness on your part. So maybe we just talk tonight and then you take the form with you and give it to me tomorrow when you’ve had a chance to sleep on it.”
“Where would I find you tomorrow?” I asked.
“Classified,” he said. “I’d find you.”
“I don’t like being stalked. I’d better sign it now,” I said.
He stared
