“It’s fine,” I said. “If you’ve annoyed Roger Blevins, how bad can you be?”
At that he looked startled—as if he’d come from someplace where speaking ill of the brass simply wasn’t done. We kept staring at each other. It seemed a perfectly normal thing to do. He was nice to look at in an ROTC sort of way, and his expression implied he didn’t mind looking at me either, although I am not the sort the ROTC boys ever took an interest in.
Suddenly he held out his hand. “Tristan Lyons,” he said.
“Melisande Stokes,” I rejoined.
“You’re in the Ancient and Classical Linguistics Department?”
“I am,” I said. “I’m an exploited and downtrodden humanities lecturer.”
Once again, that startled, wary look. “I’m treating you to coffee,” he said.
That was presumptuous, but I was so pleased with him for upsetting Blevins that it would have been churlish to turn him down.
He wanted to take me to the Apostolic Café in Central Square, which was perhaps ten minutes by foot down Mass Ave. It was that time of year in Boston when the summer feels definitely over, and the city’s seventy-odd colleges and universities are coming back to life. Streets were jammed with parental minivans from all over the Northeast, moving their kids into their apartments and dorm rooms. Sidewalks were clogged with discarded sofas and other dump-bound furniture. Add that to the city’s baseline traffic—people, cars, bikes, the T—and it was all very loud and bustling. He used that as an excuse to cup my elbow in one hand, keeping me close to him as we walked. Presumptuous. As was the very idea that you could walk two abreast in such a crowded place. But he kept making a path through the crowd with expectant looks and crisp apologies. Definitely not from around here.
“Can you hear me clearly?” he said almost directly into my ear, my being half a step ahead of him. I nodded. “Let me tell you a couple of things while we’re walking. By the time we get to the café, if you think I’m a creep or a nutcase, just tell me, and I’ll simply buy you a coffee and be on my way. But if you don’t think I’m a creep or a nutcase, then we’re going to have a very serious conversation that could take hours. Do you have dinner plans?”
In the society I inhabit currently, such an approach would be considered so outrageous that when I think on it, it is hard to believe I did not instantly excuse myself and walk away from him. On the contrary, at the time I found his awkward inappropriateness, his bluntness, rather compelling. And I confess, I was curious to hear what he had to say.
“I might,” I said. (Confession: I did not.)
“All right, listen,” he began. “I work for a shadowy government entity, you’ve never heard of it, and if you try to Google it, you won’t find any reference to it, not even from conspiracy-theory nuts.”
“Conspiracy-theory 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.