Come and Meet Them All - THE CAST OF CHARACTERS FOR "PRESIDENT HAMILTON"

    Writing a 650+ page novel is no joke.  Especially when it is a work of historical fiction that involves both real people and created characters interacting with each other!  After my second book, I discovered it was a lot easier to keep a cast of characters at the end of the manuscript, so that instead of scrolling all the way back to Chapter Two so find out "what was the name of that guy Hamilton went to see after the duel?" I could scroll down two pages instead of two hundred and see his name and a brief bio there.  It's a system that has worked for me through four books now. 

     I have a beta reader named "Ellie" who has been my friend and literary supporter since I started this journey in 2012, and when I'm writing a book I send her each chapter, as I finish it, and she sends it back to me with comments, corrections, criticisms, and questions that help me write a better story and often send me into peals of laughter. About three or four chapters into HAMILTON I sent her the cast of characters, and when she replied she added snarky notes, comments, and jokes to each character.  Not to be outdone, I began making up my own silly comments about each new character as I introduced them. The result was what you will read below.  When I submitted the book for publication, I decided that the Cast of Characters was simply to silly and off-color to be included in a serious and (I hope) thoughtful work of alternative history.

     But now that the book has been out for a while, and has been purchased and read by hundreds (hopefully soon to be thousands) of people, I found myself reading over it and thinking that it's simply too much fun not to share with a wider audience.   So scroll on down to read this bit of whimsy that my beta reader and I concocted as we went back and forth with my book during its creative process. However,. before reading this, read the following warnings!

1. CONTAINS SPOILERS!!!!  If you have not read PRESIDENT HAMILTON yet, the character descriptions below, by necessity, give away some aspects of the story, especially as you go further down the list. So read at your own risk!

2.  IT'S A JOKE!  Some of these descriptions make light of serious stuff.  Humor is a time honored way of dealing with tragedy and distasteful things; my flippant comments are not meant to minimize real suffering or some of the less savory aspects of American history.  These sarcastic, snarky comments made it easier for me to tackle some real historical unpleasantness in my book.  So if you're easily offended, read no further.

3.  This list is comic relief, but my book is actually quite serious. So don't come away thinking PRESIDENT HAMILTON is a piece of slapstick.  My 'Cast of Characters' was a way to blow off steam after doing hundreds of pages of serious writing.

So, after all that, if you still want to read on . . . HERE IT IS!!

PRESIDENT HAMILTON  CAST OF CHARACTERS: 

          (Simplified for non-history majors) 

 

Aaron Burr:  Vice President of the USA, general bad guy, killed by Hamilton in a duel in 1804, does not re-appear after the prologue except in the past tense. 

Alexander Hamilton: the Founding Father dude this story is about; crazy smart, helped create our country but never got to be President (until now) 

Philip Hamilton:  Hamilton’s firstborn, killed in a duel in 1801. Shoulda shot first! 
Maria Reynolds:  Hamilton’s onetime squeeze, whose husband blackmailed him to keep quiet about the affair and then spilled the beans to the opposition anyway! 
Eliza Hamilton:  Hamilton’s wife; a hottie with common sense and a whole pack of kids.  Made one VERY classy First Lady. 

Rachel Benson: The Hamilton family’s cook and nursemaid; could cook up a superb stew using only three ingredients 

Thomas Jefferson:  President of the U.S.; Hamilton’s nemesis, super genius IQ but no secret lair or dimwitted sidekick, an idealist who has to be kicked in the crotch to do the right thing.  Later becomes a friend and supporter. 

Charles Cooper:  One of Hamilton’s blabbermouth friends, whose loose lips caused Burr to issue the infamous challenge 
Nathaniel Pendleton:  Hamilton’s second at the infamous duel, and general partner in political mischief 
Dr. David Hosack:  Hamilton’s physician and personal trainer, invented the tongue depressor but used it for stirring coffee 
William P. Van Ness:  Sidekick of Aaron Burr; now unemployed 

Matthew Davis:  Some other guy that hung out with Burr till the duel left him looking for new friends 

James Madison:  Jefferson’s BFF, sidekick, and Secretary of State, but not at all dimwitted.  Hamilton’s favorite frienemy.  Shorter than the average dwarf. Convert to Hamilton’s First Church of Liberty, AKA “Slavery Sucks!” 
Alexander Hamilton, Jr.:  Hamilton’s oldest surviving son and namesake (but seriously, Gomer, if you need to be told that, you shouldn’t be reading this book) 

Bishop Benjamin Moore:  Pastor of Trinity Church and one of Hamilton’s spiritual advisors.  Stuffed shirt, but nice enough.  You can rearrange his name to spell: “Bambi Join Pheromones.” 
James Hamilton: Hamilton’s younger son and Junior’s little brother.  Again, duh! 

John Laurens: Hamilton’s BFF and man-crush, but in a totally non-gay way.  He’s dead but not gone, if you know what I mean. 

George Washington: Commanding general of the American forces during the Revolution, first President, and Hamilton’s sugar daddy. Also dead but not gone. 

Angelica, John Church, William, Eliza, and “Little Phil” Hamilton: Hamilton’s other children.  He was a busy guy. 

John Armstrong: Senator from New York, sent by Jefferson to France to eat crepes and pay for Louisiana. 

Samuel Mitchill: Hamilton’s opponent for the 1804 special Senate election.  Smart guy, but OH! So boring! 

John Woodworth: Republican member of the New York Senate, also state Attorney General; friend of Hamilton’s even if he played for the other team 

Rufus King:  One of Hamilton’s Federalist posse members; had the largest collection of used wine corks in New York 

Hercules Mullligan: Former spy for the continental army, expert tailor, member of Hamilton’s personal posse.  When you knock him down he . . . well, you know the rest. 

Isaac Foote: Federalist State Senator; friend of Hamilton’s, known to use way too much bubble bath 

Justinian Wallace: landlord, innkeeper, speaks with a cockney accent even though he lives in Washington DC.  Hates Congresscritters. 

George Clinton: former governor of New York, Jefferson’s Vice President, certifiable curmudgeon and occasional underwear sniffer, hates Hamilton for being younger, better looking, and smarter than he is. 

Charles Maurice yadayada Talleyrand – French foreign minister; slippery as an eel and so crooked they had to screw him into the ground when he died.  Friend of Hamilton, though. 

Samuel Maclay: Senator from Pennsylvania, came to be a reluctant supporter of Hamilton, lived in fear of four-knuckled noogies from his older brother 

Thomas Worthington: punk Senator from Ohio, thoroughly owned by Hamilton on more than one occasion but keeps coming back for more like a yappy little Chihuahua picking a fight with a bulldog 

William B. Giles: cranky old fart Senator from Virginia who hates Hamilton, John Adams, and puppies 

Ezra Darby: the “Captain Conspiracy” of the 9th Congress, convinced Hamilton was in league with the devil and possibly Cthulhu as well 

Benjamin Tallmadge: an old friend of Hamilton’s and Hercules Mulligan’s, Continental Army spymaster, Congressman, and master (de)bater; later Secretary of War for President Hamilton 

Elijah Cartwright: Hamilton’s fast-riding, fast-living Senate page; a real hit with the ladies, not so much with their husbands, later the President’s personal secretary 

Ajax Smith: Former slave, blacksmith (literally), and friend of the Adams family 

Abigail Adams: John Adams’ wife; a tough job but somebody had to do it 

Elijah Hopkins: Captain of the Plymouth, he cut a wide swath through British pride and New England’s maiden population.  His name can be rearranged to spell: “She like panji-ho” 

Baron David Erskine: British minister plenipotentiary to the USA (but you can just call him “ambassador”).  Likes American dishes, in fact, he married one! 

Josiah Quincy: Federalist congressman, ally of Hamilton’s, and a collector of seashells that resembled Ben Franklin’s posterior 

Oliver Wolcott: succeeded Hamilton as Secretary of the Treasury under Washington, now gets to come back and work for Hamilton – proof that if you do a job right, you get to keep doing it, like it or no! 

Rufus Jenkins: Overseer of Madison’s plantation, way too fond of slave women, later opened the original “Boom Boom Room” in New Orleans 

Nero Madison: former slave who became overseer of Madison’s plantation, Montpelier.  His son Caligula Madison was a bit loopy . . . 

Obadiah Brown: Chaplain of the United States Senate, Baptist pastor, and Washington social butterfly 

Robert O’Malley: Hamilton’s White House butler, and occasional confidante, known for his skill in playing the trumpet (and occasional strumpets)_ 

Sally Hemings: Thomas Jefferson’s slave, lover, occasional conscience, and eventual second wife. She eventually helped him "see the light," so to speak.

John Tyler – Governor of Virginia, a reluctant convert to Hamilton’s abolition plan.  His oldest son and namesake never amounted to much . . . 

Richard Brent: Virginia’s junior U.S. Senator, politically ally of Hamilton, and founder of the Virginia chapter of the “Napoleon Bonaparte Lookalike Club” 

James Breckenridge: Virginia Congressman and friend of Hamilton’s; his name can be rearranged to spell “Break Me Green J-Dic!”, which was his rapper name. 

George Fitzhugh: Virginia state legislator who thought that slavery was the best thing since sliced bread – or unsliced bread, for that matter! 

John Jay: Former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and an old ally of Hamilton’s, now returned to serve as Attorney General; “J.J. the Supreme” to his friends 

David Lenox – Director of the Bank of the United States, which was Hamilton’s favorite brain-baby 

Henry Clay – Congressman from Kentucky who grooved on the whole compromise thing, later Speaker of the House 

John Gaillard – South Carolina Congressman, staunch defender of slavery and Southern institutions, famous for his shrimp gumbo 

Nicholas Gilman – New Hampshire Congressman and ally of Hamilton’s, a distant relative of the Creature from the Black Lagoon 

John C. Calhoun – crackerjack attorney and Congressman from South Carolina; loves slavery like a Democrat loves taxing the rich, but more eloquently, he didn’t handle losing well. 

James Anderson – Senator from Tennessee, an old war buddy of Hamilton’s whose sister got jiggy with Lafayette back in the day 

John Marshall – Chief Justice of the Supreme Court; also known as “J-Daddy of the Supremes” 

Lily-Beth Carroll – also known as the “ER of the 19th century,” she captured the heart of the “Casanova of Capitol Hill” and got him to settle down – or did she? 

Nicholas Carroll – Lily-Beth’s papa, who is righteously skeptical of her new amour – and handy with a horsewhip to boot! 

Raoul Vega – Spanish officer who led a raid into U.S. territory and was killed by Jackson’s men 

Andrew Jackson – Militia General from Tennessee; treacherously killed by the dastardly Spanish.  Not a single Cherokee wept at his funeral. 

Jose de la Garda – Unofficial envoy from King Joseph Bonaparte to the USA, an anagram of his name is Drag A Jade & Lose! 

Luis de Oniz – Official envoy from the Junta, a bunch of guys who want to replace one French King of Spain with another French King of Spain, and will kill you if you try to stop them! 

Winnfield Scott – Every morning at muster you could see him arrive, he stood six foot six and weighed two forty five!  Badass American soldier with a killer right hook. 

Jacob Brown – Commanding General of the Southern Department of the U.S. Army during the Spanish War of 1811 

Andrew Shasteen – Brown’s second in command; held New Orleans during the war. 

Enrique White – Irish-born Spanish governor of East Florida.  Took the whole “death before dishonor” thing way too literally 

Augustus Magee – U.S. Army officer in New Orleans; hobnobs with Mexican revolutionaries and Scandinavian moonshiners 

Bernardo Gutierrez – Mexican Revolutionary who decided America was his best bet to get rid of Spain. 

Juan Jose de Estrada – Spanish Governor of East Florida for two days.  His administration was remembered for its efficiency, lack of corruption, and stench of gunpowder. 

Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna – Sassy young Spanish officer, captured by the Americans, remembers the Alamo but doesn’t know why 

Thomas Madison – Cousin of James, loves to tell funny stories 

Roger Effingham – eager beaver young North Carolina planter, hosts Hamilton and Madison on their trip south 

Cletus – Elderly slave on Effingham’s plantation, anxious to be free 

David Stone – former governor of North Carolina, solid rock of a dude 

Benjamin Smith – Governor of North Carolina; apparently named after my Dad. 

Thomas Chadsworth – Mayor of Wilmington, NC, hosted Hamilton on his grand Southern tour, elected by a punch card ballot, so he really got his chad’s worth! 

Robert Fulton – famous American inventor, the guy could really build up a full head of steam sometimes! 
Roger Whitaker – young soldier from New York, courier for Colonel Scott, befriends Hamilton 

Henry Middleton – governor of South Carolina; Hamilton’s foe in the 1812 Presidential election. 

Dante Gomez – Spanish agent provocateur who came to the U.S.A. with Vega to stir up a war 

Angelica Schuyler Church – Eliza’s sister, Hamilton’s closest friend, and a socialite on both sides of the Atlantic 

John Church – Angelica’s husband, a genial soul with a fair singing voice, always outshone by his wife but bore it with tolerable good grace because he got to take her home every night! 

Francisco Vinegas – Viceroy of Spain’s New World Empire, spent most of his career playing whack-a-mole with Latin American rebels and swivvying the chambermaids 

Ferdinand VII – King of Spain, a greedy, grasping man-child who was only interested in things that would enrich and empower himself.  Called the “Donald Trump of the 19th century” 

Now if you have read all that and still haven't read the book - here is a link!

https://www.amazon.com/President-Hamilton-Novel-Alternative-History/dp/1632137100/ref=sr_1_23?dchild=1&qid=1624931942&refinements=p_27%3ALewis+Ben+Smith&s=books&sr=1-23&text=Lewis+Ben+Smith

 

 

 

OUT WITH THE OLD YEAR, IN WITH THE NEW

      So 2021 is now in the books.  All things told, it was a pretty good year for me in a whole lot of ways.  I saw my sixth novel published, I connected with a remarkable network of Alexander Hamilton scholars and enthusiasts in my efforts to promote the book, and I saw it open with the strongest online sales of any of my previous works, and  am ending the year poised for even wider success with PRESIDENT HAMILTON: A NOVEL OF ALTERNATIVE HISTORY.   

    This year also saw my son-in-law discharged from the military, returning to our home town with my daughter, and finally the two of them moving in with us as they prepare to construct a home of their own.  Now as the year has ended, my other daughter and her husband are talking about temporarily moving in as they prepare to move to the Dakotas at the beginning of summer.  I'm not too sanguine about the possibility of seven people under one roof, but it looks inevitable at this point, so we'll all have to make the best of it. My wife and I just celebrated 37 years of marriage, and are looking forward to another (mostly) happy year together.

   One other neat development here at home was that we finally did a couple of things we've threatened to for several years - we closed in our side porch and turned it into a walk-in closet, and we had a working shower installed upstairs, so that the entire household is no longer dependent on a single tub.   These improvements will be here long after our kids have moved out, and have gone a long way towards making the house more livable and comfortable.

     I finished another year of teaching in the middle of a pandemic without contracting the dread COVID-19 virus in any of its variants or permutations.  My wife and I both got the Pfizer vaccine in April and the booster in December, so we are as well-protected as two people in our profession can be. Of course, a breakthrough case is always a possibility, but if that does happen, I am hoping that the vaccines will keep the symptoms mild and the infection brief. 

     For the first time in several years, I'm not writing another book.  I started a new novel in January, but it fizzled out after a prologue and a first chapter and I haven't been drawn to return to it.  Will I at some point in the future?  Hard to say.  My literary output has been limited to the occasional short story - all of which I publish here on my blog for you all to read. The most recent one is in the previous entry to this, scroll back through previous years and months for more.  I have about 15-20 short stories on here, totaled.  I'm sure there's another book or two lurking in my head, and at some point my muse will sprinkle enough fornus on them that they'll take root and begin growing chapters. 

     In my hobby, I have had a fun year of collecting arrowheads and fossils.  The first half of the year I was doing no book signings due to the pandemic, and we had abundant rainfall, so I found a lot of nice points washed onto gravel bars in the local river.  The latter part of the year I got busy with book signings and the rain gave out, leaving the river a weedy, muddy mess of thoroughly picked-over gravel bars.  I didn't go hunting nearly as often, but I still managed to find a few more points on some of my other sites, ending the year with a total of 77 intact artifact finds.  I also downloaded and began playing a new (to me) video game, FALLOUT 4, which promises to be a wonderful time-waster during these bleak winter months. 

     I read 46 books last year - mostly biographies but with a generous mixture of fiction thrown in.  My favorite non-fiction read was Robert Caro's majestic four volume biography of Lyndon Johnson, while my favorite fiction read has been my belated discovery of Neil Gaiman's SANDMAN series. I watched about 87 movies, re-watching some classics and discovering some new favorites, plus my usual dose of B-grade freebies on Amazon Prime.  

     So despite the general suckiness of 2021 in the realm of politics and current events, I feel like we had a pretty good run of it.  So what does the New Year hold?  That's always the big question.  I hope to take PRESIDENT HAMILTON out of state and maybe even get the opportunity to do a signing in New York City before the year is out, but as Yoda said, "Always in motion the future is."  Or, as my friend Tom Westfall is fond of saying: "Man plans, and God laughs."

   So the future will do what it does, and I will do what I do, and I'd like to invite all of you Faithful Readers to join me on the ride!  And, like all long journeys, you might need a good book to read along the way.  So if you've stuck with me all this way and read this rambling entry, I'd invite you to stay the course by clicking the link below and ordering your own copy of PRESIDENT HAMILTON today!

https://www.amazon.com/President-Hamilton-Novel-Alternative-History/dp/1632137100/ref=sr_1_23?dchild=1&qid=1624931942&refinements=p_27%3ALewis+Ben+Smith&s=books&sr=1-23&text=Lewis+Ben+Smith

A New Short Story for Veteran's Day - ONE LAST ROLE TO PLAY

 This Veteran's Day, I wanted to write a tribute to another kind of veteran.  These veterans sacrifice just as much, and suffer just as much, and die just as bravely, as any who have ever worn the uniform.  But they receive no medals, no parades, and no public recognition.  Their heroism goes unreported, their sacrifices ignored, their very existence unnoticed by most.  Their own families do not know what they do, or where they go.  They see things and do things that leave scars both physical and emotional, but they cannot talk about them.  I'm talking about the men and women of America's intelligence agencies, the shadow warriors who operate all around the world, gathering information and foiling evildoers so that the rest of us can sleep safely in our homes.

This story is for all of you.  You know who you are. 

                          ONE LAST ROLE TO PLAY

                                            By Lewis Smith

 

 

          The twenty young agents ceased fidgeting and whispering among themselves as the Instructor entered the room. Every pair of eyes followed her as she took her place at the steel lectern.  She carried no notes, no briefcase, nor any other paraphernalia to designate her status.  She wore the uniform of a staff level officer in the U.S. military, but like the trainees, she was not active-duty military.  Their employer was a different branch of government altogether, affectionately called the “Beast with Three Initials” by those it employed.  All the students in this class were intelligence officers in training; most were Americans, although a few worked for countries closely allied with the USA.  Sixteen were men, four were women; all were young.  They had left homes, universities, and employers all across the world, where their cover ID’s were scrupulously maintained, in order to attend this four week course in field operations, although it was referred to under the humorous euphemism of a “Leadership Conference.”

          She swept the room with her eyes, mentally taking attendance and reading the posture and body language of each student.  For three weeks she had led them through the advanced training all field operatives must master; alternating between classroom lectures, physical fitness training, and one-on-one exercises in everything from reading body language to covert surveillance to reading micro-facial tics and expressions to determine if the speaker was telling the truth or not. So young, she thought sadly.  How many of them would live to be even as old as she was, much less to a ripe old age?  It was a dangerous world, and she knew the odds were that at one or more of these enthusiastic young agents-in-training would not make it to thirty.

          As she studied the class, they studied her in turn. The Instructor was a mystery that they had discussed in whispers ever since the course began.  Everything about her – her real name, her age, her history – was the subject of rumor and conjecture, but in the end, none of them knew any of those things about her, and it bugged them each in different ways.

          How old was she?  She was a remarkable specimen of physical fitness, trim and athletic and able to match them, stride for stride, jump for jump, and climb for climb in the most difficult obstacle courses.  But she wasn’t “butch” at all. The Instructor was a beautiful woman - tallish, curved in all the right places, with ash blond hair and piercing green eyes.  When she smiled, every man in the room sat up a little straighter.  There wasn’t a single male in the room that hadn’t thought about what it would be like to bed her - except for Agent Hoskins, who bragged that he was “so gay he made a Spirograph look straight.”  And yet . . . despite her lack of facial wrinkles and her well-toned body, despite the ash-blond hair that cascaded down her shoulders when she let it down during a training session on disguises, despite the laugh that made everyone in the room smile –the fact remained that none of them could tell how old she really was.  When she acted flirtatious as part of a lecture on the role of seduction in espionage, she looked somewhere just north of twenty-five, perhaps.  But when she talked about doing field ops in the late 1990’s, it was obvious she was quite a bit older than that. And her eyes . . . when she spoke on serious matters, the spark in those green orbs faded, and the weariness and sadness in her gaze spoke of long decades of service, sacrifice, frustration, and loss.  Once she made a passing reference to her memories of the mid-1980’s, and the men in the room exchanged puzzled glances, doing the math in their heads and coming up with an estimate in the low forties – a clear impossibility!  Could she be lying to them about those recollections?  After all, honesty was not a trait the Agency cultivated.  But no one knew for sure.

          Her professional and personal history was another topic of whispered speculation.  Rumors abounded as to her previous assignments, and no one could say where those rumors came from or how much credence to give them.  Someone said she had spent four years undercover in Moscow, becoming a mistress to one of Putin’s cronies, passing on critical intelligence about Russia’s latest strategic plans.  Others claimed she’d been the analyst who had pinpointed the location of bin Laden’s compound in 2012. Agent Henderson claimed to have heard that she spoke fluent Mandarin and operated as a fashion model and high-end escort in China, eavesdropping on government officials at cocktail parties.  The latest story making the rounds was that she’d done repeated deep cover missions in the UK to track down and arrest the financial backers of numerous terrorist organizations, from the Islamic State to the IRA.

          All of this led them to wonder, who was she when she wasn’t doing field ops or instructing younger agents in the art of espionage?  They tried to imagine this fearful competitor and demanding instructor as a wife or mother, and most of them couldn’t see her in that role.  The same woman who’d made them stand in place, stone still and silent, for six hours, and stood as cold and hard as a statue beside them the whole time, cuddling a child in her arms and reading bedtime stories?  The woman rumor claimed had completed the Crucible four times, asking some civilian man to open a pickle jar for her?  It didn’t compute.  A couple of the men in class were pretty sure she was a lesbian, with a soft young wife or girlfriend waiting for her at some upscale apartment.  There was no proof of this, but all agreed it made for a pleasant mental picture.  The truth was that none of them knew.

          And the Instructor liked it just fine that way.  Let them wonder, she thought as she looked at their serious young faces.  As long as they wonder, they will fear. And as long as they fear me, they will remember what I teach them here – and maybe that will help some of them stay alive!

          She leaned forward on the lectern and cleared her throat, and then fixed each agent with her gaze for just a moment.  The silence hung in the air for a few seconds, just long enough for anticipation to build but not long enough for boredom to set in.  Then she spoke.

          “There is a week left in this course by the calendar, but I do not know if I will be here till the scheduled end or not.  I hope to, and plan to, but as the old proverb goes – ‘Man plans, and God laughs.’  So today, we’re going to ignore the field manuals, skip the role-playing exercises, and I’m going to level with you as best I can.  I want to warn you of what all this career can involve.  You’re about to embark on a path that will take you to some of the darkest places in this world – and inside yourself.  Statistically speaking, one or two of you agents in this room will probably die ‘on the job’ in the next decade.  No one will know, not even your family, the true circumstances of your demise.  They will be told you died in a helicopter crash, or in a training exercise, or drowned while scuba diving – but the truth will be something far more painful and less pleasant.  Another one out of this group will most likely put a gun in his mouth because he can’t live with what this job made him do, or who it forced him to become.  Ex-CIA agents have one of the highest suicide rates of any job demographic in America, except for military combat veterans.  What about the rest of you?  Odds are, most of you will quit the Agency before you complete a decade of service.  One agent in ten completes the full twenty years of service, and about one out of thirty will make it to twenty-five years.”  She paused a moment, savoring the stunned silence of her audience, and then spoke again.  “As I have done.”

          Eyebrows shot up, and some of the men exchanged glances.  She allowed herself a bitter laugh.

          “Yes, that’s right, I was recruited at seventeen, while I was still in high school,” she said.  “And yes, that means I’m in my forties now.  Thank you for your astonishment!   But . . . that’s not something romantic or cool.  They needed someone young, someone attractive, intelligent, malleable, and willing.  I was a legacy, if you know what that means, and because of the family connection I’d been on their radar since I was twelve.  I was stalked, shadowed, traumatized, and thoroughly screened before they ever approached me with a job offer.  I was flattered that they wanted me, that they told me I could be of use, that I could help punish the evil and save the innocent.  That’s the shiny object they hold up in front of you, the lure they use to suck you in until the hook is set, and once it’s set, you are dancing on the end of their line - fish and bait all in one.”

          “So it came to pass that while other kids my age were worrying about prom dates and scholarship applications and boyfriends and making the honor roll, I was undergoing psychological screenings, medical evaluations, and classes like this one – on top of all that other regular high school and college stuff I had to keep up with, to preserve the illusion of normality.  You can’t begin to imagine the toll it took, how much my relationships with family, friends, and loved ones suffered.” She paused a moment, lost in memories of those stressful days, recalling how often the bliss of youth was interrupted and sometimes ruined by “them,” as she came to refer to her employer.

          “At nineteen, I was dropped in a foreign city, given a role to play.  I was surrounded by people who hated our country, hated our allies, and who would have killed me in a second had they known who I really was.  Some were active agents of terror, others aided and abetted terrorists out of a misguided sense of loyalty, or religious fervor, or family ties.  I lived among them, drank with them, joked with them, became one of them – and when the time came, betrayed them all.  Some are still in jail because of the information I gathered and the situations I maneuvered them into.  A few are dead.”

          “Another time I was placed in the path of a wealthy Arab emigree, a man whose hands were soft and clean, but who funneled millions of dollars to Al Qaeda and other such groups.  He had a weakness for soft, emotionally frail girls who were easily victimized, because his own daughter was one such, and had taken her life at fifteen.  I became a frightened little mouse, a shrinking, terrified wallflower who recoiled from his advances at first in terror.  Oh, he didn’t want to sleep with me – he had a whole harem of women for that purpose.  He wanted to help me – and in so doing, redeem his failure to help his daughter.  But he was so psychotic that even his sympathy and desire to rescue me were marred by fits of anger and violence.  He hit me more than once, and another time he fired a gun so close to my ear I suffered permanent hearing loss on that side.  And I took it.  I had to take it, because if I struck back, or broke character even for a second, I would lose my appeal, and the opportunity to take him down would be lost.  Today he is serving a life sentence in a maximum-security prison, and a financial conduit that armed his terrorist cronies with state-of-the-art weapons that they would have used to kill thousands of people was shut down for good. What was my reward?  I’m a target for assassination to this day and have spent a decade and a half watching my back.”

          “I could go on all day telling you about ops I’ve done or assisted with.  I’ve been the ‘eyes in the sky’ for troops in combat zones, and later on was dispatched to such places myself, even though it was illegal for me to be where I was. I’ve abducted people off the streets in first world countries, sometimes in broad daylight.  Bad people, mostly, or people who we could use as leverage with the bad people they were close to.   I’ve seen men killed right in front of me, and I’ve come within inches of being captured by terrorists who would have taken their time with me before they let me die.  Understand, agents, I am not telling you this to brag on myself in any way.  Truth be told, if I had it to do all over again, knowing what I know now, I would have told the Agency’s recruiters to go to hell, and pursued a career in academia instead.”

          Agent Moore gave a nervous laugh.  “Are you trying to talk us out of our commitment?” she said.

          “No,” she said.  “I doubt I could if I wanted to. All of you have swallowed the bait, and the hook is set.  By the time you reach this level of training, you’re committed.  What I want you to do is LISTEN!”  That last word crackled with an aura of command that caused every pair of eyes to fixate on her.

          “This may be the last lesson I teach you,” the instructor said.  “Or it may not.  But it IS the most important thing I will impart to you.  There is no wasted time in this course – everything I have done, everything I have made you do, has served a purpose.  But even if you forget or disregard every other lesson I’ve taught, please remember this one.  It can save your life – it WILL save your life, at some point, if you are committed to this career.  And it just might save your soul, if you believe in such things, or your family, if you have one.”

          The students stared at her, fascinated.  The mask of the Instructor had dropped, and instead they found themselves looking into the eyes of a mentor, a friend, a sage who was desperate to pass on something of great value.

          “You probably think the essence of covert operations is to pretend to be someone else,” she said.  “That’s a lie.  If you go out there pretending to be someone else, you’ll most likely bungle the operation and you may get yourself killed in the process, or perhaps get one of our other agents or foreign assets killed. You have to BECOME someone else. You have to take that identity that the Agency will craft for you and embrace it to the core of your soul.  Take the person you are, the parts of you that you value, the things that make you, YOU – and lock them away.  Store them in a secure place, deep in your psyche, and don’t touch them, don’t recall them, don’t even think about them, until the op is over.  Until you are home, where you can be you again.  When I became ‘the Mouse,’ I had to set aside everything I prided myself in being – my strength, my independence, my physical prowess.  I had to shrink – in every sense of the word – to become this nervous, frightened creature who would draw the pity of a man who funded terrorists around the globe.  I could not break character for a second.  Oh, how my true self pounded at the bars of the cage I’d shoved her into, longing to punch that smug, pitying face!  But I did it, I let him yell at me and then hold me, punch me and then weep with repentance.  I let him do it, knowing he would do it again. But I was the Mouse, and I did what mice do.  I cowered, and tried to run, and then froze in fear and let him catch me all over again.  Until the day came that I caught HIM.  Now he’s locked away for the rest of his life, and I’m here teaching you.  Become the role. Your life depends on it. Never break character, even when you are alone.  Never let your true self out of its cage till the op is done. Remember the smallest details of your cover story!  One of our agents was sent to London in the 80’s to infiltrate the IRA.  He had the cover ID down pat, the accent, the phony credentials, everything.  He’d spent a solid year training for the mission, but once he got in the field, he was dead within a week. Why?  Because he never got entirely used to the way traffic flowed in the UK.  He always glanced in the wrong direction first when he was about to cross the road, and someone noticed.  We never found his body, but a captured enemy asset told us he was tortured for a week, then cut to pieces and dumped in the Thames.  Pretending is not enough, playing a role is not enough.  Become your cover, period.”

          She paused, making sure she still had their focus, and then took a sip of water before continuing.

          “There’s another thing,” she said.  “A relative of mine said something about our employer years ago: ‘We’re bastards, but we’re useful bastards.’  This job will require you to do horrible things.  Things the real you would recoil at, unless you’re a true sociopath – which I suspect some of our more successful agents are! Unless you are a person who can cheerfully live with innocent blood on your hands, who can betray people who trust you, who is willing to not just lie but to live a lie, and live it so deeply that it becomes your truth; someone who can spend months winning the trust and affection of another person and then see that person marched away in handcuffs to be interrogated and imprisoned - you have to become your cover story. That way, when you return to your “real” life, to your family, your parents, your spouse if you have one, you don’t wake up screaming over the things you had to do ‘over there.’  Because YOU didn’t do them.  It was that other person, that person you became, that person who ceased to exist the moment you returned safe to your native soil.  The real self, the self you kept under lock and key while you carried out the mission, would never do such a thing.  You have to not just tell yourself that but convince yourself of it.  Because the alternative is to admit you’re just as big a monster as the monster you were trying to slay.”

          “Here’s another thing – don’t expect rewards.  Your actions may save thousands of lives, but not a one of them will ever know it, ever thank you, or even be aware that they were saved.  Only your closest friends and family will even know who you really work for, and those who do know, will not ever know what you have been required to do.  They will just know that you’re gone, sometimes for weeks and months at a time, and never have the comfort of even knowing where you are or what you’re doing.  They don’t know when, or if, you will return.  Public recognition is not our thing.  Praise is not our thing.  There’s little glory to be had in this job.  Most of the time, even our fellow agents don’t know what all we’ve done, unless you do an op together – and when that happens, don’t count on being assigned that partner again.  The less we know about each other, the less that can be tortured out of us if things go south.  The only reason I am telling you as much about my career as I have is that my career is in its final weeks.”

          “Last of all, and most importantly – there is one last role you will have to take on, one last cover you will have to invent.  This one isn’t crafted for you by specialists at Langley, and it’s not designed to deceive terrorists, or foreign agents, or government investigators.  It’s designed to fool the people you love most.”

          She sighed, looked down at her hands for a moment, and continued.

          “You see, no matter how careful you are to become whoever the mission requires you to be, no matter how deeply you bury your true self, no matter how hard you try to return to normality, to deny that you are the one who did the things the job required – it’s all bullshit.  In your deepest self, you know and will always know that you did those things.  You betrayed people who trusted you, you lied, you deceived, you may have slept with murderers and thugs, or got drunk with them, or watched as they wreaked horrors on the innocent.  You may have caused ‘collateral damage’ – what a nice, sanitary phrase that is to describe blowing up the wrong people!  Why do you think the Agency employs so many shrinks?  No matter how good you are, you can’t always bury the things you’ve done.  Even if you don’t think about them in your waking hours, they will haunt your dreams.  That’s why you have to create this last role, and why you have to completely and totally immerse yourself in it.”

          “Most of you will fall in love at some point, and many of you will marry.  Agents have a very high divorce rate, primarily because most of them have never learned what I am trying to teach you now.  You see, that last role you have to create and immerse yourself in, the last person you have to become – is YOU.  The version of you that never did these things, that doesn’t remember them, that isn’t tormented by them, that doesn’t have nightmares about them. You have to become a normal wife, husband, father, mother, son, and lover.  You have to wrap yourself in a blanket of emotional normality for the sake of those you love, because if you don’t, they will pay just as high an emotional price for the things this job requires as you do.  And no one wants that for the people they love most.  So, when you are home, when you are with them – become that person you might have been if you had told the Agency’s recruiters to go to hell, and embraced a normal life instead.  Please, Agents, don’t forget this.  This last role, the role of the you that you would have been if you’d never set foot in this room – that is the most important character you will ever assume!  That is all.”

          With that, she stepped away from the podium and perched on a stool, the force of her words having drained her strength for the moment.  What happened next surprised her, and more than anything she’d experienced with this roomful of rookies, it touched her heart, reaching deep into her true self.

          For at that moment, they all began to applaud.  The Instructor rose to her feet and gave a small bow; acknowledging their gesture with genuine gratitude.  The agents fell silent, many of them regarding her with something approaching awe. Finally, Agent Moore raised her hand.

          “Just one thing I wonder,” she said.  “That last role – the role you play for your family and those you love – how long do you have to keep doing that?”

          The Instructor froze, and in that moment all semblance of youth fled from her, and the eyes that looked out at the class were a thousand years old.

          “I don’t know,” she said softly, and left the room.