Free The Mulberry Bush by Charles McCarry Page B

crazy.”
    Fred had just told me a deep secret I already knew, having absorbed it by osmosis in the company of spies: secret work had its rewarding moments, but most of the time it was a drag. Fred studied my face as he spoke. He saw, I thought, that I already understood that simple fact and smiled a cynic’s half-hidden smile of approval. I liked that. I liked him. I liked my prospects. I told myself to shut off the warm feelings and remember why I was here.
    Nevertheless, despite my best efforts, a funny thing happened in the weeks that followed. Emotionally, I joined the club. I told myself this was essential to my cover. In a way I was already an honorary member. In the six weeks I spent at Moonshine Manor, as the instructors called the farmhouse, I underwent something like a homecoming. Nearly everyoneI met reminded me in some way of my father and his friends. This came as no surprise. Father’s sympathizers had, after all, sent the people I met, and though they kept up the pretense of my anonymity, I detected signs that they knew exactly who I was and where I came from. A sense of belonging gradually awakened within me.
    Even if early memories had not been rekindled I would have taken pleasure in the company I was keeping. The people who came to teach me were brighter by several IQ points, or so it seemed to me, than any other group I had known before. After years in academia in the company of people whose minds were closed to everything their code forbade them to believe, these men and women were open-minded as a matter of professional necessity. They were good company—their humor, their refusal to be judgmental, the unswerving, even instinctive way in which they chose reality over delusion. The atmosphere was intoxicating—especially knowing, as I did after years and years of higher education, that no scholar I had ever encountered would believe for a nanosecond what I just got through telling you.
    Not that I wasn’t cautioned to think twice. Fred was there to confiscate the rose-colored glasses.
    â€œDon’t get carried away,” he said. “Everyone who comes here is on his best behavior. There’s a reason for that. They’re expected to make a good impression on newcomers and stimulate exactly the reaction you seem to be having. Plus, you’re no run-of-the-mill recruit. Personages on high are interested in you. These guys are not supposed to know that, but they do. In time—who knows?—you yourself may become a personage on high. They want to please such personages. But remember where you are and what we do in this profession, and what
you’re
going to be doing. Espionage is not religion or politics, whose appeal derives from the contradiction of reality. In theory, at least, it is the enemy of moral certitude, the defender of proof. Proof is almost always just beyond reach,but it’s useful to know as much as it is possible to know. An intelligence service is authorized under the unspoken law to carry out its responsibilities by any means necessary. The fact is, intelligence services
exist
to commit crimes on foreign soil for the benefit of a government. That is their charter, their reason for being. Espionage is a criminal activity, and in every country but their own, spies are felons and worse than felons. Never forget that. What we do, what we are, deserve at least some of the skepticism this activity inspires.”
    Now he studied my face, eyes alert, smile repressed. Apparently he gleaned some fragment of my thoughts—or wanted me to think that he did. He released the smile.
    Again he said, “Thus endeth the lesson.”
    In the short time we remained together, Fred never again strayed into philosophy. My time at Moonshine Manor flew. I went forth into the world. Firearms instruction excepted, few of the clandestine techniques I learned from my teachers were of much use to me in the years that followed. They just sprayed paint on the