Read Spy School for Free Online

disappointment. “There must be some good assignments. Alexander Hale doesn’t look like he’s doing much grunt work.”
    “Yeah, there’s maybe one or two cherry jobs. But those are for the cream of the crop. If you want to join the rat race here, busting your butt for the next six years trying to prove yourself, be my guest. But you’re not gonna come out on top. She is.” Murray gestured behind me with his fork.
    I knew whom he was pointing at even before I turned around.
    I’d noticed Erica the moment I’d come in. She was the only student sitting alone, although her exile appeared self-imposed. Every guy in the mess looked like he wanted to be chatting up Erica; every girl looked like she wished they were friends. But Erica was immune to all of it. She had her nose in a textbook, apparently uninterested in anything—or anyone—else. Given my brief encounter with her, however, I suspected her aloofness was a front; Erica was probably well aware of every single thing going on in the mess at that moment, if not on the entire campus.
    “She’s the best student here?” I asked. “She doesn’t look much older than us.”
    “She’s not. She’s only a third year. But technically, she’s been at this a lot longer than the rest of us. Seeing as she’s a legacy.”
    I turned back to Murray, about to ask why.
    “That’s Erica Hale ,” he explained.
    Understanding descended on me. “She’s Alexander’s daughter?!”
    “Not to mention granddaughter of Cyrus Hale, great-granddaughter of Obadiah Hale, great-great-granddaughter of Ulysses Hale, and so on. Going all the way back to her great-great-great-great-granddaddy, none other than Nathan Hale himself. Her family’s been spying for the United States since before there was a United States. If anyone’s graduating into the elite forces, it’s her.”
    “So you’re not even gonna try?”
    Murray shoved his second empty spaghetti bowl aside and dug into dessert, which was green Jell-O with unidentifiable objects suspended in it. “I used to be like you, back when I first got here. I was as gung-ho a Fleming as you’ve ever seen. But then one day in the middle of my second semester, I’m in the gym here, learning how to fend off an attacker with a machete, when I have this epiphany about becoming a field agent: People try to kill field agents. Onthe other hand, very few people ever try to kill the guys who work at headquarters.”
    “Hold on,” I said. “You want a desk job?”
    “Absolutely. You work nine to five, get a nice place in the burbs, put in your thirty years, and retire with a big old government pension. Who gives a fig if it’s not glamorous? Give me mundane and safe over glamorous and dead any day.”
    I had to admit, Murray had a point. And yet I still felt that if I worked really hard, someday I could be as good as Erica—and once I was, I’d be very hard to kill.
    “Of course, you can’t let the administration think you want to be a desk jockey.” Murray polished off his Jell-O with one long slurp. “They’ll bounce you for not being with the program. You’ve got to make it look good, like you’re trying to be a field agent, but you just don’t quite have the chops. Now, trying to be bad isn’t easy . . . although it is easier than actually trying to be good.”
    “Why are you telling me all this?”
    “What do you mean?”
    I waved around the room at all the clumps of students. “Have you shared this wisdom with everyone else? Why’d you save me from Chip?”
    “No, I haven’t told everyone this,” Murray admitted. “Though I’ve tried to tell some, to no avail. As I said, I was like you once. On track to have a miserable school life, followedby a miserable work life. But someone pulled me aside and showed me the light. That guy’s now a successful desk jockey in the Paris bureau with a hot French girlfriend and a long, happy life ahead of him. I’m merely paying it forward. As for Chip, well . . . simply put,