It is not easy to introduce myself.  It is even harder

        to explain why I took the road that I did.

                A psychiatrist would tell you that my life was

        determined in its formative years and that I am simply the

        result of my upbringing.  But that would be wrong.

        I am responsible for the things I have done and the many things

        I have left undone.   And I am determined to confront my failing

        head-on rather than make excuses for them.

                I can tell you that as a young man I was absolutely

        mystified about which way to go in my life.   The only thing I

        knew for sure was that I loved puzzles and mysteries and that I

        was especially fascinated by secrets.   Like many boys, I often

        took the long way home--through back alleys and backyards,

        stopping to eavesdrop on wives and listen to old winos in their

        cardboard dens--and I always lied to my parents about where I 

        had been.   From as early as I can remember there seemed to be a 

        clandestine fellow inside me who delighted in deceptions and 

        was ready to choose a devious way even when a straight one was 

        easier.   That is the path I ultimately chose. 

             The story I will tell here is about some of the choices I 

        made.   My intention is not to manufacture disguises but finally 

        to remove them.   The only exception is the name I will give 

        you, Peter Gaines.   Everything else is factual and straight. 

             Before I begin, I should tell you that less than a month 

        ago I was dismissed from a certain government organization.

        It is the same organization that nearly everyone agrees is 

        indispensable to our national security, yet too secretive, too 

        deceitful, and generally out of control.   And I assure you that 

        it is out of control.   Even the paper pushers back at 

        headquarters.   I know they see themselves as upright citizens 

        who park in their assigned stalls, arrive at their desks on 

        time, and tuck their children in at night, but they are part of 

        it all.   And the many agent handlers in the field who think 

        they are doing the best job they can.   They are part of it too. 

        I do not blame them completely.   I know all the arguments that 

        make it seem as if there is no black and white, no right and 

        wrong.   For me too the world had become a vast blanket of gray, 

        where I used lesser evils to overcome greater ones.   I had no 

        idea how far that thinking would eventually lead me. 

             But regardless of what I disclose here and what people I've 

        worked with may think of me after they've read this, I want to 

        make it clear that it is not my intention to betray any 

        personal secrets or to break our special confidences.   What I 

        will disclose is mostly against myself and a particular 

        operation I tolerated.   Its code name was Fantasy Plan, and at 

        one point it included a seventeen-year-old girl named Songkha 

        Chattkatavong.   I called her Song. 
	
             The first time I saw her, my life changed in a second. 
	
        Just to think of her now, and I see it over again in my mind. 
	
             "This new girl's unique," Leamer said to me.   "She's unused 

        and insolent, a real fighter," he added with delight.   "We got 

        plans for her.   She's a special order for someone we've 

        targeted.   She'll get us invaluable access." 

             The next day on the monitor I watched him bring Songkha 

        into the interview room.   Dressed in dark peasant clothes, her 

        body was slender, and there was a deep shine of black hair that 

        fell below her shoulders in front and back.   But she was barely 

        a woman at all, her breasts still maturing. 

             There was a jump in reality, a skip on a record, and I 

        thought of my sister, Beth, when she was younger and just 

        developing.   Yes, it was sixteen-year-old Beth standing there 

        with that same look of hurt.   Or was it shy Wendy Morris, who 

        lived next door to me when I was growing up?   Or Rachel Adams, 

        who sat behind me in math class and slipped me notes with 

        little red hearts on them? 

             I wanted to get up and adjust the picture or change the 

        channel or just make it all go away by turning off the monitor. 

        I closed my eyes and reopened them, but she was still there 

        with that same look--Beth, Wendy, Rachel, Songkha.   Each of 

        them at the fine line between girl and woman. 

             I shrank back.   Nausea rippled through me. 

             Leamer gazed up at the camera and smiled at me through the 

        monitor, a see-what-I-mean smile.   "Tomorrow she's all yours," 

        he said to me through the monitor.   "Be sure to get what we need." 
	
             And now, for the sake of the record, as well as for my own 

        memory, I have to untangle what happened.   It is a report of 

        madness and dreams and of my own deeds which now seem 

        incomprehensible to me.   I need to lay out these deeds and look 

        at them clearly because events have shown me how inventive 

        memory can be, how we twist the truth to suit our desires and 

        justify what we have done.   But there is no justification for 

        how obsessed I became with Song.

             In spite of the urgency that Operation Fantasy Plan be

        widely known, by necessity I must explain the beginning, or it

        will make no sense to you at all.  It all began in Monterey,

        California, at the Branscomb Institute for International Business.

        I was much younger then, eighteen years younger.  But I can

        still remember the lecturer's first words: "The name of the game

        is and always has been A-C-C-E-S-S."