Girl in a Box Read Online Free

a joker,” Michael said. “That’s about the only verbal impairment I’ve noticed.”
    â€œThat’s not true!” I loved comedy in all its forms—movies, fiction, live theater.
    â€œHow many spies does it take to screw in a lightbulb?”
    â€œI mean really funny stuff, okay, not lightbulb jokes.”
    â€œCome on, Rei, how many spies does it take to screw in a lightbulb?”
    â€œDo tell,” I said sourly.
    â€œDamn, do you mean that lightbulb was one of ours ?”
    I couldn’t help snickering, but I didn’t want to dismiss the serious subject at hand: languages. “I suppose you must have a decent grounding in Japanese to be chief of the OCI Japan desk. Nihongo ga joozu desho .” I’d sarcastically used You must be skilled at Japanese , the stock phrase Japanese offered to foreigners, whether the foreigners knew two words or two thousand.
    â€œI’m not joozu at all. I went to DLI ten years ago, but that was to learn how to speak and write Hangul, because my old beats were North and South Korea. If you have any concerns with Japanese, you’ll get help from Mrs. Ikuko Taki. She’s the Japanese translator who’s going to fabricate your Waseda transcript. Later on, she’ll translate the recordings you send back.”
    â€œGreat. I can’t wait to meet her.”
    â€œI hope you like the bureau. It’s a pretty small office, because I’m the only person there, day in and out, but there is some extra space for Mrs. Taki, and a few others like you who work with us on a temporary basis.”
    I felt a tinge of nausea at having an office in Washington, the city of my failed romance. It was one of the reasons I’d so readily agreed to go to Monterey. “Where is the bureau exactly—did you tell me Foggy Bottom?”
    â€œThat’s the seat of the State Department, OCI’s cover address,” Michael said. “We really work in Pentagon City. You’ll be staying at one of the furnished condo units we have in a building a few blocks away. I figured if you were close by, I could work you harder. You know, late nights, weekends…”
    â€œHa,” I said as we parked the car at the rental drop-off. Then, after a quick trip through security, it was a walk out on the tarmac to an alarmingly small dark gray plane decorated with a number, but no name. Everyone on the plane except Michael and myself was in uniform.
    â€œWhere did those guys in camouflage come from? I’ve never seen them at DLI,” I muttered as Michael steered me toward the remaining vacant seats near the tail end of the military jet.
    â€œThey’re marines based at Camp Pendleton, and I imagine that their facial expressions have something to do with the fact they were detoured here just to pick the two of us up.” He held out a Dunkin’ Donuts bag to me and said in a louder voice, “Have one!”
    I took a plain sugar doughnut—reluctantly, because the last thing I’d eaten was cookies the night before. I don’t care for empty calories, especially in the morning. I whispered back in his ear, “I can’t believe you dressed up for this.”
    Michael finished chewing his own selected doughnut—raspberry jelly—before answering. “Rumor had it that the secretary of the navy, who’s in the Bay Area, might have been flying back east today. If that had been the case, the hop could have been on that Learjet I came out on yesterday. This C-140 is a very safe plane, but the seating’s not the greatest.”
    Yes, it was a shame about the seating, and also about the toilet smell, which gradually began to seep out after about thirty minutes’ flying time. But most of all, I was slaughtered by the noise—a roaring sound of engines barreling straight out of Hades. Even my iPod playing Death Cab for Cutie couldn’t completely drown out the racket the plane was