A podium with a mic was situated at the front of the stage for those giving their presentations – like the auditorium in Rhodes Hall didn’t already echo like nobody’s business. Buffy cringed as she got a sudden attack of nerves while watching students begin filing into their seats for History 101, her hands wringing as she paced in the back of the theater.
Stupid Buffy, should have taken something easier… like macramé!
Spike had remained quiet on the rest of the journey towards campus and was standing uneasily behind her, studying the crowd and possible escape routes should it become necessary. He’d said nothing about what happened in the alley and she didn’t push him, feeling stress would just send him past a barrier that even he didn’t want to cross.
“Best find a seat, pet,” he whispered in her ear, pointing to a couple of chairs in the back of the auditorium that looked promising, in case he needed to make a quick get away.
She agreed, following him to the seats and sat down, keeping her hands together in her lap clamped tight to keep them from shaking. Give her a few vamps, a demon here or there… anything but this. Slayer strength, human fear… go figure.
Noticing her tremors, he lightly laid his fingers on her clenched fist. “`S okay, Slayer… just think of them in the nude. Most people do,” he assured her.
“Ugh, mental image SO not what I need.” She grimaced. “What if I flub up what you’re telling me?” she asked, panicking because the professor was approaching the podium to begin the presentations.
Without thinking of the ramifications, he leaned over and softly kissed her on the cheek, whispering, “You’ll do fine. I believe in you.”
Buffy froze. Whether from the kiss, or her earlier affirmation echoed back to her, she didn’t know. He believed in her! No one had ever said they believed in her, they just expected her to get the job done. Turning, she looked into his fathomless blue eyes and smiled.
“Thanks. I just hope I do your information justice,” she replied softly and leaned her forehead gently against his, mindful of his pain.
He grinned and patted her hand. “No worries there.”
“Since we usually start alphabetically by name for presentations, I’m going to pick at random this time to liven things up a bit,” Professor Turnipseed announced to the groaning class.
“Let’s see… Miss Buffy Summers, if you would come and make your presentation. You have twenty minutes,” the professor said loudly to the audience, searching for his student.
“Here goes nothing,” Buffy whispered as she rubbed her sweaty palms on the thighs of her jeans and moved towards the front.
Spike pulled his hood over his head and sunk low in the seat to avoid attention as he focused in on Buffy’s mind. She’s got a delectable bum, he thought, watching her climb the steps.
Faltering for moment after hearing his thought, she shook it off, not wanting him to see that his merest contemplation was audible to her.
Poor thing is deathly afraid, never seen a shade that white, except on Dru’s arse, he observed as he watched her grip the edges of the podium.
Her eyebrows rose as she coughed to cover up the fact that she had just been compared to Dru’s ass. This was going to be a long presentation.
Per Spike’s request, she’d written a little speech before she got into the nitty gritty of the subject, allowing for the vamp to gauge her speech pattern and flow to make it seem as if she were truly the one giving the presentation.
“Espionage. There are four reasons as to why people choose Espionage - loyalty, ego, money, or power. It could be for one reason, or all three. This is the story about a man who spied for ego, and he became the most damaging spy in the FBI’s history and possibly, in the history of the United States.”
That’s my girl, he reassured her as she ducked her head and smiled.
First off, the Mole, he started and she began speaking every word verbatim that crossed her mind from his.
“In February nineteen ninety-four, FBI agents arrested a thirty-year veteran of the CIA named Aldrich Ames and charged him with spying for the Soviet Union. In the nine years that Ames was a spy, he exposed more than a hundred sensitive operations and revealed the name of every CIA intelligence source in the Soviet Union… the damn bugger. Oops! Sorry… ahem,” she apologized to the class, coughing to hide her embarrassment at saying Spike’s personal thoughts on the matter. She sent a glare in his direction.
When she heard nothing, she continued. “At least ten of them were executed while many others were sent to prison. Ames was paid more than two and half million for his efforts and was promised another one point nine million, making him the highest paid double agent in history, not to mention one of the most damaging.”
“Fuckin’ prick,” Spike muttered. She arched an eyebrow, but didn’t repeat his opinion.
“Yet,” she began again. “As pleased as the FBI and CIA were to have caught Ames, disturbing signs soon began to emerge that there might be one, possibly even more moles hiding elsewhere in various US intelligence agencies. Some secrets known to have been compromised couldn’t be traced back to Ames - he simply didn’t know about them… yeah right,” she finished on a gulp.
Gripping the podium, she tried to calm down. “Both the CIA and FBI set up new mole hunting teams and set to work looking for spies. It was code named Graysuit. Each time a new suspect was identified, they were given a code name with ‘Gray’ as the prefix. It dredged up some relatively minor spies but didn’t answer the question of who was responsible for giving the two biggest intelligence secrets to the Russians… Commy bastards!”
“Miss Summers, I must ask that you refrain from inserting your personal opinions of the subject matter into the presentation,” Professor Turnipseed told her at this latest outburst.
“Sorry, professor,” she ground out as she looked in Spike’s direction, barely seeing the top of his head he was ducked so low. Stop with the comments! she directed harshly to him.
Fine, pet.
“Miss Summers?” the professor called to her, before she began again. “It seems you have a question from the audience.”
“Oh!” Don’t panic, Buffy, you can do this! “Uhm, sure, go ahead,” she said nervously.
“What were the two biggest secrets?” a student asked from the front row.
Blowing out a breath she didn’t know she was holding, she answered, “The Tunnel and The Spy. Someone told the Soviets about the secret eavesdropping Tunnel that the FBI and the NSA had dug beneath the new Soviet Embassy in Washington, DC. The Tunnel program cost more than one-hundred million dollars, but never produced a single piece of useful intelligence because the Russians were told of its existence in nineteen ninety-four - five years before they moved in,” she snickered on the last.
“And The Spy?”
“In nineteen eighty-nine, the FBI was hot on the tail of a senior US diplomat named Felix Bloch, who was suspected of spying for the KGB. Someone tipped off his handler, a KGB spy named Reino Gikman. Gikman then tipped off Bloch, blowing the FBI’s investigation before they could collect enough information to indict him. To this day, Bloch has never been charged with espionage,” she answered, sending a shy smile in Spike’s direction.
“You may continue,” the professor said absentmindedly as he went back to grading her presentation.
“Thanks. Well, they narrowed down the suspects to one man named Brian Kelley, but he was exonerated much later and lost his covert status. He still works at the CIA, teaching spy catchers how to avoid making the same mistakes that were made when he was targeted by the mole hunters,” she continued.
You’re doin’ a great job, pet, he whispered in her mind, causing her to smile brightly.
“Eventually, the FBI agreed to buy a file from a KGB officer for seven million. They hid him and his family under assumed names. One of the items in this file was a tape recorded conversation of a man quoting World War two’s General George Patton telling his troops, ‘Let’s get this over with so we can kick the shit out of the purple-pissing Japanese,’” Buffy said with a bit of shock.
“Language, Miss Summers!” Professor Turnipseed admonished. “You are not Patton and this is not the war, please omit when you can.”
“God, I’m so sorry,” she apologized, turning beet-red as she rubbed her forehead.
Sorry, pet, but that’s what he said! Spike thought in his defense.
“I know, I know,” she muttered, blowing out a frustrated breath.
“You know what?” the professor asked with a frown.
“Ah, umm… that what I… what I said was crass. I’ll try to keep it clean,” she improvised. This wasn’t going well.
“See that you do. Continue please.”
Shifting from side to side, she cleared her throat and tried to finish her report. “So the guy’s name that was always saying that was Robert Hanssen, a supervisor in the Russian analytical unit. The FBI had never suspected Hanssen of spying before, but all lingering doubt disappeared when the KGB officer who sold them Hanssen’s file began to interpret the contents,” she said, filtering out the ‘bloody wanker’ and the ‘right tosser’ that Spike had formed in her mind.
Smiling to himself, he was proud that she continued on in spite of the thoughts he tossed in to make her squirm… just a little. He had to give her credit, she was doing well under the pressure and she hadn’t left the building yet, but his mischievous side was dying for some real action. Let’s turn up the heat then, shall we?
“The investigators gave Hanssen the nickname of Grayday, and started slowly up her thighs to the juncture of her legs…” she faltered badly and stopped mid sentence.
You could hear a pin drop in the auditorium then finally a few snickers here and there floated around. Spike was doubled over; tears streaming down his cheeks as he silently laughed so hard his ribs hurt.
Buffy was mortified. She quickly glanced at her professor, who was writing furiously on her score sheet. Great, you mental house reject! I’m gonna flunk this exam! she flung at the blond vamp, who sobered instantly.
Sorry, pet, sorry. Let’s try this again, he sent apologetically.
“Um, Grayday,” she started hesitantly. “They uh, arranged for Hanssen to be promoted to a new job at the FBI, where he could be closely watched by hidden cameras. They tapped his office phone and searched his computer. When a house across the street from Hanssen was put up for sale, the FBI bought it, moved in and began watching him from there.”
The professor had stopped scribbling and was listening again. Good, maybe she wouldn’t totally bomb the test.
“After about three months of constant surveillance, on February eighteenth in two-thousand one, Hanssen was caught red handed leaving a package of computer discs and classified documents at a dead drop in Foxstone Park near his home in Vienna, Virginia. The evidence against Hanssen was overwhelming and he knew it. He confessed immediately and later plea-bargained to avoid the death penalty. Why, that double-crossing bastard!” Buffy huffed as she absorbed what Spike had told her.
“Miss Summers…” the professor warned.
“Sorry, I know. No personal comments,” she apologized. She seemed to be doing a lot of that during this presentation.
“Okay, so Hanssen admitted that he’d been spying off and on for more than twenty years. He started in nineteen seventy-nine, and quit in eighty-one when his wife caught him,” she said and then added as an aside, “A devout Catholic, she made him go to confession but never turned him in. But he started back up again in eighty-five, quit when the Soviet Union collapsed in ninety-one, then started again in ninety-nine until his arrest in two-thousand one.”
“Impressive, Miss Summers, comments aside, it sounds like you’ve done your homework,” Professor Turnipseed said with some praise. “Anything else you’d like to add?”
She glanced at the bleached vamp in the back and saw that he was nodding his head. “Yeah, Hanssen was smart enough not to tell the Russians his real name, but he was no master spy. In fact, he could have been caught years earlier if the people around him had been paying attention and doing their jobs,” she said with a touch of disgust.
“I agree. And to sum it up?” the professor asked.
“In the years that Robert Hanssen spied for the Russians, he handed over thousands of America’s most important military and intelligence secrets. He revealed the identities of scores of secret Russian sources, at least three of them executed, and he caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to American intelligence programs. But the most damaging I can think of is Hanssen also sold computer software to the Russians that allowed them to track CIA and FBI activities. Someone in Russia then sold it to Al-Qaeda, which may have been used to track the CIA’s search for Osama Bin Laden,” she finished grimly.
“And where is Hanssen now?” the professor questioned.
“Well he was supposed to cooperate with the US government but he flunked a lie detector test when he was asked ‘Have you told the truth?’ So instead of being sent to a high security prison, he was sent to a supermax prison in Florence, Colorado… where he is confined to his soundproof seven-by-twelve cell for twenty-three hours a day… and god, is she lovely,” she eepped out the last part, Spike’s personal thoughts slipping through once more.
Professor Turnipseed frowned in confusion at the most unusual report he’d ever witnessed. “Be that as it may, Miss Summers, you are excused for the rest of this class. You’ve earned your A.”
“I did?” she asked with astonishment, hoping for at least a C. She jumped for joy and ran down to hug the professor. “Thank you, thank you!” she cried as she squeezed the life out of him, literally.
Slayer, let the man breathe, Spike reminded her.
“Oh!” She backed away from the red-faced instructor. “Sorry! Don’t know my own strength.”
Running up the aisle, she was startled when looking at her seat, only to find the vamp missing. Spike? She panicked, looking over the auditorium. Relief flooded her when she felt him move within her mind.
Outside, pet, a bit too crowded… too many bodies, he explained, his voice weary with strain.
Quickly grabbing her backpack, she made her way outside to the lobby to see him fidgeting, rubbing his hands up and down his arms, and shaking. “Spike?”
“Just too temptin’, Slayer,” he admitted anxiously, nodding in the direction of the auditorium. “Needed a break.”
Nodding silently, she inclined her head to the left, indicating he was to follow her. Walking side by side, they made no idle chitchat, nor did they look at each other when she gently grasped his hand, holding it as they made their way down the corridor to another hall.
After several twists and turns, they stopped near a set of double doors as she peeked in the window at the class that was winding down, releasing her grip on his hand. “I’m here next. You can hang around campus and wait or you can go back to Giles’. It’s up to you,” she offered, seeing how tired he looked.
Too exhausted to care if his actions had any negative consequences, he took her hand and softly caressed his thumb over her knuckles, watching her skin flush. “What do you want, luv?” he whispered.
That was the million-dollar question, wasn’t it? Lulled into a stupor by Spike’s fingers on hers, she tightened her grip on his hand, hoping she could articulate the emotions swirling inside her. “I want-” she started to say but was cut short when the doors opened to allow students to exit the classroom.
“Hey, Buffy!”
Grimacing at the intrusion on her peaceful moment with Spike, she sagged upon hearing the familiar voice of the man who helped teach her psych class. “Hey, Riley,” she answered unenthusiastically.
Spike’s stiff hand was the first hint that something was off. Turning, she watched him become ramrod straight, though he shifted to stand in front of her. What’s wrong? He didn’t respond.
Wondering when Buffy would put two and two together to figure out that this thick behemoth was head of the Army team, he remained impassive as the man approached him, hand extended. “I don’t think we’ve met… Riley Finn,” he introduced himself amiably.
The century-old vamp stared him in the eyes, glancing at the hand that belonged the Commando. Buffy’s Commando. Right, then… no more running, not like he had anywhere to go. Grabbing his hand in a crushing grip that started the chip twinging, he looked at him, unflinchingly.
“Name’s Spike. We’ve met.”
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Author's Chapter Notes:
All of the facts about Robert Hanssen are true (the movie Breach was based on his career as a spy - but not accurate). According to the International Spy Museum (in Washington DC) there are 3 reasons why people spy: Money or Power, Ego, and Loyalty. If you ever get a chance to go there, I highly recommend it! And they showcase Robert Hanssen's profile. Thanks as always to Zoe, Sotia, Mary, Vara, Cordy, Jane...All I can say is I am your review whore and I would do anything for one...well...almost anything. *Oh and Rhodes Hall is an actual Hall on the Ohio State University's campus. **Any and all facts come from the series "Uncle John's Bathroom Reader" which is full of trivial knowledge!**