I present myself to the administrative, a middle-aged woman with a jacket over her uniform with a certain insolence in her smile. She has two stacks of folders in front of her. Some blue, tagged, some black, unnamed. "Secret Service Intern?" She—she asks me.—What is that? I ask, and she smiles. "If you were, you'd know," she says, handing me a folder. It's blue. Where's the interesting part, right? "So to speak," he replies. Do you see the size of the car parks on the way? All those thousands of people access these buildings every day with one goal: to fulfill them, she says as she taps on the black folders. Whether it is to ensure their safe transfer to a foreign destination, or avoid being eliminated when they are on duty, or analyze the information they send us. They are the tip of the spear. The rest of us are just old wood.
She laughs and leads me outside to the central courtyard, which is reached through the glass window at the top of the stairs. On the walls are flags from Eastern Bloc states, which dissidents brought down as they demanded freedom. At the end of a corridor is a vehicle behind a cordoned off area, cut in half to show the hidden compartment agents used to smuggle refugees across the Berlin Wall. it fades as I walk through the corridors in which the echo resonates, with photographs of war, peace, and history. Every twenty meters or so we passed through a large metal gate with a combination lock instead of a latch. We finally stop at one.
“Well, Miss New Girl, we're here. Southeast Asia Division. Your section chief will guide you from now on.
He opens the door to a kind of giant vault room, full of desks and the noise coming from keyboards. My new boss is waiting, a friendly, intelligent-looking, bearded man in corduroy pants and wool socks. He appears to be close to retirement.
He explains to me that we're in a place called SCIF, a sensitive classified information office from which no material can leave without prior authorization. "That includes the cafeteria," he says. He remembers, even if everyone has clearance, they can't see the same thing as you, and vice versa. If you're staying for lunch in the cafeteria, your lunch conversations had better be about your love life. And since no one has time for that, you may prefer to eat here.
