Spy School

“I wanted to be just like Alexander Hale. I wanted to be suave and debonair. I wanted to ‘let myself in’ to people’s homes with a gun casually tucked inside my tuxedo. I wanted to ditch undesirables, keep the world safe, and impress the heck out of Elizabeth Pasternak. I wouldn’t even have minded a rakish crossbow scar on my chin.”

This early quote lays the groundwork for one of the major themes in the novel. Though Ben wants to be just like Alexander Hale, over the course of the novel he discovers that Alexander is a fraud and learns to rely on his own unique skills and strengths to be his own spy. Ben will not achieve the same level of suave and debonair, but he will prove to be a more effective spy than Alexander anyway.

“‘Wait!’ I said. In all the excitement I’d forgotten something. ‘We’re not alone here. I came with Alexander Hale.’ I’d expected her to be relieved, maybe even thrilled. But to my surprise, she seemed irritated instead. ‘Where is he?’ ‘Outside. Fighting those snipers. I think he saved my life earlier.’ ‘I’m sure he’ll think that too,’ she said.”

This early interaction between Erica and Ben foreshadows the reveal of Alexander’s true nature and self-aggrandizing tendencies. Ben is entering the situation full of admiration for the man, but Erica’s response indicates she is disgusted and irritated by his involvement. Erica knows that Ben’s life is not actually in danger, so by suggesting that Alexander will also perceive himself as having saved Ben’s life, she is hinting at the man’s tendency to take credit for things he has not actually accomplished.

“I was also slightly confused by something the principal had said. I’d never known I had extraordinary cryptographic ability. In fact, despite my gift for math, I’d always found cryptography rather difficult. Math and logic will get you only so far with many codes; you also need to be good at wordplay. Which is why I could calculate exactly how many seconds I’d been at spy school so far (1,319) but still be stumped by the newspaper’s daily jumble on a regular basis.”

This passage provides an early clue to Ben’s role as the patsy in Operation Creeping Badger. Gibbs has included small passages like these throughout the novel that suggest something isn’t quite right at the academy. This quote is a clue that Ben’s file is not accurate and that the circumstances of his admission are not as straightforward as Alexander claimed.