Once Upon a Spy (Humorous Cozy Mystery) (4 page)

“Enough already!” he roared, slapping the table with his palm.

“Ouch. That must hurt,” said Yvonne as she watched him wince.

“You two are without a doubt the most skilled agents I’ve ever seen. To my knowledge, no one has ever beaten Sodium Pentothal before. The fact that you did, tells me all I need to know.”

“Uh-huh.” She knew the ax was about to fall, and she braced herself.

Matt fixed her with a stern gaze. “Yvonne Assenheimer and Izzy Superczyński?” Suddenly his face creased into a wide smile. “I would like to formally request you to join the operation in full employ.”

Yvonne managed a feeble smile. “Join? The CIA?”

“A division of the CIA, to be precise,” murmured Frank.

Matt gave her a grin. “We are ASS. Actionable Secrets Service. More intelligent than the CIA. More secure than the NSA. More investigative than the FBI. More, um, homely than the DHS. We are the cream of the crop. The best of the best.” His smile widened. “And we’d be honored to welcome you two remarkable ladies on board.”

Yvonne didn’t hide her confusion. “Change jobs?”

Joe’s smile remained firmly in place. “Not just change jobs. Working for the ASS is not just a job. It’s a calling!”

“Uh-huh,” she said dubiously. She gestured at the syringes still lying on the table. “What about the vaccination? You’re telling me you’re not working for the Department of Sanitation?”

Behind her, Izzy squeaked, “They’re not?”

Joe’s smile lost some of its wattage. “We’re not. We’re with the ASS.”

Yvonne frowned dubiously. “The ASS. Right.” She let her eyes roam around the room. “Iz? I think I got it. We’re being punked!”

“Oh, you guys!”

Yvonne gave a short laugh. “Come out, come out, wherever you are! Come on, you guys. Show yourselves!”

Matt pursed his lips and steepled his fingers. “You’re not being punked. This is an ASS facility. We took you here because you were interfering with an ASS operation.”

“Right. As if any agency would voluntarily call itself ASS. Good one, Hottie Matt.”

Matt closed his eyes. “Please stop referring to me as Hottie Matt.”

Frank gave his colleague a nudge. “They’re playing hard to get. I think you should up the ante.”

“How much do you make at the Department of Sanitation?”

Yvonne eyed him dubiously. “Well, this year I should net about 34,000?”

“We’ll double it.”

Yvonne’s jaw dropped. “Double our salary?”

“Now I’m sure we’re being punked, V. I bet it’s your brothers.”

Yvonne grinned. “I bet you’re right. Albert, Archibald, Bert, Cornelius, Ernest, Irving, Randall, Theodore! Come out now!”

Brian shook his head. “I told you they were good.”

Matt grunted. “We’ll triple it!”

Yvonne frowned at the man. He did appear dead serious. For the first time, a hint of doubt started niggling at her consciousness. If they weren’t being punked, were these guys for real? Were they really offering them a job? At triple their current salary?

“Look, you guys. I don’t think you know what you’re doing. We’re sanwomen. We don’t do…” She gestured at the three of them. “… this. Whatever this is. We keep the streets clean.”

Matt inclined his head. “So do we.”

“We take out the trash.”

“Just like us.”

“We get up before the crack of dawn and do the dirty work so others can sleep in peace and live their lives, never knowing we’re even out there.”

“I know you do. And that’s why we’re offering you the chance to join our team. Help us save American lives—keep this country safe from harm.” He eyed her stonily. “It’d be an honor and a privilege to welcome you on board.”

Yvonne sighed. How could she refuse Hottie Matt anything? The man was smoking! “Pops won’t like it.”

Matt shrugged. “Well. Pops will just have to accept the fact that you’ve moved on to greener pastures.”

“What do you say, Iz?”

“I say let’s do it.”

“I have one request, though.”

“Anything.”

“Could you please remove these handcuffs? They’re killing me.”

***

Brian excused himself and walked over to the long corridor connecting the interrogation room with the rest of the compound. The structure was but one of several the ASS utilized across the country, but to him, usually stationed in New York, it was home.

He quickly covered the distance to his office, and entered it in a hurry. He could hardly suppress his excitement at the turn events had taken. When Matt had triggered his subcutaneous distress button, the emergency procedure had immediately been kicked into gear, and a rescue team sent out.

He’d personally run point on the mission, and had been more than a little surprised when the threat to seasoned pros Matt and Frank had turned out to be two garbagewomen.

Suspecting foul play, they’d bundled them up and hauled them to headquarters for interrogation. The operation to catch the traitor Grant had already been faced with setback after setback, and it was simply too much of a coincidence to find the Assenheimer and Superczyński women on the scene when they did.

Grant was spying for some foreign power, possibly the Russians, most probably the Chinese, so it was immediately assumed the two women were operatives working in concert with this foreign nation.

It hadn’t taken them long to figure out they were exactly what they appeared to be: two sanitation workers, in the wrong place at the wrong time. And it had taken Brian even less time to see this for what it was: a golden opportunity.

Convincing Matt that Assenheimer and Superczyński were in fact master spies working for a rival agency had been a stroke of genius. It wasn’t difficult to persuade his boss. Joe’s male ego was still smarting from the knockout blows he’d sustained at the hands of the fattest of the two. And Frank, who seemed to have the hots for the skinny one, had been even easier to get on board.

The CIA, he’d reasoned, was trying to steal the ASS’s thunder, and the only way to get back at them, was by stealing their best operatives away from them.

He’d read in Assenheimer’s DSNY personnel file that her IQ was off the charts, in the negative sense, and so was Superczyński’s. With these two on board, ASS would suffer critical failure, until the fledgling new agency would have to be scrapped.

He picked up his cell, and placed a call to his contact.

“Marquis? I think I’ve found a way to destroy ASS from within.” He proceeded to explain to the other what had transpired, and was gratified to hear the Marquis’s wholehearted endorsement for the operation.

“Assenheimer and Superczyński. Yes. Sanitation workers.” His lips curled up into a smile at the guffaw sounding over the phone. “Yes, sir. I thought it was rather ingenious myself.”

He listened for a moment, and stared out the window at the drab scenery right outside his window: the dead wall of some old factory. “Judging from the women’s performance, I’d say three weeks. Tops.” He smiled. “Absolutely, sir. They won’t know what hit them.”

Matt took another glance at the file Brian had just sent him. “Amazing,” he murmured. He scrolled through the document. “Simply amazing.”

Yvonne Assenheimer had not only singlehandedly toppled three dictatorships in the last three years, she’d also managed to take out fifteen terrorists, expose five spy rings and thwart no less than sixteen terrorist attacks on US soil. The woman was a hero!

He looked up when Frank trotted in and eased himself into the opposing chair.

“Listen to this,” he said. “Izzy Superczyński was the youngest field agent ever to be approved for active duty. Before her first year was up, she’d already successfully prevented two assassination attempts on foreign heads of state, taken down five terrorism networks and managed to stop a bombing targeting the Pillsbury Doughboy.”

Frank raised his brows at this little piece of intel. “Somebody wanted to blow up the Pillsbury Doughboy?”

“I don’t doubt it for a second. It’s like blowing up the Eiffel Tower.”

“Holy moly.” A look of worship came into Frank’s eyes.

Matt leaned back in his chair and displayed a wide grin. “I think we just executed a master stroke, buddy, by bringing these two into the fold. They’re not simply the best of the best. They’re the best of the best of the best. And by a wide margin at that.”

Frank surprised him by expelling a wistful sigh. “She’s wonderful, isn’t she?”

“Who is?”

“Izzy, of course. I’ve never seen a prettier girl in my life, Matt.”

“She’s not too bad-looking, sure. A bit skinny for my taste, but—”

“I think she’s simply wonderful.”

“You sound like a man in love, buddy. Better watch it.” He tapped his computer screen. “The girl is deadly. According to this file, she can kill a man simply by laying her pinky finger on him.”

“I wish she would lay her pinky finger on me.”

“Look, Frank, as your superior officer it is my duty to inform you that interoffice relationships are strictly frowned up within the ASS.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“And as your friend it is also my duty to inform you that this girl?” He jabbed at the screen. “Is
way
out of your league.”

Frank heaved another sigh. “Trust me—I know.” He raised his melancholy gaze. “What about you, Hottie Matt. Any comments on one Assenheimer Yvonne? Or the fact she kicked your ass? Three times in a row?”

Matt groaned at the recollection. “It won’t happen again. If she so much as frowns at me, I promise you, I’ll—”

“Take another beating?”

“If I’d known this morning what I know now, I wouldn’t have underestimated her. This is a one-woman fighting machine we’re talking about.”

“Who has the hots for you.”

“She was taunting me, Frank. I don’t know how she did it, but she managed to beat the needle, for Christ’s sakes! She knew exactly what she was doing the entire time. She was playing with us. Some kind of sick, psychological mind game.”

“So you don’t think she’s got the hots for you?” Frank seemed disappointed.

“Of course not. She was simply challenging my authority.”

“But you like her, right? I saw the way you were looking at her.”

“I don’t! Like her, I mean.” He gingerly touched his damaged snout. “I respect her. I admire her. But apart from that? I have absolutely no feelings for her whatsoever.”

“Right.”

Frank sounded dubious, and Matt couldn’t blame him. In spite of the fact that the woman had kicked his ass three times, and had made a fool of him during the interrogation, he couldn’t deny she was one hot mama. He’d never liked the skinny types. For him a woman had to have curves, and there was no denying that Yvonne Assenheimer was all curves all over. The moment the thought entered his mind, he blocked it. He so didn’t want to go there. He hadn’t been lying when he’d told Frank the ASS frowned upon interoffice relationships.

Besides, he was pretty sure she hated his guts. Why else would she kick him up and down the alley?

Suddenly a thought struck him. “You know what’s weird? Yvonne and Izzy are at the top of their game, right? The best of the best of the best?”

“Uh-huh.”

“So why let us capture them? I mean, they kicked our asses pretty good, right? And then suddenly they allow themselves to be carted off to HQ and interrogated?”

Frank rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Hadn’t thought about it that way. Good point, Matt. Why, indeed?”

“Unless they
wanted
to get caught. Which would explain why they were on the scene in the first place.”

“But why would they want to get caught?”

Matt narrowed his eyes at the file on his computer. “The only thing I can think of? They’re here to take a long, hard look at our operation.” He nodded, seeing the whole picture now. The ASS was fairly new, and operating under the wide umbrella of the CIA for the time being. “You know? I bet this is just another way for Harridan to keep track of what we’re doing down here.”

“Harridan? You think she’s behind this?”

Kathleen Harridan was the person overseeing the ASS. CIA brass, she’d personally designed the program and pushed its inception through the channels. She had a lot riding on this, so it stood to reason she wouldn’t suffice with their weekly meetings and Joe’s daily reports, but would want to have eyes on the ground as well.

He tapped the screen. “I bet Harridan maneuvered Assenheimer and Superczyński into ASS as her personal eyes and ears.” He sat up a little straighter. “Buddy? I think we need to be on our best behavior around those two from now one. Everything we say or do goes straight to the top of the chain of command.”

“Great,” commented Frank wryly. “So Izzy’s definitely off-limits, huh?”

Matt gave a determined nod. “Most definitely. And so is Yvonne. From now on, we’re doing everything by the book. No more improv, all right?”

“By the book. Right,” muttered Frank, looking disappointed.

“We’re going to show Harridan we’re running this operation the best way possible.”

And to emphasize his point, he slammed the desk with his fist, making Frank jump two feet in the air.

“I don’t know, Iz. I still think they’re pulling our leg.”

“But why? Why would they do that? No, I think they’re giving us a real opportunity here. An opportunity to shine. An opportunity for greatness. And an opportunity to put our best foot forward for Uncle Sam.”

Yvonne snorted. “Puh-lease. We’re garbagewomen, hon. No one expects anything from us that cannot be contained within a black plastic bag and smells to doggie doo or puke. It’s what we do.”

Izzy shrugged and popped another French fry into her mouth. Yvonne would never be able to understand how a girl that thin could eat whatever she wanted and get away with it.

They were seated in the downstairs eating area of their local McDonald’s, the place they usually flocked to after work. And since their working day ended early, they often had the restaurant to themselves. Today, since it wasn’t even nine o’clock yet, they had the breakfast crowd to contend with.

Matt had given them the rest of the day off. Said he was going to get in touch with the Sanitation Department and arrange everything so they could start their new working lives the following day without any worries.