Once Upon a Spy (Humorous Cozy Mystery) (8 page)

“You know? I’m starting to think there’s something really, really wrong here.” Matt sniffed the air. “Something stinks, Frank.”

Frank wiggled his nose and inhaled sharply. “You sure? I don’t smell it.”

Matt ground his teeth. “Speaking figuratively here, Frank. Stay with me on this, all right?”

Frank blinked. “Okay, Matt.”

“Where did this intel come from in the first place?”

Frank’s brow furrowed as he thought about this. “Um. Izzy?” He jumped when Matt slammed the desk again.

“Exactly! So what does that tell us?”

“Um… That even top agents can make mistakes?”

“No! That she’s a nutcase!”

“But, chief,” sputtered Frank. “She’s a highly decorated field agent. Best of the best of the best. And all that.”

Matt steepled his fingers, and jabbed his index fingers into the hollow beneath his chin, a process that sometimes enabled him to think things through. “I wonder, Frank.”

“Wonder? Wonder what, chief?”

“Wonder if all those years out there taking down the scum of the world hasn’t damaged those two beyond repair.”

“Damaged? Damaged how?”

“I’m not discounting the fact that Yvonne and Izzy are top agents. But sometimes even the best can crack under the strain. Could it be—and I’m just spit-balling here so bear with me—but could it be that those two are really damaged goods? And the only reason they’ve been assigned to us is to get rid of them? A graceful golden handshake for two great assets?”

Frank shook his head. “Gee, boss, I really don’t think so. I mean, if you see what Yvonne did this morning—taking down that Fatik singlehandedly. That doesn’t strike me as the work of a woman who’s at the end of her game.”

“Mh… Then how do you explain the coffee machine?”

“I think we need to have it rechecked. If Izzy says there’s a bug inside that thing, I’m sure there is a bug inside that thing.”

Matt rubbed his chin, then heaved a weary sigh. “Very well. I’ll have it shipped to the lab.”

Frank’s face lit up. “Thank you.” He quickly rose to his feet. “You won’t regret it, Matt. I have the greatest confidence in our two new assets. The greatest confidence.”

After Frank had left, Matt still sat staring in front of him with unseeing eyes, replaying the movie of the past events in his head. Yvonne taking out that Fatik guy. Yvonne shooting the hell out of that coffee machine. That woman definitely was a force to be reckoned with. The way she’d tipped over that dumpster. Incredible piece of work. He couldn’t deny experiencing a tremor of excitement when he watched her at work.

Focused, undeterred, unafraid of anyone or anything… He had to admit he liked her. Liked her a lot, in fact. He’d never been one to fall for a colleague. They were here to get the job done, and developing feelings for a fellow agent was simply bad procedure. It distracted you from the work, made you lose focus, and generally turned a great agent into a bumbling fool.

But he couldn’t deny the stirrings of something deep and tender when he watched her shoot the crap out of that coffee machine. The way she fired round after round… A sudden urge to ask her out to the gun range swept over him. He suppressed it. Allowing his heart to interfere with his work was simply too dangerous.

He rose to his feet and shook his hands, in an attempt to rid himself of these unwanted emotions. But no matter how hard he tried to stomp down on his heart’s desires, that still little voice inside kept piping up.

How would she look with safety goggles? Or handling an assault rifle? Or better yet, how would she look with her hands clasped around the cold, hard steel of a mortar shell? Or those strong fingers pulling the pin from a grenade? He shivered with anticipation.

Oh, God. He was in big trouble, wasn’t he?

To escape those unwanted feelings, he plunked down in his chair once again, and stabbed at the space bar to wake up his PC. He’d started typing a report about that morning’s events to Kathleen Harridan but then the coffee machine incident had waylaid him.

He was just opening the file when his phone rang.

“Halloran.”

“Harridan. We need to meet, Matt. Face to face.”

“Time? Place?”

“Fortune Tower. Now.”

She disconnected and Matt sat staring at his phone for a moment. Fortune Tower? National Park? Why would she want to meet there?

He shrugged, knowing better than to question the sanity of his superiors, and switched off his PC. As he was slipping into his jacket, he suddenly got an idea. Why didn’t he ask Yvonne to join him? They could case the park, practice some counter-espionage moves, and he could introduce her to Harridan.

With an annoyed grunt, he quickly dismissed the idea. “Keep this up, Matt, and you’ll be watching Hugh Grant movies next.”

And with a final look around his office, he strode out, slamming the door behind him.

Yvonne sat nursing her water bottle and staring at the screen. Frank’s voice droned on and on and she was having a hard time staying awake. For the last two hours, they’d been cooped up in the compound’s conference room for their first session of instruction on all things ASS.

“So you see, the technology led us to set up this operation as no one else would see the merits.” The gangly agent swung his pointer at the whiteboard and tapped it smartly on a picture of some blonde babe. “Kathleen Harridan breathed life into this project when no one else would. She is, therefore, a true visionary.”

Visionary or not, Yvonne had a hard time keeping her eyes open. She gave Izzy a light shove, which made her friend’s head bob, almost hitting the table. She was clearly suffering from the same boredom issues as Yvonne.

“Ugh?” she muttered, and licked her lips.

“You think we could still get our old jobs back?”

“Why? You wanna bail out?”

“Come on, Iz. This is soooo boring!”

“Now we come to the technology that lays at the heart of ASS,” Frank intoned, unaware that the attention of his audience was slipping. With a swing of his hand, he tapped a key on his laptop, and a new slide appeared on the whiteboard. It depicted Tom Cruise.

Yvonne and Izzy awoke with a start.

“Movie?” mumbled Yvonne.

“Mission Impossible?” muttered Izzy.

“I’m sure you’ve all seen the Tom Cruise movie where he runs an agency that can prevent crimes that haven’t been committed yet?”

Izzy held up her hand eagerly. “Oh, I know! I know! Um, um—Jerry Maguire!” She blinked at Frank and held her hand to her heart. “You complete me.”

Frank eyed her strangely. “N-n-not exactly. Try again?”

“I know!” cried Yvonne. “Risky Business! I love that movie!”

“I, erm, not exactly, Yvonne, but I appreciate the enthusiasm. No, the movie I’m talking about is Minority Report? With the three naked people in the hot tub having visions? Doesn’t ring a bell?”

Yvonne and Izzy stared at him blankly, then Izzy frowned. “Was there a love story in that one?”

“I…” Frank raised his gaze to the ceiling, then slowly shook his head. “I don’t think so, Izzy.”

“Then I don’t think I’ve seen it.”

Yvonne eyed the screen sullenly. “Me, neither.”

Frank’s mouth opened and closed, then he snapped out of it, and tapped the screen. “Anyway. In the movie, a crime agency has been created that can foresee crimes and intervene before they ever happen. The story, set in the near future, proclaims that a society without crime is entirely feasible.” He smiled. “I know what you’re thinking.”

Izzy raised her hand.
 

“Izzy?”

“Why are they naked, Frank?”

“Yeah, my question exactly. Why are they naked with Tom Cruise?”

“Well, they’re not naked
with
Tom Cruise, exactly. I mean, Tom Cruise is in the control room, while the naked people are in a kind of Jacuzzi in a different part of the building.”

“Oh.” Izzy looked disappointed. She shook her head. “What are you saying, Frank? That you want us… to be naked in a Jacuzzi?”

Frank swallowed as he stared at Izzy, the word picture she’d drawn having a strong effect on him. “I, erm, no. To be absolutely honest, not exactly. We don’t want you… to get… naked, Izzy.”

“Oh.”

Yvonne shook her head. “I don’t get it. You’re saying we can prevent crime by being naked. In a hot tub? With Tom Cruise?”

“Without Tom Cruise, V. Frank said that Tom Cruise was never in the hot tub with the naked people. They were all alone in there.”

“Which still doesn’t answer the question why they have to be naked in the first place.”

Frank looked positively flustered now. “I-I-I think it had something to do with—” He struggled for words, then finally gave up. “I don’t know. I don’t know why they’re naked in the tub.” He frowned. “Good question, though.”

Izzy directed her doe-eyed gaze at the instructor and cocked her head. “If you want me to be naked in the tub, Frank, I don’t mind, you know. I’m willing to do whatever it takes to keep America safe.”

“Me, too,” agreed Yvonne. Though she didn’t much enjoy taking her clothes off in public, she’d never met a Jacuzzi she hadn’t agreed with. “Anything for the cause, right?”

“R-right,” echoed Frank, looking quite flustered as his gaze darted from Izzy to Yvonne and back. He inserted a finger between his collar, and pulled. Then he straightened his back. “Right! So! We’ve developed a computer program that can actually predict when a crime is being committed. More or less.”

“Oh, goodie!” squeaked Izzy.

“Yes, well, there’s still some quirks, of course. I mean, we’re still very much in beta stage.”

Yvonne hadn’t really understood the naked people gag, but this last bit of information surprised and excited her. “You know when a crime is going to take place? But that’s amazing!”

Frank cleared his throat and displayed a slight smile. “Well, like I said, it doesn’t work like it should, but we’re quite confident that, in the end, the project will provide us with quite an advantage over the criminal classes.”

Izzy planted her elbows on the desk, and leaned her chin on her hands, giving Frank her undivided attention. “How does it work exactly, Frank?”

“Well, we feed the software every possible morsel of information we can possibly find. CCTV feeds, criminal records, cell phone tracking, raw internet data, financial transactions… We’re pretty much tapped into every possible resource every possible agency in every possible country on the face of the earth has to offer. All this intel is fed into a humongous computer, and the algorithms do the rest. You’d be amazed how much of our daily lives is being monitored.”

Yvonne raised her eyebrows. “So you’re telling me you know everything about everybody everywhere… all the time?”

Frank nodded eagerly. You could tell he was proud of this invention. “Yep. That sounds about right.”

“So why is ASS running after this Grant fellow? Can’t you just, you know, run him through that computer of yours and find out everything you need to know? Why hide in garbage dumpsters and stuff?”

“Ah! Excellent question. The thing is, for this program to work, we need to have absolute secrecy. No one can find out this software even exists or else people will start building defense systems to thwart its probing. You see?”

Izzy frowned and crinkled her nose. “And Hugh Grant is trying to do… what exactly?”

“
Oswin
Grant works for the Department of Defense, and for some reason knows more about ASS than anyone else on this planet. And what’s more, when we run him through the system, we come up empty-handed. Which is quite impossible, since he’s been selling secrets to the Goriamanese. So we’re very much afraid that somehow the men he’s working for have managed to obtain information about the system, and have discovered a way to thwart its efficacy.” He held up his hands. “Well, it’s either that or… the software is faulty. And as long as we don’t know which is which, we can’t really launch.”

Yvonne closed her eyes as she tried to process this information. “So you’re telling me this Grant fellow knows something he’s not supposed to know, and since you don’t know why he knows what he knows, or what it is he knows, you know that whatever he knows and wherever he knows it from means your ASS has sprung a leak?”

Frank’s smile widened, and he pointed a finger at her. “Exactly. Well put, Yvonne.”

Izzy turned to her with a confused grin on her face. “Could you repeat that, V? In English this time? Why has Frank’s ass sprung a leak, exactly?”

Before Yvonne had the chance to explain, a red alert flashed on Frank’s computer screen and the whiteboard, and their instructor looked up in surprise. Tapping a few keystrokes, he frowned. “Uh-oh.”

“Uh-oh, what?”

Frank stared at Yvonne. “Uh-oh, something’s going down. The system has just churned out a warning.” When his gaze only met blank stares, he explained, “It means a crime is about to be committed. Possibly. Since the system’s integrity can’t be vouched for until we clear up the Grant enigma, we can’t be sure.” His gaze swiveled back to the screen, and he tapped a few more keys, then blanched. “Oh, no!” He looked up. “The victim! It-it’s… Matt!”

Matt decided to walk the distance to the park. He needed time to clear his head. These confusing feelings he was having since Yvonne Assenheimer had walked into his life needed to be addressed. If he was going to function as ASS’s leader, he needed to work through the turmoil that had taken possession of his heart.

Why was it that a woman who’d managed to kick his ass four times in the space of twenty-four hours had made such a strong impression on him? Before today, he’d never given any woman more than five minutes of his attention. He liked women, of course, but never had anyone crept so deeply under his skin. He’d gone on the occasional date, and had even been pretty serious about a girl way back in college, before his work had taken prevalence over his personal life.

As he stepped out into the October chill, drawing the lapels of his coat closer to his body, he felt the vague discomfort of a man who’s got something on his mind and simply can’t get rid of it.

You know what? He’d ask her out on a date, that’s what he’d do. He’d get to know her a little better, and from experience, he knew that would settle it. He’d had crushes before, usually on women he hardly knew. And once he got to know them, those feelings quickly evaporated. It was a physical thing, and once he talked to these women, he quickly saw they were nothing like he’d imagined, and the infatuation disappeared like snow on a hot summer day.