Spy Mom (22 page)

Barry walks with a slight stoop, something that might belong to a man in his eighties. His dark hair is already wispy and thinning at the top. Clearly, he belongs to the school of obsessive academics too engrossed in his work to actually feed himself; his slightly dirty jeans hang low on his hips, revealing a heart-patterned pair of boxer shorts that I can only imagine came from Chloe. He is chattering away intensely on his cell phone, head down, brows furrowed. The stress follows behind him like a trail of dust. On his heavily loaded backpack is a carabiner. On the carabiner are keys and entry cards.

It's easy to take something from someone who isn't expecting it. They're going along, thinking that the world is one way, when really it isn't that way at all. As Barry passes me, I stick out my foot and trip him. He goes down hard on his face. His cell phone flies out of his hand and hits the sidewalk. The battery lands somewhere in the grass. The overstuffed backpack crashes to the ground, its contents scatter into the flower beds.

“Oh my God, I'm so sorry,” I gush. “Here, let me help you. I'm such a klutz.”

“Yes,” Barry says, trying to regain his composure. “I'd say you are.” He's focused on reassembling his cell phone. I slip the carabiner off its loop and into my pocket. I stuff his books and papers and laptop back into his bag, all the while apologizing all over myself.

“I'm really so sorry. Are you okay?”

“I'm fine. Pay more attention to where you are going next time.”

I nod my head solemnly, fingering the collection of keys filling my pocket. Barry heads off in one direction. I head back to my car.

I am back home in a little under two hours. Theo and Pauline are enjoying peanut butter sandwiches at the kitchen table.

“I had no idea how good these were,” she says, holding up a half-eaten sandwich with a gob of strawberry jam slipping out the side. “So good.”

Theo is singing to his sandwich, something about a castle. He barely looks up when I walk in. And there I was thinking I was indispensable.

“Everything was fine here,” Pauline says, washing down the peanut butter with a splash of milk. “Theo is a doll.”

What happened to Pauline? I think. Did my blond-haired, blue-eyed baby steal her heart in a mere three hours? I look at him singing away and think it's probably true. I walk Pauline to the door.

“Tomorrow same time?” she asks. I nod. This is getting complicated. I have to explain to my husband why I suddenly have a nanny for Theo who isn't charging me twenty bucks an hour and demanding her own Mercedes SUV. I have to sneak out of my house in the dead of night to break into the lab of a rogue scientist and somehow avoid Ian Blackford until I have enough information to be on even ground with him. My landline rings, interrupting my reverie.

“Is this a secure line?” Simon asks.

“Probably.” I look out the kitchen window. “There's no one in my backyard either if that makes you feel better.”

“What exactly do you think you were doing today, Sal?” Simon asks. He doesn't sound happy.

“Being bait,” I say, innocently.

“By checking in with Malcolm?”

“Just being friendly.”

“Listen, this is not a joke. What I meant by being bait was to go have coffee, wander around Union Square, get your nails done. Whatever the fuck you want. I did not mean turning up on the doorstep of one of the players in this scenario like it's no big deal.”

“What's the problem?” I ask. “Afraid I might actually stumble upon something useful and make you look bad?”

There is silence down the line. Simon Still is doing his version of deep breathing, willing himself not to say anything he can't take back. For some reason, this makes me feel good.

“I do not need to explain things to you, Sally. You are not authorized to do anything except exactly what I tell you to do. Should I say it in Swahili too to make sure you understand?”

“Your Swahili sucks, Simon. And yes, I understand, but no, I'm not agreeing to it. You're out of your mind if you think I'm going to sit back and wait for you to catch Blackford, all the while hoping you don't get me and my family killed in the process. And I think you know better than to ask.” It's quiet. Either he is speechless or I'm exhausting him.

“You always were a pain in the ass, Sally Sin,” he says finally.

“Stop calling me that, will you?”

“I can't help it. Calling you Lucy isn't working for me. I'm sorry. Why did you go to Malcolm's office?”

“I want to know what he's working on in there, what exactly about Malcolm caught Blackford's eye. He's particular about who he works with and what he agrees to sell. To get involved with a newcomer like Malcolm is risky. There has to be a huge upside to make it worth Blackford's while. I want to know what that upside is. If you would tell me what you found in the lab, I wouldn't have to go busting in there on my own.”

There is a pause. Simon is thinking. He pauses and thinks only when he is trying to figure out the best way to deliver news that you don't want to hear.

“Well, we haven't actually been able to get into the lab yet,” he says finally.

I am sure I have not heard him correctly. “Tell me you're kidding.”

“I wish I was.”

“Come on, Simon, what sort of outfit are you running these days?” His embarrassment is palpable over the airwaves.

“We had a few problems with their electronic security system and scheduling and things.”

“Well, in that case, I'll be sure to give you an update when I get done over there,” I say. “If your schedule allows, of course.” I hang up. Simon rings me back, but I don't answer. I want to finish lunch with my son.

Now I don't want you to go off thinking that Ian Blackford was really some deeply misunderstood soul. At the end of the day, he was a criminal. Yes, he was kind enough to decide not to kill me on several occasions, but that is not enough to excuse him from notoriety.

After the mess at The Grand Event in Cambodia, things got much worse. The only bright spot, according to Simon Still, was that the Blind Monk didn't manage to put a bullet in me. Because after what happened, Simon Still wanted that privilege all to himself. Or so he said.

As punishment, I was forced to sit at my desk. I tried to keep my chin up and not complain. After all, I'd had the largest stockpile of nuclear components we'd ever encountered in one place stolen right out from under me, so I didn't really have a leg to stand on. And within days of Sovann's murder, that stuff started showing up everywhere. It wasn't good. Remember that incident in Beijing and the one in Frankfurt? Well, Agents 1 through 25, or however many, were scrambling, barely able to keep up with how efficiently Blackford moved those materials out of Cambodia and all around the world.

The Blind Monk was apoplectic. Rumor had it, he'd had Blackford's cat assassinated. But that was only a rumor. And Blackford didn't care anyway. He just kept at it, kept moving the merchandise. It was masterful really. And boy did it make Simon mad. I started to think he was torturing me with desk duty to make himself feel better. But at least I had the sense to stop short of asking him if that was indeed the case.

So I'm sitting there down in the daisy at my desk, taking my punishment, staring at my computer, toggling back and forth between
People
magazine and the
New York Times
, when suddenly Simon Still and three other USAWMD agents burst in from the elevator bank.

“Get your stuff, Sal,” Simon shouted, rushing into his office. I couldn't see what he was doing, but it looked like he was putting together his field knapsack. I shut my laptop slowly.

“Where are we going?” I asked, not sure I really wanted an answer. Mentally, I was already preparing a list of hot, unpleasant places with large biting insects and angry dictators to which I might be headed. I tested the waters. “Myanmar? North Korea?”

Simon stopped, turned toward me, his face paler than usual. “As a matter of fact, New York City,” he said. That got my attention.

“Here? Who would dare?” Simon heaved a heavy aluminum suitcase filled with surveillance gear right at my chest. The impact almost knocked me on my ass.

“Who do you think?” And for a second he looked at me as if I was the enemy, as if this whole situation was my fault.

“Blackford,” I said.

“Your guy seems to think he can get away with anything. He seems to think that we'll all look the other way as he peddles his Easy-Bake nuclear bombs up and down Fifth Avenue. Well, let me tell you, I have had about enough of him.” Simon's face flushed with anger.

“He's not my guy,” I said quietly.

“He's a dead man,” Simon responded, marching out the door. The four of us obediently followed after.

As we sped toward the airport in black sedans, red and blue lights flashing and sirens wailing, I tried to understand what Blackford was doing. There was an unwritten rule in the underground world of illegal arms dealing that transactions didn't take place on U.S. soil. The idea was that we, as a country, had a lot of fire power to throw at the problem, and if we ever wanted to get really serious about it, we could more or less shut down the whole industry, and who wanted that to happen? In truth, as you can probably guess, we could do no such thing, but the illusion that we could kept the hard stuff thousands of miles from our borders. And that was worth something in this ugly business.

But now Blackford was blatantly flaunting the rule. This could make things very complicated for us at the Agency because if Blackford could do it, why not everyone else? And there goes the neighborhood. Once in the air, Simon Still told us what he knew, which wasn't much.

“Blackford apparently brought the fully assembled weapon into the United States by boat right into New Jersey in a cargo container marked with some Chinese characters. We do not know the whereabouts of the container at present, but are making headway on that front now. The buyer is also a bit of an unknown. Two streams of information. One indicates that the buyer is from Dubai and not associated with any active terrorist organization. Number two indicates that the buyer is Chinese and associated with a homegrown Chinese terrorist organization. Neither option is any good, as you can see. From all our intelligence,” he waved a single sheet of paper in the air, “we believe Blackford is meeting his buyer at four o'clock this afternoon.” He checked his watch. “We have a team at the docks in Jersey trying to track the weapon. I want you four to find Blackford. Find Blackford and put a bullet in his head. And I don't care who sees you do it.”

I wanted to point out that New York City was kind of a big place and the chances of one of the four of us bumping into Blackford were rather unlikely. But Simon was fuming, and I thought he might take my comment the wrong way. He handed the other three agents lead sheets containing lists of places Blackford might be. Simon was asking the impossible. There was no way we could cover that much ground in four hours.

“Start at the top and move fast,” he said to the other three agents.

“You,” he said, turning to me. “Follow your nose. Or maybe just stand there and let him find you.” I felt an angry heat rise on my cheeks. Blackford was not my creation. I was simply along for the ride.

We landed abruptly and dispersed. Simon didn't mention what he himself was going to be doing while the rest of us combed the tristate area for bombs and bad guys, but he went stomping off the tarmac with purpose so none of us asked.

New York was never my favorite city. It's crowded, cold, and slushy in the winter, and hot and smelly in the summer. But I admired the people for their tenacity; it took a certain hubris to believe you could make it here. Blackford fit right in. He believed he could do anything and do it right under our noses. Whatever was happening, it couldn't be about a bomb. It had to be Blackford's coming-out party. After his triumph in Cambodia, this was his way of announcing to his underworld buddies that he was the king now and anyone who got in his way be damned.

I stood on the street, watching the people pass, chatting on their cell phones, carrying containers of coffee. There was no way we could find Blackford here. To try and do so was almost embarrassing. Resigned to being useless, I began to hike uptown. On one of the bus stops was an advertisement for the Top of the Rock, a chance to see New York City from the top floor of Rockefeller Center.

And it hit me. Of course. The last time I had seen Blackford at The Grand Event, he had said something about jumping off a rock. Hadn't he? Or maybe it was about crawling under one? Not exactly the same, but no matter. It was the only lead I had and I was going to use it. I started to run.

Only here could a relatively normal-looking woman run at a breakneck pace through the city streets without calling attention to herself. The sweat started to roll down my face, but I didn't stop to remove my jacket. It was a long way from the heliport on Thirtieth and the Hudson River to Rockefeller Center. If I had any chance of making it, I couldn't stop, not even for red lights.

By the time I reached the ticket booth for the Top of the Rock tour, I was soaked in sweat and breathing hard.

“You okay, lady?” the woman in the booth asked.

“Yes,” I gasped. “Fine. Late to meet a friend.”

“You say so.” She slid my ticket toward me. I grabbed it and ran around to the entrance. There, standing in line with everyone else, waiting to go through security, I pulled the gun out of my pants and quickly dropped it into a garbage can. I didn't have the time to negotiate it through the guards. And if I ended up being right, this would not be the first time I faced Blackford with little more than my dazzling wit and good looks.

I passed through the security checkpoint and made my way to a line for the elevator. Sweat streamed down my face. People gave me a wide berth. Finally, the elevator spat us out on the top floor. I made a quick pass around the roof. No Blackford. What a waste of time. I sat down on one of the benches and cleaned the sweat spots from my sunglasses, although it only seemed to make them worse.