Spy Mom (42 page)

Still wondering if running away is feasible, I peer in the window of the Java Luv. Simon Still sits at my usual table with his sunglasses on and his hat pulled down low on his forehead. He fiddles unconsciously with the buttons on his jacket. He looks thinner than he did the last time we saw each other on that bridge in Theo's picture, but otherwise the same, as if David Bowie were tragically lost in the new millennium.

As I pull open the door, the smell of coffee and slow-burning incense hits me hard in the stomach. I bury my nose in the elbow of my jacket, like Theo does when he needs to sneeze, and gulp at the air. Behind the sunglasses, I am acutely aware of Simon watching my every move.

“Buy me something with a lot of sugar,” he says as I approach the table. “I'll watch the yellow door.” I want to punch him right in his smirking mouth, but people don't do that in regular life. Instead, I go to the counter and order him a mocha with whipped cream. Leonard hands me my usual espresso shot.

“You actually have company today, Lucy?” he says. “Is the world tilted off its axis or what?”

I wonder if Leonard would think less of me if I asked him to add a teaspoon of rat poison from the back storage room to Simon's drink. It wouldn't kill him but it might make him froth at the mouth a little, which I would certainly enjoy watching right about now.

I carry the cups back to the table.

“What's with your pants?” Simon asks, finally removing his sunglasses. His eyes are bloodshot as if he has been up nights with a colicky newborn.

I look down to see two purple magic marker streaks across the right thigh of my jeans and a stain that could be anything. There is also sand in my shoes but Simon doesn't need to know that.

“Marker is better than bodily fluids,” I say. Simon makes a face.

“How can you stand this?” he asks. “Aren't you bored?”

Yes!
I want to scream. Sometimes I'm so bored I want to scratch my own eyes out. But Theo is why I am here. Theo is the reason I get up in the morning. He is one of two people I would willingly die for. It's a short list. I take it seriously.

“No,” I say. “Motherhood is very fulfilling.”

“Ha. And we're the good guys.”

“Aren't we?” I ask.

“These days,” Simon says with a sigh, “it probably depends on who you ask.”

I toss back the espresso. It leaves a nice scalding trail down my throat.

“I have to make some decisions about kindergarten,” I say. “It's not as easy as you might think. I need to tour eight public schools and two privates. Do you know how much time is involved in touring schools? Plus, Theo is drawing pictures of Ian Blackford during art time.”

Simon glares at me over the frothy rim of his coffee. “And your point is?”

Naturally, I don't have one. Simon cannot understand what any of this means. He is tied to no one.

“Tell me what you know,” I say. My calm voice belies my frantic need for information of any kind, facts to replace the fantastic scenarios I've been spinning all morning in my head.

But Simon will draw this out, torturing me just a little bit more. He takes a long, leisurely sip of his drink. He sticks a finger in the whipped cream topping and licks it off. I come very close to pulling out my hand sanitizer and forcing him to hold his palms out, face up.

“Two days ago,” Simon begins, “Director Gray disappeared from his home in the middle of the night.”

“I don't understand,” I say. “The man was like a ghost.” I sometimes envied his ability to seemingly not exist for months at a time.

“Not everyone got to know his whereabouts,” Simon says. “You had to earn a place at the Director's table, Sally.”

I consider mounting a defense of the much-maligned kiddie table but immediately think better of it. If I set Simon up to take another shot at me, he will aim at the burgeoning spare tire around my middle and that might be more than I can handle on only a single espresso shot.

“Would you care to hear the rest of the story?” he asks.

I nod.

“Good,” Simon says. “Let's move on. Director Gray has never pulled a walkabout before but we all agree he's getting older. Maybe he turned off his cell phone and went wine-tasting in Napa or skipped out to St. Barts for a long weekend. We give him twenty-four hours to materialize.”

“But he doesn't,” I say.

“Nice to see you are still on top of your game, Sal,” Simon says. “We are almost past the twenty-four-hour mark when the phone call comes.”

He sticks his fingers back in the whipped cream.

“Did you wash your hands?” I can't help myself, it seems. “Do you have any idea how many germs can be on your fingers just from opening the door to get in here?”

Simon's hand, the one with the whipped cream on it, lingers in the air, kind of floating there as if it's no longer attached to his arm. Then he wipes the whipped cream on a napkin.

“Is that better?”

“Yes. Go on. The phone call.”

“The phone call came to my office. We are Righteous Liberty, they said. We stand for blah, blah, blah. Fill in the latest ideological bullshit and you get the picture. We have Gray and we want to talk to Sally Sin.” Just having to say that last part makes his jaw clench in such a way as to foreshadow extensive dental work. “So I told them you were dead and they had better tell me what they wanted. To which they responded we had twenty-four hours to produce you or Gray would die. But the United States government doesn't negotiate with terrorists. Everyone knows that.” He glances at his watch. “It's been about fifteen hours since that call.”

My insides turn over, the coffee making me suddenly nauseous. I am this close to puking all over the mosaic-tiled bistro table.

“Sally, you look green.”

I close my eyes and slowly the feeling passes.

“Who did we outsource it to?” I ask. Because while it is true that the United States government does not negotiate with terrorists, they are more than willing to let private organizations that specialize in complicated human extractions do so when no one is looking. For their efforts, these organizations get heaping piles of money and access to a smorgasbord of government officials and secret information. In return, the government gets to stand by its policy of not negotiating with terrorists and keep its nose clean. But that doesn't mean the whole thing doesn't stink.

“The regulars,” Simon says, with a malignant flash in his eyes. It's enough to tell me this is an unsanctioned visit, that whatever Simon is up to, it falls somewhere outside the lines of proper. For a second, I think it might even be personal but then I remind myself that Simon doesn't do personal, so that would be impossible.

“How much did you tell the extraction specialists?” I ask. Leonard, if he's not too stoned and can eavesdrop properly, might assume we're talking about the dentist.

“Enough to get them started,” Simon says dismissively. As second in command of the USAWMD, his orders were almost certainly to go about business as usual and make sure this event did not indicate to the outside world that the United States had taken its hands off the wheel. But asking Simon to forget that Righteous Liberty asked specifically to speak to me is akin to asking him to put on a tutu and dance the role of the Sugar Plum Fairy. It's just not going to happen.

“So tell me, what do they want with you, Sally?” he says. “What makes you so special?”

I think about the envelope Blackford handed me two years ago, the one now safely hidden in my underwear drawer. In the envelope is a faded Polaroid of a young Director Gray and my parents, arms draped around one another like good friends, tan skin glistening in the summer sun. The photo was strange for a number of reasons. First, Director Gray was smiling and if you ever met him you would understand smiling was something Gray did not do. Secondly, he never once acknowledged having known my parents. And while coincidence can account for a lot in life, I had the sense it didn't apply here.

As soon as I saw the photo, I knew it was the first step down a path Blackford meant for me to follow to its inevitable end. But I read the original
Grimm's Fairy Tales
as a child and I know better than to wander into the deep, dark woods, following bread crumbs. Consciously or not, I didn't take the bait. Instead I went back to burning the pancakes and driving car pool. Blackford had underestimated my well-honed ability to compartmentalize my past and this made me feel good about myself. I'd show him who was more stubborn.

“Who's behind Righteous Liberty?” I ask.

“We don't know,” Simon says flatly.

“But you have a suspicion,” I say. “That's why you're here, right? So I can stick my neck out and see who chops off my head and you can go home with your answer?”

Simon smiles. It's an ugly smile, born of too many years blurring the lines between what is good and what is necessary. His duty to his country trumps almost everything except his need to be in control. And I'm willing to bet he doesn't feel all that comfortable with his level of control at the moment. He pulls out a cell phone and lays it on the table between us. It looks like the one he sent me earlier today except this one has more than one button. I'm flattered he feels me worthy of multiple buttons.

“The number they provided isn't traceable,” Simon says. “It disappears after stopping in about ten countries. I'm starting to think the Internet might be responsible for the end of civilization as we know it.”

The coffee shop is quiet. Leonard sits on a stool at the counter, reading the
San Francisco Chronicle
, muttering about injustice and social inequality.

“You want me to call here?” I say, looking around. “In public?”

“Is there anything more ordinary than a person talking on a cell phone in a coffee shop? It's as close to invisible as you can get these days. Besides, it's a special phone. Dial.”

I plug in the number as Simon reads it out to me. There is static, clicking, a few notes from a song that was popular in the 1970s, and finally a voice.

“Hello?”

“This is Sally Sin,” I say. I'm a fraud. Sally Sin is gone. Lucy Hamilton with the purple magic marker all over her pants is her replacement. I wonder for a second how well she will do negotiating with madmen.

“Finally,” the voice says, disguised with voice-altering software. It could be male or female, young or old. I have no idea. “Looks like we figured out how to get your attention.”

“Looks like you did. Now, what do you want exactly because I have all this stuff I should be doing right now but instead I'm talking to you.” Simon is plugged into the phone. He fiddles with his headset. It chirps.

“Is there someone on the line with you? My demand was to speak to you alone.” I want to tell this person that he or she is hopelessly naïve. There is no alone anymore. “I hope your people are taking this seriously. As I am.” And there it is, just the slightest hint of an accent seeping out around the cracks of the voice alteration, as if a steamroller has flattened certain letters. I can't quite place it but it's definitely there. And it's familiar.

“I'm alone,” I say. I don't tell him that the “people” I have now are small and really into superheroes. It doesn't seem relevant.

“I'm sitting outside the Notre Dame, watching the pigeons,” I continue. “I just finished a delicious fair trade Argentinean espresso and when we hang up I plan on going back and having another. I think I've become a bit of a caffeine addict in the last few years. But it's better than being a meth addict, I suppose. I'm considering flying to Rome for lunch. There's a place that makes a really thin crust pizza that's so good I could eat the whole thing.” The funny thing is, I mean it. My head is awash with images of Roman pizza and my mouth starts to water. It's only twelve hours or so on a plane. Might be worth it.

“You can stop talking about yourself now,” the voice says. “You Americans, so self-absorbed.”

“And you can stop with the character assassination now. You requested this call, so let's get to the part where you tell me what this is all about.”

“There's something I want back. Something that belongs to me.”

“You need to be a little more specific. Otherwise, you might end up with a Tickle Me Elmo.”

“I don't want anyone named Elmo. I want a man named Richard Yoder.” Next to me, every muscle in Simon's body goes rigid. Suddenly he looks as if he might benefit from an exorcism. Under his breath, he says something that sounds a lot like “I knew it” but I can't be sure because I'm busy talking to the crazy person.

“We know Yoder is there but he belongs to me,” the voice continues. “It's only been a matter of time until we figured out how to get him back.”

“Well, I don't know,” I say. “Does anyone really belong to anyone else? What is that thing they say? If you love something, set it free and if it doesn't come back to you, that probably means it never liked you in the first place. That's not it exactly but it's the idea that counts. What if your Richard Yoder doesn't want to come back?”

Simon drums angry fingers on the table. Something has changed. A few minutes ago, he was practically bored with this whole situation but now he's furious. And it all turned on the name Richard Yoder.

“He has no choice,” the voice says. “He's mine.”

“I see problems in this relationship. You're too controlling.”

“Stop it right now!” the voice barks. “We're wasting time. The deal is simple. We will trade Gray for Yoder. If you try to bring in any of your agency friends to assist you, he dies.”

“I don't have any agency friends but I understand,” I say.

“And just to show you we can be reasonable, I'll give you four days. At which point you'll call me back and I will tell you when and where the trade will happen. Is that understood?”