Spy Mom (56 page)

After everyone finally left, the police, the EMTs, the photographer, and the evidence collector, Will sat down on the couch. He looked exhausted.

“Tell me that's what really happened,” he said quietly.

“That's what really happened,” I said.

“Lucy, did you ever see any of those horror movies where the heroine goes into a house that is clearly possessed by a demon carrying a machete, just so she can have a look around?”

I nodded my head.

“Well, normal people don't do that,” he yelled. “Normal people run away! What the fuck were you thinking?”

In the back of my mind, I saw Walters plugging my name into her database and coming up with something that didn't look quite right. I saw her digging deeper, pulling in favors, stretching her resources to their logical limit. After which I saw her captain calling her into his office and shutting the door.

“Cease and desist,” he would say. Walters would protest, demand an explanation, and the captain would sigh and tell her it came down from the top and there was nothing he could do. Walters would experience a small shiver then, the kind that makes the hair on your arms stand straight up. And she would stop poking around because she would be suddenly and painfully aware that they were watching her.

But my husband was not so easy. I had to bring out the big guns.

“I have something to tell you,” I said, sitting down next to him on the couch, taking his warm hand in mine.

“I'm not sure I can take any more surprises today,” he said, pulling me closer.

“It's a good thing,” I said. “I'm pregnant.”

As far as misdirection goes, that one worked like a charm.

By the fourth inning, the kids are antsy and I'm busy working on a theory that involves four minutes and baseball statistics. Teacher Wendy is trying to get everyone to sing a round of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” but all the kids want is more junk food. Richard Yoder has hit me up for a Coke and a box of Cracker Jacks in addition to the popcorn and the corn dog, so I'm no longer feeling that badly for him.

I pull out my cell phone and dial the number for Chemical Claude and his Righteous Liberty pals. I don't have a special cell phone like Simon but we civvies have to make do with what we've got. Chemical Claude answers after the fourth ring.

“Put Gray on the line or no deal,” I say. Claude chuckles. He'd make the perfect evil Santa Claus.

“Sally, you didn't say hello,” he says.

The noise of the ballpark fades into the background and his voice fills the entirety of my head. The experience has all the qualities of a bad sinus infection.

“She was a lovely girl, you know,” he says. “Compliant. Pretty. A shame you couldn't protect her.”

It's ill-considered to have this conversation in broad daylight, surrounded by a bunch of children. They're certainly going to wonder what's up when I crush the cell phone into dust with my bare hands.

“Put Gray on,” I whisper, each word a chore. My heart pounds in my chest and I'm aware of Yoder's eyes on me. I dig my nails into his thigh, indicating that now is not a good time for him to make a break for it. On the phone, there's shuffling and the sound of wind.

“Sally?”

“Is this Director Gray?” Calling him Dad will take some work. The voice is muffled and soft and doesn't sound like the Gray I used to know. But maybe that's because I never really knew him and for some reason he's speaking Russian.

“Don't come. They want you …” He is cut off before he can finish. Chemical Claude comes back on the line.

“I'm pleased you were able to make this happen,” Claude says. “I knew you would.”

A vote of confidence from Chemical Claude is not necessarily heartwarming. Plus, if we start talking about it I might feel compelled to admit that skill had nothing to do with it. Mostly, it was dumb luck.

“We trade tonight,” he says.

“Nights don't work for me,” I say. Can you imagine the hoops I'd have to jump through to get an overnight babysitter on such short notice? “Tomorrow afternoon. Ferry building.” I'm already excited about a post-hostage-exchange Blue Bottle coffee.

“Sally, why do you think you get to make the rules?”

“Because I have your guy,” I say.

There is silence. Chemical Claude doesn't like being told what to do.

“We will see you there at two o'clock,” he says finally.

I agree, although I'm already sweating the logistics of such a venture. As soon as I hang up, my phone rings again. I'm sure it's the CIA curious to know why I'm chitchatting with a terrorist wanted in all 192 countries of the world recognized by the United Nations. But the number that flashes up is Will's office.

“Hey,” I answer. “Aren't you supposed to be in Idaho up to your knees in shit?”

“Well, when you put it that way, it makes me kind of sad I'm missing out.”

The sound of Ian Blackford's voice, even coming through the air, is enough to make me cold.

“Are you in Will's office?” I ask. Next to me, Yoder is getting into it, on his feet cheering a two-base grounder.

“No,” Blackford says. “I just really like the element of surprise, don't you? Keeps life interesting.”

“I liked you better when you were dead,” I say.

“You don't mean that.”

“Yes, I really do.” We couldn't have a party and invite Simon and Chemical Claude and not have Blackford crash. His presence is somehow inevitable.

“Oh, Sally, don't be so melodramatic,” Blackford says. In the background, I hear a police siren. He could be in Will's office. He could be anywhere. “You should have known the minute I gave you the Polaroid, but you decided to stick your head in the sand like an ostrich. And for my purposes, that wasn't helpful.”

I hate that he just compared me to a big dorky bird that can't even fly but even more I hate he's playing an angle that's not immediately obvious to me.

“And those purposes are what, exactly?” I ask, not expecting an actual answer.

“Oh, you know, me, rising like a phoenix from the ashes.”

I have no idea what he's talking about but his cryptic statement sends an old familiar tremor of fear through my body.

Had you asked me at any point over the last year or so, I would have proclaimed myself finally inured to Blackford's dark magic. The fact that he occasionally showed up in my dreams looking indistinguishable from the cover of a bad romance novel was utterly beside the point. I might even have taken it a step further and said I was no longer scared of him. But here I am shaking in the pale sun like one of those pathetic little dogs that needs to wear a sweater in the wintertime. Yes, the feeling is part fear but also part fury. Blackford will do what he wants and I will sit back and take it because I haven't yet figured out an alternative.

“Are you here?” I ask, assuming he knows exactly where I am.

“No. Baseball is dull,” he says finally. “I like games where the players bleed.”

“That's nice,” I say. “Really.”

The smell of garlic fries wafts by on the breeze. The Cheerios I had for breakfast crawl back up my throat. I sound as if I am being strangled.

“Sally, are you okay?” The genuine concern in his voice strikes me as completely hilarious.

“I'm great,” I say. “Really fabulous. The Giants are winning. I'm thinking they go all the way this year.”

Through the phone, I hear a familiar sound, the horn blast of a container ship gliding into the Bay. I look out toward the water and there it is, riding low with cargo from China, destined for places like Toledo and Albuquerque and Des Moines. The horn blasts again.

“I wonder what your husband thinks about all the fuel being dumped into the Bay by those tankers?” Blackford asks. “Surely it's an environmental no-no.”

Down on the field, a player shouts at the umpire. He spits on the ground and kicks at the dirt, an angry bull about to charge. The umpire gestures violently. In a flash, the dugout clears. All the players spill out onto the field and begin swinging at each other with big fleshy fists. Theo and Henry and the rest of the Happy Times Preschoolers are rapt, mouths open. They've never seen adults act this way. Teacher Wendy, looking shocked, launches into a speech about not letting anger get the best of you and then she starts to sing a song about sharing our toys. The kids could not care less about singing. It's important to remember that, not long ago, for pleasure, we'd fill the stands of Roman arenas to watch lions tear unarmed men limb from limb. Violence is fascinating as long as it's happening to someone else.

Without answering Blackford's question, I press the End button on my phone because there's nothing else to talk about. I get it. He's here and he's close. I don't know why or what he wants but I have no doubt that at some very inopportune time in the very near future, he will let me know.

Meanwhile, the umpires struggle to regain control of the field. There will be multiple fines and penalties and reprimands when this is over. Sitting beside my very own personal hostage, watching the scene unfold below, all I can think is how I would sell my very soul for a chocolate cupcake with a thick layer of frosting, which is an odd thought, considering the circumstances.

Fear is a funny thing. For me, it usually shows up after a near-death experience, be it a shooting, a near drowning, or some other general kind of ass-kicking. I get a strange sensation in my stomach that is best described as four hundred butterflies and a quart of motor oil. Usually, the feeling passes quickly and I keep on going.

But I've noticed that fear makes other people, normal people, behave erratically, as if all logic got off the bus at the last stop. I suppose this shouldn't be surprising. Half the reason I was recruited for the Agency in the first place is that I rarely let fear get a stranglehold on me. Although that time in Laos, it came pretty close.

The flight was short, from Vientiane to Luang Prabang on Laos Airlines, which wasn't the sort of outfit to give you peace of mind on its best day. In five months, sixteen days, and ten hours I would no longer be with the Agency, but at the time all I knew was that going overland in Laos to our destination was out of the question. Simon Still had made it clear he did not intend to spend the day crammed into a rickety open-air bus traveling at five kilometers an hour in the mud. When I suggested to him that overland was always safer than air travel in these circumstances, he looked at me as if I were an unwelcome hallucination.

“I do not recall asking your opinion,” he said dismissively. In reality, it probably had more to do with his white suit and how it would look after ten hours on a bus than with the overall safety of the mission or those of us on it.

The turbo prop sat on the cracked runway, the roar of the engines and rotating propellers indicating that the plane, for now, was at least operational. It was already hot and damp even though the sun was just beginning to rise in the sky.

Sitting next to me, Simon ran a tentative finger down the slightly grungy leg of my khaki pants.

“There's a stain,” he pointed out, a disgusted look on his face. I nodded. The stain was tea or bike grease or mud, all of which seemed better than the blood, someone else's, that was covering my other pair of pants.

“I don't have any more,” I said. “These are the last ones.”

“We just spent four weeks in Vietnam,” he said. “They make clothes there, Sally. Did you not notice?”

I did notice but I was working, following a guy who was supposed to reveal the secrets of the universe to me but did little more than kibitz with his friends over thick Vietnamese coffee and cigarettes. My feet were tired from all that shadowing. I had no idea where Simon had found the time to dash off and pick up a few custom-made suits. I was clearly doing something wrong.

“I was busy,” I said, “following the guy. Remember? What were you doing?”

He waved me off, trying to fasten a broken seat belt.

“Things,” he said, which meant I could tie him to the rack and torture him and he still wouldn't tell me what he was up to while I was sweating it out with the coffee klatch.

I didn't even bother with my seat belt, a frayed and faded piece of orange webbing that was probably cut from a rice sack and stapled to the seat. In the cockpit, a young pilot kept wiping his damp forehead. Almost as if he could feel me looking at him, he turned and our eyes met. His face was pale and bruised-looking. Even from fifteen feet away, I could see his hands were shaking. On the right, the copilot's seat was empty. The pilot turned away quickly, swabbed his forehead with the back of his sleeve, and slammed the cockpit door shut with his foot.

“The pilot looks unwell,” I said.

“Sometimes you just fly with God, Sally,” Simon said, not looking up from his newspaper.

But I didn't want to fly with God. I wanted to fly with a pilot who didn't resemble a dead fish. I felt the tingly fingers run up my spine, challenging me, but as the plane began to race down the runway, I did nothing more than sit back and close my eyes.

There were twelve people on the plane, including us. You would think people would stare at Simon Still in his white suit and hat but it was as if he didn't exist. If asked later on what they remembered, none of the passengers would mention a thin man in a white suit reading a current edition of the
Wall Street Journal
. They would remember my stained khakis and dusty white shirt but Simon was a ghost. To this day, I'm not sure how he did it, disappeared like he did in plain sight.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Anonymous tip,” he said.

“That usually means I get shot at.”

Simon shrugged. “It happens,” he said.

“Not to you,” I say. You always seem to be out getting a suit made when it starts raining bullets.