Spy Mom (58 page)

“Do we get more than one try?” they ask.

“No. It's all or nothing,” I say, not sure to whom exactly I'm speaking.

Yoder skids to a stop behind me, hands on my shoulders, breathing hard from the exertion.

“Help me,” he whispers. “That man is the devil.”

I don't entirely disagree. Simon stops in front of us with a twisted smile on his face.

“Isn't this nice?” he says. “Did you have fun in Vegas?”

“It's that guy again,” Theo says, incredulous. “The one who wouldn't play cars with me when I was a baby.”

“And what are you now?” Simon asks in a voice meant to terrify small children and furry household pets. But Theo jumps off buildings. He's not easily intimidated. I have an inappropriate proud parent moment.

“Mom, can we get our hats now?” Theo asks, ignoring Simon.

“You didn't spell ‘baseball' yet,” I remind them.

“Yoder belongs to me, Sally,” Simon says. “You know that.”

“What does it start with?” Henry asks. Neither boy seems at all concerned by this other conversation in which I am presently engaged. To be that secure is kind of a fantasy of mine.

“Please,” Yoder whispers again. I can smell his desperation and it makes me a little ill.

“B-A-S-E-B-A-L-L,” Simon says.

“Awesome! Thanks!” Theo says, now looking at Simon in a whole new light. “Does that count? Can we get our hats now?”

“How will they ever learn if we don't let them figure things out for themselves?” I ask. “Why do you want him? Are you going to make the trade for Gray?” Out of all the possible scenarios, this one seems the least likely, but I have to ask.

“I can't share the details with you,” Simon says coyly. “But the United States government would like you to turn him over and back off. They have everything under control.”

“They said that about Hurricane Katrina,” I say.

“Mom, the hats,” Theo reminds me.

“Kill me first,” Yoder says. His yearlong stay at the Hotel Simon must have been memorable for all the wrong reasons because people don't ever really ask you to kill them. That only happens in bad movies about sixteenth-century England.

“So where are they?” I ask Simon.

“Who?”

“The United States government, your muscle?”

“Sally,” Simon says. He's losing patience.

“The United States government does not acknowledge my existence, remember? All those rules they told me I had to live by when I left, that was a big part of it. I was never there. Which means I'm not really here, either.”

“You're not thinking clearly,” Simon says. “Give me Yoder and go back to the life you so desperately wanted. Remember, you're just one person now. How much can one person do?”

“Forget it,” I say. “Yoder is coming with me.” To stick to my three-step plan, the one where at some point I get to shoot Chemical Claude in the head, I need Yoder. Simon narrows his gaze so we're now the only two people in the world. I squirm, filled with sympathy for all those poor ants burned up by kids with magnifying glasses. Who needs that kind of attention?

“When you joined the Agency, Gray asked me to make sure he did not ever have to see you,” Simon says. He's going in for the kill and I have no doubt it's going to hurt. “He never wanted you there in the first place.”

But I lasted nine years. “I have to buy hats,” I say.

“Think about the odds of success here, Sally,” Simon says.

“They're pretty slim,” I say and that's my honest answer. But it doesn't mean I'm excused from trying.

“Give me Yoder,” Simon says again. I shrug my shoulders.

“No.” You cannot choose your family but you are responsible for them nonetheless.

In this game of chicken, I wait for Simon to blink. He looks at the crowds milling around, not yet ready to leave the stadium. His hands are tied.

“The human shield,” he says, almost to himself. “It's working now, but eventually you'll be alone and when that happens, I will be there.”

He's not threatening me, merely stating the facts.

I walk slowly toward the hat kiosk, holding a boy in each hand. Yoder stays pinned to my back. I cannot imagine how strange we must look but it's San Francisco so no one stares. Simon melts into the crowd, keeping his eyes pinned on me until he's swallowed up by Giants fans.

Step four of my plan is me being completely screwed.

I had been on a total of five missions and kidnapped once by Ian Blackford when Simon Still walked into my cramped windowless office and, dropping a folder on my desk, announced it was time for me to go to the Ranch. I heard laughter in the hallway, bubbling out of a pair of grizzled old agents who had been wearing the same clothes since the Cold War.

“Poor Sally,” said the one with the permanent five o'clock shadow. “Hope Lee is retired.” This was followed by more raucous laughter from Simon and the others.

“No,” Simon said. “Lee's still there. That's why I'm sending her now. Can't miss the opportunity. If Lee goes, so goes the Ranch.” The three men were now so tickled they could barely stand up. I leaned forward and kicked my door shut, which didn't even register with the occupants in the hallway. The Ranch? I had never heard anything about a ranch. Was this a joke or was I being punished for some unknown crime committed against humanity or, more specifically, Simon Still?

Tentatively, I flipped open the folder. Inside was an itinerary with a flight to Midland Airport in Texas, approximately south of nowhere. I was definitely being punished. Upon arrival, I was to look for the man in the photograph clipped to the inside cover of the folder.

“I'm dead,” I said to the empty office. From the looks of it, Lee was about six feet six inches and 350 pounds of solid muscle. Each finger alone was roughly the circumference of my waist and his nose was flat as a pancake. His smile was full of missing teeth; those that remained were stained and crooked.

In real life, he was actually bigger. A peacock on Fifth Avenue would have blended in better than this Lee did at the Midland Airport. I resolved to be tough, squared my shoulders, and marched toward him with purpose. The top of my head was level with his armpit, which was unpleasant in so many ways.

“Do we know each other?” he asked in a booming voice. I cringed. Was a coded exchange really necessary when I was the only other soul in the terminal?

“Yes,” I said. “We met last year in the Hamptons.” I wanted to smash whoever was in charge of this ridiculous code. Lee, covered in naked-lady tattoos and wearing a Harley-Davidson tank top that was two sizes too small, would be arrested in the Hamptons simply for the crime of being unfashionable. “Yes, we met last year in prison” would have been easier to believe.

“Great to see you again,” he said, taking my hand and pumping my arm up and down so hard I thought it might detach from my body. “There are just two of you this round and the other guy is waiting. Let's go.”

I followed Lee into the blinding sunshine to a waiting pickup truck with an extended cab. In the front seat was a man with a twenty-inch neck and forearms that reminded me of Popeye. Lee plugged his iPod into the jack and the sounds of Celine Dion filled the cab. If I lost some weight I could escape through the window. Or I could strangle both men, wrestle control of the vehicle, toss the iPod, and escape. Things were looking grim as I racked my brain trying to figure out what I'd done to Simon to deserve this. So I was slow with my paperwork and he didn't think the mousetrap in his desk drawer was funny, but was that reason enough to send me to Texas to be beaten to death by two meatheads?

“Kevin Cairns,” Popeye said, extending a hand over the back of the seat. “I can't wait to get started.” Who was this guy? Had I ever seen him before? Was he Agency? Did it matter?

“Sally,” I said, offering no last name. I could definitely wait to get started. I thought about asking Lee to stop for coffee but in no time at all, we had turned onto a dirt road that seemed to run straight and empty right to the horizon.

“So, Lee,” I said after a while, “where are we going?”

“Lee?” he said, a toothpick dangling out of the side of his mouth. “I'm not Lee. You thought I was Lee!” He laughed and laughed as if I'd just said something outrageously funny. “I'm not even close to Lee.”

Popeye laughed right along with him. He was clearly in on the joke. I slid down in my seat and for the next two hours I didn't say anything, concentrating instead on inventing elaborate scenarios of my impending doom.

It was hard to make out the ranch until we were almost upon it. The low outbuildings and the main house nestled into the scrub as if they had grown there from seeds. The afternoon sun was high in the sky, baking the earth to a lovely well-done.

Popeye chattered away about the heat and the ranch and how excited he was. He was going to get killed someday for the simple crime of being annoying.

“Madame Li will meet you both in the main room in five minutes,” the big guy whose name was not Lee informed us. He pointed to the house and hopped back into the truck. Where was he going? Why was he leaving us here? Who the hell was Madame Li? I wanted to run and hide but the only thing to hide behind were tumbleweeds. Instead, I marched up the stairs, trying to look as cocky and confident as Popeye.

The main room was a huge empty space. There were floor-to-ceiling mirrors on the far wall reflecting the blinding sun. In the rays, dust hung in the air, barely moving. We stood to either side of the door and waited.

Five minutes later, Madame Li floated into the room, her feet barely touching the floor. She was dressed in black yoga pants and a tank top and carried a bamboo cane that she spun in slow circles. She was tiny and compact and the only signs of her age were the crisp white streaks in her black hair, and even those were all lined up, ready to obey her every command.

Popeye hopped to it. “Madame Li, Kevin Cairns. I'm so excited to be here.”

Madame Li held a delicate finger to her lips.

“Silence,” she said in a fairy princess voice, “is a virtue.” With that, she did something that I haven't seen again since that day. Reaching up with her knuckles, she tapped Popeye in the center of his chest. Just a quick thump and he was flying across the room. He smashed into one of the mirrors and slid down into a heap, gasping for breath. She turned her back to him.

“You can call me Madame or Madame Li,” she said, giving me an impish smile. “Whichever.” Popeye tried to pull himself up to standing but all his attempts ended with him back on the floor.

“How did you do that?” I asked finally, hoping my question would not send me sailing across the room next.

“Practice,” Madame Li said, examining her hair in one of the mirrors, “and skill.” Taking my arm, she led me over to Popeye. With the other hand, she yanked him to his feet and turned so all three of us now faced the mirrors, looking at ourselves.

“Things are never as they appear,” she said. “I am a small person, quiet. I mind my own business. And yet … what is possible?”

She poked Popeye in his six-pack stomach and she squeezed his bulging bicep.

“Puffy muscle is good for nothing. It will not save you if someone tries to kill you in an elevator or in an airplane lavatory. Good for the ladies, maybe, but not much else.”

Popeye looked defeated. I was willing to bet he was no longer excited. Madame Li tapped her head.

“This is what you must use to survive, to defeat the enemy. You must see the future and then act upon that knowledge. You must know what someone is going to do before he does it. Use the unexpected.”

She was starting to remind me of Yoda, without the big green ears and the odd sentence structure. Popeye nodded his head as if she were preaching the Gospel from on high. Although he had no way of knowing at the time, in ten years a slimmed down, tightly wound, mean-ass motherfucker named Kevin Cairns would join Madame Li at the Ranch, terrorizing all those unfortunate souls who stumbled across his doorstep. But for now, he was a humiliated nobody hoping to pass muster.

We remained under Madame Li's care for six weeks, during which time we saw nobody else. For three hours in the morning, before the sun came up, we would train, which basically involved Madam Li kicking the shit out of us, followed by her taunting us as we tried to do likewise. After our daily beating, we would work cleaning out stables, scrubbing toilets, peeling potatoes, sweating our way to dehydration in the scorching Texas sun. This was followed by five more hours of training after which Popeye and I collectively begged for mercy and went to bed.

After a while, little muscles started to show up on my body that I had never seen before. And every last one of them ached. Through the thin walls of our rooms, I could hear Popeye groaning in his sleep. He would shout out things like “Anticipate!” and “See the future!” and sometimes he cried.

On our last day, as I packed up my few belongings, Madame Li showed up in my doorway. She ran her fingers over the items I had spread out on the bed—a clean shirt, a book of short stories, a small notebook and pen.

“You are the first, you know,” she said, flipping the pages of my notebook.

“The first what?” I asked, hoping she wouldn't say “Failure.” If nothing else, I was confident I could kick Popeye's ass or at the very least call him names and make him feel bad about himself.

“Girl,” she said. “We get lots of boys out here but you are the first girl. Are you something special, Sally?”

I shrugged, not wanting her to see I was surprised by her revelation.

“I think you must be,” she continued. “You don't cry. Everyone cries. Especially the big fancy men, they cry quickest and longest. But you stay quiet. Why is that?”

Her questions caught me off guard. Since our arrival, she had delivered many long lectures in her tiny voice about balance and focus and the weakest parts of the body, but she had not asked a single personal question of either of us. She never referred to us by name and showed no interest in our thoughts on any subject. We had no idea where she slept, what she ate, if she did anything when she wasn't beating us up.