Spy Mom (7 page)

And Ian Blackford would have remained simply that for me, a story, a myth, a cautionary tale, had he not gone and started kidnapping me over and over again.

My second assignment as an agent for the USAWMD put me in Madrid helping Spanish authorities translate Arabic documents that named a number of terror suspects. I'm not sure even now why the Spanish didn't use their own translator, but at the time I didn't have the confidence to ask such things. After a night of lying on my single bed in a little cave-like hotel room, I decided to go out. Everyone in Madrid was out. Staying in made me stand out, I reasoned. I needed to go out to blend in. My training said that blending in was all important. Don't ever want to look out of place or be pegged as odd. It's a sure way to get killed. So I planted myself on a stool in a cramped, smoky bar and drank a few glasses of sangria, ate some tapas, and generally soaked up the atmosphere, trying to figure out ways to look more Spanish. Impossible, I thought. Americans can never properly imitate the laissez-faire that the Spanish have elevated to an art form. No one around me was talking about stock options or the market or their new $120,000 Mercedes that can parallel park itself and do the occasional load of laundry. They talked about dancing and music and clothes and a possible cigarette ban. A gorgeous man with black hair and blue eyes took a seat next to me and ordered more sangria. I knew he wasn't Spanish but his accent was flawless. After a while I asked him if he was Canadian.

“No,” he answered, “I'm from all over.” He was staring at me, a slightly confused look on his face. “And you are not at all what I expected. Not at all.”

What? At almost the exact second those words flowed from his perfect lips my world started to bob and weave and buckle. I knew immediately that I had screwed up. Never let anyone buy you a drink. Whatever he put in my sangria was working its magic.

“Stand up,” he said.

“I can't,” I said. I felt so weak I thought I might collapse right there on the filthy floor.

“Of course you can,” he said. “You are trained to act under duress. This is duress. I drugged you. So get up and come on.”

I wanted to ask him how he knew me and what I was about, but I couldn't move my lips. The hardest thing I've ever done was get up off that bar stool and walk out into the night in front of my captor. And I include childbirth on that list.

Once outside, the man with the black hair and the blue eyes swept me up in his arms and carried me off down the street. To the innocent bystander, it probably looked achingly romantic. And it might have been had it not actually been a kidnapping. He walked carrying all 135 pounds of me for what seemed like forever. When I eventually retraced the route, it was only five blocks. But that's still a lot of weight, especially when it's dead weight. I passed out cold almost immediately and came to some time later to find myself locked in the marble bathroom of a luxurious hotel suite.

I tried to stay quiet, figure out my options. But my head was pounding so hard I could barely think. Under the sink, in the third drawer, was a note.

“Take this. It will help.” On top of the note was a single pill with no brand or identifying letters.

“Right,” I said to my reflection in the huge mirror. “After you drug me and kidnap me and lock me in a bathroom I'm supposed to trust you and pop that thing in my mouth? How fucking stupid do you think I am?”

I could hear Simon's voice in my head. “Very stupid. You did everything wrong.”

I took the pill, if only to shut Simon up.

Ten minutes later I felt substantially better and began investigating a way out. It didn't take me long to conclude there was none, so I sat down on the toilet to reflect on my short yet exciting career with the USAWMD.

“Sad,” I said. “I might have been pretty good at it.”

“At this?” Mr. Kidnapper, standing in the open bathroom door, asked. “Not until you learn a few ground rules. Didn't Simon teach you anything?”

“Who are you? Is this another test?”

“No, this is officially a hostage situation. You're the hostage.” A Walther P99 dangled at his side, but I could see even from my perch on the toilet seat that his finger was on the trigger, ready and waiting. “My name is Ian Blackford. Heard of me?”

Ian Blackford?
The
Ian Blackford? This was getting weirder by the minute.

“Yes,” I said, trying not to panic, “I've heard of you. Once or twice.” Suddenly I couldn't remember if I was supposed to diminish the captor or build him up. And all that stuff about trying to create a psychological bond, make him feel empathy, seemed ridiculous as I sat on a toilet, held prisoner by a turncoat.

“What have you heard?”

“Oh, things,” I said, trying to dodge.

“As long as you're here, you might as well tell me what things. So maybe now is a good time to start talking?”

In all the chatter about Blackford I'd heard back at the office, it was never once mentioned that the man made James Bond look like a slob. Ian Blackford filled the bathroom door, his arms crossed over his broad chest. He was tall and fit, but that was all secondary to the black hair and those blue eyes, in such contrast, so startling.

“Do you dye your hair?” I asked suddenly.

“What?” I caught him off guard. One little unimportant useless point for me. Go team.

“Is your hair really that black?”

“That's none of your business.”

“Sorry,” I said, “I was curious.”

“Curiosity will get you killed,” he said in a tone that scared me more than I cared to admit. With that he slammed the bathroom door and I heard it lock from the outside.

“Nice work, Einstein,” I muttered to my reflection in the bathroom mirror.

I didn't have a watch so I have no idea how much time passed while he made his point that I was not to ask him about his hair color. I learned the lesson pretty fast, but I estimate he kept me in there for the better part of three hours.

When Ian Blackford finally unlocked the bathroom, he invited me out into the main room of the suite for lunch. I made a promise to myself that I would do nothing but answer his questions. I certainly wouldn't ask him for any more personal information. And I would definitely not comment on his very thin skin when it came to his hair.

“I ordered you a few things. Are you hungry?” On the table before him was what looked like the entire room service menu.

“Yes, thank you,” I said, thinking if he was going to toss me out a window it might as well be on a full stomach. Blackford paced behind me as I inelegantly stuffed my face. He ran the dull edge of a steak knife back and forth across the palm of his hand. I kept one eye glued on the knife and one eye glued on the food. It wasn't easy.

Blackford continued pacing around the hotel suite like a caged tiger with OCD. I crammed some more ham in my mouth to keep it quiet. Finally he stopped directly behind me, tapping the knife rhythmically against his hand. It took me a minute before I realized he was waiting for me to tell him how his betrayal was playing back on the home front.

“Okay, well, I haven't been with the Agency for that long really,” I began. “I'm not even sure why they wanted me, but that's another story. What have they been saying about you? Honestly? That you're a traitor, that you let them down. They've been trying to catch you ever since it became obvious that … well, you know.”

“Know what?” he prompted. It was almost as if he needed to hear me say it for it to finally be true.

“That you turned. That you did the worst thing a spy can do.” I waited for him to plunge the steak knife between my shoulder blades, but he didn't so I went on. “You went willingly into the arms of the enemy.” I'll admit that I was taking some poetic license, but the idea was the important part. And for a split second I thought I saw regret flash in those arctic blue eyes. But it did not last.

“I brought you here to kill you,” he said matter-of-factly. “It seemed to be the only reasonable response. An eye for an eye. But you really have no idea who you are, do you? Not even a suspicion.” He studied the knife, thinking. “Unexpected. But it makes me think I might let you live. For now.”

And with that he threw the knife. It floated in the air, rotated, and stuck fast dead center in the bathroom door. I had no idea what he was talking about, but it didn't matter. Apparently he wasn't going to stick that knife in me and that was all I really cared about.

“Yes, sir,” I gulped. “Thank you, sir.”

He reached over me to get the other knife from the table. He was so close I could feel his warm breath on the back of my neck. I shivered.

“They also said you were the best there ever was. It's cliché, I know, but that's what they said.”

“I was,” he said. “But things change. You'll see.”

I won't turn, I wanted to say. I might end up living in a corrugated tin shack in western Montana, writing insane rambling letters to the editor of the local paper, but I won't turn.

“I'm pretty sure that when I get back I'm going to get fired anyway, so I probably will never make it to the point of disillusionment,” I said.

Ian Blackford smiled then, and if the smile hadn't been laced with cynicism it might have stopped my heart. I tried to swallow the piece of bread in my mouth. It stuck like paste in my throat. He hurled the second knife and planted it in the door, a centimeter below the first one.

“Ask Simon to teach you to throw knives. It's never actually useful but it can be a good way to pass the time. And Simon is the best. He'll stab you in the back from halfway around the world.” I didn't answer. Instead, I sat quietly at the table like a schoolgirl, waiting for what was going to happen next. A good spy would have had a plan by then, some elaborate way to escape the hotel and rush to safety, stopping along the way to learn how to throw knives. But not me. I was simply reciting the parts of the Hail Mary that I could remember and hoping for the best.

Suddenly Blackford spun my chair from the table so we were face-to-face. “So here is the new plan. When you get back to Washington, make sure they know I got to you. Make sure Gray knows I got to you. It was a pleasure meeting you, Sally Sin. I'll see you again someday.”

He didn't need to ask me twice. I stood bolt upright and in three giant steps was out the door and in five more was on my way down the stairs. I hit the street running, in the first direction that occurred to me.

Theo is about to finish his cookie. I have nothing else to bribe him with. I look at Simon, waiting for the inevitable next sentence.

“It appears Ian Blackford is not actually dead. It appears he is still very much alive. And it appears he is up to his old tricks with someone local. Someone here.”

The cookie is gone.

“Well, doesn't everybody just love a resurrection,” I say.

“Mommy, I have to poop,” Theo bellows. “I really have to poop. I have to poop now!”

Simon looks alarmed. Put him in a room full of armed terrorists and he's right as rain. Expose him to a partially toilet-trained toddler and he freaks.

“We have to go to my car. This way, quick,” I say. Simon does as he's told, staying close at my heels. I pop the trunk of my Prius and pull Theo's plastic potty from a bag.

“What are you doing?” Simon asks, his voice oddly high-pitched.

“You heard the kid,” I said. “We don't mess around with these sorts of things.”

“Doesn't your coffee shop have a bathroom?” His eyes grow wide with realization followed by horror.

“He won't go there.”

“I won't even ask.”

“It's better that you don't.”

I wrestle Theo out of his stroller, pull his jeans and Thomas the Train underwear down, and plop him on the plastic potty. Simon averts his eyes. Theo starts to sing. He won't use the potty unless he can sing. I don't exactly know what the song is, something about rain and butterflies I think. It's a sweet song.

“This is really happening to you,” I say to Simon, who stands with his back to the trunk of my car, a disgusted hand over his mouth. “But now we have a few minutes to finish that conversation we were having.”

“I don't know how you do this. Honestly. Where was I?”

“Ian Blackford. Alive. You know, little things like that.”

“Right. We were watching this professor here at the University on an anonymous tip. Well, not exactly watching, more like monitoring. We knew nothing about him other than he is a quirky genius of some sort in the field of analytical chemistry, so at the very least it seemed like a good time to fill in some blanks in case the guy ever decided to go rogue on us.” Simon Still pauses, as if reflecting upon a very bad memory. “And out of nowhere, in waltzes the very dead Ian Blackford.”

“Wow. That must have been a surprise.”

“Yes. We were a little surprised, as you put it.”

“And the Blind Monk?” I ask, before I can stop myself. “He must play some role in this tale of woe.”

Simon's shoulders tighten almost imperceptibly. He furrows his brow. The crease is deep. A person could get lost in there and never be heard from again.

“Information is on a need-to-know basis, Lucy. I don't think you need to know.”

“Well, as much as I'm enjoying this dialogue,” I say, “I fail to see what any of this has to do with me.”

My baby continues to sing gleefully on his potty. “I'm almost done,” he announces.

I look at Simon. “You'd better hurry.”

“I put three analysts to task answering one question. And that question was, what is Ian Blackford's weakness? Where do we stick the knife if we want to kill him? My analysts spent three hundred man-hours on it and came up with only one. You. We need you to lure Blackford out. He'll show himself for you.”

That's not quite how I thought of it, but whatever you say.