Spy to the Rescue (14 page)

“I
am Zamira Kamirov.”

“My name is Zamira Kamirov.”

“Zamira Kamirov. My parents follow soon. I take my seat now, yes?”

I am in Alex Gunnery's bedroom, gazing at my reflection in her mirror and practicing my Trezekhastan enunciation for the biggest and most important lie I will ever tell.

Sam, credit where credit's due, came through 199.9 percent. I called him up, told him I needed to get into the coming-of-age celebration despite it being covered in
cops. He told me to meet him back in his Brooklyn home, by which time he would have come up with a solution.

By the time Ryan and I reached his mom's brownstone, Alex and Lucien were already out spending their Saturday at the much-discussed Brooklyn Flea and Sam had proved as good as his word.

Sam, or someone who owed him a favor, had located the guest list for the celebration. Someone else coordinated the guests with the flight logs of the planes coming in from Trezekhastan and Savlostavia. Almost all the guests had arrived in the city the previous night. A handful were running late. Among that handful was Zamira Kamirov, teenage daughter of Trezekhastan's junior minister of agriculture, attending in place of her father, who was stuck at an international grain conference. Zamira Kamirov's Instagram account was not difficult to find. She's taller than me, but we both have short darkish hair, we both have the same kind of figure, and our faces are similar shapes.

“I can be her,” I told myself. Except that all I have to wear is Sam's hoodie, a white T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers, none of which qualify as desirable celebration attire. So I improvised. I borrowed a black tuxedo jacket from Sam's closet, one of Alex's short skirts, which comes down past my knees, a pair of dark glasses that covers
half my face, a hockey puck–shaped hat with a veil, and a pair of shoes that are two sizes too big for me but which I stuffed with balled-up toilet paper.

“Perfect,” says Sam. “Wear that on our date.”

Ah. Right. The other thing.

In order for Sam to do me this huge, possibly war-averting favor, I had to agree to go out on a date with him before I go back to Reindeer Crescent. Lives are at stake. Two countries hang in the balance. How could I say no? (Honestly? I had to think about it. Sam's a very, very smart, good-looking, insanely connected, scarily ambitious guy. If Dale Tookey hadn't resurfaced . . . no, even if Dale Tookey hadn't resurfaced, the kind of life Sam's leading is going to land him in horrific trouble somewhere down the line. Or it's going to make him a future president. Either way, I don't want to get involved beyond the one date I've committed to. Plus, still no knot.)

“I am Zamira Kamirov,” I intone with confidence as I glide into the Gunnery kitchen, where Ryan and Joanna are gorging on sandwiches and chips.

I wait for their reactions.

“Huge improvement,” says Ryan.

“Always wear that veil,” says Joanna, and they cackle in unison.

“Ignore them,” says Sam, joining me in the kitchen
and now, I can't fail to notice, wearing a black tuxedo. He reaches up to adjust my hat. “You look amazing.”

“Um, thanks,” I say, taking careful steps away from him in my too-big shoes.

Ryan crumples up his chip bag and throws it at the recycling bin, missing it by several inches.

He claps his hands. “Let's save the day.”

“You're not saving anything,” I say. “Joanna, babysit Ryan.”

“But I'm coming with you,” she starts to say.

“Ryan, babysit Joanna,” I order. “Both of you stay here where it's safe. Monitor the police scanner on the computer. Let me know if anything suspicious happens outside the cathedral.”

They both look let down.

“Oh, I'm so sorry you don't get to go to the most fashionable assassination in the city,” I snap at them. “How can I be so mean and insensitive?”

“We never get to hang out,” says Joanna. “You're only here till Monday.”

I pull off my huge dark glasses, shove my veil on top of my hockey puck–shaped hat, and stare at her. “Now? You're accusing me of neglecting you now? We've talked every day since you moved here. You're happier than you've ever been.”

“I have to work at it,” she mumbles. “Being nice to people is hard. So is getting them to like me. I never had to work at it with you.”

“Maybe you could try working at it a little bit with me,” I say. “I'm here for two more fun-filled days. We've got time to hang out, just you and me.”

I push my glasses back on. “Okay? Can I go now?” I pull my veil back down.

“Go,” says Ryan, his mouth filled with the contents of a new bag of chips. “Enjoy.”

“Later, y'all,” says Sam, leaving the kitchen.

“How come he gets to go?” moans Ryan.

“Ask Bridget,” he says.

“I . . . uh . . . need him,” I say through gritted teeth.

“Oooh,” Ryan and Joanna chorus. “Bridget needs Sam!”

And then they make stupid juvenile kissing noises and I'm relieved my glasses and veil prevent them from seeing my burning-red face.

“C
heck it out,” says a guy named Footwear as he hands me a green passport. “Better than the real thing.”

Sam and I are in the back office of an auto garage under the Brooklyn Bridge. The smell of motor oil is everywhere. Footwear, a large bald man wearing stained blue overalls with his name sewn into the chest, stands over me as I flip through the passport. The words are in Trezekhastani, but the picture is of me. Proof that I am, indeed, Zamira Kamirov.

“Nice work, Footwear,” I tell him.

“Anything for my man here,” Footwear says, punching Sam in the arm. “Never lets me down when I need Knicks tickets.”

Sam tosses Footwear a friendly salute and guides me out of the office, through the garage, and onto the street, where the town car whose driver owed him a favor waits to open the door for us.

I climb into the backseat. Sam sits next to me.

“Okay, Reardon,” says Sam to the driver. “The Trezekhastan Orthodox Cathedral.”

“Corner of Twenty-Third Street and Eighth Avenue,” says the driver. “Traffic's gonna be a challenge, but I'll get you there on time.”

I check my watch. It's ten minutes after one. The coming-of-age ceremony is scheduled to start at two.

“You two make a cute couple,” says Reardon the driver.

“She makes me look good,” says Sam. He squeezes closer to me and whispers in my ear. “You know, your spy abilities. My people skills. We should team up. I'm not just talking about dating. I mean, we could really help each other out. We could trade information, dig up secrets for each other. You could help me look into people's backgrounds; I could help you gain access to pretty much anywhere you wanted to go. We could lock down both coasts.”

And right there, in the tone of his voice, in the smooth way he lays out his vision of our joint future as if there's no doubt we're going to have one, I see how he gets what he wants. Sam's very persuasive, so much so that, when he was talking, I was thinking,
Why not? Sounds good.
We could lock down both coasts. In fact, why stop at both coasts?

The phone in my pocket rings. It distracts me from Sam's voice. I don't recognize the number on the screen, but then I remember this isn't my phone. It's the one I fished out of the pocket of the hoodie criminal who stole it on the subway.

“Hello?” I say.

“You have my phone,” says a woman's nervous voice.

It's the hoodie guys' victim! I tell her how happy I am to hear from the owner of the phone I found quite by accident. I make arrangements to return it later this afternoon, and after the victim has thanked me profusely and hung up, I continue a one-sided conversation, pretending to tell my new friend all about my family, my school, and life in Reindeer Crescent. I maintain this charade for the entire thirty-eight minutes it takes Reardon to drive us into Manhattan because I don't want to give Sam any more opportunities to persuade me to team up with him and lock down both coasts.

At two o'clock, we're on Eighth Avenue and Seventeenth Street. The traffic ahead of us is not moving. The
air is filled with angrily honking horns. I add to the noise by impatiently drumming my fingers off the window.

“If it's any consolation, everyone's in the same boat,” says the driver. “No one's going to be on time today.”

It's no consolation.

I go back to drumming on the window, and then I notice the limousine waiting in the lane next to us. A girl sitting in the backseat is staring blankly out of her window. She's looking in my direction. I recognize the boredom in her expression. I recognize something else. I know this girl from her Instagram account. I am this girl. Zamira Kamirov is in the next car.

She can't get to the cathedral at the same time as me. I squeeze past Sam and open the door nearest the curb.

“What are you doing?” Sam says. “Get back in.”

“I need to buy some breath mints,” I lie, and jump out of the car. “I'll be back in a minute.”

“No you won't,” he says, and starts to follow me out into the street.

“Sam, you've done a lot for me today, and I'm grateful,” I tell him. “But you can't help me anymore and I can't be responsible for you getting hurt.”

“I won't get hurt,” he says.

“Remember how you found me this morning?” I remind him. “All beaten-up and hanging from a hook?
Your mother already doesn't like me. Imagine what she'd think if I let something like that happen to you.”

“Nothing . . . ,” he starts to say.

“Enough!” I bark. “Do yourself a favor and get back in the car.”

Sam flinches like I slapped him. He probably thinks I'm mean. Good. The meaner he believes me to be, the safer he'll stay. I start to run up Eighth Avenue. I manage maybe three steps in my heels before I lose my balance and have to grab the arm of a shocked stranger. The passerby shakes me off. I lean against a street lamp and pull off Alex Gunnery's too-big shoes. Then I start running again. On the crowded New York sidewalk, shoes in hand, my stupid veil pushed up over my hockey puck–shaped hat, zipping around pedestrians, shoving my way through groups of teens idly shuffling along, narrowly avoiding collisions with mothers pushing strollers, nearly charging head-on into fully grown adults immersed in their phones, and all the while checking the uneven ground beneath my bare feet for garbage, open manhole covers, and smelly things that I do not want to step in. This probably isn't a smart way to get to my destination unscathed.

On Eighth and Eighteenth, I see a boy tumble off his skateboard and roll onto the sidewalk. As he tries to sit
upright, I jump onto his board, kick out with my left leg, and shoot up the street.

“Hey!” I hear him yell behind me.

“Sorry!” I call back.

With my veil flying and my shoes in my hand, I probably don't look a lot like the average skateboarder. The New Yorkers who scatter out of my way as I rocket along the sidewalk are shouting abuse and jabbing angry fingers at me. I know I'm a hazard but I can't help it. I'm in a hurry.

From halfway up Eighth and Twentieth, I can see the police presence outside the cathedral. The building is cordoned off with yellow tape. Limousines are lined up for inspection. Cops are checking inside the trunks, shining flashlights under the cars, and looking in the hoods. As I keep rolling, I see guests lining up in the street, each one being patted down by police officers.

I made this happen with one phone call, I realize. I also realize I'm a minute or so away from being patted down myself.

I slow down my pace as I approach the corner of Eighth and Twenty-Third. Police cars and local news trucks surround the cathedral. I hop off my stolen board, squeeze back into my shoes, wipe the thin film of sweat from my brow, and lower my veil.

“Celebration guests over here,” yells a policewoman.

I join the end of a long, long line. Extravagantly dressed men, women, boys, and girls in front of me talk loudly and rapidly in languages that are either Trezekhastani or Savlostavian. I do not need a translator to explain that these people who have traveled long distances to attend this ceremony are not happy about waiting in the street to be patted down by American police officers.

The couple in front of me, a woman wearing a hat the size of a satellite dish and her rotund husband, both stop in the middle of their angry exchange and peer in my direction.

Uh-oh.

If they speak to me in either Trezekhastani or Savlostavian, I'm in trouble. If they know the real Zamira Kamirov—and the chances are fifty-fifty—I'm in huuuuge trouble.

Satellite Dish Hat starts yakking a mile a minute in what she must imagine is our shared tongue.

I remain silent behind my veil and dark glasses. Satellite Dish Hat doesn't give up. She leans toward me and speaks both louder and slower. Rotund Husband joins in.

How do I get out of this?

I burst into tears. Or at least, I shake my shoulders and make appropriately pathetic weeping noises.

“Saying good-bye to childhood is so-o-o-o sad,” I manage to get out.

Satellite Dish Hat and her husband look embarrassed at my wailing. They turn around and resume their conversation. I sigh with relief but maintain my sniveling as a deterrent in case anyone else tries to engage me.

The police finally beckon to the couple in front of me. I watch as they hand over their passports and endure the rubber-gloved hands exploring their pockets for hidden weapons.

I turn around in time to see the real Zamira Kamirov take her place at the back of the line.

I feel my face go red and my heart start to thump. I whirl back around and watch Satellite Dish Hat and her husband receive the world's longest pat-down.

Hurry up.

Finally, the couple are escorted through the yellow tape and into a door around the back of the cathedral.

A police translator says something I imagine means “Step forward.” I pass my forged Trezekhastan passport to the cop. He looks at the clipboard with the list of ceremony guests. Then he looks at me.

“You're here on your own?”

“My father at grain conference,” I say. “My mother army tank commander.”

The cop motions at me to lift my veil and take off my
dark glasses. He checks my passport picture.

Passing myself off as Zamira Kamirov is not my most fully thought-through plan. There is a large line of impatient guests behind me capable of outing me as an impostor. But luckily for me, it appears they have other things on their minds. Some of them are singing with passion and volume, a song that, even to my untrained ears, sounds like a national anthem. Behind them, a second group of guests has begun to try and drown them out by singing another anthemic song in a different language. The first group gets even louder. Together they sound like a choir of angry cats.

“Shut it down,” roars the cop. “Shut it down right now or you're standing out here all day.”

The cop pats my jacket pockets. He pulls out Red and gives him a suspicious stare.

“My lucky marble,” I say.

The cop gives me a pitying look, drops Red into my hand, and then shoves my passport back at me before stomping off to deal with the dueling groups of anthem singers. Another cop guides me to the back of the cathedral. I hear organ music echoing from inside the building. I take a few more unsteady steps in my too-big shoes.

I'm in.