The Spy Who Haunted Me

by Simon R. Green

  “Shoot me now and get it over with,” said the Blue Fairy.

  “Don’t tempt me,” I said.

  “How many miles, exactly, to civilisation?” said Walker, practical as ever.

  “Thirty, forty miles to the nearest small town,” said Honey. “Hard to be sure; there aren’t any accurate maps of this region.”

  “Let me guess,” said Peter. “Because no one ever comes here, right?”

  “Maybe a few trappers, hunters,” said Honey. “Backwoods hermits who like to keep themselves to themselves.”

  “Can you hear banjo music?” said the Blue Fairy.

  “Shut up,” I said.

  Honey set off through the trees, and since she looked like she knew where she was going, the rest of us trailed after her, for want of anything better to do. She stripped off her heavy fur coat, dropped it carelessly on the ground, and walked away from it. The rest of us stepped carefully over and around it. Honey was an agent; there was no telling what kind of dirty tricks she might have left behind with her coat. The Blue Fairy sighed appreciatively.

  “Now that’s style, that is. Just drop off a few hundred thousand dollars of coat and keep on walking.” He ripped off his wilting ruff and threw it into the trees with a dramatic gesture.

  “I should lose the breastplate while you’re at it,” I said. “It must weigh half a ton, and it’ll only get worse in this heat. You don’t need it now you’ve got a torc to protect you.”

  He looked down at the brass and silver breastplate scored with protective runes and shook his head stiffly. “No. I don’t think so. In the things that matter, it’s always best to stick with things you can trust.”

  I glanced back to see how the others were doing. Peter King was wandering along, stumbling over the occasional raised root in the ground because his attention was clearly elsewhere. If anything, he looked more out of place in the woods of the American South than he had in the Scottish Highlands. He’d taken off his expensive jacket and slung it over one shoulder and rolled up his sleeves, and his pale bare arms had excited the surrounding insects into a feeding frenzy. Walker hadn’t even made that much of a concession to the heat; he still wore his smart city suit like a knight’s armour. Though he had loosened his old-school tie, just a little. He strolled along amiably, smiling about him and enjoying the scenery as though taking a tour of someone’s private estate.

  The vegetation and the trees fell suddenly away as we came to the riverbank. Almost wide enough to qualify as a lake, the muddy waters ran calmly past us, swirling around the mottled trunks of gnarled and knotted trees. Small dark shadows shot this way and that through the waters; beavers, maybe? I’m not really up on wildlife. And I can’t think of beavers without remembering the talking ones in Narnia. I’d make a lousy trapper. We all stood close together on the riverbank for mutual comfort and support in such alien surroundings, and we looked up and down the river. Just more of the same, from one horizon to the next. It was getting darker. The Blue Fairy studied the crap brown waters with a sort of disgusted fascination.

  “Do you suppose they have alligators here?”

  “Almost certainly,” I said.

  “Oh, God . . .”

  “I can deal with alligators,” Honey said cheerfully. “I could use a new pair of shoes. Or even luggage.”

  Shadows were lengthening, filling the gaps between the trees. The light was going out of the day, and the sky was the dull red of drying blood. Cries from surrounding wildlife were becoming louder, more urgent. Already the gloom was creeping in around us, and I couldn’t see nearly as far as I could when we arrived. I had a strong feeling . . . of being watched.

  “Did anyone else see that film The Blair Witch Project?” said Peter.

  “I liked it,” said Walker unexpectedly.

  “I saw it in the cinema,” said Honey. “All those jerky camera movements made me seasick.”

  “I always thought they should have given James Cameron the sequel,” said the Blue Fairy. “Let him do another Aliens. Send a whole company of heavily armed marines into the Blair woods and have them blow away everything that moved. Like to see the Blair Witch deal with that . . .”

  “Oh, tell me we’re not here looking for the Blair Witch,” I said. “That was fiction from beginning to end, and to hell with what it said on the Net.”

  “No,” said Peter. “Sasquatch, maybe. You know: Bigfoot? Half man, half ape, maybe even the missing link. Often glimpsed, never properly identified.”

  “Actually,” Walker murmured, “Sasquatch was a Native American name for a particularly reclusive tribe called the Shy People. The name Bigfoot is more recent, from tracks found in various locations.”

  “I’ve seen some photos and a couple of amateur films,” I said. “But nothing even remotely convincing. And there’s hardly anything at all about Bigfoot in the Drood library. Mostly because we were never that interested in them. If they wanted to stay hidden and keep themselves to themselves, that was fine with us.”

  “I saw a film on television, when I was just a kid,” Honey said slowly. “About a creature in Arkansas . . . Spooked the hell out of me. The creature lurked around this small town and even terrorised some people, but it was never identified . . . Maybe that’s what we’re here for.”

  “Could be,” said Peter. “Maybe Grandfather saw that film too.”

  The insects were swarming around us now, clouds of them sweeping in from off the river. We all flapped our hands, trying to swat the damned things, but we might as well have been holding up signs saying, Fresh meat! All the blood you can drink! Since mosquitoes are known to breed around rivers for the express purpose of passing on malaria to people, I was actually considering armouring up in self-protection, when the Blue Fairy spat out half a dozen words in Old Elvish, and every single insect dropped out of the air, stone cold dead. The world seemed to pause, considering, and then all the other insects boiling up off the river decided to go somewhere else. We looked at the Blue Fairy with new respect. He smiled happily.

  “Works even better with pests at parties. Look, it’s going to be night very soon now, and not even a Bates Motel to take us in. What was Alexander King thinking of, dropping us in the middle of nowhere? I mean, how are we supposed to find one bloody Sasquatch in God knows how many square miles of wild forest? It could be anywhere, and you can bet good money that if it wants to avoid us, it’s perfectly capable of hiding itself so completely we could walk right past it and not even know it was there! I am not tramping through this godforsaken wilderness dressed like an extra from Shakespeare in Love just in the hope we bump into the damned thing!”

  “Easy, Blue,” I said. “You’re hyperventilating.”

  “I’m entitled! Do any of us even look like hearty outdoors tracker types?”

  “I hate to break this to you,” said Honey, “but our situation is even worse than that. According to Langley, these woods cover hundreds if not thousands of square miles, most of them completely unmapped, except for a single notation: Here Be Deadly Wildlife That Will Bite Your Ass off if You Don’t Pay Attention.”

  “I want to go home,” Blue said miserably.

  “What . . . kind of deadly wildlife?” said Peter, looking quickly around him.

  “Alligators, bears, wolves, wild pig, snakes, you name it,” Honey said cheerfully. “Great hunting grounds. My uncles used to take me hunting when I was younger. Though that seemed to consist mainly of drinking beer, wandering in circles, and telling stories that were entirely unsuitable for my young ears. Either way, I could bring down a full-grown buck with one shot, skin it, and dress it out before I was twelve.”

  “How wonderfully primitive,” said the Blue Fairy.

  “At least in Scotland we had a loch to look in,” said Walker, sensing things were about to get nasty. “Where are we supposed to start here?”

  Everyone looked at me.

  “Don’t look at me,” I said. “There’s lots of stories about the Sasquatch, mostly of personal one-on-on
e encounters, but it’s all very vague. There have been some edgy confrontations, but there’s no recorded incident of a Sasquatch ever killing or even attacking a man. Mostly they’re supposed to be . . . shy and diffident creatures.”

  “Shy and diffident; great,” said the Blue Fairy. “Shy and diffident I can live with.”

  “And no Drood has ever bothered to track down the truth?” said Walker.

  I gave him a hard look. “We have a whole world to watch over and protect, often from the likes of you.”

  If Walker was bothered by my hard look, he hid it well. “I’m surprised no one’s ever tried to catch or trap a Sasquatch,” he said thoughtfully. “Especially given the locals are undoubtedly all experienced hunting and trapping types. Why would they allow a dangerous and potentially exploitable creature to just roam around their backyard, unchecked?”

  “If I’m remembering what I saw on the television right,” said Honey, “they tried tracking it with dogs once. Pedigreed hunting hounds from all over the county. But the moment the dogs got a scent of what they were after, they tucked their tails between their legs, backed away, and tried to hide behind each other. They didn’t want anything to do with what they were smelling. Their owners took a lesson from that, and maybe we should too.”

  “But it’s never killed anyone,” I said. “So why is everyone so scared of it?”

  “Maybe it’s a Neanderthal,” Peter said suddenly. “Cut off from the world in one of the last great wildernesses on earth, the last of its kind . . .”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But . . . Alexander King warned us off from disturbing the Yeti, so why is it okay for us to go bother the Sasquatch?”

  “Clearly he knows something that we don’t,” said the Blue Fairy.

  “I think you can count on that,” said Peter.

  “Hold everything,” said Honey. “Langley’s just told me something very interesting. These teleport bracelets we’re wearing were preprogrammed to bring us here, to a particular location, at an exact moment in time. Well, the bracelets brought us to Arkansas safely, but Langley says we’re missing a whole day. They say it’s been twenty-six hours since they were last able to locate me.”

  We all looked at each other, and then at the alien mechanisms clamped immovably about our wrists.

  “Alexander must have expected us to take somewhat longer with Nessie,” I said finally.

  “But why drop us here and now?” said the Blue Fairy plaintively.

  “It’s almost night! It’s already dark enough I can barely see my hand in front of my face. How are we supposed to find anything in this? Has anyone even got a flashlight?”

  “You should sit down, put your head between your knees, and breathe steadily for a while,” Walker said kindly.

  “If these bracelets were preprogrammed to bring us right here, right now, Alexander must have had a reason,” I said. “Maybe this . . . is Sasquatch territory. This is where one of the creatures is to be found. In which case all we have to do is sit tight and wait for one to come along.”

  “We must make a fire,” Honey said firmly. “Before it gets really dark. Perhaps the light will attract the Sasquatch.”

  “Katt was right,” growled the Blue Fairy. “This is so amateur night. Just sit around and hope one of the rarest creatures in the world will just happen to wander by, when we all know the clock is ticking? I know, I know, go with the flow, don’t make waves . . . Does anyone actually know how to make a fire? I think it involves rubbing two Boy Scouts together.”

  “In your dreams,” I said.

  “I was a Scout,” said Walker unexpectedly. We all looked at him, but that was all he had to say on the subject.

  “I’ll bet he had some really weird badges,” muttered the Blue Fairy.

  In the end, we moved a comfortable distance away from the river and gathered some wood and some moss, and Honey made us a fire with brisk efficiency and the use of a CIA monogrammed cigarette lighter. By then it really was night, and the dark was full and heavy. The light from the fire didn’t travel far. The air was still uncomfortably humid, but the temperature was dropping fast. We sat in a circle around the fire, staring into the leaping flames. Gnarled twigs and branches stirred and popped as the flames consumed them, and after a while most of us stopped jumping at the sudden noises. Up above, the sky seemed to fall away forever, full of stars, but with only a bare sliver of a new moon. From all around came the sound of various beasts going about their brutal business, though none of them ever entered the circle of firelight.

  It turned out that for all his moaning, the Blue Fairy was the best provided of all of us. His padded jerkin had faerie pockets: sub-space larders from which he produced drinking cups, bottled water, tea bags, milk and sugar, and even a small pot to boil the water in. The pot had pretty blue flowers on it and the legend A Present from Lyonesse. The essentials, Blue said just a bit smugly, for any journey. The only food he had was elf bread, which the rest of us politely declined. That stuff would give an elephant the runs, and it would stop for months afterwards to remember. Honey asked Blue if he had any coffee, and he took a certain amount of pleasure in telling her no.

  We sat around the fire drinking tea from an assortment of ill-matched cups. Mine bore the legend World’s Best Motherfucker. While the water was boiling to make us a second cup, Honey produced a large knife from somewhere and slipped off into the darkness. Her white cat-suited figure glimmered briefly here and there in the darkness like a ghost that couldn’t make up its mind whether or not to materialise. There was a certain amount of crashing about, followed by some loud splashing, and then Honey returned triumphantly with a large dead beaver she’d caught and killed on the riverbank. She skinned and prepared the thing with expert skill, and soon enough there was meat roasting on pointed sticks over the fire. It actually smelled pretty good. One beaver doesn’t go all that far between five people, and the taste was . . . interesting, but we were all hungry, and no one turned up their nose. Walker ate his with great enthusiasm and actually licked the grease from his fingers when he’d finished. The Blue Fairy started to smirk.

  “Don’t,” Honey said sternly. “I have already worked out every possible permutation of any joke involving the words eat and beaver. Also, I have a gun, and I will shoot you.”

  “Listen to all the noise out in the woods,” I said, tactfully changing the subject. “It’s like every living thing out there is killing, eating, and humping each other. Not necessarily in that order. And possibly simultaneously.”

  “This is what the wild sounds like, city boy,” said Honey.

  “You should hear what the Nightside sounds like,” said Walker. “Where the really wild things go to screw each other over. We have the best nightclubs, the greatest shows, the music never stops, you can dance till your feet bleed, and Cinderella never gets to go home.”

  “You know, Walker,” said the Blue Fairy. “You disturb the shit out of me.”

  “Thank you,” said Walker.

  We sat around the fire, and the night passed slowly. If anything it got even darker. The heat of the day slipped away, and we all ended up crowding as close to the flames as we could. The dancing firelight painted our faces with ever-changing shadows, sometimes suggesting unexpected revelations of character. Every now and again we’d hear something large and heavy crashing through the woods, but nothing ever entered our circle of firelight. To begin with we jumped at every sound, but it never came to anything, and after a while we just stopped bothering. It was cold, we were tired, and you can drink only so much tea. Peter kept almost nodding off, and then jerking up his head with a start. Finally, the Blue Fairy stirred uncomfortably.

  “I really need to go to the toilet,” he said miserably.

  “Thank you for sharing that with us,” I said. “Go do it in the river. That’s what it’s for.”

  “But it’s dark out there! There are . . . things. Hungry-sounding things, hiding in the dark. I don’t want to go on my own.”

  “Wel
l, I’m not going to hold your hand,” said Peter. “Or anything else, for that matter.”

  “Be brave, little soldier,” said Honey.

  “What have you got to be scared of?” I said. “You’re wearing a torc, remember?”

  He gave me a look, and then lurched to his feet and shuffled off into the darkness. We could follow his progress from the muffled curses and the occasional banging into trees that didn’t get out of his way fast enough. Finally, there came a distant splashing.

  “I think he’s found the river,” Walker said solemnly.

  “Oh, good,” said Honey.

  “If the Sasquatch was going to be attracted by the firelight, I think he would have turned up by now,” I said.

  “Patience,” said Honey. “Hunting is all about patience. And blowing something’s head off with a really big gun, naturally.”

  “No wonder you ended up in the CIA,” said Peter.

  Walker winced. “Perhaps we should decide in advance what we’re going to do with the Sasquatch when it finally does deign to put in an appearance. Capture it on Peter’s phone camera?”

  “I really would like to shoot it,” said Honey. “Have it stuffed and mounted . . . I’ve got just the place for it in my apartment. Or maybe use it as a throw rug.”

  “That might be all right if it is just some kind of unknown ape,” I said tactfully. “But what if it does turn out to be a Neanderthal or some kind of missing link? Maybe even the last of its kind?”

  “What would you do with it, if it did turn out to be half human?” said Walker. “Put it in a zoo, or give it the vote? No, Eddie, you had the right idea with Nessie. It would be a sin to make such a creature extinct, but at the same time it’s far better off left alone. It doesn’t need to be made a target for hunters or conservationists. We’ll take its photo and then leave it to its own devices, safe in the wilderness.”

  “Right,” I said. “This is its home. We’re the intruders here.”

  “You soppy sentimental thing,” said Honey. “How did someone as softhearted as you end up a Drood field agent?”