by Stuart Gibbs
Everyone else seemed just as unconvinced by Erica’s arguments, but for the moment they all let it slide. Cyrus returned his harsh gaze to me. “Seems my granddaughter is really putting herself out to fix this trouble you’ve caused. . . .”
“I had no idea Mike was going to be here,” I reiterated.
Cyrus snorted disapprovingly. “Point is, she’s going way out on a limb to get this mission back on track. Now, are you prepared to do your part? Can you get to Leo Shang?”
I hesitated before answering. The truth was, I felt I had almost no chance of getting to Leo Shang. The man was surrounded by bodyguards trained to kill, and I’d be lucky if Jessica ever talked to me again.
But then I thought about my encounter with Leo Shang that day. Even though Cyrus said my hunch wasn’t worth anything, I knew I was right. The man was up to something. Whatever Operation Golden Fist was, it wasn’t good. And if I was the CIA’s only route to finding out what was going on, then I couldn’t back down. Yes, it would be dangerous. Yes, it would be scary. And yes, it would force Erica to flirt with Mike even more. But there was a job to be done, and I was determined to figure out a way to do it.
So I looked Cyrus right in the eye and said, “Yes. I can get to Leo Shang.”
Cyrus held my gaze for a long time, as though trying to determine whether he believed me—and whether I believed myself. “All right,” he said finally. “We’ll move ahead. But if this mission goes to pot, you’re the one who’ll take the fall for it.” With that, he slipped into his parka and headed out into the cold, stiffing all of us with the check.
“I hope you’re not saying you can get to Leo just to please my father,” Alexander said to me quietly. “You can never please him. Trust me, I’ve spent my whole life trying.”
There was a sadness in his eyes as he said this, and I suddenly had a revelation about Alexander. The man had built his reputation on hundreds of lies about how successful his missions had been. I had always assumed that he’d done this to further his career, but now I wondered if it had all simply been a desperate attempt to impress his father.
“I’m not sucking up to Cyrus,” I said. “I can do this.”
“Well, you’re going to have to do it fast,” Erica told me. “There’s only three days left until Golden Fist goes down.”
“Erica and Mike, sitting in a tree,” someone at the other end of the table sang under their breath, “K-I-S-S-I-N—”
Erica suddenly lunged out of her chair, grabbing Warren by the hair and slamming him face-first into the remnants of his dinner. “Say one more letter,” she growled, “and I will gut you with a steak knife.”
“It wasn’t me!” Warren whined. “It was Chip!”
“I don’t care if it was the Queen of England!” Erica warned us all. “I am not interested in Mike Brezinski. And the next person who makes a joke about it ends up in the hospital.”
She released Warren, who collapsed back in his chair, gasping for breath, pulling french fries out of his nostrils.
Erica calmly returned her attention to me, as though she hadn’t done anything out of the ordinary. “So, how’d things go with Jessica after I got Mike out of there?”
“Um . . . We have some problems,” I reported, then looked to Zoe. “She didn’t get vulnerable after Mike left like you said she would.”
“She didn’t?” Zoe asked.
“No,” I replied. “Instead, she got angry. Really angry. And then she told me to leave.”
“Oh boy,” Zoe said. “I was hoping that wouldn’t happen.”
“You mean you knew it might?” Erica snapped at her.
“You didn’t?” Zoe shot back. “You’re a teenage girl! You’ve never had your emotions get all out of whack?”
“No,” Erica said, without any emotion at all.
“Well, it happens to normal people sometimes,” Zoe replied. “Normal people aren’t robots. They have feelings, and I can’t predict every possible one of them. So I went with what I thought would be the most probable outcome.”
“Sadly, that wasn’t the case,” I said. “Jessica went totally cold on me. So now I have to figure out a way to get her interested in me again.”
“Lucky for you, you’ve come to the right place,” Alexander said suavely. “When it comes to piquing a woman’s interest, I’m an expert.”
“Dad, please don’t say things like that in front of me,” Erica said, looking nauseated. “I’m going to lose my appetite.”
“Now, then,” Alexander went on, oblivious to his daughter, “the best way to win over a woman is with good manners and charm. You invite her out to a delicious meal, then order something special, like a nice bottle of champagne. . . .”
“I’m only thirteen,” I pointed out.
“. . . or beluga caviar . . . ,” Alexander went on.
“That’s a hundred and forty dollars an ounce,” Jawa told him.
“. . . or perhaps some oysters,” Alexander continued, indicating the ones on his plate. “Normally, you’d want them raw, of course. I prefer Kumamotos, myself. They have just the right hint of brininess and a certain je ne sais quoi, but these local ones are surprisingly tasty.”
Erica cocked an eyebrow at him. “You ordered the Rocky Mountain oysters?”
“Yes. They’re quite flavorful, although they don’t taste much like other oysters. . . .”
“That’s because they’re bull testicles,” Erica told him.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Alexander chided. “They wouldn’t make something like that at a restaurant like this!”
Erica handed him the menu and pointed to the small print he’d overlooked that indicated exactly what Rocky Mountain oysters were.
“Oh dear,” Alexander gasped. He promptly turned green and ran out the door to throw up in the parking lot.
Hank slid into the seat next to me and put an arm around my shoulder. “Don’t listen to Alexander. When it comes to women, he’s way too old-school. But me . . . I’m a regular Casanova. You have any questions about chicks, I can answer them.”
Chip burst into laughter. “You? You don’t know anything about women! That’s why Claire dumped you!”
“She didn’t dump me,” Hank retorted. “I dumped her!”
“Then why did you spend the next three days crying about it?” Chip asked. He then performed an overblown imitation of Hank, bawling into the telephone. “Please, take me back, Claire! I’m nothing without you. I promise, I can change!”
“Stop it,” Hank warned.
Chip didn’t. Instead, he amped up his imitation even more. “You can’t dump your little Hanky-Wanky. I love you!”
“That does it!” Hank launched himself at Chip, knocking him out of his chair. They proceeded to roll around on the floor of the restaurant, trying to pound each other.
Jawa gingerly stepped over them and took the chair Hank had just vacated. “I might be of service where women are concerned,” he said. “I have read Agent Percival Perry’s Manual to Seducing Women in the Field a hundred times.”
“Agent Perry was a hack,” Erica said coldly.
“He was?” Jawa asked.
“Yes,” Erica replied. “He was actually terrible with women in the field. They stopped using his manual thirty years ago.”
“So the ‘Red Rose Rendezvous Ruse’ . . . ,” Jawa began.
“Never works,” Erica finished. “All it will get you is a slap in the face and a knee in the crotch.”
“Oh,” Jawa said, turning red. “Apparently, I may not be of service after all.”
“Well, I know all about women,” Warren said, grinning at Zoe slyly. “If you want to win a girl over, the first thing you do is slip up behind her and give her a nice, soothing massage.” He tried this on Zoe, digging his fingers into her shoulders.
“Ouch!” Zoe screamed. “Stop that, you moron!”
Warren cringed. “But it’s shiatsu!”
“It’s painful,” Zoe snapped. “And disgusting. Your hands are all cl
ammy. Ugh. I need to go home and shower.”
Warren wilted and sat back down.
Chip and Hank rolled past us, still trying to clobber each other.
Erica sighed. “Looks like we’re pretty screwed where relationship advice is concerned.”
As she said this, however, I had a flash of insight. Maybe things weren’t quite as bad as Erica thought. When it came to women, I knew exactly who to turn to for help.
ASSISTANCE
Simba ski run
Vail Mountain
December 28
1600 hours
“I need some advice,” I said to Mike.
“Sure,” he replied. “You’re dragging your left ski when you turn.”
“Really?” I made another turn, taking care to not drag my left ski. Mike’s advice was spot-on. I moved much more naturally.
“There you go!” Mike exclaimed proudly. “Nicely done!”
Since my lessons had ended before the lifts closed, Mike had agreed to meet me for one last run at the end of the day. (To give us some time, Erica had told him she needed an hour to change and do her hair before she met up with him for another ice-skating date.) We had taken the gondola up to Eagle’s Nest Ridge and were now coming down a wide intermediate run called “Simba.” (Why anyone had named a ski run in the Colorado Rockies after the Swahili word for “lion” was something no one could explain to me.) It was the toughest run I’d ever attempted, a huge challenge for me—while it was so easy for Mike, he was skiing backward down it. This allowed him to talk to me as we went.
“Actually,” I said, “I need advice about something besides skiing.”
“Cool,” Mike said. “Because, to be honest, you’re skiing’s coming along great. You’ve got a lot of natural talent for this.”
“I do?” I asked, getting distracted from the topic once again. I couldn’t help it. In my entire life, Mike had never given me a compliment like that. Well, he had, but I knew he hadn’t really meant any of the others. With those, he was merely being a good friend and trying to bolster my spirits, like when he said “You’re getting a lot better at basketball” after he’d just creamed me in a game of one-on-one. Or “You’ve got a great swing” after I’d just whiffed at thirty straight baseballs in the batting cages.
This was different, though. I could tell Mike was being honest, which meant a lot to me.
I’d pushed myself hard in my ski lessons that day, determined to improve as quickly as possible. Woodchuck had been impressed enough to put me at the top of the class. (Well, not quite the top. Jawa and Chip were the best skiers, but then, they had been good to start with. I could tell it was driving them crazy to have to keep pretending to be beginners when they could have been off skiing the fun runs like Mike all day.) I had gone from the beginner’s wedge turn (known as “making a piece of pizza” because of the angle you formed with your skis) to the more advanced turn, where I kept my skis parallel to each other (known as “making french fries.”) This allowed me to go faster and take on tougher runs.
“Keep going like this,” Mike said, “and you’ll be able to ski almost anything by the end of the week.” He skidded to a halt with a deft spin.
I stopped right next to him. We were now perched at a lip where the run got steeper. The entire Vail Valley was spread out far below us, while low-slung gray clouds covered the mountaintops not far above our heads. It looked like someone had installed a ceiling over the earth.
“Looks like snow,” Mike said eagerly. “I heard we might get twelve inches tonight.”
“Is that good?”
“No. It’s great. If we get a foot of fresh powder, it’s gonna be epic tomorrow.” Mike shifted his gaze from the clouds to me. “So, what do you need advice about?”
“Jessica.”
“Ah! You have chosen wisely, my friend. She’s cute. And loaded.”
“And into you,” I pointed out.
“Oh.” Mike seemed genuinely upset. “Sorry about that. I got that vibe, but I also sensed she might like both of us. I thought maybe she’d shift to you once I took off with Sasha.”
“She didn’t. Instead, she got all annoyed and she’s been cold to me ever since.”
I had tried to talk to Jessica plenty of times during ski lessons that day, but she hadn’t been very interested. The sweet, approachable girl I’d met on the first day had been replaced by a sullen loner. What made everything even stranger was that Erica—who was usually the sullen loner—was stuck pretending to be nice and friendly all day for Jessica’s sake. It felt like the two of them had switched brains.
“Well, now,” Mike said confidently, “that doesn’t mean she’s not into you at all. She might just be embarrassed by the idea of making an obvious rebound to you.”
“You really think so?”
“She was awfully friendly to you at first, right? When I found you two in the gondola, it looked like you were getting along great.”
“We were.”
“So, there you go: She likes you. I think we can still get you back in the game.”
“You do? That’s awesome! Thanks!”
“And I only need one thing from you in return.”
“Oh,” I said, growing concerned. I assumed Mike wanted my help getting closer to Erica in some way—and I was going to have to give it, no matter how much I didn’t want to. “What is it?”
Mike raised his ski goggles, then fixed me with a hard stare. “Tell me the truth about this school you’re going to.”
This caught me by surprise so badly, I pulled away from Mike, lost my balance, and fell on my butt. Which then made it very hard to pretend like nothing was wrong. I gave it my best shot anyhow. “What are you talking about?”
“You said you were coming out here on a class trip. So where’s your class?”
“They’re all in different lessons from me.”
“Oh, come on!” Mike snapped. “Give it a rest, will you? I’m not an idiot.”
“I know that. . . .”
“Then stop treating me like one. You’re not out here doing snowpack research. I want to know what’s really going on. And don’t give me that garbage about you being a human guinea pig.”
“You were the one who guessed I was a human guinea pig,” I pointed out.
“Yeah. That’s why I know it’s garbage. And you actually played along. No one would ever willingly admit to being a human guinea pig! Not unless they were trying to cover up something else that they couldn’t admit to!”
“That’s not true,” I said, struggling back to my feet.
“You’re training to be a spy, aren’t you?” Mike asked.
He caught me so off guard, I promptly fell over again. This time I made a valiant attempt to cover my surprise, laughing like this was the funniest thing I’d ever heard. “C’mon, Mike! That’s crazy. You said it yourself the other day: I’d be the worst spy of all time.”
“I was trying to get a rise out of you so you’d admit the truth.”
I looked around the ski run nervously, worried someone else might be listening in on our conversation. Luckily, it was late in the afternoon and most other skiers had already gone in for the day. Those still out on the slopes were a good distance away and focused on getting down the mountain.
“Being a spy explains everything,” Mike continued, ticking things off on his gloved fingers. “Your strange behavior. The commandos around your school. How you could beat up Trey Patterson and three other guys. Plus, when I told a bunch of cute girls that you were training to be a spy, you denied it.”
“How on earth does that prove I’m a spy?” I asked.
“The only reason a thirteen-year-old boy would deny he was training to be a spy in front of three cute girls is if he actually was training to be a spy. Anyone else would have totally lied about it.”
“I’m not training to be a spy,” I said.
“There!” Mike cried. “You’re doing it again!”
I struggled back to my feet again. “If you’
re going to take my denial of training to be a spy as proof that I’m actually training to be a spy, then if I say I am training to be a spy, won’t that be proof that I’m not training to be a spy?”
Mike paused a moment to make sense of that, then said, “It’s different with me. I’d know if you were telling the truth.”
I glanced around the ski run again. I now had the eerie sensation that we were being watched. None of the other skiers were paying any attention to us—but when I looked toward a grove of aspen trees to my right, I thought I caught a glimpse of something moving among them. However, whatever it was seemed to disappear the moment I looked that way.
“Come on,” Mike pleaded. “I know there’s probably a ton of rules against admitting this, but I’m your best friend. It’s not cool to lie to your best friend. And you’ve been lying to me for months.” He then fixed me with a mournful, wide-eyed stare.
It suddenly started to snow. Hard. Like the clouds had ripped open and everything was falling out of them. Big, wide flakes came down in sheets. The grove of aspens—and whoever might have been watching us from it—vanished behind the white curtain. The snow made the world quieter, too. It swallowed up the conversations of all the skiers near us, meaning that they would have trouble hearing anything I said too.
If I was ever going to tell Mike the truth, this seemed like as good a place as any to do it.
And I was tired of lying to him. It wasn’t simply because it made me feel like a bad friend. It was because he already knew. Like Mike had said, he wasn’t an idiot. He’d stumbled upon too many things that were too hard to explain away, and the more lies I piled up on top of one another, the worse things would get.
And yet I lied to him anyhow. I’d been sworn to secrecy; if I spilled the beans without permission, I could be expelled from school. And kicked out of the CIA. And Erica would never talk to me again. And, for all I knew, Cyrus might order a hit on Mike and me. So I looked Mike right in the eye, doing my best to seem believable, and sold the lie as hard as I could. “For the last time: I. Am. Not. A. Spy.”