by Winona Kent
“How many?” Robin gasped.
Evan counted. “Eight—nine—ten. Only ten.”
“Only? That’s comforting. Shoot back! Why don’t you shoot back?”
“I don’t have a gun,” his father replied. “Charlotte, off you go. On your hands and knees. Stay low—they won’t see you if you’re quick. Now.”
With her heart slamming in her chest, she set out, slithering through the mud on her belly, Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now. The field was immense. Far away, she could see the helicopter—black, tiny, blades stationary. God. How would they all fit inside?
Another burst of gunfire sent her scrambling at double speed. They weren’t firing at her: the bullets were going into the bushes, into the shrubbery where Ian and Evan and Robin were crouched, hiding.
Heart pounding, out of breath, she crawled up to the helicopter’s runners and threw herself inside the eggshaped Plexiglas shell, nearly squashing Anthony, who was sitting in the front passenger seat.
“Charlotte!” he exclaimed, eyes lighting up. He threw his arms around her and gave her a kiss. “I haven’t seen you since I fell through the ceiling. How are you?”
“Fine,” she gasped, looking at Giselle. “They’re out there—in the trees. Evan and Robin and Ian. Getting shot at. Can you help them?”
“This helicopter sprays oil slicks,” Anthony said, confidentially. “This helicopter comes equipped with air-to-air nuclear missiles. This helicopter—”
“This helicopter has nothing,” Giselle answered, starting up the rotors. “I stripped it down. It was overweight. With sacks of flour.”
She searched the field. “Here comes a person. Two persons.” She raised the binoculars. “Robin and Ian.”
The popping of gunfire could be heard quite plainly, coming closer, closer. Robin stumbled through the short grass, half-dragging his brother, who was weaving up and down like a drunkard, tripping, falling over. They reached the helicopter. Robin pushed Ian inside. They collapsed into the back, one on top of the other.
“Evan says to fly over,” he said, fighting for breath. “He’ll come out when he sees you. There’s ten guys on his tail. Go! Go!”
Charlotte’s stomach gave a lurch as the helicopter swung away from the ground, like an enclosed pod on a giant ferris wheel.
“Hang on,” Giselle said, through her teeth. She went in low, hovering close to the line of bushes, pulling up and back as the headlights of three jeeps full of yellow-shirted guards appeared from the far end of the field.
“Oh, shit,” said Robin. He stuck his head out through the open door. “Evan!” he hollered. “Evan!”
He was answered by a spectacular explosion—yellow and orange and smoking and blazing—from inside the Dehra Dun compound. The fireworks momentarily distracted the drivers of the three jeeps. They stopped, stood up, craning their necks to see over the tops of the trees.
As the black, acrid cloud billowed into the overcast sky, fueled by the flicker of fires beneath, Evan stumbled out of the cover of the bushes. Robin could see that someone was chasing him—a man in yellow, carrying a weapon, aiming it as he ran, shooting…
There was one short burst of automatic gunfire, and Robin’s father fell, face down, sprawling in the grass and mud. He didn’t move.
“No!” Robin screamed. “No! No!”
He elbowed Anthony and Charlotte out of the way and tumbled to the ground, landing on his side, rolling. Another explosion, nearby, in the hangars, jarred the darkness. The single gunman was startled. A third series of explosions sent fireballs high into the sky. Robin crawled across the field to his father.
“No,” he sobbed, tears of rage pouring down his cheeks. “No—you can’t die on me now! No!”
The guard was turning, had spotted him, was raising his semiautomatic…
For a moment, their eyes met, and the man grinned at him. Robin buried his head in his father’s neck, holding on, not letting go…never letting go…never again…
There was a funny kind of noise from the helicopter. A pphhht kind of noise, and, again, a second time. Pphhht. The guard collapsed, the gun dropping from his hand.
His eyes swimming, Robin raised his head. It was dark. The helicopter was a long way away. But what it looked like…what it looked like…was Anthony, clutching the Spy Squad Special…clutching it in both hands…aiming it…
Robin gazed at his father. “Don’t die,” he pleaded, softly. “Please…don’t die. You can’t…”
“I’ll try not to,” Evan whispered.
“Oh, God.” Robin scrambled to his feet. “You guys!” he hollered. “You guys! Help me! He’s still alive! You guys!”
Two figures dropped out of the helicopter; Giselle inched it closer, hovering, one eye on the jeeps. Charlotte grabbed one of Evan’s arms, Anthony the other, Robin his legs. They dragged him across the field.
Charlotte struggled inside, pulling; Anthony pushed. Evan tumbled to the floor, gasping, blood seeping through his clothing, front and back. Charlotte reached for Anthony and hauled him into the back; he fell on top of her, squashing her against Ian.
Giselle fought to keep the machine balanced as Robin grabbed for a handhold. They were overloaded and swaying dangerously. The three jeepfuls of guards were advancing from the edge of the field, guns blazing. Giselle pulled for lift, and the helicopter staggered upward; Robin wrapped an arm around the runner, squirming to get his leg up and over.
His stomach dropped as she drove the machine up into the air, high above the guards, the trees, the fires, the shots that flew up from the ground in rapid succession. A cloud of smoke billowed into his face; he started to cough. The wind buffeted the helicopter and it lurched.
Don’t look down. Don’t. He swallowed. He was going to fall. He imagined himself plunging, hurtling down in the dark. He couldn’t hang on. He couldn’t Couldn’t. Shoulders…back…arms…screaming…hurting…
He felt fingers grip his wrist, tight. Something rough scraped his hand. Both hands. He strained his eyes, dragged his head up. He looked. Charlotte, knotting his brother’s long, multicolored wool scarf securely around his arms. Anthony, hanging on with all of the strength in his slender, sensitive, expressive, entirely impractical fingers. Robin got his leg up. Both legs. He looped a piece of the scarf around his waist. He pressed his face to the thin strip of metal that was the runner. The helicopter soared away from Dehra Dun, heading back toward Canada.
Chapter Eighteen
Monday
Anthony waited patiently on the stool while the doctor snipped the stitches on the bottom of his brother’s foot and pulled out the remaining black threads with a pair of tweezers. Robin curled his toes; it tickled.
“OK,” the doctor said, cheerfully. He was wearing hospital greens, and looked like he’d just stepped from the high drama of an operating theater; a mask and a very old-looking stethoscope dangled around his neck. “Let’s check your back.”
Obligingly, Robin swung his legs over the edge of the bed and sat sideways, leaning forward, letting the doctor probe the cuts and bruises with cold, bony fingers.
“Healing nicely,” he said, thoughtfully. “You’ll have a scar here.” He drew a line with his finger across Robin’s shoulder blades, left to right, slightly angled. “And probably here.” He touched an area lower down, around his rib cage. Robin shivered. Souvenirs. He slipped his shirt on.
“And you,” the doctor said to Anthony. “I want to see you again in about two weeks. You’re OK for medication? No pain?”
“No pain,” Anthony confirmed. He stuck his hand in his coat pocket and rattled the little plastic vial of pills. The doctor tried to recall whether or not he’d actually ever prescribed anything for him. Robin slid off the bed.
Outside the emergency ward, on their way upstairs, they passed a newspaper vending machine. The blue banner of the Province brightened the early-morning gloom.
“Look,” Robin said, pointing to a headline that appeared very near the top, in tantalizing black lett
ers. “I love this. ACCIDENT-PRONE ACTOR SHOOTS SELF.’ They don’t even try to explain how he managed to get the bullet going in the back and coming out the front.”
“Spy PR,” Anthony replied. “Just like Rosie’s fictitious friend. The one who said she’d had a fight with her landlord.” He pressed the button for the elevator.
“I’m curious. That gun of yours…it wasn’t real, was it?”
Wistfully, Anthony shook his head. “Giselle shot the sniper. Mine’s still just a replica. Always was.” He smiled. “I was a little out of it.”
“A little,” Robin said, as the elevator arrived, and the doors slid open. “You kissed me.”
“I did not.”
“You did. Just before you put the pillowcase over your head and started to sing the theme song from Gilligan’s Island.”
Anthony tried to pretend his face wasn’t turning crimson. He pushed the button for the third floor.
Charlotte was lounging against the wall about halfway down the corridor, her arms folded.
“Not going in?” Robin inquired. They were standing outside Ian’s room.
She jerked her head at the closed door. “I think he’s having a fight.”
Robin gave the door a small push, and the three of them peered through the narrow crack.
Ian was sitting up in bed. Most of his fingers had been encased in metal splints and his hands wrapped with fresh bandages. He was staring, with beleaguered confusion, at Jennifer, who stood at the foot of the bed, hands on hips, shoulder purse dangling.
“Fine,” she was saying. “OK. Just—fine. So Fitch and Raymore’s a bust. So you’re not really an ad exec. So what am I supposed to do about it? Pretend the last two years just never happened?”
“You might try to be a little more understanding,” Ian suggested.
“How can I be understanding when I don’t even know who I’m living with? I suppose your real name isn’t Ian Harris, either.”
“No,” said Ian, “it’s Napoleon Solo. Of course it’s Ian Harris. I can’t fake that.”
“Sure,” Jennifer pouted. “Sure. And what else have you lied to me about?”
“Nothing—as far as I know.”
“Except your whole existence.” She hunched her purse back onto her shoulder. “Well—fine. That’s all I can say. Fine. There’s a car-sized hole in our roof, too. Tell me you don’t know anything about that.”
Ian pursed his lips together, trying not to smile.
“See?” Jennifer said, angrily. She marched toward the door; the three spies flattened themselves against the wall. “I’ll be gone when you get out, Ian. I’m sorry. I just can’t live like this. I need my sanity. I need my security.” Her hand was on the doorknob. “Good-bye,” she said, dramatically, flinging herself into the hallway.
Anthony and Charlotte and Robin watched her as she strode down the hall, her hips swaying in the exaggerated manner fashion models practiced. They went inside the room.
“I’ve got the funniest feeling I’ve heard portions of that speech before,” Ian said, brightly. “Hi, guys.”
“Hello,” said Charlotte, sitting down beside the bed. She searched inside her knapsack. “I brought your gold chain.”
Robin nudged his brother. “We’ll come back later.”
“No!” Charlotte said, alarmed. “Don’t leave!” She stood up. “I’ll never see you again.”
“Yes, you will. We’re only going down the hallway to Evan’s room.”
“What if I miss you?”
Robin looked at Anthony. “Highly unlikely,” he said. “Agreed?”
“Agreed,” his brother concurred. “Bye.”
In the corridor again, Anthony stuck his hands in his pockets and studied the ceiling. “A definite improvement over the yuppette,” he decided.
“She doesn’t smoke.”
“No fake fingernails.”
“She hasn’t so much as mentioned Perrier or racquetball.”
“And she does know something of our family background,” Anthony added, “even if she does think I’m a year older than I am.” He stopped. “We’ll have to put a special announcement in the Spy Squad newsletter.”
Robin gave him a humorous look. “Idle speculation,” he warned.
“Yes, and look what happened last time we engaged in a little of that. We ended up with microfilm, satellite dishes, religious zealots…”
“Kung Fu arms.”
“A back that looks like a relief map of South America.”
Evan’s room overflowed with flowers in all sorts of containers. Cards. Letters. Lying flat, with tubes and drips and wires attached to various parts of his body, their father didn’t really look the part of a master spy who’d just completed one of the more hair-raising assignments of his long career. He didn’t really look much like a movie star, either, Robin thought. He looked—very ordinary. His red hair made the hospital sheets seem stark, white, bleached.
Their mother turned around and smiled at them. She was knitting. Robin recognized the sweater with the Fair Isle pattern: it was nearly finished. She held it up.
“What do you think?”
“Very nice,” Robin replied. “For me?”
“No,” said his mother.
“How is he?”
“He’s doing rather well,” Evan replied, opening his eyes. “The bullet went straight through. Missed every major organ.”
“Actor shoots self,” Robin quipped. “I suppose they’ve had to delay your movie.”
“Indefinitely,” said his father. “Never mind. I need the sleep.”
Gwennie finished a row of stitches. “You two didn’t have anything to do with any of this spying business, did you?” She didn’t look at them.
Robin laughed. “Us?” he said. “No way. We’d be idiots to get involved in something like that. Two secret agents in the family are enough.” He nudged Anthony with his elbow. “Right, Tree?”
Anthony nodded, gravely. “Yes, Pooh,” he said.
“And where are you off to after this? The university?”
“I think we’d better,” Robin replied. “Tree’s got a play to do, and I have to rescue my car from the clutches of the pseudocops.” He stopped, trying to recall just what he’d told his mother concerning his whereabouts for the past week. “I think they towed it after I got back from Whistler.”
“Ah, yes,” said Gwennie, looping a strand of heather green wool around her finger. “Whistler.”
Delayed shock, Robin supposed. One husband revealed as a Soviet spy, the other—and her oldest son—recovering from near annihilation.
Evan smiled.
Robin glanced at Anthony. His brother shrugged.
“Good-bye,” their mother added, pleasantly. “See you at home.”
Randy Lundberg was sitting in his car in the hospital visitors’ lot, listening to “Rough Boy” and wondering whether Evan was in any sort of condition to receive visitors other than family. He’d thought of dropping by, just to see—to give him an update on Rolf Raymond, anyway, and what was left of Dehra Dun.
There wasn’t a lot to recover, after the fire. Giselle and Ian had done a pretty thorough job. The forensic fellows were still searching for bodies and had promised a head count by the end of the week. Meanwhile, Dehra Dun was out of business.
Raymond had turned out to be more of a complication. The Russians had intervened. They’d sent messages. They’d sent people. The Russian people were talking to the Canadian people at that very moment. It looked now like some kind of deal was going down. Aeroflot had been contacted. A seat had been booked on their Friday flight from Mirabel. Five seats had been reserved from Moscow back to Montreal.
He jacked the driver’s seat back and listened to ZZ Top, his arms behind his head, his eyes on the front door of the hospital. Now there was an interesting-looking woman. All legs. Short skirt. Long hair. His type. He sprang upright and started the engine.
“Going anywhere special?” he inquired, pulling up under the wide canopy
of the Emergency entrance.
She stopped and scrutinized him through the window.
“Coming from anyplace special?” Lundberg tried.
She shrugged. “Boyfriend,” she said, noncommittally. “Ex.” She ran her hand over the Prelude’s tinted sunroof. “you?”
“I was thinking of dropping in to visit someone—but he can wait. He’s not going anywhere.”
“Are you?” she asked, coolly.
“Could be. Want a lift?”
“Maybe.” She thought for a moment. “Sure. What the hell. Live recklessly.” She climbed inside the Prelude, her long legs sliding under the dashboard as though that part of the car had been designed with her shape in mind. “I’m Jennifer. Who’re you?”
“Randy,” he said. “Have I see you downtown somewhere?”
“I work in a law office,” she said, shaking back her hair. “What do you do?”
Lundberg grinned. “Sales,” he said. “Computers. Hi-tech software. Industry graphics. Laser printers.”
He angled the car out onto the street.
“I know this great little restaurant down in Kits—Greek. You like Greek food?”
“Love it,” Jennifer replied, checking her makeup in the mirror attached to the sun visor. “Let’s go there for lunch. I’m dying for a Perrier with lime.”
“I can’t believe they wrote me out of the play,” Anthony said, kicking a stone out of his path. “I just can’t believe it. Replacing me with a prop. The nerve of those guys!”
“It was a prop to begin with,” Robin reminded him. “They’re only being faithful to the original stage directions. Nowhere does it state that the tree is an actual character.”
Anthony didn’t say anything. They’d ridden out to UBC on the bus and were now on their way to the campus impound, where Robin’s car had been towed two days after its original parking voucher had expired. It was a long walk across the university property.
“Any idea when you’ll see your Mini again?” Robin inquired.
“I’ve got the auto club working on it. I used Rolf’s membership number.” He stopped walking and looked at his brother. “What are we going to do about Rolf?”