Spy to the Rescue

by Jonathan Bernstein

  “You think you have any say?” says Irina. “We’ll find you something special for your date. Something that’ll knock his eyes out. Not literally.”

  Irina starts to plan our extensive shopping trip. As she talks, I catch Vanessa watching us out of the corner of her eye. She looks sullen and contemptuous. I have nothing more to say to her. But if I felt like talking, I’d say, Having people who care about you doesn’t make you weak, it makes you strong.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  The Date

  “You look nice,” says Sam. He’s a little less confident than usual. A little less cool. A tiny bit nervous. “I mean, you always look nice. But tonight, you just . . . there’s something about you. It’s like you’re lit from within. I know that sounds corny. You bring that out in me. I feel like I don’t have to put on a front when I’m around you.”

  “What means front?” says Zamira Kamirov, Sam’s beautiful date for the evening.

  Oh, I’m sorry. Did you think he was talking to me? Nope. Sam and Zamira hit it off so well during their afternoon of fun and excitement in Manhattan that he pretended to release me from my debt of having to go on a date with him so he could cling on to Zamira’s hand in case she floated back to heaven.

  And that’s fine by me. I was never going to go on a date with Sam. Well, not just him. If Sam had held me to it, I would have agreed to go out with him, but I would also have insisted on bringing Ryan, Joanna, Dale, Strike, and Irina, the people who meant the most to me during this frantic, terrifying trip to New York. As it turns out, I get to do just that.

  Strike and Irina accompanied me to Brooklyn on Sunday afternoon so I could hang out with Joanna and present Alex Gunnery with a bunch of flowers as an apology for abusing her hospitality over the course of the weekend (and also for stealing and destroying her clothes, which I will not be telling her about). By this time, Joanna had convinced her to stop hating me. In fact, Alex had huge plans for my last night in New York.

  “You’re so lucky you came here when you did. There’s an incredible festival of the best local musicians Brooklyn has to offer tonight at the bandshell.”

  Alex took a breath and waited for my excited reaction. When I failed to provide one, she started yammering again.

  “The Brooklyn Bandshell? In Prospect Park? The celebrated outdoor venue? I know you’ve heard of it. Legends perform there. Giants.”

  “Actual giants?” asked Irina, giving me a nudge.

  “Blues guitarists, reggae bands, singer-songwriters, zydeco legends, old-school rap heroes. I’ll bet there’ll be some clog dancers . . . ,” Alex said, her eyes widening with every fresh genre she named.

  “That sounds incredible,” said Strike. “But we’ve got tickets for . . .”

  I could see Strike’s mind race. He said “the Knicks” at the exact same moment Irina said “the opera.”

  It was painfully obvious they were both lying.

  I saw the wounded look in Alex’s eyes and punched Strike in the arm. “He’s such a kidder,” I told her. “We’d love to go. Thank you so much.” I’d told enough lies for a lifetime these past few days. Why not relish the opportunity to spend time doing something relatively normal with no threat to anyone’s life?

  So this is where we are. Sitting in front of a huge shell-shaped stage while some half-blind, almost-dead blues legend plays guitar with his teeth. And he’s the liveliest act in the entire show so far. But I don’t care. I’m sitting next to Dale. We’re sharing a pizza and we’ve got tonight and a bit of tomorrow before I go home.

  “Worst music ever,” I say.

  “Never heard anything as horrible,” he agrees. I let my head rest on his shoulder.

  After a moment, he says, “This security job I’m doing. It’s not going to last forever.”

  “It’d be pretty weird if it did,” I say. “You’d be an old toothless man still pretending to be a hacker.”

  “What I’m saying is, I probably won’t stay in New York. I might come back to California.”

  “But you don’t know,” I say. “You don’t know for sure. You might get another job you can’t say no to.”

  “Yes, but . . . ,” he starts to say.

  “And I don’t want you to say no,” I tell him. “I just want to know you’re okay. I just want to hear your voice and get your texts and know wherever you are and whatever you’re doing, there’s a moment when you’re thinking of me.”

  “There’s more than a moment,” Dale says. “There’s always more than a moment.”

  And with the sound of an ancient blues guitarist making his instrument bleat like a dying lamb, Dale and I kiss.

  “Oooohhh,” chorus the concertgoers seated around us.

  “Careful,” I hear Ryan yell. “She’s still got bits of toilet on her.”

  “She’s got little bits of Squirrel as well,” laughs Sam.

  Dale pulls away from me. “Too public,” he says. “Too many people.”

  He gets up.

  “You’re going?” I say. “You’re always going.”

  Dale gestures around the crowded park. “I’m undercover,” he says. “Everyone’s got a camera, everyone’s got a microphone. All those phones freak me out.”

  However upset I feel by his desire to leave, I can’t say I don’t understand. We spies live in a weird world. We can’t trust anyone we don’t know. At least I had this time with him. At least I know we both still feel the same.

  “I’m Bluey Harvest and this is my brother, Creech,” drawls a voice from the bandshell. The old blues guitarist I will forever associate with my most recent kiss has left the stage. Two skinny dudes who wear faded dungarees and carry acoustic guitars gather around a microphone. “We’re gonna play a song by the Louvin Brothers,” says one. “Hope y’all like it.”

  The skinny dudes strum a few chords, and then they start to sing in harmony. “If I could only win your love,” they whine.

  “Geese,” I fume.

  “What?” says Dale.

  A few seats down from me, Strike stands and holds his hand out to Irina. She gets up and they slow-dance to the song. Little Lucien jumps up and holds his hand out to Joanna, who is not even a bit embarrassed; she gets right up and dances with the kid. Sam and Zamira are next. They make a lovely couple. Alex watches them with tears in her eyes. I see her search the row for an available man. Her gaze falls on Ryan. He puts his phone to his ear. “What’s that? Armed robbery in progress on Atlantic Avenue? I’ll be right there.” He makes a sorry face to Alex and runs off.

  Which leaves me and Dale as the only non-dancers in our party.

  “I know you’ve got to go,” I say.

  “Maybe one dance,” he says.

  So we hold each other for the duration of this terrible song I will never get out of my head. (Thanks, Louvin Brothers, whoever you may be.) I feel him close to me, his arms around my waist, my hands around his neck. When he’s gone, I’ll still have this feeling, and I’ll hold on to it for a long, long time. When the song ends, I applaud with everyone else and I don’t look around to see Dale slip away. But I do raise my hand and do a five-finger spider wiggle.

  I feel someone touch my shoulder.

  “That guy keeps running away from you,” Joanna says. “You must be a horrible kisser.”

  “The worst,” I agree.

  “If it’s any consolation, no one’s going to want to kiss you when you’re back at Reindeer Crescent,” she says.

  “That’s a relief.”

  “But I’ll be around to walk you to school,” she says.

  I turn and stare at her.

  “Big Log’s on the mend,” she says. “She’ll be home soon.”

  “That’s great.” I smile. “That’s the best news.”

  But it isn’t. Joanna’s eyes are watery. She chews her bottom lip. I see her glance in Alex’s direction and then look over at little Lucien, who is gobbling a plate of ice cream. She does not want to leave this.

  “You can come back and visi
t,” I tell her. “You can come back all the time. It’ll be something to look forward to.”

  “Not the same,” Joanna mutters.

  “Jojo, come danthe,” squeals Lucien, running toward her.

  “Coming, monster,” she says, wiping her eyes and putting on a happy face.

  I feel horrible for my friend. I see Sam and Zamira, both looking gorgeous, taking pictures of their gorgeousness. That could have been you, a little voice in my head says. You and him looking gorgeous together. He wouldn’t have run out on you. He would have made a clog dance contest movie for you.

  “No knot,” I tell the little voice.

  “No what?” says Strike, who wanders up to join me. Irina is by his side and they’re both smiling at me. “Can we talk for a minute?” he says.

  I nod.

  “Somewhere a little more private,” says Irina.

  Oh my God. They’re getting back together.

  We walk around the back of the bandshell.

  I wait for them to break the big news.

  Strike looks at Irina. She looks back at him. He nods and takes a breath.

  “This is hard,” he says. “It’s not something I thought would happen to me. Not at this stage in my life.”

  “When you’re so old and slow,” says Irina.

  “You want to tell her?” says Strike. “Be my guest.”

  “Tell me what?” I demand. I’m already thinking, Will they move to Sacramento? Will they want me to spend some of the year in New York with them? What about school? What do I tell Mom and Dad?

  “The Forties isn’t out of business,” says Strike.

  “What’s that now?” I say. This wasn’t what I was expecting to hear.

  “That’s not how you start,” snaps Irina. “What happened was . . .”

  “The CIA sees the Forties as an amazing resource,” says Strike. “The people under its umbrella, the innovations in tech and weaponry, the client list, and so . . .”

  “And so they thought, why let all the warlords, billionaires, corrupt politicians, and crooked cops who use the services of the Forties look elsewhere?” says Irina.

  “Why not keep it open?” says Strike. “Or at least, pretend to keep it open.”

  “Like a fake Forties?” I say. “A faux-rties?”

  “You’re so smart,” Irina says, smiling.

  “Yeah, a counterfeit Forties,” says Strike. “With a bootleg boss running the fake show.”

  “You?” I say. “But you’re done with spying; you’re an old, burned-out spy. Your words.”

  “The CIA doesn’t think so,” says Irina. “They think there’s life in the old dog. They think there’s life in me, too.”

  “You’d be running this knock-off Forties together?” I say.

  They both nod.

  I don’t even know what to say about this. I don’t think I like it. But I remember the mess Strike made of his life when he wasn’t a spy. Maybe it’s the only thing he’s good at. But Irina?

  “You were out,” I say. “You were going to sing.”

  “It’s a younger woman’s game,” she says. “This is a chance to make up for the bad things I did. This is a chance to work for the right side.”

  “The CIA tried to kill you, both of you,” I remind them.

  “And now they trust us so much they put us in charge,” says Strike.

  “Well, good luck,” I say. I’m taken aback by this turn of events. I feel like I’ve just lost them both and I’ve only known Irina for a day and a half. They’ll both be sucked into this massive fake operation that requires endless lies and double lives. They won’t have time for me anymore. I’ll be back in school, safe from harm but a million miles away from the action. I might hear about some bank president getting arrested and wonder if Strike and Irina had anything to do with it, but I won’t know for sure. It was one thing to let Dale go back undercover without making a fuss, but to be reunited with both my birth parents and then have to stand back and watch them disappear into a world that has no place for me is something else.

  “There’s something else,” says Strike.

  “We don’t want you to be part of what we do,” says Irina. “It’s dangerous and it takes its toll. Look at what it’s done to Strike.”

  “We want you with your family in Reindeer Crescent,” says Strike. “That’s where you belong.”

  I nod. I already picture myself trudging to school, standing in line for lunch, ignoring Brendan Chew. Not much fun.

  “The thing is, though, you’re really good,” says Irina. “Nearly as good as I was when I started. Better than Strike.”

  “Have I said one mean thing to you?” says Strike, giving Irina an exasperated glare.

  “He brings it out of me,” shrugs Irina. “The way you pursued Vanessa. The fire in you. It would be such a waste to let that go.”

  Once again, I wasn’t expecting this.

  “What are you saying?” I ask.

  “If a mission arises that involves a young person . . . ,” Strike says.

  “Someone who’s a criminal or a potential victim,” says Irina.

  “Maybe you’d think about helping us out now and then?” says Strike.

  I thought I was out and now it seems like I’m in. And way further in than I ever imagined. It means lying to my family and friends. But then, one of my family and most of my friends now know what I am, and I’m never telling Mom and Dad under any circumstances.

  “So what do you think?” says Strike.

  What do I think?

  “I am not a spy,” I tell them.

  They both smile because they know only someone who is a spy would say something like that.

  I smile, too, and then I head back to the concert, where the two skinny dudes are still on stage, strumming and whining their way through another classic from the Strangled Geese back catalog. I pass Little Lucien dancing with Alex, who has her eyes shut and is waving her arms in the air. Joanna sits alone at the end of an otherwise empty row of seats. I sit down next to her.

  “This is literally the worst music anyone has ever made” are her first words to me.

  “You can’t clog-dance to it,” I agree.

  “K-Clog could,” says Joanna.

  I narrow my eyes at her. “Is that a challenge?” I ask. “Because Roxy is totally down for that.”

  “With her one leg?” mocks Joanna.

  “One’s all you need,” I reply.

  “Show me what you got,” she says.

  “You can’t even begin to handle what I got” is my brilliant retort.

  I didn’t imagine my trip to New York would end with me fake clog dancing in a park with my best friend to the worst music anyone has ever made, but right now, there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.

  Excerpt from Bridget Wilder: Live Free, Spy Hard

  “Faster, Uber driver,” Joanna and I both scream at Jesse, whose only crime was his promptness in picking us up the second we fled the Reindeer Crescent Medical Center. Big Log got Joanna an Uber account in case of emergencies. She probably didn’t think we’d be using it to rush to our school to stop a hypnotically suggested soccer player from letting a deadly wasp attack the First Lady of the United States of America and my sister, Natalie, the face of the Say Hello campaign. But if this doesn’t qualify as an emergency, I don’t know what does.

  Jesse flinches as we scream at him, and he drives his little blue Mini Cooper toward our school as fast as it is capable of going on an unusually busy weekday morning. I texted Strike and Irina the shocking details of Klee’s scheme, and I tipped off the local police that the dentist was a threat to the First Lady. If Jesse can’t get us to the school on time, at least I know I’ve alerted reinforcements.

  “You think T-shirt was under suggestion when he dated Nola?” Joanna asks, breaking my concentration. “She has insectoid features.”

  I give Joanna a pained look. Her face is still smeared with tomato sauce.

  “Just trying to keep things light,” sh
e says. “We’ll get there in time to save the most important woman on the planet. And also Jocelyn Brennan.”

  I laugh out loud at that. Joanna, it turns out, is fun to have around on spy missions.

  She breaks into our catchy theme song: “Here come the spy twins on another adventure, here come the spy twins coming to your town. . . .” I join in for a reprise of the chorus.

  “Uh-oh,” says Jesse.

  I stop singing as I see the reason for his uh-oh.

  A police car signals us to pull over. Maybe they got Klee to confess? Maybe they want me to help them catch T-shirt? Maybe I’ll get to ride in the cop car with the siren wailing!

  Jesse stops his Mini Cooper and rolls down his window.

  A uniformed cop leans inside and looks back at us. “Bridget Wilder?” he says.

  “Did you get Klee to talk?” I ask, sounding brisk and businesslike, as if we’re fellow law enforcers.

  “Step out of the car for me, miss,” says the cop.

  I’m getting a ride in the police car!

  I climb out. The cop peers down at me. “Dr. Klee made a complaint against you. He says you assaulted him, disrupted his place of business, and caused him emotional distress.”

  My mouth opens and closes. “He what . . . I what . . . he what?”

  “I need you to come to the precinct.”

  “You’re taking Klee’s side?” I yelp. “Didn’t you get my tip? He’s a threat to . . .”

  This is pointless. Whatever I say next will make me sound like a hysterical nut job. I nod sadly, lower my head, chew on my lip and put my hand in my pocket. I pull out a tissue to dab my eyes.

  The officer is kind enough to wait for me to gather my emotions. This is a mistake on his part because, as I reached into my pocket, I also pulled out Klee’s vial. I pop the lid and yell, “You’re free, you monster, now attack!”

  Nothing happens.

  I shake the vial and a dead fly falls to the ground.

  “Klee!” I howl in frustration.

  “Get in the car,” growls the officer. He takes a step toward me and then he freezes to the spot. His face reddens and he lets out a scream of pain.

  The officer hops up and down on one foot. I stare at him in confusion and then I realize what just happened. He stood on the dead fly’s transplanted stinger which, obviously, was lethal enough to pierce the leather of his cop shoes. Klee’s reign of terror has claimed its first victim! I’m not sticking around to let him sting anyone else.