“You might as well relax,” I said to her. “The agents will be
here in a minute.”
She yelled at me in Japanese, and I was pretty sure she was swearing.
“Spencer …” Grace’s eyebrows were all scrunched up. She was worried.
“It’s fine,” I said. “And if they’re mad, I’ll take the blame. It was my idea.”
“What if there’s a reward?” Grace asked.
“Then we split it, of course.”
Grace grinned, which was something I hoped to see more of. I was glad she and I were getting along now.
“Here they come!” Grace pointed out the front windshield.
Sure enough, Redbeard held the door while one of the Mr. Sloans pushed Kimura-san out of the building. Cuffed. “Yes!” I pumped my fist. “They wouldn’t have arrested him unless they’d found the mystery room.”
Redbeard and Mystery Sloan took Kimura-san to the grey car and stuffed him in the back.
I opened the sliding door. “Hey, Mr. Sloan! We’ve got another one for you in here.”
Redbeard shut the car door and came to look. “What’d you do? Who is that?”
“Shoko Miyake,” I said, shrinking a bit at Redbeard’s tone.
“What?” Redbeard glared at me, then leaned in to look at my catch. “How do you know?”
I looked at Grace, paling slightly. “Uh … it looked like her?”
“Are you kidding me? You abducted some woman because you think she looked like Shoko Miyake? Sloan, get over here!” Redbeard leaned inside the van and reached for Shoko’s arm, I hoped it was Shoko, anyway. “Help me get her up, kid.”
Get her up? It had been all I could do to get her down. I got on my knees and grabbed her waist. She started bucking again. Redbeard pulled her ankles out the door. I picked her up and fed her out the door until Redbeard had her on her feet. Her hair was a mess, all frizzy and sticking to her face. She yelled at him in Japanese.
“Looks like her,” Redbeard said to Mystery Sloan.
“Namae wa nan da?” Mystery Sloan asked.
“Hottoite kure!” Shoko yelled.
“She probably has her license in her purse,” Grace said.
Her purse! I reached over the back of the middle bench seat and grabbed it. I handed the purse out the door to Redbeard just as Mr. S and the second Mr. Sloan exited the building.
“What’s this?” Mr. S asked, when they reached the van.
“Shoko Miyake,” Redbeard said, holding up a red wallet and grinning wide. “Your boy caught her.”
“That’s what I’m talking about!” I offered Grace a fist.
She looked at it, then me. “Oh.” She tapped her fist against mine.
“But how?” Mr. S asked.
“Grace and I saw her coming out of the end of the gym,” I said.
“And we didn’t even have to leave the van to catch her,” Grace said. “But I did drive the van. I’m sorry.”
“I made her,” I said.
Mr. S took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “It’s time to take you two … somewhere else.”
Redbeard put Shoko into the grey car with Kimura-san. I’d have loved to have known what they said to each other in there. Grace came and sat beside me on the middle bench, and Mr. S and one of the Mr. Sloans got into the van. Itou stayed with the grey car. The Mystery Sloan started driving back toward the safe house.
“You’re taking us back to get our statements again?” I asked.
“We have to,” Mr. S said. “Do you even know … ? Do you understand that Shoko Miyake is the Japanese equivalent of Dmitri Berkovich?”
Jeepers. “Dmitri was a lot more intimidating,” I said.
“It is early,” Mystery Sloan said. “And I suppose you did catch her off guard.”
“I would have called you if I hadn’t lost my cell phone,” I said. “And those shoes. If women criminals wore better shoes, they’d have a better chance of running away.”
Mr. S laughed at this, which gave me hope that the guy wasn’t going to kick me out of the Mission League.
Mystery Sloan pulled the van into a parking lot.
“You’re a twin, aren’t you?” I asked him.
He looked in the rearview mirror and raised his Sasquatch eyebrows at me. “Hold that thought just one minute more and I’ll explain.” Then he hopped out and went inside.
I took a deep breath and sighed. As if this night into morning hadn’t been long enough, now I had to wait. Again.
“Tired?” Mr. S said.
So very. But I couldn’t complain to Mr. S when all this was my fault. “I’m really, totally sorry, Mr. S. About everything that happened tonight. And this morning. And any time I might be forgetting right now.”
“Are you upset with me, Spencer?” Mr. S asked.
“Me? At you? No.”
“Then why do you look at me like you are upset?”
“I don’t know. You just have that angry dad look on your face. It’s my fault your daughter almost got killed tonight, and I feel like I’m at your mercy. You could take it all away.”
“Take what away?”
“Gabe … the Mission League … any chance of figuring out what really happened to my mom. Plus I’m afraid to talk to Mary now because I don’t want you to think I’m trying to corrupt her. I really have been trying to be good. But I know I was dumb about Keiko …” I glanced at Grace. “I should have listened to you. No girls ever really like me. Every time they act like they do, it’s because they’re up to no good.”
“Mary likes you,” Mr. S said.
I barked out a laugh. “Yeah. That’s true.” If nothing else, at least I had me a fangirl.
“Mary may be young,” Mr. S said, “but she’s an excellent judge of character. I don’t blame you for her part in tonight’s events. She is very persistent. And I’m sorry if I’ve intimidated you, Spencer, but that’s my job. As for Keiko, well, we all make mistakes. Learn from it and don’t be so hard on yourself. Someday, if you like, I’ll tell you some stories of my goof-ups when I was younger, and you can have a good laugh.”
Mr. S mess up? I doubted I’d be impressed.
The door opened and Mystery Sloan climbed in with two paper sacks. “I don’t know about you, but I’m famished,” he said.
The greasy smell of fried food filled the van, and I swear my stomach screamed. I was so hungry I could drink three bowls of sweat sock soup. I might even eat sushi.
He drove us back to the safe house. We went inside and sat around the kitchen table. I sat between Mr. S and Grace, hoping Grace would give me a buffer. Mr. S was being nice now, but I knew my lecture was coming.
Mystery Sloan set his bags down and passed out chopsticks and bottled water. Mr. S got some paper plates from a cupboard in the kitchen. He even found me a fork in one of the kitchen drawers. Then Mystery Sloan pulled out four Styrofoam containers and set them in the middle of the table. He took the seat across the table from me.
Mr. S prayed for our food and thanked God that Grace and I were safe. I had to admit that God had answered my prayer there. Then we all dug in. Tempura and rice had never tasted so good. I would’ve stuck my face into it if I’d had to, but the fork was nice to have.
Once we’d eaten, Mr. S cleaned off the table while Mystery Sloan recorded our statements, which didn’t take long this time around. Grace folded her napkin into an origami crane.
“So, you want to know about me, eh?” he said as he put away the digital recorder. “It’s confidential, so if I tell you two, you must not tell the other students. Mr. S only found out about it a month back.”
“I won’t tell,” I said, sitting back in my chair.
Grace leaned forward. “Me either.”
“Very well. I am, in fact, Christophe Sloan, Jean Sloan’s brother. Officially, though, I don’t exist.”
Sasquatch’s brother? “But how can you—?”
“The Mission League trains a special class of agents in a program called Project
Gemini,” Christophe said. “They look for twins—sometimes siblings who could pass for twins—and recruit them for the program.
“When I was seventeen, I was approached by a man who invited Jean and me to a preliminary meeting. There we got a basic understanding of Project Gemini and what it would mean for us personally. At first we were both against it.”
“Why?” I couldn’t imagine not wanting to be a part of something so selective.
“Because the program has one major flaw. You both assume one identity. One of you ceases to exist forever.”
“You don’t exist?” Grace asked.
“That’s right. Try and look me up. Christophe Sloan has been erased from history.”
“And you didn’t want to be erased?” I asked.
“Would you?” Christophe snorted an airy laugh and continued. “Jean had more of a life than I had. He was more visible, had made a bigger splash. So I knew I should be the one to disappear. But in Project Gemini, no one really disappears: We become one.
“There are times when we go on assignment together, but mostly it’s one or the other. The one who stays home keeps up the home life, work life, the appearance that everything is normal, the alibi. We’ve moved a lot over the years. France, Spain, Japan, England. We moved to America when we were assigned to your case.”
That got my attention. “My case?”
“A young man set to be recruited into the Mission League,” Christophe said. “A possible profile match involving a major prophecy, a potential target. Our family dynamics matched the case well. Arianna was your age. We were fairly certain she would be recruited, so we knew it was a good time to move before she settled into a training program.”
“So you’ve been following me since you got there? Before Moscow, I mean?”
Christophe nodded.
“Does Kimbal know there are two of you?”
“He does not. And you must not tell him.”
Wow. “So, the night of homecoming … ?”
“You had Jean terrified that night. Running across town in the dark. He thought he was going to lose you.”
“So Jean was following me that night?”
“Yes,” he chuckled. “I was following a different lead when Jean called me. He’d lost you. So I tracked your necklace and went to the club.”
“Oh. Then it was you at the club.” So it was this person, this Christophe, who’d batted Tito aside like a shower curtain. “And one of you was with me when Bushi almost broke my arm. And a different one of you patched up my cut, because I made a joke about the soda can, and whichever of you didn’t get it.”
“Ah, that is correct. Jean drove you to Oroku Hospital to have your arm looked at. I attended your cut last night. And here you have the most challenging aspect of Project Gemini: What happens to one of us must happen to both of us. It’s important that we tell each other everything. Apparently Jean didn’t think the soda can worth mentioning. Nor did I understand your comment about the Japanese agent in the, uh, jungle house.”
“It sounds like a terrible sacrifice,” Mr. S said.
“Some days are worse than others, but yes, I had to give up living a normal life. I can’t just go to the store or a movie. Jean and I must run everything we want to do past each other. I can’t have a family of my own, a wife, or even a girlfriend. It can be lonely, but Jean and Virginie and Arianna, they make it easier. I chose this sacrifice because I believed it was God’s call for my life. And I’ve never regretted that.”
Man. It sounded rough. Christophe Sloan was my new hero. “Is that what Keiko and Kozue were doing? Project Gemini?”
“Of a sort, it seems. Clearly the girls were not so far removed from their aunt as their father claimed.”
“Aunt?”
“Shoko Miyake. She was the local mission target for tonight—Anya would have been a nice bonus. But Shoko is the leader of the Abaku-kai.”
“And we caught her,” Grace said, grinning at me.
“That you did,” Christophe said.
“You didn’t know that the girls were part of it?” I asked. “Because I got a red card and …” I didn’t know if I should finish that in front of Grace.
“The entire family was being watched, yes. You were supposed to bring us any suspicious information you noticed about her, but no one considered they might use the girls against you.” Christophe turned to Mr. S. “Perhaps you will now have to instruct your protégés on how to track and report members of the opposite sex, no?”
Mr. S hummed his agreement. “We’ve been over it.” His eyebrows crept away from his piercing brown eyes as he focused on me. “But a review might be necessary.”
I examined a grain of rice on the table that Mr. S had missed when he’d cleaned up, thinking that it was going to be a loooong time before I lived this one down.
REPORT NUMBER: 29
REPORT TITLE: I Get a Letter from a Long Lost Relative
SUBMITTED BY: Agent-in-Training Spencer Garmond
LOCATION: Library, Oroku High School, 1-5-3 Kanagusuku, Naha, Okinawa, Japan
DATE AND TIME: Tuesday, July 14, 11:22 a.m.
THE NEXT MORNING AT JUN’S HOUSE we all sat in silence at the kitchen table, eating cheesy toast, tamagoyaki, and rice and drinking tea. Okasan had tried to start a conversation about school, but no one had answered. I was too tired. I’d gotten to stay home yesterday and sleep all day. But today I had to go back to school. We were still here for two more weeks. Jun said Kimura Fitness had been temporarily closed, and I felt bad for the kiddies who went there to play.
With Kimura-san and his daughters in custody, Arianna, Isabel, and Grace were moved to another house, so Jun, Gabe, Wally, and I walked to school alone.
“Come on, Spencer,” Gabe said once we were finally out the front door, “tell me what happened. I’m dying here. Plus, I heard Dad tell Toda-san something about Mary being involved. And Mom was going on about her having a concussion.”
I hadn’t gotten to hear Mary or Grace give their full stories, so I couldn’t help Gabe out there, but I did tell them what had happened. I left out the parts about the Misters Sloan and Project Gemini, of course, and Jun filled in some of what I didn’t know.
When Keiko, Grace, and I never showed at the Yuri Rail, Jun called Toda-san and told him who was missing. Once Gabe and Wally were safe at his house, Jun went to Toda-san’s office. When he couldn’t find his instructor, he tracked Kozue’s necklace on Toda-san’s computer, then drove his motor scooter out to Mabuni, which was the town closest to Peace Memorial Park and Suicide Cliffs. In Mabuni, he called Toda-san again, and this time got ahold of him. Toda-san told him to stay in the jungle and make sure that the rappelling bag was there for whoever needed to use it. And that’s where we’d found him.
“Mary holding a samurai sword,” Gabe mumbled. “That girl is nuts.”
“The steel for katana swords is made from a rare type of iron sand,” Wally said. “It’s the ultimate slicing machine.”
Oh-kay. “It’s too bad Anya took it from Mary,” I said. “It would have been an awesome souvenir.”
Gabe snorted. “That’s all we need, Bushi coming to America once he gets out of jail, searching for his sword.”
I shuddered at the idea of Bushi out of jail. “Yeah, I don’t ever want to see that guy again. Sayonara, muchacho.”
Jun wrinkled his eyebrows my way. “What it means, muchacho?”
“I think he means, “Sayonara, shonen,” Wally said.
This made Jun burst out laughing.
“What?” Wally said. “Is my translation incorrect?”
“Is okay, Wori.” Jun rolled his eyes at Wally. “Supensa-san, I should have warned you when I found out Kozue had lied to me about where she went to school. I did not want to believe it, though.”
“Yeah, me either. Lesson learned, though. Girls are evil.”
“Not all of them,” Gabe said. “Isabel’s not evil.”
“All of them,” I said. “Especially Isabel.”
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“Shut up,” Gabe said.
“Make me.”
Gabe tried to whack me in the arm, but I darted out of the way and almost got run over by a miniature Coke truck. The driver honked at me and shook his fist out the window as he passed.
We walked the next block in silence. I’d had my fill of near-death experiences this summer. Anya had almost won. She’d messed with me, threatened me, hurt me, but she’d also given me something: Another clue to my past.
She’d been sincere when she’d mentioned my dad thinking he was the profile match. I didn’t exactly know what to do with this information. I still didn’t have the whole story about what really happened when my mom died, but what if it had been an accident? Not that that made it okay, but what if? I much preferred the idea that my dad had intended to do something good and messed up, over the thought that he’d intended to do something bad.
But that made me wonder what he might have been trying to do. Had he been trying to prove he was the profile match in some strange way like Anya had been trying to give me “the mark of my faith”?
Some faith. After Moscow I’d intended to read the Bible and pray more, but then school got going, then basketball, then LCT. I was always too busy. I always forgot. I hadn’t even been able to come up with one spiritual warfare verse when Anya’s eyes had gone all dark. Mary kept thanking me for saving her life, but if it hadn’t been for her …
Forget this. I didn’t like my depressing thoughts. “Hey, you guys want to see my stitches?”
● ● ●
A week later, in Jun’s second period math class, Mr. S showed up and pulled me out of class.
“What’s up?” I asked as I followed him to the staircase.
“After what happened last week, with all the official statements and with Grace there, you and I didn’t have a chance to talk in private,” Mr. S said. “So I thought we could take this hour to do that.”
Oh, goody. And here I’d thought Mr. S was going to let me off the hook. I should have known better.
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