by Gini Koch
My phone beeped and I dug it out of my purse. At a normal sporting event I’d never have heard it. At this one, not a problem. Of course, I wasn’t supposed to spend time on my phone when we were at public events, but our daughter wasn’t with us and the text could be about her.
Sadly, it was from the head of Alpha Team. James Reader was none-too-gently suggesting I plaster a look of enjoyment onto my face. He wasn’t technically at this event—Alpha Team’s job was to protect, not to be the face of American Centaurion. Had no idea where in the stadium Reader and the others actually were, other than nowhere I could see them. However, they could see me, and I looked, if I took his text to be accurate, “like you’re about to die while passing gas.”
I replied with one word: “charming.” Wanted to say other words. But my Secret Service detail had clued me in—I had no such thing as privacy anymore.
Dropped my phone back into my purse as people nearby gasped. Something was happening on the field. It appeared to be exciting, based on the crowd’s increased murmuring. Couldn’t tell what the heck it was. Looked around. Right now would be a great time for a parasitic superbeing to form, or for an intergalactic invasion to happen, or anything else that would alleviate the boredom. Waited hopefully. Nothing. Apparently the Powers That Be liked cricket. Or had been bored into inactivity.
“When is the halftime or intermission or whatever?” I asked Raj. Again, tried to keep my voice down, but apparently the acoustics in this stadium were great, because I got another host of dirty looks.
“There isn’t really a break like that, as I’ve explained.” He managed not to add “over and over again,” but I could see the thought written on his face. “We’re watching a T-Twenty game, so there will be a short intermission in about an hour.”
We’d already been watching this for an hour and had been sitting here even longer. I wasn’t sure I could stay conscious for another hour without moving around. And there were at least two more hours to get through after the short intermission. And this was a “short” game. “Real” cricket could go on for days. This game had to have been created to torture political prisoners. Wondered if I could invoke the Geneva Conventions as a way out of the boredom. Probably not. My luck never went that way.
Plus I was uncomfortable. Under normal circumstances—you know, before my husband had somehow become the Vice President—I’d have been in jeans, my Converse, an Aerosmith thermal of some kind, and my nice, warm snow jacket. Or I’d have been in what the A-Cs, who were love slaves to black, white, and Armani, always wore—a black slim skirt, a white oxford, and black pumps, with a long black trench coat.
Because we were now some of the most public of figures, I was required to pay a lot more attention to what I was wearing. I’d also been assigned my own color—iced blue. I was in iced blue as much as I’d been in black and white before. In fact, I missed black and white, I was in this blue so much nowadays. This meant that for this event I was in an iced blue pantsuit, an off-white Angora sweater, and neutral high-heeled boots. And pearls. Supposedly I looked great. I felt remarkably stupid dressed like this at a sporting event.
Chuckie got a text and grunted. “You need to pretend to be having fun,” he said. Either his voice hadn’t carried or everyone else agreed with him, because no one shot the Evil Eye toward us.
“I’m trying.”
“It’s not working.”
Made up my mind. “Then, I’m out of here.”
CHAPTER 2
“WHAT THE HELL?” Chuckie sounded ready to lose it, though he managed to keep his voice down.
“You can’t leave,” Raj said, as he tried to watch the so-called action on the field and look at me at the same time, with limited success.
“No freaking duh. I’m going to the concession stand. Now.”
Raj, sensing that the emergency was about a negative three on a scale of one to ten, turned his full attention back to the match.
“Couldn’t we just send someone?” Chuckie asked, sounding relieved. “You’re going to have to go with a contingent, and that’s going to be noticed.”
“I need to piddle.” I didn’t, but I needed to splash cold water on my face and drink about a gallon of coffee to make it through this ordeal. Of course, I was in makeup, so cold water on my face was probably out. It was also February and we were outdoors in the freezing cold. I was at risk of dying from hypothermia as well as boredom. Hypothermia sounded better.
Chuckie heaved a sigh. “The Secret Service has to escort you.”
“Fine. They probably want some coffee and to use the bathroom, too.”
This earned me a dirty look I chose to ignore. I got up. The entire row behind me got up as well. There was some grumbling from the crowd behind us. I had no idea how, but we’d somehow packed this stadium with every cricket fan in, by my guess, the entire United States. Maybe we’d imported them from Europe or something. Regardless of the statistics Raj had thrown at me, I couldn’t believe that more than about fifty thousand Americans liked this sport.
The row behind me was made up of my wide variety of bodyguards, of which my Secret Service detail was only a part. This detail included two women and four men—the wives of Vice Presidents rarely got as much security as I rated, but apparently, my reputation had preceded me.
All of the Secret Service agents assigned to us had picked up cricket in less than a day and understood the sport. They didn’t love the sport, but they understood it. They, like everyone else, had given it the Old College Try in terms of teaching me. Unlike everyone else, they’d given up quicker. I respected their intelligence and ability to identify a lost cause quickly.
Two of the other men behind me were Len Parker and Kyle Constantine. I’d met them right before Jeff and I got married, when they were still playing football for USC. They graduated into the C.I.A. and had been the bodyguards Chuckie had assigned to me early on in our stint in D.C. Len and Kyle both understood cricket, but as former football players, felt it wasn’t a real sport. This made me love them even more than I already did.
The others were from Centaurion Division. Four A-C agents, one human. The human guy was Burton Falk, who I felt actually reported up to the person who was most likely coordinating the majority of my actual protection—Malcolm Buchanan.
Buchanan had been assigned to me by the Head of the Presidential Terrorism Control Unit, also known as my mother. Mom had put her best operative onto me and my daughter, Jamie, at about the same time Chuckie had assigned Len and Kyle to me. There was never a day I didn’t appreciate Mom’s protective instincts, because Buchanan had saved our lives quite a number of times.
He wasn’t here, that I could see. He had Dr. Strange powers, and if he didn’t want you to see him, you didn’t see him. He insisted it was just training. I didn’t believe him.
However, while I didn’t see him in the stadium, I knew he was nearby, watching for threats to my safety. Sadly, Buchanan was no help in terms of the threat to my sanity currently being perpetrated on the field.
Of course, my getting up meant that everyone on one side of me had to get up, too. Because Chuckie was the smartest guy in any cricket audience, he’d put himself in the aisle seat and had me right next to him, meaning he was the only one who had to stand to let me out.
He heaved another sigh and offered his hand. “I’ll go, too. Why not? It’s not like this is the first match I’ve seen in ages or anything.”
“Wow, bitter much? You can stay. I’m sure my thirteen other protectors can handle my trip to the bathroom.”
“Advise Cosmos that Cyclone and Playboy are on the move,” Evalyne said quietly into her lapel. She was the head of my Secret Service detail. The Secret Service gave out nicknames to those they were protecting. Based on Chuckie’s wealth, position within the C.I.A., proximity to us, and personal relationship with me and the rest of American Centaurion, he was considered one of those under prot
ection.
A Secret Service agent next to Jeff nudged him. Jeff turned around. Chuckie cocked his head, Jeff shared an obvious “go with her” sign. Chuckie nodded, and I gave up. Gave him my hand, he helped me out of the aisle, then took my elbow and helped me up the stairs to the concourse. Cameras flashed.
“Great,” he muttered.
“Yes, this is us, off to have our torrid affair with my husband’s blessing and a baker’s dozen of witnesses. We’re so smooth, you and me.”
He laughed. “It’s amazing how you make it sound ridiculous and the tabloids make it sound like we’re actually committing adultery every five seconds.”
“It’s one of my many gifts. You know what’s weird?” I asked as we reached the concourse level. “When it bothered Jeff, it didn’t bother you. Now that he just finds it amusingly annoying, you find it distressing.”
“One of us has to cover the worrying about our reputations part of this goat rodeo we find ourselves in.”
“Thanks for taking one for the team. Crap. I left my purse under my seat.” I almost never left my purse anywhere. Experience had shown that I needed to have it, and its contents, with me at all times. Sure, I might not need hairspray, a Glock and several ammo clips, the giant hypodermic needle and adrenaline I still had to slam into Jeff’s hearts more often than I’d like, or most everything else inside it. But I sure needed my wallet to buy coffee.
Chuckie sighed. “I’ll buy whatever, Kitty. I don’t want to go back and forth any more than we have to.”
“I have money for her,” Len said. “Jeff gave it to me, just in case.”
“I feel like an infant.”
As I said this, Evalyne shot some hand signals at the agents with us and everyone fanned out. The three A-Cs disappeared. Well, they used hyperspeed to check out the concourse, but to human eyes, they were here one second and gone the next.
Of course, my eyes weren’t fully human any more, just like the rest of me. Due to our enemies pumping Jeff full of Surcenthumain, what I thought of as the Superpowers Drug, he’d mutated. His sperm had mutated, too, so that Jamie was born extra with a heaping side of special. And she’d passed a lot of that along to me.
The A-Cs were back. They were all troubadours, meaning that they reported to Raj. “Cleared,” Manfred said.
Falk wasn’t looking at any of us but was, instead, staring at the TV screens that were installed about every fifty feet, so that spectators who were buying concessions wouldn’t miss the action on the field. He shook his head. “Sorry, but we have a problem.”
CHAPTER 3
“GOD, WHAT NOW?” Chuckie asked as he looked at the screen Falk was staring at.
I did the same. The game wasn’t on. Instead it was the anchor team for whatever sports news station that was covering the game. Couldn’t hear them, but the stadium had closed-captioning on all the screens, and I could certainly read.
The general insinuation was that it was obvious I hated cricket. The discussion centered on whether I hated the sport, hated the Aussies, hated politics, hated the Armstrongs, hated my husband, or hated Chuckie. Or some combination thereof.
“Wow, does it get any better than this?”
“Probably,” Evalyne said as she took my other arm. “Heading to the Excuse Station with Cyclone,” she said into her lapel.
Chuckie laughed as Evalyne led me away and to the bathroom, the rest of my Secret Service detail trailing us. “I really need to go,” I lied.
She snorted. “Right.” We got inside and she and Phoebe, my other female Secret Service agent, checked every single stall. The couple of women who were in there finished up and scurried out.
I knew without checking that the four male Secret Service agents were blocking both doors to this bathroom, two to each entrance, meaning that no one else, other than Elaine Armstrong or another woman within our little Circle of Protection, could come in here until I left. Under normal circumstances, this meant I was the fastest woman in the world in here. Today, I didn’t feel the need to rush.
“You don’t have to pretend to go for our sakes,” Phoebe said. “You’re probably doing less political damage in here anyway.”
Per Chuckie, and I saw no reason to doubt him, most Secret Service agents didn’t act informally with their assigned subjects. However, I’d managed to stand the official Secret Service formality for about a day.
Then I’d had a very private and meaningful talk with those assigned to me, wherein, assisted by Len and Kyle, I explained that they would call me Kitty, I would call them by their first names, and we would act like normal people whenever we were in private, or I would make life a living hell for one and all.
They’d all seen the wisdom of being casual. Len and Kyle had also shared how I rolled with them. Falk had chimed in with his impressions of me, too. Basically, no one on my protection detail could claim that they didn’t understand how I operated. Which, happily, appeared to be working out. We were, by now, one big informal family whenever we were in private. This meant, among other things, that I got honesty from the people who understood far more about what was going on than I did.
“Thanks, Pheebs. I appreciate the support. It’s not my fault this is the most boring game ever created.”
Evalyne shook her head. “It’s not that. At all.”
“Really? It is to me.”
“No,” Phoebe said. “Evalyne’s right.”
“Explain what you mean, Ev. It has to be more interesting than whatever’s going on out on the field.”
Evalyne sighed. “Look, if, before your husband moved into the Vice Presidency, you’d been bored, and the three of us had been wandering around, trying to find something to do, and we’d stumbled upon this game? You’d have suggested we give it a try, because it’s something new. We’d have gone in, you’d have asked someone near us what was going on, you’d have listened and paid attention. Then you’d have looked at the program. You’d have chosen which team to root for based on which team had the cutest guys, or which team had the most impressive record, or, preferably, the team with both.”
“Or you’d have supported the team of whomever we were sitting by,” Phoebe said. “Then, you’d have gotten into the game. By the end, you’d be a fan. Maybe not a huge fan, but you’d have your team, have a favorite player, and have made friends with those sitting around us.”
“How can you assume that?”
They both sighed. “We’ve read up on you, it’s required,” Phoebe replied. “Think about it. If the scenario we just described had happened, wouldn’t you be having fun?”
Considered this. “I guess so. Probably.”
“You’re not enjoying yourself because you’re being forced to be here,” Evalyne said. “Everyone tried to cram this knowledge down your throat, so instead of it being a fun outing, it’s a job. And it’s a job you didn’t sign up for.”
Washed my hands slowly. Not that I needed to, but that way I’d be able to honestly say I’d used something in the bathroom. “I suppose you’re right. So, how do I fix it? And, based on what Burton pointed to on the TVs, I need to fix it.”
“Just pretend no one spent the last week trying to make you like and understand this sport,” Evalyne suggested. “Look at it as a sociological experiment. You need to determine what it is that everyone likes about this game. Two of the men close to you love the game—why? Focus on figuring it out, not fighting against it.”
“I can do that. I think.”
Phoebe shook her head. “They’ve made you so tentative. I understand why you’re rebelling.”
“Jeff didn’t become VP because he wanted to. He did it because it was the right thing to do for our people and country.”
“I didn’t mean the Vice President. Or any of your allies.” Phoebe shrugged. “But your enemies’ attacks are taking their toll. And I don’t mean their physical attacks. I mean the ones you
’re trying to handle here—the innuendo, the insinuations, the pressure to be some sort of perfect political wife.”
“Yeah. All that sucks.”
“And it’s affecting you negatively,” Evalyne said. “So, let’s go out and get you some coffee. Then, try to figure out why much of the world thinks this sport is the best thing going. It’ll at least make you look like you’re paying attention.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
We left the bathroom to find Chuckie and the rest of my detail standing there. The A-Cs each had two cardboard trays with four cups each. We were carting a lot of coffee. Maybe I’d make it through after all.
Chuckie had a giant cup in his hand, which he gave to me. “They make lattes here. It’s a triple vanilla latte with lots of extra vanilla in it.”
“I love you. And I say that with full knowledge that someone’s lurking in the shadows and that it will be on the news within the hour.”
“Let’s get back, I want to see what I can of the match.”
“Oh sure, it’s all about you.”
We chuckled all the way to the edge of the concourse, me happily sipping my latte. To find that the crowd was very animated.
People were jumping up and down and acting like normal sports fans for the first time. There were a set of older men who were flashing the V for Victory sign at each other, only their palms were turned in, not out. Figured this was how the Aussies or cricket fans in general did it. Nothing else was normal about this game, so their “we’re winning” sign being a little backward was par for the course. The crowd was, hands down, the most excited they’d been since getting inside the stadium.
Because the crowd was standing and we were no longer around the TVs, I couldn’t actually see what was going on down on the field. However, clearly it was a big deal thing, and per my chat with my Secret Service gals, I needed to get with the program. And what better way to do so than to share in the joy of whatever had happened while we were getting coffee?