Spy Mom

by Beth McMullen

  Suddenly Blackford spun my chair from the table so we were face-to-face. “So here is the new plan. When you get back to Washington, make sure they know I got to you. Make sure Gray knows I got to you. It was a pleasure meeting you, Sally Sin. I’ll see you again someday.”

  He didn’t need to ask me twice. I stood bolt upright and in three giant steps was out the door and in five more was on my way down the stairs. I hit the street running, in the first direction that occurred to me.

  Theo is about to finish his cookie. I have nothing else to bribe him with. I look at Simon, waiting for the inevitable next sentence.

  “It appears Ian Blackford is not actually dead. It appears he is still very much alive. And it appears he is up to his old tricks with someone local. Someone here.”

  The cookie is gone.

  “Well, doesn’t everybody just love a resurrection,” I say.

  “Mommy, I have to poop,” Theo bellows. “I really have to poop. I have to poop now!”

  Simon looks alarmed. Put him in a room full of armed terrorists and he’s right as rain. Expose him to a partially toilet-trained toddler and he freaks.

  “We have to go to my car. This way, quick,” I say. Simon does as he’s told, staying close at my heels. I pop the trunk of my Prius and pull Theo’s plastic potty from a bag.

  “What are you doing?” Simon asks, his voice oddly high-pitched.

  “You heard the kid,” I said. “We don’t mess around with these sorts of things.”

  “Doesn’t your coffee shop have a bathroom?” His eyes grow wide with realization followed by horror.

  “He won’t go there.”

  “I won’t even ask.”

  “It’s better that you don’t.”

  I wrestle Theo out of his stroller, pull his jeans and Thomas the Train underwear down, and plop him on the plastic potty. Simon averts his eyes. Theo starts to sing. He won’t use the potty unless he can sing. I don’t exactly know what the song is, something about rain and butterflies I think. It’s a sweet song.

  “This is really happening to you,” I say to Simon, who stands with his back to the trunk of my car, a disgusted hand over his mouth. “But now we have a few minutes to finish that conversation we were having.”

  “I don’t know how you do this. Honestly. Where was I?”

  “Ian Blackford. Alive. You know, little things like that.”

  “Right. We were watching this professor here at the University on an anonymous tip. Well, not exactly watching, more like monitoring. We knew nothing about him other than he is a quirky genius of some sort in the field of analytical chemistry, so at the very least it seemed like a good time to fill in some blanks in case the guy ever decided to go rogue on us.” Simon Still pauses, as if reflecting upon a very bad memory. “And out of nowhere, in waltzes the very dead Ian Blackford.”

  “Wow. That must have been a surprise.”

  “Yes. We were a little surprised, as you put it.”

  “And the Blind Monk?” I ask, before I can stop myself. “He must play some role in this tale of woe.”

  Simon’s shoulders tighten almost imperceptibly. He furrows his brow. The crease is deep. A person could get lost in there and never be heard from again.

  “Information is on a need-to-know basis, Lucy. I don’t think you need to know.”

  “Well, as much as I’m enjoying this dialogue,” I say, “I fail to see what any of this has to do with me.”

  My baby continues to sing gleefully on his potty. “I’m almost done,” he announces.

  I look at Simon. “You’d better hurry.”

  “I put three analysts to task answering one question. And that question was, what is Ian Blackford’s weakness? Where do we stick the knife if we want to kill him? My analysts spent three hundred man-hours on it and came up with only one. You. We need you to lure Blackford out. He’ll show himself for you.”

  That’s not quite how I thought of it, but whatever you say.

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “I am sure. You can trust me.”

  I think about it for a minute and don’t like the conclusion I reach. “No,” I say finally, “forget it.” I turn back to Theo, but Simon grabs my arm.

  “There is no choice here, Lucy,” he says.

  “There is always a choice. What are you going to do, arrest me?”

  “He knows where you are,” Simon says. Just like that.

  I pretend I didn’t hear what he said because I don’t want to have heard what he said. So he says it again.

  “Somehow Blackford got into our records and was able to figure out where you were and under what name.”

  “Tell me you are making a very bad joke. Please. My records? Are you fucking kidding me?” There is a note of hysteria in my voice. It sounds like it belongs to someone else.

  “What’s fucking, Mommy?” Theo chimes from his potty. Can this get worse?

  “Nothing, honey,” I say, helping him stand up. “It’s an ugly word that big people say sometimes when they’re mad.”

  “Are you mad at me?” he asks.

  “No, baby.”

  “Are you mad at the man who won’t play cars?” Theo has a memory like an elephant. Simon will always be the man who wouldn’t play cars. If he lives to be one hundred, Theo will never forget this slight. I get him cleaned up and his pants back on and his hands wiped and the little plastic potty hermetically sealed in a garbage bag.

  “No,” I say again, strapping Theo into his car seat, Simon leaning on my hood. “I’m not getting involved.”

  “It’s too late for that. You are involved. Help us and we can protect you and your family.”

  “And finally get your guy. That’s what this is really about, isn’t it? You want bait. You don’t give a shit if this professor lights up the sky with nuclear fireworks so long as you finally nail Blackford. So let me ask you, Simon, did Blackford suddenly find my records in his carry-on? Did a little birdie whisper in his ear? You were banking on him not being able to stay away from me, weren’t you? I can’t believe I ever liked you.” I shove Simon out of my way, get in the car, and peel out from the parking place as well as you can in a hybrid. I see him in the rearview mirror shaking his head, looking after me.

  6

  Ian Blackford kidnapped me again on my seventh mission, but I’d gotten better and gave him a run for his money. In the end, however, I walked right into his trap, so to speak. He simply waited for me in my hotel room. I’d changed locations no fewer than six times, so I’m not sure how he stayed ahead of me but there he was, sitting in a straight-back chair, lights off, right foot tapping a gentle rhythm on the floor.

  “How come,” I asked, “you always seem to know exactly where I am? It’s a little uncanny.”

  A slow smile crept across his face. “Sorry, Sally,” he said and like a Vulcan he pinched some nerve in my neck and I collapsed in a heap at his feet. I woke up hours later on a foul-smelling couch in a drafty communist-style apartment building in Zagreb, Croatia, my head pounding and my neck sore.

  “Are you planning on killing me this time?” I asked, thinking I might as well know what was in store. Blackford sat perched on the edge of the single window in the perfectly square apartment.

  “Perhaps. Haven’t decided yet,” he said.

  “Great. Thanks.” I pulled myself up into a seated position and leaned back against the wall. “That makes me feel so much better.”

  “I have a message I want you to deliver.”

  “So I guess you are not going to kill me?”

  “I told you. I haven’t decided yet.”

  “But if I’m dead how can I deliver a message?”

  Blackford grimaced. “Please, Sally. Can you stop talking?”

  I nodded.

  “How’s the head?”

  “My head is terrible,” I said. “Feels like Jell-O. You knocked me out.”

  “I know. I’m good at knocking people out, that sort of thing. My third-grade teacher told
me to do what I was good at, so there you have it. Blame it on Mrs. Pearson.”

  Don’t tell me things about yourself, I thought, holding my aching head in my hands. I don’t want to know you.

  “What’s the message?” I asked, hoping he might hurry up and deliver it and let me go on my merry way.

  “Tell Gray this is his last warning. If he doesn’t back off in Libya, the consequences could be bad.”

  And here is what I wanted to say: Gray? You mean the guy who runs the place, the one you sent a message to the last time you snatched me? Well, let me tell you what happened after that. Nothing. Nothing happened. Gray does not even have a phone number, near as I can tell. And if he did he would certainly not be taking calls from me. I might as well be a worm for all he cares.

  But instead I answered, “Okay. I will tell Director Gray to stop getting in your way in Libya. Is that the whole message?”

  “What? That’s not good enough? Then let me elaborate. Tell him I will start eliminating those agents who show up in my shadow. Up until now, my nostalgia for the USAWMD has kept me from doing so, but my patience is wearing thin and they are becoming more of a nuisance than I’m inclined to tolerate.” He focused those blue eyes on me and my heart pushed its way into my throat. “I kill, Sally Sin, Agent Twenty-six. That’s what I do. And I’m very good at it. Do we understand each other?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I understand perfectly.”

  He sat down next to me, our legs not twelve inches apart, on the mildewed old couch.

  “Competition is tough out there, as I’m sure you can imagine. So I don’t need the Agency fucking up any more of my deals.” He sounded like we could have been talking about the weather or politics or the Red Sox. “And as long as you’re here, there is something I want you to tell me, something about the Agency.”

  The way he put it you would think I had popped in to borrow a cup of sugar and now he couldn’t get rid of me, which wasn’t really how it felt from where I was sitting. And what could I possibly tell him that he didn’t already know? I was basically a subhuman life-form at the Agency, so green that most people wouldn’t even give me the time of day, let alone state secrets. All the rungs of the ladder were still above my head. But even if, by accident, I did know something, I’d have to let him kill me before I could give him any Agency intelligence. And I didn’t fancy dying in a dusty old apartment building with this lunatic. I sighed. Blackford laughed. Naturally.

  “Don’t worry, Sally Sin, I’m not going to make you give up any of your prized tidbits of useless information. You can go. Live another day. I assume you can find your way home.” Insulted or not, I was out the door in no time.

  Simon didn’t like the message I had nor did he like the fact that I kept getting myself kidnapped. He also told me that if I tried to pass the message on to Gray as I’d been instructed, he’d send me to Siberia. He stepped up the pursuit of Ian Blackford, but that didn’t seem to have much of an impact. It did, however, lead to several uncomfortable situations that were hard to explain to the bosses.

  So we kept stumbling along, tripping over our own feet, until one rainy Monday word came from deep in Sudan that Blackford was dead. The Blind Monk had finally gotten to him through some unsatisfied militiamen. He was shot at close range in the head. In fact, the range was so close that there was no head left. But several reliable European allies confirmed that it was without a doubt Ian Blackford, dead as a doornail.

  Simon gathered us in his office. He glowed like a woman in her second trimester. It was the happiest I had ever seen him, before or since. Standing on his swivel chair, trying hard not to fall off, he clapped his hands to draw our attention.

  “Blackford,” he said, spreading his arms as if to take flight, “is dead.”

  “Dead,” he said again in case we somehow missed it the first time. “Now go back to work. Do something useful.” And we were dismissed.

  As I walked toward my empty little office, all I could think was, Wait a minute. Nothing interesting ever happens on a Monday. This is impossible. In the background, Simon Still was chanting “Blackford is dead, Blackford is dead” over and over again as if he were insane. I waited for relief to rush in, for the tension in my neck to suddenly vanish. But instead of relief, I felt like a helium balloon two days after the circus leaves town, smaller and duller and forgotten. Blackford was dead and I was alive. Somehow I’d always seen it ending up the other way around.

  But like I said, nothing that interesting ever happens on a Monday. And in this case, apparently, I was right.

  I pull into my driveway and hit Will’s Colnago custom-made road bike, parked precariously near where my front bumper usually goes. The uncomfortable sound of crunching metal is the final straw.

  “Shit!” I scream. “Double shit!” I pound my steering wheel with my fists.

  And from the backseat I hear, “Mommy, what is double shit? Double shit, double shit, double shit,” Theo gleefully cries.

  I try not to smile, but it’s hard. “Theo, Mommy said another naughty word. It’s best not to say it, okay?”

  He smiles, widely, happily, such a well-adjusted little boy, and shouts out “Fucking! Double shit!” as loud as he can.

  I haul him out of his car seat. Now he is dancing around the garage, singing a song of pure obscenity. At that moment my neighbor Tom chooses to appear on the sidewalk right outside my garage.

  “Lovely song, Lucy,” he says, pointing at Theo, as if I don’t know what is happening right in front of me.

  “Yes,” I say, exasperated. “We’re working on the follow-up. It’s called ‘Go Fuck Yourself.’”

  And to my surprise, Tom laughs. He grabs one of the bags of toys wedged into my trunk. “Let me help you.”

  We climb up the front steps to the house. Tom carries the toys into the kitchen and puts them on the table. It occurs to me he has never been in my house before.

  “Do you want some coffee?” I offer. He nods. “Always.”

  For the moment, Theo has stopped singing and is now pulling impatiently at my leg.

  “Yogurt pop, Mommy. Yogurt pop, yogurt pop, yogurt pop.” I lean over to the freezer, Theo still attached to my pants, and pull out a frozen yogurt. He snatches it from my hands and takes off down the hallway.

  “Theo,” I call after him, “don’t you want me to open it?” But he’s gone. I shrug and set about getting some coffee for Tom. He settles in at the kitchen table. The nesting dolls are sitting on the tabletop. Tom picks them up, turns them slowly in his manicured hands. A little pile of sand tumbles out onto the floor.

  “These are lovely,” he says. “An amazing example of the craft. Where did they come from?”

  “I don’t know,” I reply honestly. “Someone sent them as a present when Theo was born, but with no note and no indications on the box about where they came from. I think they must have been hand delivered. They’re nice though, aren’t they?”

  Tom carefully extracts each smaller doll and lines them up on the table. He gives the tiny one a shake.

  “Interesting. They are probably quite valuable. They look old. Anyway, some of your mail ended up in my box,” he says, pulling a few envelopes from his jacket pocket. He looks around my kitchen with an odd expression. “I’ve never been in here before. That seems strange. And you’ve never been in my house either, now that I think about it. How can that be? Tell me about yourself, neighbor.” He means it in a friendly way. He wants to know the people whose walls touch his. It’s only natural.

  But as I stand with my back to him, pouring coffee, I feel a familiar tingling in my spine that always seems to show up right before I get into serious trouble. I clear my throat and turn back toward Tom, who is staring at me intently.

  “Oh, I’m not very interesting,” I say. “This is pretty much the whole picture.”

  “If you say so,” he says, taking the coffee. I lean against the counter, sizing him up. Mid-fifties, bald, bad teeth, gay, short with a slight paunch that I imagine
was not always there. He has visitors, mostly younger men with a lot of hair. They stumble home with him after midnight, drunk, laughing. And they are always different. We are all hiding something. I take a slow sip of coffee.

  “What is it you do, Tom, when you are not delivering my mail?” I ask. I’ve discovered, after years of informal field-testing, that the best way to distract a person is to invite him to talk about himself. People love to talk about themselves. They can go on for hours. It can be rather painful but, in some situations, no doubt worth the price. Is it really that weird that I don’t know what my neighbor, a man whom I regularly can hear singing in the shower, does for a living? Probably, but in a city you can still get away with that.

  “I’m a reporter, actually,” he says, “for the BBC, but semiretired now. I do the occasional stateside human interest story when they ask. And some travel items when I can get away with it.”

  It’s an effort but I manage to not spit my coffee out all over Tom and my kitchen. I’m living next to a reporter? Is this some sort of cosmic joke?

  “I used to cover politics and the military, but as I got older I wanted to slow down a bit and I thought parking it here might be fun for a while. Looks like I’m never leaving.” As I’m about to thoroughly lose my composure, Theo appears, covered in strawberry yogurt, now melted.

  “More,” he demands.

  “No,” I say with as much conviction as I can muster.

  “Shit,” he mutters and trudges off down the hallway.

  I look at Tom, who is trying not to look shocked, and we both start laughing.

  7

  If you watch enough television and movies, you’d naturally assume that to become a covert agent for the USAWMD you’d have to undergo months of intense physical and mental preparation. You’d imagine cruel runs in the rain and mud carrying backpacks full of rocks and bricks and things. Maybe you’d envision mile-long swims in a stormy cold ocean at night. Or perhaps being forced to find your way out of the deep, dark woods with nothing more than an orange and a Popsicle stick. Probably you’d expect some jujitsu training where the master is kicking your ass back and forth across the room, all the while pontificating about how you will never be any good unless you let go of the past and focus on the future.