Spy Mom

by Beth McMullen

  “Come in, please,” I said in my most adult voice. And the man in the snow-covered coat seemed to exhale my name as if it had been caught in his throat for years.

  At that moment, my mother came flying out of the kitchen, pulling off her apron on the way. She grabbed me by the upper arm, too hard. Her fingers would leave bright red marks on my pale skin.

  “What did I just tell you about answering the door?” she hissed.

  “Not to,” I answered, my eyes welling up with hot, humiliated tears. How could she, in front of this perfect stranger? The man removed his cap and stepped over the threshold.

  “It’s okay,” he said. He continued to stare at me as I slid, uncomfortable now, behind my mother’s skirt.

  “Sir?” my mother said, trying to draw his attention back to her. The man shook his head as if to clear it.

  “Yes. Of course. I didn’t expect her to be so … lovely.” He gave me one last pained glance and followed my mother down the hallway.

  From my room I could hear them downstairs, talking quietly and urgently. I was not yet old enough to yearn for the name of this man, the details of their conversation, a connection to the great big world outside my window. That would come later.

  Not your average farmers, my parents would travel every February, when activity on the farm was slow, to New York City for a long weekend of good restaurants, opera, museums, and a hotel room with crisp cotton sheets and a fluffy white comforter. It appeared to be the one extravagance of two people who worked dawn to dusk every other day of the year. One February, while driving home during an ice storm, they were hit by an out-of-control tractor-trailer and both of them were killed instantly.

  Later I learned the truck driver was drunk and had fallen asleep at the wheel of his fifteen-ton rig. After two years with the Agency, I made a discreet inquiry and found him. He lived alone in a dead and depressing corner of the city of Utica, New York. When I showed up at his door, intent on extracting some revenge, I learned a valuable lesson. Sometimes letting a person continue to live is a far worse punishment than killing him. Releasing this broken and pathetic man from life would have been a gift, and I was not there to bestow such a kindness. I left him in his dark apartment, which smelled like mildew and sweat, to rot away his remaining days.

  When I came back to Washington, Simon Still wanted to know why I didn’t do it. I tried not to express surprise that he knew what I was up to. I shrugged.

  “It wasn’t worth it,” I said. “What’s done is done.”

  He gave me a cold look. “You lack a certain killer instinct, Sal,” he said. “Someday that is going to get you into trouble.”

  The farm was sold and all of my parents’ assets were placed in a trust for me. I used the money to pay for college. In the years in between I lived with an aunt and uncle in Vermont. It wasn’t bad. It wasn’t good. It wasn’t really anything but killing time, waiting to see what came next.

  All of this would have been available for Will II’s investigator, but he was missing a crucial piece of information: my name. Lucy Parks never lived in upstate New York. She lived in Connecticut somewhere and probably had pink wallpaper and a fluffy rug covered in hand-embroidered butterflies. She was the kind of girl who would have ended up married to an entrepreneur with his own investment fund, living in San Francisco, obsessing over the amount of omega-3 her child is getting in his diet. She makes total sense. The girl from the farm, the one who used to run down the gravel driveway with no shoes, chasing the dogs, she is gone.

  But no story, at least in real life, is ever quite so tidy. One night in an empty bar on the Lower East Side of New York, Simon, well into his fourth scotch, leaned in close to me.

  “Don’t you ever wonder,” he slurred, “how it is you came to be here?” A drink or two behind him but not altogether sober, I asked him what the hell he was talking about.

  “Here in this bar or here on this planet? You’ll have to be more specific.”

  Simon tried to focus his swimming eyes on me.

  “You’re so good at deflecting, aren’t you? Must run in the family.” He paused long enough to toss back the last of his drink, slam down the glass, and position his hat just so on his head. When he tried to stand up, I had to steady him to keep him from falling on the floor. He grabbed onto my arm and pulled me in so our faces were inches apart. His breath was heavy and sour and I tried to pull back.

  “Do you think you were plucked from obscurity by John Smith, NSA, because you were so smart? Nothing is ever that simple. I’ve known canned tuna with more curiosity than you.”

  With that he pushed me away and stumbled out into the cold New York night.

  Most people, anyone sane or curious or even human for instance, would have gone after him and demanded an explanation. But not me. No. I stayed right there on my rickety bar stool and sucked on the sticky sweet cherry from my drink. Then I ordered another.

  Simon had a way of finding the most tragic thing in your life and exploiting it. Although I would rather have been set on fire than tell him about how I always felt a little bit disconnected from everyone around me, he knew. My past was gray, existing only in my memory, and Simon found that irresistible.

  Our wedding, Will’s and mine, was beautiful. It was held on the patio of a faux Italian villa in Napa Valley, surrounded by stunning English gardens and hills covered with grape vines. The English gardens upset Will. “All that water!” But he got over it and by midafternoon everyone was drunk on the house wine and dancing up a storm. Even my new in-laws seemed to have thawed a bit, welcoming me into their family with a hint of tension behind their eyes. When the party finally ended, my father-in-law was propped up against the bar. He grabbed me as I walked past.

  “Who are you?” he slurred. “Everyone leaves a paper trail.”

  I smiled, making my eyes as cold as possible. “It would be better for you if you let this go,” I said. With that, his fingers slid from my arm and his face lost some of its rosy glow. He would not remember this incident later, which was good for me. Sometimes I overreact.

  I was happy to survive the wedding more or less intact, but that was not enough for my darling new husband. Will wanted some sort of great adventure for our honeymoon.

  “How about Thailand?” he suggested, standing in the travel section of our local bookstore, months before our wedding.

  “No, bad weather that time of year,” I said. Have you ever lived through a monsoon in the jungle? It’s horrible.

  “Cambodia?”

  I looked at him over the top of the book I was holding. “Tell me you’re kidding.”

  “It’s supposed to be amazing, off the beaten path. Time to go is now,” he quoted from the open travel book in his hands.

  “No.”

  “Jeez, Lucy, where is your sense of adventure?” At which point I started laughing in a high-pitched, slightly insane sort of way. I’d never traveled on my clean passport. I’d never traveled for pleasure. I had no idea how it was done. And I was paranoid that the minute I stepped outside of the borders of my own country, bullets would start to whiz by over my head. Hard to relax in that frame of mind.

  “Laos? China? Nepal? Bhutan?”

  “Aren’t honeymoons supposed to involve a lot of sex and cocktails and things?”

  “Typically.”

  “So why do you want to go to a place where there is a better than average chance that you will end up sleeping on a bed of rocks with all of your clothes on?”

  “That is a good question.”

  “Think about it. Where are your priorities?” I asked.

  Will put down his travel book and walked toward me. “My priorities are in order,” he said, as he slid his hands under my shirt. Pulling me into the enclosure of his jacket, he undid my bra and pulled both it and my shirt off over my head. He unbuttoned his own shirt so our skin could touch. Standing half naked amid the dark stacks of our favorite bookstore, I found myself sighing with pure pleasure.

  “Do you think th
is is a good idea?” I whispered.

  “I’m showing you my priorities,” he said, maneuvering me backward toward the single cramped bathroom with the drippy faucet. Once inside, under the harsh fluorescent light, he took off the rest of my clothes, lifted me onto the dirty sink, and had his way with me. We spent our honeymoon on the very civilized Caribbean island of Anguilla. I promised him adventure, excitement, and near-death experiences for our next vacation. Which I have tried very hard to avoid.

  9

  Before we get too far along, I should probably explain how I first came to meet the Blind Monk. It is not a love story.

  After I survived following Peter Bradley in New Zealand without getting caught or killed, the Blind Monk became my hot property. Mind you, I didn’t ask for preferential treatment when it came to men with particularly bad intentions, but all things Monk suddenly started to flow downstream in my direction, leaving me drenched and cold.

  The agents trapped down in the daisy with me couldn’t believe their good fortune.

  “You really stepped in it, Sally,” they’d laugh.

  “Better you than me.”

  “Simon must be trying to kill you.”

  “Now, had Blackford managed to off the guy before he went rogue, things would be different. Remember to thank him for the inheritance next time he snatches you!”

  So of course when word came in that the Blind Monk was masquerading as a masseur in a place catering to western tourists off of Sukhumvit in Bangkok, presumably not to give massages, Simon barely let me finish my morning coffee before we were on a plane heading east. During the flight, Simon sat beside me, drumming his fingers, tapping his foot, fiddling with the TV controls, spinning the gold ring he wore on his right ring finger around and around.

  “Will you stop it?” I finally begged. “You are starting to drive me crazy. Wouldn’t it be better if you went home and let me handle this? You don’t seem centered.”

  Simon glared at me. “I’m very centered. And you would not be able to handle the Blind Monk on your own. He’s a tricky character. Takes a seasoned agent to go up against someone of his caliber.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Simon, it’s not as if I just got off the boat, you know?” He ignored me.

  “There is a chance that there might be other players involved too. People of interest to us.”

  “Who?”

  “I’ll tell you on a need-to-know basis.”

  “I need to know now.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Blackford,” I said, matter-of-factly.

  “Definitely not Blackford,” Simon said.

  “You’re lying.”

  “And you’re insubordinate.”

  “I do what I can.”

  “Go to sleep.”

  “I can’t. You keep fidgeting around over there and it’s really annoying.”

  “Learn to ignore it.”

  “Fine.” I pulled my eyeshade down and reclined my seat. I could still feel the vibrations of Simon’s aerobics, but eventually I fell asleep anyway.

  Bangkok in November is not altogether unpleasant, if you don’t mind your days being extremely hot, humid, and gritty. The air was thick with pollution hanging in a haze over the city as we left the airport and headed into town. The view outside never seemed to change. The half-finished buildings never got any closer to being done, the construction cranes long gone to China. As we whizzed along on the toll road designed for visitors with cash, I could see the locals sitting in mile after mile of stopped traffic on the parallel free route, their cars belching gray smoke into the toxic mix outside. Our cab driver tried to convince us to go immediately to his cousin’s shop for custom-made suits and dresses, but shut up after I explained in Thai how we weren’t here as tourists but with a United Nations agency looking into the exploitation of Thai children in the custom clothing sector. We stopped briefly at Simon’s favorite Bangkok guesthouse to drop off our few belongings. He was greeted like a member of the family who’s been gone for a while. He explained that he’d been promoted and had not been spending quite as much time on the road as he used to. That was news to me.

  “Such good work you do, sir,” the owner said, leading us to our rooms. “So nice you find pretty girl to travel with.” The very thought turned my stomach, but I didn’t say anything.

  Simon followed me into my room and shut the door. He sat down on my thin mattress, propped himself up comfortably on my single pillow, and started to do that thing he was always doing with his fingers. Here is the church, here is the steeple, open the doors and see all the people. You know that one, right? Whenever Simon was contemplating throwing you to the wolves, he’d start in with that routine. It was fascinating to watch, his fingers and hands moving as if independent from the rest of his body. This was not going to be good for me.

  “The Blind Monk knows me, obviously, but he doesn’t know you, at least not yet,” Simon said, fingers moving furiously. Church, steeple, people, church, steeple, people. “So you will be the lead here. But I don’t want you to do anything. Go to his place and get a massage and see what you can see, nothing more. We’ll figure out a plan after we know a few things. There are sure to be at least half a dozen of his men around so don’t make any moves. You are another American tourist on vacation. Is that understood? Remember every little detail that you see. The Blind Monk’s strength is in the details.”

  I nodded my head, thinking a massage sounded kind of nice, considering the circumstances.

  “I’ll be watching you from the coffee shop across the street. If he tries to kill you, of course, feel free to defend yourself.”

  “Gee, thanks for the permission.”

  The Blind Monk’s massage parlor was known for being straight. If you wanted a prostitute for a little extra behind the curtain, you’d have to take your business down the road, although not very far.

  I asked at the front desk how long I’d have to wait for the Blind Monk himself to do my massage and was told about an hour, which was perfect, allowing me time to sit unobtrusively and watch what was going on.

  The place was jumping with clients, mostly western, coming and going from behind a flowing curtain covering the door to the massage stations. Most emerged with happy, dopey expressions on their faces, floating out the front entrance with a sublime disinterest in the chaos that awaited them out there. There were two large Thai men behind the counter with the receptionist. They didn’t seem to be doing anything but sitting there and I assumed they were the Blind Monk’s bodyguards. There were also several female masseuses that came in and out to collect clients. Nothing else of interest transpired.

  Eventually the Blind Monk himself emerged from behind the curtain. He was so enormous that his monastic robes strained across his shoulders and barely covered his knees. I could see the silky dark hair cascading down his calves, coming to a hard stop at his ankles. His hands were roughly the size of frying pans and he rubbed them together like he was about to sit down before a grand feast. I just hoped it wasn’t me.

  He filled the space behind the small counter, dwarfing the very men meant to protect him. Dark sunglasses hid his perfectly functioning eyes. He gestured that I was to follow him, which I did.

  Behind the curtain were about six massage stations, small cubicles divided by curtains, with raised platforms covered in dense straw mats. I was invited to change into the flowing pajamas typical to Thai massage.

  For the first hour everything went fine. I was actually feeling pretty good. The perpetual tingly tightness in my neck began to disappear beneath the aggressive hands of the Blind Monk. I was so relaxed that I didn’t much notice the brief pause in my massage and the totally wrong stillness that followed. I raised my head off of the mat.

  “Are we all done?” I asked, feeling a little bit dizzy. Looking left and right, I realized I was now the only one in the back room. All the other massage stalls were empty. Uh-oh. I rolled over and sat up to face the Blind Monk flanked by his goons from behind the des
k. They made a strange sight. The Blind Monk could almost rest his elbows on their heads. I smiled, trying to contain my urge to giggle.

  “I am so pleased you came right to me rather than me having to chase you all over the world,” the Blind Monk said in perfect English. “You are as lovely as everyone says. A shame, but Blackford has brought this on himself. Your demise will send the exact message to him that I intend.” Before I had time to think of a clever retort, he pushed me back onto the massage mat, took my right arm, and pulled it back and up toward the base of my neck until I shouted out with the pain.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, weakly.

  “Speak Thai,” the Blind Monk demanded, adding a little more pressure to my arm.

  “But you’re speaking English!” I squeaked through the searing flash in my shoulder.

  “Doesn’t matter what I do. We are in Thailand, are we not? You Americans, you all think the world should bend to your whim and speak English. So you speak Thai.”

  “I would love to speak Thai,” I said in English. “But I can’t even say hello. I am not who you think I am.” This made him pull a little harder on my arm. I groaned.

  “I said speak Thai!”

  “I’ll speak fucking Greek if you want me to. I still don’t know why we are having this conversation!”

  “You are Sally Sin of the United States, are you not?

  “Who?”

  “Your acting, it does not convince me. But I have a way to find out if you are Sally Sin or not.”

  I didn’t really want to hear it but figured he was going to tell me anyway.

  “Put her in the cage,” the Blind Monk announced. He pulled a little bit harder on my arm. I could feel my shoulder reaching its limits. “If Blackford shows up to rescue her, we know she is Sally Sin and we kill her. If Blackford doesn’t show up to rescue her, well, we kill her anyway.” The Blind Monk laughed at his own joke. His two bodyguards joined in although I doubted they understood anything he was saying in English.