Spy Mom

by Beth McMullen

  With that he gave my arm a final twist. And when my shoulder released my arm, popping it clean out of its socket, I passed out.

  Later, Simon Still berated me for passing out over something as mundane as a dislocated shoulder. He reminded me that passing out was only acceptable if I was dead. Still, it hurt like hell and when I woke up in a wire cage attached to a rusty-looking crane dangling over the Chao Phraya River, it didn’t feel much better. The cage was about twenty feet above the water, suspended on a thin chain that looked like it could go at any moment.

  Through the cloud of pain, I remembered what the Blind Monk said about killing me to piss off Blackford. The very thought made me groan. And where the hell was Simon? What happened to his watching me from across the street? This was turning out to be a bad afternoon all around.

  There is a technique for relocating your shoulder. It hurts. A lot. Especially if you are trying to do it while sitting in a cage designed for a small dog over a fast-running, filthy river.

  I lay on the bottom of the cage, with my legs bent into my chest, my agonizing arm flat alongside my body. I bent my elbow so my hand was now at a right angle to my body.

  “Fuck!” I screamed, the pain blurring my vision for a few seconds. “I hate this job!” I lay my forearm across my chest and rotated it back out, keeping my upper arm stationary. I started to sweat, the drops leaving a cold trail as they rolled down my forehead. Slowly, I attempted to coax the wayward shoulder back into its socket. I repeated the process, the whole time cursing Simon Still and his inept planning. Finally, a pop followed by a wave of relief and pure nausea. I rolled over on my side and threw up through the mesh bottom of the cage. Great. Things were really looking up.

  After a few minutes I sat up as best I could in my cramped cell and assessed my situation. My shoulder and arm throbbed with the trauma of the dislocation. I craved a drink of water, only made worse by the river flowing beneath me.

  “So here I am,” I said out loud to nobody but the fishes. “Not likely that anyone is going to rescue me, right?” The water was silent. “No, not likely.” I shifted my weight, trying to ease the pressure on my shoulder, pushed up against the side of the cage.

  But before I could get too comfortable, the bottom of the rusty old thing gave out. I heard the slightest scraping sound and then I dropped twenty feet into the muddy brown Chao Phraya. The Chao Phraya looks like a relatively calm river. At any given time, it’s so crowded with boats and ferries and people floating on wooden pallets that you’d think it was an easily navigable waterway. But at certain times of the year it flows with purpose, fast and reckless, belying its calm surface.

  This was one of those times. To say my sudden plunge into the water surprised me would probably be an understatement. As I hit, I held my weak arm to my body to lessen the shock of the impact. I shot downward like a missile about ten feet before the desperate flapping with my good arm stopped my descent. Then I paddled toward the surface, breaking through with a gasp. The water tasted of metal and gas in my mouth. The shoreline rushed by. I tried to swim toward it but my arm wouldn’t cooperate and it was all I could do to stay afloat.

  Strange. I never thought I’d die by drowning. Maybe getting pushed off a cliff or run over by a bus or something, but drowning never occurred to me. I thought for a second I might cry. There were things I wanted to do in my life. I wasn’t exactly sure what they were but I knew they were out there. And if I were dead I’d never figure them out.

  Flipping onto my back, I started to kick deliberately with my feet and pull with the good arm.

  At first, all I could hear was a faint buzz under water. It grew into a whine, getting louder as the engine drew closer. A Jet Ski. I picked my head up enough to see it coming right for me. I ducked under the water fast and despite the pain started to swim like hell toward the shore. When I opened my eyes, it looked like I was swimming through a huge cup of tea, my orange hands cutting through the dirty water in front of me.

  The engine whine faded into the distance but soon headed back in my direction. I dove again, watching it pass inches above my head.

  I heard a splash and one of the Jet Ski passengers plunged into the water. The man was in a wet suit, with a mask, swim fins, and a small tank of compressed air. Definitely not a level playing field, in my opinion.

  Beneath me I could see the dark hulk of what had to be a collapsed pier. Rusted steel beams protruded out of the slabs of concrete, now covered in a thick layer of soft green seaweed. I took a deep breath and swam down toward the pier. The man was right at my heels, breathing comfortably while my lungs burned. I slipped a foot under one of the bent steel rods sticking out of the concrete. The man grabbed my good arm, trying to pull me toward him and the surface. I resisted, instead pulling him down toward me.

  We rotated in the water around each other, doing a strange sort of ballet. As we turned, I pushed him backward with all of my strength onto a protruding rusty beam with a nasty point. It pierced him like a knife. In his shock the regulator fell out of his mouth. I snatched it and sucked the air into my empty lungs, my eyes on the verge of popping out of my head. Trying to breathe normally, I swam through the cloud of blood, not toward the surface but toward the shore, leaving my skewered victim without even a glance back.

  I climbed out of the water a good ways downriver from where I had started, collapsing on the dirty street in an exhausted heap. Simon Still stood nearby, his white suit immaculate despite the dust.

  “You look terrible, Sal,” he said. “Hope your tetanus is up to date.”

  I could barely lift my head, the taste of Chao Phraya and blood still polluting my mouth.

  “I hate you,” I said quietly, rolling over in the dirt.

  “No, you don’t.” Simon lit a cigarette and blew a perfect smoke ring in my direction.

  “Yes,” I confirmed, “I really do. Thanks for your help.”

  “Well, I couldn’t exactly barge in there and save you, now could I? Then we both would have ended up in that cage. And that would have been a real calamity.”

  “You saw me in the cage?”

  “I was all prepared to free you when you fell in the river,” he said, matter-of-factly. “Which actually worked out quite nicely, don’t you think?”

  I tried to stand up, my legs wobbly. “I killed someone,” I said. Simon caught me under the arm. I could see the dirt jump hungrily from my body to his clean white cuff. He made a face.

  “Yes. But I expect that whomever you killed would have killed you first, given the chance. The ends justify the means. Almost always.”

  “Shouldn’t we be getting out of here?” I asked. Simon studied his watch, as if the answers to all the universe’s most perplexing questions were provided there. He looked left and right like he was waiting for someone.

  “Well, this has turned out to be a complete loss. But on the positive side, I’d say we have about half an hour before the Blind Monk figures out you killed one of his men and escaped. So we have time for some curry if we eat quickly. I’m starved.” He let go of my arm and marched away down the street. I sank back to my knees.

  “Come on, Sally! Time’s a-wasting!”

  On my knees in the dust, I suddenly understood something very clearly. This was not about the Blind Monk. If it had been, we would have stormed into his massage parlor like we were serious. But we didn’t. Because the man we were really after was Ian Blackford. Simon Still expected that Blackford would show up to save me, drawn like a moth to a flame. Did Simon Still himself tip off the Blind Monk to my arrival? Did my own boss give me up? I pushed that thought out of my head as fast as I could. I couldn’t let it be possible and survive.

  So that was the first time Simon attempted to use me as bait to draw out Blackford. Which might help you understand why I am not all that excited to try it again.

  10

  Theo, exhausted from building forts and knocking them down, is sleeping in my arms as I move slowly back and forth in an antique rocking chair. H
e smells like sunshine and strawberry yogurt. I bury my nose in his hair and inhale. It is times like these that I can forget the boredom of motherhood, the longing for something exciting to happen, the little voice in my head that wants to know if I did the right thing all those years ago. Right now none of that matters. Right now I am happy.

  I run my fingers down the soft, pale skin of his arm. He stirs slightly and changes position, muttering something about cats. I should put him in his bed, go downstairs, and fold laundry. I should go downstairs and figure out what’s for dinner. I should go downstairs and work out how to fix this mess I’m in. But I can’t let go of him yet. We continue to rock slowly, back and forth. When he does wake up, I’ll take him to the playground for another hour. He’ll run around until he’s sweaty and red-cheeked. And I’ll sit on the benches, chatting with the other moms and nannies, pretending that what they all see is really my life.

  Another fifteen minutes pass. Finally, I lift Theo gently into his bed. He rolls over, sighs, and slips back into a deep sleep. I stand in his doorway and float again into the past.

  The fifth time I went to Cambodia for the Agency, it was to follow a man named Sovann who was suspected of acquiring too much black market nuclear materials for his own good. Your average global citizen was allowed a certain amount of what we called “restricted” materials, but if you got to stockpiling the stuff in your backyard we got interested. It’s only fair. To make things worse, it looked like Sovann intended to sell his stockpile to the Blind Monk, and that was making everyone a little uncomfortable.

  By the time I crossed into Cambodia we were at a fairly high level of discomfort. Intelligence told us the Blind Monk all but had his shopping bags out, ready to fill them with uranium and plutonium and switches and detonators and all the other goodies Sovann had for sale. This was usually a pretty good sign that a transaction was in the cards. Money was going to change hands and really bad stuff would be transferred really bad people.

  My mission, loosely defined as always by Simon, was to watch Sovann. Basically, I was to confirm that Sovann was indeed going to make a deal with the Blind Monk, after which we’d move in and take down the lot of them. Or so I thought.

  You might wonder, as I did, why they would send me, being as the Blind Monk had expressed an interest in killing me the last time we met.

  “Sally, who else am I going to send? Glenn?”

  “He’s dead,” I said.

  “Exactly. Now stop asking questions to which you already know the answer.” I didn’t know the answer but assumed I was not to seek further clarification.

  My train ride from Thailand to Cambodia came to an end in a Thai town called Aranyaprathet. I stood up, feeling all the vertebrae in my spine pop and crack. I rolled my shoulders a few times, grabbed my knapsack, and followed the streams of people off of the train. Outside, the air was hot and wet but the smell of this place, so foreign and yet so familiar, was always a thrill. I took a deep breath and started toward the band of idling tuk-tuks, one of which would gladly shuttle me the three or four miles from the train station to the actual border crossing. I chose an older man as a driver, a man who didn’t look like his eyesight was too great. Not so good for driving but excellent for not remembering my face. As I settled myself in the little trailer attached to his motorbike, a man the size of a mountain hauled himself into the small remaining space next to me.

  “Hello there. Name’s Roger. Mind if I join you?” he said in a crisp British accent.

  I shrugged, not sure of the proper etiquette for kicking this intruder out of my tuk-tuk.

  “Great.” He wiggled into the narrow spot, popping me up out of my seat and onto the edge of the cab in the process.

  “Thanks. Great,” he repeated. “You are headed to the border, aren’t you?”

  I gave him a tight smile. “Yes.” I could feel the heat radiating off his enormous bulk. The sweat began to run freely down my face and back, but my arms were trapped. I blinked my eyes to clear the salty water from my field of vision. This was not starting out well.

  We bounced along slowly for about ten minutes until the Thai border stations were visible, all sound drowned out by the roaring of our driver’s motorbike. Roger made a great show of handing the driver 100 baht although I’d negotiated a rate of half that, and then refusing my offer of half the fare. I slipped it to the driver as Roger turned away. The driver rewarded me with a condescending shake of the head.

  Now while Aranyaprathet is relatively civilized, Poipet on the Cambodian side is not. The air there even tastes different, slightly wild and acidic. Behind Roger, I marched through the Thai border station. The guards barely looked up as they stamped my fake passport and handed it back to me.

  On the other side, in the no-man’s-land between the two border stations, was a strip of run-down hotels and casinos. Outside the ramshackle hotels, the touts shouted and called to me, promising me riches beyond compare. A chance at another chance, they said. I kept my head down and kept walking. My new friend Roger fell in beside me.

  “Quite a place,” he said, swabbing his face with a crusty red bandana. He was breathing hard, the thick air causing a slight wheeze on his exhale.

  “Give it a few years and it will be a mall anchored by Target on one end and Home Depot on the other,” I said. My companion laughed.

  “Thanks for sharing your ride back there,” he said, offering me his hand while we continued to walk. I shook it briefly. It was damp with sweat.

  “Camilla. Nice to meet you. On holiday?”

  “Yes. Well, no actually. I’m a scientist. I’m looking for some … particular … flowers.”

  Up went my radar. He was having trouble with his cover story.

  “What sort of flowers?” I asked.

  “Purple ones, actually. Actually, yes, purple ones might be the best way to describe them.”

  “Wow. Good for you,” I said. “I’m going to the temples to have a transcendental experience myself.”

  He laughed before he realized I might be serious. We arrived at the Cambodian crossing. On the other side, I could see Rangsey waiting patiently for me atop a rusted minibike. I, of course, had a plan for crossing the border. It did not include Roger. I gave Rangsey a small shrug, telling him this might take a few minutes. He went back to tapping away on his cell phone.

  The border guards were sitting at a table, faces buried in huge bowls of hot soup, one hour into their four-hour lunch break, all border traffic at a standstill. Tiny Cambodian women and girls were running back and forth to a makeshift kitchen at the back of the guards’ shack, bearing big steaming bowls of kuyteav and platters of banh chiao accompanied by bottles of cold beer. You’d think these guys did something other than sit in a booth and accept bribes from people all day.

  “I am always bothered by this sort of thing in developing countries,” Roger said. He took a seat outside the shack to wait with all the others.

  “Maybe I’ll see you in Siem Reap,” I said, continuing to walk toward the guards.

  “Wait,” Roger called after me. “Where are you going?”

  The pile of American dollars I deposited among the soup bowls was not insignificant, the sort of wad of cash that even these corrupt guards could appreciate. Underneath the cash was my passport with a photo that looked like me, but actually wasn’t, and an official vaccination record that may or may not have been real.

  “Something for after lunch,” I said in Cambodian, without looking directly at any of them. I gestured to my passport, open to the fake visa, ripe for stamping. A few grunts and slurps and mutterings among the group. One of them put down his spoon long enough to attend to my passport. He slid it back toward me, slick with soup and oil from his meaty hands.

  “Proceed.”

  I nodded, adjusted my backpack, and walked around the small sawhorse blocking the official way into Cambodia. I wanted to look back at Roger, but I didn’t dare. Calling attention to myself was stupid, but I was in a rush.

  The dr
ivers of the new minibuses and bikes, the tuk-tuks, and the broken-down cars swarmed around me like bees, offering up the world. I pushed through them to where Rangsey was waiting.

  Without a word, I hopped on the back of the bike and he took off.

  Easy, right? Sometimes having the United States as my personal banker made my job less difficult. Other times throwing money around did nothing more than piss off the very person I intended to bribe.

  Rangsey took off at full speed down the Khao San Road, which is taking some poetic license with the word “road.” Deep gullies and potholes the size of pickup trucks scarred the hard-packed earth. You would think a driver, at least one with any sense of self-preservation, would navigate slowly and carefully, like the captain of a ship moving through a shallow reef system at night. But to my dismay, I discovered that in Cambodia there are two speeds: stop or “pedal to the metal” as my driver Rangsey informed me the first time we met. I clung to his thin chest for dear life.

  I met Rangsey during my first mission to Cambodia. I was as green as an agent could be but I had my pride. When one of the notorious Phnom Penh child pickpockets took a whack at me, I gave chase as if my life depended on it. Rangsey was fast but not quite fast enough. When I caught him, he was clutching one of my many fake passports, panting.

  “This is useless,” I said quietly, taking the passport from his small hands.

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “I can sell it. Food for my sister, for Ary.”

  “Do you really have a sister?”

  He nodded. “She’s sick. Land mine.” From his pocket he pulled out a mangled photo of a girl, missing an arm. I had no idea at the time if he was trying to con me, but something in his eyes made me want to find out.

  “How old are you?”

  “Ten.”

  “Take me to where you live.”

  His eyes grew wide with fear. “You’re not in trouble,” I reassured him. “I want to meet your sister.”