“There is no cargo container, Sally. That was a diversion, something to keep you folks busy. And clearly it worked beyond my wildest expectations if we are both standing here right now.” Blackford kept at the buckles, pulling, adjusting, shrugging his shoulders to get everything right, comfortable.
“A diversion from what?”
“Business of another sort altogether. I was visiting with an old friend in California. We had a lot to talk about, big plans for the future, and I wanted to make sure none of you government types got in my way.” He pulled out a pair of goggles. “And this part,” he gestures to the harness, “this part is about having fun. You should try it some time.”
“What are you talking about? Hey, what are you doing? You are not … you can’t … you are not jumping off of this building, are you? You owe me some answers!”
“I don’t owe you a thing,” he laughed, holding up the briefcase. “I believe it is you who owes me.”
“What the hell is in that briefcase?” I shouted, but it was too late.
In a flash he was over the side. I ran to the ledge in time to see him pull the rip cord on his parachute. A security guard ran up next to me.
“Did he just …?”
“Yes! He jumped.” The guard started shouting into his radio. I pushed my way into a departing elevator and headed down. The lobby was buzzing with the news that someone had jumped off the Top of the Rock. How did he get through the barriers? How did he get up there with a parachute? How could this happen? Easy, I wanted to shout. He’s Ian Blackford and the world appears to bend to his whim.
Out on the street, a small crowd had gathered. Several uniformed police officers chattered into their handsets. I scanned the sky, but there was nothing. The whine of cruiser sirens drew closer. Wherever Blackford had intended to land, it wasn’t nearby. The wind blew from the west to the east. He had taken off in the direction of the Empire State Building. I took a deep breath and started running toward the East River. Traffic chugged slowly along beside me. A man in a cab looked at me curiously as we moved forward at about the same pace. I pulled off my jacket and let it fall to the ground. I kept looking for a purple and yellow parachute, but there were only blue skies.
Seconds from collapsing, I found myself at the edge of the FDR Drive. The traffic was at a standstill even though it was the middle of the afternoon.
“God, I love New York,” I said, my lungs on fire, wheezing. I ducked under the congested highway and kept running toward the ferry terminal. The only practical way out of this city was by water or by air. Boats were heading in and out with purpose; nothing looked out of place. About fifty yards from shore, there was a small private yacht, remarkable only for how it gleamed white in the sun. On the deck, standing beside the captain, was Blackford. I doubled over, so out of breath I thought I might pass out and topple into the river, never to be heard from again.
“Nice try, Sally!” Blackford yelled, as the boat pulled out into the river. “You must really want this.” I looked up in time to see him hurl the aluminum briefcase in my direction. It landed a few yards shy of shore. The last thing I saw Blackford do was shrug as if to say, Sorry, I tried. Without giving it a second thought, I dove in. The water was cold and brown, and the current was moving faster than I expected. The ferry passengers started to get excited. I didn’t have much time. I grabbed the case and hauled it and myself back to shore, clawing my way out on an old concrete piling, all that remained of a dock lost long ago. The minute I was upright, I opened the briefcase. Inside was a foam inset designed to carry five four-inch vials of something liquid, something delicate, something precious. But the vials were gone. In their place were five bullets, clean and unexploded. I believe the Blind Monk meant these for you, the note said. I could almost hear him laughing.
“Goddamn it!” I put my head down and almost cried, exhausted and wet, stranded on a hunk of concrete in the East River.
Simon wasn’t happy about the bullets in the briefcase and the nonexistent cargo container.
“What was he doing in California?” he asked, during the lengthy debriefing where I began to feel like a criminal myself.
“I don’t know. He didn’t tell me that part. He said he was out on the coast. Visiting wine country maybe?”
“Sally,” Simon said through clenched teeth. “They found traces of some plant life on the foam in that briefcase. Is he changing professions? Opening a flower shop in the East Village?”
“I don’t know.” But I was thinking about Cambodia, the jungle, those lilies. “Maybe it has something to do with the botanist?”
“Shut up, Sally. Do not mention Cambodia to me right now or I might actually kill you. I need facts, not theories.”
“I don’t know,” I said again.
“Don’t know? Or don’t want to tell us?”
I was about to remind him that he wanted facts, not theories, but I remembered that he was going to kill me and decided to keep quiet.
“Blackford has done a lot of things since leaving the Agency. He’s done unspeakable things. But this … this is different. This is plain rude. So somebody better figure out what the hell he was up to out there today or heads are going to roll. And I don’t mean that in a nice way. Got it?”
I nodded. Add it to the list of disasters.
I saw him once more in Hanoi. Two months after that, word came that Blackford was dead.
19
An hour after I return from mugging Barry the grad student, Theo and I are ensconced at the playground with Avery and Sam and a host of others. I still have Barry’s keys in my pocket. Their weight is somehow comforting.
“I still wish you’d teach me to knock out yoga instructors with such finesse,” Sam says with a smile. “I’m a quick study.”
I can see Claire the ex-investment banker’s ears perk up. “Who knocked out a yoga instructor? Wouldn’t that lead to, like, one hundred years of bad karma?”
Just what I need.
“Forget it,” I say. “Forget the whole incident.”
“What incident?” Belinda asks, licking the leftover applesauce off her sleeve and dusting the sand off her flowery skirt.
“Apparently Lucy beat up her yoga instructor last night,” Claire offers.
Belinda’s eyes open a little too wide for my liking.
“Why? Did he hurt you? We can sue him for professional misconduct, you know. Just because someone claims to be spiritual doesn’t mean he’s a nice guy.”
“No, nothing like that. He was trying to adjust her triangle pose and … BAM … he was flat on the floor,” Sam explains.
“Kind of like this,” adds Avery, using Sam to simulate my brutal attack on poor Conrad.
“Then I was worried that yoga man put a hit out on you on account of the weird guy in the hat hanging around your car that night,” Sam continues, “but at least I’m pretty sure you can take care of yourself.”
Simon, you idiot, I think. I play dumb.
“Really? Probably someone thinking about stealing it. Lots of car theft going on lately.”
“Especially your kind of car,” Sam says.
We lock eyes, Sam and I, and in his expression I read disbelief. There are too many weird little pieces for him, and he wants to put them together. He wants to make sense out of all this random information. I cast my eyes down toward my feet. He knows I am lying, but as much as I’d like to tell him the whole sordid tale, I cannot. Fortunately, my crew here spends so much time with two- and three-year-olds that they are very easily distracted. Suddenly, Belinda brings up the annual sale at our local children’s clothing store. I join in with great enthusiasm and force Sam back into his role as lone male voice screaming in a gale of hyped-up women with nothing better to do than shop.
Speaking of being easily distracted, it is possible to become obsessed with one’s nemesis to the point of distraction, and that is what happened to me. After Blackford kidnapped me the second time, I felt compelled to understand him and how he became the way he
was. Simon reminded me that my job wasn’t to explore the troubled childhood and resulting psychosis of Ian Blackford, but rather “to catch the bastard or, at the very least, kill him.” Neither option was all that appealing, and when I told Simon that, he also reminded me that finding my assignments appealing was completely irrelevant and I should stop thinking like a girl. If I wanted appealing, he said, I could go and work for the State Department. I didn’t really understand why working at the State Department would be better, but the look on his face did not encourage further discussion. I dropped the subject with Simon, but made a point of bringing it up with the Old Timers.
The Old Timers were an invaluable resource to the Agency—men who’d been there since its inception, who acted as the Greek chorus, the living archive, the moral compass for those of us running around in the field. There were three of them. There used to be four, but nobody was willing to say what happened to the fourth one. The Old Timers were indistinguishable from one another, and they spent their days camped out in the cafeteria, drinking bad coffee and talking about baseball. It was understood that an active agent could pick their collective brain regarding Agency history and they would be forthcoming. It was why they were still on the payroll. Well, that and the fact that they had the ear of the Director. Word was that they had all worked together in the past. They were tight. Like family.
I had never talked to them before, being a relative newbie with the Agency, but they knew all about me.
“Sally Sin!” the fat one bellowed as I approached their table.
“Scored higher than anyone in the history of the Agency on that silly test,” the bald one added.
“And has a truly unique gift for languages,” the short one with wiry eyebrows continued. “Better than our Simon even.”
I didn’t know that I’d done better than anyone on that test, but I kept my face neutral. No need for them to know I was clueless.
“Sally has never come to the table and we are now wondering what deep, probing questions she intends to ask,” Fatty, clearly the ringleader, barked. He pulled out an empty chair and pointed to it. I sat down.
“Sally has achieved fame for being snatched multiple times by none other than our own black sheep ex–Agent Blackford,” Baldy said. They sounded like sports broadcasters, and it was all I could do not to flat-out hate them. Shorty poured me a cup of black sludge from the carafe on the table.
“Drink,” he said, pushing the mug toward me. The coffee was the consistency of motor oil, barely moving in the cup as I raised it to my lips. An initiation of sorts. They watched me intently.
“Sally Sin is going to do it black, straight up, down the hatch, no sugar, no cream,” Shorty whispered. I took a sip of the black goo. It required all of my resources not to spit it back out on the table. I swallowed, kept my face steady, and placed the mug back down on the table.
“You know,” I said, “that coffee is not very good.”
“No,” the three men chimed in unison, “it’s bloody awful! We save it for you new kids.” With that, they burst out laughing.
“Now, what can we do for you, missy?” Fatty asked. “Because we’re pretty sure you didn’t come down here for the coffee.” Another round of hysterical laughter.
Oh, God, I thought, watching them convulse, is this going to be me? Am I going to be sitting here with Simon Still in thirty years, wallowing in the glory days that never really existed? I started to sweat. Somehow, that troubled me more than being known as the girl who kept getting kidnapped.
“Ian Blackford,” I said, trying to get the conversation back on track. “I’d like to know why you think he flipped.”
“Oh, well,” Baldy said, “that’s a pretty big question, one that we’ve been pondering for quite some time now. Might help to have a pastry or two to get us focused.”
I trudged dutifully to the cafeteria counter, picked out several pastries that looked more like hockey pucks than food, and returned to the table.
“Ah, the apple fritter goes a long way toward loosening the lips. Okay, Ian Blackford.”
“Bad seed.”
“Rotten apple.”
“A real Darth Vader, if you get my meaning. Couldn’t resist the lure of the money, the power, the high life.”
“Wanted the glory, couldn’t stand being anonymous, wanted everyone to know he was a hero.”
“He was from nowhere. No roots. No connections. Moving through this universe untethered.”
Something about those words, the idea that a person could really be from nowhere, made me squirm. I was sure all three men noticed my discomfort.
“Simon found him,” Baldy said. “He was teaching karate to kids in Ohio or North Dakota or something.”
“What’s the difference? Ohio or North Dakota? Who cares?” The laughter started again. It sounded like nails on a chalkboard, but I forced myself to smile right along with them.
“But really, we all know what it was about,” Fatty said, “the reason he flipped.”
Baldy nodded aggressively in agreement. “Yes. It’s always about the girl, isn’t it?”
“The girl?” I asked.
“Of course. Love lost. The most motivating emotion to be encountered by man.”
“Or woman,” Fatty tossed out with a wink. Jokester.
“The Czech girl. Or Bulgarian girl. Who can remember? Anyway, he loved her and she was dead. The Blind Monk did it. At least that was the word put out on the street.”
“Put out on the street? So the Blind Monk didn’t do it?” They were losing me.
“Well, you never can tell in this business.”
“And it didn’t really matter because Blackford thought it was the Blind Monk. That was what was important.”
“But it was already too late. He was gone.” They sat in silence for a few moments.
“So he is out there trying to avenge his lost love?” I had never considered, even for a moment, an emotional component.
“Hard to say. Maybe he just likes being bad.” They laughed again.
“Well, thank you, gentlemen,” I said. As I pushed away from the table, Fatty suddenly took both of my hands in his. His grip was strong. I slowly sank back into my seat.
“You should know,” he said, eyes boring into me, “that Blackford is a psychopath. Regardless of what turned him, remember he has no capacity for love, no ability to feel empathy. He is, at the end of the day, a very dangerous man. Go carefully, Sally Sin, go very carefully in the direction of Ian Blackford.”
And I saw a glimpse, at that moment, of the agent this man used to be. A small shiver shot down my spine.
I found out from an illegal pilfering of personnel records that Ian Blackford had no family, had grown up in a series of foster homes, some of which had been particularly ugly. He was a gifted athlete with a keen interest in the martial arts. He was the only Agent on record that did not finish college. There was a note in his file that this made him insecure. He compensated by embracing the physical parts of sleuthing. When it came to things like hand-to-hand combat, guns, blowing things up, breaking into buildings, setting traps, or generally causing mayhem, no one was better than Blackford.
There was no mention of a girl, dead or alive.
He was an odd choice for the USAWMD, an agency that tended to favor people who preferred to fly under the radar. Blackford was flamboyant, too loud, calling attention to himself more often than not. But he always delivered the goods, so his behavior was tolerated at the highest level. When he flipped, those same higher-ups looked around for someone to blame, but there was no one. They knew it was ultimately their own fault. After his defection, the Agency tightened up. By the time I came on board, the place could only be described as gray.
“What are you doing tonight, Lucy?” Avery asks. “Do you and your boys want to come over for dinner? Jonathan is out of town and we could use some company.”
I come reeling back to the present. Tonight my plans include getting my husband very drunk, sneaking out of the
house, and breaking into the lab of one Professor Albert Malcolm. But I can’t exactly say that.
“Can we take a raincheck? Will’s got some thing going on.”
“Sure.”
After an hour or so, Theo is tired and we head home. I keep checking my rearview mirror for Ian Blackford, sure that one of these times he’s going to be there. I almost expect to find him sitting at my kitchen table waiting for me.
As soon as we are in the house, Will calls and tells me he has to jump on a plane for Washington this afternoon.
“They want me to give testimony at a hearing on alternative energy. An honest dialogue at the highest levels of government. Isn’t that great?”
“Fabulous,” I say. I don’t have the heart to tell him that he should never use the word “honest” and “government” in the same sentence. It will only hurt his feelings. As he hangs up, I hear him yelling to his assistant to go out and buy him a clean shirt and a tie and see if his suit is still at the cleaners. I wonder if he remembers how to tie a tie? Oh well, I’m sure some lobbyist will be more than happy to help if he doesn’t. They like to have their hands around your neck.
I miss Will when he’s gone, even for a night. I miss the warmth of his body. After so many years of sleeping alone, I have grown accustomed to the comfort of another person in my bed. However, tonight this will work perfectly. I call Agent Nanny Pauline.
“I need you here tonight around ten P.M. Don’t be late,” I say and hang up. Tonight I will figure out what the professor is up to and maybe that will help me understand what all this fuss is about.
For dinner, Theo demands macaroni and cheese, not from a box but conjured from the mystery that is my refrigerator. We grate a pile of cheese, melt it with the macaroni, and call it good. Theo could not be happier. He digs in, insisting on feeding me every other bite.
“Mommy,” he asks, cheese smeared across his cheek and in his hair, “what’s your job?”
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