On the night my parents died in a car crash on an icy stretch of the New York Turnpike, a state trooper arrived at the door of our farmhouse, hat in hand, to deliver the news. It was cold and dark outside and while he stood on the porch and spoke, all I could think was how the fat snowflakes looked like dandruff on the trooper’s exposed head. My babysitter cried and cried, holding me, smoothing my hair, telling me it would all be okay. But I knew those were just words and meaningless, no matter what language I said them in. The next day my mother’s sister and husband, who I had never met before, came and took me to live with them in Vermont and there I stayed until college.
An ordinary person might question the strangeness of these events but I didn’t because I remembered that moment in the third grade. Outsiders were not afforded the same protections as those who belonged.
That sense of not belonging, of looking in the window but never entering the room, made me a good spy. I could be whoever I needed to be. If I disappeared in Nigeria for ten months at a time, no one would come looking for me. The assumption was I was doing my job. I was obligated only to my country and that somehow managed not to be too personal.
After Theo was born, everything changed. I found myself searching his face for a trace of the people I knew as my parents, hoping for evidence that maybe everything was exactly as it had seemed back then and that my feelings of being on the outside looking in were no more than the product of an overactive imagination.
Theo’s blond hair and wide grin come directly from his father, the shape of his eyes from me. It’s also possible I’m responsible for his desire to take inappropriate risks but I’m not willing to cop to that quite yet. His long fingers came from William II and his fashion sense from Rose Marie. The kid is a road map of those who have come before him and the map does not include the woman I remember swabbing my forehead when I had a fever or the man who read me storybooks at bedtime. The need to know who is responsible for my ugly feet and the slope of Theo’s nose grows with each passing day. Yes, I know it’s possible that Theo’s nose is all his own, but in my experience, nothing stands in isolation. Everything is connected, even if that connection is fragile.
The one time I met Gray at the USAWMD, he sat in his office behind an enormous oak desk, examining me as if I were something necessary but inconvenient. He wanted to know about me only in so much as it related to Blackford. Maybe Gray really wanted a boy. Maybe he hated my mother. Maybe I was a mistake. Or maybe I was just not good enough for him to even consider.
But in the end, none of that matters. I can’t let him die. He’s the only one who can tell me where I come from because he was there, on that train, wearing the scratchy overcoat, taking me away from where it all began.
12
On the way home from the soccer game, I make a detour to the Java Luv. Theo’s excited because it means chocolate milk for him and a chance to play with the burning incense, which Leonard sincerely believes hides the smell of other burning things.
He stands behind the counter, rearranging the muffins as if he’s in a trance.
“Hi, Leonard,” I say. He jumps. I feel like everything is an out-of-body experience. I see myself in the coffee shop, feel Theo’s hand in mine, and yet I’m floating on the ceiling. This whole situation seems enormously unfair for a Saturday morning. Saturday mornings are made for relaxing, taking a slow stroll to the bagel shop, and buying unidentifiable produce at the farmer’s market. They are not made for playing genealogical roulette as I seem to have been doing.
“Sorry, Lucy,” Leonard says. “I was thinking about the war in Afghanistan. I think I have the solution.”
“That’s great, Leonard. Maybe you should e-mail the White House.”
He considers this briefly.
“Nah,” he says. “Too busy.” And I think Leonard really believes that. I worry about his future.
Theo grabs a chocolate milk from the cooler and sits down on the low window seat next to the incense burner.
“What are you doing here on a Saturday anyway, Lucy?” Leonard asks.
I didn’t intend to be here. I intended to drive straight home after the soccer game and lock myself in the closet until I regained my equilibrium and could think rationally. And yet here I am, pulled into the fray by the singular idea that Charles Gray cannot die and the accompanying belief that I might be the only one who can save him.
“I could ask you the same question,” I say.
“Please don’t,” Leonard says. “Because I really have no idea why I’m here.”
“So, Leonard,” I say, trying to get to the point before the day is over, “I need something.”
“Espresso?”
“Not exactly.” In his eyes I can see him slowly processing my request.
“Oh,” he says. “Oh. I didn’t think you were the kind. So how much do you want? It’s great stuff, from up north.”
“Not drugs, Leonard,” I say. “Don’t you know what drugs do to your brain?” He looks at me blankly. See? “I need a black hat.”
“Well, there’s that boutique down on Twenty-fourth Street that’s nice,” he says.
“Leonard, look at me. A black hat.”
Finally, understanding registers on his face.
“Why?” he asks in all sincerity.
“You’re not supposed to ask me why,” I say.
“Wow, Lucy. I’m learning so much about you today. It’s really cool.”
“Stay focused, Leonard. Do you know anyone?” I know he does. He runs in those circles. I can tell. Later, Leonard and all of his friends will end up either in jail or voting Republican. It’s inevitable.
“Yes,” he says after a pause. “She’s kind of weird and I think she might live in her car. But she’s got a good reputation. You know, in those circles. Plus, she wears a Rolex.”
She could live in a tree house and wear Big Ben on her wrist for all I care as long as she’ll do anything for money. “Call her,” I say.
“Okay,” Leonard says. “Lucy, what happened to your pants? You look homeless.”
I roll my eyes. “Make the call, Leonard.”
Within minutes, Theo and I are headed to an abandoned warehouse in the South of Market neighborhood to meet a woman named Sheila. This should teach Will to work on a Saturday. If he were with us and not at a meeting with a bunch of granola-crunching, Birkenstock-wearing, save-the-rain-forest types, I wouldn’t be forced to take our five-year-old son along with me while I commit what is indisputably a crime.
But before you get too upset over that, let me tell you a thing or two about computer hackers. They are, by and large, antisocial, unwashed, and exceptionally smart. They assume anyone falling outside of their immediate shadowy circle of computer gangsters is an idiot and in many cases they’re right. But hackers aren’t violent. In fact, most are downright squeamish. It might be because they’re malnourished from consuming nothing but Starbucks Frappuccinos and weak from a lack of vitamin D because they never go outside. A swift karate chop, Theo style, would be enough to send them scurrying under the bed.
We park next to a pile of broken car-window glass on a deserted side street. I have no doubt the building was right in the middle of a condo conversion when the market collapsed a few years ago. There’s yellow security tape blocking off the area where the front steps should be. Someone has stacked plastic milk crates to one side. I climb up and hoist Theo over the yellow tape and onto the landing.
“Doesn’t the tape mean you can’t go in?” Theo asks.
“Well, sometimes it’s more of a suggestion,” I say, “something to consider when you’re making a decision.”
I wonder at what point in Theo’s teenage years this statement will come back to haunt me. “I considered the illegality of the drugs, Mom,” he will say, “but decided to take them anyway.” But for now, Theo nods thoughtfully.
“That’s nice, Mommy,” he says, indicating he has no idea what I’m talking about.
The building’s front door is open, a
n empty hole where one would normally find the knob and lock. Inside sit mildewing boxes of tile, parts of light fixtures, and unopened paint cans. A thick layer of dust covers everything, as if the workers went off to lunch one day and just never came back.
We head to the second floor as instructed and there we find Sheila, dancing alone to one of Phish’s extended jams. Two tiny speakers are attached to her iPod and the music echoes through the unfinished warehouse. From the ceiling dangle frayed utility cables and ducts to nowhere. Construction debris is piled all around in haphazard little mounds.
Sheila wears a long peasant skirt so colorful it appears she is being trailed by a lovelorn peacock. A dark blue, slightly grungy tank top is all that stands between her and the roughly fifty-five degrees of the room. Around her neck hangs a giant rusty peace symbol on a leather cord. Her dreadlocked hair is of an indeterminate color and I half expect a swarm of insects to come flying out of it at any moment. The only thing Sheila lacks is a burning joint between her lips. She doesn’t look like a hacker. But I don’t look like I can kill a grown man with a single strategic punch in the chest, so who am I to judge?
“You Lucy?” she asks, snapping a red rubber band at her wrist. The Southern accent she’s trying to kill is not quite dead yet.
I nod. She doesn’t acknowledge Theo at all.
“Why can’t we live in one of these?” Theo asks, wide-eyed. “I could scooter in here!” He starts racing up and down the length of the warehouse, jumping over the piles of debris and dodging discarded panels of sheetrock.
“Theo,” I bark. “No running. Nails on the floor.”
“Aw, Mom, you’re no fun.”
I know that. Everyone knows that.
“Is it okay for him to look around?” I ask Sheila.
She shrugs. “Don’t care. None of this shit is mine. Leonard vouched for you and we fuck, so I guess that’s gotta count for something. What do you need?”
Normally the idea of Leonard having sex would be so disturbing I’d need a moment or two to recover. But not now. What I’m about to do is wrong on many levels but it’s clear that Righteous Liberty asking for me was no fluke. And that means I need to know who Richard Yoder is. I’m not the kind of girl who likes to sit in the dark.
“There’s a secure government network,” I say. “I want in.”
She snaps the rubber band.
“Sure. Two thousand dollars. Small bills. Up front.”
Let me acknowledge up front that most moms don’t walk around with two thousand dollars in small bills stuffed in their handbags and, normally, neither do I. But this morning, anticipating this little detour, I made a pit stop in the back of my closet, behind a bin of maternity clothes, where there’s a small, nondescript box that’s actually a safe. By sticking the safe behind the maternity clothes, I virtually guaranteed that Will will never find it. He claims he’s still trying to forget about those elastic pants that came up to my armpits.
Inside this safe is ten thousand dollars in U.S. currency, a British passport that, if I tried to use it, would probably land me in a black site prison somewhere undesirable, and four stolen, disposable cell phones that I prefer not to discuss in too much detail. Some parts of the spy life are like the glitter in the floor mats of my car; no matter how much I vacuum, the glitter is not going away.
As soon as I hand Sheila the money, I can officially consider myself a rogue agent of the USAWMD. The thought sends a shiver down my spine and I’m not sure if it’s the result of joy or horror. Either way, I am skating on thin ice.
“Fine,” I say, digging into my bag for the pile of money. “Can you do it fast?”
She snorts. I have inadvertently insulted her professionalism.
“What’s the name of the place?” she asks.
I hand her a piece of paper with United States Agency for Weapons of Mass Destruction written on it. She smiles.
“Cool. Never done them before. When I’m in, I’ll text you a password. It will come from a random phone number. You will gain access but only once so don’t fuck up and sign out until you’re done.”
“Great,” I say, as if we are going to be fast friends. “Is this where you usually are, if I need to find you again?”
Slowly, she surveys the abandoned warehouse as if she has never seen it before.
“No,” she says. “We’re done now.” She points to the exit.
Theo and I roll in our door around 2:00. His little belly bulges with three slices of pizza and what has to be a liter of lemonade, the reward for being such a good boy while Mommy indulged her criminal alter ego.
“I’m so full,” he moans, lying on the floor spread-eagled. During lunch, my cell phone chirped and a message containing a password appeared. In between bites, I memorized it, deleted it, and immediately began plotting on how to come up with ten minutes alone in front of a computer. Although I hate to resort to bribery, I’m not above it. I’m about to suggest an episode of Go, Diego, Go! to my beached whale of a son when Will comes out of the kitchen.
“You’re home,” I say, startled. Rogue agents are not supposed to be caught off guard.
“Yup. All done,” he says.
“I’m stuffed,” Theo says, rolling into Will’s legs.
“What happened to him?”
“Pizza.” And by the way, my father is not actually my father but someone else entirely and most definitely not dead. At least not yet.
“Lucy, are you okay? You look funny.”
He could not have served it up better if I’d ordered in advance.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I’m feeling a little off today. Maybe something I ate? Do you mind if I go and lie down for a bit?”
“No. Go. Theo, do you want to come to the hardware store with me?”
I don’t hear the end of the conversation because, moving very fast for a sick person, I’m already upstairs planted in front of the computer. There’s a small smile plastered on my face. This isn’t supposed to be fun so why the stupid grin? I’ll tell you why. There’s no good way to twelve-step yourself out of an adrenaline addiction. I don’t deserve to call myself a rogue agent. Rogue agents are way cooler than I am.
13
The USAWMD has no idea that at 2:15 on Saturday they get hacked. As much as I hate to admit it, I feel a small thrill as I waltz right through their security and belly up to the information bar. Scrolling through a number of menus that to the outsider would appear to be just this side of word salad, I search for the trail that will lead me to Richard Yoder. It takes a few minutes but soon enough I stumble on his file. It’s written in code but it’s a code I wrote in for nine years and I remember it as well as my own name. Okay, maybe that’s not the best example, but you get the idea.
Richard Yoder is younger than me by a decade or more but from his photograph he doesn’t look it. He’s tired and drawn, sporting the beginnings of a beard. Dark-hooded eyes complete his expression of utter resignation, as if he just missed the last bus for joy and happiness.
I’m unprepared for what I read next. According to the file, it appears that Yoder’s last employer was none other than Chemical Claude. I snap the pencil I’m holding in my right hand in two.
“Why Chemical Claude?” I ask the computer. I would take anyone over Chemical Claude, even Blackford in a pinch. The fact that Chemical Claude is even tangentially involved here makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
The story is they meet in Sudan when Richard Yoder is a child and Chemical Claude is selling weapons to interested warlords. One night, while driving back to his lodgings, a drunk Chemical Claude’s Land Cruiser rams a small pickup truck and sends it careening over a cliff. In that truck, engulfed in flames at the bottom of a ravine, are Yoder’s parents. They are fresh-faced missionaries from the United States, but now they’re dead. Claude feels something unusual in his gut that might be guilt and takes the boy under his wing. He uses the young Yoder to run messages for him, as communication networks in Sudan are notoriously un
reliable, technology’s greatest enemy being sand. Yoder turns out to be well suited to the task. Even at age five, he can remember all the details of a message without having to write anything down. It saves his life a few times as he appears to be nothing more than a young boy out for some mischief.
Chemical Claude grows oddly fond of Yoder, becoming a father figure to the boy as he grows up. As fathers go, he’s not so bad, keeping Yoder in pretty girls, fast cars, and expensive champagne flown in from France. All Claude expects in return is loyalty. And Yoder, now a teenager, tries hard not to let him down. But when he’s alone, he fantasizes about attending architecture school at Cornell or MIT and traveling to Dubai to build towers that touch the sky. He carries a worn copy of Architectural Digest around with him wherever he goes.
Occasionally, Claude will catch Yoder wandering the halls of the château in France or the villa in Spain, a tormented look on his face. What more could this boy of no means and humble family want? Chemical Claude finds the whole tortured soul act rather annoying.
Things proceed more or less as usual until one night while soaking in a hot tub full of naked girls, Yoder decides that if he just had something to bargain with he might be able to negotiate his way out of this life and into another. It would need to be something so valuable that Chemical Claude would do anything to secure its return.
Now, the casual observer might wonder why Yoder didn’t decide on a more direct approach, perhaps simply asking Chemical Claude how much he would mind if the young man took off for the states to attend college, or something along those lines But Claude’s answer to such a request would, more likely than not, be a bullet between the eyes and an order to remove the body from his sight. Chemical Claude does not take perceived treachery lightly.
Yoder’s half-formed plan has “bad idea” written all over it but he wears the Teflon of youth. He actually thinks he can pull it off.
Spy Mom Page 37