“I need to go,” I said.
“I can’t let you do this.”
“Listen, I appreciate your sense of obligation as my guide or whatever, but I think you’re getting in over your head.”
Min sighed, looking at me as if I were hopelessly naïve, which, in retrospect, was certainly true.
“I cannot let you go after the girl,” he said. “My orders come from the top, Sally.”
I was pretty sure he had just called me Sally. “The top of what?” I asked. There were a lot of mountains around here and all of them had tops.
“The Director,” he said. “The head of the Agency. That top.”
“As in Director Gray?” I asked slowly.
Min nodded.
Sitting there in the mud, I was speechless and I’m not often speechless. Director Gray and Min? Even accounting for six degrees of separation that relationship seemed impossible.
“But I picked you out of a random line of taxis,” I said as if that would explain everything.
“Nothing is random, Sally Sin,” Min said.
“I’m starting to get that.”
“My job is to keep you safe while you attempt to carry out your mission.”
Emphasis on attempt, I guess.
“You’re my babysitter?” Was I really that pathetic?
“I prefer to think of myself more as a guardian.”
When I woke up that morning, I’d been concerned about normal everyday covert agent things such as if I was going to die from a brain aneurysm brought on by a lack of oxygen or if Chemical Claude was going to kill me before I had a chance to complete my mission. But it was rapidly turning into the kind of day that well illustrated one of Simon Still’s fundamental beliefs: Things are seldom as they seem.
From the back of my pants, I pulled my small Colt Commander. It was slick with sweat from being nestled against my skin. Before Min could figure out what was happening, I had the barrel pointed right in his face.
“I’m going to get that girl,” I said.
“Sally, be reasonable. You’re walking right into their trap. They want something. And then they’ll kill her anyway.”
If I had been Simon Still or, I suspect, any other agent from the USAWMD, I would have seen the logic in Min’s argument. But I wasn’t and I didn’t.
“Get out of my way,” I said.
“I can’t do that.”
“Who’s in charge here? You or me?”
He shrugged. “Hard to say.”
“So if I run, you shoot me. And if you won’t move, I shoot you, is that it?”
“Looks like it.”
“Those aren’t very good choices,” I said. “I hate a rock and a hard place.”
And then I shot him in the foot. As he fell to the ground, cursing, pulling at his boot to remove it, I took off down the trail. I would end up spending two months in a desert in Mali for this act of reckless aggression because shooting an innocent man is just not acceptable, even according to the rules of frontier justice governing the USAWMD.
I ran over the treacherous ground until I came to a rickety wooden footbridge strung haphazardly across a raging, chalky gray river. On the bridge stood the man with the scarf and two goons, one of whom held Ayushi, a beefy arm around her slim neck. I skidded to a stop. The man began to unwrap the scarf. Gone was the giant forehead; bleached blond hair tumbled to his shoulders in stylish waves. If I had to bet I would say the nose was new, too, but no amount of reconstructive surgery could take care of those eyes, filled full with sadistic pleasure at this turn of events.
“Welcome to the party, Ms. Sin,” Chemical Claude shouted above the thunderous sound of the water. “We knew you would come.” I had found my man.
The time on my fake password expires and the computer screen goes dark. I push back from the desk and close my eyes. Chemical Claude’s voice rings in my ears just as it did that day, floating in the thin air above the furious river. And despite his best efforts, no amount of voice-distorting software can mask the flatness of his accent. Chemical Claude and Righteous Liberty are one and the same and, when I think about it, there was never really a chance they weren’t.
And to make matters worse, by staging this elaborate effort to get Yoder back, Chemical Claude has indicated to Simon Still that the boy does indeed know something, and Simon really doesn’t like being made a fool of. Gray is irrelevant. Simon’s on an unsanctioned one-man mission to get Yoder to confess all he knows, damn the consequences.
What a mess.
“Shit,” I say, squeezing my temples, hoping if I apply enough pressure the whole world might disappear.
Back from the hardware store and sucking on a lollipop, Theo stands in the door, looking at me with a curious expression. I have no idea how long he’s been watching. The fact that he’s not an early reader suddenly seems a point in my favor.
“Mom,” he says, “how do you spell ‘shit’?”
“You can’t,” I say, digging my fingernails into the soft flesh of my palms. “‘Shit’ doesn’t have any letters.”
But that doesn’t mean you can’t step in it.
15
Theo and I play Star Wars in the living room, he with great enthusiasm and me not so much. We patiently await the return of Will with our regularly scheduled Sunday night Chinese take-out from the place around the corner. Theo will eat a single egg roll but not before he has deconstructed it and organized all the ingredients into separate piles on his plate. All day, from the beach to the playground to the grocery store, the contrails of Chemical Claude’s voice have floated behind me.
“I am Darth Maul and I have two light sabers,” Theo announces in his best attempt to intimidate me. “I will stab you with them, you bad guy.” With that, he pokes me right in the stomach with two plastic swords, left over from Halloween.
“Ouch,” I yelp. When did my darling and loving child turn warlike and mean? He stabs me again.
“Come on, Mom. Be the bad guy,” he whines. “You said you would play.”
I never said anything of the sort. I’m twitchy, anxious, trying to put the pieces of this puzzle together while simultaneously being pursued by a foe with a double light saber. It would be a challenge on a good day.
Finally, I take my sword, cut from a cardboard box, wrapped in peeling tinfoil and slightly bent in the middle, and tap Theo on the head with it.
“I am the bad guy,” I say in my “Theo-clean-up-your-toys-or-I-am-going-to-throw-them-all-away” voice. “I am here to disarm you and take your planet and, um, recycle it.” With that, Theo’s lips start to quiver and his blue eyes fill with tears.
“What’s the matter?” I ask. “I thought you wanted me to be the bad guy?”
“You’re supposed to let me win,” he cries, the tears spilling over and running down his cheeks. This kid needs a sibling. He’s starting to exhibit symptoms of being an annoying only child.
“Honey, I’m sorry. Here, let’s try again.” He looks skeptical but eventually takes up his swords and makes a halfhearted attempt at gutting me with them. I fall over, accompanying the action with a series of horrible gagging noises, much to Theo’s delight.
“Is that better?” I ask from my twisted position on the floor. He nods.
“Yes. Keep doing that. Keep dying.”
What a sweet kid. I lie there groaning and gasping for air and hoping Theo will soon grow tired of this and let me get back to the serious business of panicking over Chemical Claude and being the spawn of Director Gray. Overall, it’s been a lousy weekend and I can’t say I’m unhappy to see it end.
Will returns holding a brown paper sack already stained with grease in one hand and a bouquet of red gerbera daisies in the other.
“What are you doing on the floor?” he asks. “Are you sick? You have been looking a little pale lately.” He stands over me, examining my face but not making any motion to help me up.
“I’m playing dead for Theo,” I say. “Dead people are pale.” Will looks as if he’s cons
idering a follow-up question but, using his better judgment, decides against it.
“These are for you,” he says.
“They’re lovely,” I say, still on my back.
“So are you,” Will says, raising his eyebrows. “Even if you are a little pale.”
I think it’s a compliment but I can’t be sure.
“How long did it take me to pick up the take-out?” he asks, looking around. A trailer park after a tornado has got nothing on my living room.
“Twenty minutes,” I say.
“You guys work fast.” He plucks a stray Harry Potter book from between the couch cushions. Theo’s attempt to write his name inside the front cover in fact takes up the whole first chapter.
“And we’re efficient,” I add. “And thorough.”
Taking advantage of his father’s momentary distraction, Theo sticks Will in the back with a plastic sword.
“Take that!” he yells.
In retaliation, Will grabs Theo by the legs and turns him completely upside down. Dangling there, Theo squeals with delight. I stay on the floor, stretching my arms above my head and listening to all of my vertebrae snap and crack. When I was twenty-five, my body didn’t make all this noise.
Still holding Theo upside down, Will steps over me as if I am nothing more than a fallen tree in the forest. He used to come through the door, slide an arm around my waist, and pull me to him so our bodies curved around each other. He would kiss me slowly, as if time and dinner and children and baths and storybook reading weren’t important, as if the two of us together were all that actually mattered in the universe. Those were the moments that helped me over the sometimes mindless and infuriating task of caring for a small, unruly, illogical howler named Theo who appeared, at times, hell bent on self-destruction.
But over the last two years, things have cooled between us in a way that sometimes makes it hard for me to breathe. Maybe it’s the weight of everyday logistics, the basic management of a family unit that leaves little time for all the other important things in life. Although it doesn’t happen every night, occasionally I’ll tuck myself into bed by 9 P.M., which does not leave much room for adult conversation, let alone other activities.
Or maybe it’s the fact that, although we’ve been married for a number of years now, Will still has no idea who I am and that sort of thing can be a hurdle to intimacy once the momentum of pure lust disappears. I sometimes think I’d like to tell Will about Sally Sin and the Agency and how long a night can seem when you’re trudging through the jungle or what the air tastes like when you’re running as fast as you can at 18,000 feet, but I cannot risk the safety of our family for my own self-indulgence.
And for his part, Will has yet to ask. I know he sees the cracks, the inconsistencies in my stories. But he digs no deeper, indicating to me a fear of what he’ll find if he does. Sally Sin has been officially dead for some time now yet she still has the power to destroy all of us.
Watching Theo and Will roll around on the floor like puppies, I remind myself that every relationship has its peaks and valleys. Or I think they do. None of my past relationships were conducted in English or lasted very long, so it’s not as if I have a great data set from which to draw conclusions. But I am hopeful. Or hopelessly naïve. I haven’t decided yet.
Theo tries gallantly to impale Will with one of the light sabers. Will ducks and sidesteps as if he studied fencing with the royals at Buckingham Palace. Theo giggles with delight at each failure, his blond hair falling into his eyes, flushed from a dogged pursuit of the enemy.
A strange sensation rises in my stomach, a toxic mix of nausea and dizziness.
“I’m going to set the table,” I say, standing up quickly, which makes the feeling worse. I walk down the hall, holding the wall for support. Please don’t let me puke on my shoes. I don’t want to spend the evening picking barf out of the lace-holes with a Q-tip. That thought is so appalling I’m forced to hold on to the edge of the sink with my eyes closed, waiting for the sensation to pass. When I open them, I see my reflection in the window above the sink. I look ghostly, hollow. Can that really be me? Surely I’m dying of some terrible disease, liver cancer perhaps, or the plague.
I wipe my face with a damp dish towel that smells faintly of apple juice. There are questions I must answer and they create an off-color haze around me. The first one is, what do I owe a man who saved my life but never wanted me to know he was my father? The second is, should I be willing to risk everything for him? Is he the third person on my list of people I would willingly give my life for? But maybe I’m not asking the right question. The right question may be, is it worth risking my future to uncover the truth about my past?
I trace the outline of my face on the window. The air is cooling outside and my fingers leave little damp trails on the glass.
“Yes,” I hear myself say out loud. “Yes, it is.”
And that means, according to Chemical Claude’s demands, I have less than forty-eight hours to do something about it.
16
In Nepal, bridges aren’t given all that much consideration. They are pieced together with whatever materials might be lying around and usually that doesn’t include steel and bolts and detailed engineering plans. The bridge I suddenly found myself on didn’t look like it could hold the weight of Chemical Claude, his two hatchet men, and Ayushi, let alone me. I approached the first rickety board very carefully, my Colt Commander dangling at my side. I was not nearly a good enough shot to take out the goons and Chemical Claude and miss Ayushi and grab her before she fell in the river. Later I would be, but not on that day.
“Chemical Claude,” I said, trying to buy time. “Where’d you get a name like that?”
He made a face as if he were sucking on a wedge of lime. The eyes of the man holding Ayushi grew round like saucers. Clearly, my attempts at small talk needed some improvement.
“That name,” Chemical Claude hissed, “does not reflect the extent of my range. I am much more than chemicals. I am warfare for the ages.”
“That’s a great tagline,” I said, inching forward slowly. “You might want to make a commercial.”
“You’re ill informed,” he said. Sadly, if that were true, it would not be the first time. “I come here to rekindle my spirit, to be as close to the gods as a mortal can get.”
“So then you must mean that literally?” I asked, trying to gain a few more inches as he talked. His beady eyes narrowed on me. I stopped moving.
“Everyone knows I’m committed to conducting no business during my time in Nepal,” he said. “You’re disturbing me.”
“Give me the girl and I’ll go,” I volunteered.
“Oh, it’s too late for any of that,” Chemical Claude said. “The price for what you want is to tell me in agonizing detail what Simon Still is doing in Pakistan.”
Pakistan? Simon Still? I had no idea. I hadn’t been with the Agency long enough to be given access to actual state secrets. In fact, the extent of my spying experience so far was limited to following various misanthropes around and taking notes about what they had for breakfast and how many people they had sex with and what movie they happened to take in. At this point, I had more in common with a golden retriever than with an actual secret operative.
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “They don’t exactly explain themselves to me.”
Realizing that if I had known the answer to his question, I would have considered telling him in exchange for our lives, struck me in a physical way. What kind of spy did that make me? I’ll tell you. A very bad one.
Chemical Claude nudged the man holding Ayushi closer to the edge of the bridge. Big tears rolled down her cheeks. All of a sudden, Min appeared, limping, on the trail behind me.
“Great,” I said. “The band’s all here.”
“Sally,” Min said, through clenched teeth. “This is not going to go over well on the home front. For either of us.”
I was quite confident that if I ever got home, Simon was goin
g to exile me to an ice floe somewhere in the neighborhood of the South Pole, so I was trying not to sweat it too much.
“Just don’t shoot me, okay?” I asked.
“You have some nerve asking me not to shoot you,” Min said. He took a small step and winced. Blood soaked through the laces of his heavy leather boot.
“Hello over there!” Chemical Claude bellowed. “Can we focus on the question at hand, please? What is Simon Still doing in Pakistan?” I looked at Min, who shrugged his shoulders. No help there.
“I have people there,” Chemical Claude went on, almost as if talking to himself. “Good people, but Simon is slippery. I can’t always get a hold of him.” He seemed genuinely perplexed.
“We all walk away if I tell you?” I asked, embarrassed by the rank cheesiness of the line.
“Sally,” Min warned.
“Yes, you have my word,” Claude said.
I was sure he was lying, the word of a terrorist not really worth that much, but I figured I had to exhaust all possibilities and there weren’t that many to begin with.
Well, if you really have to know,” I said, “Simon Still is in Pakistan looking for whoever just purchased a nuclear warhead from Ian Blackford. We heard noise that it’s destined to visit India in the very near future.” Technically, this could have been true. I heard things, rumors mostly, floating around the Underground that Blackford was doing something particularly awful. Maybe it was selling a nuclear bomb to some fringe group in Pakistan? Why not? He’d done worse.
“You lie like an amateur,” Chemical Claude said, exposing his perfect white teeth in what I think was meant to be a smile. “Blackford works for me. He knows better than to sell anything to anybody without my approval.”
This was not good news and I’m not talking about my inability to lie convincingly.
“That’s what you think. Blackford has no allegiance to anyone but Blackford,” I said, parroting word for word a lecture Simon Still had delivered to me no less than a hundred times. All the while I continued to move forward on the swaying bridge, hoping I could get close enough to do, well, something. What that was, exactly, I had not figured out. I was making it up as I went along, a behavior that would become something of a bad habit of mine in the future.
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