Spy Mom

by Beth McMullen

  “That’s reassuring,” I say. “Thanks.”

  Claude grabs me by the neck. His strong fingers dig deep into my windpipe. I see funny little stars swirling around his head, as if he wears a halo.

  “You’ll read now,” he says. Not seeing an alternative, I nod in agreement and he releases me. I gasp. Claude slams the book into my hands. On the upper right-hand corner is engraved the number 17. He’s been filling these little black books for quite some time, waiting for me to show up and read them to him.

  I flip open the book. Inside is page after page of code, recorded in pencil, revealing the secret workings of the USAWMD.

  It’s not complete; big sections are missing but I’m shocked at how current it is. The latest entry is from a mere two days ago, which confirms Simon has a sewer-sized rat in his organization.

  Chemical Claude circles me, running his gun along my cheek and through my hair. The barrel is cold and I shudder despite my best efforts not to.

  “Finally, the means to bring you down,” he says, half to me and half to Gray, “to put an end to your ridiculous crusade to save the world. If any of you paid closer attention, you’d discover the world doesn’t want to be saved.”

  “I don’t think it wants to be blown up, either,” I say. In response, he whacks me on the head with the butt of his gun. I see a brief flash of light and colors and my eyes water.

  If I had a gun, which I don’t, could I even kill all these people? Claude, the two men guarding Gray, Yoder. Wait a minute. Where is Yoder? Not one minute before he was standing behind Ayushi, but now he’s gone and no one else seems to have noticed.

  “It’s all useless, you know,” mumbles Gray. “That code is false. The real code never gets recorded.” Gray looks worse up close. His parchment skin is papery and blueish, as if the blood in his body is sticking close to his heart. I notice his long toes and I gasp in horror. Those are my feet, my ugly awkward feet. Finally someone to blame.

  “It was created to mislead people like you,” Gray continues. “People who aren’t too smart.”

  Chemical Claude doesn’t like Gray’s commentary. He backhands him across the face but Gray barely winces.

  “You lie, old man,” Chemical Claude snarls.

  “Just because you believe it,” Gray says, “doesn’t make it true.” Chemical Claude hits him again.

  “Wait a minute,” I interrupt, hoping to draw Claude’s wrath in my direction. “If world domination is what you’re after, and I think we’re all in agreement on that point, why don’t you just have him translate the code?” I say, gesturing to Gray. “He’s the one who wrote it, after all.”

  “Do you think us fools?” Chemical Claude shrieks. “Gray and I are enemies, yes, but we’re both from an age of respectability, when a man giving his word stood for something.” I have no idea where he’s going with this but as long as he prattles on about old-school techniques and respectability, he isn’t killing anyone.

  “You kids think you can do anything you want and get away with it,” he says, standing over me. “Just change your minds when it suits you, change sides like you change your socks. It’s reprehensible.” He walks over to Gray and places a hand lightly on his bruised shoulder.

  “It’s clear this man would die before revealing the code. There’s nothing he cares about more than his country.” For a second, I think he might give Gray a big wet kiss on the lips but instead he turns back to me and says, “You are not that man. You won’t be able to hold out while watching your father scream for his life. You’ll translate the code. Girls are like that.”

  “He won’t scream,” I correct. “He might sing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ but he won’t scream. And you, Claude Chevalier, are nothing like him.”

  “Well,” Claude says, leaning down to whisper directly into my ear, “I imagine your son will scream if your father won’t. Now read.”

  My blood pressure surges and it takes every ounce of my willpower not to reach out and strangle Claude, consequences be damned. The only thing that stops me is a gentle pressure on my shoulder, a small hand holding me in place.

  Ayushi stands very close to me. The smell of her laundry detergent is familiar and I’m suddenly overcome by a sharp longing for home. I want to be sitting at my kitchen table, building wampa snow creatures out of LEGOs with Theo.

  The pressure I feel against my shoulder turns out not to be Ayushi holding me in my seat. Rather, it is the butt of a SIG P226, barely visible peeking out from the long sleeve of her oversized down jacket. She must have lifted it off him when he hugged her on the beach. Quickly, as Claude fumbles with a recording device, I take the gun and slide it into the pocket of my fleece jacket. Ayushi gives me a small smile and squeezes my shoulder.

  “Sally,” she whispers. “Sally.”

  In all my time at the Agency, I never knew if I was good enough. No one ever slapped me on the back and said, “Nice work.” I never got a gold star on my report card or a year-end bonus based on outstanding performance. But eventually, you have to grow up and judge yourself. And today, right now in fact, I decide I might just be okay. Maybe not the best there ever was but good enough.

  “Girls are unreliable,” Chemical Claude says, returning to his earlier theme as he sets up a microphone in front of my face. “They’re ruled by emotion. They don’t think clearly. Girls can never close the deal.”

  “Some girls maybe,” I say, whipping the gun from my pocket, “but not this one.” The first two shots are clean and the men go down immediately. I hear their submachine guns skitter across the concrete floor. The third guy starts to run and my bullet goes through his neck. Not pretty but no less effective. Chemical Claude grabs Ayushi and hides behind her, the length of cord from the microphone wrapped tightly around her neck.

  “You take one step and she’s a goner,” he hisses. “Don’t want to lose her a second time, do you?”

  “Kill him, Sally,” whispers Gray from his seat. He looks up now, a twisted smile on his swollen face. “You were the best shot in the place, although no one ever told you. You put those boys to shame. Do it now.”

  And that’s all it takes.

  I lower the gun just a millimeter and fire without pausing. Ayushi dives to the left as Chemical Claude crashes to the floor in a spray of red. His face is frozen in surprise, a gloved hand halfway to where the side of his head used to be. And while I expected seeing Chemical Claude finally die would fill me with relief, I find I’m filled with nothing more than a deep, cold fatigue.

  Quickly, I untie Gray. He can barely stand, leaning heavily on my shoulder for support. We start to shuffle off to our getaway.

  “Not so fast,” comes a voice from up above. Yoder stands on a catwalk above us with a grenade in each hand, pins pulled. “Put down your gun, Sally, and pick up the book. We’re not done yet.”

  And there I was, kind of hoping this wouldn’t happen. I lean Gray against the wall and hold up my gun for Yoder to see.

  “I’m putting it down,” I say, placing it on the floor at my feet. “Don’t do anything crazy, okay?” I position myself in front of Ayushi and Gray. “I’m going to pick up the book now.”

  The book is floating in a puddle of blood. I fish it out and hold it up for Yoder to see.

  “Here it is,” I say. “I’m opening it.”

  My brain, which ought to be going full throttle figuring a way out of this mess, is instead thinking things along the lines of “Gee, I hope the grandparents remembered to bring Theo’s snacks” and “I wonder if it’s foggy out at the zoo and if Theo is wearing his jacket?” and finally, “Oh my God, what am I doing here? What was I thinking?”

  Fortunately, before I can break into full-scale panic, I see a look on Gray’s face that can only be described as shock. Considering nothing is supposed to shock Gray, it gets my attention.

  He looks up at the catwalk but not at Yoder. His eyes fix on a shadowy figure behind Yoder, a figure holding a very large weapon. He is looking at Ian Blackford.

>   In a flash, I understand Gray thinks Blackford works for the now dead Chemical Claude and is here to help Yoder finish what Claude started. And Gray knows if Claude had Blackford on his roster, the game is over. We’re all dead.

  So what can I say to that?

  “It’s the Man with the Yellow Hat,” I whisper in his ear. Gray shakes his head at me. He doesn’t understand the reference but it’s all I can give him right now because the ride is about to get bumpy.

  Up on the catwalk, Yoder flexes his scrawny biceps, all hopped up on power and hand grenades.

  “Claude promised me if I did this, went along with his plan to find you, he would set me free,” he says. “Then I could go to school and build buildings and be somebody real.”

  Like a cat, Blackford moves silently forward.

  “But he never mentioned a man named Simon Still. He never told me what they would do to me. Claude took everything and I’m not leaving here without getting some of it back.”

  “You don’t need to do this,” I say, trying to keep Yoder’s focus on me. “Tell me you don’t want to do this and I’ll come up there and get those grenades and we can end this.”

  I’m not even done with my speech but Yoder is already vigorously shaking his head no. He looks like Theo when I try to get him to eat Brussels sprouts.

  “I’m done taking orders,” he says. “I’m done being a pawn.”

  I sympathize with him in an abstract way but there’s little I can do about it if he insists on dropping grenades on our heads.

  “Please,” I say again, in one last effort, “let me help you. I can help you. You’re just a kid, Yoder.”

  The last part makes him mad.

  “Read or die,” he says with renewed determination. It’s a terrible line.

  “If you do this, you’ll end up being nobody, just as everyone thought,” I say. I’m straining to hold up Gray, even with Ayushi’s help.

  “That’s not true,” Yoder howls. “You watch and see. I am somebody.” At that moment, Blackford slides up behind Yoder and puts the barrel of his gun to his head.

  “Not anymore, you’re not,” Blackford says and pulls the trigger.

  The grenades, spoons released, fall from Yoder’s dead hands like overripe apples from a tree. But Blackford always has a plan and, as I see this one unfold, I think for a split second how nice it would be to be that sure of myself. As if he is playing a high stakes game of urban handball, Blackford strikes an armed grenade and sends it sailing out a glassless window.

  He almost gets the other one but gravity pulls it just beyond his reach.

  “Grenade,” I shout, in case anyone missed it.

  Ayushi and I grab Gray and push him toward an open door. He groans in agony. On the other side of the door, we huddle down against the thick cement wall. Then I pull them both to me, hold tight, and wait for the inevitable big boom.

  39

  The car that comes screeching to a halt in front of us is government issue and black. Although the windows are tinted, I have a pretty good idea who is inside. I hold Gray around the waist. He leans on me and, although he looks frail, he’s surprisingly heavy.

  Slumping down, his breath is warm on my ear. I can barely make out his words, my head ringing from the explosion.

  “You look so much like her,” he whispers in Russian.

  In an instant, I’m back in the one room, her beautiful young face inches from mine as she holds me up so I can look out the window at the desolate landscape of Norilsk, Russia. It’s winter and there’s nothing but ice and snow for as far as the eye can see. When the men came for her, she locked me in a special compartment under the floorboards.

  “Do not come out,” she said. “No matter what you hear.” She hugged me hard and I thought I heard a jagged sob escape from her throat. Above my head, she quickly replaced the planks.

  She was a spy, they said. I could hear their boots, someone rearranging the chairs around the table. A double agent, they went on. A traitor. And the punishment for that was death. The gunshots were loud and I covered my ears. Moments later, there was silence. But I stayed under those boards, hardly moving, until Gray came for me. I did as I was told.

  “She loved you,” Gray says. “But in the end, it wasn’t enough. It never is.”

  I hear her voice in my head, the little girl on the train, and I think Gray is wrong. Love was enough because here I am. Still alive. Still moving forward. In the end, love might be the only thing that matters.

  “Who was she?” I ask. But Gray closes his eyes and shakes his head. It’s too late for that question. Simon Still has arrived.

  Simon climbs out of the car along with three other indistinguishable men. They’re all armed and appear quite serious. My instinct is to run, fast and hard, in any direction.

  “Sir,” Simon says, limping up to us. “I’m so relieved to find you alive.” Using me for support, Gray attempts to straighten up. He raises an inquisitive eyebrow at Simon and clears his throat.

  “Are you really?” he asks.

  “Of course.” Simon elbows me out of the way, acting as though we have never met, as though we hadn’t tried to kill one another just a few hours earlier, and takes the weight of Gray onto his own shoulders. The other men form a tight protective circle around the Director, hustling him off to the warm car.

  It seems now would be a good time to take a minute and reflect on my relationship with Gray and what it all means, but that will have to wait because right now I need to see to something else.

  Before the car doors slam shut on the armored sedan that will spirit Gray back to the safety of Washington, I run for the warehouse. Ayushi yells after me but I can barely make out her words.

  There is, of course, no body. At least not the one I’m looking for. The explosion proved too much for the ancient catwalk and it dangles at a right angle to the floor. Yoder is stretched lifeless beneath it, a permanent look of surprise in his unblinking eyes.

  We have less than a minute before the Agency clean-up crew arrives and attempts to sweep us out with the trash. I identify a faint trail of blood leading to a door on the far side of the building but it disappears before the exit. Blackford is gone.

  Ayushi tugs on my sleeve. “Come now,” she says in the same singsong voice I sometimes hear in my nightmares. “We need to leave.” I stop long enough to take her face in my hands. There’s something important I want to say but the words don’t form. Ayushi places her hands over mine. They’re warm and soft.

  “Do not worry, Sally Sin,” she says. “We do the best we can.”

  By tomorrow afternoon, someone will report a fancy white yacht, called the Everest, illegally moored to a San Francisco pier. The police will spend hours trying to figure out who owns it but to no avail. Eventually, the yacht will be auctioned off by the city and the new owner will have no clue he is cruising the bay in a boat that used to belong to a terrorist.

  Ayushi, with only a small backpack thrown over her shoulder, hails a cab. She seems oddly at ease in her own skin, a survivor in a world that makes absolutely no sense.

  She claims she has plenty of money, stolen slowly over the years and hidden in various locations.

  “Claude taught me to be a thief,” she says. “I practiced on him.” She won’t listen to my apologies for having left her to a madman and when I ask her where she’s going, she says only “home” before kissing me on the cheek and sliding into the taxi.

  “We will see each other again, Sally,” she says as she pulls the door shut. “I am sure of it.”

  As Ayushi’s taxi becomes lost in a flood of taillights, I think about all the paths I could have taken in my life, the different people I could have been. The thought makes my throat constrict. Any other path would have led to a life without Theo, without Will, without the things I value above all else.

  I cannot save any of us from what has already happened. I cannot undo the past nor, I realize, would I, if given the chance.

  40

  I a
rrive home to Theo, Will, and his parents sitting around the table eating pizza and laughing about the howler monkeys at the zoo. They look so content, so connected to each other, that I stop short before entering the kitchen.

  “It was like he was talking to me,” Will II says. “We had an understanding, me and that monkey. It was a relationship.”

  Rose Marie covers her mouth with a manicured hand in horror at the memory. “I have never been so embarrassed in all my life,” she says. “Honestly. Grown men do not talk to monkeys. At least not in public.”

  “You were so funny, Gramps,” Theo says, spontaneously hugging him. “Do the monkey voice again. Do it for Daddy.”

  It’s as if I am watching them through frosted glass, as if I am already playing back the memory of this moment.

  “Hi, guys,” I say. The nonchalance of my greeting almost makes me laugh. It doesn’t fit with the rest of my day.

  “Hi, honey,” Will says. “I didn’t see you there.” He jumps up and puts his arms around me. “We got pizza. Good day? You look kind of washed out.”

  There is, I suspect, a reason for that but it requires confirmation.

  “No, I’m fine,” I say, kissing Theo on the head and Will on the lips. “Save me a slice. I’ll be right back.”

  It’s been a long day but I take the stairs two at a time. In my pocket, I hold two possible futures. The plus sign means everything changes once again. The minus sign means it’s probably the malaria. I find myself praying for the plus sign, suddenly filled with an unfamiliar yearning.

  I stand in the bathroom, holding the white plastic stick. I watch the little window on the stick change. I wait for it to reveal the future. Downstairs, the business about the monkey is ongoing. It’s sure to become one of the stories Theo begs me to tell over and over again. But I’m about to send the conversation off in another direction entirely.

  I fill my lungs with air and exhale in the way my yoga teacher tells me is helpful in aligning my chakras. And with what I’m about to do, I can use all the aligned chakras a person can get.