From Russia With Fur

by Rene Fomby

  A tear starts trickling down Sammy’s gray cheek, and suddenly I feel like a complete heel for ever bringing the subject up in the first place. He wipes the tear away slowly with his left paw and looks straight at me. “I was there, you know. I was just a little squirrel at the time, just barely out of the nest, but I was there. When the human kid across the alley shot my mom. In cold blood, and then left her there to bleed out. Left her there to die.” He suddenly stops talking as he starts breathing funny and covers both of his eyes with one paw.

  I don’t know what to say. I’m never all that good at moments like these, so I decide the best idea is just to change the subject. “So, hey, Sammy, you said I’m wanted at HQ. Where exactly is that? I mean, my dealings with those folks have always been a little paws-off, arm’s length transactions, if you know what I mean. I’ve never even voted in one of their elections, to be honest. So where are we supposed to meet up?”

  Sammy takes a long moment to recover, then finally drops his paw. I can’t help but notice his eyes looking bright red. Raw. He’s not looking in my direction when he answers. “I was told they were all meeting up at Fat Tony’s office. That you would know how to find it.”

  Fat Tony? Why, I haven’t thought about him for one moment, not since our last meet-up in his office. And for good reason. “Hold on, Sammy. I—I don’t get it. I’ve been to Tony’s office a bunch of times, and I never saw anything that looked like a pet protection operation going on in there. Did I miss something?”

  “Didn’t you hear?” Sammy asks, finally looking my way. “Fat Tony’s been named interim president of PETSEC, ever since the previous president was found lying dead just outside his office about a month ago. The elections to name a new, permanent president are set for Tuesday, and Fat Tony is expected to win it by a landslide. And that’ll truly be something, a first time for everything. Never had a cat at the top of PETSEC, before. As a matter of fact, none of them ever seemed to be all that interested in the job.”

  Now I’m feeling like a complete idiot. Here I am, a dog, and this—squirrel—knows more about PETSEC than I could ever imagine. Maybe Bella is right about me. Maybe I do live too sheltered a life, lounging around out here in the ‘burbs. Maybe I do need to get more involved in things. But then I think about the last time I got involved in business outside of our safe little neighborhood, and I think, nah! I can’t count how many times I almost got myself killed in just two short days, poking my nose into things best left alone. But at least I’d managed to save my buddy Killer. And freed a bunch of other wrongly-imprisoned dogs and cats in the process.

  I sneak a peek over at the spot under the old mulberry bush where there’s a hole leading out into the alley. If I’m going to make the meeting, I better get going. Fat Tony will have my hide if I show up fashionably late, for sure. But as I start to head that way, one final thing stops me in my tracks.

  “Okay, listen up Sammy, I’ll let things slide between you and me for now. But tell me, did you really have to whack me like that with the acorns? You couldn’t have just nudged me a little, all gentle like, so I could have eased out of my dreams instead of being jolted awake?” I feel the left side of my head, where I swear a huge knot is already starting to swell up.

  Sammy laughs out loud, a funny sound coming from a squirrel, kind of like claws scraping across a sidewalk. “Nudge you? That’s hilarious, Moose! You should do standup, for sure!” He takes a second to get control of himself, then goes on. “You ever hear the phrase, let sleeping dogs lie? You think for a second I’d have risked being just inches away from those canines of yours when you woke up? Not in a million years, I tell you! Not in a million years!”

  The squirrel has a point. After all, we have some history between us, Sammy and me. Sure, for me it was all mostly just fun and games, but then—I’ve never seen my mom shot down right in front of me. In cold blood. That sort of thing has got to change a guy, for sure, and not in a good way. As I trot over to the mulberry bush to make my way downtown to the meeting, the thought crosses my mind that maybe I could mend fences a little with the squirrel, after all. Cut him a little slack, maybe even be friends.

  But that thought only lasts a second. Maybe two at the most. I mean, he is a squirrel, after all…

  Downtown Chicago,

  Mid-Morning

  I

  t’s been more than a little while since my last trip downtown—ever since the Killer caper, to be exact—and it took me a little longer than I thought to work out all the details with the whole elevated train business. But I made it here in one piece and didn’t get myself arrested by some do-gooder for riding without a master, so I’m feeling pretty good about myself as I stroll up to Fat Tony’s office, dodging the humans along the way.

  As I push the door open with my nose, I can see that very little has changed. The office is still decorated in old leather and dark wood paneling, and dominated by a large oak desk parked right in front of a big picture window looking out over the Chicago skyline. There are so many certificates and awards and photos covering the walls, they might as well have been wallpaper. But I make note of the fact that all of the pictures are of humans grinning at each other, and none of the awards say anything at all about Fat Tony.

  Speaking of which, as I trot into the room, Tony is standing right in front of the window, staring out, a fat stogie giving up its last stinking moments of life in an ashtray on the left side of the desk. There are two high-backed chairs laid out in front of me, and as I clear my throat to get Tony’s attention, a familiar black-and-white face pokes out from behind the seat off to my right. Tommy Tuxedo. The ultimate fat cat.

  “I told you he couldn’t be trusted with a mission this big, this important,” Tommy snarls in my direction. “Can’t even show up on time for the meeting.”

  Fat Tony turns slowly away from the window, pausing for just a second to give Tommy the stink eye, then glancing my way with a warm smile.

  “Moose! It’s been too long, my friend.”

  I smile back, carefully ignoring the harsh look I’m getting from the Tuxedo. “Yeah, it’s hard to imagine it’s been almost a year already.” I point my nose at his gut. “But hey, you’ve slimmed down quite a bit since the prison break thing. I’m impressed. May have to try out a new nickname, for a change, to go with the new body. Maybe, say, Not-So-Fat Tony? Or how about Antonio Slim?”

  Tony pats his belly a couple of times, and for once it doesn’t look like it has a life of its own. “I wish I could say I’ve been working out to get rid of the weight, but the truth is, this past year has been a hard one. I’ve missed a lot of meals lately, you know, from all the stress.”

  “The dress? You mean… you’ve been…” I direct my eyes a little lower.

  “No,” Tommy butts in with a sour look on his face. “He said ‘stress,’ you idiot, not ‘dress.’ Stress from everything that’s been going on around here. Especially since the murder.”

  Murder? I can barely believe what I’m hearing. There hasn’t been a murder in Chicago since Penny got mauled by the Crimson Canines. Well, not among pets, that is. The humans are knocking each other off all the time. I glance over at Tony, who’s nodding.

  “Moose, you better take a seat. We’ve got a lot to catch up on, I’m afraid.”

  I circle around to the front of the empty chair off to my left and hop on up. Which takes more effort than you might think. I mean, I may have the ripped physique of a trained mastiff, but still, with these short legs …

  Tony hops up on the desk himself, facing us. Even slimmed down he’s a big cat, a Maine Coon Cat to be exact, with thick gray and brown hair marked with streaks of black, and ears poking up out of all that fur like two little gray horns. Devil’s horns, Bella used to call them. Personally, I think they’re kind of cute, in a cat-like sort of way.

  Tony clears his throat to get our attention. Or maybe he’s just working on a big hairball—it’s kinda hard to tell with cats.

  “Okay,
Moose, I gotta warn you, what I’m about to disclose to you is top secret information. Eyes only, and not to be discussed outside of this room. Capisce?”

  There he goes with that fake Italian accent again. I’m about to say something when I glance over at Tommy and see that he’s clearly still bought into the act. Maybe he doesn’t know that Tony is actually Jewish, that he’s been pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes all this time, just pretending to be Italian. Everyone but me, that is. W-e-l-l, to be honest, it was Bella who first tipped me off to the whole phony cannelloni thing. But hey, I was at least the second one to catch on! That’s gotta count for something!

  But it only takes one quick glance in Tommy’s direction to decide this might not be the best time to bring it up. Maybe later. I turn my attention back to Tony, who’s talking.

  “So here’s the deal, Moose. A couple of months after I saw you last, I got a late-night summons from the top brass at PETSEC. Seems the president was concerned that someone might be hacking into his pee-mails, planning something nefarious. Only he couldn’t figure out who was doing the hacking, or what they were ultimately up to.”

  “Pee-mails? You mean hikies? Sniffing around the old fire hydrant?” I’m confused. Sure, you could find out a lot about whoever had been hanging around an area by checking out what he’d left behind, but that was pretty much limited to name, rank and cereal number. Nothing that could really be of much use…

  “I can see you’re confused, Moose,” Tony suggests. “You’re probably thinking, how much info could someone get off a random sniff of a tree trunk, and normally you’d be spot on. But our guys down in Q’ute’s tech lab have whipped up a way to leave behind highly encoded messages in the urine spray. Think of it kind of like a form of spy drop, a way to communicate secretly with agents in the field.”

  Tommy leans my way with an evil sneer smeared across his face. “But for you, little Moosie, puny as you are, they’d be more like instant Moosengers. Get it? Instant—”

  “I get it,” I cut him off. “Funny dog, a regular comedian. I gotta squirrel you might need to meet up with back in the ‘hood…”

  Tony slaps a paw down smartly on his desk, making me jump. “Okay boys, let’s stay focused here. This is serious business. The future of PETSEC is at stake. Maybe even the future of pets throughout the entire Western world.”

  Boy, that finally got my attention. I sit up straighter in my seat and focus in on what Tony is trying to tell us. The future of PETSEC? Of the entire pet civilization, even? This must be serious! “But, Tony,” I protest, the sound coming out a little bit louder and shriller than I had planned. “If it’s just the president’s pee-mails we’re talking about, why should anyone care? After all, there couldn’t be anything embarrassing in—”

  “Oh, but that’s just the problem, don’t you see,” Tony explains, leaning in. “You see, the president had more than his share of enemies out in the world. And the PETSEC organization itself has long had folks bent on destroying everything we’ve been working so long to accomplish. And to fight all that perfidy, to save the world for pet democracy, sometimes we had to fight fire with fire. Get down in the dirt with them.”

  Ooh. I think I see the problem now. One thing I’ve avoided all my life is getting down in the dirt when I didn’t have to. Dirt means baths. Oof! I’m shaking all over just thinking about it. Especially getting accidentally sprayed with cold water in my ears. But Tommy is talking now.

  “So what you’re saying is that President Boomer put something in writing that’s coming back to bite him, is that it?”

  “That’s it on the nose, Tuxedo. And just last night we got wind of a plan by one of our enemies to release all of Boomer’s pee-mails to the public. More specifically, a plot cooked up by a certain Himalayan feline named Julia Strange, the head of Kitty-Leaks. And it couldn’t possibly come at a worse time, what with the election of a new president set for just two days away.”

  Presidential elections? That’s the first time I’d heard of any of that. Or was it the second? Anyway, I usually try to steer clear of politics every chance I get. And of politicians. Talk about needing a bath…

  Tommy’s been chewing on his right front paw, and now looks up at Tony suspiciously. “But why do we care, Antonio? You’re a shoo-in for winning the election. There’s no one even lined up on the ballot to contest it.”

  Tony shakes his huge head, slowly. “No one up until late last night, that is. But now, right on the heels of the Kitty-Leaks announcement, we’ve got a new contender. From down south a ways. And I think you know exactly who I’m talking about, Moose. It’s our old friend, Boss Dawg. The lead dog of the CCs. The Crimson Canines.”

  I think back on the last time I laid my eyes on that massive black Doberman, and my legs go limp, even as I leak a little bit uncontrollably onto the seat underneath me.

  Fat Tony’s Office

  T

  ony is suddenly looking a little lost somehow, his forehead scrunched up in thought. I sneak a peek in Tommy’s direction, hoping he hasn’t caught wind of my—accident—but then I see him with his nose pointed my way, inhaling sharply and shaking his head in disgust, and I know I’ve been outed.

  Tommy coughs to catch Tony’s attention. “I don’t know much about kitty leaks, but I can sure recognize doggie leaks when I smell it.”

  I try to shrink up into the smallest ball possible as Tony returns to our world.

  “Wut?” he asks, looking confused for a long, long moment before he finally glances my way. “Oh. I see.” He notices the red stain spreading across my muzzle and shakes his head again, warmly. “Well, nothing to be ashamed of there. Moose has every reason to be afraid, my friend. He and I went through some pretty rough moments with that gang of blood-thirsty criminals. Pretty rough moments, indeed.”

  He leans forward again, resting most of his weight on his two front paws. “So, here’s what we’re facing. We have no idea who exactly hacked the pee-mails, but it’s unlikely Kitty-Leaks was behind it—they just don’t have the technological know-how to make that happen. Not with the kind of encryption Q’ute’s people have provided to us. And, second, it can’t be a coincidence that Boss Dawg has jumped into the ring at the very last minute, and at the very same moment Julia Strange is threatening to release all the hacked info. But, with Boomer dead, what we don’t know is what’s in those pee-mails, and how that’s going to affect the final election results in just two short days.”

  Tony leaves that hanging in the air while the Tuxedo and I stare at each other, trying to make sense of what role we were supposed to play in all of this. Finally, Tommy cuts his eyes back toward Fat Tony.

  “And I take it the two of us are somehow part of a master plan to answer those very questions. But the bigger question is, why us? And what can we possibly do that PETSEC’s Double-O agents don’t already have a handle on?”

  “Yeah, about that.” Fat Tony suddenly jumps off the desk and returns to staring out the window, reluctant to face us it seems. “I’m afraid the Double-O’s won’t be of much help to us over the next few days, unfortunately,” he mutters over his shoulder. “They’re kind of, uh—on the sidelines at the moment, you might say.”

  That doesn’t make any sense to me, and I say so. “On the sidelines? What do you mean by that? What mission could they possibly have that’s more important than safeguarding this election? An election that’s less than two days away?”

  Slowly he turns back to face us, and I can’t help but see the concern hanging in his dark face that speaks volumes as to how much weight he has lost over the past year.

  “Moose. Tommy. We—we don’t exactly have a Double-O service at the moment. All our agents have—disappeared, you might say.”

  Tommy and I lock eyes for what seems like an eternity, before we both turn back toward Tony, now bent over with his back pressed up against the window, staring forlornly at the floor. Like it had any answers. Tommy is the first to break the silence.


  “What do you mean, disappeared? The last time I checked, there were seven feline agents on the service, all of them on their first lives. Are you saying they defected somehow?”

  Tony straightens slightly, like his spine is in traction. Knew a dachshund like that, once, but I can’t say I remember his name. “Defected? No, I don’t think so. Not all seven of them. Especially Double-O Seven. He’s on loan to us from M, the head of the United Kingdom branch of PETSEC. She swears he’d give his very life before turning his back on his Queen and country. Or our country, for that matter.”

  Tommy’s face is twisted in angles I’ve never seen before as he slowly digests Fat Tony’s news. “Well, if they haven’t crossed over, then—” He sucks in a deep breath, trying to process everything he’d just been told. “The only other alternative is that they’ve been captured—”

  “No.” Tony jumps back up on top of the desk, back in charge again. “No way all seven of them could have been captured. Especially Bond. Double-O Seven. So that only leaves one other possibility.”

  “That they’re dead?” Tommy blurts out incredulously. “But—how is that even possible? You said they were all on their first lives. That means they would have all been killed a total of—” He does the math quickly in his head, which I have to admit is pretty impressive. “Sixty-three times! Impossible!”

  Tony shares a smile that isn’t even close to a smile. “You’re assuming the old wives’ tale that cats have nine lives is true. Turns out that couldn’t be more wrong. We cats have just one shot at life, not nine. Same as every other animal in this world.”