Agent Q, or the Smell of Danger!

by M. T. Anderson

  She knew that Mrglik didn’t really want to kill anyone. He needed to take them alive if he wanted to get information from them. But she had heard that the Ministry of Silence was brutal, and she didn’t want to take any chances. She pressed her face against the wood of the cart and shut her eyes. She wished it would all go away.

  But instead she heard another shot fired—and heard it strike the dirt by her feet.

  How—?!?

  Mrglik was leaning down, firing under the cart. He smiled at her under the cart and waved.

  “Come out,” he said, “and you not will be harmed.”

  Startled, sick with fear, she grabbed the rim of the cart and pulled her legs up off the ground. She clutched herself close to the planks. Her arm was thrown over the lip now, and her hand was buried in rice pilaf.

  She heard Mrglik approaching. Soft soles on dust.

  “Lily!” Drgnan urged.

  Step by step, Mrglik got closer.

  She could practically feel him stretching out his arm to reach over the corner of the cart and take ahold of her. . . .

  But then the cart began to move backward. Her slight weight had started it rolling.

  She was hanging on to the downhill side of it. It didn’t have any brakes. So, slowly at first, it began creaking down the switchback road with Lily gripping the lip for dear life.

  She screamed and looked up. Mrglik was running along behind, his gun in his hand.

  Drgnan was pounding along beside her and the cart, his robes flashing around him.

  She heard Mrglik shouting fiercely in his own language.

  There was a shudder—the whole cart tipped—righted itself—rolled on.

  Now with Drgnan aboard.

  Drgnan reached over the side and pulled Lily in.

  She tumbled over the side, scraping her belly on the wood.

  She and Drgnan were a-sift in a deep pool of dry rice. The cart was hurtling now, the hill steep and the road rough. Mrglik flung himself along behind, grabbing at the traces and shafts.

  He put his hand on the cart. Drgnan brought his fist down on it, and Mrglik pulled back his arm, cursing. He shoved the gun back in its holster.

  The spy reached out. He clamped both hands to the cart—which slowed with the drag. Soon he would have them stalled. Lily began prying at his fingers. She pried one, then Drgnan another, then Lily, then Drgnan. They took turns—like a lover plucking off flower petals and saying, “She loves me not.”

  Mrglik dropped back, unhanded—but still armed. He pulled out the pistol again.

  Then he flung himself bodily—and landed half on the pile of rice, with half his body still dragging on the ground. His legs wheeled wildly as he tried to get his knee up on the cart shaft.

  Drgnan grabbed him and they went into a fearsome clinch. Mrglik kicked hard with both legs and bucked himself all the way into the cart, while Drgnan tried to pry away the man’s gun.

  Lily looked down the street and saw the cart was careening toward a stone wall. They were going to smash—and die in a flurry of rice pilaf new-plucked from the pilaf fields below.

  Drgnan grimaced with effort as the man in his black suit and cushions (I perhaps should have mentioned that Mrglik was still wearing some of the cushions from pretending to be a chair) writhed and tried to point his gun, all the while yelling, “HALT!” as if anyone could halt the rumbling, tumbling, hazardous progress of that rickety cart as it swooped toward the wall and certain—

  But no! Lily had her hand on one of the traces, and she was yanking it as hard as she could!

  The cart turned! Spun out a little, sending a flurry of rice off the side, but missing the wall by inches!

  She could control the wheels, she realized. She fished for the other trace.

  Got it. Now she looked behind her, the two leather straps in her hands. The cart was still rolling backward down the road.

  Toward some little kids, standing in the road and looking wonderingly up at the fight. The cart would plow right through them. They all wore their paper smiley-face masks, the uniform of schoolkids in the Autarch’s dictatorship.

  Whizz—Lily yanked and just missed them.

  Jiggle—headed right toward a baby in a carriage! The baby looked at the hurtling cart and plucked at its mouth with a chubby finger.

  Lily clenched and pulled. Turned just in time. The baby carriage tottered with the wind of passage.

  A mother cat! And kittens! Twelve of them! In the road! Cute as buttons!

  Lily tugged the trace with all her might. The rice sifted—shifted—spilled over the shafts! And the cart missed the kits.

  A perfect daisy! Growing up through the road! Bringing sunshine and happiness to everyone who passed it on the way to their rice fields!

  Lily caromed the cart off the curb and the flower just shivered with the spin of the spokes.

  Honking! From where?

  The van! Riding alongside them! At the same speed!

  Cobbles rattled beneath the wheels. The door was open. Jasper and Bvletch reached out to receive whoever wanted to try to jump the gap between the vehicles.

  Lily couldn’t leave the traces or Drgnan would be stuck in the hurtling cart with no control over the wheels.

  “Go!” said Drgnan, fighting Mrglik.

  The gun dropped from Mrglik’s hand. Lily saw it slide into the rice. She reached for it, but the cart tipped.

  “Go!” yelled Drgnan again.

  Lily leaped—was grabbed by her friends and pulled into the van.

  “We have to help Drgnan!” she said.

  “Look who’s behind us,” said Katie.

  Lily looked back—and saw their old guide, Bntno, driving a little car behind them. He was yelling out the window in English, “Hasty children! Do not run away! Come sit with Bntno in his excellent little car!”

  That was what was behind them. And in front of them? Lily looked forward—and saw that both the van and the cart were headed for a low concrete wall where the switchback road turned. The van could turn. But Drgnan had to get out of the cart in the next few seconds—or he’d be over the wall and falling freely, showered with rice—like a wedding and a funeral all at once.

  DEAD END ALLEY

  Van and cart raced for the wall.

  They had to both swerve, or they’d be flipping off the edge of a cliff.

  Behind them was Bntno, a new danger. Lily didn’t know what to do. Jasper was clearly contemplating jumping into the rice to help his friend—but that would mean certain death when the cart hit.

  Drgnan looked up from his wrestling. Saw the wall.

  He struggled to get free—but Mrglik had a grip on him. . . . Drgnan couldn’t . . . pull himself . . . away. . . .

  Unless . . .

  THWAM!

  They hit the wall.

  The cart flew up into the air.

  Drgnan scissored his legs—spun. He rose above the cart like a saint ascending, his arms spread wide, a halo of rice pilaf glittering around him.

  He landed on the roof of the van, spread-eagled.

  The cart and Mrglik were tumbling down the hillside. Mrglik could be heard yelling ouches. His cushions were little comfort now.

  The door to the van was still open. Jasper hung out of it, yelling up at Drgnan to see if he was okay.

  Drgnan’s shaved head popped down from the roof. “What does a side of rice pilaf mean in the code of Friar Tuck-In?” he asked. “Because for me, it means victory.”

  Katie looked at him adoringly.

  He scrambled down with Jasper and Bvletch’s help.

  Now they were all in the van and only had to deal with the problem of Bntno. Except Bntno was on a cell phone, probably calling the secret police.

  Katie and Lily dragged the van’s door shut.

  They screeched into a side alley. Bntno shot past.

  “Huzzah!” cheered Jasper.

  But at the next alley, Bntno roared out from a side road.

  The chase was still on.

&nb
sp; There were sirens.

  The van roared down an avenue plastered on either side with billboards advertising beer and milk and hamburger sandwiches.

  Two secret police cars rolled out behind them and joined the chase.

  Lily started to think about what Grzo had mentioned to them regarding dungeons where they might be kept if they were caught: the darkness . . . the toads . . . the slime to drink . . . questions being asked about where the monks and their monastery were hidden. . . . She wanted desperately to be at home, to be lying on her bed with a book, with her mom and dad cooking dinner in the kitchen. . . .

  She shut her eyes, as if that would somehow wake her from a bad dream.

  She opened them, and of course nothing had changed.

  The van crossed a bridge over a deep crevasse. Children swayed on balloon harnesses, hovering by the cliffs.

  Now they were back in tricky little streets, shuddering along elevated roads that swerved and wobbled like old roller coaster tracks supported by scaffolds of wood. Shacks were caught in the scaffolds like flies in a web.

  Bntno bobbed up and down after the van. He was yelling something out the window, but nobody could hear. The secret police were right behind him.

  “Does anyone want the radio on?” asked Brother Grzo’s monk copilot from the driver’s seat. “I do not mean that we should be silent.”

  Nobody answered him.

  Brother Grzo frowned at the road.

  Behind them, Bntno was urging on the secret police. Their sirens were wailing and they pulled ahead of him. Their windows rolled down. Arms came out holding pistols.

  They were firing at the van.

  Everyone was screaming along through some kind of dock land now. Blimps were rising and falling around them. Six-armed dockworkers drove forklifts in muddy yards.

  Hit!

  The van was hit! The tire popped with a smack!

  The van began to rattle, agitated. Clunk—wobbling—one tire flat! The rim biting rubber!

  Screeched around a corner—the cops after them—

  The van shot through a gate.

  Lily saw it was a dead end.

  The gate slammed shut behind them.

  Outside, the cops pulled up by the shut gate, waited.

  Bntno roared past, squealed to a stop. He pulled back.

  “They’re in there,” said one of the secret police. “They can’t go anywhere. It’s a dead end. We’ve got them.”

  “Let’s knock down the door,” said another.

  It took them only a few minutes to commandeer a forklift.

  Then they ran it repeatedly into the gate.

  Eventually, the gate fell down.

  And they confronted . . . nothing.

  An empty little alley leading nowhere.

  As if the van had vanished.

  “Huh?” said the secret police.

  “Wha?”

  “Whoa.”

  “Wow.”

  “Where?”

  And far above, dangling from a hook, the people in the van looked down on the scene as they were lifted into the sky—into a cargo hold—peering down through thin vapor to the tiny cars, the little spies—seeing the law of the dictator dwindle beneath them.

  A RENDEZVOUS WITH AGENT Q

  The sky freighter’s first mate took good care of them. He bustled them out of the van, once it was locked in the hold, and ushered them up a ladder to the lounge. He showed them to chairs. He offered them tea and made them popcorn in a battered old microwave that was surrounded by wrenches, screwdrivers, stale donuts, and a grimy calendar showing the tusked, six-armed women of Lumbrook sprawled out on glaciers, dressed in bikinis.

  The freighter’s name was the Snow-Bow, and she was a fine little ship. She looked like a seashell supported by parachutes. The parachutes were constantly filled with air by rows of thick, trumpety pipes that sprouted out of the bottom of the ship and twisted upward. They constantly blew tempest winds up into the ’chutes, keeping the freighter suspended.

  Jasper was fascinated by this method of propulsion. “By Jove,” he said, “it’s like lifting yourself by the seat of your own pants.” So with Drgnan translating, he got a tour of the engine room from the first mate. When they’d examined the giant hair-dryer technology that made flight possible, Drgnan and Jasper scampered up and down the length of the vessel, exploring, pointing out the windows at the cities below and above.

  The secret police had dispatched a helicopter to look for the flying van. By the time they started patrolling the skies, however, shining their searchlight into windows, the freighter had mingled with others like it, swinging around in circles, a complicated dance of bees, until it was impossible to tell which freighter concealed the van and the monks.

  Grzo talked gently as they all gazed out the windows at the hovering spires above them. “The crew on this heavenly ship, dear children, are all members of the Delaware Resistance Movement, devoted to removing the Awful and Adorable Autarch from power and restoring our rightfully elected Governor.”

  “Where’s the Governor?” asked Lily.

  “None know,” said Grzo. “Not for many years. Not since the Autarch took power. The Governor may have escaped the palace safely or—the gods forbid it!—the Governor may be imprisoned even now in Fort Delaware, off the coast.”

  “So where are we going now?” asked Jasper.

  “We go to Wilmington. There we shall stay in a safe house secretly owned by the Resistance. There we shall await a secret agent sent by Washington, DC, who shall help us cross the border into the other United States. We must be very careful—for with the spying of your acquaintance Mrglik, the Ministry of Silence may now know that we do not head for Guyencourt, as we claimed.”

  “A spy?” said Jasper. “From Washington, DC? Golly, that’s swell. Will he have gadgets?”

  “I do not know,” said Brother Grzo. “Like a handheld back massager?”

  “Like an amphibious car. That goes on land and underwater and through lava.”

  Grzo admitted, “I know nothing of this agent.”

  “What?” said Katie. “Wait a second. You at least know his real name or something.”

  “No, child.”

  “Or a password. Or a sign to put in a window. Like one lantern if by land, two if by sea. You must know something.”

  “The waiter at Friar Tuck-In could not tell me, even in code, who the agent is. I know only that he shall meet us . . . and that he is called Agent Q.”

  “Agent Q,” grumbled Katie. “That’s not a name. That’s a bathroom tile cleaner.”

  Grzo folded his hands before him. “The waiter drew a Q with his finger on the frost of my water glass. This was his sign to me.”

  “That’s all he could say? ‘Q’? Nothing else?”

  “No, child.”

  “No real name?”

  “No.”

  “And we don’t know what the guy looks like?”

  “Or that the agent we shall meet is, as the lively child says, ‘a guy.’ All of us who are monks must be kept in a state of ignorance, because we have taken the vow never to lie, even to our enemies. Knowledge is dangerous for us. We must remain blank.”

  “So you’re the head of this expedition,” said Katie, “and you don’t even know how we’re supposed to find the spy who’s going to bring us across the border?”

  “That is correct.”

  “You’re just going to wait and hope this spy finds us?”

  “Do not fear, sweet nettled one. The spy who seeks us shall be as subtle as the serpent and as quick as the hawk.”

  “This is so stupid!”

  “You are touched by wrath, child of Pelt.”

  Katie sputtered, “Okay, I’m not touched—no, I’m not . . . I’m just . . . This is not a good way to run an adventure.”

  Lily, for a minute, was a little embarrassed that Katie was being so rude. But then Katie said what Lily herself was thinking: “Brother Grzo, I mean, I’m sorry, but do you know how long i
t’s been since I’ve seen my parents? It’s been days. They don’t even know where we are. I lied to them and said we were going to sleep overnight inside one of Jasper’s rockets for a science project. Eating stuff out of tubes.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry to be kind of a brat,” she said, “but we need to get home. They’ll be worried about us.”

  Brother Grzo took Katie’s hands in his own and he said, “Dear child, you are no brat. You are anxious and afraid. And who could not understand that? Even the shark sheds tears when it is away from its mother.”

  “Um . . . are you sure?”

  “The shark is a very moody creature.”

  “But I mean, about the crying. ’Cause the shark is underwater? So how could you tell, like, when it . . .” Katie realized that she was supposed to be apologizing, not poking holes in Grzo’s metaphors. She stopped herself, considered, and said, “I guess the sea is one big, salty tear.”

  Brother Grzo smiled his huge, lopsided smile. “Now you speak truth,” said he. He lifted up her hands before him, and insisted, “Do not fear. The day after tomorrow, you shall be reunited with your family.”

  “You promise?” said Katie, warily. “You can’t lie, remember.”

  “Yes, child, I promise you shall see them,” said Grzo, nodding consolingly. Then he added: “Either on Earth, or in Heaven.”

  Which was not a very comforting thing to add.

  While the freighter waited for clearance to leave Elsmere, Drgnan, Bvletch, and Jasper listened to entertaining stories told by the first mate, Dnny. He was six-armed, tusked, friendly, and unshaven. He wore jeans and a bandanna tied around his head. He was telling them a great story about his previous rig, a little ship he flew by himself called the Hornet Mistress. He spoke no English, so Drgnan translated for Jasper. It was a thrilling story, full of shootouts with the secret police, near escapes in the Newark Mountains, and a crash in the desert east of Sandtown.

  The story ended this way: After many trials and tribulations, Dnny’s little ship had finally reached the end of her run in Winterthur, north of Elsmere—a town where the pines and firs are crystalline with ice all year round, high up on the cliffs above the Montchanin Valley.