Agent Q, or the Smell of Danger!

by M. T. Anderson

  The five kids had watched some of This Is Your Double Life! with Drgnan translating. A spy was called up onstage from out of the studio audience, and then a bunch of informants he’d known in the past denounced him and exposed him while he tried to guess who they were. (A female voice: “We had a beautiful dinner together in Vienna. You named a new species of poisonous tropical flower after me.”—While the spy in the spotlight guessed, “Is it—is it Ldmilla? Ldmilla Brblik? . . . No. . . . No, it can’t be. . . . You’ve betrayed me! Ldmilla! How—how could you?!? We exchanged numbers. . . . We exchanged gunshots! But I never thought you’d turn me in. . . .” etc., etc.)

  Daytime television in Wilmington was really awful.

  And then they were stuck with the obnoxious Taylor Quizmo while they waited for their burgers.

  Taylor took a long, steady sip of his Coke. He gave a warm smile to the other two kids. He said to Jasper, “That is so great you have your own series of books too.”

  “Thank you,” said Jasper.

  “I think I remember them. They were published a long, long time ago, right? With all kinds of cute, old-timey inventions in them?” Taylor took another long draft of his Coke. “I mean, I have a series about me and my adventures as a boy spy, but I don’t know if they’re any good. I haven’t read any of them myself. I just don’t have time. I’m always off on another adventure! That must be one of the great things about having a series that hasn’t sold any copies for fifty years—you really have time to relax. No one clamoring for you to go anywhere or do anything. That’s just great.”

  It was apparently not just great for Jasper. The Boy Technonaut stood up. “I’m sorry,” he said weakly. “I . . . I have to . . . I just remembered that I’m eating over there.” He pointed rather unconvincingly at an empty corner near a little ficus tree. “Near that little tree.”

  He gave a weird, embarrassed bow and walked away.

  If he’d really been in his usual frame of mind, he would have found an excuse to pull Lily away too. He knew, however, that wherever Lily went, Taylor would go. And Jasper was really starting to feel that Taylor, despite his good intentions, was really not a very nice or thoughtful person.

  So Lily was stuck alone at the table with Taylor. She wanted really badly to be someplace else.*

  “It’s . . . it’s really nice of you to come and help us,” said Lily. She was trying to be friendly. “If it hadn’t been for you, Jasper and Drgnan would have been captured by those men in the hay. Not just Bvletch.”

  “Don’t worry!” said Taylor. “It’s all in the line of duty, as the saying goes. If any of my friends in Congress wants me to do a thing, that’s all I have to know. I’m there.”

  “Great,” said Lily. “I mean, nice. For us.”

  There was nothing to talk about. Lily looked at the grain of the wood in the table. The folk songs drifted over to them.

  “Do you think Bvletch is okay?” Lily asked.

  “Okay? Okay?” Taylor rubbed Lily’s arm. “Well, that’s a good thought. From a good little girl.” He nodded solemnly. “But there’s no way he’s okay. They’ve probably shipped him off to Fort Delaware, if they haven’t already fed him to the sand sharks.”

  Lily stared at Taylor. “Really?” she said.

  “It’s the Ministry of Silence,” said Taylor. “You know how they are.”

  “I thought sand sharks didn’t eat people. That’s what they say in Pelt. We have sand sharks in Smoggascoggin Bay.”

  “Pelt? Pelt!??” Taylor chuckled. “We aren’t in Pelt anymore.” He took a draw on his Coke. He smiled a pert little smile. “So,” he said, “do you have any hobbies? I have a few.”

  Lily did not want to talk about hobbies. Who knew what was happening to Bvletch? She looked wildly around the courtyard, hoping for some excuse to get up,* anything that might distract her from the—

  And she saw Katie and Drgnan holding hands. There they sat, with Katie beaming—not smiling much, but beaming, as if a secret panel in her head had opened up and a light came out on a stalk and illuminated everything in a rosy glow. Katie and Drgnan didn’t move. They just sat there listening to the music, holding hands.

  Lily wanted a trapdoor to open up under her and drop her into the ocean or something.

  As long as sand sharks didn’t eat people.

  She knew it was good for Katie and for Drgnan—she was happy for them, she told herself, really happy, but—

  Taylor was saying, “And I do archery.” He appeared to still be talking about his hobbies without noticing she hadn’t responded. “I’m no dab hand with a bow and arrow, but I guess I’m, ha, I’m good enough to pin down a Mongolian assassin at one hundred yards. And I scuba dive. And skydive. And wrestle. And wrestle while I skydive. And I play golf. Do you play golf?”

  “I have,” Lily admitted. She couldn’t even think.

  Taylor asked her, “You have? What’s your handicap? In golf?”

  “I always hit the little windmill.”

  Taylor laughed. “No, your numerical handicap. For example, mine’s nine. Which I guess is okay. It’s pretty okay.” He smiled humbly. “That’s what you’d call it, right? Okay? Since you think a lot of things are just okay? I guess a little nine on the golf handicap is okay, even by your standards? Is that right?”

  The instruments played and Taylor kept on talking and Lily’s head was ringing, ringing, ringing.

  Or was that Taylor’s cell phone?

  He took it out and looked at the screen. “It’s Washington!” he said. He anxiously jabbed at the buttons. “They must want to coordinate our escape!” He hit the send button three times in a row by accident, and the phone shot poison darts into the bushes. By that time he had answered it. He put his hand over his ear, shooting dirty glances at the musicians. “I can’t . . . One second . . .” He held up a finger and winked at Lily. He said to her, “Will you permit me?”

  She shrugged.

  “I mean, will you step away from the table so I can talk?”

  She got up gladly. She took her plate and napkin and started walking over toward Jasper.

  “And,” Taylor called after her, “could you tell those musicians to shut up? I’m trying to talk to a senator, here.”

  She did no such thing.

  When Taylor was done, he came over to Lily and Jasper’s corner. The two friends were sitting with their knees almost touching. They had gotten their hamburgers and were eating them silently.

  “All done,” said Taylor.

  Lily looked up at him.

  “You all right?” he asked.

  “I hope you had a good phone call,” said Lily miserably.

  “Depends on what you mean by ‘good.’ Because I had to tell him that you guys had lost one of your friends to the Ministry of Silence when I ran into you. He said the plan may change for getting you out of the state tomorrow. Who knows? They’ll call back. What a day.”

  “Could we use your cell phone?” Lily asked. “We’d like to call our parents. Katie’s and my cell phones don’t have a signal in Delaware, and we don’t have enough coal to power Jasper’s.”

  “Sorry,” said Taylor, giving her a friendly smile. “I would, but it’s government property. Can’t let anyone else touch it. And you probably wouldn’t like it, anyway. It’s probably just okay to you. I wouldn’t want you to use just an okay cell phone.”

  With that, he walked away.

  And everyone was relieved.

  At this point, there could have been a conversation between Lily and Jasper. Maybe Lily would have even told her friend nervously that she kind of liked Drgnan Pghlik. Or maybe Jasper would have guessed it without her telling him. It would have been hard for Lily to tell Jasper, especially because Lily wanted Katie to be happy, and in some ways, she was glad that Katie and Drgnan were holding hands.

  It also would have been hard for Lily to tell Jasper about liking Drgnan because of the commandos who were crawling across the slate roof of the old mansion, eager to drop down and
capture everyone in the courtyard.

  Lily and Jasper sat silently. Neither of them looked over toward Drgnan and Katie. They watched the musicians play the folk tunes of Delaware, and the girls sing while one rocked the baby’s cradle with her foot. They watched Taylor Quizmo eat his hamburger.

  Lily suddenly felt a rush of longing for her home and her parents. She just wanted to be around normal things, like her bookshelves and her desk and a comfy chair that didn’t turn out to be Mrglik, Delaware’s finest furniture-imitating spy. She didn’t want to have to watch carefully all the time and always be on her guard. She wanted to listen to her mom and dad talk over the news of the day, sitting at their kitchen table—without any mention of tyrants or dictators or obnoxious spies or anything crazy and dangerous. Just one more day, she told herself, and she’d be back in her living room, eating a bowl of ice cream. Just one more day.

  A guard rushed into the courtyard, wearing a muddy blrga shirt and, tied around his head, a necktie.

  “I wonder if something is wrong,” mused Jasper. “That fellow looks mightily churned up.”

  The guard went over to Drrok, the gardener, and whispered something to him. Drrok smiled and nodded and spoke to the musicians. They began another tune.

  Lily shrugged. “I guess it was a request,” she said.

  “They take requests?” said Jasper. He sighed. “I wonder if they’d do the theme from It Came from Outer Space. It always reminds me of home.”

  The musicians’ lazy tune floated over the courtyard, but nothing in the courtyard itself was lazy, suddenly. The girls had risen up and taken the baby, and they were filing out as quickly as possible. They blew out candles as they went. Men and women who’d been sitting up on the balconies disappeared. Lily and Jasper looked around in consternation.

  If only they’d known, everyone was leaving because of the music. Not that it was bad music. But the words to the music, in Doverian, went:

  You tell me

  you love me.

  You tell me

  you care.

  The guard tells me

  we are surrounded

  by commandos.

  The commandos of my heart.

  And also ones with super crossbows.

  I mean, the real kind of commandos.

  Get up and leave, my sweet one.

  Quickly, silently.

  Get up and leave, my dear one.

  Because this place we love

  is ours no more.

  No more, my dear.

  So run.

  The men crawling across the roof heard the song dimly, muffled, below, and thought that it was just a love song. They thought everyone was still gathered in the atrium, motionless, looking at the candles and the stars. They did not see people scampering to grab their most important possessions—shoe boxes of letters or bags of photos or an old corduroy rabbit on a bed. They did not see people rushing down flights of stairs—in bare feet, so as not to create a ruckus—and unclamping secret doors into the sewers.

  Drgnan, dragging Katie by the wrist, rushed to Lily and Jasper’s side. He whispered quickly, “Come on! We’ve got to run! The Ministry of Silence found us! They’re invading!”

  Lily and Jasper asked no questions. They stood up and prepared to follow Drgnan. Drgnan, meanwhile, looked toward Drrok for guidance. Drrok gestured with his head toward the secret door into the restaurant.

  Jasper started to wave at Taylor Quizmo.

  Taylor kept eating fries.

  For a few seconds longer.

  Before the men in black dangled like evil worms from the rooftops, masks over their faces, ropes in their hands, handcuffs on their belts, and malice everywhere.

  * I hate to interrupt this very romantic moment, but I thought I would mention that outside, in the streets around the safe house, several black vans and cars were pulling up alongside the blank stone walls. Vegetable sellers were looking carefully up and down the street. Some of the vegetable sellers twitched their mustaches, as if their mustaches were not their own. There was a dim murmur of walkie-talkie crackle.

  * I think Lily would really, really have wanted to be someplace else if she had known that out in the alleys around the safe house, doors to black vans were opening, and men in black sweaters, balaclavas, and bulletproof long johns were crawling out. They each had on an armband with the symbol of the Ministry of Silence: a finger across lips, as if to say, “Shhh!”

  * If only she had known, her excuse could have been that commandos from the Ministry of Silence were crawling up the stone walls of the house on grappling hooks. That usually is a pretty good excuse to get up from the table.

  MARTIAL ARTS IN SLO-MO

  Dangling they came, their teeth grit, and they slid toward the earth. They did not speak as they landed. Their soft-soled espionage boots touched, finally, the cobblestones, and then they looked around to see who they could grab.

  The musicians lay down their instruments without a word. In their hands they had dart guns. They began to fire on the assailants.

  Jasper, Lily, Drgnan, Katie, and Taylor were hidden in the shadows behind some tropical tree in a vat. They couldn’t make it to the secret door they had originally come through. They would have to sneak along the wall.

  “We arrest you,” called one of the commandos to Drrok, “in the name of the Governing Committee of Wilmington and His Terrifying Majesty, the Awful and Adorable Autarch of Dagsboro!”

  He winced as a dart hit his neck—then his eyes crossed, and he collapsed into slumber.

  At that, all the commandos pulled out their handheld crossbows and began firing. The musicians blocked shots with their dulcimers and slapped bolts out of the air with their gootars. But there were too many commandos and not enough musical instruments. If it had been a whole symphony orchestra, maybe they would have stood a chance. But as it was, they were just a quartet, and more soldiers were sliding down the ropes.

  Lily watched the events in horror. “They’re going to get Drrok!” she said.

  Indeed, the soldiers had hit Drrok in the leg with a drugged crossbow bolt. He held up his dart gun, but his hand was unsteady. He was getting woozy. He shot one guard with a dart—and carefully collapsed in a head-butt, knocking out another—but then didn’t rise, himself.

  The commandos clustered in to pick him up.

  And Lily realized—the Ministry of Silence had probably found this safe house because of her and her friends. Either spies had followed them here, or—oh no—she didn’t even want to think about this—or they had forced the information out of Bvletch.

  Bvletch!

  Miserably she watched Drrok, the leader of this cell of the Resistance, get lifted up from the ground, sleeping. She watched the soldiers handcuff him.

  And then she watched one notice her—and shoot a crossbow bolt right at her pale face in the shadows.

  THE GIRLS IN FLAMES

  THWACK!

  The crossbow bolt buried itself deep.

  In the trunk of the shrub, which Jasper had yanked over to the side just in time.

  “They’ve seen us, fellows!” he cried. “We must prepare for a furious fight!”

  “We’ve got to get out of here!” said Katie.

  “Through the secret passage,” said Lily, pointing to the door about twenty feet away.

  Commandos were running over toward them.

  And Drgnan was climbing the shrubby tree.

  “Drgnan!” hissed Jasper. “What’s the dodge?”

  “Diversion, brother,” said Drgnan—and Jasper seemed immediately to know what he meant.

  Drgnan reached his hand down toward Katie. “Take my hand,” he said.

  She did so. In a glow.

  “Pull,” said Drgnan, and she pulled, and the tree bent back with him clutching it between his knees. Katie’s muscles bulged. Then Drgnan yelled, “LET GO!” and Katie spread her fingers—

  And Drgnan went flying through the air, as if from a vaultapult.

  He hurtled—a plai
d stripe—overhead—and the soldiers fired, craning their necks as he lofted over them—

  While the kids, behind the whickering shrub, ran for the secret passage.

  Drgnan hit the far wall of the courtyard. He would have fallen and broken his neck if he hadn’t grabbed one of the black ropes hanging from the grappling hooks—which allowed him to kick the wall and swing back out.

  He arced out over the mob of soldiers, trounced one who was still sliding down a nearby rope, and then spun toward the secret door.

  His friends were already through.

  “Down with the Autarch!” he called defiantly. “Long live the Governor of Delaware!”

  The crossbow bolts were flying around him in swarms. He let go of the rope—rolled through the air—and hopped into the hole where Jasper held the door to the secret passage open.

  Drgnan landed running, puffing, and Jasper stood for one glorious moment, facing the commandos, smiling at them jauntily. Then—just as a barrage of crossbow bolts were about to hit him—he slammed the door shut. He heard thunks like freezing rain on a tin roof.

  But he was already jogging after his friends down the secret corridor into Wilt’s Fishery.

  Lily didn’t want to be rude, but Taylor Quizmo, Secret Agent, was still eating his fries one by one as they ran. “Um,” she said, “um, Taylor? Don’t you have a cell phone that shoots darts? Which you could use?”

  “When I’m done with my french fries,” he said, “I’ll mop up these jokers in no time flat.”

  “Okay,” said Lily, “but could you at least not dip each fry in the ketchup first?”

  “Fine, Lily,” said Taylor, throwing his arms wide so the container of fries and the paper cup of ketchup flew and splattered all over the secret passage. “I won’t even finish my fries. Are you happy now? Are you ‘okay’?”

  “Well, you know, Drrok got taken prisoner, and the others have lost their home, and it’s kind of our fault, so I wonder whether—”

  “You are just impossible,” said Taylor. “I can’t believe I am even hanging out with you.”