Spy Runner

by Eugene Yelchin

  “It’s a drill, children,” Mr. Vargas said calmly. “Duck and cover.”

  When Jake turned back, Duane’s chair was empty. Jake plunged to the floor. Duane was gone. Jake looked around, trying to spot him through the bodies scrambling below their desks.

  “Stay down until the alarm is turned off, children,” said Mr. Vargas. “Remember, you’re safe under your desks.”

  The mushroom cloud on the screen lit up the room in snatches of bright flashes. For an instant, Jake caught sight of Duane crawling through the aisle on hands and knees. Jake sprung up and, slicing through the projector’s light beam, fell on top of him.

  “McCauley!” cried Mr. Vargas. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  Duane was on his back, flailing his arms, and Jake, straddling his chest, leaned away so as not to be hit in the face. He caught Duane’s right hand by the wrist and held it, unsure of what to do with it. His burst of anger had passed. Duane yanked his hand from Jake and when he let it go, Duane’s fist bounced back, whacking himself hard on the nose.

  “Mr. Vargas! Mr. Vargas!” Trudy Lamarre screeched from under the desk beside them. “Come here! Quick!”

  Someone pulled Jake off Duane. Eddie Cortes pounced, punching Jake in the belly and chest. Other boys fell on top of him.

  “Give it to the Commie!”

  “Let him have it!”

  “Dirty Communist!”

  Jake thrashed under the blows of the boys’ sharp fists and knees and elbows. The siren blared. Mr. Vargas hollered. The screen throbbed in flashes. Jake’s foot shot from under Vernon sitting on his legs and kicked the table holding the projector. The mushroom cloud on the screen froze in mid-explosion and slid sideways, bubbling to a boil. The film, stuck in the projector’s gate, was melting. At its center a gaping hole spread rapidly, devouring the A-bomb mushroom.

  The siren broke off abruptly. The ceiling lights went on. The boys scattered, leaving Jake rolled into a quivering ball in the aisle.

  “McCauley?” cried Mr. Vargas. “What have you done to Armbruster?”

  “He whacked him on the nose, sir,” said Trudy Lamarre. “I saw it.”

  Duane was sitting on the floor with his chin up and his hand pressed to his nose to stem the bleeding, but the blood was everywhere, running down his arm, soaking the front of his shirt, and spotting his knees.

  “I’ve had enough of you, McCauley,” said Mr. Vargas. “To the principal.”

  16

  The principal’s office was on the second floor, but Jake was in no rush getting there. His knee was bleeding again, and his belly felt funny from Eddie’s punches. He slumped on the floor, cooling his sweaty back against a metal locker. Sharp, hollow sounds of a basketball game came from behind the double doors to the gym at the end of the hallway. Shrilling whistles, shrieking voices, sneakers squeaking over the varnished floor. At each thud of the ball, dust motes hovering inside a sunbeam slanting from a window across the hallway gave a little shiver. Jake thought of his model bomber giving little shivers when Shubin was stomping above him in the attic. What happened in the classroom happened because of Shubin. Because of that thin, gray, nearsighted Russian who had invaded his dad’s attic, Jake’s life at school was ruined. The words scrawled in red pencil flashed through his mind. Jake McCauley is a Communist! He? A Communist? How stupid it was and how unfair.

  The long hand of the wall clock twitched toward the hour. Twenty minutes to recess. Clapping and cheering came from the gym. One of the teams must have scored. Jake cared little for basketball, but suddenly he felt like weeping. Who would want him now on the basketball team? Who would want to play with him, sit next to him, laugh at his jokes?

  He sprung to his feet with a sudden urge to run away from here, away from his shame, away from his swelling tears. The dust motes inside the sunbeam sparkled and reeled before his face. He swiped at them and bolted up the hallway.

  “Halt!” someone cried as Jake pulled at the door. “Forbidden to exit!”

  Startled, he turned, letting the doorknob slip from under his hand. The door slammed closed, resounding through the hallway. Principal Hirsch emerged from the sunbeam, charging at Jake with a hurried and menacing stride.

  “I can explain, sir—” Jake began, but the principal yanked him away from the door.

  “Not to me, yes? They’re waiting!”

  “Who’s waiting?”

  Mr. Hirsch grasped Jake under the upper arm and dragged him back up the hallway and up the staircase, barking at each step, “Right! Left! Right! Left!” as if he were an army sergeant drilling a private.

  “You’re hurting me, sir!”

  “Hurting?” Mr. Hirsch cackled and drew Jake across the second-floor landing, using him to bust the hallway door wide open.

  “Ouch!”

  Two eighth graders sauntered out of the boys’ room, saw Mr. Hirsch hauling Jake toward his office, and ducked back in.

  Mr. Hirsch had come from Germany after the war. Once, when he rolled his shirtsleeves to wash his hands in the schoolyard, Jake saw something written on the inside of his forearm. Blue numerals, five or six in a row. Duane said that the number was tattooed on his arm when the Nazis put Mr. Hirsh in a death camp. Jake couldn’t make up his mind whether that was really true. If Mr. Hirsch made it out of the Nazi death camp, he should have been happy. Instead, the principal was the angriest person Jake had ever met in his life.

  Mr. Hirsch swung Jake toward the door to his office. Holding him flat against the wall at arm’s length, he said, “I have this school to answer for? Yes? My pleasure to expel you.”

  “Why, sir? I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “He makes me laugh,” Mr. Hirsch said, not laughing. “Did Principal Hirsch miss today the Pledge of Allegiance or did student McCauley?”

  “Well, you see, sir—”

  “Don’t tell me, McCauley. Tell them.”

  “Tell who, sir?”

  Ignoring the question, Mr. Hirsch planted his ear against the door to his office and stood, listening, with his eyes closed. His droopy, clean-shaved face was purple and drenched in sweat. It hit Jake that Mr. Hirsch was not angry at all. He was scared.

  “You want to stay in my school, McCauley,” whispered Mr. Hirsch, rapping on the door, “prove to them that you are a loyal citizen.”

  “Enter,” a voice said inside the office.

  Mr. Hirsch opened the door just wide enough to squeeze Jake in, nudged him through the gap, and shut the door behind him.

  17

  The electric fan atop a steel cabinet lurched side to side with sudden clucking jerks, pushing the overheated air back and forth across the room. The American flag in the corner stirred and flapped against the wall each time the whirring blades swung in its direction, then drooped again when the fan lurched away. Mr. Hirsch’s office was small, but the two square-shaped fellows sitting shoulder to shoulder behind the principal’s desk made it look even smaller. The fellows looked remarkably alike, with their matching buzz cuts, matching square jaws, and matching suits stretched tightly across their massive matching chests.

  When Jake was shoved into the room and the door behind him closed, two sets of matching X-ray eyes bored right through him. He flinched and quickly looked away, and while the matching fellows studied him, Jake studied his broken-down high-tops. The silence in the room seemed to go on forever until the chair creaked under one of the fellows. “Care for some chewing gum, McCauley?”

  Jake glanced up at him quickly, then looked down again. “No, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  “I’ll take one,” the other fellow said, and while they unwrapped the gum, and folded the sticks over their tongues, and worked their massive jaws in silence, Jake felt their X-ray eyes fixed squarely on him. A sharp scent of Doublemint made him a little sick.

  “Name’s Bader,” said the one on the left. “Agent Bader. And this here is Agent Bambach.”

  “Federal Bureau of Investigation,” the fellow called Agent Bambach said. “Grab
a seat, son. Let’s have a chat.”

  Jake’s knees gave out under him, and he dropped into a chair. They were G-men. That’s what the FBI agents were called in the comics, G-men, short for government men. The Communist hunters.

  “Chat about what?” Jake said in a small voice.

  “If you are a loyal citizen, as we think you are,” said Agent Bader, “you ought to know.”

  “If it’s about what Duane says … he’s full of it. I’m no Communist. He’s the one who’s a traitor.”

  “Duane who?” Agent Bambach said.

  “Duane Armbruster, who else?”

  Agent Bambach scribbled something on a square pad before him. “That’d be Major Armbruster’s son. Correct? Your neighbor?”

  “You didn’t talk to Duane? How do you know about the Russian, then?”

  “It’s our job to know such things,” said Agent Bambach smugly. “What did you say that Russian fellow’s name was?”

  “I didn’t say.”

  “So what is his name?”

  “Why ask me? Ask my mom. She rented him my dad’s room.”

  “And where’s he, Jake?” said Agent Bader.

  “Where’s who?”

  “Your father.”

  Jake glanced at him quickly. Could these G-men get his dad out of Russia? They were government men, were they not? Fighting the threat of Communism? It was worth a try.

  “My dad didn’t come back from the war, sir. Went MIA, missing in action somewhere in Europe. That’s what the letter from the air force says.” He paused and looked from one G-man to the other. “Only I don’t think it’s true.”

  Both fellows glared at him severely, and Jake lowered his eyes, worried that he should not have said that. He was staring at his high-tops and yet somehow he also saw the G-men, weighing heavily upon him with their massive chests, both huge and still and solid, as if they were chiseled out of rock like those presidents on Mount Rushmore. Nothing moved on their flat, clean-shaved faces, not a twitch of a muscle, not a blink of an eye, and when the fan whirred in their direction, not a hair stirred in their flattops.

  “So what are you saying, son?” Agent Bambach said fiercely. “The United States Air Force is lying?”

  “No, sir. I didn’t say the air force was lying, sir. They just don’t know where he is, that’s all.”

  The G-men seemed to relax a little.

  “Fair enough,” agreed Bader. “Let’s go back to that Russian fellow. What’s your take on him?”

  “Why don’t you talk to my mom, sir? She took him in.”

  “We’ve talked to her, Jake,” said Agent Bambach. “And now we are talking to you.”

  Jake looked up, interested. “Oh, yeah? What did she say?”

  “She said she was expecting your full cooperation with the FBI,” said Agent Bader.

  “You don’t want to disappoint your mother, now, do you, Jake?” said Agent Bambach.

  To disappoint his mother? No matter what he did, his mother always seemed to be disappointed in him. Well, guess what, Mom? It was Jake’s turn to be disappointed.

  “Okay,” Jake said. “What do you want to hear?”

  “Just how much do you know about that Russian fellow?”

  “The Russian fellow?” Jake repeated, and scratched his head. “Well.”

  His mother said not to talk about Shubin to anyone, but thanks to Duane, the whole school knew about him by now. And did his mother lie to these fellows when they asked her about Shubin? No, not his mom. Besides, cutting up Shubin’s suitcase and hiding his stuff under the porch was stupid and childish. It would hardly make him move out. If Jake really wanted to get rid of the Russian for good, he should be smarter than that. Jake looked up at the G-man and said a little too loud, “His name is Victor Shubin, sir. He’s a Russian spy.”

  For the first time since Jake had entered the room, the agents shifted their X-ray eyes off him to exchange glances, and Jake knew he had them now. He quickly followed with, “You better arrest him, sir, before he starts stealing our secrets. We live next door to the air force base, sir. That’s why he moved in with us, see?”

  The G-men looked at him severely again, and Jake began to worry that he had gone too far again. He could not meet their gaze. His ears were burning.

  “This is a serious allegation, Jake,” said Agent Bader. “Do you have evidence of Mr. Shubin’s subversive activities in the United States?”

  “You want evidence? Sure. I can find where he hides his stuff.”

  “What stuff?” said Agent Bambach.

  “His spy stuff, sir.” He tried to remember what Duane had told him. “A shortwave radio, and an umbrella that’s like a gun that shoots bullets, and poison, and cameras, and film, and stuff like that. Well, isn’t it your job to know such things?”

  The G-men were silent, and Jake knew that he definitely went too far this time. The hole from the missing tooth in his mouth began to hurt him so badly, he stuck his tongue inside it to soothe the pain. It did not help.

  “Let me give you a piece of advice, son,” said Agent Bambach, leaning with his massive chest across the desk. “You want to be helpful to the FBI, you stay away from Shubin, you hear?”

  “Do not talk to him,” said Agent Bader, “and talk to no one about him.”

  “And don’t go into his room again,” said Agent Bambach. “What did you ruin his suitcase for?”

  Jake looked up at him in astonishment. How did he know?

  “Quit playing detective, son,” Agent Bambach went on, peering fiercely at him. “You’re not cut out for the job. Keep to your homework and leave the grown-up business to us.”

  “Okay, okay,” said Agent Bader. “You’re scaring the pants off him.” He smiled at Jake. “You are a clever boy, right? Clever? So just stay away from the Russian, that’s all you have to do.”

  “Stay away?”

  “Yeah, that’s it,” Agent Bambach said. “You got it.”

  “Naturally, if you see or hear anything suspicious,” said Agent Bader, “you report to us at once.”

  “About the Russian?”

  “About anything,” said Agent Bader.

  Anything? How about the black Buick following him today? How about the gold-toothed fellow snooping around the house?

  “You heard the man,” snapped Agent Bambach. “What-ever comes up, you tell us. Is that clear, or do you want me to draw you a picture?”

  Jake looked at the two matching bullies with their matching flattops and their matching suits and knew that he was going to tell them nothing. Let them figure it out if they were so good at it. They figured out the suitcase, right?

  “Call this number,” said Agent Bader, “or come see us in person.”

  As if on cue, the agents whipped out two matching cards engraved with their names and lined them up along the edge of the desk. The electric fan lurched toward them, and the hot air current lifted the cards off the desk and sent them spinning and fluttering back into their faces.

  18

  When Jake stepped into the hallway, the principal caught him by the arm, drew him away from the door, and whispered, “What was said, McCauley?”

  “Not sure, sir.” Jake looked up at Mr. Hirsch’s sweat-drenched face. “They gave me these cards.”

  He offered the principal the cards, but he would not touch them. The cards were as identical as the men themselves, but one had SPECIAL AGENT A. A. BAMBACH engraved on it and the other, SPECIAL AGENT B. B. BADER. Both said FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION.

  “If I see or hear anything suspicious, sir, I have to report to them at once.”

  “Report to them?” Mr. Hirsch wrenched a handkerchief out of his breast pocket. “Naturally, McCauley, naturally. It’s your duty as a loyal citizen to report, yes?”

  For a moment, Jake thought that the principal was about to start crying. “Will they stay in there a while longer or were they about to go?” he said, mopping his face with a handkerchief.

  “Why don’t you go in and a
sk them yourself, sir? It’s your office.”

  “Why interfere, yes? I’ll wait here awhile.”

  Mr. Hirsch tried to shove the handkerchief back into his breast pocket but missed, and the handkerchief slipped through his trembling fingers. He lunged after it, staggered, spun his arms in two large circles to regain balance, buckled at the waist, and sat down hard on the floor.

  Jake squatted next to him. “Are you okay, sir?”

  Mr. Hirsch’s eyes rolled up in his head, showing yellowish whites spiderwebbed with blood vessels, and he began falling backward. Jake caught him.

  “You look sick, sir. Should I call the nurse?”

  The principal blinked, and his eyeballs slid down. He looked at Jake, as if surprised to see him, and then he looked at the wall, no more than three feet away.

  “It’s all right, McCauley. I’ll just rest here a minute.”

  He tried to scoot toward the wall and began falling, sideways now, but Jake managed to catch him again.

  “Thank you, McCauley.” Mr. Hirsch gripped Jake’s hand. “Thank you kindly. Just help me to the wall, my boy.”

  Jake dragged Mr. Hirsch toward the wall. He was not as heavy as Jake thought he would be. The principal clutched Jake’s hand, and when they got to the wall, Mr. Hirsch glanced over his shoulder to judge the distance, cautiously leaned back, and only when his shoulders were propped safely against the wall did he let Jake’s hand go.

  “I also have to say, McCauley,” he whispered, “last week they accused the janitor at Las Vistas Elementary of being a Communist, and they fired him and the principal. At Palo Verde, the English teacher turned out to be a Communist, too. They said that she was poisoning the minds of our youth. They fired her and two other teachers, friends of hers, and they fired the principal.”

  “But we have no Communists here, sir. They won’t fire you.”

  “I’m just a little worried, my boy, that’s all,” he said, searching Jake’s eyes. “That’s how it all started in Germany, you know.”