Spy Runner

by Eugene Yelchin

  “Keep him safe?”

  Jake guessed by the creaking of the leather that Bader had turned to look at him.

  “We should’ve put a twelve-man team on that kid. No disrespect to his parents, but you got yourself a reckless child.”

  “I think he’s kind of cute.”

  Jake felt his ears burning. It was that redhead, Kathy Lubeck.

  “If you ask me, keeping him in the dark was a dumb idea.”

  “What would you rather, darling?” Bambach said. “Say hello to your daddy, little boy—he’s only pretending to be a Russian spy. He’s a double agent.”

  “Shut your trap,” Jake’s father snapped. “You talk too much.”

  “What’s the matter?” Bambach said. “The Commies bugged your Chevy?”

  “Whose idea was it, anyhow?” Bader said. “I mean the need to know and all?”

  “We can successfully defeat the Communist attempt to capture the United States by fighting it with truth and justice,” Kathy Lubeck sung prettily, as if it were a jingle.

  “Truth and justice?” Bader said. “Wait, wait, don’t tell me. The boss said it somewhere. I heard it on the radio.”

  “I’ll be darned,” Bambach said. “The boss himself ordered you to keep the boy ignorant?”

  “J. Edgar Hoover didn’t know who he was dealing with,” his father said proudly.

  “Neither did you,” said his mother.

  Someone laughed.

  “Is that funny to you?” Kathy Lubeck said sharply. “You try to be a woman raising a child by herself while your husband is risking his life undercover in Russia.”

  “Thank you, Kathy,” said his mother.

  They were all quiet for a while, and then Jake’s father said, as if he was defending himself, “Yeah. Well. It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it.”

  “Which job?” said Jake’s mother. “Raising a child or staying undercover in Russia?”

  Someone laughed again. Bambach or Bader.

  His father did not answer, but Jake imagined the kind of look he might have given his mother and the kind of look he might have gotten back. Jake rocked with his face in his mother’s lap and his feet in his father’s, eager for them to keep talking, but no one said anything for a long time, and there was nothing to listen to but the rustle of the tires and the hum of the engine. He had begun to doze off again when he heard his father’s voice: “In that diner—you know, Ruby’s, I used to go there before the war—a waitress recognized me and then some creep knocked a plate of bean soup into my lap on purpose.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Bader said. “I know Ruby’s. Good coffee.”

  “I never made it to the coffee part,” Jake’s father said bitterly. “I’d kill for a cup.”

  Jake felt the motorcar making a sharp left, the tires screeched, and his body began to slip off the bench, but his mother and father held him securely.

  “Take it easy, Bader,” his mother said. “You’ll wake up the neighborhood.”

  “Is that the Armbrusters’ house?” Kathy Lubeck said. “A beautiful home. Is there a pool?”

  “A pool and a fallout shelter,” Bambach said. “Top of the line.”

  “The Russians have definitely overpaid Armbruster for all that phony film they got from you during the war,” said Bader. “Pity we had to wait so long until he decided to bite again. I guess he only likes you, Shubin.”

  Bambach laughed. “I’d like to see them building the Stratojet using the crap you handed Bull this time.”

  So that was it. That was their operation. The major had been paid by the Russians to leave top secrets in his Cadillac to be photographed by Jake’s father, who was only pretending to be a Russian spy. He was an American spy instead, a double agent. Bull watched him taking pictures of the real top secret stuff, but what he got instead from Jake’s father were film cartridges with fake pictures, not what the major had left in his Cadillac at all. Bull then sent the film cartridges to the Russians somehow, so they would build aircrafts using fake charts, and fake diagrams, and fake drawings. It could never work, but the Russians would not know why. Major Armbruster had no idea, of course. He was a traitor, and he wanted to kill Jake, but still, Jake felt bad for Duane and he felt kind of bad for his dad, too. He hoped the major was not terribly hurt.

  “And may I inquire,” Jake’s father said, “where’s my big pal Gold Teeth?”

  Nobody answered.

  “If my cover’s blown, gentlemen,” he announced, “the heads will roll. Your heads, gentlemen.”

  “Bull can’t get away,” Bambach said. “All exits are sealed.”

  “We’ll get him,” Bader promised.

  “Either you’ll get him,” Jake’s father said, “or Hoover will get all of us.”

  “What do you have to worry about, turncoat?” Bader said. “He’s not your boss since the war.”

  “Shubin is with the Central Intelligence,” Bambach said in a mocking voice. “That must make Shubin very intelligent.”

  “Oh, shut up, Bambach,” Jake’s father said. “You try to freeze your butt in Moscow digging the dead drop from under the snow!”

  “I wonder how much phony stuff they’re handing us,” Bader said.

  “Just as much,” Jake’s father said. “It’s a lousy game.”

  “Then why don’t you quit it and stay home?” his mother said.

  Shubin did not answer, and Jake became worried that his dad might go away again.

  “Let me ask you something, Shubin,” Bambach said. “We were all here wondering. All that Communist talk of yours? Is it for real or just for your cover?”

  “Come on, lads, can’t we take a break from the Cold War for a minute?” said Kathy Lubeck. “I’ve never been invited to their home before.”

  Jake felt the gears shifting, felt a soft sideways sway, and when the tires bounced over the crumbling slab, he knew that they had turned into the driveway of their house. A lock of his mother’s hair tickled his ear as she bent down to whisper, “Wake up, honey. We’re home.”

  Jake waited until the engine cut and the vehicle stopped rocking from the passengers climbing out and then he opened his eyes, looked into his mother’s face, and said, “I know, Mom.”

  52

  Jake slipped out of the motorcar after his mother and, keeping slightly behind her, peeked out at his dad. On the far side of the mesquite tree with the tire swing hanging off its branches, his father, Kathy Lubeck, Bader, and Bambach stood close together talking in hushed voices. All four looked a little guilty, but his father looked guiltiest of all.

  “Go ahead, Shubin,” Jake’s mother said, and when his father turned to face them, Jake was struck at the change in his appearance. Shubin’s crummy spectacles with one split lens were missing, and his hair was combed in some other, different way. He did not even look that thin anymore, or not as thin as he had the first time Jake saw him, when he seemed so insubstantial that Jake thought he might vanish before his very eyes. Now his father appeared solid and present, but it was hard to miss that he was also terribly nervous.

  Shubin glanced at Jake, but instantly his gaze slipped off Jake’s face toward Mrs. McCauley. Jake looked up at his mom, then turned back to his father. Shubin hesitated until Kathy Lubeck gave him a little nudge in the back. He nodded and began walking toward Jake, but bumped his knee into the tire swing. The tire swayed away and swayed back, banging into him from behind. Shubin leapt aside and glared at the tire, then over his shoulder at Kathy Lubeck and the G-men, expecting them to laugh. They kept straight faces, watching him. Shubin turned back to Jake and, blushing with embarrassment, continued walking.

  Jake’s mom gently took him by the shoulders and moved him in front of her, so that Jake would be closer to his father. Jake leaned back into his mom with all his weight, watching Shubin approach. Gone was his easy and carefree way of walking that had so irritated Jake before. Gone was his sarcastic and arrogant smirk. Instead, Shubin dawdled like a kid on his way to the blackboard after he
had forgotten to learn his lesson. Not that Jake wanted him to hurry. He, too, needed a little time to sort out how he felt at the moment. There was no anger in Jake, nor fear, but some new feeling toward Shubin, so new he could not even name it yet.

  Shubin halted abruptly one step short of Jake and, clutching his shoulder at arm’s length, took a deep breath as if he was about to deliver a speech. Everyone waited, but Jake’s father stood motionless with his mouth open, unable to utter a sound.

  A pearly gray dove flitted from under the eaves of the house, and Jake’s eyes followed it to the yellow bird feeder suspended from the hackberry tree in the driveway. When he looked back at his father, he caught the pleading glance Shubin gave Mrs. McCauley. And while the three of them, Jake and his mom and his dad, stood facing one another in that awkward silence, Jake remembered the family of dummies in the window of the J. C. Penney. He remembered the dummy boy standing behind the glass with his dummy mom and his dummy dad, close together and yet somehow far apart. Mrs. McCauley, Shubin, and Jake were just like those dummies with one exception: the dummy boy had been given a bicycle, while Jake’s bike was stolen.

  By the strangest coincidence, at the very moment Jake had that thought, Bader cleared his throat and said, “Before we forget, Jake,” and walked briskly past them to the rear of the Chevy, swung open the trunk, and lifted out Jake’s rusted roadster. “Yours, isn’t it, sonny?”

  “Where did you find it?” Jake gasped.

  “Well, we…” Bader glanced at Bambach.

  “The thing is,” Bambach said, “we sort of took it.”

  Jake looked up at him in astonishment. “You stole my bike?”

  “For your own safety,” Bambach said, nodding at Bader. “It was his idea.”

  “We felt it was a bit dicey to follow you on the bike,” Bader said sheepishly. “After that trick you pulled with the bus.”

  “You need to slow down sometimes, kid,” Bambach said. “It’s not safe.”

  “Hoover is going to love this!” Kathy Lubeck gave a throaty laugh. “Stealing a kid’s bike!”

  “Stop dawdling, Shubin,” Jake heard his mother say, and he glanced up at his dad still clutching his shoulder. Shubin made a serious face and began in his raspy voice, “So, young man…”

  “It’s okay,” Jake said quietly, and slid from under his hand. “Later.”

  “Later?” his father repeated, searching Jake’s face.

  Jake shrugged, and when a tiny smile cracked his lips, Shubin exhaled in relief. “Phew,” he said, and then, looking around, “Well, what are we standing here for? Let’s all go in and have us a little celebration.” He rubbed his hands together in excitement. “What do we have that flows, sweetheart?”

  “It’s seven in the morning, Shubin,” said his mother sternly.

  “Shubin is still on Moscow time,” said Kathy Lubeck.

  “I’ll make us fresh coffee,” said his mother.

  “Coffee?” his dad said. “I’d kill for a cup.”

  53

  Jake’s father, followed by Kathy Lubeck and Bambach and Bader, went into the house, but his mother halted in the doorway and looked over at Jake. “Coming in, honey?”

  “I’ll be right there.” His mother hesitated, and he added with a smile, “I’ll be fine, Mom. Just want to put my bike away.”

  She watched him for a moment, and then went in, leaving the door wide open.

  Jake walked the bike toward the garage, leaned it against the wall, and let his fingers caress its bruised and peeling frame.

  His good old roadster.

  “Hey, bud? Bud?” he heard a voice behind him. “I brought you something.”

  Jake’s hand halted on the roadster’s frame, he hesitated for a moment, and then slowly turned around.

  The hedge that separated their properties came just below Duane’s chin, and Jake guessed that Duane must have been balancing on his toes, the way his head swayed side to side. “Jeez, bud,” Duane said. “What happened to your face?”

  “Oh, this?” Jake tapped the bandage with his index finger. “It’s nothing.” He nodded at his roadster. “Fell off my bike.”

  “Did they take you to the hospital?” Duane asked, but did not wait for Jake’s reply and went on. “My dad’s in the hospital now. Mom and I just came back from there. Bad car accident. His Caddy’s smashed! We’ll have to get a new one.”

  “Is he … okay?”

  “Yeah, yeah, he’s fine. Sure. Well. I don’t really know. We actually didn’t see him. The G-men wouldn’t let us. Can you believe that? The place was crawling with the FBI.” He cocked his head to one side, studying Jake’s face. “Know anything about it?” But once again he did not give Jake a chance to reply, as if he would rather not know. “Going back to school on Monday? We’ll have a new teacher. They fired Vargas. Yep. Fired him and fired the principal. Isn’t that crazy? Said they were Communists poisoning the minds of our youth. I don’t know about Vargas, he might have been a Commie, but Mr. Hirsch? He was in a death camp in Germany! How could he—”

  Duane’s head disappeared for a moment—he must have lost his balance—then reappeared again.

  “What I was going to say, bud … I’m sorry about what happened at school. I didn’t know they would gang up on you like that. I swear I didn’t. Want to talk about it?”

  “Not now,” Jake said. “I’m kind of busy.”

  “Right, right. Of course you are, bud. Sorry.” His head vanished again, popped up again. “Oh, yeah. I brought you this.”

  He tossed something over the hedge, and Jake watched the metallic links spin, glinting in the morning light, until the bicycle chain clanked against the buckled concrete in the driveway.

  “Brand-new,” Duane said. “I got a couple of spares. My dad was going to buy me a new bike anyhow. Do you want my old Phantom? I’ll give it to you, bud, if you want it. I also got a bunch of new Spy Runner comics. Some good ones. Lots of action. Car chases, shoot-outs. You’ll like it. Want me to bring them over?”

  Jake squinted at Duane, thought about it, and shook his head. “No, thanks. I’m kind of through with Spy Runner, I guess.”

  He left the bike chain where it fell and hobbled to the front door, but on the threshold halted and looked over.

  Duane’s head popped up again. “Yeah, bud? I’m still here.”

  “Don’t leave without me Monday morning, okay?” Jake said. “We’ll ride to school together.”

  54

  When Jake entered the house, the grown-ups were still crowding the hallway. The men flung their hats on the hat rack, and stood loosening their neckties and firing wisecracks. Kathy Lubeck was peeking into the parlor, complimenting his mom on her window blinds.

  Jake slipped past them and hobbled toward his room. He wanted to show his father the only snapshot he had of him, or maybe he wanted to compare the man holding the baby in the snapshot with the man laughing in their hallway, or maybe he just wanted to be alone for a while to sort out all those strange and scary things that had happened to him.

  He put his hand on the doorknob and was about to turn it when the door swung open by itself. Someone was blocking the doorway. Startled, Jake peered at the enormous white potbelly sagging over the handle of a gun stuck behind the trousers’ belt. Before he could scream, Bull snatched Jake by the shirtfront, yanked him into the room, whooshed him round, and squashed his neck in the crook of his arm.

  “Where did you go, honey?” Jake’s mother called from the hallway. “Kathy has a question for you.”

  Jake began to gag from the neck crush but also from the putrid odor of Bull’s body: sweat, sweet-sick aftershave, and something else, death maybe.

  “Jake?” his mother’s voice rang out again, alarmed. “You okay?”

  Moving like a giant crab, Bull stomped sideways into the hallway, squashing Jake’s neck and shielding his chest and potbelly with Jake’s body. The laughter and the voices ceased abruptly, and in the silence of the hallway, Jake could distinctly feel and h
ear Bull’s meaty heart pumping against his back and Bull’s bowels shift and flex inside his massive belly.

  “Give Stratojet,” Bull growled above Jake’s ear. “Or boy dead.”

  Jake saw his mother’s face, white as chalk, rapidly floating toward him through the darkened hallway. Her right arm, rising, came into sight. Bull’s right arm jerked up to meet hers. For an instant, Jake thought that they were about to shake hands, but then something glinted between Bull’s fingers.

  The handgun!

  Jake thrashed wildly in Bull’s iron grip. A flash. A loud blast. The ceiling globe exploded. Bull crushed Jake’s neck harder. “Teeho, doorak!”

  Choking, Jake grasped Bull’s forearm with both hands, trying to push the gun away from his mother. The gun went off again. The window blinds at the end of the hallway burst into splinters. Glass shattered. A shaft of sunlight shot through the hallway from the exposed window, and Jake saw a large chunk of glass sparkle before it split in two over his dad’s hitched shoulders.

  Blinded by the sun, Jake missed his mother striking Bull in the face. She struck him twice in one continuous motion. Jake felt Bull’s body jolt as her fist cracked him just above the ear. She followed with her elbow, smashing it into his jaw. Something bonked the back of Jake’s head and lodged below his shirt collar. Bull gave a grunt, swayed, and loosened his grip. Sagging down Bull’s potbelly, Jake hit the floor with his knees, then with his chin. The thing tumbled from under his collar and conked the floorboards beside him. Bull’s golden dentures, smeared in blood and saliva.

  Rapid gunfire popped from several directions. A bullet whizzed by and slugged into the wall above Jake’s head, spraying plaster in all directions. Jake felt his mother’s body wrap over his, shielding him from bullets. Through the narrow gap between the floorboards and his mother’s elbow, Jake saw what happened next.

  The whole thing took no more than an instant, but unfolding out of time in the measured succession of frozen pictures, it did not seem real, as if Jake were leafing through the action sequence in a Spy Runner comic. He may have told Duane that he was through with Spy Runner, but Spy Runner was not through with Jake yet.