Chapter Four --

 

“Excuse me? Are you talking about that dork you set me up with on a blind date fifteen years ago?”

“He told me....”

“That I rejected his advances?” I took two steps closer and got into my older brother’s face. “The guy actually thought I was going to sleep with him on the first date. Not to mention the fact that he told me he only agreed to go out with me so that you could get a settlement for your client. And you have the audacity to assume this is evidence I’m gay? Holy cow, you really are thick!”

With my blood boiling, I stomped off down the hall. I had a good mind to pack up my things and head back to my townhouse. I had just put it on the market, something I hadn’t told the family, save for Nora. I planned on moving up here because of my work plans. That would serve my idiot family right, wouldn’t it? Poor little Gesso had no idea why I was so upset. She licked my face with her tiny tongue, trying hard to make me happy again.

“Idiots,” I groaned. “I’m surrounded by idiots!”

I gave myself ten minutes out in the cold December night, trying to put aside my frustrations. Maybe it wasn’t my family I was so angry with -- maybe it was the fact that I couldn’t have the love I wanted and needed. I was tired of going without, of making adjustments, of always being the one to sacrifice. Or maybe it was the fact that giving up my place in Virginia after all these years had me worried that my relationship was ending. After all, we spent so little time together now. How could we get together more often if I was farther away?

“Give me strength, Lord!” I gave an exaggerated groan, raising my head to heaven. For a moment, I realized I was only half kidding about the plea. The other half of me actually wanted some help.

“Come on, sweet thing. Let’s go back inside.” The dog and I let ourselves into the mud room. I took a deep breath and rejoined the gathering as the family milled around the dining room, having the last few conversations of the day. The chairs were pushed in, the last of the coffee and wine consumed, and we all ran out of things to say.

The party broke up shortly after that. I helped Andrew wash and dry in the kitchen, while Nora packed up the leftovers. Aunt Clementine and Georgina collected the glassware, while the rest of the gang stacked the dishes and gathered the silverware for the trip to the kitchen. When we were done, we all scattered, most to their assigned sleeping quarters. I found myself a seat in the living room, in front of the Christmas tree. Gesso curled herself up on my lap. Sparks sizzled and popped on the burning logs in the nearby fireplace. I looked up as Bowie entered the room.

“Look, I just wanted to tell you that my mother meant well. She’s very upset that this spun out of control.” He plunked himself down on the sofa across from me. “Hey, I’m okay with it. I understand you want to keep your life a secret.”

I gave myself a minute. I took a deep breath. And then I exhaled slowly. It didn’t help.

“What?”

“I won’t tell.”

“Won’t tell what? What is there to tell, Bowie?” My voice got louder and louder as I got past the need to reign myself in. It was time for a good offense. “What do you think you know that you don’t know?”

“I know you’re a spy, Maisie.”

Don’t ask me why, but I burst into giggles. I should have been upset. I should have cringed. But I just was so relieved, I didn’t care. I’m used to hiding the fact that I spy for a living. This, I told myself, I can work with -- it’s just a matter of deflecting his attention. As I stood there, looking at this cock-sure little twit with the knowing nod, I laughed. Like mother, like son.

“I’m a spy? Oh, that’s rich. That’s really, really rich.” Even as I shook my head, I suddenly started to realize why I was wearing a wedding band for Langley. With my back to Bowie, I composed myself as he went on.

“I saw your name on the list.”

“The list?” I scoffed. “What list, pray tell, is this?”

“WikiLeaks.”

“Oh. Well, that must make it true. And how does WikiLeaks know I’m...a spy?” I whispered in a hushed voice to give it some emphasis.

“You’re on the watch list.”

“The watch list?”

“Yup.”

“You know what, Bowie? I’d like you to get me a copy of the list you saw.”

“Why? So you can pass it to your bosses at the CIA?”

“Hell, no. I want it so I can sue the pants off the idiot who put me on the list. I’m going to make myself a fortune.”

“Uh, Maisie, that’s not the reason for the list. It’s to out the spies.”

“And a fine job they’re doing of it,” I pointed out. “First, you and your mother presume I’m gay because I don’t drag a man to these cheerful family gatherings. Now you’re accusing me of being a spy. And you wonder why I don’t share my life with my family? Why would I ever want to do that with people who are so...so untrustworthy and disrespectful?”

“I’m not like my mother,” Bowie insisted. “I can accept you being gay.”

“Oh, mighty white of you, kiddo. And if I were a spy, could you handle that, too?”

“Well, that’s different.”

“Why?” I got right up to that naive face and steeled myself to do battle. Poor little Gesso tucked herself behind me as I got started. “Because you know what it takes to run a country and protect it from bad guys? Because you think that world peace consists of painting happy faces on every surface you can find and slapping ‘Mean People Suck’ bumper stickers on everything? You think you’re a good person, Bowie?”

“Look, I’m not....”

“I asked you a question. Do you think you’re a good person?”

“Of course I am,” he bridled. “I’m very tuned into this planet and I do my part to clean it up.”

“I’ve got news for you, Bowie. You’re a fraud. You wear the mask of being a good human being, but when it comes down to it, you and your mother are two peas in a pod. You feel entitled to information, so you grab at the tiniest morsel and fill in the blanks. And then you have the gall to act on that information, on the assumption that it’s all correct and you understand the implications of it all, when in fact you are one huge ignoramus. Guess what. You’re not smart, you’re not nice, and you sure as hell don’t have a clue about what matters in life. Now get out of here, you sanctimonious little jerk, and take your filthy, disgusting assumptions with you!”

As far as I was concerned, this was the last family reunion I would attend. From now on, I will live my life without this nonsense. If the Carrs don’t like it, the Carrs can all go lump it. Enough is enough.

I pulled poor little Gesso out of from behind me, scooping her up in my arms. What a big, fat mess this all is, I told myself. Good thing I had an art heist to solve, because otherwise, I’d be out of here.

I actually am a spy. I have been for some time. And I did plan to spend a week with my sister and brother-in-law. But I didn’t expect to land in the middle of an art heist investigation. That happened when the Tattinger was robbed and folks at Langley wanted to know if there’s any chance that terrorists or drug traffickers stole those paintings to use for cash to finance their operations. I got a call two days ago, from Elise Ulbricht, asking me if I would be willing to write a guest post on her art blog, detailing what I could find out about the robbery. Elise is actually a CIA analyst in New York, who maintains a number of blogs devoted to subjects that seem as unrelated to intelligence work as anything you’ve ever seen. She has a degree in art history and a gallery of her own, and as a dedicated blogger, she’s interviewed some of the top artists in their fields. It’s really a communications system to track information in a very public forum.

Unless I missed my guess, the CIA also knew that I was on that WikiLeaks list of CIA agents. Time to call in reinforcements? I wasn’t sure.

Wondering how I became a spy? It’s kind of a long, complicated story. On my first trip to Europe, I ran into some trouble when I found myself targeted by Hassan, a young student who turned out to be a Hezbollah operative. He lured me into a disco one night for dancing and offered to buy me a drink while I went to the ladies room. As I came out, I observed him furtively putting something into the glass. I slipped out the front door of the disco and never looked back. Taking flight, I got as far away as I could, boarding the tube for the trip across town. Should I go back to my hotel? What if he was waiting there for me? What if he had friends with him? I knew no one in this city. Who could I turn to for help?

Needing a chance to think, I decided to get a cup of coffee. Alone at a tiny table in the nearly deserted restaurant, enveloped in my loneliness, I drank it. What if Hassan pursued me? The front door opened and several people entered. That caught my attention, breaking my miserable, self-inflicted fog called worry. Suddenly, I found myself surrounded by a bunch of strangers in the small café in Holland Park. One by one, they settled at the tables all around me and my anxiety level went sky high.

I thought they were friends of Hassan’s, but they turned out to be Mossad agents. That’s right. Israeli spies.

“Hello, pretty lady,” said a handsome man with eyes the color of the Mediterranean Sea. “I am Amos. May I join you?”

“I...I don’t think,” I started to say. He cut me off.

“May I see your purse, please?”

“Excuse me?”

“Your purse.” He didn’t bother waiting for my answer. He simply reached over and took it from me. He dumped out the contents on the table and picked up a pen knife. With a slashing motion, he separated the lining, reached his hand in, and pulled out a floppy disk.

“What is that?” I was stunned. Back then, I was just a new college graduate, fresh-faced, trusting, vulnerable.

“Your little friend Hassan has been a very naughty boy.”

“I don’t understand.” It was true. I had no clue.

“You are on your way to France, are you not?”

“Yes. How did you know that?”

“We will keep this, but we will have one to give you in its place. Come back here tomorrow morning before you catch your train. You will find a man sitting at the table next to you. When he offers you his newspaper, take it. Just be sure to leave it behind when you go.”

“I don’t think so,” I said, as the full impact of my situation began to filter through my dazed mind, refusing to cooperate.

“Want to know what will happen to you if you don’t show up so that Hezbollah can retrieve its disk? They will get to your family in America and start killing them one by one until you turn it over, only you won’t have it because you aren’t playing ball with us. How are you going to find us after you leave here?”

Even as I looked into those blue, blue eyes, I knew he was telling me the truth. If Hassan had distracted me on the dance floor, while one of his friends had hidden the floppy disk in my purse, I was in way over my head. And these coffee-drinkers were professionals, too.

Unable to sleep, tossing and turning throughout the night, I found myself exhausted when my alarm went off. If I went to collect the replacement disk, I was involving myself in something that was out of my comfort zone. If I didn’t, my family was at risk. I was between a rock and a hard place.

At the meeting the next morning, I met Serge, the CIA’s liaison with the Israeli Embassy in London. He sat at the next table, talking to me from behind his newspaper. He had some documents for me to sign. They were tucked into the copy of Le Monde that I found on my table when I arrived. I read them over carefully and signed on the dotted line. I was so nervous, I never finished my café au lait.

Serge told me I could expect someone to contact me once I got to my hotel room in Paris. Unfortunately, that’s not how things went. The train was crowded and there were people standing as we pulled into the station. As I stepped off, I felt a tug on my purse. The next thing I knew, a knife cut through the strap and I looked up in time to see a young man dash away across the platform, my purse tucked under his arm. Panicked at the thought of losing my family, I screamed and carried on, desperate to recover that disk. The conductor spoke little English and I was too upset to make much sense in my college French, but he understood I had been robbed. He took me to the station office and waited with me until a gendarme arrived. He took me to the police station and called the US embassy. Someone at the desk there promised to send a representative. It turned out to be Serge.

By the time he dropped me off at my hotel, Serge had explained that they knew the purse would be stolen and they wanted my reaction to appear normal. All my kicking and screaming gave me credibility. I needed that. Hassan’s friends were tailing me.