Chapter Five --

Once in my hotel, I thought it was all over. I spent a couple of days seeing the sights. I finally felt like I could relax and get on with my trip, but I was wrong. On the day before I left for Spain, there was another knock on my door. The same CIA man wanted to know if I could do just one more thing. Could I sit and sketch down at the waterfront of Barcelona for a few hours? How could it hurt? I was headed there anyway, wasn’t I?

Not only did the CIA need me to sit and paint, they offered to buy the work from me for an exorbitant price of a thousand dollars. And that’s how I wound up becoming a spy.

Oh, I don’t carry a gun. Let me be clear about that. In fact, if I did, I probably would have lost my life a long time ago. I’m what they call an observer. I’m not the spy that breaks into a hotel room and steals the briefcase with the secret codes in it. I’m not even the type to leap off balconies and escapes in a speeding car. I’m a watcher in the shadows, the person you never really notice is taking copious notes. That’s because when you see me, you see my paint brushes, my canvases, and my easel. I’m actually a decent artist. I usually show my work at three or four major exhibits a year, both here and abroad. I’m represented by four galleries -- one in New York, one in Los Angeles, one in Miami, and one in London. I’m hoping to get into one in Madrid in March. That’s because right now there’s a lot of action in Spain with various terror groups, so the CIA could really use a pair of trained eyes and ears there.

How do I share my information? I paint my key into each painting, so my handler knows where to find the file once it’s ready for retrieval. I might add a little dog to the scene and Langley knows the digital card is tucked inside the battery-operated jumping pup I bought for Gesso. If there is a glass of wine in the scene, Langley knows that I have put the tiny piece of technology inside my battery-operated corkscrew. These are things I take with me on the road.

Whoever is sent by the CIA is led to believe I’m just a tourist who got used as an unwitting courier by Langley while traveling abroad. I might be having lunch in a restaurant or shopping for clothes in some trendy little boutique. With a slight of hand, the digital file is replaced in my bag by an exact duplicate by the CIA officer. Usually they send a fairly new trainee, someone who assumes contains the material the CIA wants passed to the next person down the CIA route. That’s the benefit of not being trained as a spy. I don’t walk like a duck, I don’t quack like a duck, so I’m not a duck.

You’d be amazed at how sensible this whole procedure really is. Having never been trained as a gun-toting, ass-kicking Mata Hari, I look so harmless and I blend into the background of any scene so well, people often forget I’m there. And even those people who want to watch me paint are more than welcome to do that. If people want to buy one of my paintings, I usually let them. Why not? It’s more cover for me. Besides, I don’t normally paint on the key to the code until I am ready to pass it to the CIA.

Now do you understand why my cousin Alberta gets so far under my skin? I’ve sacrificed so much for this job. Love. Children. Even the chance to find a husband who comes home at six every night for dinner, the way that Marty does -- although, I will confess that if I was married to a guy like that, I’d probably be grateful he didn’t come home on time.

I blame that on Roswell Oakley. It’s really all his fault we fell in love. I was minding my own business, doing what I was supposed to do. I was painting the waterfront in Miami. When I’m in the United States, I just focus on my art. There’s no spying involved. Instead, that’s the time when I meet with my handlers and get prepped for the next overseas assignment. In this case, Ross showed up and spent the afternoon on the bench about a hundred yards from me. And when he finally came over to observe my work, he slipped me an untraceable cell phone. When I called the only number in the contact list, he answered. It signaled the start of something that was both wonderful and frustrating at the same time.

That’s a big part of why my cousin irritates the hell out of me. I love Ross and I can’t have him. I can’t even pretend to have him. He went and got himself a desk job at Langley, a big stinking promotion that means he’s on every spy’s radar. I still work behind the scenes. If we go public now and all those terrorists I’ve monitored all these years figure it out, that not only puts me in danger, it puts the other watchers in jeopardy, not to mention the genuine tourists. The spy business can be ugly. Bad people do terrible things to achieve their goals, and sometimes good people have to do unsavory things just to keep up.

In that mean-spirited little display of feigned support for my supposed plight in life, Alberta proved to my family once and for all that the years of gossiping were all for naught. Not only was I not gay, she “outed” herself as the source of all the rumors over the years. Now I understood all those family reunions, when folks were too embarrassed to ask about the plain gold band on my finger, Alberta was a busy girl, dishing the dirt.

That wedding band was something I was forced to wear as cover and I was rarely without it. I wasn’t happy about having to keep it on my hand, but there was concern that I was a target for a raven attack. That’s when the bad guys throw an attractive male into the honey pot in the hopes of luring the target into a sexual tryst. Better the bad guys believed I was suffering from a romance that had no future. Let them believe the guy (or the girl) was unavailable. Let them believe I was too in love to swallow the bait on the hook they dangled in front of me. That’s how the spy game goes. But I wasn’t about to explain that to the big mouth in the family.

Gesso was softly snoring when I finally turned off the Christmas lights in the living room a little after midnight. I gently picked up the sleeping Yorkie and carried her up to the tower. Climbing into bed, I tried to settle myself down. Why couldn’t I get along with my cousin? It wasn’t that I didn’t want to make nice-nice. It was that she had a knack for saying things that set my teeth on edge. As a good Christian, I decided I had an obligation to find the positive in her, but as an independent woman with a whole lot of experience in dealing with really bad people, I had to fight the urge to kick her in the proverbial fanny. We came from two different worlds -- in hers, there was plenty of time to sit around and criticize the rest of the human population; in mine, I was too busy trying to survive.

Maisie, are you really mad at Alberta because she thinks you’re gay and you don’t want to come out of the closet, or are you really mad because you think that if Ross really loved you, he’d find a way for the two of you to be together?

I hate it when my conscience kicks in, mostly because Alberta really is a jerk. How do you find the good where it doesn’t exist? The funny thing is that if my cousin ever put her mind to doing something important, she’d probably be good at it. Maybe that’s where the real frustration came from -- the realization that Alberta was wasting her life on petty issues when the world was in such dire need of decent people. I supposed I could make more of an effort.

But that still left the issue of Ross. How many times had I seen him in the last year? Every year, it seemed like we spent less and less time together. Pretty soon, we’d be waving to each other as we passed on the Metro. Kind of like “Charlie on the MTA”, forever doomed to stay on the subway for want of a nickel.

What if I gave up the world tours? What if I retired and found myself a quiet little flat in a quiet little neighborhood? What if I got myself a new identity? Would Ross be able to be with me? Was I willing to find out, even if it meant saying that final goodbye?

The dawn slipped into the Robbie Burns room like a furtive friend. I threw on my sweats and sneakers, zipped up my fleece jacket, and took Gesso out for her early morning walk. As we tiptoed down the massive stone staircase, the house was quiet. No one else was up.

There was a fresh layer of snow on the ground when we stepped outside. Gessie, her nose in the snow, scampered along, having fun. I gave her plenty of lead. I was still disconcerted by the holiday heartache. What I needed was a good, long walk, to clear my head and shake off all that tension.

We traveled across the lawn and hit the trail through the woods that goes up to the pond. I skidded here and there as the path iced up, my sneakers lacking the right treads for the job. Gesso race ahead of me, her nose to the ground. Her excited energy was getting the better of her, as she increased her speed to a mad dash. When Gess picks up a scent, she rarely lets it go. She’s a stubborn seven-pound hairball. Yorkies are notorious ratters, sniffing out the odd mouse in the snow or the occasional chipmunk. They’ll try to tunnel their way to the darkest of hiding places, in search of their prey.

“What’s up, Gess?” I began to retract the dog lead, not comfortable with letting her get so far ahead. In some forests, she was a tasty little tidbit for any of a number of predators, everything from fisher cats to coyotes. I once even had a hawk lie in wait for her along a trail. That’s really why I kept her leashed, on the odd chance I had to suddenly reel her in. But even as I pulled harder, the little dog fought the command. Coming around the corner, I suddenly understood why. There, across the snowy trail, lay a stiff body.

I’ll be honest -- it wasn’t my first. Once, in Tangiers, I came back to my hotel room to find a stranger laid out on my bed, a fistful of flowers in his hands, a rather large knife in his silenced diaphragm. I took one look at the cadaver and screamed my head off. When the hotel staff came running, I made sure they knew just how upset I was with their turn-down service. I really do prefer a mint on the pillow to a corpse on the covers. I found out later at a briefing in Alexandria that the dead man had been a CIA informant. The killer had arranged for me to get the shock of my life in order to find out if I was, indeed, a spy. His theory had been that if I was, I would pack up my belongings and jump on the fastest boat out of the country. By carrying on as I did, I actually strengthened my cover as a professional artist. The hotel, known to cater to Westerners, went out of its way to make the rest of my stay uneventful. They moved me to another room at my request and frequently checked to make sure everything was satisfactory. After all, is there anything more dangerous to a hotel’s reputation than a hotel guest with an unpleasant experience? Imagine the Tweet on that. Unique boutique Hotel Golden Tangiers -- every room comes with flowers and “dead guy” vase. #@saveme.

Looking down now, I could see this was an older man, maybe in his mid-fifties. He was wearing a dark navy parka, brown corduroy slacks, and a tweed fedora on his head. Or rather, had been wearing the wool hat. It was currently askew on the ground, as were his black-framed glasses. Judging from the blueish tint to his skin, he looked like he had been dead quite a while. I had plenty of questions and no real answers as I stood there shivering. Pulling out my cell phone, I placed a 911 call, and whistled to Gesso. When she bounded over to me, I gathered her up and waited for the voice at the other end.

“What is your emergency?”

“I’m at my sister’s estate and there’s a dead man out in her woods. I don’t know who he is or why he was trespassing, but he’s definitely deceased.”

“I’ll need a location....”

I gave a very long, very involved description to the dispatcher, and then promised to call Nora and Andrew. One of them would meet the police officers at the driveway and escort them up to the pond. After I hung up, I punched the button for Nora on my speed dial. She was less than thrilled at the news.

“No way!” she gasped. “Is this your idea of a prank?”

“I promise you I would never be this cruel. Listen, Norrie, show the cops the trail, but there’s no need for you to see...to see the dead body. Just go back to the house. I’ll get there as soon as I can.”

“Well, I must say you’re taking this very well,” she replied. She was clearly upset.

“Must be all those episodes of ‘Law and Order’,” I teased lamely. “I’m on automatic pilot. Next thing you know, I’ll be helping the coroner look for clues.”

“Maisie, how can you joke about this? Who is the man?”

“I have no idea. But he looks peaceful enough. Maybe he’s a neighbor of yours and he walks the trail a lot.”

“We have ‘No Trespassing’ signs posted everywhere. It’s the liability issue. Andrew says that if we allow people to hike on our grounds and they’re injured, we could lose the house. We don’t have enough homeowners’ insurance.”

“If it’s any consolation, he doesn’t look like he fell or drowned. He looks like he went to sleep. Maybe he had a heart attack. But,” I said, following the trail of footprints on the path, “it looks like quite a few people have been out here recently. The snow has been disturbed.”

“Oh, dear.... Oh, dear. That’s not good, Maise. Ooh, I can hear sirens. I have to go.” With that, she disconnected. As I waited, I took the time to quickly assess the situation, knowing that Langley would want a report. I took the liberty of snapping a couple of photos of the corpse on my cell phone. I know it seems rather gruesome, but you never know when that kind of thing is going to come in handy.

The man obviously was headed in this direction. He might have come from the east, where the road runs parallel to the pond. That was at least half a mile away. I didn’t want to alert the cops to my interest, but how I wished I could explore the area, to follow his path, to have a glimpse of where he had been. Then again, maybe this was just a dead body. No indication of anything sinister. And yet, I found myself wondering if I was being observed as I stood there. Tangiers. WikiLeaks. I thought about all that nonsense last night with Alberta and Bowie. What if this was another attempt to out me as a spy? Would someone actually go to the trouble of killing a man to confirm the information in a classified information breach? Was I getting ahead of myself here? Lord, my feet were cold as I stood there. I stomped on them a few times, desperate to get the blood flowing. When I got back to the castle, I was going to park myself in front of the fireplace and stay there until I thawed out.