We had to get something to wear. As soon as the stores opened, we’d be in them. We walked around the city for a few hours, killing time, getting a bite to eat at a falafel stand, staring at everything. It was pretty cool. Angel told me a bit more about her life in Bermuda. She had tried to run away a few times, but really, where could she go? They looked after her needs at home. She had everything, materially, that her peers had, and sometimes more. But I wondered if she’d ever received a hug or much encouragement. She did fine in school and it was a good school, but she had few friends. She’d never had a boyfriend. She claimed she didn’t want one. Mr. Know didn’t talk to her often. When he did, he was usually critical. She knew she was a bit clumsy, but he would laugh at her anytime she bumped into anything. She liked to exercise in their basement fitness room. Whenever Know saw her in shorts, though, he’d say that her legs looked huge and laugh. So she worked out in sweats. She blurted that last bit out kind of angrily, then stopped talking, as if she’d revealed too much. It was hard to believe that Grandpa would say something like that. I turned the subject to shopping.
This was going to be interesting—buying clothes in New York with a girl. Shirley would have loved it. She isn’t like many of the other girls in my school, who all have to have the latest thing, even if that latest thing looks incredibly stupid on them. And I’m not the sort of guy who cares that much about fashion either. I like to look a little trendy, if I can, but you won’t see me with designer underwear showing about a mile above low-riding pants.
Despite my lack of enthusiasm, when Angel and I went shopping, I was definitely the one who was the most into it. Imagine that! And I barely even bothered to look at the labels or the price tags. I bought a pair of dark skinny jeans, a Sabres T-shirt, another Skyfall T-shirt and a warm Yankees sweatshirt. I also quietly grabbed some more of the undies I like and a few dark socks. She spotted that, smiled and said, “Good move!” She was much more interested in what I was buying than in her own stuff, which was extra weird for a girl. She even forced me to buy a nice white, long-sleeved shirt and a pair of black dress pants. “You’re James Bond,” she teased. “You have to look good.”
Getting her to buy anything was like pulling teeth, and everything she got was baggy—a baggy pair of camo pants, a couple of baggy I Love New York T-shirts I knew I’d never even see on her because they’d be under the baggy gray sweatshirt she had on or the baggy brown sweater she’d gotten to keep warm. She wouldn’t even model them, nor would she show me how she looked in the little black dress I absolutely made her buy. (“If I’m James Bond,” I said, “then you have to be a Bond Girl.” She glared at me.) She took everything into a change room, came back out and said, “Okay” and moved on. (Though, of course, she tripped once coming out.)
She hadn’t done anything with her hair since I’d first seen her in Bermuda. It still looked uncombed and unfashionable, even a little dirty, though it was a nice auburn color with a bit of wave to it. She kept her blue eyes hidden behind her shades most of the time, though she sometimes wore awful horn-rimmed glasses once the sun went down. I figured we needed bathing suits for Jamaica, and I bought a pair of red, knee-length trunks, which she said would look great on me. But I had to insist that she get a suit herself. She said she didn’t like bathing suits (which seemed pretty strange for a girl from Bermuda), and it was only after I said I wouldn’t take her to Jamaica without one that she finally grabbed a boring-looking one-piece right off the rack, the kind a seventy-year-old woman would wear. I think it was brown, but it was hard to tell. She was really uncomfortable in the clothing stores, never looked at herself in the mirrors and was happy when we were finally finished.
“Does your girlfriend wear a bikini?” she asked when we left the last store.
“Yes,” I said, almost as if to prove that it wasn’t the end of the world. But Shirley didn’t always wear them; she had a one-piece as well, and she usually chose that even though she looked great in the more revealing outfit—really great. And then, out of nowhere, an image of Vanessa Lincoln in her bikini shot through my mind. It was red, white and blue and very skimpy. I saw her wearing it at Crystal Beach last summer. She is, shall I say, full-figured. She looked awesome, said Bad Adam. You know it. But I banished the image instantly.
I bought Angel a prepaid cell phone (she didn’t have one in Bermuda), we got new backpacks, and we were back at JFK Airport before noon. I kept peeking in the taxi’s rearview mirror, hoping no one was following us. No one seemed to be. But if John was really on our trail again, I had the distinct feeling that we wouldn’t even know it.
I felt nervous buying the tickets and even more so taking my Walther PPK through the special-baggage check. I had to go through a long chat with the officials again, even though I showed them the pass I’d been given at this very airport, the one that had allowed me to take the empty “collectible” gun back and forth from Bermuda.
I had toyed with the idea of getting some bullets for the gun when I was walking uptown toward Rockefeller Center. I was really worried about what John might do to us if he caught us again and wondered if I needed to protect myself (and especially Angel) in a serious way. I was sure I could get ammunition. I’d heard about guys my age buying bullets in gun shops around Buffalo. These guys, apparently, looked just a touch older than they were. They’d been asked for their IDs, but the shop owners hadn’t even really looked at their faces—they’d just had them flash the IDs to make it legal. It didn’t seem right.
I’d made that point in a big discussion about gun control we had in the cafeteria one day. Vanessa had been there. Her dad is a member of the National Rifle Association and a big supporter of our armed forces (I am too). She said everyone had a right to arm themselves, every last citizen in America; it was our right under the constitution. I was ashamed that I hadn’t argued with her about that. I’d looked at the constitution myself, and the part that covered arming yourself seemed to be more about the military than citizens and was written over two hundred years ago, when people had muskets and lived in dangerous, outlying places, not in modern cities. Nor did they have anything remotely like today’s assault rifles, which can fire off about a million rounds a second and tear someone to shreds. But that conversation had been about a year ago, before I went to France. I hadn’t realized in those days what a dough-head Vanessa was. I guess beauty can blind you, if you don’t watch it.
Anyway, I didn’t get the bullets. I thought better of it. But I have to admit that it was exciting to think of firing the Walther PPK, and at first I’d even tried to convince myself that I’d get the bullets and just shoot a few off at a firing range or something. I also tried to tell myself that the W might indeed refer to the Walther and that using it would somehow tell me something more about the mystery I was pursuing. That was stupid. So was getting the bullets. It was like I had momentarily thought I was in the movies or a video game or an alternate universe. I think it was all Bad Adam’s idea.
We sat in the lounge at JFK, trying to sleep despite it being almost noon, waiting for our flight to Jamaica. But both of us were unable to even close our eyes, excited but also very nervous, constantly glancing around for any sight of John. After a while, we forgot about him. That wasn’t smart. A spy should always be vigilant. Always.
I had my phone out, looking at the Goldeneye resort website, trying to book a room for us online, putting it in Angel’s name since she was eighteen. I had to use my credit card, but I didn’t want to answer any questions about my age. It was a really high-end place and the rooms—little houses, really—were about a thousand dollars a shot. All I could afford was a one-bedroom “villa” (as they called it), and only for one night—we had to get in and out and solve things that fast. But all the villas, both the ones on the beach and on what was called the “lagoon,” were taken. I shouldn’t have been surprised. It was the Christmas holidays, after all, and here I was, on December 29, trying to book a room for that very evening. Even the Ian Fleming Villa was taken. I wondered what that was—it was incredibly expensive, so I couldn’t have afforded it anyway. But what were we going to do if we couldn’t get a room? They wouldn’t let you into the resort without one. Would I have to break in? I had to go there. It was the only light at the end of my tunnel. Frustrated, I took out a Jamaican tourist brochure I’d found in the airport lounge, put it on my knee and started writing out the clues we had, right on the brochure’s surface, over and over—Goldeneye, W, W marked the spot and Cuban Missile Crisis. Then a shadow loomed over my shoulder. I looked across to the seat in front of me and saw Angel staring back, her eyes wide. She wasn’t looking at me: she was staring up…at John.
“No one move,” he said evenly. “Everyone just stay nice and quiet-like for a count of ten and then get up and proceed slowly over there, toward the window.”
He was motioning to an area where no one else was sitting, a stretch of about ten or fifteen connected seats.
“We need to have a little chat.” His voice sounded alarmingly calm.
I considered making a run for it. I looked at Angel and she looked back as if she were trying to see right into my brain. Could we make it? Was it a good idea to try? Could we lose him in the crowd? Were there any policemen nearby this time?
“Don’t even think about it,” John added.
I was worried he would do something that was not, shall we say, good for our health. Angel seemed to have decided that we should do as he said too. That wasn’t a good sign. She had known what to do last time. But now she just looked frightened. I tried not to be. I needed to protect her.
We got up and walked slowly to the vacant area. He made us sit beside each other, looking out the big airport windows at the planes on the tarmac. When he started to talk, he still seemed very calm. In fact, he was smiling. I quickly realized how smart that was—to any observer, we were friends having a nice friendly discussion. What others couldn’t see was that his hand was on the gun inside a big pocket in his jacket, and the gun was pointed at us. It amazed me that he could do that with the weapon so easily, and that he looked so pleasant. That was terrifying. What was this guy capable of?
“Do you know what a silencer is?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Angel before I could answer. “Technically, it’s called a suppressor.” Even in this tense moment, it sort of ticked me off that she knew that.
“Do you know that I could kill both of you right now with the weapon concealed in my jacket, the weapon with an attached suppressor, and that I have positioned you so that not only will no one hear the sound of the bullets entering your hearts and killing you instantly—and I will not miss—but when you slump over, no one in this lounge will see it? I need just a split second to eliminate you both and only a few more seconds to exit the area. I have connections here who will help me. I have connections everywhere.”
“Everywhere?” I asked.
“How do you think I located you in New York? How do you think I found the hotel you were staying in? I believe it was rooms 1412 and 1413?”
“CIA?” I asked. I hoped he didn’t see me gulp.
“MI6?” asked Angel.
“A little of one and a good deal of the other,” he said, glancing around. “So you see,” he added, smiling again but this time actually looking genuinely friendlier, “you have nothing to fear. I am with the good guys. Surely you aren’t afraid of your own governments? I followed you simply to talk with you, and to bring Ms. Hicks home.”
I glanced at Angel. Her eyes flashed up at me and then down to the floor. He didn’t seem anything like a good guy.
“It’s not my government,” she said.
He ignored her comment.
“Mr. Murphy, please hand me that brochure.”
He knew my real name. I gave him the brochure without thinking.
“Hmmm.” He looked down at what I’d written on it. Goldeneye, W, W marked the spot and Cuban Missile Crisis. “What’s this all about?”
Why had I written out our clues? I bet a real spy never would have done that.
“Nothing,” said Angel, too quickly.
“Nothing? Do you have anything to add, Mr. Murphy?”
“No.”
“Look, relax. I told you, I work for the good guys.” He eyed us. We didn’t say a word. There was silence for a long time. “What does this mean?” he asked again, and this time he didn’t sound as friendly.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Honestly.” And that was true, sort of. What I said reminded me of a line from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a great novel I’d read recently. It’s really funny from the very first page, where Huck, who is an excellent character and kind of progressive in his views despite being a hick and living in the olden days, actually starts talking about the author who wrote the book he’s in. It’s amazing! He says the author likes to tell “stretchers” when he writes, “but mainly he told the truth.” That cracked me up. Huck also said, “I never seen nobody but lied, one time or another.”
Well, I suppose I was lying at that very moment, but “mainly” telling the truth. Maybe that’s what spies do? Everyone in the John Le Carré novels was certainly a little fast and loose with the truth. Maybe you had to be that way to be in espionage. Maybe you had to be that way in life to survive, period. Was Le Carré saying that? I knew that Angel and I had to be careful with John, very careful. We couldn’t tell him the whole truth.
“You don’t know? Really?” he asked. I’d never seen anyone examine someone’s face quite the way he did then. His gaze drilled into me, checking out my throat, my mouth, even my forehead and ears, as if he could spot something, some giveaway, some swallow or twitch.
“Yes!” said Angel, as if to divert his attention to her. “He’s telling the truth.”
“You, young lady, are going home.”
“I’m not so young anymore, John.”
“You’re young enough, my dear. You are still Mr. Hicks’s ward.”
“I’m staying with Adam.”
“Mr. Murphy is going home too.”
“I am?”
“Yes, shortly. I have arranged your flight to Buffalo. It departs soon. Jim will be meeting Ms. Hicks at the Bermuda airport. Your flight, my dear, will depart late this afternoon.”
“Aren’t you coming with me?”
“No.”
I detected a slight pause before he answered, very brief, yet definitely there. And I noticed a quick swallow too, barely evident. Maybe I was learning how to be a spy, how to play the game. I had been so suspicious about so many things over the last day or two that it was becoming second nature to try to “read” people. I wondered if John was telling a “stretcher,” just “mainly” the truth. And if so, why? What was he hiding?
We didn’t talk for a few moments. Angel kept looking over at me. It seemed like she was about to cry. I couldn’t look back. My mind was racing. I had to help her, and I had to know more about Grandpa. I couldn’t give up. I had risked life and limb to get this far, and so had Angel, who was desperate to have her freedom and discover who she was. I couldn’t go through life thinking that Grandpa had deceived me and the whole McLean family so horribly, even if he did it for all the right reasons. All I would have left was the Walther PPK, and even it might be lost, since it was on its way to Jamaica and I might never get it back.
“Your bag will be retrieved for you and will make its way to Buffalo as well.” These guys were mind readers extraordinaire. Well, at least I’d have the gun. But that wasn’t good enough, far from it.
“He isn’t Mr. Hicks,” I said sternly to John, without even looking at him. Maybe I could get him talking.
“What’s that?”
“The man you work for is David McLean. He’s my grandfather.”
John smiled. It didn’t seem like a revelation to him or even a strange thing to say. I wished it had. “Guy Hicks, David McLean, Mr. Know…it doesn’t matter what he calls himself. I am an operative. I work for the good guys; I do what is right. You will have to satisfy yourself with that. But if I ever see you in Bermuda again, I am sorry to say that you will be eliminated. There is a greater good at stake. I am sure your grandfather, whoever he is and wherever he is, would understand that.” He smiled again. “Knowing him, I am sure of that.”
I didn’t like the sound of that either.
“I’ll come back,” I muttered.
He turned his face toward me. “Look at me,” he said.
I’ve heard about “cold eyes” or “dead eyes,” the ones that crime writers often say bad guys and murderers have. Like Goldfinger, or Javier Bardem in Skyfall when he took out the dentures that were holding his face together and his cheeks collapsed on-screen, or the arch-villain Le Chiffre in Casino Royale when he had Daniel Craig strapped naked to a chair and was torturing him. Well, John had those kind of eyes at this very moment. It actually made me shiver.
“No, you won’t,” he said.
He didn’t swallow at all. Nothing on his face moved. I knew right then that I couldn’t go back to Bermuda. I had to think of something else.
“Before I see you off ”—he smiled —“I want to explore the things you wrote on this brochure, Mr. Murphy. It was brave of you to say that you knew nothing about them, but you do.”
“He doesn’t,” said Angel.
“Quiet, Ms. Hicks.” He gave her a cold look and turned back to me again. He didn’t have the dead eyes now, but they weren’t entirely friendly either; it was a bland expression with a threat inside it. “Care to explain, Adam?”
“No,” I said.
“Well, let’s do an exchange then, shall we?”
“What do you mean?”
“You give me something and I’ll give you something. It’s really quite fair and equitable, given that I could simply kill you.”
There was a long pause.
“Goldeneye is in Jamaica,” I said.
“Very good. It is Ian Fleming’s old home, isn’t it? Now a resort? You know all that, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“You won’t be going there either,” he said.
“All right.” I said it straight to his face, without moving a muscle.
“We have people there as well, of course. They would make things decidedly unpleasant for you and for anyone who accompanied you.” He looked at Angel again.
But I had seen him swallow, slightly. Had he just told a stretcher? And if so, what did it mean? I glanced at Angel, who looked my way for an instant when John turned back to me. She smiled, ever so slightly. Then the smile vanished.
Goldeneye, I thought. There really is something there.
“I said I would give you something too, and I am a man of my word.” He paused and thought for a moment, looking away, then turned back to me. “Mr. Know indeed had something to do with the Cuban Missile Crisis. He was there in 1962, deeply involved. That is a tidbit that will take you nowhere. In other words, it’s a nice fact for a civilian to possess.”
Within an hour, I was on a flight to Buffalo and Angel was on her way to Bermuda. We didn’t say goodbye. We didn’t have to. We hoped to meet again, and soon.