Spy to the Rescue (15 page)

I
'm seated eight rows from the front and six seats in. As I try to squeeze my way through the half-filled row without tumbling off Alex Gunnery's shoes, I feel eyes on me. Not from my fellow row mates; they couldn't be sweeter or more welcoming. No, these eyes are coming from the right-hand side of the cathedral. The Savlostavian side.

What the Trezekhastan Orthodox Cathedral lacks in grandeur—it can only seat about three hundred people—it makes up for in beauty. I'm stunned by the white marble floor, the artwork on the ceiling depicting a swirl
of angels ascending to heaven, and the detail and craftsmanship of the stained-glass windows that surround me. But the atmosphere is heavy with pent-up hostility. The well-dressed occupants of the right-hand side are not happy to be here at this coming-of-age ritual. They are not happy to be so close, separated by only a single aisle, from their one-time enemies.

Every new addition to the left-hand side incites a mass of angry murmurs. I can't hear the words, and even if I could, I wouldn't understand them, but I can guess the meaning behind them. He's poor and common. Their child smells of lumpy milk. My companions in row eight are more sensitive to each new insult. Every time an usher deposits a fresh guest on the left-hand side, my row mates click their tongues, inhale sharply, and shake their heads with disapproval at the boorish behavior coming from the other side of the cathedral. I click, inhale, and shake along with them, but my attention is elsewhere.

I count four uniformed policemen in the cathedral. Two on either side of the door. Two at the bottom of the steps leading up to the altar. I see a man in an ill-fitting suit standing under a stained-glass window on the right-hand side of the cathedral. From the way his eyes continuously sweep the entirety of the room, I'm guessing he's a plainclothes cop. My eyes are also sweeping the
entirety of the room. I'm looking for someone the size and shape of Vanessa Dominion. She may be bewigged, she may have a different posture and a different accent, but if she's here, I'm going to sniff her out.

I rise from my seat and gesture to my immediate neighbors to save my place. I totter out of the row and make my way up the aisle to the altar steps. I take out the phone I rescued from the subway hoodie guys and I brandish it at the cop standing closest to me.

“Is okay I make film for my muzzer and fazzer?” I ask, wildly overdoing my accent.

The cop gives me a suspicious look. I hand him the phone. “You don't trust me? You do it for me.”

“Go ahead,” the cop mutters. “But make it fast and then sit down.”

I pretend to film the angelic vision on the ceiling but I'm really searching for a familiar face. I nod my thanks to the scowling cop and walk slowly back down the aisle, looking from left to right. I want to catch a glimpse of Vanessa, but more than that, I want her to catch a glimpse of me. I want her to feel nervous. I want her to be careless. I want her to remember that I was more than a match for her. I want her to remember that she told me her plans but I didn't tell her mine. I want her to be so rattled by the sight of me that she makes mistakes. I lift my veil and
take off my glasses. Here I am.

“There she is!” screams an outraged, accented voice. “Liar! Impostor!”

The real Zamira Kamirov stands in the doorway of the cathedral with a group of New York cops grouped around her, an accusing finger pointed in my direction.

Uh-oh.

Do I run? Do I cry? Do I rely on Red? That's a lot of police officers for one small marble. I hear the footsteps of the cop stationed by the altar. Before he gets too close, I sprint over to the right-hand side of the cathedral. The Savlostavian side.

I look at the rows of disdainful faces, the big hats, the gold rings, the huge hoop earrings, the missing teeth, and I shout out two words. “Trezekhastan sucks!” I put on a terrified face. “They tell lies about me. They want to put me in their jail. I did nothing wrong.”

The woman in the satellite dish hat purses her lips at me. “You sit on Trezekhastan side,” she says, her eyes glittering with distrust.

“I didn't know,” I wail. My accent is all over the map. I'm not sure whether I'm supposed to be American, Trezekhestani, or Savlostavian at this point. I'm drowning in a sea of my own lies! But I have to keep going. “I'm young and naive. I thought we could all be friends.
Now they call the cops on me.”

Satellite Dish Hat beckons to me. “You sit with me,” she says. “No one takes you anywhere.”

“Thankyouthankyouthankyou,” I babble, and squeeze my way next to the woman.

“Miss,” calls the cop from the altar. “Come with me, please. You need to answer some questions.”

Satellite Dish Hat waves him off. “She with us. Move on, Johnny Cop.”

“I'm talking to the girl,” he says.

I grab her arm. “Don't let them take me.”

The woman spits out a short, angry sentence. Every man seated on the right-hand side of the cathedral rises to his feet. I'll say this about both sides. They may be mortal foes, but they've been very protective of me.

All the cops working in the cathedral come charging forward. The tension that's been building since I got here boils over. The Savlostavians throw their prayer books at the cops. The police officers start hauling guests out of the aisles and handcuffing them.

In the middle of the chaos, I get down on my hands and knees and crawl out of the row. I continue to crawl in the shadows under the stained-glass window. No one notices me. I keep shuffling along until I'm close to the cathedral doorway, where I see a stunned Zamira
Kamirov. I sympathize with her. She has to fly alone to a foreign country for a ceremony she probably doesn't care about. She gets stuck in a traffic jam and then reaches the cathedral only to be told someone with her name is already in attendance. And now the cops she hoped would right this wrong are fighting with the guests. Not a great way to spend your first day in New York, but guess what, Zamira, my first day wasn't much fun, either.

I jump to my feet, run toward the doorway, pull Red out of my pocket, and toss him in her direction. She opens her mouth to scream, giving him the perfect opportunity to jump inside.

“She's going to be fine,” I tell the arriving guests who see the choking, red-faced girl flailing around in front of them. “Cough lozenge stuck in her throat. I'm taking care of it.”

I grab Zamira by the arm and drag her to the ladies' room. She tries to struggle and pull away.

“Mmmm mmmm mmmm!” she protests.

I kick open the door and shove her inside.

“Mmmmm mmmm mmmmm!” she tries to scream.

I put my hands on her shoulders and look into her bugged-out eyes.

“Zamira,” I say quietly and calmly, “I'm going to remove the marble from your mouth, but before I do, you
have to promise not to scream, and you have to promise to listen to me. Do you promise?”

She stares at me like I'm a dangerous lunatic on the run from an asylum. I do not for one second blame her.

“Do you promise?” I repeat.

“Mmmm mmm.” She nods.

I open my palm. Red jumps out of her mouth and into my hand. Ugh. Warm and wet. I drop him in my pocket and go over to the sink, where I squirt the contents of a little plastic soap dispenser onto my hand.

“Aaaaa . . . ,” Zamira starts to scream. I clamp my soapy hand over her mouth.

The ladies' room door opens. I shove Zamira into the nearest toilet stall and kick the door shut behind me.

I touch my finger to her lips and nod at her. She nods back. I very slowly pull my hand away.

“Who are you?” she croaks.

“I'm a friend,” I say. “Not a great friend, obviously. But I'm here to help stop a war between your country and Savlostavia.”

“Those Savlostavian pigs,” she says.

“Someone far, far worse is behind it,” I tell her.

In a stall in the bathroom of the cathedral, I explain, in rapid whispers, to the daughter of Trezekhastan's junior minister of agriculture, that Vanessa Dominion is
planning to shoot the secretary of state's son to impress her father.

“I understand if you don't believe me,” I say at the end of my hurried explanation. “But I'm telling you the truth.”

Zamira gives me a long stare filled with dislike. Once again, I don't blame her in the slightest.

“I'm the bad guy here,” I tell her. “You want to scream, you want to have me arrested and thrown in jail, you have every right. I would if I were you. But there's something else you could do. You could let me be you. Tell the cops you're my stalker. Apologize and slip away.”

“Then what I do?” she says.

“This is New York,” I say. “Your trip had a bad start, but it doesn't have to carry on like that. I can help you have a better time, if you'd like.”

“You get me ticket to
Spider-Man
?” she says.

“
Spider-Man
closed years ago,” I say, and I empathize as her face clouds over with disappointment. “But if you want to see a show or get into a club or get a fake passport or have the best day in New York you've ever had, I can make that happen.”

Her expression softens. I take out the phone and hit ten digits.

“Sam,” I say. “I need another favor. I'm putting my
friend Zamira Kamirov on the phone. Whatever she asks, you say yes.”

I hand her the phone. “Ask for the moon,” I tell her. “He'll get it.”

“And what about you?” Zamira says. “What are you going to do?”

“I'll tell you next time I see you,” I say.

“We will meet again?” she says.

I shake my head. “No. Now go.”

She nods and pushes past me. I watch the toilet stall door close as she leaves.

“This Sam?” I hear her voice start to fade. “I want to see sweaty men fight in a cage.”

I take a moment to try and undo some of the damage crawling across the cathedral floor did to my fancy outfit. I smooth, tuck, and rebutton until I'm ready to return to my mission. I push open the stall door but I can't seem to get out. I feel something push back at me, but I don't see anything. I realize what it is—who it is—but I'm too late. I feel a sharp jab at the side of my neck. My vision blurs. My legs give way.

Vanessa stole more than a few teaspoons of the invisibility juice.

I
t could have been a lot worse. I mean, my situation is not great. But I could have woken up to find myself buried alive in a coffin ten feet under the earth. I could be in a trunk in the back of a speeding car. I could be at the top of a bonfire with flames licking my feet. Compared to any of those situations, returning to consciousness and finding myself still in a bathroom stall and tied to the toilet is almost a relief. Almost. Thick, knotted ropes pull my arms back and tie them around the tank of the toilet. My legs are fastened against the bowl. I start to struggle and pull but it makes no difference. From
outside, I hear the faint sound of swelling organ music and I understand why Vanessa didn't bury me, shove me in a trunk, or sit me at the top of a bonfire. She wants me to know I failed.

I try to call for help. That's when I realize there's tape over my mouth. I feel faint stirrings of panic. I can't move my arms and legs. I can't speak. There's nothing on the ground that might help me free myself. The ceiling is bare except for a light bulb hanging from a wire. Even though the stall is tiny, there's not enough room for me to bang my head off the walls. I'm out of options.

Except Red.

If I still have him. If she hasn't taken him. We've been together long enough for him to respond to my moods.
If you're still here, Red
, I think,
if you can understand what's happened to me, help me, get me out of this.

I strain against the ropes and make the same sort of
mmmm
noises that came out of Zamira's mouth in this very same stall. It's not much, but it's the only way I know to communicate my need to be rescued. I strain and
mmmm
a little more.

Nothing.

The disappointment crushes me. I'm alone.

And then I feel a soft shuffling movement against my waist. I'm not alone.

Red bounces out of my jacket pocket and shoots into the air.

“Red!” I try to shout, but it comes out “Mmmmnnnggg.”

The little red marble disappears over the top of the next stall. I hear a loud splash and then I hear nothing. This didn't have to happen. I didn't have to end up like this. I had options. Why did I have to be so stubborn? Why did I forbid Ryan, Joanna, and Sam from helping me? Why did I send Zamira away? Why didn't I listen to Dale and leave this in the hands of the cops? Why did I put all my trust in an unpredictable red marble?
If I ever get out of this toilet stall, I will be more of a team player
, I tell myself.

When did the rumbling start? Was it happening while I was bemoaning my lack of faith in others? I feel something moving. It's coming from directly underneath me. I feel the toilet seat start to vibrate. I hear a loud whistling noise. The toilet bowl is starting to shake. The whistling sound has altered in pitch and ferocity, sounding more like an endless hysterical scream. The toilet seat beneath me feels like a washing machine barely containing a full load. My own
mmmmmnnnnngggggg
s match the noise from the bowl.

Oh my God.

I think I know what's happening down there.

I think Red's doing the same thing Ryan did a few years ago during his blowing-up-toilets phase, when he'd go to the house of a friend-slash-victim, unscrew the valve beneath the toilet bowl, and insert a golf ball into the water pipe. The pressure would make the bowl explode into a thousand pieces. Hilarious!

Except that I'm the one currently sitting on a toilet that is primed to explode.

The shaking is getting more violent. The screaming from the blocked pipe verges on the hysterical as my own
mmmmmnnnnnggggg
ing grows louder. I squeeze my eyes shut and start counting backward. Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One . . . Zero. Zero minus one. Zero minus two. Zero minus . . .

BOOM!

A jet of water blasts the toilet up in the air. It's like being on a rollercoaster in that I feel like I'm about to be violently sick and I'm too terrified to scream. I look up and see the ceiling get closer. I hurl myself forward. The movement turns the toilet upside down so my head is now pointed toward the floor. The porcelain base smashes against the ceiling. The ropes fall from my arms and ankles. I am blasted full in the face by an explosion of dirty water that causes me to gasp and choke. I start
to fall, but before I do, I wrap my ankles around the wire that holds a single light bulb.

For a second, I dangle, like a gasping, choking human bulb; then, as I feel the wire start to tear away from the roof, I swing myself from side to side until I've gathered enough momentum to let go. I fly through the door of the nearest stall, flailing wildly as I try to grab the door and make some kind of graceful landing. That doesn't happen. I hit the wall hard enough to knock the wind out of me and then I slide down the toilet bowl and land upside down on the wet ground. I lie in a breathless, trembling, sodden heap. Out of my one open eye, I see Red roll toward me. He stops a few inches from my face.

“Thanks,” I try to say, but my mouth is still covered. I rip the tape off and reach to wrap my hand around the marble who broke me out of my prison.

“New York's kicked our butt since we got here,” I say to him in a hoarse whisper. “Time we kicked back.”