Agent for a Cause (The Agents for Good) (18 page)

Yeah right I thought to myself. He may be pushing eighty, but I was very much doubtful that he had even one less measure of testosterone then he had as a man of thirty five. He looked ten years younger than he was and had the athleticism of a man at least twenty years younger and perhaps more.

His gaze grew more serious as he laid a hand on my shoulder, “Tyre I have had many successes in my life as well as my share of failures. You have been one of my greatest successes! Thank you for not letting me down!”

I swallowed and nodded slightly in acknowledgment of the respect he had just given me.

I had never known my father, but in a way over the past eight years I had strived to please Chantry as if he had been a father to me. I had wanted to show him that I had been worth it and that I was capable of doing something good and that I wasn’t just a coldhearted killer. He had just confirmed my success in achieving that and I couldn’t help but feel a little choked up myself.

His smile came back, “Anna is really special Tyre! She’ll have you out of that tight secretive shell of yours in no time flat!” He said laughing and I had to admit that he was probably right.

He started to push the doors open as he said, “Now let’s go rescue your son!”

I stepped into the room and was surprised to see so many team leaders. I hadn’t known there were so many teams. I only knew half of the thirty some people in the room, which echoed loudly to the fact of how little I might actually know about the breadth of our private organization.

It was humbling to know that so many obviously important players had come together for the purpose of addressing and fixing my problem. It wasn’t exclusively my problem, in some ways it was there’s also.

They were all seated around a roundtable, which the symbolism of did not escape me. I remembered Anna’s comment that our organization was a collection of superheroes. Better put it was a collection of honor bound male and female knights gathered around a table where none were held in any more prominence than the one sitting next to them gathered together to see that justice was done and that good triumphed over evil.

I was directed through a gap in the table to sit in a chair in the center of the group at the table which now surrounded me. I wasn’t much good with making eye contact so to avoid embarrassing stairs I let my eyes drift over the assembled multinational group of agents. I don’t think there was an area of the globe not represented in terms of ethnicity.

An older powerfully built man spoke up and my eyes swung to him, “Fourteen years ago my daughter was taken. I got her back!”

An oriental looking man with a Japanese accent spoke up on the tails of the big American’s voice, “Two years ago my sister and her little boy were taken as hostages. I could not save my sister, but the boy is safe and I raise him now as my own.”

One after the other of the group spoke up as their combined words broke the ice of the perceived judgmentalness of their gazes upon me.

Instead of being in a court filled with judges I was instead among a collective group of people, who all had their own experiences that enabled them to relate to how Anna and I felt in this moment.

Flint spoke up and I zoomed in on him. I hadn’t been expecting him to say anything, “I was a boy growing on to be a young man as I was raised on a small farm in Minnesota. One night people came in the night and stole me, my brother and my sister because they thought we were special. There was a lot of testing done on us, but I escaped. I have unclear memories about virtually everything in my childhood. I can’t even remember what my parents looked like. Tyre, you know how committed I am to saving children from the missions that I have undertaken through the years. Missions that you’ve helped me make a success many times over. I think I speak for everyone in this room when I say that if we do not tolerate such practices occurring in the greater outside world we most certainly do not tolerate such occurrences against one of our own!”

In the wake of his words there was a general noise of acceptance upon everyone’s part seated around the table.

I nodded at Flint in thanks as I felt a tear slip down my face. Oddly I didn’t feel embarrassed by the show of emotion.

A middle-aged woman with skin as black as coal spoke smoothly into the quiet aftermath of the entire group’s affirmation of Flint’s words, “Perhaps now that you have heard our stories you will feel more at ease at sharing your own.” She stated in her beautifully accented Ethiopian voice.

I nodded, “Where do you want me to start?”

“From the beginning and please do not leave anything out even if it sounds trivial to your own ears. Everything is useful in helping us to build a picture of how it will be best to save your son.”

I started my story with Anna and I and I made my way through what already felt like it had been years long into the making of the reality of the past few days.

I conveyed my astonishment at Kevin’s quick grasp of chess. I covered the attack on Anna and how I and Kevin had helped deal with it. I talked of taking apart the computer and finding what I had seen and what my conclusions to Anna had been about Kevin.

I talked of the apartment explosion and my leaving on my wedding day and then of my reunitement with my family.

“Once Flint gave the code he had to Kevin the boy found my location in less than thirty seconds.”

I could see that the threat imposed by Kevin’s capture and the far greater implications other than just the breakup of one little family was beginning to become alarmingly clear to everyone present in the room. I described the attack on the house.

As I finished with our journey through the lava tube and the explosion of the volcano I saw one man of about forty shake his head, “Your either half crazy or you’ve got one big pair of balls to pull off that volcano trip!” He said in a Texan accented drawl.

I don’t know what made me say it and I regretted it instantly, “It’s more of a combination of both actually.”

For a split second there was silence and then in unison almost everyone broke out in laughter. Flint was dying from it and looked like he needed a shot of air badly.

I hadn’t meant to say something crude. It just sort of slipped out, because well it was true for lack of a better way of putting it. I glanced around and to my horror I saw Anna sitting against the back wall of the room.

I hadn’t known she was there. Her face was ten shades of red, but she was laughing so it shouldn’t go too hard on me later, hopefully. Chantry had recovered and brought the meeting back into its soberness of discussion.

“We know that the Iron Wills have been transgressing the bonds of our treaty with them for some time, but no breaches of trust of this significance have come to light before. Small wonder as to why they would make such a risky move now. As vital as Kevin is to his family he also represents an incalculable step forward in technology that is virtually without exception one of the greatest breakthroughs of the modern era. The price alone for such a wealth of knowledge could only be afforded by a handful of countries and commercial magnets in the world.” He said glancing around the table meaningfully.

I caught his drift of thought. With such a technological breakthrough at stake we could expect no friends in this operation in fact there could be direct opposition to us by those we often called friends.

“The details of this operation stay tightly secret are all agreed?” Chantry asked the room at large.

Everyone nodded their heads in matching somberness to fit the gravity of the moment.

“Now our sources have confirmed the boy’s whereabouts. Just as Tyre suspected he is being held at the Iron Wills main office in Prague right next to their rave hall. I’m putting Flint in charge of coordinating the ground assault and while we will need extensive backup ready to move in fast at a moment’s notice, I think it’s best if the retrieval team be small and one based out of stealth in their attempt to rescue the boy.”

A cool voice with a hard edge to it spoke up from the opposite side of the table from Chantry, “I do not agree with your assessment Sir.”

All eyes swiveled to the woman who sat across from Chantry. Her pose and demeanor echoed strong self-confidence in both her reasoning and her abilities to see her plans come to fruition.

Her darker toned gypsy looks were the complete picture of stoic resolve that was impossible to get a clear read on as to what she may be thinking. Her curly hair was restrained back tightly by a clasp at the back of her neck, but her face and body were essentially earthy in their appearance of symmetrical and voluptuous appeal.

The look of warm passion that one would have expected to grace her face in composition with the rest of her body was absent though. Her face even though beautiful clearly reflected the hardness that was within, which was evidenced by the implacable black eyes that left one with the feeling that she thought less of you and that mercy was not a part of her emotional makeup.

I had never seen her carried away by any other emotion other than anger. She did her work with a coldness that echoed my own life before joining the agency. Her code name was Maria Christina and I had to say she was a good fit for the book character that she was based off of.

A body built for passion, but a heart as cold as ice, punctuated by an active disdain for all things male. I knew virtually nothing else about her other than like me, she was also one of Chantry’s favored protégés.

I wasn’t exactly quite sure why Chantry seemed to favor her so much. It was true that in her work she was the soul of both efficiency and effectiveness, but it was rumored that she had been slated by Chantry to take over for him upon his inability to run the agency as the chairman of the board. I was not looking forward to her taking over even though I appeared to be on good terms with her based on her treatment of me in the past.

I was efficient and coldly calculated in my duties just as she was, which she seemed to respect about me. Her favor towards me could also stem from the fact that I had never approached or even hinted at any romantic involvement with her and for good reason. She may be gorgeous by any man’s standards, but I could only imagine what a major pain she would be like to live with!

A man was liable to wake up with the ability to reproduce gone after it had been cut off in the night. I had been about to object to Chantry’s plan myself before she had preempted me though.

Chantry’s eyes twinkled as he gazed admittedly at his favorite protégé next to Flint. “What is it you object to in the rescue of the boy, Maria?”

“I do not object to the rescue of the boy first, but I do not agree with holding the bulk of our forces in reserve. The Iron Wills society itself has to be taken down! They have broken the treaty many times and this time will not be the last. They were saved the last time, because we lacked the available agents needed to take them out completely. The treaty made sense then, but now it doesn’t. I say we create a diversion steal the boy away and then we take them out. Not just their headquarters in Prague, but globally as well. We make such a mess of it that any survivors that are left don’t think twice about reforming the society.”

Chantry nodded as if mulling the plan over in his head, but I could tell that instinctively he had set up Maria to come forward and speak out as she had. He had manipulated her rather smoothly in his ongoing process of developing her for leadership of the agency.

I glanced at Maria and from the further hardening of her jaw line I could see that she’d realized her duplicity as to how she had just been manipulated by a master of the game. Chantry looked around the table. The nods of support for the second plan were hesitant at first, but grew in strength.

Chantry’s eyes focused in on the woman with the Ethiopian accent, “What do you think Madeleine of Maria’s plan?”

Madeleine turned her head to glance at Maria, “I do not care for so much violence, but she is right. To borrow from the American children’s story, “If you give a mouse a cookie he’ll ask for a glass of milk. If the Iron Wills were willing to betray us to this extent, then it is safe to say that when they felt they could, they would take us out. Better to attack first, but Maria in the future it would be wise for you to learn the value of mercy even though we can have none on our enemy at this moment.”

Maria nodded slightly taking the rebuff from the older woman surprisingly well.

“Then it’s settled we’ll go full scale with Maria’s concept.” Chantry said.

I doubted if there was anyone left in the room that didn’t think her plan had been Chantry’s all along, but what was important though was that she, like Chantry had thought of the best plan, which helped establish in all the agents the belief that Maria could hopefully one day be as adept as Chantry was in the management of the Agency for Good. It certainly wasn’t a job I wanted.

Chantry was speaking again, “Let’s begin to plan our little war then. Maria you mentioned a diversion. What did you have in mind?”

“Me.” I said interrupting.

Everyone looked at me. “I’m the diversion.”

“What do you plan on doing Tyre?” Asked the big American who went by the codename Bendigo Shafter.

“I’m going to walk right into the rave hall and start taking them out. They’ll think I’m on a personal vendetta once it looks like I’m alone and they won’t ship the boy out. While I’m in the rave hall causing a ruckus, Flint and some others will get the boy.”

I could see that Chantry didn’t like it, but he was keeping silent. Flint didn’t hold back though, “That would be suicide Tyre for whoever tried it! The place is crawling with not only their people, but others that would join in on filling you full of lead!”

“Nevertheless I’m going to do it.” I added firmly.

Flint looked like he was about to object again when Chantry broke into the conversation, “I’ll only allow it if you have backup of some kind.”

“My team can provide backup.” Maria piped in resolutely.

Chantry nodded, “Okay then.”

I thanked Marie with my eyes and she inclined her head slightly in response. I owed her one. I hoped I lived long enough to return her the favor someday.