Angela Sloan (24 page)

Wilhelmina buried her mouth in it.

Dirk produced a set of bolt cutters, which he used to cut a flap in an eight-foot chain-link fence. On the other side, more woods. We slipped through in our Salvation Army suits.

“Now we'll assemble the device,” Dirk said.

I reminded him we had planned to do that inside.

“There may not be time inside, Lucy. If we do it now, we can carry it in, drop it in a toilet stall, and get out the way we came.”

“We'll never get out,” I said.

“Let's do it,” Wilhelmina said. She stripped her jacket off. She had a roll of black vinyl tape and two pencil-shaped blasting caps in the lining. “Come on, Lucy.”

I dropped the raincoat. Underneath it I had on a fishing vest with five sticks of dynamite in it.

Dirk taped the sticks alongside his flashlight—a cheap one containing four batteries. He'd rigged it so some loose wires dangled from the switch. Eeyore's wind-up alarm clock went on top. Small screws had been added on the face and minute hand. Dirk wound the clock and taped it in place. His hands were steady as he pressed the two blasting caps longways into two sticks of dynamite.

“Why do you need two of those?” I said.

“One could fail.” He set the crude device in his shoulder bag and presented it to Wilhelmina, who pulled the strap over her head.

Beyond a second fence, it was just as Dirk had said it would be. No security anywhere. We stepped off a curb and crossed a parking lot. Each car had its permit hanging from the rearview mirror. They were ordinary cars in an ordinary parking lot. If anything, the parking lot was duller than most. The permits had only numbers on them.

Before this day I had never been to Agency Headquarters. I had wondered about the place and studied the pictures that are available. In some you can see what looks like a wide tent or awning at one end of the Headquarters building, and I had assumed that to be the front, but I now saw it wasn't. The building they call the Bubble was at the front. It is a white,
dome-shaped auditorium resembling the crown of a mushroom. We passed a few people, and no one stopped us or seemed to notice us much. One fellow, who had a bench in the sun to himself, was eating peanuts.

A part of my mind had forgotten why I was there until Dirk dropped the door on Wilhelmina's arm. She made no sound, but I saw her cringe, and when her head turned I saw her grinning.

The lobby of the Headquarters building is mostly white stone. At the center of the floor is the Agency seal, done in black granite. Two uniformed guards stood well back from the entrance. It's a bare, sterile room—no curtains to hide behind, no cubbies to tuck things into. A few plain chairs were lined up by the wall.

A woman stood with her back to us. Wilhelmina asked her where the ladies' room was.

The woman was smiling when she turned. “You'll have to wait for your escort,” she said. “There's no ladies' room on this side.”

Dirk went limp when a man touched his shoulder. It happened fast. That man and one other caught Dirk by the arms and led him away.

Wilhelmina saw it happen, and I watched the understanding cross her face. Here we were: we had walked right in, led by Dirk, and why? She was frozen very briefly. Then she ran, or tried to. The pumps slid out from under her. She hit the floor hard on her hip.

Men had appeared behind us to block the door. Suddenly they were everywhere. Wilhelmina scrambled to the wall, kicking her scratched legs. She got behind a chrome and vinyl chair. Men were running across the floor, soles clacking and making a rain of echoes.

Wilhelmina stuck her arms into the bag. She brought the ugly, taped-up device out onto her thighs. What a shoddy-looking thing it was—a child's first science project. The circle of men who'd been closing around us stopped. Wilhelmina pinched the hands of the clock together. She held her white thumb on the flashlight switch.

“Come closer,” she said.

The only other woman in the crowd—the one who'd smiled—had my arms pinned. “All she has to do is push the switch,” I told the woman.

The woman asked me whether I was afraid, and I told her I was.

“Don't be,” she said in my ear. “It's only glue and sawdust.”

The officers who surrounded Wilhelmina stood their ground as she
cradled the toy bomb in her lap, spitting and barking profanities at them. She flung her head backward, and I heard it knock the marble—a loud, sickening sound. She did it again.

No one here was afraid of Wilhelmina's bomb. The only thing these men were wary of was the hysterical woman on the floor. She could bite, scratch, and kick with her heels. She was hopeless and had her shoulders to the wall.

“Settle down, Louise,” someone said to her.

That was another surprise for me. Louise Larch is now a household name, but in the short time I knew her, I never once heard her called that.

She screamed and threw her head against the stone again.

“
Ouch,
” an officer said. Some people laughed.

I tried to pull my arms free. “Someone stop her,” I said.

No one moved. Louise Larch slung her head against the wall again. She screamed this time. It was too much. I raised my leg and dragged it down the inside calf of the woman who had my arms, planting my boot sole hard on her arch. She let go. I ran at Wilhelmina and grabbed her head to drag her away from the wall.

She bit me hard between my thumb and first finger. She got a good hold of me with her little square teeth and wouldn't let go. I howled. Then she pushed the flashlight switch, and both of us got a surprise. Louise Larch had thought we were going to die, I guess. And I'd thought nothing would happen. Wrong again.

I only wish the genius who gave Dirk that fake dynamite had also thought to give him some fake blasting caps.

P
eople at my new school are always asking me how I got my glass eye. I tell them I was born with it. Some of these West Virginia kids are not as dumb as they look, however. In the high school parking lot I saw a boy weld two bumpers together using a car battery and a set of jumper cables. Everyone had a laugh except for Mr. Breen and Miss Bowers, whose bumpers they were. I'm not driving cars anymore until I'm legal. Mrs. Gandy drops me off and picks me up in her long, tan Chrysler.

Since I moved in with the Gandys she has been kind enough to lay off of the prying questions. I know she is curious about my early life. So am I, sometimes. Had we reconverged, I would have had many things to talk about with Ray.

Mr. Gandy turns into a storyteller when he has had a few drinks. I asked him one night to tell me why, in 1960, Ray went to Stanleyville. What was the intelligence requirement?

“I don't remember precisely, Angela. It had been an important city under Belgian rule. We were there because we were everywhere. The truth is, I never understood that place nor knew what the hell was going to happen next. Africa! Stanleyville had a university, but it fell to forty witch doctors walking down Main Street waving palm leaves. The city succumbed to magic, then it ate itself. I understand the Soviets, and I am beginning to make some sense of the GOP, but four years in the Congo left me none the wiser. We must have done something right, however, because the Republic of Zaire remains a staunch ally of the Western democracies. This can only redound to its advantage in years to come.”

He has offered to contact the Belgian Embassy regarding any relatives I may have. I only need to tell him what my name is. But I don't think I will.

After everything that's happened, I may as well stay Angela.

About Ray. He wasn't perfect. We were swindled on those Tennessee driver's licenses. Recently, I found out that the real ones don't even have photos. It is a little yellow card with typing on it. Also, Marilyn was right that we should have had a better system of communication set up for after the bugout. I understand the
World News Digest
with my “all clear” in it was lying under the mail slot when Mrs. Edel and the meter reader found Ray.

I don't know why he went back to I Street. He told me not to go there. It was the last place I'd have looked for him. Maybe he didn't know how sick he was, or maybe he did know. The coroner's certificate says his death was from “acute alcohol withdrawal.”

If he were alive he would be in jail now with H
ORSEFLY
and G
RISTLE
and the rest of them. G
RISTLE:
he thought Watergate might hurt Nixon. But he gave the people of this country too little credit. The voters have once again decided for themselves, and as I write this the President is about to begin his second term. A year from now, I imagine the break-in will mostly have been forgotten, except by the few whose lives were wrecked by it.

I think Ray would not have minded jail so much, but seeing his face in the paper would have been a terrible thing. He was one of the men who worked quietly, content to have his medal locked away in a safe in Langley. I loved Ray because he pulled me down from a tree on the day I lost everything, and I regret that I wasn't with him in the end. He died downstairs on the couch without a blanket. Evidently he was too ill or not thinking straight enough to get upstairs to where the blankets were. I could have helped with things like that and would have done so bravely, though I suspect he didn't want me to see him die. The first thing Ray ever said to me was “Don't be scared,” and I'm not and I would have liked to return the kindness.

One final thing.

I don't know where Betty or “Ding” is, and asking me a thousand times won't change it. The last time I saw her was the fifth of July on the National Mall, when worms were creeping over the sidewalks trying not to drown. Check the weather reports. Off she went, toward Chinatown. I don't know whether she got there. I stopped looking, and she may have
gone straight, right, or left. The person you are looking for is a Chinese female, five-foot-two, wiry, dark of complexion, with an overall surly, obstinate, and independent manner. There's your description. It occurs to me now she must have made a poor Maoist, back at home, considering how mulish she is, and always averse to going along with the group in even the most trivial thing.

Like they say of a mule, she would live twenty years just to kick you.

She has a few freckles across both cheeks. That's a little unusual for a Chinese, as far as I know.

The best bet for picking her up will be on a shoplifting charge.

Your Mr. Wicker, the polygraph man, implied that I might be still in touch with Betty or even hiding her. On that subject, here are some thoughts that I hope you will consider.

Why would I want to help her in any way? She only gave me headaches.

She steals, which I do not approve of except when it is necessary.

She is a Communist, which I never approve of.

Where am I going to hide a Chinese Communist in Wigmore, West Virginia? In the Gandys' spare bedroom? Mrs. Gandy would certainly notice on one of her tidying jags. In the barn? But Betty dislikes horses and she is afraid of cats.

Let me put it this way. Suppose for the sake of argument that your Mr. Wicker were correct, and I did in fact have Betty hidden away in a cave somewhere on the property, living in high style off chicken and rice and perfecting her English by reading old copies of
American Girl
magazine. In the scheme of things, so what? She is a small and insignificant person, a blip of humanity, as am I. I am not saying it is so (in fact, I am saying it is
not
so), but even if you think that such a relationship exists, why waste your time on it? It is a two-headed frog of a thing—a totally meaningless accident of nature. Nature is strange. Sometimes a horse and a goat are friends, and it is merely something weird they do. I don't know why they do it. Some horses do not get along with other horses, and some goats can get along with anything. What I am describing now is not the case, but if it were the case it would not be hurting anyone, and the best thing that you could do would be to leave it alone.

Sincerely,
Angela Sloan

A Novel

James Whorton, Jr.

Reading Group Guide

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Angela Sloan.
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It's the summer of 1972 and one “strange, dry girl”—fourteen-year-old Angela Sloan—is on the run from the CIA, even though she is
quite
certain that her father, ex-agent Ray Sloan, had
very
little involvement in the Watergate fiasco. As Ray and Angela hit the road, sometimes together, more often apart, Angela, who prides herself on her ability to go unnoticed, finds herself in the company of rather unlikely car-fellows, such as a strange, pro-communist Chinese girl named Betty, and a bevy of not-so-laid-back hippies with their own hidden agenda. As she tries to dodge agents and find a way to reunite with Ray, Angela learns how to drive a car, smoke a cigarette, subsist on diner food, and charm a motel desk-keeper into giving her vital information; but most important, she comes to find that things are not always what they seem in this hilarious and poignant comedy of broken girls, stoic men, and mean hippies set amid the chaos of the Nixon era.

1. Names are transient throughout the novel; many characters have more than one name, some have no real name at all, and we never do find out Angela's real name—yet, the title of the book is simply
Angela Sloan
. Discuss the significance in relation to the story and Angela's journey.