Horse Spy (5 page)

“We are here to, as you people say, RVPS,” said the man, smiling.

“I think he means RSVP,” Stevie suggested helpfully.

“As you say.” He nodded briefly in Stevie’s direction.

“It’s French,” Lisa piped up. “It stands for
Répondez, s’il vous plaît
, which means ‘Please respond.’ ”

He smiled weakly at Lisa.

“Yes?” Carole said.

“Ms. Nazeem would like very much to ride here with you when she comes to this country next week,” said the man.

Another man stepped forward. Carole hadn’t noticed him before, perhaps because he was hidden among all the black suits.

“Let me introduce myself,” he said, offering Carole a hand. “I am representing the Nazeem family and planning their schedules for their visit to the United States of America.” He gave Carole a card with his name in Arabic script. On the other side was a translation into English. Carole tucked it in her pocket. “Is there someplace we can talk?” he asked.

By then Max and Lisa had given up all pretense of continuing their exercise program and were standing right behind Carole.

“We can go into my office,” Max suggested, introducing himself.

“Satisfactory,” said the secretary. “And while we talk, would you have any objection to the security team’s looking around the stable? They will need to be sure everything is safest possible for Ms. Nazeem’s visit.”

“Everything here is very safe,” Max assured him. “I always require that my riders follow my rigorous safety program.”

“I am not talking about riding helmets,” the secretary said. “I am talking about terrorism.”

“That, too,” Max said, nodding as if all of his riders were worried about terrorism. “Of course. This way, please.”

There was no way Lisa and Stevie were going to miss a minute of this. They tied their horses to the fence in a shaded area of the schooling ring and tagged along after Max and Carole into his office.

As they walked, the man who had given Carole his card introduced himself as the Nazeems’ secretary. Speaking very formally, he explained that the whole Nazeem family was coming to the United States, specifically Washington, D.C., and although Ms. Nazeem had many obligations of state, she had requested that she be allowed to ride while she was in America. Specifically, she had asked if she could ride with this girl who’d written her a letter and spend some time at Pine Hollow with Carole Hanson and her friends.

The secretary then looked at Lisa and Stevie. “These girls, I presume?”

“You bet!” Stevie answered. She didn’t want anybody to make any mistakes about exactly who Carole’s friends were. In fact, she didn’t want to miss anything. She hurried to walk right next to Carole. Lisa walked beside Stevie.

The group entered Max’s office and everybody took a seat. The secretary pulled a notepad out of his pocket to check something.

“Karya will be arriving in the United States next Tuesday,” he said. “On Wednesday she will accompany her mother on a tour of the Beltway Mall.”

Stevie stifled a giggle. The secretary glowered, looking at her over his reading glasses. “And what is so funny about that?” he asked.

“You don’t tour a mall,” Stevie explained. “You shop at one.”

“Yes, well, they will observe things there, and that’s a tour, right?”

“Yes, sir,” she said, and then decided to keep her mouth shut, realizing that nice and efficient as this man might be, he’d been born without any sense of humor, so there wasn’t much point in continuing a conversation with him.

“After that, there is a luncheon at the ADR embassy, and then there’s something in the afternoon—a reading of essays about the produce of the fertile valleys of the ADR, followed by a dinner at the home of the agriculturist whose grandfather, also an agriculturist, developed the plan for the dam that provides waters for those fertile valleys. And the following morning, Mrs. Nazeem and Karya will meet with representatives of American labor unions who want to reward Mrs. Nazeem for her support of the labor movement in the ADR,
followed by a visit to an exhibit at the International Commission on Hydroponic Farming at which Mrs. Nazeem will—”

Stevie could contain herself no longer: “Stop! Doesn’t this girl ever get a break?” she asked.

“I was just getting to that,” said the secretary. “She is completely free to do as she pleases from two-fourteen on Thursday afternoon until three-oh-four. Can she ride here then?”

Three young girls and a stable owner stared at the man.

“Forty-five minutes?” Max asked.

“That’s not enough time to go on a good ride!” Carole said.

“And she won’t have time to muck out a stall!” Stevie protested.

Lisa was calmer. “In order for Karya to enjoy herself, she’s going to need to spend time at the stable, meet the horses, get used to the place, tack up, and go for a nice ride. We sort of got the impression—from the article we read—that she’d like to have that kind of time.”

“How much time do you mean?” the man asked.

“Two to three hours,” Lisa said without batting an eye.

The man looked at his notepad.

Max’s phone rang and he picked it up. “Yes, this is he,” said Max. “Yes, of course I know my own Social Security number.” There was a pause. A puzzled look came over his face. “Well, you called me,” he said. “Perhaps you’d like to tell me
your
Social Security number.”

The secretary looked up from his pad. “That would be the State Department,” he explained to Max and the girls.

“Is this someone from the State Department?” Max asked. A moment of silence. “Well, now we’re getting somewhere.
Yes, Mr. Nazeem’s security team is here. The secretary is in my office right now,” Max said.

The conversation went on. It became clear to the listeners that someone from the U.S. State Department was asking Max to cooperate with the ADR security team.

“Of course I’ll cooperate,” Max said. “I always cooperate with armed men.”

“Are you guys armed?” Stevie asked.

“I am not armed,” the secretary said.

Stevie turned to her friends. “Well, that answers that. This man may not be carrying a gun, but all those other guys are.”

“Of course they are,” Carole said. “They’re supposed to protect lives.” Because her father was in the Marines, she was a little more attuned to such matters, although her father always kept whatever arms the Marines required him to have locked up in his office at work. She’d never even seen his weapons.

Max, in the meantime, kept listening to the State Department representative. “Yes, yes, of course. I understand. We’ll certainly cooperate in any way we can. Definitely. Oh, yes, I understand, they’ll need to check everything and everyone. Um-hmmm.”

It went on like that for a while. Finally Max hung up the phone and turned to the secretary. “As you heard, sir, we’re here to be as helpful as possible to you and the agents and we’ll do everything we can to make sure Karya has a good time. Now, let’s negotiate the hours, because Lisa was exactly right that two hours would be the mini—” The phone rang again. He picked it up.

This time it wasn’t for him. It was for Carole. He handed
the phone to her. It wasn’t the Secret Service, the State Department, or even MI-6. It was Karya Nazeem herself.

Carole could hardly believe it. She listened for a while and then began smiling. “Yes, everybody’s here,” she said. “There are a dozen men in black suits interviewing horses and looking in hay bales for spies!”

“Oh, they’re like that,” Karya said. “My father is always afraid for me because he has enemies and he worries that someone will try to get to him through me.”

“You mean this stuff is for real?” Carole said. As soon as she said it, she was sorry. Nobody would send out a dozen agents just because it seemed like fun.

“I guess so. But I don’t let it worry me. Now, what about Alek there?” Carole realized she was asking about the secretary, whose name she’d noticed when she glanced at the business card he had given her. “He proposed a forty-five-minute visit to the stable.”

“Well, that’s enough …,” Karya said.

Carole felt her disappointment growing until Karya continued.

“… for me to have the complete tour you promised in your letter and for us to tack up our horses. That’ll all take about forty-five minutes, right? And then we can spend about an hour or two on the trail, and then we can get back to the stable and groom our own horses, and then, if there’s time, we can muck out some stalls. You did say something about being able to get special permission for me to use the pitchforks, right?”

Carole grinned. Already she liked this girl enormously.

“I think we can work something out on that. I’ll get Max’s
special permission for you to have access to one of the pitchforks. Now, would you like to talk to Alek and explain that forty-five minutes is inadequate and he’s going to have to find a way to get you excused from the tour of the electrical plant that installed the gates on the dam …?”

Now Karya giggled. “It’s that bad, isn’t it?”

“Sounded pretty awful to me,” Carole confirmed.

“Let me talk to him.”

Carole handed the phone to the secretary. He spoke to Karya in a totally unfamiliar language. Carole presumed it was Arabic and only then stopped to wonder how it was that this daughter of the president of a foreign land spoke such great English.

“We’re going to like her a lot,” Carole said to her friends and Max. It had only taken five minutes on the telephone for Carole to be sure of that, and her friends had heard enough of Carole’s end of the conversation to know she knew what she was talking about.

Soon Karya was off the line and everything was all business again, but by then it was really just details. The girls had gotten what they most wanted, and that was a lengthy opportunity to visit with Karya, who would be at Pine Hollow the following Thursday, a week from today, arriving at the unlikely hour of 2:14 but being allowed to stay as long as she wanted. She’d convinced Alek that the diplomatic ribboncutting event could go on without her. He made large black X’s in his notebook and everybody was happy.

Max then spent time with Alek, showing him and some of the agents, whom Stevie had immediately dubbed men in black (because most of them were, and looked as if they’d
stepped off a movie set, down to their bug-eyed reflector sunglasses), all around Pine Hollow and giving them maps of the trails on the surrounding woods.

The Saddle Club worked with the remaining men in black, explaining who they were, giving them their names and addresses and their parents’ names and occupations.

“And have they ever been arrested?” one of the agents asked Stevie. Once again, she couldn’t keep herself from laughing.

“We have ways of finding out these things,” he said sternly.

“Oh, I wish they had been,” Stevie responded. “It would be so much easier for me!”

Her friends laughed then, too. In spite of himself, the agent cracked a smile.

“And you two? Your parents? Have they been arrested?”

“Not a chance,” Lisa said.

“No way!” Carole assured him.

It went on like that for a while. The men questioned Red and Mrs. Reg. They made an appointment to talk with Max’s wife, Deborah, and seemed concerned when they found out she was a reporter, but looked relieved when Max promised she wasn’t planning to write an article about Karya Nazeem.

Finally they all left. That was when the girls remembered that Polaris and Blue were still tied out in the schooling ring. It hadn’t done them any harm, but it didn’t seem fair. The good news was that Max said there had been enough excitement for everybody for that day and the girls should just put the horses away, groom and water them, and head on home. He’d see them again first thing in the morning.

Carole’s father was late getting home that evening. She’d
gotten dinner almost ready and was sitting on her bed reading her history assignment when the phone rang. It was Stevie.

“You know, Carole, those guys are doing pretty thorough checking. They already called my parents, and they’ve been in touch with the school. Do you suppose they might find out what I did to the polliwog in the bio lab?” Carole remembered Stevie’s test with blue food coloring. “And you know it’s
possible
that someone might get the impression that I am the person who telephoned the seventh-grade French teacher to tell him he had a burst pipe so he’d hurry home instead of giving his class a totally un-called-for pop quiz. Do you suppose the men in black can check phone records for that sort of thing?”

“Uh, Stevie, I don’t think they really care about that sort of stuff,” Carole began. “I think they’re more concerned with matters of state—like have you been spying for any terrorist organizations or threatening to overthrow any duly elected governments recently.”

“Well, sure, but people can jump to conclusions about the most innocent—”

There was a knock on Carole’s door and her father came in. He had a seriously concerned look on his face.

“Hang on,” she said, interrupting Stevie’s next confession. “Hi, Dad,” she said.

He acknowledged her greeting with a nod and then asked, “Carole, have you been doing any spying for a small Middle Eastern country known as ADR?”

Clearly, the men in black had been very busy.

“Gotta go,” Carole told Stevie, and hung up the phone.

“Well, it’s like this, Dad …,” she began.