Spy Mom (10 page)

It was hard to say no. So I plotted and planned a wedding, which included one hundred fifty of Will's closest friends and exactly none of mine.

Now, even if Will was marrying me to stick it to his parents, it was impossible for him to ignore what his father had suggested. It led to some strange conversations, such as:

“So you lived off the grid?” he'd ask.

“What? Grid?”

“You know. You didn't use credit cards, you kept your cash in a safe-deposit box, didn't own a car or property or anything.”

“I had a really nice bicycle.”

“Was it because you worked for the government? You probably saw some scary things.”

Yes. Some.

“Well, I think it takes a lot of guts to live like that,” he'd continue.

“Sure,” I'd say. “So gutsy.” Now at the time, in my mind, I hadn't actually lied. I had simply said nothing. Bit by bit, Will filled in my backstory with little or no input from me.

Add to the mix my dead parents, and some compassion gene in Will magically turned on and he felt terrible that I'd had this little orphan Annie childhood and he wanted to make it all better. Thus the princess wedding.

Maybe in the end it's nothing more than another example of love and denial, twisted up together like a pretzel. Not all that unusual if you consider the human condition.

So then, what is the real story? Everyone must come from somewhere and I am no exception to this rule. I grew up on a farm in upstate New York, surrounded by acres of corn and milk cows named Bessie and Moo. It was an idyllic existence in the beginning. During the summer, I'd roll out of bed in my nightgown and bare feet, grab a few still-warm biscuits and a glass of fresh milk from the kitchen table, and go sit on the porch. Watching the farm hustle and move all around me, I'd plot my day. Maybe I'd get Luke from next door and we'd fish for trout in the river with our dime-store poles. Or go swimming in Black Lake. Or ride our bikes down the endless dirt road that seemed to go nowhere. Or go searching for fossils in the dried-out streambed that ran by Luke's farm. The possibilities were endless. As I was only eight years old, I was not called upon to help on the farm. And because we lived in the middle of nowhere, I was allowed to run amok, unquestioned. I had the long, endless days of childhood summer all to myself and everything was a wonder to behold.

I would come flying into the house in the early evening, hair a mess, damp from swimming, covered in dirt and mud, a huge grin on my face, and throw myself into my chair at the big, oak dining room table. My parents would look at me and shake their heads. What are we raising here, a wild animal? I'd dig into my food—meat, potatoes, vegetables, and bread straight out of the oven—as if I hadn't eaten in a month. After dinner, I'd help clean up the kitchen, we'd play cards or watch TV, and I'd go to bed. The next day I'd wake up and do it all over again.

The winters in upstate New York are another situation entirely—long, cold, and gray. It is safe to say nothing good ever happened in an upstate New York winter. I like to believe it was the bleakness that made the annual winter visits from the man in the dark blue overcoat stand out in my memory. Or maybe it was the fact that he was the only person ever invited into our house.

The first time he came I opened the door despite my mother yelling that she'd get it. I flung it open and there he stood, tall, slightly stooped, a thick wool cap on his head, and the overcoat, much too fancy for our neck of the woods. He was covered with new snowflakes that were quickly melting into shiny little spots on the blue wool. I stepped back to let him in but he didn't move, staring at me, a slight twitch evident at the corner of his mouth.

“Come in, please,” I said in my most adult voice. And the man in the snow-covered coat seemed to exhale my name as if it had been caught in his throat for years.

At that moment, my mother came flying out of the kitchen, pulling off her apron on the way. She grabbed me by the upper arm, too hard. Her fingers would leave bright red marks on my pale skin.

“What did I just tell you about answering the door?” she hissed.

“Not to,” I answered, my eyes welling up with hot, humiliated tears. How could she, in front of this perfect stranger? The man removed his cap and stepped over the threshold.

“It's okay,” he said. He continued to stare at me as I slid, uncomfortable now, behind my mother's skirt.

“Sir?” my mother said, trying to draw his attention back to her. The man shook his head as if to clear it.

“Yes. Of course. I didn't expect her to be so … lovely.” He gave me one last pained glance and followed my mother down the hallway.

From my room I could hear them downstairs, talking quietly and urgently. I was not yet old enough to yearn for the name of this man, the details of their conversation, a connection to the great big world outside my window. That would come later.

Not your average farmers, my parents would travel every February, when activity on the farm was slow, to New York City for a long weekend of good restaurants, opera, museums, and a hotel room with crisp cotton sheets and a fluffy white comforter. It appeared to be the one extravagance of two people who worked dawn to dusk every other day of the year. One February, while driving home during an ice storm, they were hit by an out-of-control tractor-trailer and both of them were killed instantly.

Later I learned the truck driver was drunk and had fallen asleep at the wheel of his fifteen-ton rig. After two years with the Agency, I made a discreet inquiry and found him. He lived alone in a dead and depressing corner of the city of Utica, New York. When I showed up at his door, intent on extracting some revenge, I learned a valuable lesson. Sometimes letting a person continue to live is a far worse punishment than killing him. Releasing this broken and pathetic man from life would have been a gift, and I was not there to bestow such a kindness. I left him in his dark apartment, which smelled like mildew and sweat, to rot away his remaining days.

When I came back to Washington, Simon Still wanted to know why I didn't do it. I tried not to express surprise that he knew what I was up to. I shrugged.

“It wasn't worth it,” I said. “What's done is done.”

He gave me a cold look. “You lack a certain killer instinct, Sal,” he said. “Someday that is going to get you into trouble.”

The farm was sold and all of my parents' assets were placed in a trust for me. I used the money to pay for college. In the years in between I lived with an aunt and uncle in Vermont. It wasn't bad. It wasn't good. It wasn't really anything but killing time, waiting to see what came next.

All of this would have been available for Will II's investigator, but he was missing a crucial piece of information: my name. Lucy Parks never lived in upstate New York. She lived in Connecticut somewhere and probably had pink wallpaper and a fluffy rug covered in hand-embroidered butterflies. She was the kind of girl who would have ended up married to an entrepreneur with his own investment fund, living in San Francisco, obsessing over the amount of omega-3 her child is getting in his diet. She makes total sense. The girl from the farm, the one who used to run down the gravel driveway with no shoes, chasing the dogs, she is gone.

But no story, at least in real life, is ever quite so tidy. One night in an empty bar on the Lower East Side of New York, Simon, well into his fourth scotch, leaned in close to me.

“Don't you ever wonder,” he slurred, “how it is you came to be here?” A drink or two behind him but not altogether sober, I asked him what the hell he was talking about.

“Here in this bar or here on this planet? You'll have to be more specific.”

Simon tried to focus his swimming eyes on me.

“You're so good at deflecting, aren't you? Must run in the family.” He paused long enough to toss back the last of his drink, slam down the glass, and position his hat just so on his head. When he tried to stand up, I had to steady him to keep him from falling on the floor. He grabbed onto my arm and pulled me in so our faces were inches apart. His breath was heavy and sour and I tried to pull back.

“Do you think you were plucked from obscurity by John Smith, NSA, because you were so smart? Nothing is ever that simple. I've known canned tuna with more curiosity than you.”

With that he pushed me away and stumbled out into the cold New York night.

Most people, anyone sane or curious or even human for instance, would have gone after him and demanded an explanation. But not me. No. I stayed right there on my rickety bar stool and sucked on the sticky sweet cherry from my drink. Then I ordered another.

Simon had a way of finding the most tragic thing in your life and exploiting it. Although I would rather have been set on fire than tell him about how I always felt a little bit disconnected from everyone around me, he knew. My past was gray, existing only in my memory, and Simon found that irresistible.

Our wedding, Will's and mine, was beautiful. It was held on the patio of a faux Italian villa in Napa Valley, surrounded by stunning English gardens and hills covered with grape vines. The English gardens upset Will. “All that water!” But he got over it and by midafternoon everyone was drunk on the house wine and dancing up a storm. Even my new in-laws seemed to have thawed a bit, welcoming me into their family with a hint of tension behind their eyes. When the party finally ended, my father-in-law was propped up against the bar. He grabbed me as I walked past.

“Who are you?” he slurred. “Everyone leaves a paper trail.”

I smiled, making my eyes as cold as possible. “It would be better for you if you let this go,” I said. With that, his fingers slid from my arm and his face lost some of its rosy glow. He would not remember this incident later, which was good for me. Sometimes I overreact.

I was happy to survive the wedding more or less intact, but that was not enough for my darling new husband. Will wanted some sort of great adventure for our honeymoon.

“How about Thailand?” he suggested, standing in the travel section of our local bookstore, months before our wedding.

“No, bad weather that time of year,” I said. Have you ever lived through a monsoon in the jungle? It's horrible.

“Cambodia?”

I looked at him over the top of the book I was holding. “Tell me you're kidding.”

“It's supposed to be amazing, off the beaten path. Time to go is now,” he quoted from the open travel book in his hands.

“No.”

“Jeez, Lucy, where is your sense of adventure?” At which point I started laughing in a high-pitched, slightly insane sort of way. I'd never traveled on my clean passport. I'd never traveled for pleasure. I had no idea how it was done. And I was paranoid that the minute I stepped outside of the borders of my own country, bullets would start to whiz by over my head. Hard to relax in that frame of mind.

“Laos? China? Nepal? Bhutan?”

“Aren't honeymoons supposed to involve a lot of sex and cocktails and things?”

“Typically.”

“So why do you want to go to a place where there is a better than average chance that you will end up sleeping on a bed of rocks with all of your clothes on?”

“That is a good question.”

“Think about it. Where are your priorities?” I asked.

Will put down his travel book and walked toward me. “My priorities are in order,” he said, as he slid his hands under my shirt. Pulling me into the enclosure of his jacket, he undid my bra and pulled both it and my shirt off over my head. He unbuttoned his own shirt so our skin could touch. Standing half naked amid the dark stacks of our favorite bookstore, I found myself sighing with pure pleasure.

“Do you think this is a good idea?” I whispered.

“I'm showing you my priorities,” he said, maneuvering me backward toward the single cramped bathroom with the drippy faucet. Once inside, under the harsh fluorescent light, he took off the rest of my clothes, lifted me onto the dirty sink, and had his way with me. We spent our honeymoon on the very civilized Caribbean island of Anguilla. I promised him adventure, excitement, and near-death experiences for our next vacation. Which I have tried very hard to avoid.

Before we get too far along, I should probably explain how I first came to meet the Blind Monk. It is not a love story.

After I survived following Peter Bradley in New Zealand without getting caught or killed, the Blind Monk became my hot property. Mind you, I didn't ask for preferential treatment when it came to men with particularly bad intentions, but all things Monk suddenly started to flow downstream in my direction, leaving me drenched and cold.

The agents trapped down in the daisy with me couldn't believe their good fortune.

“You really stepped in it, Sally,” they'd laugh.

“Better you than me.”

“Simon must be trying to kill you.”

“Now, had Blackford managed to off the guy before he went rogue, things would be different. Remember to thank him for the inheritance next time he snatches you!”

So of course when word came in that the Blind Monk was masquerading as a masseur in a place catering to western tourists off of Sukhumvit in Bangkok, presumably not to give massages, Simon barely let me finish my morning coffee before we were on a plane heading east. During the flight, Simon sat beside me, drumming his fingers, tapping his foot, fiddling with the TV controls, spinning the gold ring he wore on his right ring finger around and around.

“Will you stop it?” I finally begged. “You are starting to drive me crazy. Wouldn't it be better if you went home and let me handle this? You don't seem centered.”

Simon glared at me. “I'm very centered. And you would not be able to handle the Blind Monk on your own. He's a tricky character. Takes a seasoned agent to go up against someone of his caliber.”

I rolled my eyes. “Simon, it's not as if I just got off the boat, you know?” He ignored me.