Spy Ski School (6 page)

“Nice work, roomie!” Zoe cheered, emerging from a motel room. Zoe tended to be unnaturally cheerful most of the time, but being on her first mission—and at a ski resort—had made her almost manic with glee. She'd been smiling constantly since the moment we'd met at the airport that morning. “You sure showed him!”

Erica regarded Zoe curiously, thrown by her enthusiasm. “Yes,” she said finally, “I did.”

Zoe came to my side to help me scrape the snow out of my hair. “How's your room?”

“Crowded,” I said. Zoe and Erica had lucked out; as the only two girls on the trip, they got a whole room and separate beds to themselves. “How's yours?”

“Great!” Zoe chirped, and then lowered her voice to even
below a whisper. “Although it's kind of freaky being with Erica. Half her luggage was ammunition. Who brings grenades on a ski vacation?”

“I can hear you,” Erica said, even though she was still fifteen feet away.

Zoe grimaced, alarmed that she'd been overheard.

“And it's not a vacation,” Erica pointed out. “It's a top-secret CIA mission.”

“Why does everyone keep saying that out loud?” I asked.

“Because the only people close enough to hear me are also on the mission,” Erica explained. “I've already cased the area. All the other residents of this fleabag motel are out skiing, housekeeping has gone home for the day, and the guy running the desk has the stereo in the lobby jacked up so loud playing Christmas music he can barely hear anything over the jingle bells. So the only humans around are either fellow spies or shams.”

“Shams?” I asked.

“Hello!” Alexander Hale cried, exiting his room.

“Case in point,” Erica told me, indicating her father.

Erica and Alexander had the most dysfunctional family relationship I'd ever encountered. And I came from a family where my cousins had gotten into three different fistfights at our Christmas party. Erica absolutely resented her father—though, in her defense, for much of his life, Alexander hadn't
been a model parent. For example, six months before, he'd accidentally left a piece of information crucial to national security in a public bathroom and then covered for himself by blaming the mistake on Erica, resulting in a black mark on her permanent record. Alexander had ultimately admitted to the truth—and ever since, he'd been desperately trying to prove his worth to Erica every chance he got, but she rejected each attempt he made.

“How are my little agents doing?” Alexander asked. He was wearing a ski outfit that appeared to be custom-tailored. Zoe and I looked round as Butterball turkeys in our parkas, but Alexander looked stylish as could be in his. “Having a good time so far?”

“Hardly,” Erica replied, before Zoe or I could. “This place is a dump.”

Alexander's good cheer faltered. When he smiled again, he looked far more apologetic. “Ah, yes. Well, there's been quite a bit of belt-tightening at the Agency lately. We have to keep an eye on the budget for missions now. Not like the good old days. Once, when I was on a mission in Gstaad, I rented the executive suite of the Hotel Beauxville for six weeks. . . .”

“And he wonders why the CIA doesn't have any money anymore,” Erica muttered.

“But this place isn't so bad,” Alexander said spiritedly.
“Sure, it's a little cramped. And it's cold. And it's unlikely that the sheets have been washed in the last few weeks. And there's barely any water pressure in the showers. And . . .” Alexander frowned. “What was my point again?”

“This place isn't so bad,” I reminded him.

“Oh! Right you are, Benjamin! The fact being that sometimes, struggling against adversity is the best way to build friendships. Why, I can remember one mission in Siberia, when I was subjected to simply the worst ordeal known to man. I was on the run from the Russians with Agent Johnny Cliff. We were off in the most hostile wilderness you can imagine, miles from civilization, with no food, no shelter, and half the KGB on our tail. But while the experience was miserable, it brought Johnny and I together in a way like no other. We were as close as brothers after that. Closer, maybe.”

“Didn't you take all the responsibility for the success on that mission?” Erica asked. “After which Johnny never talked to you again?”

Alexander smiled weakly. “Er, well . . . all brothers have their differences.”

Erica sighed with disgust and then started across the parking lot toward me. “Well, Dad, this has been extremely enlightening, as usual, but I'm afraid Ben and I have something to take care of right now.”

“I've lost a glove,” I said.

“No, you haven't.” Erica pulled my glove from her pocket and slapped it into my hand. “I found that in the lobby.”

“Hey, thanks!” I told her, then added, “Um . . . if you had this, what do we have to take care of?”

“Reconnaissance.” Erica grabbed my arm and led me across the parking lot, toward a pedestrian bridge that crossed over the highway to connect us with Vail Village. “We're on a mission, remember? It's time to get to work.”

Lionshead Village

Vail, Colorado

December 26

1630 hours

Thirty minutes later, I got
my first glimpse of my target.

Erica and I were casing the Shangs' hotel, the Arabelle. It was five stories tall and located in an area of Vail known as Lionshead Village. Lionshead was mostly free of roads, with wide-open concourses for tourists to walk on. The Arabelle had a prime position in the center of it, right at the base of Vail Mountain, closer to skiing than any other hotel, and it was incredibly luxurious. For example, there were “ski valets”
whose job it was to carry guests' skis to the lifts for them, even though the lifts were less than a minute away. Renting one small room for a week there cost more than my father's car. And yet Leo Shang had rented out the entire place, top to bottom, on the busiest ski week of the year for only himself, his daughter, and their security staff.

One side of the Arabelle faced a public square with an ice-skating rink, some fancy restaurants, an ice cream parlor, and a pizza joint. Erica had treated me to a slice of pepperoni and grabbed one for herself as well. We ate them as we walked around the hotel. “We'll look less suspicious if we're eating,” Erica explained. “Like two kids who just went out for pizza, rather than two spies on a recon mission. Plus, I'm starving.”

I didn't question this. I was starving too. Between the plane and the shuttle, we hadn't had a chance to eat much that day except airline peanuts.

It didn't seem as if we needed much of an excuse to be walking around, though. There were hundreds of other people walking around too. The ski lifts had just closed for the day, and skiers were pouring down the mountain in droves. An area the size of a soccer field in front of the Arabelle was crowded with people unclipping their skis and snowboards and heading off to their hotels. The ice rink was packed with parents and children. The line for pizza had taken fifteen minutes. Everyone seemed to be in an extremely good mood,
jazzed after their day of skiing, sharing stories about their best runs. For a brief period, I forgot all about my mission and began to grow excited about learning to ski the next day.

I watched a crowd of snowboarders not much older than me skid to a stop after their last run, beaming with excitement. “Looks like fun,” I observed.

“I suppose it could be,” Erica replied.

I took a bite of my pizza; the cheese was already congealing in the cold weather. “I can't believe you've never skied before.”

“Why not?”

“It just seems like something you would have done. I mean, you know fourteen different styles of martial arts. I figured you would have mastered skiing somewhere along the line.”

“I haven't had the chance,” Erica said. “I'll master it tomorrow.”

I smiled, amused by her attitude. “It's not supposed to be that easy. I read that it can take a few days before some people even learn how to turn.”

Erica shrugged. “I taught myself how to be a world-class fencer in one morning. It won't take me more than a day to get good at skiing.”

I wondered if Erica was right. At the moment, the nearby slopes were full of evidence that skiing could be difficult.
For every skier who came down the mountain well, there were many others coming down badly. I could see a dozen people who'd wiped out at the base of the mountain. As I watched, one poor soul shot off the run entirely and fell into Vail Creek. And things didn't get much better once everyone had taken their skis off. Ski boots seemed to have been designed to make walking as difficult as possible. Everywhere I looked, people were wobbling about in them like toddlers taking their first steps. One person crashed to the ground right in front of us, his skis and poles flying every which way.

Erica stepped right over him, leading me toward the front doors of the Arabelle.

I hustled after her, feeling strangely out of breath. “Hey. Can we slow down a bit?”

“Getting winded?” Erica asked.

“Yes.”

“It's the altitude. We're more than eight thousand feet above sea level here. There's far less oxygen. Your body isn't used to it yet. It might take a day or two.”

“You don't seem to be affected.”

“I'm using ashanti-veda yogic breathing techniques to modulate my oxygen intake. And, of course, I'm in much better shape than you are.”

“You can actually control how much oxygen you're breathing? How?”

“It's
very complicated. You have to harness your chi energy, align your chakras, and then—” Erica stopped so suddenly I almost slammed into her from behind. “The target is approaching,” she whispered.

I glanced around me, trying to pick up on what Erica had. But everything looked completely normal. We had now reached the front of the Arabelle, where a semicircular driveway passed the main doors. Skiers were streaming across the road, returning to other hotels that were farther from the slopes. “How did you . . . ?” I began.

“Check the front doors,” Erica hissed.

I looked that way. Some very large Chinese men had exited the Arabelle. Of the dozens of people within view, they were the only ones who weren't wearing ski clothes. Instead, they wore three-piece suits, each of which had the telltale bulge of a weapon under the jacket. Bodyguards. “Oh,” I said, feeling like an idiot for missing them before.

Two of the bodyguards, each the size of a professional linebacker, stepped into the path of the skiers, holding up their hands to stop the crowd, like extremely well-dressed crossing guards. They didn't say a word, but something ominous in their demeanor froze everyone in their tracks. Both guards had radio wires curling from their ears. One said something in Chinese into his.

“That's the ‘all clear,' ” Erica informed me.

A second later, three vehicles came down the road. I'd never seen anything like them. Each looked like someone had crossed a car with a tank. They were big and boxy, with all-terrain tires and what appeared to be armor plating. The windows were heavily tinted, so we couldn't see a thing as they rumbled past us.

The first looped past the front doors of the hotel and stopped, blocking the exit of the driveway. The second parked in front of the hotel doors. The third stopped short, blocking the driveway's entrance. No one got out of the first or third car-tank.

Jessica Shang got out of the second.

Leo Shang also got out of it, but I didn't see him. In the first place, he had exited on the far side of it, closer to the hotel doors, so the car-tank was blocking my view of him. And after that, he was instantly surrounded by a scrum of bodyguards.

But the
real
reason I didn't see him was that I couldn't take my eyes off Jessica.

The single picture I'd seen of her before hadn't done her justice. Either it had been too grainy, or she'd blossomed since it was taken. Probably a bit of both. Whatever the case, she was equally as beautiful as Erica—only, there was something different about her. Erica always had an aura of danger about her that made her alluring but also incredibly intimidating.
Meanwhile, Jessica, despite being surrounded by armored vehicles and menacing guards, appeared to be completely the opposite. As opposed to Erica she seemed . . . friendly. I couldn't explain how, but I immediately got the sense that she'd be extremely kind and good-natured. She had wide, luminous eyes and an endearing little smile, and she was wrapped in a big, fuzzy pink parka that made her look like she was wearing a giant Hostess Sno Ball.

Jessica quickly slipped around the car-tank and disappeared into the pack of bodyguards before being shunted through the doors of the hotel. My entire glimpse of her had lasted five seconds. If that.

I kept my eyes locked on the hotel doors, hoping she might exit again.

“Oh, great,” Erica muttered. “One look at the target and you already have a crush on her.”