Girl Takes Up Her Sword (17 page)

He could see she was moved by what they were saying. Probably no other sort of consideration could move her, he supposed, not the girl who risked everything for someone else’s kid in the way the video showed.

“I got the strangest phone call the other day, from Admiral Wallace,” Alex said. “At the time, it made no sense to me, what he was saying. But now…”

“What’d he want?” Theo asked.

“Emily, apparently you’re going to the Academy, or you’re not. He doesn’t seem to know. What he does know is that everyone who counts at the Academy seems to think you need to be there in the fall.”

Emily shook her head.

“The whole Kamchatka thing, I think it started with someone at the Academy leaking my information. I don’t see how I can go there. It’s clearly not safe.”

“You’re worried about your safety on a naval base?” Alex asked. “From what we just saw on that video, I can’t imagine what you have to worry about. I mean, you went into the lion’s den to rescue innocents. I know you’re not afraid.”

“I’m not worried about my safety. It’s everyone else’s. Look what happened to Anthony, and Michael, just because they know me. How’s the Academy gonna be safe from that?”

Yuki stuck her head in the door.

“The kids are getting restless. I think it’s time to get this party started. Get a move on, sailors!”

Michael, Jerry and Alex filed out of the room, dutifully. Once the voice of command had spoken, they all knew how to follow. But Theo hung back, and gestured to Emily to have a word.

“First, thank you for saving Anthony. Our family owes you a tremendous debt.”

“I’ve come to think of it as my family, too,” she said.

“I’m sure we’re all glad to have you, cousin. I know I am. But that’s not what I want to talk about.” He tried to look her directly in the eyes, which was no easy task, given the way emotions had been running in that room. The intensity of her stare, the darkness in her eyes, even he would admit it was daunting.

“I think I’ve been where you are,” he continued. “The pain, the sorrow, the exultation, the mix of emotions after a fight, it’s intense, and pretty hard to manage by yourself. It can get pretty dark and twisted inside your head after something like that.”

She had to look away, maybe for the first time in her life, because of someone else’s words.

“I know,” she whispered.

“Being part of something larger is the only thing I know that can really help you manage stuff like that. Family and friends are important, but they’re not enough. You need something much larger.”

“You’re not the first person to tell me that.”

“Just think about it.”

~~~~~~~

“Everyone, put your goggles on,” Theo barked out. “Nobody gets a gun until the goggles are on.”

Eight fourteen year old boys in shorts and t-shirts stood in an impatient line at the edge of the back patio. The end of the line was held down by Alex, Jerry and Emily.

“Okay, listen up everyone. Here are the paintball rules: three hits on your t-shirt and you’re officially ‘dead’, each gun has a magazine with six shots, extra magazines are scattered throughout the woods. No shooting anyone once you’re already ‘dead.’ No fighting over magazines. Only hits on the t-shirt count, so try not to hit anyone in the head… or any other sensitive areas, for that matter.”

“How are we gonna divide up the teams?” Jerry asked.

“Boys against girls,” Theo suggested, with a big smile.

“Yeah, right,” Emily snorted. “Okay. I’ll take you guys on.”

“I’m on Emily’s team,” Anthony cried out.

“How about kids against old men,” Andie proposed.

A more or less equal division of forces was eventually accomplished, and guns were issued.

“The goal is to defeat the opposing team before they can seize the flag hidden down by the lake, which is more or less that way,” Theo said. “Ready, set…”

“And nobody gets back into the house until they’ve rinsed all the paint off in the lake,” Andie called out before running back inside.

“Go!”

Sixteen pairs of sneakers sprinted for the tree line, followed by eight slower moving feet. A mere two steps before he could get to the shelter of the trees, Emily put a pair of pink splotches on Theo’s shirt and ran off giggling.

“Damn, that was sneaky quick. I’ll get you for that, girl,” he yelled over his shoulder.

Everyone was covered with pink paint by the time the flag was retrieved from the branches of a tree by the lake. Minutes later the kids were all in the water, swimming, snorkeling, searching for the treasures Theo had hidden on the bottom of the shallows. Turns on the rope swing punctuated everyone’s pleasure. The rope hung from the upper branches of a tall tree, long enough to make for a nearly horizontal arc over the water.

By this time, Emily had fetched the little kids, Li Li and Stone, from the house so they could share in the fun. Even though she was too small to ride the swing, Li Li was insistent, and so was Stone. The only thing to do was to let them ride on someone else’s lap.

Theo scooped up Li Li and ran off to the swing, with her shrieking over his shoulder the whole way. Stone let out an inchoate wail and dashed to her rescue, until Emily scooped him up from behind. In the end, this was the only resolution he would accept, and Li Li seemed mollified by the situation once she felt how solid her ride was—maybe even slightly reminiscent of her own uncle.

Once they were in the water, Li Li splashed on and off Theo as if he were a human swim dock. That spot taken, Stone scrambled onto Emily’s shoulders, perhaps a little uncertain of the water. One big heave and he flew through the air toward Theo, a look of terror on his face. When he recovered himself from the dunking, he saw Li Li in Emily’s arms and realized he was in the arms of a stranger. Much kicking and clawing ensued until a switch could be arranged.

“He is one determined little man,” Theo said. “Who’s he belong to?”

“Me, I guess,” Emily said, with a mischievous little smile.

This girl is just full of surprises, he thought. Did he dare ask any more questions? Li Li squirmed out of his arms and into the water, which was fast becoming her element.

“Who’s the father, if you don’t mind my asking.”

“I don’t really know.” She let that statement hang in the air between them for just a moment. Theo winced to hear it. “One of the guards in Kamchatka, I think. I found him there in the wreckage. Everyone else was dead. I couldn’t leave him behind. Besides, Li Li loves him.”

“And Li Li, how’d you end up with her? I’m almost afraid to hear.”

“Her father is, or was, a high level officer in the Chinese
Guoanbu
.” Theo whistled on hearing that tidbit. “He was executed for refusing to take me into custody, and after her mother died, she was handed over to the North Koreans. Her uncle Jiang asked me to get her back. She was part of the reason I went to Kamchatka.”

“I was gonna say, you’re another Pied Piper, ‘cause you’re like a magnet for kids.”

“I suppose. But what I really am is a magnet for trouble.”

“Let me have this big girl,” Anthony said, paddling by. Li Li could content herself with Anthony, since Emily wasn’t paying her any mind. She climbed onto his back and they paddled off. Stone squawked at first, but having the attention of both big people was intoxicating, and the water didn’t seem quite as threatening as it did at first.

“That you are,” Theo conceded, once they were alone. “But why you? What do all these nasty folks want with you?”

An answer was not immediately forthcoming. Dark emotions smoldered visibly in her eyes. She was sizing him up, he could feel it, and it was just a little unnerving. Would he even measure up? He wasn’t so sure, until she nodded. And he definitely wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the answer.

“It’s about my grandfather... and my mom. He was the biochemist who... he’s the one who developed the idea of genetically enhanced soldiers.” She paused to take a breath. “They think I'm one of them. They think my mom and my grandfather cooked me up in a lab or something.”

The next question was obvious, but he trembled to bring it out into the open between them. Before today he would never have entertained such a possibility, even in jest. But after what he’d already heard and seen….

“Are they right?”

Her eyes flashed to hear such a question. Had he offended her? Would she even answer?

“I wish I knew. You still think I belong at the Academy?”

The noise of restless boys on the shore broke the tension. It took a moment’s growling to organize them. Rinsed and toweled off, everyone headed back to the house for cake and ice cream. And presents.

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Chapter
21

Spy Versus Spy

“It looks like the report’s accurate,” Harkness said. “They’re all dead.”

“The whole team?”

“Yeah. Tice and Parfitt were in the hotel with him. Tariq and Danilov turned up in a dumpster across town.”

“How?”

“Tice and Parfitt were killed with a blade, something big, and Tariq was practically decapitated.”

Burzynski sat quietly, giving this last piece of information his full attention.

“So it was Walker, then,” he said.

“Maybe. But that’s not even the worst part. The girl was there.”

“What the hell do you mean she was there?”

“There’s video of her clearing customs at Gimpo.”

“Coincidence?”

“She was traveling with Connie Savaransky,” Harkness said with all the finality of a death sentence.

“Is that all?”

“She was met by Kim. You know, Meacham’s contact in the NIS.”

“Okay, that sounds bad. But Wickham thinks Savaransky’s broken with Meacham.”

“I wish I could believe it, sir. But there’s no way Walker let’s her jump ship and live. If she was there, the girl is Meacham’s.”

“Then why hasn’t he presented her to the Sub-Committee?” Burzynski asked. “What’s he waiting for?”

“More testing?”

“Whatever it is, we can’t let this opportunity slip away. We need her dead before he can capitalize on her. You understand?”

“Yes, but…”

“You’re not having second thoughts, are you?” Burzynski said with a sneer. “You were just so keen on arguing that Meacham’s got her.”

“It’s two things, sir. First, we still don’t know what happened to the Parks’ clone. Isn’t he more important than the girl?”

“And second?”

“We don’t know how to find her.”

“That’s crap. What about all those sightings you had of her in Charlottesville?”

“None for the last few weeks. And the last one was from when we thought she was staying with Cardano. But that theory is hardly compatible with the notion that she’s with Meacham.”

“Fine. Then we start from scratch, with the high school. We know she’ll turn up at there soon enough.”

“Yeah. But we can’t hit her at a school,” Harkness replied. “We’d be destroyed by the public backlash.”

“Not if we pick our moment. We just have to lay it on Meacham’s doorstep, let him take the heat. We just need a public occasion, very public.”

“That’s gonna take some damn good intel to pull off.”

“Yes, and I’m sure you know where to get it. There’s gotta be a disgruntled student who can help us.”

Harkness nodded and growled his agreement.

“Leave the question of the clone to me. Wickham may have a lead there.”

The door clicked shut after Harkness left. A file on his desk claimed Burzynski’s attention, something about gangsters causing a ruckus in a fish market. A contact in the Metropolitan Police thought there might be a connection to the disappearance of several NIS agents.

~~~~~~~

Four steps down to the landing at the end of the hall, then turn right for another four steps down and a short walk along a bank of vending machines to the two sets of double doors leading into the cafeteria. When Emily turned the corner on the first landing she saw Wendy waiting for her. Coming from the other end of the school, she was a few minutes late. Everyone else had already gone through—the area in front of the doors was deserted. For an instant, she mulled turning around, skipping lunch. “Not a solution,” she thought. “Gonna have to face this sooner or later.”

“What’s going on with you two, Em?” Wendy asked.

“Nothing,” she grunted in response, with an expression on her face that said “Do we have to?”

“Danny’s walking around in a haze, and you, you’re acting like some sort of ice princess, or something.”

“I don’t know what to tell you about Danny. I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

“Something happen in Seoul you wanna tell me about?”

“Nope.”

Wendy looked her in the eye in that deadpan way only she could do.

This is the downside of having friends. They think because they care, you owe them an explanation. Mostly that sounds pretty great, when it isn’t annoying. But if you have to conduct your life on a need-to-know basis, there are just some things you don’t want to share, because of the danger, or maybe because they’re too painful.

Emily rolled this simple truth over in her mind as she looked distractedly at the streaks in Wendy’s hair. How should she go about explaining what happened in Seoul to her? Maybe an expurgated account would be enough for her, even if it wouldn’t satisfy Emily as much as silence. Friendship was beginning to feel like those paradoxical “finger-cuffs” that grip tighter the more you pull. Opening up to Wendy could be cathartic, especially if it involved tears… if only what she had to share wouldn’t turn out to be too repugnant for her.

“What were you guys even doing over there anyway? You just left all of a sudden, and then you’re back, all cloaked in mystery.”

“You really want to know?” Emily asked, in as forbidding tone as she could manage.

“Is it safe to tell me?”

“Who knows… why not? You’ll have to be the judge of how safe it is.”

“I’m all ears.”

Emily sketched out the main events: a friend in danger, Korean intelligence agents, a confrontation with gangsters in the fish market, rogue CIA contractors and a conversation with a
yakuza
.

“Seriously, you took him to meet a
yakuza
? Is that what’s got him so spooked?”

“Not exactly, though things did get a little hairy at that meeting.”

“Such as…?”

“Oh, you know, just the usual.”

Emily knew she was avoiding the most important thing. She also knew saying it out loud to a friend would make it painfully real again.

“If it wasn’t the
Yakuza
, what’s bugging him, then?”

She swallowed, and let out a breath, then began the hardest part of the story.

“Connie’s Korean friend, the NIS agent, he turned on us.”

“Turned on you?”

“Yeah, him and his men, they put a gun to Danny’s head, and to Ethan’s and the others. They lined them up, you know, down on their knees, and threatened to shoot them all if I didn’t surrender. I stumbled into the middle of it, the trap… and the little girl was there.”

“Oh,” Wendy said, as a visceral sort of excitement gleamed in her eyes. “But you got him out of there, right, and the others, too?”

“Yeah,” she said, searching the floor, their shoes, anywhere but Wendy’s face, for direction.

“Oh, Em,” Wendy said, nervously. “What else happened? How did you get them out?”

Her eyes were hard and dark, fixed on objects and people more than a world away.

“I killed them, all of them.”

“Holy crap.” All that might have been exciting in Wendy’s curiosity drained away along with the blood in her face. It took a moment to recover. “Em, I’m so sorry. Are you gonna be in trouble for this?”

“I don’t know, maybe. Somehow, I think that’s the least of my problems.”

“Shall I take it this is another one of our little secrets?”

The question caught her by surprise, as expected as it ought to have been. Just what sort of secret did she need, or want it to be?

“I’ll leave that up to you, Wendy,” she said. Then, after a moment’s reflection, she offered a caveat. “You might want to be careful what you say around Melanie. She’d be pretty unhappy to hear I used the little sword her dad gave me.”

“You used a sword to kill those guys? What kind of scene
was
that?”

“Bloody.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“I guess you might not want to talk about it around Danny. Or Billy, or Wayne, you know, so it doesn’t get back to Danny that everyone knows.”

“So that just leaves Amanda,” she said with a laugh.

Emily laughed, too. That was the point of having friends, she supposed. Some moods can’t be managed without them.

~~~~~~~

“Trouble in paradise?” Amanda asked Melanie, as they entered the cafeteria a few minutes later. “Maybe I should sit with your new friends today.”

“They could be yours, too, if you wanted.”

“I know you’d like that. But I wouldn’t. Sorry, Mel.”

Wendy looked up to see the two girls standing behind Wayne.

“Hi, Mel. You joining us today, Amanda?”

Wayne was wedged into his seat, but craned his neck to catch a glimpse of Melanie and she put a hand on his shoulder. Emily grunted, then turned back to her book, betraying no interest in whatever might transpire at the table.

“Hey, Danny,” Amanda said. “That’s a pretty dark cloud you’re sitting under. Something troubling you?”

He growled and turned away.

“Could it be
Navy
problems?” she asked just to needle him. “Maybe one too many Midshipmen in your life.”

Melanie frowned at her, but didn’t have anything to say about it.

“Great idea, Amanda,” Steve said, stepping out unexpectedly from behind her. “Let’s sit with these guys. That’s okay with everyone, isn’t it?” he asked the whole table, but looking mainly at Wayne.

“You bet,” he replied with a big grin.

Melanie put her arm around Amanda’s shoulder and smiled like it was Christmas morning.

“Looks like you’re finally sitting with
our
friends!”

“Great,” Amanda grumped, looking across the room at her other friends.

“Oh, c’mon,” Steve said. “It’s almost graduation. You really want to sit with Marty and Jeff and those guys now? They’re just sophomores and juniors. It’s our class at
this
table, the people we’re going to college with.”

In the end, however reluctantly, Amanda sat down with them. The conversation was tense and uncomfortable for the first few minutes. But opportunities for fun and mischief arose soon enough. And one even pulled Emily’s nose out of her book.

“Yeah, the same thing happened to me,” Billy said. “Some guy in a suit was asking if I knew the girl who stabbed that guy in the parking lot.”

“Stabbed that guy?” Wayne snorted back with contempt. “You mean the guy who stabbed me?”

“Yeah, that’s who he meant.”

“What’d he look like, this guy in the suit?” Emily asked.

“Yeah, two guys in suits approached me in the grocery store,” Amanda reported. “Wanted to know if I knew any… Asian girls, you know.”

“What did you say?” Steve asked her, a look of genuine concern on his face.

“I was with my mom, you know, and I didn’t say anything. She knows who you are, Emily, and she’s been grilling me about why I didn’t say something to them. Am I supposed to lie for you?”

“Yes,” practically everybody at the table roared back.

“Do you even know who those guys were?” Wendy asked, as though the question were so obvious as to be a refutation all by itself.

“They said they were FBI,” she replied. “They had badges.”

“You tell ‘em whatever you like,” Emily finally said. “All of you, if people with badges ask about me, don’t be afraid to answer their questions.”

“No, Em, are you sure?” Wendy asked. “Isn’t that dangerous.”

“Dangerous,” Amanda snorted. “Please. What do you think she is, some sort of secret agent?”

“It’s more dangerous for you guys to try to protect me from whoever these people are. Tell them whatever you think they want to know.”

“What do you mean, whoever they are?” Amanda asked. “They’re FBI. We have to tell them the truth, or we’ll be in trouble. And what, exactly, do they want with you?”

“If they were really FBI, and they were looking for her, don’t you think they’d just go directly to the office and have her taken out of class?” Wendy asked pointedly. “Why do you think they’re skulking about, asking kids about her?”

“No, it’s okay,” Emily said. “Tell them whatever you know, Amanda, and the rest of you guys, too. Just don’t pretend you know some secret you’re keeping from them. Whoever these guys are, I can assure you, they’re dangerous. Don’t give them a reason to hurt you.”

“Where are you even from? This is America, honey. That sort of thing doesn’t happen here.”

“Oh, shut up, Amanda,” Melanie finally snapped at her, tears quivering angrily in her eyes. “Emily protected me that night. You saw it in that stupid video. I trust her and I’m going to protect her if I can. I owe it to her.”

“No, Mel. Please don’t try to protect me. None of you,” she said, looking around the table with a strange new intensity. “It’s too dangerous, and it’ll just make things worse for everyone. I love you all, but please just keep your distance.”

With that she snapped her book shut and stuffed the remains of her lunch into her pack and hurried out of the lunchroom. A silence hung over the table as everyone looked nervously at each other. Amanda tried to conceal a sneaky little smile.