Mrs. Pollifax Unveiled

M
rs. Pollifax was feeling bored and rather left out of life. Cyrus had recently accepted an invitation to teach law three days a week at the university; he was hugely enjoying it.

“Damned good to feel so useful again,” he’d admitted, and she was glad for him.

She, however, was not feeling particularly useful. She reminded herself that she was still growing prizewinning geraniums, was in excellent health, hoped soon to earn her black belt in karate, and remained a faithful member of the Save Our Environment club. But … 
How spoiled I am
, she thought. For a woman of what was delicately referred to as “of a certain age” she ought to feel fortunate indeed, and yet … She realized that she was absentmindedly scratching her left arm from which, not long ago, a bullet had been removed in a Bedouin tent by a man named Bushaq, and she concluded that what she was experiencing was letdown.

The price one pays, she thought sadly, for venturing out into dangerous worlds for Carstairs and the CIA, only to return to errands at the grocery store and bank, cooking and
cleaning, mulching her garden for the winter, and pampering her geraniums.

Across the breakfast table from her, almost hidden behind his newspaper, Cyrus glanced up and saw the gesture toward her arm. “Still hurting?” he asked. “Do wish you’d let Dr. Orton have a look at that.” He hesitated, and then, “Damn good to have you safe at home again, Em,” and as he said this the telephone rang. He put down his cup of coffee, reached across his briefcase and newspaper, and when he answered it she saw his face change. Handing the phone to her he said, “It’s Bishop.”

“Oh,” she said, startled, and concealing her reaction she kept her voice casual. “Bishop, how good to hear from you, are you well?”

Bishop, however, was not interested in polite conversation. He said bluntly, “Have any important plans for this day?”

“No,” she said, honestly enough.

“A car will pick you up in forty minutes at your house,” he said. “Carstairs wants to talk with you. Oh, and you might bring your passport with you, just in case.”

And he hung up.

“Emily,” said her husband warningly.

“He just wants to talk with me,” she told him.

“Hard to believe,” growled Cyrus. “You haven’t even been home long enough for that arm to heal.”

“It’s healed,” she told him. “It just itches.”

He gave her a rueful smile. “I know, I know—I promised never to interfere, but still I don’t like the sound of that call.” With a glance at the clock on the wall he added, “And now I’ve got to go or I’ll miss my first class, but Em—nothing dangerous, promise?”

He knew, of course, that anything Carstairs might have in
mind could be dangerous; after all, she and Cyrus had met in Zambia under very dangerous circumstances and they had survived by luck and ingenuity. Cyrus had gone with her to Thailand, too, where he’d been snatched away from her by bandits, but she did not think it wise to remind him of this, nor to mention that Bishop had asked her to bring her passport. Instead she said tactfully, with a bright smile, “Barbecued chicken for dinner tonight,” and when he had gone she hurried upstairs to dress for her trip to CIA headquarters.

M
rs. Pollifax, entering Carstairs’s office, smiled at the many times she’d opened this same door, and wondered again why she’d been so hastily summoned by car and private plane. As she closed the door behind her, Carstairs’s assistant, Bishop, glanced up from his desk and leaped to his feet to give her a hug. “Thank heaven you’re here, Carstairs has been testy all morning.”

“Testy
, Bishop?”

“Grouchy. Impatient. Cross. If you’ll wait I’ll check my thesaurus for a stronger word.”

“I’ll pass on that,” she told him dryly, and he opened the door to Carstairs’s inner office. “She’s here,” he announced.

Carstairs rose from his desk to shake hands with her, tall and lean, his shock of white hair a sharp contrast to the tanned face that always mystified Bishop, who knew how seldom the man ventured outdoors, how much he despised exercise, and how often he worked long into the night.

“Relieved and delighted to see you, Mrs. P.,” he said, smiling at the sight of her. It still amused him that one of his canniest agents was an untrained amateur, a woman who once, very naively, had arrived downstairs in Mason’s office with a
bland introduction from her congressman, and after bewildering poor Mason with polite questions had announced that she had
really
come to apply for work as a spy. Since then there had been moments when Carstairs shuddered at the thought that if he’d not passed Mason’s office at the right moment and seen her sitting there—so perfect for a courier job he had in mind—Mason would have dismissed her and Carstairs would have missed the constant astonishment of her achievements, the assignments she’d pulled off so ingenuously and ingeniously through sheer instinct.

What he tended to forget, of course—and was conveniently overlooking now—was his heightened blood pressure when he thought her lost, captured or dead. “Very swashbuckling hat,” he told her. “Do sit down and join us.”

“Us?”

He gestured toward the opposite end of the room where a man in blue jeans and a tweed jacket stood with his back to them, peering closely at the huge map on the wall and tracing routes with one finger. When he turned from the map she gasped,
“Farrell?”

“Hi, Duchess,” said John Sebastian Farrell with a mischievous grin.

“But … what are you doing here? I thought you were back in Mexico City with your art gallery!”

“Sold it,” he said, strolling over to join them. “My own paintings are selling damn well these days so I’m leaving both the gallery and Mexico.”

“To work with Carstairs again?”

He gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Doubtful, Duchess, but Carstairs keeps hoping. At the moment …” He shrugged. “Strictly freelancing … you know how I am.”

She smiled. “Yes, I do—restless,” she said. Reckless, too, of course: undercover agent in Mexico for years, with gun-running on the side … working with freedom fighters in Africa … and still too handsome for his own good. She turned back to Carstairs, who suggested they both sit down.

Once seated, Carstairs leaned back comfortably in his chair and said, “I need one respectable and indignant aunt to inquire about a missing niece, and a bodyguard to keep her out of trouble, and whose relationship we’ve not yet determined—friend or cousin—to accompany her.”

Farrell winked at Mrs. Pollifax and she smiled and waited.

After studying their faces for a moment Carstairs nodded. “When the two of you flew off to the Middle East recently,” he said, “you were neither of you on assignment for me. It was strictly Farrell’s gig, keeping a promise to an old friend in trouble, but what the two of you happened to bring back for us at the department was a small miracle.” He hesitated and then added with a rueful smile, “Now I’m hoping you both can produce a miracle again, but on
official
assignment, and for us.”

“Where?” asked Farrell.

“The Middle East again, Syria this time. Today is Wednesday and I know you’re available, but you, Mrs. Pollifax, would you be free to leave on Sunday?”