Only the Good Spy Young (Gallagher Girls) (6 page)

I
n our room an hour later, Bex was the one who told the story. About the Tower and the Circle and the mad look in our teacher’s eyes as he stood shaking on the bridge. It sounded like a dozen other crazy tales she’d brought back after break, but this one, I knew, was true.

“He was sixteen?” I watched Liz plug that number into some formula in her mind, then shake her head as if it didn’t compute. “No, he couldn’t have been bad. I mean he
can’t
be. He is... I mean, he was...”

“Our age,” Macey finished for her.

One of the downsides of going to a school where they teach you that you’re capable of anything is that eventually you start to believe it. But none of us had ever thought ourselves capable of that.

“How does someone our age end up working for the Circle?” Macey asked in disbelief.

“Blackthorne,” I said simply. “The Circle recruits at Blackthorne.”

“Cammie, no,” Liz started, already knowing where my thoughts had gone. “Zach can’t be . . .”

“But he
might
be. These are the facts: We know the Circle recruits at Blackthorne. We know Zach was in London. And D.C. And Boston. Zach knew the Circle wanted me before
we
even knew the Circle existed.” I looked down at my hands. “And we know Zach’s always been close to Mr. Solomon. They’ve both always known too much.”

“Cam, no,” Macey ordered. “Stop it. Even if Mr. Solomon is a double agent or whatever, that doesn’t mean Zach is too.”

“Bex’s mom said that having someone at the Gallagher Academy—having someone close to me—would be a high priority.” I laughed sadly. “And Zach got pretty close.”

“Cam, that doesn’t mean anything.” Liz rushed toward me. “Maybe Mr. Solomon used to work for the Circle, but now—”

“He’s the good guy?” I guessed.

“Yeah,” Liz said.

“Good guys don’t jump into rivers in the middle of winter to get away from the other good guys,” I answered. “Besides, I don’t think the Circle really offers early retirement.”

“Okay, so Joe Solomon’s a traitor. . . .” Macey said as simply as if she’d said “So Joe Solomon looks good in turtlenecks.” “Do you really think he’d be
stupid
, too?” She stepped closer. “Think about it, Cammie. Why was Mr. Solomon there?”

“He said I had to follow the pigeons.”

“Follow the what?” Liz asked.

“He was talking crazy, okay?” I took a deep breath. “One second he was telling me to run, and then . . . you know.”

“So you’re saying that one of the CIA’s best undercover operatives—not to mention one of the most wanted men in the world—walked through an MI6 surveillance detail just to tell you to follow the pigeons?” Macey didn’t try to hide her disbelief.

“Yeah,” I said. “He said he had to see me before I got back to school. And he said when I got back to school I had to
fol
low the pigeons
.”

“Tell me this, Cam.” Macey placed her arm around my shoulder. She seemed so much taller than me then. “Do you believe Mr. Solomon is working for the Circle?”

“Abby and the Baxters say he is.”

“What do
you
say?” Macey asked.

“It’s true,” Bex answered for me, leaning against the wall, arms crossed. “My mum and dad have been taking me on missions since before I could walk. They’ve never lied to me before. They wouldn’t start lying to me about this.” She turned and looked right at me. “Abby would never lie to
you
about this.”

Sometimes I hate it when my friends are right. Unfortunately, it happens
a lot.

“But, Bex, your parents weren’t there on election night,” Macey countered. “Abby was there, but she was half dead. Cam, you were drugged and practically knocked unconscious, so you won’t remember either—but I do.” She shivered a little.

“I remember everything. Everyone was worried that night, but Mr. Solomon was terrified. He was as worried about you as your mother was.”

“Mr. Solomon’s been working for the Circle since he was sixteen! He’s pretty good at faking things,” Bex challenged.

Macey shook her head. “He wasn’t faking.”

“You can’t know that,” Bex said.

Macey laughed softly. “I know fake love when I see it.”

I didn’t know what so say, so I sank to the floor and rested my arms on my knees, suddenly far too tired for the first day of school.

On the other side of the room, Liz sat perfectly still on her bed, weighing options, waiting to cast the tie-breaking vote. When she spoke, her voice was low. “Cam, where’s your mom?”

“Buckingham said she’s been temporarily detained. Whatever that means.” I sighed. “She didn’t even come to England after ... everything.”

“I wish she was here,” Bex admitted. “There is something they’re not telling us.”

I pictured Zach, his breath fogging in the air as he’d said
They know more than we know
. But my mother was gone. The Baxters and Abby were a thousand miles away. That morning Bex and I had walked away from England—from our last chance at answers—except . . .

I smiled.

“Cam,” Liz said softly. “What is it?”

“Townsend.”

“What?” Liz said. “Do you think he’s going to be a good teacher?”

I shook my head.

“Do you think he’s hot?” Macey asked.

I laughed.

“Then
why
are you smiling?” Liz’s voice went up an entire octave, but I just looked at her—thought about a folder on a metal table and eyes that looked like they’d seen everything.

“I think he
knows things
.”

The first day of the semester started as semesters often do.

Mr. Smith gave a really good pop quiz on the world’s most unstable political regimes and the top five ways to undermine each. By midmorning Madame Dabney was passing out place cards and instructing us all to prepare a seating chart for a state dinner that includes two ambassadors, five senators, and three rogue operatives who may be selling nuclear technology to the highest bidder.

But walking out of Madame Dabney’s tearoom that Monday morning, I couldn’t help but remember that nothing would ever be “typical” again.

“That’s it. It’s official!” Tina Walters whispered to me. “Joe Solomon is in deep.”

I shot an anxious glance at Bex, but Tina went on slowly, savoring every word.

“According to my sources, he hasn’t been farmed out to any cooperating agencies. He’s not listed on the in-action list. And he’s not exactly the type for
official
cover operations, so wherever he is . . . our teacher is in deep, deep cover.”

The entire junior class seemed to exhale, and I recognized the look that was spreading through the narrow hall. If possible, Joe Solomon had just gotten cooler. And hotter.

“I bet he and your mom are on some super-secret and dangerous mission, Cam,” Courtney Bauer guessed as we emerged into the main corridor on the second floor.

“
Yeah
.” Anna Fetterman’s voice had taken on a dreamy quality. “I bet your mom and Mr. Solomon are going to find them. I bet...”

Anna went on, but I tuned out, barely registering the sounds of my school—slamming doors and running girls. I looked into the center of the foyer below, where a half dozen teachers stood huddled together in a way I’d never seen before.

“Cam?” Anna asked. “Are you okay?”
One by one the teachers in the foyer began to break away
and start down the halls or up the stairs.

“Cam?” Anna asked, her voice higher.

“Sorry, Anna,” I muttered. “I’ve . . . got to go.”

Professor Buckingham was already at the top of the Grand Staircase, walking toward the Hall of History, when I cried, “Professor? Professor Buckingham!”

“Yes, Cameron?” She didn’t snap the words, but they sounded weary. She seemed tired as she stood beside the sword that had belonged to Ioseph Cavan. “Is there something I can help you with?”

I wanted to know why my mother’s door was closed to everyone, even me. I wanted to ask how it could be true about Mr. Solomon—how it could be true at all. But there was only one thing that I knew it was okay to ask.

“It’s spring,” I said.

“It is?” Professor Buckingham glanced out a window streaked with freezing rain.

“I mean, it’s the spring semester. You said last fall that you might be able to teach me about the Circle of Cavan in the spring. And . . . it’s spring.”

All around us, girls were filing into classrooms, rushing out the front doors to P&E. The halls were growing quiet. School was back in session—life was back to normal. But behind Patricia Buckingham, my mother’s office door stayed closed.

“Junior year curriculum is very challenging, Cameron dear,” she said.

“I know, that’s why I—”

“You need to focus and learn as much as you can.”

“I know, but the Circle is—”

“Cameron, the lessons of this school are essential for fighting the evils of the world—no matter what that evil calls itself.
You have to learn those lessons
,” she snapped, and I knew it wasn’t advice; it was an order. And she was right. My classes weren’t less important now. Not by a long shot.

“And even if that were not the case, I’m afraid there are a number of...
pressing
matters that require my attention for the time being.”

And then it hit me: for the first time that I could remember, our oldest faculty member looked . . . old.

Her hands were dry. Her eyes were puffy. And I could have sworn I heard her voice crack as she said, “Now, if I’m not mistaken, you’re about to be late for Covert Operations. You don’t want to keep our newest teacher waiting.”

R
unning through the halls toward the elevator to Sublevel Two, I tried to brace myself for what I had to do.

1. Learn what (if anything) Agent Townsend knew
   about my mother, Mr. Solomon, and the Circle of
   Cavan.
   
2. Discern whether Agent Townsend would lean
   toward practical or theoretical examinations and
   how to best master each. (Because being the target
   of an international terrorist organization is no excuse for letting your GPA slide.)
   

When I reached the small hallway beneath the Grand Staircase and the large mirror that was supposed to slide aside and show me the way to the Covert Operations classrooms, I pressed my hand against it and waited for the eyes of the painting behind me to flash green. But the glass beneath my palm stayed cool, and nothing happened.

It was my first lecture with Agent Townsend, and I was
already
late. I actually knocked on the mirror as if there were someone back there, waiting to let me in.

Still nothing.

I was turning, starting for one of the other elevators, when I saw it: a small, neatly typed piece of paper taped to the wall.

ATTENTION STUDENTS: UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE, THE SUBLEVELS WILL BE CLOSED. ALL COVERT OPERATIONS COURSES WILL TAKE PLACE IN ROOM 132

I didn’t know what was happening. All I knew for certain was that I was late, so I turned on my heel and ran through the empty hall, past the library and the student lounge—all the way to the classroom that had been nothing but a big storage closet at the end of last semester. I almost ran right past it, but at the last second I grabbed the door frame and skidded to a stop.

“Oh, there you are.”

Okay, I don’t know about regular schools, but let’s just say that at the world’s premiere spy school, tardiness isn’t exactly
typical
. And when it does happen, it’s almost always met with questions like “Was there an explosion in the chemistry lab?” or “Do you have another concussion?” It is most certainly
never
met with “Oh, there you are.”

But those were the words Agent Townsend chose, and for someone who had questioned me in a top secret facility just hours after one of the world’s most wanted men had pseudo-kidnapped me, he certainly didn’t seem that concerned with where I’d been.

“I’m sorry, I—”

“Just . . . sit,” he said with barely a glance in my direction.

I took the desk next to Bex, and without looking at the clock, I knew I was three and a half minutes late. Three and a half minutes in which my classmates had been sitting in silence, waiting. And as I joined them, I realized our teacher
wasn’t
waiting for me.

Four minutes.

Five minutes.

Ten minutes, we waited. The only noise was the sound of Agent Townsend turning the pages of his newspaper.

It was a test, I told myself. He wanted to see if we were memorizing the front page of the paper he held; he was gauging how still we could be, how silently we could sit. Great operatives are naturally patient, I thought. He wanted to see if we could wait.

Little did he know, Tina Walters doesn’t wait for anyone. (Or, well, she does, but evidently she draws the line at ten minutes.)

“Mr. Townsend?”

Our teacher didn’t glance up, didn’t say a single word.

“Sir,” Tina went on, “is there something we could do to help you get started with your lecture?” She sounded very much like Madame Dabney, but Mr. Townsend wasn’t impressed.

“No,” he said flatly, then raised his newspaper higher, threw his feet to the desktop, and leaned back in his chair. “Who can tell me about Joe Solomon?”

It sounded like a pop quiz. It
looked
like a pop quiz. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that the entire junior class had just been picked up and hauled across the Atlantic—plopped down inside Baring Cross Station.

Townsend moved the paper aside for a split second and pointed to Tina Walters, who was about to pull her arm out of its socket, she was raising her hand so wildly. “You,” he said.

“Agent Joseph Solomon. CIA operative. Faculty member of the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women—”

“Know all that,” our new teacher interrupted. “Next.”

“He said that after break we would probably start with secret writing techniques,” Anna told him. “And if that went well, he promised we could—”

“Boring,” Townsend countered.

I could feel my classmates watching closer, sitting up straighter—literally rising to the challenge. But I knew this was no test—it was an interrogation. We weren’t students in that moment; we were witnesses who’d been locked in a room with a double agent almost every day for a year and a half.

“Where did he go?” Agent Townsend slowly turned the page of his paper. “How did he fill his days? What did he want ... here?”

“He’s a teacher,” Eva Alvarez said. “He wanted to teach.”

Agent Townsend laughed, quickly and softly, but there was no joy in his voice as he said, “I’m sure he did.”

“I’m sorry, sir?” Anna said. “I don’t understand.”

“I’m sure you don’t,” he muttered.

The Operatives were able to ascertain that whatever brought Agent Townsend to the Gallagher Academy, it was NOT a love of teaching.

Then the feet came off the desk and the paper went down and I got a good look at his swollen nose (note to self: even soft-sided luggage can make an excellent weapon).

“
Where
does he spend his time?”

“Well, usually we see him in Sublevel Two,” Tina admitted, and an odd look crossed Agent Townsend’s face.

“Nowhere else?”

“Everywhere else,” Anna replied.

It occurred to me then that it would have been a good lesson—a test of our memories, of our powers of observation. But Agent Townsend didn’t know that. Agent Townsend didn’t care.

“Known associates?” he asked, then shook his head as if for a second he’d forgotten that he thought we were idiots. “I mean, who were his friends? Did he have any allies? Anyone he was especially close to?”

“Sometimes he lets Mr. Mosckowitz go with us on missions,” Anna said.

“He used to work out in the P&E barn with Mr. Smith,” Kim Lee added.

“I think he might be
really
close to Headmistress Morgan.” Tina giggled, but then glanced at me and stopped.

“Is that so?” Townsend crossed his arms and looked at me. “What about you, Ms. Morgan? What do you know about Joseph Solomon?”

Freezing rain hit against the windows. I shivered, remembering the cold wind and the look in Mr. Solomon’s eyes as we stood on the bridge, and the fact that I’d believed him. For a year and a half, I’d believed everything.

The Operatives hated Joe Solomon.

“Sir.” I heard Bex’s voice. “Mr. Solomon used to say that an operative’s best weapon is her memory, and that—”

Agent Townsend finally stopped staring at me. “You’re the Baxter.”

“Yes, sir.” Bex beamed.

“I know your parents’ work,” he said.

Bex smiled. “Thank you, sir.”

“That wasn’t a compliment.”

The Operatives missed Joe Solomon.

Townsend stood and walked around his desk, settled back in his chair. “I’ve known about the Gallagher Academy and its girls for most of my career.” He leveled us with a gaze. “And that wasn’t a compliment either.”

I noticed something about his accent then. I replayed his words in my mind while, outside, the sleet fell harder, and the room turned colder, and I knew the entire class was starting to feel the chill.

“Fine, if this is all any of you are willing to bring to today’s—”

“How long were you stationed in Mozambique?”

Townsend was rarely surprised, I could tell, and yet my question stopped him. “Excuse me?” he said.

“Your Swahili this morning at breakfast was very distinctive.” He looked at me as if he wanted to protest, but I didn’t give him the chance. “You’re left-handed, but the calluses on your palm say that you probably shoot with your right hand.” I thought of how he’d moved when he pulled his feet from the desk. “You favor your left knee. I’m betting you hurt it . . . what? Six months ago. Your accent is lower middle-class, but you went to a good school, didn’t you? Someplace like this, I’m betting.”

“Nice trick, Ms. Morgan.”

“It’s not a trick.” I shook my head. “It’s last fall’s midterm. Mr. Solomon—”

“Joe Solomon is gone,” he snapped. “I made that point very clearly in London, or have you forgotten?”

I’d forgotten nothing about that day—not the color of Townsend’s shirt or the cool feel of the hard, metal table.

“Why aren’t we having this class in Sublevel Two?” I asked, and watched his eyes change. “Were you not given clearance?”

“Oh, I assure you, Ms. Morgan, I’ll see all of this school I need to see.” He waved toward the door. “Now go. Consider yourselves dismissed.”