Authors: Jonathan Bernstein
“S
trike!” I yelp in disbelief.
“Strike,” groans Edward, the combined weight of my biological father and a concrete gargoyle pressing down on his chest.
“You okay?” Strike asks.
“I am now,” I say.
“I'm not,” moans Edward.
“That's the plan,” says Strike. He looks over at the table of cakes and sandwiches.
“Can I get a cake, Bridget?” he asks “I'm dying for something sweet.” I carry a whole plate of cakes over to
him. He shuffles down the back of the gargoyle, making room for me near the head. I pass Strike the plate and sit down next to him. I hear Edward gasp in pain underneath us. The gargoyle's head is barely an inch from his face. Strike picks up a round pink-and-white delicacy.
“What's this?” he asks.
“Raspberry and almond, I think,” I say.
He takes a bite. “Mmmm,” he moans. “What are you having?”
I hold up a brown slice. “Chocolate caramel.”
“Nice,” he says.
“Would you like some tea, Mr. Strike?” I ask with exaggerated formality.
“Tea would be a delight,” he replies in similar fashion.
I hop off the gargoyle and pour a cup, which I present to Strike. He brings the cup to his mouth, blows on it, then takes a sip.
“Hits the spot,” he sighs.
He drinks his tea and wolfs down his cake. I plow through my slice. It's a nice warm moment between us, the sort we haven't had in a while. I feel safe with him sitting next to me.
“I guess Sam found you,” I say.
“Who?” he replies.
“Alex's son.”
“Who?” he says again.
“Didn't he have Red with him?”
“I don't understand one word you're saying,” he says.
I groan in frustration. “That jerkface. I told him to . . . and he didn't even . . . and he took . . . I'm sorry, I tried to send someone to help you. But I guess you didn't need help.”
“I appreciate the thought,” he says between mouthfuls of cake. “But you shouldn't have come here.”
I swallow my creamy confection and stare at him. “Are you kidding? You send me those texts and then you vanish.”
Strike winces. “Give me a do-over. What I meant was, I'm glad you're here and you're okay and this is fun, we should definitely do this more often. I should get the recipes for these cakes before we go. But I know the lies you had to tell to get here, and that's not something I want on my conscience. Your parents have been great to me. We need to be as straight with them as we can under the circumstances.”
“Those texts,” I say. “And then my mom's van showing up outside your building.”
“I had a gut feeling something bad was about to happen,” he says. “I just didn't move fast enough. It won't happen again.”
“You're dead, Strike,” Edward shouts in a raspy,
strangled voice. “I've got nine floors of criminals who won't hesitate to kill you.”
Strike sips a little tea. “Incorrect, your majesty,” he says, glancing down at the red-faced man trapped under the gargoyle. “You've got nine floors of criminals who became criminals because they never wanted to work for a boss, which is what you are. You've kept them here through a mixture of persuasion and intimidation. The moment one of them sees you lying down there in that embarrassing position, any hold you have on them will be gone and this place will be the empty shell it used to be. They might even steal your expensive shoes before they go.”
“That's . . .” Edward doesn't finish the sentence. As always, he sees the big picture and he knows Strike's right.
I turn back to face Strike. “How was the journey in the crate?”
“Not that bad.” He shrugs. “I've been in tighter spots. How was the journey in the plane?”
I shudder. “The worst, most uncomfortable, most annoying experience of my life.”
“I haven't been to New York for a while,” he says.
“Not since you used to order takeout from the King of Shish Kebab?” I say.
“Ah,” he murmurs. “Okay. I wondered . . .”
We fall silent for a moment. Should I wait for him to ask me about Irina? Did he even know she was still alive? Have they been in contact since he met me? Did he know she was never really in the Chechen secret service?
“Oh, for God's sake,” wheezes Edward. “You both have questions. Ask them. Say what's on your mind.”
“He always knows,” I marvel.
“That's how you get to be a criminal mastermind,” says Strike. He finishes his tea in one slurp, inhales, and then breathes out. “Okay. The elephant in the room. I know you've met . . .”
He doesn't finish his sentence. He doesn't get a chance.
A steel arrow flies up over the shards of glass still standing in the window frame. The arrow embeds itself high in the wall above the gargoyle. A steel wire stretches out. Strike jumps off the gargoyle and positions himself in front of me. Irina comes hurtling through the window, gun in hand. She lets go and lands in the middle of the room. She looks at me and relief floods her pale face. She takes in the gargoyle and the flattened figure of Edward underneath. Then she looks at Strike.
If it were possible, I'd say she just turned whiter.
“You always knew how to make an entrance,” he smiles. The smile fades and he inhales sharply.
Irina puts a hand over her mouth. Her eyes widen in shock. I follow her gaze. The sleeve of Strike's jacket has been torn away. The white shirt underneath has a red stain on the upper arm and that stain is getting bigger.
“The arrow,” she gasps. “I'm sorry.”
“Flesh wound.” He shrugs. Then he pulls a ragged tissue from his pocket and attempts to stop the flow of blood.
“Let me,” Irina says. She pulls off her leather jacket and ties it around his upper arm.
“And they say romance is dead,” groans Edward. “Girl wounds boy, girl tends boy's wounds, and then they kiss.”
Irina looks up at Strike as she tightens the jacket around his arm. He looks back at her.
Oh my God! They want to! They totally want to!
E
wwww!
I
rina shoves Strike away and slaps the arm she didn't wound with her arrow-shooting gun thing.
“Fourteen years,” she says.
“I wish it had been longer,” he replies.
They don't want to. They totally don't want to!
I remain sitting on the gargoyle, watching the awkward interaction between my biological parents.
“You deserve so much more than an arrow through the arm,” snarls Irina. “After what you did to me.”
Strike's mouth falls open. He slaps a palm against his forehead. “What I did to you?”
“I was a naive, trusting immigrant girl,” she yells. “You left me alone. You took off without a word.”
“You lied to the new management,” Strike shouts back. “You told them I was a double agent.”
I stare at Irina. “You left that small part out when you were telling me the story of your life.”
Irina squirms. “It happened so long ago. I don't remember every little detail.”
Strike's face reddens. “You turned on me to save your butt when the new bosses came in.”
“Well, it didn't work,” Irina snaps. “They never trusted me, not for a minute. I was always in fear for my life and that of my beautiful baby's.” Irina reaches out to touch my cheek. I turn my head from her. Suddenly, the thought that I have inherited Irina's lying gene is filling with me horror. The lines start to connect.
“If you hadn't lied about Strike, the CIA wouldn't have sent him away,” I say. “He would have known you were having a baby. He would have known about me.”
Irina bows her head so her hair falls over her face and I can't see her expression. I hear her murmur, “That's a lot of ifs. You don't know it would have worked out like that.”
“You're sure you want to give up hurting people for a living, Irina?” says Edward from underneath the
gargoyle. “You're so good at it.”
Strike sits down next to me and puts his non-wounded arm over my shoulder. “Irina and I have our differences, Bridget, but you can't blame her for us not being a family. We were different people. Those were different times. Everybody lied, no one trusted anyone, everybody stabbed everybody else in the back.”
“So how were they different times?” I say.
“Because I've never lied to you,” says Strike. “And I never will.”
We both look at Irina. Black tears are dribbling down her pale face.
“Don't cry,” I say.
“I'm not,” she gasps.
“Tear gas!” yells Strike. He points to the red velvet curtain. A second tear gas grenade rolls into view, joining the first one.
Edward laughs and weeps at the same time. “Your observation that my employees would desert me in my time of need? Care to think again? They were waiting until I had the whole family under my roof.”
Strike throws his elbow over his face.
“Get Bridget out of here,” he tells Irina.
“Bridget's fought her way out of worse situations than this,” I say as I reach for my box of marbles.
From the other side of the curtain we hear the sound of feet charging toward us. The floor shakes. It sounds like a lot of feet.
Irina yanks at the steel wire attached to her arrow and winds it back into her gun.
“Let's go,” she says to me.
Strike kicks the gargoyle off Edward and pulls him to his feet.
“Human shield?” says Irina.
“It'll buy you some time.” He nods.
“Okay, wait, let's not be hasty,” Edward chimes in. “This doesn't have to end in bloodshed.”
“It won't for me,” Strike says.
“Find us,” says a choked-up Irina. “We'll wait for you.”
“I'll meet you in the safe house,” gasps Strike as the tear gas fills the room, making it impossible to see or speak.
I feel Irina wrap her arms around me. I feel the wind in my face as we leave the building and then I feel myself fly through the air.
“Don't drop me!” I hear myself scream.
“I let you go once,” Irina yells back. “I won't do it again.”
W
e're in Chinatown. Around me, I see food vendors packing up their stalls for the night. Wooden tables groan with knock-off handbags and T-shirts. One of the men behind the tables sees me staring in his direction. “Gucci, Prada, Chanel!” he shouts. “Buy something nice. The boys will like you better if you don't look like a fool.”
“You look like a fool!” I shout back, enraged. (Actually, I do look like a fool. I'm wearing an I Love New York sweatshirt and a green foam Statue of Liberty crown. So is Irina. Her idea. Apparently, we're safer if we blend in.)
Irina slips her arm through mine and tugs me away. We walk under scaffolding, passing an electronics store, a Buddhist temple, and a restaurant with roasted ducks and chickens hanging on skewers in the window. The smell wafting out is amazing. I slow down, starving, but Irina speeds up, yanking me along in her wake. She takes a sharp left turn and charges down a grimy alley. Here, the smell is not amazing. Black garbage bags swollen to the point of bursting litter the alley. Angry cats hiss and spit in the darkness, cursing us for invading their unpleasant home turf.
Cats aren't the only inhabitants of this dark, dirty place. I hear a familiar scampering, the same pattering of tiny feet I became acquainted with when I was stuck in an air vent trying to escape from Section 23.
So, rats, we meet again.
Suddenly, Irina stops walking and digs into her pocket. We're outside a door with peeling black paint. She pulls out a key and sticks it in a padlock.
“Go on,” she says, ushering me through the open door.
Last time she did this, I went from the outside of a concrete tower into a warm and welcoming little oasis of calm and comfort. This time, I fumble around in the dark for a moment before a light goes on and I'm
immediately reminded of all the times my dad didn't get to watch sports or
L&O
because Mom was immersed in a program about people who live in quaint old country farmhouses. This kitchen, with its shelves filled with jars of jam, honey, and sugar, would make my mom moan with envy. Irina turns on more lights. I follow her through a hallway filled with vases of freshly cut flowers and a bamboo umbrella stand into a living room that groans with antique furniture and mountains of throw pillows. It's a room designed for comfort and relaxation, but Irina is pacing the floor like a panther.
I sink into the couch and make a fun fort out of the many, many pillows.
“Can you sit down and talk to me?” I say, feeling a little like the adult in this situation. “I get that you're on edge but you're making me tense, too.”
Irina plops down next to me. Her eyes are darting from her watch to the living room door and back to me.
“I feel very safe here in the safe house,” I say. “I thought places like this were bare-bones and only used for emergencies, but I could vacation in here. I bet all the other assassins want to hang out at Irina O's.”
“It's not for me,” she says. “Sometimes the people I was assigned to erase didn't deserve to be erased. Not a lot of times, but sometimes. So I brought them here and
arranged for them to disappear.”
“Oh,” I say again.
“So I'm not quite the villain you think I am.”
I'm about to protest when she says, “But I am a bad guy. I did lie about Strike to save myself and I probably did ruin any chance of us ever being a family.”
Irina gets up and goes over to a shelf filled with figurines. She begins arranging and rearranging them.
“A real bad guy wouldn't have checked up on me,” I say.
Irina turns back to face me, a china clown nestling in her palm. “I wanted to know you were with good people. That you were happy and healthy and living the life I wanted for you.”
“I was,” I say. “I am. They're the best. Well, Ryan's kind of a tool.”
“I can't believe he got away with stealing the red fox from the zoo,” she says.
“Right?” I say, amazed. “Wait, you knew about that?”
“Spy.” She shrugs.
Irina suddenly lets out a little gasp and lets go of the china clown. I watch it fall to the ground and smash.
“Irina?” I say, scared. I jump off the couch and run to her.
Irina's eyes roll up in her head. Her legs buckle and
she collapses onto the floor, where she lies motionless.
“What's wrong?” I shout.
The air behind Irina starts to ripple. A shape forms, transparent at first; then it becomes whole.
A girl not much older than me, with blond, sideswept hair, wearing a black cocktail dress, stands over the still body of Irina Ouspenskaya brandishing a syringe.
She holds both palms up to me and smirks. “The wrong hands,” she says in an upper-class English accent.
Who is this? Where did she come from? And why is she acting like she knows me?
“She's not dead. In case you were worried,” the girl goes on. “She'll be good as new tomorrow. She might drool a little. She may also have trouble swallowing or blinking or remembering her name, but other than that, she'll be in tip-top condition.”
I can't form words. All I can do is stare and shake with fright. The more terrified I am, the more poised and amused the girl seems.
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” she solemnly intones.
I must look baffled because she points to the top of my head and smirks, “That's a good look for you.”
I'm still wearing my stupid foam Statue of Liberty crown! And my I Love New York hoodie! I go to pull
the crown off my head but then I stop. Something about this girl strikes a familiar chord. Her high heels give her a few inches, her eyes are blue instead of gray, her lipstick-reddened mouth is bigger, and her voice is different, but I know this girl.
“BlâBlabby?”